This book brings together original research in theatre and the visual arts, around the common object of a revaluation of the intersections of the theatre and visual culture. Contributors are drawn from a stimulating mix of highly-esteemed and established scholars (such as Shearer West, Jim Davis, Richard Foulkes and David Mayer) and new scholars, bringing fresh research materials into the mix. The collection offers a set of essays around a theme of emerging interest in Victorian studies. There are few books focused on the theatre and the visual arts since Martin Meisel's Realizations. Since then, essay length pieces have been published by prominent theatre and art historians, several of whom are contributors to this work. The multi-author nature of this collection of essays allows a broader range of original material to be examined, and a number of critical approaches to be pursued. The collection is made coherent by the focus on John Ruskin's aesthetic and cultural theories, and their application to a re-evaluation of the popular theatre of the late nineteenth century. All contributors are working within a theoretical framework which challenges Modernist historiographical assumptions about a theatre in moral and aesthetic decline in this period.