This chapter explores the reopened theater with particular attention to William Davenant. He transformed English theater in significant ways. Restoration theater artists not only intensified onstage explorations of an increasingly interconnected global network, but also defended the revived theater as more sophisticated than a posited barbaric past. Further, they understood theater as a mechanism for national refinement. Davenant became the most successful advocate for this vision, arguing for the positive effects of theater through its capacity to help England emerge from its crude provincial past and match the more advanced European and Asian empires. The Siege of Rhodes transformed theatrical possibilities, featuring moveable scenery, a new genre (the heroic), and the professional actress. At the moment of the Stuart restoration, after defeat and exile, it also marked the first English stage representation of an admirable Ottoman Empire. Davenant's production flattered, but also revealed the vulnerabilities of the restored monarch's cosmopolitics. Even though the play features the defeat of Christians at the hands of Ottomans, The Siege does not promote fear or hatred, but rather envy of this empire's sophistication and power. Ottomanphilia became fashionable in the Restoration. Charles II wore Eastern clothing to the opening of Roger Boyle's play Mustapha. Davenant's immensely popular Siege of Rhodes inaugurated, a new form of cosmopolitanism that promoted the widespread consumption of global objects and ideas as signs of sophistication.
Shakespeare in the Theatre: Sir William Davenant and the Duke’s Company
