"The middle years of the English Restoration were an intensely political time, marked by the nomination of a Catholic successor, James II, the formation of the Whig party to oppose that appointment, and the contest that followed, known as the Exclusion Crisis. Rehearsing the Revolution traces the role of performance in the fervent years of the Exclusion Crisis when the boundaries of allegiance between the King and the King's playhouse were stretched, tested, and occasionally ruptured. It charts the limits of representation within the royal theater where Whig playwrights were challenging Stuart mythography, before moving out onto the streets where the contracts of representation were less circumscribed by royal interests. It was on the streets of London that the Whig party staged massive civic performances - the Pope-Burning pageants - that allowed the circulation of the Exclusion platform."--BOOK JACKET.