Greg Vargo's Chartist Drama (Manchester UP, 2021) opens a window into a fascinating aspect of working-class radical drama. This book includes scripts of four dramas performed or published by members of the Chartist movement, as well as an informative introduction situating these plays in their historical context. Ranging from history plays to political drama to Gothic melodrama, these plays show that Chartism was much more than a political movement. It included an entire cultural world, of which drama was a central part. 

Andy Boyd is a playwright based in Brooklyn, New York. He is a graduate of the playwriting MFA at Columbia University, Harvard University, and the Arizona School for the Arts.

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