This thesis addresses three aspects of the relationship between audience, playhouse and play in Restoration theatre from 1660 to 1710. It provides a comprehensive account of the composition of the Restoration audience, an examination of the effect this group of men and women had upon the plays they attended and an account of the ways in which the plays and playhouses of the Restoration touched the lives of London's inhabitants. In the first part of this dissertation I identify the audience. Chapter 1 deals with London's playhouses, their location, archictecture and decoration. It shows how the playhouses effectively created two sets of spectators: the visible and the invisible audience. Chapter 2 is a detailed examination of those audiences, and the social and occupational groupings to which they belonged. Chapter 3 deals with the support the stage received. It analyses attendance patterns, summarizes evidence of audience size, presents case studies of attendance patterns and outlines the incidence and effects of recurrent playgoing. In the second part of the dissertation I deal with theatricality, with the representation of human action on and off the stage. I examine the audience's behaviour in the playhouses and the other public places of London. I focus on the relationships between stage and street to show how values and attitudes were transmitted between those two realms. To do this, I analyse three components of theatrical behaviour--acting, costume, and stage dialogue and look at their effect on peoples' behaviour in and ideas about the social world. Chapter 4 is an introduction to late seventeenth century ideas of theatricality. Chapter 5 examines contemporary ideas of dress and fashion and of their relationship to stage costuming. Chapter 6 considers how contemporary ideas about conversation and criticism affected and were in turn affected by stage dialogue.

La viole de gambe en Angleterre connaît un destin singulier, passant d’une popularité incontestable dans l’aristocratie anglaise au dix-septième siècle à un rejet d’une intensité croissante au fil du dix-huitième siècle. Les représentations de l’instrument dans des documents périphériques à la sphère musicale – lettres, poèmes, peintures – trahissent la complexité de l’imaginaire qui entoure la viole. Dans sa période faste, la viole génère simultanément des images lubriques de corps sensuel, et d’instrument noble en raison de la mélancolie supposée de son timbre. Elle est alors étroitement associée au sentiment national anglais, dont elle cristalliserait la spécificité. Cependant, sa popularité décroissante auprès de l’élite voit la prolifération d’images négatives : vieillesse et stérilité semblent désormais être l’apanage de la viole, que l’on met également à distance idéologiquement comme instrument étranger. La viole réapparaît dans la deuxième moitié du dix-huitième siècle au moment où le culte de la sensibilité se développe : brièvement, son archaïsme et son timbre unique donnent voix à l’individu et ses émotions. La viole, dans le paradigme cyclique de la Renaissance tout comme dans le paradigme linéaire et discursif des Lumières, parvient à s’incarner selon des modalités esthétiques et idéologiques très différentes dans l’imaginaire anglais / In England, the viola da gamba has a singular destiny, from an incontestable popularity with the aristocracy in the seventeenth century to a rejection of increasing intensity over the eighteenth century. The representations of the instrument in documents peripheral to the musical sphere, such as letters, poems or paintings, reveal the complexity of the imaginaire surrounding the instrument. Although, in prosperous times, the viol conjures up lewd images of a sensual body, it is simultaneously associated with ideals of nobility through the supposed melancholy of its tone. At that period, it is also felt to be closely connected to the English national identity, whose specificity it appears to crystallise. However, its dwindling popularity with the elite leads to the proliferation of negative images. Senescence and sterility are increasingly associated with the viol, while ideologically, the instrument is spurned as non- English. The brief resurgence of the viol in the second half of the eighteenth century is brought on by the development of the cult of sensibility. Individual emotions are voiced through its perceived archaism and unique tone. The viola da gamba, both in the circular paradigm of the Renaissance, and in the linear and discursive paradigm of the Enlightenment, successfully embodies contrasting aesthetic and ideological imaginaires