"Harlequin Empire explores the presentation of foreign cultures and ethnicities on the popular British stage from 1750 to 1840. Under the 1737 Licensing Act, Covent Garden, Drury Lane and regional Theatres Royal held a monopoly on the dramatic canon. Excluded from polite dramatic discourse, non-patent theatres produced harlequinades, melodrama, pantomimes and spectacles. Worrall argues that this illegitimate stage was the site for a plebeian Enlightenment. Discussions about natural and civil rights, voyage and discovery, and Britain's relationship with other cultures were relentlessly enacted."--Jacket.