Stock Pieces: British Repertory Theatre, 1760–1830

What do we gain from watching a familiar play for the nth time? This was a crucial question for Romantic-period theatre managers, who, to deliver varied programmes, relied on a repertoire of ‘stock’ entertainments performed in alternation with the latest plays. Repertory theatre was not new to the Romantic period, but it took on additional purchase at a time when the playhouse was not simply a site for entertainment but a government-controlled cultural institution and business, subject to sometimes extreme financial, political, and ideological pressures. Through an innovative selection of case studies drawn from deep archival research, Stock Pieces juxtaposes canonical with otherwise forgotten entertainments; unites the period’s professional and amateur dramatic cultures; and spans British metropolitan, provincial, and imperial geographies. The picture that emerges is fresh and compelling. Stock Pieces sheds light on the mechanics of stock piece status, the Romantic afterlives of Shakespeare’s near contemporaries (whose popular appeal declined as his increased), and the work of various agents (from pantomime arrangers to enslaved performers in Jamaica) who contested the repertoire’s received aesthetic and cultural values. It also explores the extent to which investments in the abolitionist cause were remediated by stock pieces that revived and reenacted the spectral violence of slavery and the slave trade – for various purposes. Stock Pieces showcases how the Romantic-period dramatic repertoire could be mobilised to signify social and political practices that operated outside the theatrical institution, crossed national borders, and dared to effect real change.