This project will document every performance and, where possible, all reviews and contemporary commentary of melodrama in Britain before 1843. Taking its cues from early responses, where audiences experienced melodrama's powerful stage effects and highly wrought scenes of suspense as a sort of augmented reality, the project will explore how the form's techniques (such as continuous music, extensive pantomime and immersive soundscapes) created a new theatre of sensation that heightened the affective experiences of audiences. The project will furthermore track how these same techniques impacted writers working in other printed genres and media, repositioning melodrama – and theatrical performance more generally – as an exemplary and revealing form in Romantic culture.
