From a leading historian and writer, a delightful exploration of the
great English tradition of treading the boards.
The English Actor charts the uniquely English approach to stagecraft,
from the medieval period to the present day. In thirty chapters, Peter
Ackroyd describes, with superb narrative skill, the genesis of
acting--deriving from the Church tradition of Mystery Plays--through the
flourishing of the craft in the Renaissance, to modern methods following
the advent of film and television. Across centuries and media, The
English Actor also explores the biographies of the most notable and
celebrated British actors. From the first woman actor on the English
stage, Margaret Hughes, who played Desdemona in 1660; to luminaries like
Laurence Olivier, Peter O'Toole, Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, and Helen
Mirren; to contemporary multihyphenates like Gary Oldman, Kenneth
Branagh, Sophie Okonedo, and Chiwetel Ejiofor, Ackroyd gives all fans of
the theater an original and superbly entertaining appraisal of how
actors have acted, how audiences have responded, and what we mean by the
magic of the stage.