The Restoration Reinvention of Shakespeare

The next time someone complains about a director changing or tampering with Shakespeare… we’ve got an answer for them.

The first generation of theater artists after Shakespeare weren’t particularly concerned about performing Shakespeare's plays the way they appear in the First Folio. After the English Civil War, the Puritan-led government outlawed theater for eighteen years. When Charles II ascended to the throne, in the period we now call the Restoration, theater came back to life. With no new plays, producers like William Davenant and Thomas Killigrew turned to Shakespeare… but they made some pretty big changes to keep up with the times. Restoration-era Shakespeare featured new characters, changed scripts, and grand musical interludes inspired by court masques.

Dr. Richard Schoch of Queen’s University Belfast lay out this history in his new book, "A Short History of Shakespeare in Performance." We spoke with Schoch about the theater in the Restoration and what we can learn from them after our own year without live theater. Schoch is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev.

Richard Schoch is a professor in the School of Arts, English and Languages at Queen’s University Belfast. “A Short History of Shakespeare in Performance: From the Restoration to the Twenty-First Century” was published by Cambridge University Press in 2021.

From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published July 6, 2021. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, “Change It, Change It,” was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer. We had technical help from Andrew Feliciano and Evan Marquart at Voice Trax West in Studio City, California, and Gareth Wood at The Sound Company in London. Leonor Fernandez edits a transcript of every episode, available at folger.edu.