Theatre and Governance in Britain, 1500-1900

Tony Fisher is a Reader in Theatre and Philosophy at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London, where he is Associate Director of Research (Research Degrees). He has published a number of journal articles in both theatre and philosophy, and he is the co-editor of books including Performing Antagonism: Theatre, Performance and Radical Democracy (2016) and Theatre, Performance, Foucault! (forthcoming).

• Introduction. The discourses of theatre and governance; Part I. Origins of the Discourse on Theatre: 1. The theatre of the multitude; 2. Revolts of conduct on the Restoration stage; Part II. Theatre and its Publics: 3. Theatrocracy and the public sphere; 4. The Beggar's Opera and the criminal picturesque; 5. The deontic stage in the eighteenth century: George Lillo's The London Merchant; Part III. Theatre in the Age of Reform: 6. The governmentalisation of the stage; 7. The theatre dispositif of the late-nineteenth century.

'In this masterful and original study, Fisher combines philosophical reflection, discourse analysis and substantial archival research to produce a new way of considering the symbiotic relationship between state and theatre. While focused on English theatre history between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, its approach could and should be applied with profit to other countries as well.' Christopher Balme, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München