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The Cambridge History of American Theatre. Vol. 1: Beginnings to 1870. Ed. by Don B. Wilmeth and Christopher Bigsby. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. xvi, 525 pp. $69.95, ISBN 0-521-47204-0.)
The Cambridge History of American Theatre, edited by Don B. Wilmeth and Christopher Bigsby, launches a major effort to address the paucity-in number and currency of methodology-of comprehensive histories in the field. This is the first of three volumes (volume 2, 1870-1945, published in 1999, is also available) that attempt an authoritative and wide-ranging history taking into account developments in literary criticism, cultural analysis, and performance theory over the last fifteen years. Unlike the other recent major contribution, The History of North American Theater by Felicia Hardison Londre and Daniel J. Watermeier (1999), which in a single tome surveys developments in the United States, Mexico, the Caribbean islands, and Canada, The Cambridge History of American Theatre centers on the region that became the United States. The book is organized around particular aspects of theater production traced throughout...