The individual archives of the authors of this site were grouped together because of their common interest in one main aspect of Restoration drama: theatricality. Through a variety of different modes and devices, playwrights of this time explored the act of performing and writing plays. Self-reflexive dialogues, the use of masks and masquerading, and ambiguous depictions of gender and love all shed new light on the playhouses and the society surrounding them. Each of the essays supplied on this site interpret a variety of artistic turns that the plays of the time made.  They also reveal a degree of self-consciousness about the play as a form of theatricality as a whole.

The essay by Taylor Gibson, "Plays of Plays, By Plays, and For Plays:
The Self-Reflexive Drama of the 17^th and 18^th Centuries," explores both general and specific references to drama as a genre and the play as a form. As plays grew to broach a much wider array of subjects, playwrights began to make ironic and specific jabs at the world of drama. Some authors supported the more open forum for their plays because it allowed them to explore subjects that would have been highly objectionable in the decades previous.  Others, however, viewed these changes as a step backwards for the form as a whole. The former group enjoyed the new opportunities they had to write about the sometimes seedy underbelly of their society. They were now allowed to have an increased degree of sexual spectacle on the stage, and this aspect was enhanced even further by the emergence of actresses. The latter group of commentary frequently claimed that the freedom now given to playwrights created a new kind of play that was crude, vulgar, and offensive. They stepped backward from the beauty and profundity of Shakespeare and other more elegant plays. Through new forms and self-reflexive dialogue, playwrights expressed their opinions on a variety of dramatic topics.

In her essay, Gibson chose to focus on a number of plays that possessed self-reflexive properties, but she contends that one in particular, Henry Fielding’s The Author’s Farce, embodied both of these devices more fully than most others. In the first two acts of this play, the main character Luckless attempts to produce his tragedy, either on paper or on the stage. Since he fails to do either, he chooses to create a new play that will please a larger group of people, and therefore, prove a more sound financial investment for publishers and producers—a puppet show. These first two acts allow Fielding to explore the society surrounding both the publishing and performing of plays. The third act of Fielding’s play is Luckless’s puppet show. Gibson maintains that this strange form is unique to The Author’s Farce.  It creates a very strange layering of authorship that makes it difficult for the readers to understand where the reality of the play lies, if it exists at all. Gibson notes that the play as a whole perfectly reflects the two self-reflexive devices that she explores in her paper. The dialogue of the play implies that the theaters were no longer merely forums for expression, but were now controlled by men of influence who could only make their living by producing the plays of the least merit and the most celebrity or spectacle. The 'play-within-a-play' contained in the third act draws great attention to the fact that a play is being performed. Theatricality pervades the dialogue, the performance, and the reading of Fielding’s play.

Waites’ essay "Out of Sight: An Examination of Love Relationships in the Restoration Performance" focuses on the increased eroticism, mentioned earlier by Gibson, displayed upon the eighteenth-century stage.  In conjunction with the reopening of the theaters in 1660, Charles I instituted two innovative techniques of visual titillation: technologically advanced scenery and female actresses.  As audience members delighted in the new colorful and mobile stage mechanisms, directors increasingly emphasized the elements of spectacle on the Restoration stage.  Thus, the stage became an extravagant production with an increased emphasis on the visual.  The augmentation of exhibition continued as Restoration playwrights exposed intimate courting rituals and sexual relationships on stage.  As contemporary plays typified interactions between lovers, the boundary of privacy no longer protected the intrigue of lovemaking, and “the separation between the public and private spheres in the long eighteenth century [was] dead” (Benedict 619).  As Waites points out, this staging of love relationships became increasingly erotic, spurring a dispute between critics and playwrights.  The increasing criticism of explicit sexuality tightened the confines upon the Restoration stage forced playwrights to reform the theatrically exhibition of love making, specifically the visual representation of sexual interest in order to conceal flagrant eroticism from the spectator’s view. As sexuality became an increasingly self-conscious element within these plays, Restoration directors often presented an intentional controversy between the explicit actions and their implied meanings, defining a critical communicated to an audience only through performance.  Since visual actions and dramatic performances are subject to the spectator’s interpretation, every movement or character placement remains open to interpretation.  Thus, playwrights manipulate this system to convey explicit material and impart a chosen “truth” onto the audience.

As stylized patterns of movements determined the dynamism of social encounters on the stage, the origins of staged social situations arose from real life.  Plays from this period mock the formality of discourse and interaction between the sexes.  The most provocative conveyance of sexuality on the Restoration stage arose literally from the visual, the scandalous act of “gazing” linked to female sexuality.  This convention became an explicit focus within many famous Restoration plays like William Wycherley’s The Country Wife and Aphra Behn’s The Rover.  As the audience watched these performances, the actors and actresses erotically “gaze” upon each other.  The duality of the term increased condemnation of the immorality in Restoration drama.  Jean Marsden asserts that “The [critics] detail a system of voyeurism, involving an image, an audience which watches that image, and a reflexive gaze which excites desire” (877).  These commentators believed that spectators participated in the sexual actions or dialogue as they watched a Restoration play, as the eye incites physical wanting.  Though defenders of social promiscuity, such as Congreve and Vanbrugh, denied both the immorality of the players’ actions and the possibility of their plays inciting moral corruption, there was an inexorable connection between the spectator and the actions on stage.  The caustic debate concerning possible voyeurism resulted in strict constraint upon the contents of these plays, despite the popular demand for aspects of comedy and titillation.  Though Collier criticizes the playwrights’ refusal to reform, the shrinking confines on the stage forced authors to palliate the critics and reduce, or at least disguise, the explicitly sexual scenes.  As drama communicates ideas, attitudes, and moods through visual action, a greater focus on stage directions and patterns of movement ensued to proffer particular “ways of seeing” to the audience (Milhous 619).  Waites notes that playwrights, therefore, relied on producible interpretation as they explicitly revealed certain aspects of sexual interaction in these plays, yet manipulated stylized dramatic techniques to convey implicitly titillating moments.  Thus, the concept of “peeping,” from behind doors, curtains, or other stage scenery, arose as a modified version of the erotic “gaze.” The OED defines the verb 'to peep' as “to emerge or protrude (one’s head, nose, etc.) a very short distance into view; (hence) to look quickly or furtively from a vantage point; to steal a glance.”  This definition inherently juxtaposes this action with the “gaze,” which means “to look fixedly, intently, or deliberately at something.”  Within the plays a gaze would be consciously exchanged between characters.  The act of peeping becomes much more secretive, ironically heightening the titillation and excitement of these moments, especially in plays like The Country Wife and The Busie Body.  Playwrights ultimately created a guise to block the most provocative eroticism that appeared on the eighteenth-century stage.  The most sexual scenes took place behind closed doors, and directors relied on the audiences' interpretation to convey the “final gratification” of a flirtation or chase.  The evolution of the “gaze” as a method of sexual titillation denotes the tightening confines upon the visual eroticism displayed on the Restoration stage. 

While Waites considered the self-consciousness present in the concealment of love scenes, Sarah Guy’s essay "Let's Ramble:" The Licensed Chaos of Masquerade in Restoration Theater-Going focused on a different sort of disguise: masquerade. Guy examined the use of masquerade as a form of theatrical self-consciousness by identifying similarities between masquerading and theatergoing. She argued that the liminal space of the theater and of a masquerade or disguise offered the potential for social subversion by erasing class distinctions for a defined period of time. Through an examination of carnivalizing in Aphra Behn’s The Rover and of disguise in George Farquhar’s The Beaux’ Stratagem, Guy concluded that these liminal, chaotic, and dangerous moments ultimately return the characters to a strengthened social status quo.

In considering Aphra Behn’s The Rover, Guy discussed the potential for both liberation and danger in the masked carnival. She identified the double attempt at rape of Florinda and the humiliation and robbery of Blunt as moments of confusion that only a masquerade, with its ability to remove class distinctions, could provide. The series of marriages at the end of the play support the notion that after a masquerade, the status quo is reaffirmed as the preferred mode of existence. In Farquhar’s The Beaux Stratagem, the use of disguise by Archer and Aimwell acts as a masquerade and forces them into chaotic moments. After being discovered, Aimwell reverts to his old social position and refuses to marry Cherry, an innkeeper’s daughter, because of her lower class standing. These retreats to a strengthened social status quo, in both The Rover and The Beaux’ Stratagem, marked these two plays as conservative texts in a period of theatrical chaos. The playwrights ultimately draw attention to themselves through their keen observations of human behavior after social subversion and the connection between masquerade and the theater itself. Behn and Farquhar, therefore, proved to be intensely conscious of the theatricality within their work and self-conscious of their own role in the production of that theatricality.

Elise Gelinas's essay, "Masks and Masquerading: The Construction of Identity in Restoration Comedies" relates to Guy's topic by focusing on how a masked face can alter one's identity in society.  William Wycherly’s The Country Wife includes abundant references to masks or masquerades, which demonstrate how disguising or concealing a face can influence societal position.  Gelinas asserts that the mask references in The Country Wife connect with themes of either beauty or honor.  Both concepts define identity and are based on surface appearances.  Masks, therefore, illustrate how beauty and honor can be manipulated.  Characters lacking these two traits can alter their position in the community with a vizard.  Gelinas’s essay contends that masks interfere with designated roles in society.  The theme of disguising one’s appearance is consistent with other plays from the Restoration Era.  The society in Love’s Last Shift is enthralled by appearance, and therefore, a mask used for deceit disrupts perceptions.  Appearances are important because they are used to describe, recognize, and judge other members in the community.  When one wishes to deceive society, this can be done by either donning or removing a mask.  Physical exteriors, which are an important tool of assessment for society, should not be carelessly altered by a mask.  Similar to the plays by Wycherly and Cibber, mask use in The Relapse revolves around deceit.  The Country Wife, Love’s Last Shift, and The Relapse all emphasize the construction or concealment of identity.  Vizards or personas affect beauty, honor, or deceit.  As an extension of identity, masks are a powerful tool for manipulation in Restoration comedies.

The essays by Taylor Gibson, Katie Waites, Sarah Guy, and Elise Gelinas commonly reflect upon theatricality in Restoration drama. Self-reflexive dialogue, eroticism on stage, the effects of masquerading on behavior, and the use of masks to construct identity contribute to theatrical self-consciousness.  These subjects introduce new concepts concerning the playhouses and audiences of the eighteen-century. Each essay interprets a different artistic method used in the Restoration period. They reveal the playwrights’ views on their own plays and society's response.  The theatricality discussed in this collaborative project emphasizes innovation in visual representation through the social subversion of dramatic performance.