This volume offers a selection of essays from The Tatler and The Spectator (1709-1714). The accompanying texts include excerpts from other periodicals such as The Guardian, The London Spy, and The Female Tatler; advertisements; and selections by Defoe, Ward, Flecknoe, Gay, Mandville, Pope, and Swift. A general introduction providing historical and cultural background, a chronolgy of Addison's and Steele's lives and times, an introduction to each thematic group of documents, headnotes, extensive annotations, a selected bibliography, and illustrations make this volume a unique scholarly edition of the periodical papers that helped define eighteenth-century culture and standards.

The Dramaturgy of the Spectator explores how Italian theatre consciously adjusted to the emergence of a new kind of spectator who became central to society, politics, and culture in the mid-seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The author argues that while a focus on spectatorship in isolation has value, if we are to understand the broader stakes of the relationship between the power structures and the public sphere as it was then emerging, we must trace step-by-step how spectatorship as a practice was rooted in the social and cultural politics of Italy at the time. By delineating the evolution of the Italian theatre public, as well as the dramatic innovations and communicative techniques developed in an attempt to manipulate the relationship between spectator and performance, this book pioneers a shift in our understanding of audience as both theoretical concept and historical phenomenon.