"This Companion is designed for readers interested in the creation, production and interpretation of Victorian and Edwardian theatre in its own time and on the contemporary stage. The volume opens with an introduction surveying the theatre of the time followed by an essay contextualizing the theatre within the culture as a whole. Succeeding chapters examine performance, production, and theatre, including the music, the actors, stagecraft, and the audiences themselves, plays and playwriting and issues of class and gender. Chapters also deal with comedy, farce, melodrama, and the economics of theatre. Book jacket."--Jacket.