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Restoring Britain: Performances of Stuart Succession in Dublin, Edinburgh, and London RESTORING BRITAIN: PERFORMANCES OF STUART SUCCESSION IN DUBLIN, EDINBURGH, AND LONDON by Deirdre O’Rourke BA, Washington University in St. Louis, 2006 Masters of Arts, University of Pittsburgh, 2008 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2014 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH THE KENNETH P. DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Deirdre O’Rourke It was defended on April 2, 2014 and approved by Dr. Attilio Favorini, Professor Emeritus, Theatre Arts Dr. Bruce McConachie, Professor, Theatre Arts Dr. Jennifer Waldron, Assistant Professor, English Dissertation Advisor: Dr. Lisa Jackson-Schebetta, Assistant Professor, Theatre Arts ii Copyright © by Deirdre O’Rourke 2014 iii RESTORING BRITAIN: PERFORMANCES OF STUART SUCCESSION IN DUBLIN, EDINBURGH, AND LONDON Deirdre O’Rourke, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2014 Though much worthy scholarship exists about English Restoration theatre, few studies examine the intersections between theatrical activity in London and its British “sister” cities of Dublin and Edinburgh and the stakes of Stuart restoration and British union for all three kingdoms expressed through theatre and performance. This dissertation is a historiographical reconfiguration of the Restoration period that analyzes how theatre and performance in Dublin, Edinburgh, and London contributed to Charles II’s reestablishment of Stuart rule and British union. My project brings together new British history and performance studies to uncover the British theatrical and cultural performances that re-defined union during Charles II’s restoration. I examine Stuart succession through three case-studies: beheadings, Shakespeare adaptations, and the actress. I analyze beheadings as performance events that map a history of Stuart succession through the triple beheadings of Charles I and his Irish and Scottish viceroys. Through their speeches on the scaffold, Charles I and his viceroys made themselves enduring symbols of Stuart monarchy. Charles II then reestablished execution as a royal power, executing and publicly displaying the corpses of the regicides. He highly regulated performances of execution in the theatre, however, especially plays that restaged royal executions from British history. I then examine the ways in which Shakespeare adaptations interrogated past and present British union through plays that betrayed the tensions between the three kingdoms. I consider adaptation a practice shared by Charles II and playwrights, both invested in restoring Britain’s iv cultural past. Through their adaptations, theatre artists created Shakespeare into an origin myth of the English theatre. Lastly, I argue that Charles II’s introduced the professional actress on the public stage as a surrogate of two past traditions of female performance, the boy actor and the female courtier, who served his agenda to provide his British subjects with public access to himself and his court. Charles II revived Britannia, the female personification of Britain, to capitalize on the popularity of public female performance and create public support and ownership over the reunited Britain. v TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE ..................................................................................................................................... X 1.0 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................ 1 1.1 NEW BRITISH (THEATRE HISTORY) ......................................................... 3 1.2 RESTORATION PERFORMANCE STUDIES ............................................... 4 1.3 RESTORING THEATRE (AND) HISTORY ................................................... 5 1.4 PUTTING HUMPTY DUMPTY BACK TOGETHER AGAIN ..................... 7 1.4.1 BEHEADINGS................................................................................................. 8 1.4.2 ADAPTATION ................................................................................................ 8 1.4.3 ACTRESSES .................................................................................................... 9 1.5 HUMPTY DUMPTY’S PIECES ...................................................................... 10 2.0 REATTACHING BRITAIN’S HEADS ................................................................... 11 2.1 PERFORMING BEHEADING ........................................................................ 14 2.2 BRITAIN’S PERFORMING HEAD(S) .......................................................... 20 2.3 BANNING BEHEADING IN PERFORMANCE ........................................... 50 2.3.1 The Unhappy Favourite ................................................................................. 62 2.3.2 Vertue Betray’d ............................................................................................... 67 2.3.3 The Island Queens .......................................................................................... 71 2.3.4 The Innocent Usurper .................................................................................... 76 vi 2.4 BRINGING THE BEHEADED BACK TO LIFE .......................................... 81 2.5 THE PURPOSE OF PLAYING ....................................................................... 83 3.0 ADAPTING SHAKESPEARE’S BRITAIN ............................................................ 85 3.1 CHARLES II’S ADAPTIVE HISTORIES ..................................................... 88 3.2 BRITAIN’S THEATRICAL VICEROYS ....................................................... 94 3.3 RESTORING THE THEATRE BY ADAPTING HISTORY ..................... 100 3.4 ADAPTING “OUR SHAKESPEAR:” SHAKESPEARE AS ENGLISH ORIGIN MYTH ................................................................................................................ 105 3.4.1 “When shall we three meet again?:” Macbeth onstage in Restoration Dublin, Edinburgh, and London ............................................................................ 110 3.4.2 John Lacy’s Sauny Shakespeare: Untamed Covenanters on the English Stage 126 3.4.3 “We have divided in Three our Kingdom:” Finding Ireland in Nahum Tate’s The History of King Lear .............................................................................. 142 3.5 KING SHAKESPEARE .................................................................................. 158 4.0 REUNITING BRITANNIA ..................................................................................... 160 4.1 FEMALE PERFORMANCE: PRIVATE AND PUBLIC BRITAINS ....... 166 4.1.1 Boy actors: England’s performing women ................................................ 174 4.2 THE ACTRESS AND PUBLIC FEMALE PERFORMANCE ................... 179 4.3 THE KING OF ACCESSIBLITY .................................................................. 191 4.4 REPRESENTING BRITANNIA .................................................................... 198 4.5 PERFORMING THE LAST STUART BRITANNIA: ANNE II, BRITAIN, AND THE FEMALE PERFORMANCE TRADITION ............................................... 213 vii 4.6 “BOOB BRITANNIA!”................................................................................... 224 5.0 CONCLUSION ......................................................................................................... 227 6.0 BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................... 233 viii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Charles I After his Execution with his Head Stitched On ©Museum of London ......... 21 Figure 2. Hollar's The true maner of the execution of Thomas Earle of Strafford ©Trustees of the British Museum ............................................................................................................................. 28 Figure 3. The True Characters... ................................................................................................... 32 Figure 4. A true and perfect relation ............................................................................................. 46 Figure 5. The True Characters ...................................................................................................... 47 Figure 6. Ditchley Portrait ©National Portrait Gallery, London ................................................ 206 Figure 7. The United Sisters© Trustees of the British Museum ................................................. 210 Figure 8. Charles I after his Execution with his Head Stitched On ©Museum of London ........ 210 Figure 9. A true copy .................................................................................................................. 211 ix PREFACE It is my great privilege to recognize the many people and institutions that have made this dissertation project and the culmination of my degree possible. I owe special thanks to the Performing Arts Department at Washington University in St. Louis, which stimulated my thinking and welcomed me into an artistic family, a family with, I’m happy and humbled to say, far too many members to list by name. I do want to recognize D.J. Hopkins in this moment because he is to blame for exciting me about Shakespeare and scholarship. I am also especially grateful to the Theatre Arts department at the University of Pittsburgh, which has been my home for the last eight years. At the outset, I would like to thank and acknowledge Ellen Smith and Jean Grace, the heads of Pitt’s Dissertation Boot Camp.
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