DOCSLIB.ORG

1 Sheridan and Women Marianna D'ezio Born Into a Family Whose

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
1 Sheridan and Women Marianna D'ezio Born Into a Family Whose 1 Sheridan and Women Marianna D’Ezio Born into a family whose reputation and income were anchored in literature and the theatre, Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s predisposition to theatrical activity was not unexpected. His father Thomas Sheridan was an actor and a manager, and Sheridan himself had always been surrounded by talented women writers, from his mother Frances Chamberlaine—a gifted authoress and playwright, albeit her work and biography still lack a comprehensive critical study—to his first wife Elizabeth Linley, a singer who managed to make a living from her public performances and contribute to realizing her family’s financial independence. Furthermore, there was another society of women around Sheridan besides his family connections, comprising professional and amateurish playwrights who were pursuing their own way into the highly male-dominated arena of commercial theatres. Of the plays that premiered at Drury Lane during Sheridan’s part-ownership of the theatre and his father’s management in 1778–1781, twenty-six were written by women, including a whole generation of distinguished female playwrights like Hannah Cowley, Elizabeth Inchbald, and Elizabeth Griffith, as well as authoresses like Frances Burney who wanted to try their hand at writing for the stage.1 Official biographies of Sheridan have generally suggested that his role with regard to female theatrical productions was that of mentor.2 At the time of Frances Burney’s early attempts at writing for the stage, for example, when Sheridan had become the manager of Drury Lane, he nurtured her hopes by offering his assistance in producing her first play—the unstaged comedy The Witlings (1779)—and in trying to persuade her father, Charles Burney, to withdraw his ban concerning his daughter’s passion for dramatic writing.3 Burney writes an enthusiastic account of Sheridan’s insistent request that she write a comedy, a naively flattering description of the great man who had “meditated to [propose this] to you the first Time I should have the pleasure of seeing you”: As a manager who must, of course, be loaded with Pieces & recommendations, to urge me to write, & to promise to thank me for my Writing, instead of making a favour & a difficulty of even looking at it,—is it not truly good-natured & liberal minded? And now, my dear Susy,—if I should attempt the stage,—I think I may be fairly acquitted of presumption, & however I may fail,—that I was strongly pressed to try by Mrs. Thrale,—& by Mr. Sheridan,—the most successful & powerful of all Dramatic living Authors,—will abundantly excuse my temerity.4 In a similar tone, Elizabeth Griffith’s “Advertisement” to her comedy The Times, first performed at Drury Lane on 2 December 1779, addressed Sheridan’s father and “return[ed] thanks to my much- esteemed friend, Mr. SHERIDAN, senior, for his kind attention to the getting-up my Play, my ill health not permitting me to attend one Rehearsal.”5 For his part, Sheridan also wrote a conspicuous number of prologues and epilogues—to Elizabeth Craven’s The Miniature Picture, for instance, acted at Drury Lane on 24 May 1780,6 and to Hannah More’s The Fatal Falsehood, first performed at Covent Garden on 6 May 17797—ostensibly, as he wrote to Garrick, because he meant to be “vastly civil to female talent of all sorts.”8 Taking the above into account, it would seem pertinent to disagree with Ellen Donkin, who argues that Sheridan maliciously sabotaged women dramatists’ productions with the intention of undermining the idea of the woman playwright as professional.9 Sheridan was critical of women’s involvement in writing for the stage as well as in performing; however, evidence of and, more importantly, the reasons for Sheridan’s attitude towards women’s professionalism have yet to be fully demonstrated. One of the aims of this essay is precisely to shed light on Sheridan’s often-misinterpreted connections with the professional women of his time, in order to assess his own personal and professional stance towards the female sex and to measure the impact of his ideas regarding women on the course of his own career as a dramatist. Sheridan’s relationships with the women in his life—whether aristocratic female representatives, professional women writers, or his two wives—mirrored the contradictions and eccentric aspects of his own character. From his clandestine, romantic marriage with Elizabeth Linley as a young and penniless son of an Irish actor to his entry into the fashionable world of the Whig patroness Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, his notorious “womanizing” has been frequently distorted. Sheridan’s notions of love and his idealistic self-representation as passionate hero are indeed much more complex and kaleidoscopic than they may seem. He possessed a strong yearning to be accepted into the high spheres of eighteenth-century society—one still reluctant to admit members of an intellectual middle class that was busy affirming its professional presence. And yet Sheridan was never a flatterer: he acquired his position amidst members of the upper classes with by his genius alone. From time to time, Sheridan took on the roles of public man, politician, gentleman, devoted husband, and affectionate lover, although his social and political ascent demanded in return the sacrifice of both Elizabeth Linley’s and his second wife Hecca’s sentiments. He could be relentless, impetuous, seductive, and even vengeful with the women he was determined to pursue, yet he was never vicious, and his female partners were always strong women with vivacious intellects and original minds. On the other hand, Sheridan consciously recognized the ambiguous character of his relationships with the female sex, and alternatively pictured himself as a candid lover consumed with “tormenting sensations,” and as the “Serpent [that] found [its] way to the ear of slumbering innocence,” learning with time to bargain his feelings for a much coveted place among the wits:11 I have fixed to myself a walk in Life, for my entrance into which I shall work ‘Oar and Sail’ as the Devil did in Milton, and when I am in, if I can’t make my way on, I shall deserve to be trod on.12 Both his wives would soon learn to “taste the forbidden fruit” in order to reconcile with his eccentric character and continue to live with him.13 Drawing liberally from his personal and professional relationships with women, Sheridan depicted and polished his ideal of the woman throughout his works: there is an interesting evolution of the female characters, especially in his comedies, that follows Sheridan’s own involvement with Elizabeth Linley and the coterie of fashionable women of Devonshire House, coming full circle in the uncommon “new woman” of The Camp (1799). The character of Nell, notably underestimated among the female characters in Sheridan’s theatrical production, is at the other extreme of Lydia Languish in The Rivals (1775). And yet these characters complement each other, thus offering a complete (and complex) notion of a Sheridanian female alter ego that, never finding full expression in a single character in Sheridan’s works, was instead fragmented into a series of fictional women that combine together his own multi-faceted personality. Writing to Mrs. Angelo from Bath in October 1770, Sheridan was probably already infatuated with the woman who would inspire so many characters in his comedies as well as some of the most adventurous episodes of his life, including duels, an elopement to France, and a secret marriage. He recounted that Bath was “no place for news,” except for the fact that “there is a Mr. Linley here, a music master, who has a daughter that sings like an angel; perhaps you may have heard of her.”14 At that time, he wrote that most of the women he associated with at Bath were, to use a theatrical expression, “as ugly as Lions,” and Elizabeth Linley was already a celebrity. The story of Sheridan’s romantic elopement with “Eliza” to escape the persecutions of Captain Mathews, and of their consequent clandestine marriage in France, is well-known to Sheridan scholars and readers. As a matter of fact, more than witnessing the passion that Sheridan bore for Eliza—“my love is almost the only Feeling I have alive”—the fashionable milieu of Sheridan’s love affair with her, made up of duels, gossip, speculations and newspaper paragraphs, turned into his first public performance and the ideal setting for his official entrance into the world à la mode.15 Before moving to Bath with his father in 1770, Sheridan was a solitary young boy, with some vague prospects of becoming a lawyer and a deep sense of revenge already rooted in his soul. His mother’s death in 1766, the rivalry he had always felt with his brother Charles, and the ambiguous relationship with his father exacerbated his anxieties about finding himself strangled by an ordinary life that could domesticate that “brilliancy of genius” his sisters always ascribed to him.16 The occasion of endorsing his concept of himself as the romantic hero offered by Eliza’s situation and prompted by Sheridan’s sisters could provide more excitement and popularity than simply laboring over the translation of some erotic fables from the Greek, or in writing a burlesque narrative of the amours of deities and mortals.17 To Alicia and Betsy Sheridan, it would be obvious that “one so handsome, clever and bold had been designed by Nature to act the part of a knight of olden time,” and Sheridan was captivated by this unexpected, romantic role he was called upon to play.18 He and Eliza spent the following
Load more

Recommended publications
  • A Passion for Opera the DUCHESS and the GEORGIAN STAGE
    A Passion for Opera THE DUCHESS AND THE GEORGIAN STAGE A Passion for Opera THE DUCHESS AND THE GEORGIAN STAGE PAUL BOUCHER JEANICE BROOKS KATRINA FAULDS CATHERINE GARRY WIEBKE THORMÄHLEN Published to accompany the exhibition A Passion for Opera: The Duchess and the Georgian Stage Boughton House, 6 July – 30 September 2019 http://www.boughtonhouse.co.uk https://sound-heritage.soton.ac.uk/projects/passion-for-opera First published 2019 by The Buccleuch Living Heritage Trust The right of Paul Boucher, Jeanice Brooks, Katrina Faulds, Catherine Garry, and Wiebke Thormählen to be identified as the authors of the editorial material and as the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the authors. ISBN: 978-1-5272-4170-1 Designed by pmgd Printed by Martinshouse Design & Marketing Ltd Cover: Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788), Lady Elizabeth Montagu, Duchess of Buccleuch, 1767. Portrait commemorating the marriage of Elizabeth Montagu, daughter of George, Duke of Montagu, to Henry, 3rd Duke of Buccleuch. (Cat.10). © Buccleuch Collection. Backdrop: Augustus Pugin (1769-1832) and Thomas Rowlandson (1757-1827), ‘Opera House (1800)’, in Rudolph Ackermann, Microcosm of London (London: Ackermann, [1808-1810]). © The British Library Board, C.194.b.305-307. Inside cover: William Capon (1757-1827), The first Opera House (King’s Theatre) in the Haymarket, 1789.
    [Show full text]
  • Irish Gothic Fiction
    THE ‘If the Gothic emerges in the shadows cast by modernity and its pasts, Ireland proved EME an unhappy haunting ground for the new genre. In this incisive study, Jarlath Killeen shows how the struggle of the Anglican establishment between competing myths of civility and barbarism in eighteenth-century Ireland defined itself repeatedly in terms R The Emergence of of the excesses of Gothic form.’ GENCE Luke Gibbons, National University of Ireland (Maynooth), author of Gaelic Gothic ‘A work of passion and precision which explains why and how Ireland has been not only a background site but also a major imaginative source of Gothic writing. IRISH GOTHIC Jarlath Killeen moves well beyond narrowly political readings of Irish Gothic by OF IRISH GOTHIC using the form as a way of narrating the history of the Anglican faith in Ireland. He reintroduces many forgotten old books into the debate, thereby making some of the more familiar texts seem suddenly strange and definitely troubling. With FICTION his characteristic blend of intellectual audacity and scholarly rigour, he reminds us that each text from previous centuries was written at the mercy of its immediate moment as a crucial intervention in a developing debate – and by this brilliant HIST ORY, O RIGI NS,THE ORIES historicising of the material he indicates a way forward for Gothic amidst the ruins of post-Tiger Ireland.’ Declan Kiberd, University of Notre Dame Provides a new account of the emergence of Irish Gothic fiction in the mid-eighteenth century FI This new study provides a robustly theorised and thoroughly historicised account of CTI the beginnings of Irish Gothic fiction, maps the theoretical terrain covered by other critics, and puts forward a new history of the emergence of the genre in Ireland.
    [Show full text]
  • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
    Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816) Richard Brinsley Sheridan was born in Dublin on 30th October 1751. Sheridan's parents moved to London, and in 1762, he was sent to Harrow School. After six years at Harrow, he went to live with his father in Bath who had found employment there as an elocution teacher. In March 1772, Sheridan eloped to France with a young woman called Elizabeth Linley. A marriage ceremony was carried out at Calais but soon afterwards the couple were caught by the girl's father. As a result of this behaviour, Sheridan was challenged to a duel. The fight took place on 2nd July 1772, during which Sheridan was seriously wounded. However, Sheridan recovered and after qualifying as a lawyer, Mr. Linley gave permission for the couple to marry. Sheridan began writing plays, and on 17th January 1775, the Covent Garden Theatre produced his comedy The Rivals. After a poor reception it was withdrawn. A revised version appeared soon after and it eventually become one of Britain's most popular comedies. Two other plays by Sheridan, St. Patrick's Day and The Duenna, were also successfully produced at the Covent Garden Theatre. In 1776, Sheridan joined with his father-in-law to purchase the Drury Lane Theatre for £35,000. The following year, he produced his most popular comedy, The School for Scandal. In 1776, Sheridan met Charles Fox, the leader of the Radical Whigs in the House of Commons. Sheridan now decided to abandon his writing in favour of a political career. On 12th September 1780, Sheridan became MP for Stafford.
    [Show full text]
  • UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations
    UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title "Furbish'd Remnants": Theatrical Adaptation and the Orient, 1660-1815 Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0998z0zz Author Del Balzo, Angelina Publication Date 2019 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles “Furbish’d Remnants”: Theatrical Adaptation and the Orient, 1660-1815 A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English by Angelina Marie Del Balzo 2019 Ó Copyright by Angelina Marie Del Balzo 2019 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION “Furbish’d Remnants”: Theatrical Adaptation and the Orient, 1660-1815 by Angelina Marie Del Balzo Doctor of Philosophy in English University of California, Los Angeles, 2019 Professor Felicity A. Nussbaum, Chair Furbish’d Remnants argues that eighteenth-century theatrical adaptations set in the Orient destabilize categories of difference, introducing Oriental characters as subjects of sympathy while at the same time defamiliarizing the people and space of London. Applying contemporary theories of emotion, I contend that in eighteenth-century theater, the actor and the character become distinct subjects for the affective transfer of sympathy, increasing the emotional potential of performance beyond the narrative onstage. Adaptation as a form heightens this alienation effect, by drawing attention to narrative’s properties as an artistic construction. A paradox at the heart of eighteenth-century theater is that while the term “adaptation” did not have a specific literary or theatrical definition until near the end of the period, in practice adaptations and translations proliferated on the English stage.
    [Show full text]
  • An Examination of the Theories and Methodologies of John Walker (1732- 1807) with Emphasis Upon Gesturing
    This dissertation has been 64—7006 microfilmed exactly as received DODEZ, M. Leon, 1934- AN EXAMINATION OF THE THEORIES AND METHODOLOGIES OF JOHN WALKER (1732- 1807) WITH EMPHASIS UPON GESTURING. The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1963 Speech—Theater University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan AN EXAMINATION OP THE THEORIES AND METHODOLOGIES OP JOHN WALKER (1732-1807) WITH EMPHASIS UPON GESTURING DISSERTATION Presented In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By M. Leon Dodez, B.Sc., M.A ****** The Ohio State University 1963 Approved by Department of Speech ACKNOWLEDGMENT I wish to express my gratitude to Dr. George Lewis for his assistance In helping to shape my background, to Dr. Franklin Knower for guiding me to focus, and to Dr. Keith Brooks, my adviser, for his cooperation, patience, encouragement, leadership, and friendship. All three have given much valued time, encouragement and knowledge. ii CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................... 1 Chapter I. INTRODUCTION............................... 1 II, BIOGRAPHY................................... 9 III. THE PUBLICATIONS OP JOHN WALKE R............. 27 IV. JOHN WALKER, ORTHOEPIST AND LEXIGRAPHER .... 43 V. NATURALISM AND MECHANICALISM............... 59 VI. THEORY AND METHODOLOGY..................... 80 VII^ POSTURE AND P A S S I O N S ......................... 110 VIII. APPLICATION AND PROJECTIONS OP JOHN WALKER'S THEORIES AND METHODOLOGIES......... 142 The Growth of Elocution......................143 L a n g u a g e ................................... 148 P u r p o s e s ................................... 150 H u m o r ....................................... 154 The Disciplines of Oral Reading and Public Speaking ......................... 156 Historical Analysis ....................... 159 The Pa u s e ..................................
    [Show full text]
  • Prints Collection
    Prints Collection: An Inventory of the Collection at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center Descriptive Summary Creator: Prints Collection Title: Prints Collection Dates: 1669-1906 (bulk 1775-1825) Extent: 54 document boxes, 7 oversize boxes (33.38 linear feet) Abstract: The collection consists of ca. 8,000 prints, the great majority of which depict British and American theatrical performers in character or in personal portraits. RLIN Record #: TXRC02-A1 Language: English. Access Open for research Administrative Information Provenance The Prints Collection was assembled by Theater Arts staff, primarily from the Messmore Kendall Collection which was acquired in 1958. Other sources were the Robert Downing and Albert Davis collections. Processed by Helen Baer and Antonio Alfau, 2000 Repository: Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin Prints Collection Scope and Contents The Prints Collection, 1669-1906 (bulk 1775-1825), consists of ca. 8,000 prints, the great majority of which depict British and American theatrical performers in character or in personal portraits. The collection is organized in three series: I. Individuals, 1669-1906 (58.25 boxes), II. Theatrical Prints, 1720-1891 (1.75 boxes), and III. Works of Art and Miscellany, 1827-82 (1 box), each arranged alphabetically by name or subject. The prints found in this collection were made by numerous processes and include lithographs, woodcuts, etchings, mezzotints, process prints, and line blocks; a small number of prints are hand-tinted. A number of the prints were cut out from books and periodicals such as The Illustrated London News, The Universal Magazine, La belle assemblée, Bell's British Theatre, and The Theatrical Inquisitor; others comprised sets of plates of dramatic figures such as those published by John Tallis and George Gebbie, or by the toy theater publishers Orlando Hodgson and William West.
    [Show full text]
  • Information to Users
    INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely afreet reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author didsend notUMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note wül indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Each original is also photographed in one exposure and is included in reduced form at the back of the book. Photographs included in the origmal manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6” x 9” black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. UMI A Bell & Howell Infonnation Company 300 Horth Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor MI 48106-1346 USA 313/761-4700 800/521-0600 THOMAS KING AT SADLER'S WELLS AND DRURY LANE: PROPRIETORSHIP AND MANAGEMENT IN LATE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH THEATRE, 1772-1788 DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Evan M.
    [Show full text]
  • THE SCHOOL for SCANDAL by Richard Brinsley Sheridan
    THE SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL by Richard Brinsley Sheridan THE AUTHOR Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816) was born in Dublin to a mother who was a playwright and a father who was an actor. He thus came by his talents honestly, though he far exceeded the modest accomplishments of his parents. Already one of the most brilliant and witty dramatists of the English stage before the age of thirty, he gave up his writing and went on to become the owner and producer of the Drury Lane theater, a well-regarded Whig member of the English Parliament, and a popular man-about-town. Despite his family’s poverty, he attended Harrow, a famous prep school, though he appears to have been unhappy there, largely because the rich boys at the school looked down on him because of his humble origins. The bitter taste of his school years drove his later ambitions, both for literary and political success and for acceptance in the highest strata of society. He used his profits from his writing to buy the theater and his profits from the theater to finance his political career and socially- active lifestyle. Sheridan was a tireless lover and a man who, no matter how much he earned, always managed to spend more. In 1772, he married a lovely young singer named Elizabeth Ann Linley; she had already, before her twentieth birthday, attracted the attention of several wealthy suitors twice her age, but she and Sheridan eloped to France without the knowledge or permission of either set of parents. Though she loved him deeply, he was not a one-woman sort of man, and his constant infidelities led to a temporary separation in 1790.
    [Show full text]
  • No Play Title 651 102 94 a Bold Stroke for a Husband MISSING 77
    No Play Title 651 102 94 A Bold Stroke for a Husband MISSING 77 A Bold Stroke for a Wife 889 A Cabinet Question 722 A Christmas Carol 709 A Close Seige 603 A Cure for Love MISSING 260 A Cure for the Heartache 415 A Day After the Fair 776 A Day at the Inn 425 A Day in Paris MISSING 531 A Day Well Spent 808 A Dead Shot 359 A Dream of the Future 981 A Familiar Friend 545 A Gentleman in Difficulties 403 A Good Night's Rest 989 A Good-looking Fellow MISSING 887 A Handsome Husband MISSING 887 A Hasty Conclusion MISSING 576 A House Divided MISSING 850 A Husband At Sight MISSING 852 A Kiss in the Dark 425 A Lady and a Gentleman 373 A Legend of Florence 809 A Lesson For Ladies MISSING 735 A Maiden’s Flame 488 A Marriage Noose 852 A Match in the Dark 459 A Message from the Sea 736 A Mistaken Story 1008 A Model of a Wife 7 A New Way to Pay Old Bet 623 A Night in the Bastille 878 A Perculiar Position 873 A Pleasant Neighbour MISSING 437 A Poor Young Man 946 A Quarter to Nine 987 A Quiet Day 337 A Roland for an Oliver 1010 A Romantic Idea 1006 A Rough Diamond 919 A Sailor's Legacy MISSING 716 A School for Grown Children 1055 A Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing 919 A Soldier and a Sailor, A Tinker and a Tailor MISSING 343 A Soldier's Courtship 881 A Trip to Kissengen 68 A Trip to Scarborough 1025 A Vision of Venus 33 A Winter's Tale MISSING 880 A Woman Never Vexed MISSING 490 A Woman Will Be a Woman MISSING 1038 A Wonderful Woman 814 Abelard and Heloise 543 Abroad and At Home MISSING 590 Advice Gratis 805 Agnes De Vere MISSING 778 Aldgate Pump MISSING 83 Alexander
    [Show full text]
  • Research Guide for Archival Sources of Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin
    Research Guide for Archival Sources of Smock Alley theatre, Dublin. October 2009 This research guide is intended to provide an accessible insight into the historical, theatrical and archival legacy of Smock Alley theatre, Dublin. It is designed as an aid for all readers and researchers who have an interest in theatre history and particularly those wishing to immerse themselves in the considerable theatrical legacy of Smock Alley theatre and it’s array of actors, actresses, directors, designers, its many scandals and stories, of what was and is a unique theatrical venue in the fulcrum of Dublin’s cultural heart. Founded in 1662 by John Ogilby, Smock Alley theatre and stage was home to many of the most famous and talented actors, writers and directors ever to work and produce in Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales, throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth century. Celebrated players included Peg Woffington, David Garrick, Colley Cibber, Spranger Barry and George Ann Bellamy. Renowned managers and designers such as John Ogilby, Thomas Sheridan, Louis De Val and Joseph Ashbury would help cement the place of Smock Alley theatre as a venue of immense theatrical quality where more than just a play was produced and performed but more of a captivating, wild and entertaining spectacle. The original playbills from seventeenth century productions at Smock Alley detail many and varied interval acts that often took place as often as between every act would feature singing, dancing, farce, tumbling, juggling and all manner of entertainment for the large public audience. Smock Alley was celebrated for its musical and operatic productions as well as its purely dramatic performances.
    [Show full text]
  • A Thesis the University of Manitoba in Partial Fulfillment for the Degree
    ALCHEMIST OF THE THEATRE: STUDY OF SHER]DAN ' S DRAMATIC ART A thesis Presented to the Faculty of Graduate Studies The University of Manitoba In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts by Anne E. Boeckx February L97I .ånne E. Boecks 1972 ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to explore Sheridan's dramatíc art as ít develops in his minor plays--St. Patrick's Day, The Duenna and å Trip to scarborough--and particularly his comic masterpieces--The Rivals and The School for Scandal. To the Restoration and sentimental modes of comedy, the plays owe many of their themes and Sheridan much of his inspiration and craftsmanship as a comic dramatist. Sheridan, hovtrever, is no mere imitator who mechanically adheres to ej-ther tradi- tion. Rather, to his blending of the Restoration and senti- mental comic modes, he adds his own distinctive comic ingredients. Thus, his Restoration and sentimental models are transformed into a ne\^/ comic mode. This study, then, shows how Sheridan effects a blending of his two inherited traditions. Even more import- antly, it indicates Sheridanrs own artistry and his skill as a transformer, or alchemíst, of comic modes. In Chapter One, a brief summary of the Restoration and sentj-mental modes establishes the nature of Sheridan's basic comic models. Chapter Two, which deals with the minor plays, points to Sheridan's attempt to transform the two traditions into a new comic mode. The third chapter is devoted to a detailed discussion of The Riva]s, one of Sheridanrs more successful efforts as a transformer of comic traditíons.
    [Show full text]
  • Melanie Bigold, ' “The Theatre of the Book”: Marginalia and Mise En
    occasional publications no.1 ‘Theatre of the Book’ Marginalia and Mise en Page in the Cardiff Rare Books Restoration Drama Collection Melanie Bigold Centre for Editorial and Intertextual Research, Cardiff University ‘ “Theatre of the Book”: Marginalia and Mise en Page in the Cardiff Rare Books Restoration Drama Collection’ (CEIR Occasional Publications No. 1). Available online <http://cardiffbookhistory.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/bigold.pdf>. © 2013 Melanie Bigold; (editor: Anthony Mandal). The moral rights of the author have been asserted. Originally published in December 2013, by the Centre for Editorial and Intertextual Research, Cardiff University. Typeset in Adobe Minion Pro 11 / 13, at the Centre for Editorial and Intertextual Research, using Adobe InDesign cc; final output rendered with Adobe Acrobat xi Professional. Summary he value-added aspect of both marginalia and provenance has long Tbeen recognized. Ownership marks and autograph annotations from well-known writers or public figures increase the intellectual interest as well as monetary value of a given book. Handwritten keys, pointers, and marginal glosses can help to reveal unique, historical information unavaila- ble in the printed text; information that, in turn, can be used to reconstruct various reading and interpretive experiences of the past. However, increas- ingly scholars such as Alan Westphall have acknowledged that the ‘study of marginalia and annotations’ results in ‘microhistory, producing narratives that are often idiosyncratic’. While twenty to fifty percent of early modern texts have some sort of marking in them, many of these forays in textual alterity are unsystematic and fail to address, as William Sherman notes, ‘the larger patterns that most literary and historical scholars have as their goal’.
    [Show full text]