English Romanticism has long been considered an 'undramatic' and
'anti-theatrical' age, yet Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley and
Keats all wrote plays and viewed them as central to England's poetic and
political reform. In the Theatre of Romanticism analyses these plays, in
the context of London theatre at the time, and argues that Romantic
discourse on theatre is crucial to constructions of nationhood in the
period. The book focuses primarily on Coleridge and on the middle stage
of his career, during which he wrote most extensively for and about the
theatre. But its discussion of anxieties about women in Coleridge's
plays applies just as forcefully to the history plays of the
second-generation romantic poets, and to the best-known romantic writers
on theatre: Hazlitt, Hunt and Lamb. Unlike the few existing studies of
romantic drama, this study considers the plays not as closet drama or
'mental theatre', but as theatrical contributions to the debate sparked
off by the Revolution in France.