ABSTRACT
There was a growing fascination with Shakespeare during the eighteenth century. Amateur groups performed his plays privately, and Shakespeare became a large part of the Drury Lane and Covent Garden repertory. David Garrick, manager of Drury Lane, altered Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, King Lear, and other works of the Bard, in some cases drastically, to suit the taste of eighteenth-century audiences. In 1750, the two patented London theatres took the unprecedented step of staging competing productions of Romeo and Juliet. Nineteen years later, Garrick organized a “Jubilee” in Stratford to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth, complete with a parade of actors in Shakespearean costumes. Bad weather washed out the parade, but Garrick later staged a successful revival of the Jubilee at Drury Lane.
