Restoration Plays and Players

David Roberts is Professor of English and Dean of the Arts at Birmingham City University. He is the author of Pinacotheca Bettertonaeana: The Library of a Seventeenth-Century Actor (2013) and Thomas Betterton: The Greatest Actor of the Restoration Stage (Cambridge, 2010), which was shortlisted for the Theatre Library Association's George Freedley Memorial Award in 2011. He has also written many journal articles, including in Shakespeare Quarterly.

• List of figures; Preface; 1. Regime change theatre; 2. The life cycle of the Restoration play; 3. Playwrights; 4. Companies; 5. Actors; 6. Playhouses; 7. Audiences and critics; 8. Texts and publishers; 9. Revivals and adaptations; Further reading; Timeline; Index.

'In addition to discussions of a generous selection of plays, Roberts provides students with succinct, informative and well-paced accounts of the personnel and material circumstances of Restoration Theatre, including the actors, the managers, the theatres and the growth of print culture. There is much to admire here.' Derek Hughes, University of Aberdeen