Theatre and Governance in Britain 1500-1900

This book begins with a simple observation - that just as the theatre resurfaced during the late Renaissance so too government as we understand it today also began to appear. Their mutually entwining history was to have a profound influence on the development of the modern British stage. This volume proposes a new reading of theatre''s relation to the public sphere. Employing a series of historical case studies drawn from the London theatre Tony Fisher shows why the stage was of such great concern to government by offering close readings of well-known religious moral political economic and legal disputes over the role purpose and function of the stage in the ''well-ordered society''. In framing these disputes in relation to what Michel Foucault called the emerging ''art of government'' this book draws out - for the first time - a full genealogy of the governmental ''discourse on the theatre''.