Playing Out the Empire

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 Hollywood `epics'. Generously illustrated, the volume ranges from the most popular of Victorian melodramas The Sign of the Cross (1895) to 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 to issues of class, gender, religion, and imperialism.