LIT 3041 Sec. 1878. EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY THEATRE Patricia Craddock
Office: TUR 4332 Office Phone: 352-392-0757
E-Mail Craddoc@Nervm.nerdc.ufl.edu Office hours: W5 &;6, R 8 &9, and by appointment

REQUIRED TEXT BOOKS
Cordner, Michael, ed. Four Restoration Marriage Plays, Oxford UP
Harris, Brice, ed. Restoration Plays. Modern Library
Quintana, Richard, ed. Eighteenth-Century Plays. Modern Library

IDEA OF THE COURSE
Because plays require performance, and performances require audiences, it is not just permissible, but essential, to think of "theater" as a world, existing in several dimensions, rather than just a collection of printed texts. In this course, we will certainly read many of the plays that were written and performed in London in the period between 1660 and 1800, but we will also be trying collectively to reconstitute some of the features of the "world" in which they were written performed, seen, as well as read.

We can think of that world as like a giant 4-dimensional (space and time) web given shape and form by numerous links among the various items in it. For instance, a play is linked to time in several ways: it was written at a certain time, performed at certain times, published at certain times, possibly banned or censored at certain times, reviewed at certain times, etc. It is linked to several places--theaters, the author's residence, the publishing house, possibly the milieu that inspired it (that is, the world portrayed within it), the coffee houses at which people discuss it, and so on. All the people who are involved in its performance, from the author to the members of the audience, are linked to it. So are those who try to interfere with its performance. So are the many people, amateurs and professionals, then and now, who record their reactions, criticism, and analysis, in diaries, letters, reviews, books, or articles. So are the tradesmen and craftsmen who contribute to its staging, ranging from scene painters and musicians to guards, ticket sellers, and cleaning people. It is linked to many other plays. Events and institutions, affecting performances or providing the content for the plays, also affect the theater world. The links around even a single play define a complex world, and we will examine many plays.

WEBSITE and GRADING
At the end of the semester we will have created a site on the World Wide Web containing BOTH texts and images of eighteenth-century materials, or rather, AND articles written by members of the class. Grading will be based on contributions to this portfolio. Some items will receive points rather than a letter grade, as specified below. Other items will receive letter grades, counting the indicated percentage of your grade. In the portfolio there will be at least the following items:

1. Articles about individual people connected with the British theater at the time--at least one per class member. (20%) Students may choose to contribute additional brief biographies to the portfolio. If these are accepted by the class and teacher, they will be awarded from 3 to 5 points each.
2. Articles about each play we have read. Every class member will write about one of the plays, or about an additional play approved by the professor. If more than one student writes about a particular play, we will have to decide collectively which discussion(s) to publish on our website. (20%)

3. Cast lists for particular performances of plays. Every student must provide the best available information about the date and cast of the first performance of the play s/he chooses to write about, but other cast lists and cast lists for plays that were not necessarily new at the time may also be contributed. Each cast list counts 1 point.

4. Articles about individual institutions, places, events, and issues connected with the theater, ranging from particular theaters, coffee houses, and districts of London to issues like religious opposition to the theater, relationship between British and French theater, censorship laws, drama and other arts, play reviews, and actors' training. Each student will either choose a research topic from the list provided, or invent a topic (subject to my approval); the portfolio, therefore, will contain as many such articles as there are class members. (20%).

4. A timeline of the time period, with year by year information about theatrical developments. Each piece of information contributed to this chronology by a given student and approved by the class for inclusion in the final version counts 1 point. A contribution may be either a new date, or a link to some other item in the site. A student who discovers an error in the dates gets 2 points, subtracted from the erring student's total unless the one who made the mistake can show that a legitimate reference source misled him or her. It is important not to be careless about factual details!

5. A physical map of London, indicating sites important to the world of the theater. Each piece of information contributed to the map by a given student and approved by the class counts 1 point.

6. An annotated bibliography of works helpful in analyzing the London theater in this period. No work may be included to which there is not access in a local library OR through the Internet. Each entry contributed by a student and accepted by the class and the teacher for inclusion in the bibliography counts 1; each annotation contributed by a student and acceptable to the teacher and the class counts 2; each addition to an annotation contributed by a student and acceptable to the class and the teacher counts 1.

7. A collection of pictures relevant to this study. Each picture will need to be photocopied and properly credited. It should have a caption indicating its value to our work. A picture is acceptable only if the source is properly given. An accepted picture will count 1 point if it merely identifies the subject, 2 points if the student creates a good caption

8. To all of the above items, hypertext LINKS may be added. To create a link, identify two items that are related to each other, briefly explaining why and documenting the source of your knowledge. For instance, if you are writing about a certain actor, and another student contributes an article about a playwright in whose plays your actor frequently appeared, you may point out the link between the two. You may also link your actor to each new play as it is listed on our timeline if he or she performed in that play, and to articles about the plays she or he was in. Each link that survives the scrutiny of class and teacher receives 1 point. Links that are erroneous, duplications, or frivolous (unless extremely witty) will not count.

Grading: it will be clear that 60% of the student's grade will be based on his or her three articles, which may be written in any order. The first is due February 22, the second March 21, and the third April 15. 10% will be based on particular homework assignments that will help to prepare you to do the major papers, and on class contributions of various kinds (including attendance). The other 30% must be earned in "points." 18 points will be a passing mark, 27 or above an A, on this portion of your grade. If a student or I can think of another category in which students might legitimately earn points, that category will be added to the list. The criterion will be whether the work proposed will improve our final collective project. It may be possible to earn "extra credit" in point form.

CLASS MEETINGS
Especially at the beginning and end of the semester, the class may sometimes resemble a regular class, with the teacher giving background information, the students giving reports, and everyone discussing particular texts we have all read. But many class meetings will be devoted to reading each other's work, working on collective projects, and progress reports on individual students' research. Ideally, the classroom on those days will be our workshop, a space in which different groups are working on different parts of the same projects, different individuals are helping each other, with searching criticism as well as suggestions and praise, and a productive atmosphere of organized chaos (not unlike a theater in which a play is being prepared for performance) will obtain. This class is deliberately new and experimental, but it mirrors a situation, the task force or (research) team, that most people will encounter in their professional lives, sometimes in their personal lives as well. If you see ways to improve the process, don't hesitate to propose them to me. If you want to just sit passively in the classroom and take notes, choose a different course.

WRITTEN ASSIGNMENTS:
One of the assumptions of this course is that by the end of the semester, each of you will have produced several pieces of writing that will not embarrass you (or your teacher, or your classmates) as the products of a student in an upper-level English course at the University of Florida. Many of you, however, are rewriters--you just don't do your best if you turn in a first draft, or even a revised draft without letting some time elapse before you proofread it. For that reason, I want you to begin bringing in notes and ideas for drafts from the very beginning of the class. You will be able to try out your ideas on me and on other students before setting them "in stone." In any case, the articles will be edited for clarity, documentation, and correctness before they are included in the portfolio--first by you, then by your colleagues, and finally by me. I hope there will be nothing left for me to correct. For that reason, note that it will be important for you to help your colleagues by telling them when you think they have made an error or been unclear. They may be right and you may be wrong, but even the best writers have troubles seeing their own small slips or reading their work from someone else's perspective.

Note that you may well earn both a grade and points with the same assignment, as you turn in article links, chronology links, map links, pictures, bibliography, etc. I reserve the right to add points for special contributions to class, and to allow extra points (beyond 30) to make amends for weaknesses in written projects (I don't promise anything on that point, however).

Assignment for the week of Tuesday, January 9:

1. Read Restoration Marriage Plays, iii-lviii. At the bottom of p. liv and on the next 3 pages numerous sources that might be of interest to the student of Restoration theater are listed. Count down through the entries until you find the one whose number (in your count--they aren't numbered in the book) corresponds to the day of the month on which you were born. (This is just a device for making sure everybody doesn't do the same item.) Bring to class the location of that source in our library (call number, location, whether it is in or out, which part of the library). If you want to get started earning points right away, prepare a bibliographical entry for our portfolio, on the model of the sample attached to the syllabus. If you can't find the item, start at the end of the list instead of the beginning and do the same thing. For instance, if your birthday is the third, you could look up Peter Holland's The Ornament of Action; if you can't find it, you would look up Robert D. Hume's article in the journal Modern Philology, because that is the third item from the end of the list. Getting the right item isn't crucial; getting an item is crucial. Record your information on an index card or slip of paper to turn in. Be sure your name is on it.

2. Choose a name from the list of eighteenth-century theater people which will be circulated to you (write your name beside the name you have chosen). (Note: some of these people may have the same name as a person who lived in another period. Make sure you are finding information that is relevant to the time period of this course, 1660-1800.) In our next class meeting, you will be asked to tell the class what this person has to do with the Restoration and eighteenth century theatre world, what would be interesting about this person, and where they might start looking to find out about him or her. You will also provide the first link(s) to our chronology for this person (birth and/or death dates,). To answer these questions, look this name up in one or more of the following sources, all of which are to be found in the Reference section of the library.

Dictionary of National Biography

A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers, and Other Stage Personnel in London, 1660-1800, ed. Highfill et al.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, 80, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Dramatists, ed. Backscheider.

Dictionary of British and American Women Writers, 1660-1800, ed. Todd.

Keep a record of your work, that is, note down the source(s) you use, the call numbers and location of the reference works and problems you encounter/short-cuts you discover. This work should be on a separate sheet of paper from that done for part 1 of the assignment.

3. Browse through our three collections of plays. Make note of the ones that might be interesting subjects for your own paper. You may want to look up the playwright in LUIS and the playwright and play in MLA International Bibliography (library, CD-ROM).

4. READ William Wycherley, The Country Wife, in Restoration Plays

SAMPLE BIBLIOGRAPHY ENTRY.
Marshall, Dorothy. Dr . Johnson's London . New York: John Wiley, 1968. Takes as its theme Samuel Johnson's comment in 1763: "How different a place London is to different people . . . . A politician thinks of it merely as the seat of government . . . ; a grazier as a vast market for cattle; a mercantile man, as a place where a a prodigious deal of business is done upon [the Stock Exchange]; a dramatic enthusiast, as the grand scene of theatrical entertainments; a man of pleasure, as an assemblage of taverns, and the great emporium for ladies of easy virtue. But the intellectual man is struck with it, as comprehending the whole of human life in all its variety." Includes chapters on the following topics related to London in the eighteenth century: history and layout of London; business and finances of London; government of the city; the Court and Parliament; London amusements; literary and cultural life; poverty and crime; charity. Many quotations from eighteenth-century sources; very clear and readable; several illustrations. Highly recommended. 942.12 M367 d
(NOTE: a particularly long annotation because of numerous topics; most would be much shorter)