Theatre and Governance in Britain, 1500–1900 : Democracy, Disorder and the State

This book offers a critical re-examination of theatre's relation to the public sphere and shows how theatre was assimilated to the interests of government by suppressing various 'democratic' disorders associated with the stage. It will interest those working in the area of theatre history and its relation to social history and politics.

This book begins with a simple observation - that just as the theatre resurfaced during the late Renaissance, so too government as we understand it today also began to appear. Their mutually entwining history was to have a profound influence on the development of the modern British stage. This volume proposes a new reading of theatre''s relation to the public sphere. Employing a series of historical case studies drawn from the London theatre, Tony Fisher shows why the stage was of such great concern to government by offering close readings of well-known religious, moral, political, economic and legal disputes over the role, purpose and function of the stage in the ''well-ordered society''. In framing these disputes in relation to what Michel Foucault called the emerging ''art of government'', this book draws out - for the first time - a full genealogy of the governmental ''discourse on the theatre''.