How new technologies can contribute to our understanding of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century drama: an Antwerp case study

Abstract

The hundreds of Dutch-spoken plays written in Antwerp in the seventeenth and eighteenth century have rarely been considered within the context for which they were written: the Antwerp theatre stages. Literary and architectural evolutions influenced each other, and studying the relationship between the repertoire and the theatres can be quite revealing. However, all of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Antwerp theatres are long gone. This article explores the possibilities offered by the use of computer models in the field of theatre history and in particular in the reconstruction of the Antwerp theatres.