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.

While historians of Britain in the 1640s have long been attracted by the English New Model Army and in recent years by the English royalist armies, the armies fielded by the Scottish Covenanters have suffered a strange neglect. It was not until the work on this thesis was well- advanced that the crude nature of previous efforts became apparent. In an attempt to provide a basic understanding of the Covenanting forces, this thesis synthesizes a mass of material relating to the religious aspects of the armies. Two crucial questions emerged: did the military reflect Scottish society or any part of it; were the Covenanters' forces godly armies seeking to evangelize the areas they occupied? These themes have been interpreted broadly to include the rules of war, the army chaplains, religious manifestations in military life, the moral behaviour of the soldiers, and the role of the armies in spreading the presbyterian faith. In addition to those topics, an examination of the soldiers' relations with civilians and the political activities of the military have been included. The first most clearly allows one to determine whether the Covenanting armies attained the status of godly armies. The political question arises out of the close relationship between religious and political activities in the period. With the exception of family legal papers the entire spectrum of Scottish seventeenth-century sources was inspected. The records of the 1.Estates and its committees, the General Assembly and its Commission, form the basic sources for a view of national developments. At the local level the burgh, presbytery, family and kirk session records proved invaluable. Unfortunately few diaries, memoirs or letters survived. English materials primarily state papers, pamphlets and news books were also helpful. The findings of this thesis suggest that the armies of the Covenanters failed to achieve the ideals set for them.

The object of this thesis is to lay open a repertory of music which has long been ignored, the music for two and more choirs composed by Roman composers of the generation of Palestrina and his immediate successors. Polychoral music is taken to mean music in which two or more independent and consistent groups of voices take part, singing separately and together; the parts should remain independent in tuttl sections, with the possible exception of the bass parts. By this definition, the first real polychoral music to be published in Rome was that by Giovanni P. da Palestrina in his Motettorum liber secundus of 1575. This is taken as the starting point for this study. Music which might have influenced Roman composers is examined, as well as eight-voice music by Roman composers which is not polychoral according to the above criteria. The development of polychoral music in the city is then traced through the reigns of the various popes from Gregory XIII to Paul V, whose death in 1621 is taken as a convenient place to end the study. Particular emphasis is laid on structural and textural aspects and the way these were adapted by successive composers. The ground for the Roman concerts to style was laid in the early experiments by composers such as Giovanni Animuccia, Palestrina and Tomas Luis de Victoria; this is traced through what is termed the 'fragmented' style of the last two decades of the sixteenth century to the full flowering of the large-scale concerts to motet after 1605. The music is studied in the context of the institutions for which it was written. The archives of these Institutions have been researched for information on performance practice, which is presented here. The broader cultural, social and religious background which spawned the idiom is also examined and polychoral music related both to the new propagandist attitude of church leaders from Gregory XIII onwards, and to a general expansion in musical activity in the city of Rome through the period under investigation. The various printed and manuscript sources for this music have been researched and the resulting catalogue of pieces by fifty or so composers who worked in the city is presented. A more detailed examination is carried out of the primary manuscript sources, from which valuable information on various aspects of the music can be obtained.

The view that the lute exercised an important influence on the formation of French harpsichord style in the seventeenth century is a commonplace of musicology which has not until now been thoroughly investigated. This thesis is an attempt to determine the nature of that influence taking into account as much of the available relevant material as possible. The first chapter outlines the status and function of stringed keyboard instruments, particularly in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, using a wide variety of non-musical sources whether literary, archival, or documentary. It also charts the relative standing of the two instruments and the interrelationship of their repertoires as viewed by contemporaries throughout the seventeenth century. The second chapter provides a survey of the evolution of French lute style based on a detailed study of most of the French lute sources from the period cl600-cl670 and including the more important sources from cl670-cl700. The third chapter presents detailed comparisons of individual works existing in versions for both lute and keyboard. These are based on numerous parallel transcriptions presented in the second volume. The material for this section is provided by a concordance file for virtually all French seventeenth-century lute sources designed to be usable in conjunction with Gustafson's keyboard catalogue. The final chapter is an attempt to define the degree of affinity existing between particular features of the central harpsichord style and that of the lute on the basis of principles established in the previous discussions. This thesis contains the first detailed discussion of the works of the principal seventeenth-century French lutenists in the context of a survey of the general development of the lute style. Numerous illustrative examples of hitherto unpublished lute music are included in the second volume. The final chapter also discusses some new sources of French harpsichord music dating from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, with transcriptions. Also discussed for the first time is the Premier Livre (1687) of Elizabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, and a transcription of a suite supposedly written in imitation of the lute is given. A comprehensive concordance of pieces existing in versions for both lute and harpsichord is given in Volume II.

From the beginning of the Reformation until the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War, there was brisk and far-reaching cultural interaction between England and German-speaking states. Towards the end of this period, the Englische Komoedianten (EK) - itinerant troupes of English actors and musicians - began a century of touring German courts and cities, with remarkable though neglected success. This thesis is a study of the first, truly English, phase of those tours, 1592-1620, arguing that the EK deserve recognition for their achievement as mediators between English and German cultures in their own right, not because of the remote possibility that they may have been the first to take Shakespeare to Germany. The thesis concentrates on a collection of EK plays, Engelische Comedien vnd Tragedien (1620), which contains a representative selection of their comedies, tragedies and "Singspiele", the genre associated with their clown, Pickelhering, the figure with whom they were most closely associated in the popular mind. There are five main sections: 1) A survey of scholarly attitudes to the EK; 2) A study of Anglo-German cultural relations in the sixteenth century; 3) The EK on tour, and their dealings with courts, cities and the church; 4) A study of four versions of perhaps the most popular of all fictions in Germany in the sixteenth century, Fortunatus, and his magic gifts, from its origins in the Augsburg Volksbuch (1509), through Hans Sachs (l553), Thomas Dekker (1599), to the EK themselves (1620): this is the one work which crosses from Germany to England and then back again during the century, changing and developing at each step; and 5) a detailed analysis of the 1620 collection of plays, according to questions of recognisability, socio-political immediacy, generic impurity and minimal staging. A brief investigation of English influences on Andreas Gryphius concludes the work.

This thesis argues that much of the gender based criticism that has led to the "rediscovery" of neglected early modern women writers has, paradoxically, also served to limit our understanding of such writers by distracting attention from other aspects of their writing, such as their political commitments. The three authors considered, Jane Barker (1652-1732), Mary Caesar (1677-1741) and Anne Finch (1661-1720), have been selected precisely because Jacobitism is central to their writing. However, it will be argued that a focus upon gender politics in the texts of these writers has led to a failure to comprehend the party political boldness of their work. The thesis examines the writing of each author in turn and explores the implications of Barker's, Caesar's and Finch's Jacobite allegiances for their respective views of human history as played out in political affairs. It also considers the ways in which each author attempts to reconcile a cause that is supposedly supported by God with apparent political failure. The quest of Barker, Caesar and Finch to investigate these issues and to comprehend how Jacobitism forms part of their own authorial identities is central to what is meant here by "literary Jacobitism" in relation to these writers. The thesis demonstrates that Jacobitism is enabling for each of these three women as it enhances their ability to conceive of themselves as authors by allowing their sense of political identity to overcome their scruples about their position as women who write. However, it also illustrates that Jacobitism functions differently in the writing of each of the selected authors. It thus argues that an undifferentiated labelling of the work of these three women as "Jacobite" is as restrictive as their previous categorisation as "women writers".

The thesis is a survey of 291 frontispieces and illustrated title pages in European books on astronomy from the 17th century. It is a quantitative and qualitative survey of how motifs are related to consumption, identification and display. Elements in the motifs related to factual content as opposed to those aimed to raise the perceived value of astronomy are distinguished. The quantitative study shows that astronomical phenomena (90 per cent) and scientific instruments (62 per cent, or as much as 86 per cent if only titles with illustrations occupying an entire page are considered) are the most common motifs to inform the reader of the genre. Besides these, a wide range of depicted features indicate the particularity of each title. Different means for raising the value of astronomy and its attributes are identified. The interplay of “real” or “credible” elements with fictional ones was used to attract attention, create positive associations and promote acquisition and reading. The motifs mainly promote delectation and erudition, although some attract attention through their deliberately enigmatic design and a few through fear. The survey determines prevalent settings (palaces, the theatre, gardens, the wilderness and the heavens), activities (skilful use of instruments, conversations or disputes), references to the ancients and heraldic components. They present both the self-image of astronomers at the time and ideal components that contain connotations of an enhanced reality. This self-image also contributed to the definition of normative values for astronomers in the 17th century. The affinities between painters and astronomers are examined. In addition, an analysis of descriptions of frontispieces is undertaken, which shows that the user of the book was expected to devote considerable time to the frontispiece in order to understand all of its particular features and that the illustrations were suitable for display and learned digression.

Vrije Univ., Diss.--Amsterdam, 1999. / Literaturverz. S. [205] - 216.

Thesis (Doctoral)--King's College (University of London), 1998. / BLDSC reference no.: D218276. Includes bibliographical references.

The popularity of religious art in late seventeenth century Protestant England stands in apparent contradiction to the profound anti-Catholic sentiment that many current scholars argue characterizes the period. A close analysis of London auction catalogs from 1690 reveals that a significant number of all pictures listed for sale featured typically Catholic subject matter. Consulting both seventeenth century literature and current scholarship provides a rationale for this apparent contradiction. Factional conflict within Protestantism itself was often focused on the issue of religious imagery. Accordingly, it functioned as a means of articulating religious difference. While the radical Puritan mission may have involved abolishing all English "monuments of superstition," Anglicanism held biblical and hagiographic imagery to be an essential aspect of Christian worship. This thesis argues that Anglicans embraced religious imagery as a means of rejecting the Puritan cause and, in doing so, forged a unique Anglican identity.