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

by David Mayer, Katherine Preston

Overview

The "toga play" is a genre of theatrical melodrama which flourished in the late nineteenth century and which re-emerged in silent cinema and later Hollywood "epics." This first collection of the most important playscripts and film scenarios of toga plays includes the popular Victorian melodrama The Sign of the Cross (1895), Claudian (1883), The Last Days of Pompeii, Ben Hur (both the play and the film), The Charioteer, and D.W. Griffith's earliest toga film, The Barbarian Ingomar (1908). David Mayer's detailed introductions show how the plays cast new light on Victorian attitudes toward issues of class, gender, religion, and imperialism. The volume is generously illustrated.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780198119906
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	03/24/1994
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	5.75(w) x 8.75(h) x 0.91(d)

About the Author

University of Manchester

Editorial Reviews

"A fascinating volume."—Nineteenth-Century Literature

From the Publisher