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Palgrave Macmillan

Actors, Audiences, and Emotions in the Eighteenth Century

Communities of Sentiment

  • Book
  • © 2023

Overview

Authors:
  1. Glen McGillivray

    1. University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia

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  • Examines how audiences and actors emotionally interacted in the English theatre in the mid eighteenth century
  • Challenges the view that emotional interaction between actors and audiences depends on an empathetic exchange
  • Explores how the theatre space itself mediated behaviours

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in the History of Emotions (PSHE)

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Table of contents (6 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xviii
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Introduction

    • Glen McGillivray
    Pages 1-33

  3. Playing to Type

    • Glen McGillivray
    Pages 35-72

  4. Communicating Emotions: The Arts of the Actor

    • Glen McGillivray
    Pages 73-115

  5. Regulating and Mobilising Emotions: The Audience

    • Glen McGillivray
    Pages 117-148

  6. Mediating Emotions in Place

    • Glen McGillivray
    Pages 149-187

  7. Conclusion: “Damme, Tom, it’ll do”

    • Glen McGillivray
    Pages 189-195

  8. Back Matter

    Pages 197-223
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Keywords

About this book

This book offers an innovative account of how audiences and actors emotionally interacted in the English theatre during the middle decades of the eighteenth century, a period bookended by two of its stars: David Garrick and Sarah Siddons. Drawing upon recent scholarship on the history of emotions, it uses practice theory to challenge the view that emotional interactions between actors and audiences were governed by empathy. It carefully works through how actors communicated emotions through their voices, faces and gestures, how audiences appraised these performances, and mobilised and regulated their own emotional responses. Crucially, this book reveals how theatre spaces mediated the emotional practices of audiences and actors alike. It examines how their public and frequently political interactions were enabled by these spaces.

Reviews

“The behavior of people in theaters of the eighteenth century still presents us with a puzzle: why the effusive emotion? In this brilliant study, drawing on a wealth of source material, the emotional style which peaked in Sentimentalism is explained through a deep historical ethnography of the emotional practices of the age. Glen McGillivray attends to both actors’ and audiences’ performances of feeling, as well as the space in which they were executed, to provide a full picture of what was going on in early modern English theaters.” (Monique Scheer, University of Tübingen, Germany)

Authors and Affiliations

  • University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia

    Glen McGillivray

About the author

Glen McGillivray is Associate Professor in Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Sydney, Australia. He was an associate investigator with the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions, and his research focuses on the intersection between emotions and performance.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Actors, Audiences, and Emotions in the Eighteenth Century

  • Book Subtitle: Communities of Sentiment

  • Authors: Glen McGillivray

  • Series Title: Palgrave Studies in the History of Emotions

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22899-5

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham

  • eBook Packages: History, History (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-22898-8Published: 21 February 2023

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-031-22901-5Published: 22 February 2024

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-22899-5Published: 20 February 2023

  • Series ISSN: 2946-5958

  • Series E-ISSN: 2946-5966

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XVIII, 223

  • Topics: History of Britain and Ireland, Cultural History, Social History, Theatre History

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