New book from Ray Ball explores charitable theater and civic health in early modern Atlantic world

Rachael "Ray" Ball, Ph.D., of the UAA History Department has published a new book, Treating the Public: Charitable Theater and Civic Health in the Early Modern Atlantic World, with Louisiana State University Press. In this work, she presents a comparative history of commercial theater, public opinion and charitable organizations in eight cities across the Spanish and Anglo Atlantic worlds during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This innovative study uncovers the rapid expansion of public drama into urban daily life in the Spanish Atlantic, revealing the means by which men and women provided and sought theatrical entertainment while practicing Catholic piety and working to aid the poor. Ball focuses her analysis on the theaters of Madrid, Seville, Mexico City and Puebla de los Angeles, which she compares to English-speaking theaters throughout the Atlantic world in cities and towns, including London, Bristol, Dublin, and Williamsburg, Virginia.

Using an array of archival and print sources, Ball links the largely disconnected national histories of Spanish, English and colonial American theaters. Treating the Public uncovers the depth of the comedia tradition that flourished in early modern Spain as well as the geographic scope of the Spanish theater as a political, social and cultural institution.

April Archive