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Martial Women in the British Theatre: 1789-1804 MARTIAL WOMEN IN THE BRITISH THEATRE: 1789-1804 SARAH CATHERINE BURDETT PHD UNIVERSITY OF YORK ENGLISH AND RELATED LITERATURE AUGUST 2016 II ABSTRACT In the period of the French Revolution, the armed or martial woman comes to stand in Britain as the representative of extreme political and social disruption. She embodies, in striking form, the revolutionary chaos witnessed across the channel, which threatens to infect British culture. This thesis traces shifting representations of the female warrior, and examines the complex processes by which the threat that she personifies is handled in British tragedies and sentimental comedies, written and performed in London and Dublin between 1789 and 1804. The study presents the British theatre as an arena in which the significance of the arms-bearing woman is constantly re-modelled and re-appropriated to fulfil diverse ideological functions. Used to challenge as well as to enforce established notions of sex and gender difference, she is fashioned also as an allegorical tool, serving both to condemn and to champion political rebellion in England, France and Ireland. Combining close readings of dramatic texts with detailed discussions of production and performance histories, this thesis tells a story of the martial woman’s evolution in British dramas, which emphasises her multifaceted and protean identity, and shows her development not to have followed a stable or linear pattern, but to have been constantly redirected by an expansive range of contextual factors: historical, social, and theatrical. III TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract ii Table of Contents iii-iv List of Figures v-vi Acknowledgements vii Declaration viii INTRODUCTION 1-28 Chapter 1: ‘Unbrutifying Man’: Martial Women and Male Reform in Elizabeth Inchbald’s Dramas 29-34 I) ‘It’s Not Myself I’ll Kill – ’Tis You’: The Pistol-Bearing Heroine and the Reformed Rake in the Sentimental Comedy Next Door Neighbours 34-48 II)‘Tragick Composition on the Subject of the Late Gallic Massacre’: Revolutionary Violence and Women’s Martial Rights in The Massacre 48-73 III)‘Newgate Before My Eyes’: The Demise of Inchbald’s Martial Women 73-75 Chapter 2: ‘The Ruthless Queen’: Lady Macbeth and Margaret of Anjou on the London Stage 76-77 I)‘Death in so many Frightful Shapes’: Shakespearean Ghosts, Revolutionary Sentiments, and Sarah Siddons’s Lady Macbeth 77-126 II)‘Blood Thirsty, Cruel, Savage and Revengeful’: Reinventing Margaret of Anjou in 1797 127-157 Chapter 3: ‘The Merit of her Patriotism’: Charlotte Corday in British Drama, 1794-1804 158-167 IV I)‘My Streaming Tears shall Swell the Great Account of Dire Revenge’: Royalist Heroines, Romantic Motives and Debilitating Sensibility in John Edmund Eyre’s The Maid of Normandy 167-185 II)‘The Heroism that distinguishes it’: Debating Female Heroism in Matthew West’s Female Heroism 185-216 III)‘Sentiments of Disinterested Patriotism’: Helen Craik’s Adelaide de Narbonne and Heroic and Republican Cordays on the Turn-of-the-Century Page and the Stage 216-223 Chapter 4: ‘Be Mine in Politics’: Irish Radicalism, The Act of Union, and Charlotte Corday on the Dublin Stage 224-225 I)‘The Baneful Poison of Republican Principle’: Irish Radicalism and The Maid of Normandy 225-230 II)‘A Strict Adherence to Truth’: Historical Inaccuracies and Political Motives in West’s Female Heroism 230-246 CONCLUDING REMARKS 247-248 BIBLIOGRAPHY 249-299 V List of Figures Fig.1: Thomas Rowlandson, The Contrast: Or which is Best? (December 1792). © Trustees of the British Museum. 7 Fig.2: Isaac Cruikshank, A Republican Belle (1794). © Trustees of the British Museum. 8 Fig.3: J. Boyne, For the Benefit of Mrs Siddons (1787). © Trustees of the British Museum. 86 Fig.4: George Henry Harlow, Mrs Siddons as Lady Macbeth, sleepwalking scene, Act V, from Macbeth by Shakespeare (1814). Courtesy of the Garrick Club, London. 97 Fig.5: Richard Westall, Macbeth, act 5, scene 1, Lady Macbeth sleepwalking (1797). © Folger Shakespeare Library. 98 Fig.6: Robert Sayer, Death of Marie Antoinette Queen of France and Navarre (1794). French Revolution Digital Archive.<http://purl.stanford.edu/qm057nd2026> [accessed 12 March 2015]. 99 Fig.7: William Hamilton, Marie-Antoinette conduit a son exécution, 16 Octobre 1793 (1794). © Coll. Musee de la Revolution Francaise/Domaine de Vizille. 100 Fig.8: Mariano Bovi, engraving after Domenico Pellegrini, The Trial of Marie Antoinette Queen of France October 14, 1793/Proces de Marie Antoinette Reine de France October 14, 1793 (1796). French Revolution Digital Archive. <http://purl.stanford.edu/wy288rs0618> [accessed 11 March 2015]. 101 Fig.9: Henry Fuseli, Lady Macbeth Seizing the Daggers (1812). © Tate, London. 105 Fig.10: Isaac Cruikshank, The Last Interview between Louis XVI, King of France, and his Family (1793). © Trustees of the British Museum. 107 Fig.11: Mather Brown, The Final Interview of Louis the Sixteenth with his Family (1795). © Trustees of the British Museum. 108 Fig.12: James Gillray, The heroic Charlotte La Cordé, upon her Trial (1793). © Trustees of the British Museum. 163 VI Fig.13: James Gillray, The New Morality: or the promis’d installment of the high-priest of the theophilanthropes, with the homage of Leviathan and his suite (1798). © Trustees of the British Museum. 189 Fig.14: Jacques-Louis David, The Lictors Bring to Brutus the Bodies of his Sons (1789). © RMN-Grand Palais (musée du Louvre)/Gérard Blot/Christian Jean. 201 Fig.15: Isaac Cruikshank, A Second Jean d’Arc or the assassination of Marat by Charlotte Cordé of Caen in Normandy (1793). French Revolution Digital Archive. <http://purl.stanford.edu/rm620hm7797> [accessed 2 February 2014]. 208 Fig.16: Anon., A Trial for A Rape!!! (February 1799). © Trustees of the British Museum. 235 Fig.17: James Henry Brocas, Loyalty Rewarded (1800). Image Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland. 240 VII Acknowledgements I am immensely grateful to my supervisors, Harriet Guest and Emma Major, who have gone above and beyond in supporting me with this project, and whose contagious enthusiasm and valuable words of encouragement have inspired me from start to finish. I am thankful also for the generous feedback provided by tutors at the University of York, present and past, including Richard Rowland, Catriona Kennedy, Jim Watt, and Jane Rendall. I am privileged to have been part of the University’s Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies, which has provided a warm and stimulating environment in which to form and share my ideas. I was incredibly fortunate to receive a PhD scholarship from the University of York’s Department of English and Related Literature, without which the completion of this thesis would not have been possible. My research was also enhanced by funding awarded by the F.R. Leavis fund, and by the York Georgian Society, from whom I was honored to receive the Patrick Nuttgens Award in 2015. Archivists and librarians at institutions including the Garrick Club, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the British Library, the Bodleian, the University of Wales Trinity St David, and the Folger have been instrumental in directing me towards important materials used in this project. I greatly appreciate their assistance. Friends and family have provided continual motivation. I would like to thank David Barrow for his relentless optimism and constant willingness to chat about all-things- martial-women. Tom Parmiter has been unremitting in his patience and support, and has never allowed me to lose faith in myself. My parents continue to inspire and drive all that I do. I dedicate this thesis to them. VIII Author’s Declaration I declare that this thesis is a presentation of original work and I am the sole author. This work has not previously been presented for an award at this, or any other University. All sources are acknowledged as references. Part of chapter 1 has been published in revised form under the title ‘“Feminine Virtues Violated”: Motherhood, Female Militancy and Revolutionary Violence in Elizabeth Inchbald’s The Massacre’, in Birkbeck University’s postgraduate arts journal, The Dandelion Journal, vol.5 (Summer 2014). Part of chapter 2 has been published in revised form under the title ‘“Weeping Mothers Shall Applaud”: Sarah Yates as Margaret of Anjou on the London Stage, 1797’, in Comparative Drama, vol.49, no.4, Special edition (Winter 2015). Part of chapter 4 has been published in revised form under the title ‘“Be Mine in Politics”: Charlotte Corday and Anti-Union Allegory in Matthew West’s Female Heroism, A Tragedy in Five Acts (1803)’, in Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatre Research, vol.30, no.1-2 (Winter 2015). 1 Martial Women in the British Theatre, 1789-1804 INTRODUCTION In the period of the French Revolution, the armed or martial woman comes to stand in Britain as the representative of extreme political and social disruption. She embodies, in striking form, the revolutionary chaos witnessed across the channel, which threatens to infect British culture. This thesis traces shifting representations of the female warrior, and examines the complex processes by which the threat that she personifies is handled in British dramas, written and performed in London and Dublin between 1789 and 1804. I present the British theatre as an arena in which the significance of the arms-bearing woman is constantly re-modelled and re-appropriated to fulfil diverse ideological functions. Used to challenge as well as to enforce established notions of sex and gender difference, she is fashioned also as an allegorical tool, serving both to condemn and to champion political rebellion in England, France and Ireland. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, my thesis tells a story of the martial woman’s evolution in British dramas, which shows her progression not to have followed a stable or linear pattern, but to have been continually redirected by an expansive array of contextual factors, social, literary, and theatrical.
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