Women Warriors in Romantic Drama advances scholarship on late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century theater by bringing together, for the first time, female and male dramatists as well as British, German, Irish, and French writers, thinkers, actors, and philosophers. This transnational perspective allows Women Warriors in Romantic Drama to make the provocative claim that in some instances, the violence of the French Revolution--and especially women's participation in it--advances proto-feminist concerns.

In this book, Albert W. Halsall presents the first complete treatment in English of Hugo's plays - a history, plot summary, and detailed analysis of all the dramas, from Cromwel and Torquemada to the juvenilia and the epic melodrama Les Burgraves.

This book examines the radical changes in drama during the Romantic period, tracing how these changes affected theatre performance, acting, and audience.

It does not treat Romanticism as a limited "period" dominated by some construed singular master-ethos or dialectic; rather, it follows the literary patterns and dynamics of Romanticism as a flow of interactive currents across geocultural frontiers

The London theatres arguably were the central cultural institutions in England during the Romantic period, and certainly were arenas in which key issues of the time were contested. While existing anthologies of Romantic drama have focused almost exclusively on “closet dramas” rarely performed on stage, The Broadview Anthology of Romantic Drama instead provides a broad sampling of works representative of the full range of the drama of the period. It includes the dramatic work of canonical Romantic poets (Samuel Coleridge’s Remorse, Percy Shelley’s The Cenci, and Lord Byron’s Sardanapalus) and important plays by women dramatists (Hannah Cowley’s A Bold Stroke for a Husband, Elizabeth Inchbald’s Every One Has His Fault, and Joanna Baillie’s Orra). It also provides a selection of popular theatrical genres—from melodrama and pantomime to hippodrama and parody—most popular in the period, featuring plays by George Colman the Younger, Thomas John Dibdin, and Matthew Gregory Lewis. In short, this is the most wide-ranging and comprehensive anthology of Romantic drama ever published. The introduction by the editors provides an informative overview of the drama and stage practices of the Romantic Period. The anthology also provides copious supplementary materials, including an Appendix of reviews and contemporary essays on the theater, a Glossary of Actors and Actresses, and a guide to further reading. Each of the ten plays has been fully edited and annotated.

Bringing together leading British, North American, and Italian critics, this collection makes a crucial intervention in the reclamation of women's theatrical activities during the Romantic period. As they examine key figures like Elizabeth Inchbald, Joanna Baillie, Elizabeth Vestris, and Jane Scott, the contributors take up topics such as women's history plays, ethics and sexuality, the politics of drama and performance, and the role of women as managers and producers.

Reproduction of the original: Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama by E. Cobham Brewer