Provides a general account of the Roman theater and its audience, and records some of the results of the author's experiments in constructing a full-scale replica stage based upon the wall paintings at Pompeii and Herculaneum, and producing Roman plays upon it.

The Roman Stage (1964) gives a connected account of the drama of ancient Rome in its historical setting. Using original source material, whole plays as well as fragments, of tragedies, comedies and farces, it traces the development of theatre in Rome, and notes the historical importance of these plays – the Elizabeth world looked back with reverence on the days ‘when Roscius was an actor in Rome’ (Hamlet). It also examines the physical conditions of drama in Rome – the types of theatres, and their place in the lives of the Roman inhabitants.

Drawing on insights from various disciplines (philology, archaeology, art) as well as from performance and reception studies, this volume shows how a heightened awareness of performance can enhance our appreciation of Greek and Roman theatre.

Packed full of new archival evidence that reveals the interconnected world of music theatre during the 'Classical era', this interdisciplinary study investigates key locations, genres, music, and musicians. Austin Glatthorn explores the extent to which the Holy Roman Empire delineated and networked a cultural entity that found expression through music for the German stage. He maps an extensive network of Central European theatres; reconstructs the repertoire they shared; and explores how print media, personal correspondence, and their dissemination shaped and regulated this music. He then investigates the development of German melodrama and examines how articulations of the Holy Roman Empire on the musical stage expressed imperial belonging. Glatthorn engages with the most recent historical interpretations of the Holy Roman Empire and offers quantitative, empirical analysis of repertoire supported by conventional close readings to illustrate a shared culture of music theatre that transcended traditional boundaries in music scholarship.

Roman comedy evolved early in the war-torn 200s BCE. Troupes of lower-class and slave actors traveled through a militarized landscape full of displaced persons and the newly enslaved; together, the actors made comedy to address mixed-class, hybrid, multilingual audiences. Surveying the whole of the Plautine corpus, where slaves are central figures, and the extant fragments of early comedy, this book is grounded in the history of slavery and integrates theories of resistant speech, humor, and performance. Part I shows how actors joked about what people feared - natal alienation, beatings, sexual abuse, hard labor, hunger, poverty - and how street-theater forms confronted debt, violence, and war loss. Part II catalogues the onstage expression of what people desired: revenge, honor, free will, legal personhood, family, marriage, sex, food, free speech; a way home, through memory; and manumission, or escape - all complicated by the actors' maleness. Comedy starts with anger.

This 1999 book is concerned with the pictorial language of gesture revealed in Anglo-Saxon art, and its debt to classical Rome. Reginald Dodwell was an eminent art historian and former Director of the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester. In this, his last book, he notes a striking similarity of both form and meaning between Anglo-Saxon gestures and those in illustrated manuscripts of the plays of Terence. He presents evidence for dating the archetype of the Terence manuscripts to the mid-third century, and argues persuasively that their gestures reflect actual stage conventions. He identifies a repertory of eighteen Terentian gestures whose meaning can be ascertained from the dramatic contexts in which they occur, and conducts a detailed examination of the use of the gestures in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts. The book, which is extensively illustrated, illuminates our understanding of the vigour of late Anglo-Saxon art and its ability to absorb and transpose continental influence.

This book is a definitive architectural study of Roman theatre architecture. In nine chapters it brings together a massive amount of archaeological, literary,and epigraphic information under one cover. It also contains a full catalogue of all known Roman theatres, including a number of odea (concert halls) and bouleuteria (council chambers) which are relevant to the architectural discussion, about 1,000 entries in all. Inscriptional or literary evidence relating to each theatre is listed and there is an up-to-date bibliography for each building. Most importantly the book contains plans of over 500 theatres or buildings of theatrical type, as well as numerous text figures and nearly 200 figures and plates.