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Charles Dickens' a Christmas Carol The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey 2019 CHARLES DICKENS’ A CHRISTMAS CAROL: Know-the-Show Guide Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol Adapted by Neil Bartlett Directed by Brian B. Crowe Know-the-Show Audience Guide researched and written by the Education Department of Artwork by Scott McKowen The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey 2019 CHARLES DICKENS’ A CHRISTMAS CAROL: Know-the-Show Guide In this Guide – A Christmas Carol: A Brief Introduction .................................................................................... 2 – The Life of Charles Dickens ....................................................................................................... 4 – Dickensian Times: A Chronology .............................................................................................. 6 – About the Adaptor: Neil Bartlett ................................................................................................ 7 – Who’s Who in the Play ............................................................................................................. 8 – Holiday Traditions Before and After Dickens ............................................................................. 9 – Commentary and Criticism ..................................................................................................... 11 – Past Productions ..................................................................................................................... 12 – Explore Online ....................................................................................................................... 13 – Sources & Further Reading ...................................................................................................... 14 1 The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey 2019 CHARLES DICKENS’ A CHRISTMAS CAROL: Know-the-Show Guide AN INSTALLMENT PLAN FOR LITERATURE A Christmas Carol part of a chain of charitable establishments that had been set A serial novel is any novel that has A Brief Introduction up to provide free instruction in been printed in installments. One reading and math for the poor. can think of these as a limited series It is possible that no other single piece of fiction has had the kind of weepings He was appalled at the filth, on television versus a full-length cultural influence that can be attributed to Charles Dickens’ first Christmas misery, and ignorance of the men feature film. Most often, chapters story. It is therefore interesting to note that the story was not originally born and boys he met there, and at the are printed in a regularly published from a sense of altruism, but rather, to some extent, A Christmas Carol was thought of how his society mostly magazine, newspaper, or other written for very practical financial reasons. overlooked the sufferings of its periodical. vast lower class. He resolved that When he began work on the short novel in 1843, Dickens and his wife had the Christmas book which was Serialized fiction surged in four children with a fifth on the way, had a large mortgage payment, and were taking shape in his head would popularity during Britain’s Victorian subjected to frequent requests for “strike a sledgehammer blow... on era. This was in part due to the rise financial assistance from family behalf of the Poor Man’s child.” of literacy, technological advances members. His latest serial novel, Indeed, its working title was The in printing, and the improved Martin Chuzzlewit, had suffered a Sledgehammer. economics of distribution. With disappointing fall-off in monthly the price of published books still sales. In hopes of earning a quick When he began A Christmas considered high, especially for the influx of cash from a bestseller, Carol, Dickens was still finishing working classes, a serial format Dickens abandoned the serial Martin Chuzzlewit. As he plunged proved to be a more appealing way form in which he usually wrote into the tale of Scrooge’s fateful to reach a wider audience. Many and made his first attempt at encounter with the Ghosts, significant majority works of the writing a novel all at once. he found himself increasingly Victorian era first appeared in either engrossed in and moved by his monthly or weekly installments in As usual with Dickens, the “little Christmas book.” He later magazines or newspapers. Charles novel’s form and content were noted that, as he worked on A Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers, first principally dictated by a powerful Christmas Carol, he “wept and published in 1836, is credited with social message he wished to laughed, and wept again... and launching the wild success of the convey. He had recently visited thinking whereof, walked about serial format. “Scrooge’s Third Visitor” by John Leech for the the Field Lane “Ragged School,” the black streets of London fifteen original publication of A Christmas Carol, 1843. 2 The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey 2019 CHARLES DICKENS’ A CHRISTMAS CAROL: Know-the-Show Guide or twenty miles many a night when all sober folks had gone to bed.” and were never really revived. Scrooge’s attitude that Christmas should be just another day of work was by no means universal, but it was far more common Dickens was determined that the book would be physically beautiful — his than today’s reader might suspect. own personal Christmas gift to the English public. He also insisted that it be affordable for the average family. When his publisher was unwilling to do so, Dickens was never comfortable with organized religion, and while he alludes he paid out of his own pocket for the first edition’s gold-stamped cover and to the religious nature of Christmas in the novel, the “sledgehammer blow” hand-colored engravings. Ultimately this, combined with the fact that he held he strikes is on behalf of charity and human kindness rather than any specific the price to five shillings (roughly $20 in today’s money), meant that Dickens religious belief. The association of the holiday with charitable giving and the made far less from the book than he had hoped. opportunity to personally right society’s injustices is one of the novel’s most powerful legacies. Nevertheless, the sales of the book in sheer volume were (and continue to be) astounding. The first printing of 6,000 copies appeared in bookstores on Dickens was a gregarious, outgoing man who loved parties, games, and festivities December 19, 1843 and was sold out on December 22. The book continued of all kinds. Religious officials, particularly those in the Puritan tradition, had to be printed and sold throughout Dickens’ lifetime. He later adapted it for done much to strip Christmas of its festive qualities during the 17th and 18th public readings which he gave throughout the world all the way up until the centuries. It was precisely this aspect of dancing, feasting and laughing with year of his death. In later years, when he was no longer writing as prolifically, one’s neighbors that Dickens loved most about Christmas. There are few more these readings became one of his principal sources of income. powerful literary defenses of the humanizing value of a party than Dickens’ Carol. Driven by the demand from his reading public, Dickens went on to write four more “Christmas books” and numerous Christmas stories in his magazines. Modern-day readers in England and the United States may take for granted that None of these achieved the popularity or lasting acclaim of A Christmas Carol, nuclear families would gather annually for a special meal on Christmas Day. This but nonetheless Charles Dickens was indelibly associated with Christmas by tradition, however, is almost entirely attributable to A Christmas Carol, which almost everyone in England for the rest of his life. Many years later, in a letter essentially became a handbook for reworking the old rural Christmas traditions to his daughter Mamie, he would grumble that he felt as if he “had murdered a for a modern urban lifestyle. It sparked a “Christmas renaissance” that led Christmas a number of years ago, and its ghost perpetually haunted me.” directly to our contemporary traditions of exchanging gifts and Christmas cards, giving a Christmas bonus to employees, elaborately decorating the home and, Far from being the murderer of the Christmas holiday, however, Dickens’ Carol most of all, roasting a “prize turkey.” It is even possible to argue that Dickens is may have in fact saved it. By 1843, most of the Christmas traditions depicted the single individual most responsible for the fact that Christmas is celebrated and alluded to in the novel were dying out. Many had originated in England’s today as a secular holiday by so many families outside the Christian tradition. farm culture and were being left behind as more and more people flocked to cities and factory work. Other traditions had been suppressed by the Puritans 3 The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey 2019 CHARLES DICKENS’ A CHRISTMAS CAROL: Know-the-Show Guide Portrait of Charles Dickens by David The Life Lee Guss, ca. 1857. of Charles Dickens Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, the second child of John and experiences at the Elizabeth Dickens. (His beloved older sister, Fanny, would be immortalized in A factory to only two Christmas Carol as Scrooge’s sister, Little Fan). John Dickens was a civil servant people during his who worked as a clerk in the Navy Pay Office at the time of Charles’ birth. life. Nevertheless, those experiences In 1817, John Dickens was assigned to the Navy shipyards in Chatham, Kent. would have a profound impact on his writing as well as his
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