English Theatre Culture 1660-1737
Adaptations, Appropriations and Afterlives on Restoration Stages
19 October 2020 (online)
seminar convenor: Dr Filip Krajník (Masaryk University, CZ)
keynote speaker: Assoc. Prof. Teresa Grant (University of Warwick, UK)
Monday, October 19
2pm (GMT+2): Plenary Lecture: Teresa Grant (University of Warwick, UK): ‘James Shirley, Aphra Behn and the Performing of Women’s Parts’
3pm (GMT+2): Break (15 minutes)
3.15pm (GMT+2): Seminar: ‘Adaptations, Appropriations and Afterlives on Restoration Stages’ – Part One
1) Angelina Del Balzo (Bilkent University, Turkey): ‘“Female Suff-rers”: Adapting Ibrahim and Emotion on the Restoration Stage’
2) Nathan Richards-Velinou (McGill University, Canada): ‘“All You Shall See of Her is Perfect Man”: Performing Masculinities in John Dryden and William Davenant’s The Tempest’
3) Lisanna Calvi (University of Verona, Italy): ‘A Piece of “Art Magick”: George Granville’s The Jew of Venice (1701)’
4) Eva Bilská (Charles University, Czech Republic): ‘Macbeth in the Restoration period’
4.45pm (GMT+2): Break (45 minutes)
5.30pm (GMT+2): Seminar: ‘Adaptations, Appropriations and Afterlives on Restoration Stages’ – Part Two + final discussion
5) Lauren Liebe (Texas A&M University, USA): ‘Weaponizing Adaptation: The Duke of Lermaand the Clarendon Crisis’
6) Angelica Vedelago (University of Verona, Italy): ‘The “Harp” and the “Muse”: Sophocles and Seneca resounding in Dryden and Lee’s Oedipus (1679)’
7) Andrew Walkling (Binghamton University, USA): ‘Royalism and Resolution in Edmund Waller’s Rescripting of The Maid’s Tragedy’
7pm (GMT+2): Conclusion
“In the realm of literature influence may be strong, and shaping inspiration powerful,
even when the work so inspired is completely alien to the inspiring force.”
(Allardyce Nicoll, A History of English drama, 1660–1900)
Declared adaptations and revivals of older plays comprised more than a half of all the productions of London playhouses between 1660 and 1700. Although they contributed in a decisive way to the overall image of the English Restoration theatre, any inquiry into Restoration adaptations poses a methodological challenge: while even nowadays theatre scholars maintain that “[a]daptation is a slippery term, and like dramaturgy, it eludes definition because it is so context specific” (Kara Reilly, Contemporary Approaches to Adaptation in Theatre), mapping the modern concept of adaptation onto early modern drama is potentially anachronistic. Moreover, the Restoration period was probably the first era that acknowledged a dramaturgy from within living memory – the plays of Shakespeare, Fletcher, Massinger, Dekker or Jonson – which its playwrights took as one of their key sources of inspiration. A special, and even more complex, chapter in researching Restoration adaptations is foreign sources and influences – predominantly French, Italian and Spanish, but also German and Dutch – and the creative milieu of transnational theatre of the early modern period.
The seminar invites papers on Restoration adaptations for the theatre, whose topics might include (but are not limited to) the following issues:
- defining Restoration adaptation – possible methodological approaches;
- Restoration playwrights’ treatment of domestic and foreign sources;
- transnational dramaturgies of the Restoration;
- revivals of pre-1660 plays: continuity and discontinuity between the Renaissance and Restoration theatre traditions;
- adaptation across forms and genres;
- plagiarism, theft and the early politics of possessive authorship in the Restoration period.
We welcome a variety of paper formats, from short interventions and notes, to full conference papers.
Please send your abstract (of no more than 250 words) to Filip Krajník (filip.krajnik@phil.muni.cz) by September 15, 2020.
We expect that accepted papers or paper theses should be pre-circulated to seminar participants in advance. The format of the seminar will be a moderated discussion based on the pre-circulated contributions and short (up to 10 minute) presentations of their main thesis on the day.
Registered, non-presenting auditors are welcome.