Staging Shakespeare in England since the restoration

This chapter explores the Continental and, eventually, broadly international influences on Shakespearean performance and, the influence of increasing globalization by considering how William Shakespeare has been performed in his own country since his own time. Edmund Kean was certainly not the originator of Shakespeare in the antiquarian vein; he drew on the historically accurate stagings of designer James Robinson Planche and manager Charles Kemble a generation earlier, and perhaps even on Charles Macklin experiments in the previous century. The history of Shakespeare on stage in England since the Restoration illuminates and imbricates the history of English theatre. The most substantial alteration to Shakespearean performance practice occurred with the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, resulting in sweeping and lasting changes unrivalled even by the major technological and globalizing shifts in the twenty-first century. Shakespeare's popularity in London after 1737 is perhaps less an encouraging sign of the developing good taste of eighteenth-century audiences than a pragmatic response to censorship.