"Their Majesties' Servants." Annals of the English Stage (Volume 3 of 3)

This volume chronicles the English stage in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, surveying dramatic authorship, audience habits, and performance practice. It offers biographical and critical sketches of prominent actors and actresses—Macklin, Henderson, Sarah Siddons, John Kemble, George Frederick Cooke, Edmund Kean, and youthful Master Betty—alongside discussions of comedic and tragic trends, condemned or failing playwrights, and the rise of new theatres and ideas. Chapters examine stage costume, special effects, benefit performances, prologues and epilogues, and the theatrical marketplace, supplemented by portraits and illustrations that document the period’s theatrical life.