History Research Seminar Series: “Theatronomics The Business of Theatre, 1737-1809”

Professor David O’Shaughnessy (NUI Galway) 

Theatronomics: The Business of Theatre, 1737-1809

Abstract 

Eighteenth-century literary studies now acknowledges the centrality of the theatre to Georgian cultural and political life. However, scholars have virtually ignored its remarkable and voluminous financial archive. Account-books, ledgers, and ephemeral manuscript folios contain rich data on ticket sales, audience members, revenues, actor salaries, repayments to investors, costume, scenery and other costs: this is richly detailed source material that needs to be understood. This paper will first present a sketch of a new research project that will apply financial and econometric analysis to this data to write a new history of eighteenth-century theatrical culture (1732-1809). It will discuss how financial data for Covent Garden and Drury Lane will be analysed using econometric methods in order to incorporate the theatres’ underlying commercial operations to future research. Secondly, it will offer a case-study of how such an approach might help us test prevailing ideas in the field of eighteenth-century theatre by looking at the financials around Charles Macklin’s The Man of the World (Covent Garden, 1781), infamously the only play of the period to be twice refused a performance licence for its political satire.

Speaker Biography

Professor David O’Shaughnessy is personal professor at the School of English and Creative Arts, NUI Galway. He has published widely, including William Godwin and the Theatre (2010); a special issue of the journal Eighteenth-Century Life titled Networks of Aspiration: the London Irish of the Eighteenth Century (2015); a volume of essays titled The Censorship of Eighteenth-Century Theatre: Playhouses and Prohibition, 1737-1843 (in progress); and two additoinal edited collections of essays, Ireland, Enlightenment and the English Stage, 1740-1820 (2019) and Charles Macklin and the Theatres of London (2022). He has held fellowships at University of Oxford, University of Warwick, the Huntington Library and Caltech. His current projects include a new edition of Oliver Goldsmith’s collected works (8 volumes) for Cambridge University Press on which he is working with Michael Griffin (UL). This follows their Letters of Oliver Goldsmith for Cambridge University Press (2019). In 2020, he was awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant (€2m) to work on the finances of London theatres. This project brings together a postdoctoral team of humanities and economic scholars to apply econometric analysis to the financial archives of Covent Garden and Drury Lane. The project will apply these economic methodologies so that new perspectives on the careers of managers, playwrights, actors, and plays emerge. 

Registration

This semester will take place in-person at 4.00pm on Wednesday, 23 March 2022 in Room 1001, Hardiman Building, NUI Galway (Bridge Seminar Room). The paper will also be streamed simultaneously online, via Zoom: https://nuigalway-ie.zoom.us/j/96778848118. Please note, Covid-19 practices will be in line with prevailing university guidance, which includes wearing masks in seminar rooms. 

Register for the livestream at: https://forms.office.com/r/f6dLqyNPvV