Distance, Theatre, and the Public Voice, 17501850 [Paperback]

As theatres expanded in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the distance between actor and audience became a telling metaphor for the distance emerging between writers and readers. Nuss explores the ways in which theatre helped authors imagine connecting with a new mass audience.Introduction: Impossible Theaters 1. Pantomime: Killing the Drama in Order to Save It 2. Spaces with Meaning: Crossing from Stage to Closet in Byron and Inchbald 3. Man Seeing: Wordsworth and the Theatrical Voice 4. 'The Great Master Of Ideal Mimicry : Shelley?s Struggle With The Actor 5. Creative Spectacle: Hunt, Hazlitt, De Quincey Conclusion: Reaching a Mass Audience Face to Face

'In this taut little book, Nuss examines the ways that literary figures experimented with theatre forms and techniques as public theatres proliferated from the 18th into 19th century . . . This solid study will interest advanced students and scholars exploring the nexus of performance and literature. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.' - CHOICE

Melynda Nuss is an associate professor in the Department of English at the University of Texas-Pan American, USA.