Introduction

This collection takes as its focus a different cross-section of performance history than those offered by conventional periodization, neither ‘Restoration’ nor ‘Eighteenth Century,’ instead concentrating on an exciting period of theatrical and musical volatility at the turn of the century encompassing the span of a hypothetical audience member’s active theatre-going life. It is often easy to forget, in period studies, that one could attend (or act in) an opening night for a production by Dryden and one by John Gay; or, musically, that one could play the violin for the first performance of both a masque by Purcell and an opera by Handel.