Above all, historical theatre relates the desires and the fears of the era that is played out on stage. These fears and desires are what determine that a given present opened up from a particular past, and not another; that a past is seen from one perspective and not from another. It relates intrinsically the past and the present as if it were a specific past that had awaited a corresponding present —as though the past had sent it, and the present collected it.

And this is why questions to do with historical theatre go beyond the interests of just theatre lovers: historical theatre raises the question of why one historical period should feel that a particular past is of its concern. Why should one historical period feel itself questioned by another, or even referred to in that past? What images of the past get offered on the contemporary stage, and what, by extension, have been excluded? What do these images of the past tell us about our present moment? The history of historical theatre is a history of Humanity, and the historical theatre that produces our age is a dramatisation of our age.