Their Majesties' Servants. Annals of the English Stage

Doran, Dr. (John), 1807-1878Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.2
Word count
699K words
Chapters
70

Tags

English Originals Dramatic Literature Portrait GalleryLegendary LivesGroup BiographyPopular Narrative19th CenturyCultural ChangeFolk Customs

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today."Their Majesties' Servants." Annals of the English Stage (Volume 3 of 3) by DoranAuthor: Doran, Dr. (John), 1807-1878,Language: English, Class: PN: Language and Literatures: Literature: General, Criticism, Collections, Release Date: Oct 14, 2014

Editor's review

This is the third and final volume of Dr. Doran's Their Majesties' Servants: Annals of the English Stage, an electronic reprint of a public-domain theatrical history. As the closing volume, it takes up the chronological thread of the first two and carries the narrative into later stage figures and events, bringing the whole work to a conclusion. Doran writes in the manner of a nineteenth-century mean of letters—attentive to persons, anecdotes, and chronology—with detailed material and the unhurried feel of old-style historical biography. Its value lies not in new theory but in preserving and retelling a wealth of theatrical lore for later consultation and quotation. Because it is the final volume, reading it alone risks losing the antecedents; it is best read with Volumes I and II to appreciate the full chronology. The electronic edition is easy to search, convenient for scholars checking persons and events while writing and for theatre enthusiasts to dip into as interest dictates and savor the details of the old theatrical world.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Not a good fit for

Reading tips

  1. If you have not read the first two volumes, read Volumes I and II first before entering this one, so the thread is not broken.
  2. Use the electronic edition's search function to locate chapters by person or theatre name and read selectively by topic.
  3. Mark persons and events that echo the first two volumes as you read, building cross-volume comparisons.
  4. After finishing, review the tables of contents of all three volumes to sort out the overall chronological structure and test whether your understanding is coherent.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62
  63. 63
  64. 64
  65. 65
  66. 66
  67. 67
  68. 68
  69. 69
  70. 70

FAQ

Can this volume be read on its own? It can, but it is not ideal. This is the final volume of a three-volume work and continues the persons and events of the first two; read alone, it lacks antecedents and background. At least skim the tables of contents of the first two volumes before starting this one.
How does this book differ from Volume 2? Both belong to the same chronological history; they differ in the periods and figures covered. Volume 2 is the middle, Volume 3 the close, carrying the narrative into later stage figures and events. Only all three together form the complete thread.
Is the electronic edition suitable for academic citation? It can serve as a source for tracing and retelling, but since it dates from the nineteenth century and is essay-like in format, citations should be checked against the original and Doran's account distinguished from later research findings.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Doran, Dr. (John), 1807-1878 Author

Dr. John Doran (1807–1878) was an English writer whose life and education are sparsely documented in publicly available sources; five of his works are held in this collection. He drew mainly on the history of the English court and stage. His History of Court Fools examines the origins and anecdotes of the court jester across the centuries. Their Majesties' Servants: Annals of the English Stage chronicles the English theatre and its actors in annalistic form, while his Memoir of Queen Adelaide, Consort of King William IV, recounts the life of the queen. His writing favours archival detail and personal anecdote, in a plain yet engaging style, leaving readable popular histories of nineteenth-century English social and theatrical life that are still cited in works on these subjects.