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DISTANCE, THEATRE, AND THE PUBLIC VOICE, 1750-1850. By Melynda Nuss. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012; pp. 208.
By the end of the eighteenth century, London's theatres had undergone massive architectural chang- es: they had grown enormously, with some seating nearly 4,000 spectators, in stark contrast to the inti- mate venues of a century prior. Without accompany- ing advances in visual technology, they relied more heavily upon spectacular display and exaggerated gesture. Audiences enjoyed these new grandiose sights and sounds, but also expressed nostalgia for the intimacy of the past. Melynda Nuss's book takes this question of theatrical distance as its cen- tral concern. It argues that dramatic writings from the period actively experimented with manipulating distance, expressed anxieties about coping with this new atmosphere, and attempted to fashion spaces in which they could overcome its limitations-all as ways of coming to terms with their shifting theat- rical environment. However, Nuss's central insight is that representing distance onstage stood in for a whole host of issues beyond conveying messages to a theatrical audience, and was a metonym for English culture's navigations of an emerging mass public. In each of five compelling chapters, Nuss articulates how "in dramas both stage and closet, in theatrical criticism, and in theatrical situations imagined in print, authors experimented with dif- ferent ways of connecting with readers separated in space and time" (3-4).
Distance, Theatre, and the Public Voice contributes to a critical landscape only recently investigating the connections between theatre and its physical setting during the late eighteenth...