Articles

1. The Theatrical Career of Mary Ann Canning, Part 2: May 1777 to December 1788

   Julian Crowe

   This second article of three takes up Mary Ann Canning’s life in May 1777 and follows her provincial career through to the end of 1788. It covers her pregnancies and the mental illness that affected her husband Samuel Reddish as well as her engagements in Ireland, Plymouth, Exeter and elsewhere.

2. Strolling with Shakespeare and Friends: New Evidence from the Late Seventeenth Century

   Gerald Baker

   William King’s Dialogues of the Dead (1699) offers glimpses not visible elsewhere of the travelling repertory and of touring conditions, new evidence and facts about the performance history of several early modern plays and a hitherto-unnoticed allusion to a major Shakespeare play that encourages us to reconsider its context and appeal.

3. Protagonists in Paper: Toy Theatres and the Cultivation of Celebrity

   James Armstrong

   Nineteenth-century toy theatres reinforced an iconography of celebrity that linked star actors with the roles they played, generating excitement around individual performers. by closely examining miniature theatre prints, we can see the ups and downs of this star system being played out before our very eyes.