Restoration London's leading actor and theatre manager Thomas Betterton has not been the subject of a biography since 1891. He worked with all the best-known playwrights of his age and with the first generation of English actresses; he was intimately involved in the theatre's responses to politics, and became a friend of leading literary men such as Pope and Steele. His innovations in scenery and company management, and his association with the dramatic inheritance of Shakespeare, helped to change the culture of English theatre. David Roberts's entertaining study unearths new documents and draws fresh conclusions about this major but shadowy figure. It contextualizes key performances and examines Betterton's relationship to patrons, colleagues and family, as well as to significant historical moments and artefacts. The most substantial study available of any seventeenth-century actor, Thomas Betterton gives one of England's greatest performing artists his due on the tercentenary of his death.

This collection of 32 modernised versions of The Canterbury Tales which appeared in the 18th century offers basic material for studying the history of attitudes to Chaucer, and Chaucer scholarship, duringthe period. Reception data so precise and extensive is available only for Chaucer among English authors. At least seventeen known and anonymous writers produced thirty-two modernised Canterbury tales during the century, plus tale links and adaptations of each other's work. The present collection contains only modernisations that have not seen print since 1796, thus excluding those by Pope and Dryden. Although most works in this collection may be examined further in several British and American libraries, others cannot. Apparently only one copy has survived of an anonymous Miller's Tale (1791) with a thoughtful preface justifying the tale's overt sexuality published just as William Lipscomb was completing his 1795 edition that, in its preface, justifies exclusion from the pilgrimage of the notorious tales of Miller and Reeve. Such contrasting attitudes illustrate the dangers of generalisation about the usual reception or interpretation of Chaucer during this or any other socio-historic period; instead, the collection provides an untapped reservoir of material with which to investigate anew the rich complexity of his poetry and its enduring appeal. BETSY BOWDEN is Professor of English at Rutgers University, New Jersey.

Professor Ripley, in this 1980 study of Julius Caesar, offers one of the most detailed stage histories ever attempted, focusing upon aspects both of English and American staging from 1599 to 1973. His primary sources include promptbooks and groundplans, letters, diaries and reviews. He approaches the play from four different angles: he examines the texts used in all major productions, and makes valuable deductions about the taste and sensibility of an age from cuts, alterations, additions and redistribution of parts. He explains in detail the staging of the play at various points in time, and demonstrates how sets and costumes, bits of business, handling of crowd scenes and lighting affected its business. He reconstructs performances of the four main roles by the greater and lesser lights of each period. Finally, he comments on the way in which the theories of critics and, in modern times, directors' ideas have influenced understanding of the play.

Peter Holland brings together the disciplines of theatre history and literary criticism in a close study of the staging of plays in the Restoration.