Princes to Act: Royal Audience and Royal Performance, 1578-1792

"[Wikander's] meticulous and imaginative study... subtly chronicles an evolving dynamic between ruler and ruled as mirrored in the circumstances of court performances."--Theatre History Studies

Princes to Act describes how theater and monarchy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries existed in mutual dependency and mutual mistrust, leading to performances that both affirmed and challenged the social boundaries between monarch and actor, audience and performer. Wikander explores selected plays by Shakespeare, Davenant, Corneille, Molière, Racine, Voltaire, and others.