| 研究実績の概要 |
The focus of this stage in the research project has been to survey the development of entr’acte entertainment during the years in which the theatre practitioner John Rich (1692-1761) was active. My research has so far indicated that entr’acte entertainment during the Restoration period was burgeoning, but it was really in the first half of the eighteenth-century that saw a rapid increase in the number of entr’actes so that by the 1750s they had become, as Donald J. Rulfs suggests, “a well-established phenomenon on the London stage”. John Rich, the manager of the Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre from the year 1714, plays a crucial part in the development of entr’actes and therefore is the protagonist of the period for this research project. Consequently, The Stage’s Glory: John Rich (1692-1761) has been an invaluable source for this phase of the project. We see his immense influence on entr’actes with a following statistic from Moira Goff: “during its first season, Lincoln’s Inn Fields advertised entr’acte dancing at 125 performances” - this is compared to its rival theatre, Drury Lane, which only offered 46. What we see during this period is not only the rapid rise in the number of entr’actes but entr’actes beginning to take on a life of its own, separate from the plays themselves. I plan on presenting my findings on this period soon.
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