Playing Out the Empire: Ben-Hur and Other Toga Plays and Films, 1883-1908. A Critical Anthology

Mayer doesn't want his book to be catagorized in the United States section of any history catalogues. This is the first collection of the most important playscripts and film scenarios of the `toga play' a genre of theatrical melodrama which flourished in the late nineteenth century and which re-emerged in silent cinema and later `epics'. Set in the post-Republican Roman Empire, toga plays and films presented Roman and Jewish heroes, Christian virgins, seductive `adventuresses', insane Emperors, savage lions, and racing chariots. But, as David Mayer shows, the plays also ventured clandestinely into issues of class, gender, religion, immigration, and imperialism and hence shed new light on British and American social and cultural history. Among the restored scripts and scenarios included here - all of which are previously unpublished and generously illustrated - are those of Claudian (1883), the most popular of all Victorian melodramas The Sign of The Cross (1895), and the stage spectacular Ben Hur (1899) and its earliest cinematic version (1907). D.W. Griffith's first toga film The Barbarian Ingomar (1908) is represented by a lengthy selection of film stills. At a time of growing interest in the relationship between Victorian popular theatre and early cinema, this ground-breaking publication brings to light a highly significant - but critically neglected - theatrical and cinematic genre.

Table of Contents:
The music of toga drama, Katherine Preston; "Claudian", Henry Herman and W.G. Wills; "The last days of Pompeii", James Pain; "The sign of the Cross", Wilson Barrett; "Ben-Hur" (play), William Young; "The charioteers", Marshall Moore; "Ben-Hur" (film), the Kalem Company; "The barbarian Ingomar", D.W. Griffith.

Review :
`an illuminating study of the theatrical treatment of this theme in a number of "toga dramas", which shows how Quo Vadis? belonged very much to a genre' Allan Massie, Times Literary Supplement 'This collection is invaluable for anyone seeking to understand and interpret popular drama in the late-Victorian and Edwardian perids as also the links between theatre and drama.'' New Theatre Quarterly '... handsome volume ... In a scholarly and critical thesis Mayer makes a cognent and convincing case for the economic importance of the toga play ... an unexpectedly rewarding volume, a useful resource for students and a valuable record of an overlooked phenomenon.' Adrienne Scullion, University of Glasgow. Theatre Research International. Vol. 19 No 3 '94 `it is, to begin with, an anthology - and an exemplary one...In addition to providing this sheaf of virtually unobtainable texts, Mayer offers a brilliant, wide-ranging introductory essay, in which he argues for the integrity of his subject and its relevance to both Victorian and contemporary convcerns... wondrous, necessary book' Theatre Notebook `an anthology - and an exemplary one ... Mayer offers a brilliant, wide-ranging introductory essay, in which he argues to both Victorian and contemporary concerns ... wondrous, necessary book' Joel Kaplan, Theatre Notebook, Volume L, Number 2, 1996