Máire MacNeill: Exiled from the Stage: Actors and Politics in the Late Stuart Period

The 1688 Revolution impacted England’s theatre as much as it did its politics, resulting in dramatic shifts in modes of performance and production. An example of this can be found in the career of William Smith. An established Restoration actor who had found success playing Willmore in Aphra Behn’s The Rover in the 1670s, he chose to show vocal and active support for James II in the following decade. When he attempted to revive his career in the 1690s, he failed, resulting in his eventual reluctant retreat from the London stage. A figure as political as much as he was theatrical, Smith was unable to continue his stage career after 1688 – which in turn meant that The Rover, a play about exile, was effectively exiled. It was not until the younger actor Robert Wilks inherited the part of Willmore the following decade that The Rover was restored as a long-running stage success.

This paper will examine the lives of Smith and Wilks in relation to their stage work to discuss primarily how depictions of exile onstage developed during this period, looking in particular at their casting in productions of The Rover during the 1690s and 1700s. In addition to this, this paper will uncover the impact that actors’ personal lives could have on their stage careers – potentially throwing them into professional exile.