Broadview Anthology of Romantic Drama

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.

Jeffrey N. Cox is Professor of English and of Comparative Literature and Humanities at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he also directs the Center for Humanities and the Arts. His other work includes In the Shadows of Romance: Romantic Tragic Drama in Germany, England, and France (1987), Seven Gothic Dramas, 1789-1825 (1992), and Poetry and Politics in the Cockney School: Keats, Shelley, Hunt, and Their Circle (1998).Michael Gamer is Associate Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Romanticism and the Gothic: Genre, Reception, and Canon Formation (2000), and the editor of the Penguin edition of The Castle of Otranto (2002).