News
Published on 07 May 2026
Attention fans of the London Stage! Get your tickets now and line up early because Drury Lane is the place to be tonight! We simply can’t guarantee everyone a spot in the audience! Don’t believe me?
Well believe the one unlucky theatergoer of May 7th, 1776 who (perhaps not arriving early enough) “[a]ttempted to get into Drury Lane Theatre (…) but the crowd was so great that after suffering thumps, squeezes and almost suffocation for two hours, [ ] was oblig’d to retire.”
That’s right, Londoners were SO frantic to attend the performance of The Stratagem that the playbill made sure to outline that “Ladies and Gentlemen [were] most earnestly requested to come early.”
Want to know what all the excitement was about? It just so happens that Drury Lane wasn’t just putting on Stratagem that night, it was staging the grand finales of not one, but TWO stage greats.
A Starlet and a Stage Manager
Frances... Read More
Published on 30 April 2026
Happy April 30th readers! Don’t you just love spring? April showers, May flowers, and, of course, wedding season! Speaking of which, it just so happens that on this #theaterthursday, London was deep in the throes of celebration over none other than a ROYAL wedding!
On April 30th, 1736, Goodman’s Fields Theatre put on a performance of The Conscious Lovers “in Honour of the Royal Marriage.” It was such a momentous occasion that some of the audience had even been treated to tickets at the expense of Goodman Fields manager, Henry Giffard, himself!
As if complimentary tickets were insufficient, “a large Quantity of Liquor” was also provided for attendants and the stage was decorated with “several Glass Lustres. Even the exterior of Goodman’s Fields was alight that night with decorative candles: announcing to the entire city the extents undertaken to celebrate the royal match.
The Royal Couple
Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, Princess of Wales by Charles... Read More
Published on 23 April 2026
We spent last week’s #theaterthursday reflecting on Charlotte Charke and her transgression of strict gender binaries on and off stage. For more on how scholarship regarding Charke’s gender/sexuality has changed over the years, check out “Reading as Lesbian, Reading as Trans* and Thinking Intergenerationally” by Katherine Binhammer.
This week, we discuss yet another way Charke defied conventional constraints on women’s presence in public: her engagement in political commentary on the stage.
Henry Fielding, Pasquin, and Richard Walpole
On the night of April 23rd, 1735, Charke was on stage as Mademoiselle in The Provok’d Wife. As you may remember, this had been Charke’s debut role when she began acting at her father, Colley Cibber’s, theater. Despite this instance of repetition, her stage career was far from monotonous: less than a year later, Charke branched out and left behind her father’s theater altogether.
In March of 1736, Charke joined manager and playwright Henry Fielding at Haymarket Theatre,... Read More
Published on 20 April 2026
“With the interface and the user experience, The London Stage [Database] surfaces wild connections about disabilities, racialization, pleasures, and performances across time; it removes barriers in navigating the margins and the center of performance history. In this way, it makes disability history easier to access.”
– Dr. Jarred Wiehe, Colorado College
That quote comes from a roundtable discussion on the topic of “New Work Using the London Stage Database”, which I hosted earlier at the annual meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS) in Philadelphia. In this post, I’ll share some highlights from that event, which featured brief talks from five incredible scholars and a lively Q&A session with the audience.
But before I get into it: a huge shout-out to Erin Winter, Quynh Tran-Le, Ceilidh McCallum, and Rose Ruhnke for all their work helping me prep datasets for preview and expert testing by conference attendees. In a parallel universe... Read More
Published on 16 April 2026
On this day in history, theater fanatics across London rolled out of bed, grabbed their copies of The British Chronicle, and opened them only to find what must have been shocking news: Charlotte Charke, an iconic figure of the acting world, had died.
A Life of Adventures…
From a young age, Charke embraced her interests in endeavors considered improper for a woman. Her mother made it clear that she intended Charke to “[be] made a good Housewife,” but Charke found herself “passionately fond of the Study of Physics [medicine]” and took no interest in more culturally acceptable feminine hobbies such as embroidery (A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Charlotte Charke, pages 30-34).
After demands from her father to cease as desist her practice of medicine and loss of the shop she had been selling herbal remedies out of, Charke moved on to other business pursuits. This would be a theme of her life,... Read More
Published on 09 April 2026
Good morning lovers of the London Stage! Can you believe it? Today’s the day! The night has finally arrived that we get to see the great John Dryden’s NEW play Cleomenes!
Wait- what do you mean? The show’s been canceled?!
Dryden’s Latest Tragic Play
“Cleomenes the Spartan Heroe: A Tragedy”, 1692. Public domain image via Internet Archive
On the 12th of March, 1692 the Gentlemen’s Journal newspaper ran the following advertisement:
“Mr Dryden has completed a new Tragedy, intended shortly for the Stage, wherein he hath done a great unfortunate Spartan no less justice than Roman Anthony met with in his All for Love. You who give Plutarch a daily reading, can never forget with what magnimity (under all his tedious misfortunes) Cleomenes behaved himself, in the Aegyptian Court. This Hero, and the last Scene of his Life, has our best Tragic Poet chose for his fruitful Subject.” (page 406).
Invoking his widely popular play All for... Read More