Time in Romantic Theatre 3030960781, 9783030960780

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Time in Romantic Theatre Frederick Burwick

Time in Romantic Theatre

Frederick Burwick

Time in Romantic Theatre

Frederick Burwick UCLA Claremont, CA, USA

ISBN 978-3-030-96078-0    ISBN 978-3-030-96079-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-96079-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgements

In reviewing the temporal modalities of Romantic Theatre, my purpose is to provide a typology and a representative sampling. Not a general typology such as that attempted a century ago by Robert Metcalf Smith in Types of Romantic Drama (1928), but rather a typology of dramatic time. My intent is to draw attention to the ways in which the drama reflected the pervasive impact of increased temporal urgency in social and cultural behaviour. I acknowledge here the works of several colleagues, who have examined the time-obsessed characters and the time-driven plots, and who have raised critical awareness of British drama as a major genre of the Romantic period. Among the many studies of time in the drama, I learned much from two richly insightful essays: Katherine Biers’s “Clock-Watching: Time in Romantic Drama” (2018) and Brian Richardson’s “‘Time Is Out of Joint’: Narrative Models and the Temporality of the Drama” (1987). To these I must add Marcus Tomalin’s Telling the Time in British Literature, 1675–1830 (2020), which reminds us, chapter by chapter, that characters in books and on stage enlist, just as folk in the real world, a variety of means of measuring time. With varying habits and degrees of urgency, characters consult watches and clocks, observe the lengthening shadows, the shifting light on a sundial, the sifting sand in an hourglass, the flower opening and closing its petals, the church bell, the cannon blast, the curfew warning. Perhaps not dramatic in themselves, these phenomena can precipitate action and reveal character. As a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, I was a reader for Ricardo Quinones when he was writing on “Views of Time in Shakespeare.” v

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At UCLA, a major influence in my thinking on time and the drama came from the wise and generous Reginald Foakes, who prompted me to delve into Coleridge on Shakespeare. Foakes provided me with a complete set, prior to publication, of page proofs of his two-volume edition of Coleridge’s Lectures 1808–1819 On Literature. As a former student of Allardyce Nicoll at the University of Birmingham, Foakes was able to guide me through Nicoll’s six-volume History of English, 1660–1900. My education in Romantic drama has been significantly augmented by Jane Moody’s Illegitimate Theatre in London, 1770–1840 (2000). Moody shifted attention to what had previously been the relatively neglected trans­pontine theatres and the consequences of the Licensing Act (1737). She invited me to her seminar at the University of York to speak on “Bluebeard and The Castle Spectre” (27 February 2007). Discussion of the comic character in the Gothic setting prompted a consideration of “timing,” as in De Quincey’s account of the Porter in “The Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth” (1823). My visit to York coincided with the publication of The Cambridge Companion to British Theatre, 1730–1830, edited by Jane Moody and Daniel O’Quinn. My last personal interaction with Moody took place at the Thomas Moore Symposium, Queen’s University, Belfast, 4–5 April 2009, where in a televised appearance she provided an astute critique of my critical emphasis on acting and performance. My reliance on her scholarship has persisted since her death, 28 October 2011. When she attended the final dress rehearsal of a production of James Cobb’s adaptation of Marquis de Sade’s The Haunted Tower [“La Tour enchantée”] (2 March 2006), Moody was able to give the players sound advice on stepping into a scene or a song. This was the penultimate student production in the series of fourteen plays I directed or supervised through the UCLA English Department and the Office of Residential Life. It is a truth of our profession, that we learn more from our students than we can teach them. I became aware of the challenges of non-­sequential duration in directing such plays as Thomas Morton’s Speed the Plough, Elizabeth Inchbald’s To Marry or Not to Marry, Joanna Baillie’s The Tryal, and especially Thomas Lovell Beddoes’s death-denying, time-scorning Death’s Jest Book (which was rendered stageable only through the shrewd editing of Jerome McGann). During our conversation on staging riot and reform, Julia Swindells, author of Glorious Causes, The Grand Theatre of Political Change, 1789 to 1833 (2004), asked me to contribute the entry on acting theory to The Oxford Handbook of the Georgian Theatre, 1737–1832 (2014), which she

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was co-editing with David Frances Taylor, whose closely allied interests in the drama of revolution and reform were published as Theatres of Opposition: Empire, Revolution, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan (2012). Following Swindells’s death (29 October 2011), Taylor took over the project and saw it to completion. He gave thanks to Daniel O’Quinn who generously shared the skills acquired in his similar project with Jane Moody. Since his first book, Staging Governance: Theatrical Imperialism in London, 1770–1800 (2005), O’Quinn has more recently assembled two collections: The Routledge Anthology of Restoration and Eighteenth-­ Century Drama (2017) and The Routledge Anthology of Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Performance (2019), both with the assistance of Kristina Straub and Misty G. Anderson. From its first appearance I have kept Jeffrey Cox’s In the Shadows of Romance (1987) within ready reach at my desk. On 26 March 1988, he signed my copy. I was especially pleased when he and Jane Moody were among those who attended the final dress rehearsal of the UCLA production of The Haunted Tower. Two attributes of Cox’s work made it especially relevant to my own: (1) recognizing the infiltration of romance into drama, (2) tracing pan-European sources and influences. In Romanticism in the Shadow of War, Literary Culture in the Napoleonic War Years (2014), Cox examined another shadow who “struts and frets his hour upon the stage,” now a shadow darkened by the slaughter of revolution and conflict. Together with Michael Gamer, Cox edited The Broadview Anthology of Romantic Drama (2003), a useful collection in teaching Romantic drama. In addition to the Routledge Anthologies mentioned earlier, I consulted older anthologies, such as Katherine Rogers’s 18th- and NineteenthCentury Drama (1979) and Adrienne Scullion’s Female Playwrights of the Nineteenth Century (1996). The selection process for any anthology is governed by a functional typology, as in Scullion’s attention to female playwrights, Cox’s Seven Gothic Dramas. 1789–1825 (1992), or Arnold Schmidt’s three-volume British Nautical Melodrama, 1820–1850 (2019). In their Introduction, Cox and Gamer attend to a range of types and subtypes that has influenced their selection. Sorting out generic subtypes is the brilliant accomplishment in Gamer’s Romanticism and the Gothic: Genre, Reception, and Canon Formation (2000). Having identified Gothic Feminism (1998), Diane Long Hoeveler went on in Gothic Riffs (2010) to identify and formulate distinctive characteristics of prominent subtypes, which she dubbed the “collateral gothic.”

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Julie Carlson’s In the Theatre of Romanticism: Coleridge, Nationalism, Women (1993) was among the first critical studies to place the women playwrights in the competitive roster. When I reviewed Judith Pascoe’s The Sarah Siddons Audio Files: Romanticism and the Lost Voice (2011), I applauded her success in assembling from the many reviews a recreation of the actor’s vocal quality. Drawing on paintings as well as reviews and biographies, Robyn Asleson and contributors to her Notorious Muse: The Actress in British Art and Culture, 1776–1812 (2003) visually documented the body language and gesture of many of the actresses of the period. When Wendy Nielsen was a student at the University of Göttingen, I had occasion to walk with her along the ramparts of the mighty Fortress Marienberg in Würzburg. She may even then have had visions of the armed female wielding her weapons in the midst of the fray. In Women Warriors in Romantic Drama (2012), Nielsen not only brought these characters to life, she also explained their social and cultural relevance on the stage. Angela Esterhammer’s Print and Performance in the 1820s: Improvisation, Speculation, Identity (2020) is her fourth monograph on performativity and performative language. As in her previous works, she again demonstrated her thorough awareness of the subtleties and nuances contained within words and gestures. For the study of theatre performance, she exposes the slight-of-tongue magic of improvisation. She reveals, too, ways in which meanings may be amplified or redirected when the actor inadvertently alters lines or deliberately improvises or steps out of the role. I also acknowledge an extensive debt to four books by David Worrall: Theatric Revolution: Drama, Censorship and Romantic Period Subcultures (2006), The Politics of Romantic Theatricality: The Road to the Stage (2007), Harlequin Empire: Race, Ethnicity and the Drama of the Popular Enlightenment (2007), and Celebrity, Performance, Reception. British Georgian Theatre as Social Assemblage (2013). In each of these studies, Worrall has developed a unique typology accompanied by a pertinent set of representative plays. Providing valuable insight into how theatres were managed, Worrall revived attention to a vast number of comedies, tragedies, melodrama, as well as burlesques, burletta, and harlequinades. When I reached an impasse in my own research, he readily responded to my queries with pertinent suggestions. Conference encounters and correspondence with Terry Robinson predate by several years her invitation to contribute to her Home and Abroad:

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Transnational England, 1750–1850 (2009), co-edited with Monika Class, author of the lucid and revelatory study, Coleridge and Kantian Ideas in England (2012). In considering the reception of continental philosophy, I have turned to Nicholas Halmi, whose “Romanticism, the Temporalization of History, and the Historicization of Form” (2013) examines periodicity and the epochal organization of thought. Kant does not affirm that time is dependent upon mind for its existence, but such dependence is necessary to the awareness and representation of time. For Hegel, time has always already passed away, so that time perceived is past even in the moment of perception. Terry Robinson follows Robyn Asleson in extending and enriching insight into the body language, physical movement, and optical devices on the Romantic stage. Her essay, “‘The glass of fashion and the mould of form’: The Histrionic Mirror and Georgian-Era Performance,” Eighteenth-­ Century Life (April 2015), was preceded by a monograph, Reading the Acting Body in the Romantic Age: Performance and Its Truth Effects, 1750–1830 (2012) and followed by a collection, The Visual Life of Romantic Theatre (2021, co-edited with Diane Piccitt). Her current deliberations on time in Romantic drama deal with audience response and the affective experience of temporality. Although a prominent actor, playwright, and poet of the 1790s, Mary Robinson receives only passing attention in this volume, when I refer in Chap. 2 to the gambling craze of the period. Terry Robinson provided the introduction, text, and notes to Mary Robinson’s Nobody: A Comedy in Two Acts (1794), readily accessible in Romantic Circles (web: March 2013). I cite William Brewer’s “Mary Robinson as Dramatist: The Nobody Catastrophe,” European Romantic Review (July 2006), and I recommend Brewer’s comprehensive edition, The Works of Mary Robinson, 8 volumes (2009–2010). In his Staging Romantic Chameleons and Imposters (2015), Brewer identified, as correlative to the play-within-a play, the chameleonic performance, in which the actor plays the role of a character who plays a role. Contemporary reviews, many of them anonymous, served as valuable references, all the more valuable when subjected to the interpretive strategies developed by Jonathan Mulrooney in his Romanticism and Theatrical Experience: Kean, Hazlitt, and Keats in the Age of Theatrical News (2018). His focus on the sway of theatre criticism in the popular press, and especially in the reviews of William Hazlitt, retrieves for the reader in the twenty-first century the dynamic interaction of player, critic, and the

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theatre-going public of the Regency. As Mulrooney makes clear, Edmund Kean not only played to the audience, he played as well to the population at large. More especially, he played to the theatre critic who provided the grand mediation. Mulrooney examines the prose through which William Hazlitt contributed to the celebrity building of the age, informing audiences not only what they should be watching in a performance, but also how in his performance Kean should be Kean. The response infiltrated other genres as well. The poetry of Keats, Mulrooney argues, began to take on attributes of stage performance. Keats’s imagination became theatrical. Indeed, cultural sensibilities widely readjusted in relation to the immediate trends in theatrical tradition. To spare many additional pages, I must resort to the usual economy of presenting Acknowledgements in a list of names. I have tried to suggest the reasons underlying my debts and prompting my gratitude. My understanding of Romantic drama is further indebted to Catherine Burroughs, Gilli Bush-Bailey, Lila Maria Crisafulli, Thomas Crochunis, Stuart Curran, Tracy Davis, Franca Dellarosa, Regina Hewitt, Omar Miranda, Marjean Purinton, Nicholas Roe, Diego Saglia, Judith Thompson, and Duncan Wu. I trust in tolerant forgiveness for failing to name more of the colleagues to whom I owe recognition and gratitude. In addition to the shared scholarship of friends, I must acknowledge the principal libraries and librarians that make research in the history of the drama possible. I am especially grateful for access to the theatre collections of the British Library, the Larpent Collection at the Huntington Library, the Mander and Mitchenson Collection at the University of Bristol, and the Westminster City Archives.

Contents

1 Introduction: Keeping Time on Stage  1 2 Flashback and Flashforward 29 3 The Fatal Hour 49 4 Synoptic Time 99 5 Time Stopped119 6 Time Replayed149 7 Longitudinal Time171 8 Alternate Time187 9 Forgotten Time209 10 Epic Time247 Works Cited269 Index285 xi

List of Illustrations

Illustration 1.1 Illustration 3.1 Illustration 3.2 Illustration 3.3

Illustration 3.4 Illustration 3.5 Illustration 4.1 Illustration 5.1 Illustration 5.2 Illustration 5.3 Illustration 6.1

The Bayeux Tapestry, scene 52 8 “The Garden Path, Mephistopheles with Martha, Faust with Margaret” 52 Playbill, The Devil’s Elixir (Covent Garden, 1 May 1829) 58 Wolf’s Glen, Der Freischütz (Lyceum [English Opera House], 22 July 1824). Thomas Potter Cooke as Zamiel; John Braham as Max. (II). Peltro William Tomkins, artist and engraver (17 February 1825) 81 Leolyn altering time, One o’Clock; or, The Knight and the Wood Demon88 The Ghost Ship in Fitzball, The Flying Dutchman. Robert Cruikshank, artist; George W. Bonner, engraver 91 Ambrose Gwinett was cruelly beaten. Douglas Jerrold, Ambrose Gwinett. Robert Cruikshank, artist; George W. Bonner, engraver 115 Paulina brings the statue of Hermione to life. The Winter’s Tale (V.iii). William Hamilton, artist; Robert Thew, engraver 121 Grove and Lawn before Portia’s House, The Merchant of Venice (V.i). William Hodges, artist; John Browne, engraver (1 Dec 1795) 125 The Rent Day (1807). David Wilkie, artist; Abraham Raimbach, engraver (1817) 137 Arden of Faversham, woodcut, 1592 151

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Illustration 8.1

Illustration 9.1 Illustration 9.2

Illustration 9.3

Rosambert. What do I see? the white phantom! Good heavens! ’tis Ernestine! (I.ii). Robert Cruikshank, artist; George W. Bonner, engraver. William Thomas Moncrieff, The Somnambulist; or, The Phantom of the Village201 Alvanley pledges his love to Agnes, The Lear of Private Life. (I.iii). Robert Seymour, artist; Welch, engraver. Richardson, 1820 215 Clifton: Horror!—What sight is this? (I.v). George Dibdin Pitt, The Eddystone Elf. Robert Cruikshank, artist; George W. Bonner engraver. John Cumberland, 1828. (Courtesy of Amherst College. Archives and Special Collections. Plimpton Collection of Dramas 4 197 1833) 226 Portrait of the actor Henry Gaskell Denvil, in character as Byron’s Manfred. Drawn and lithographed by J. W. Gear (John Miller, Covent Garden, 1834) 236

CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Keeping Time on Stage

William Shakespeare and the Industrial Revolution share responsibility for the radical changes in the representation of time in the drama and melodrama of the Romantic era. The French critics, who declared the unities of time, place, and action indispensable to drama, rejected the English preference for Shakespeare, whose plays met with increasing success in spite of his many variations on how time passes on stage. During the latter half of the seventeenth century, the notion still prevailed that Shakespeare could be improved if his plays were revised to conform to the three unities. John Dryden’s All for Love (1677), based on Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, achieved unity of time by focusing on the last hours of its hero and heroine. Earlier, Dryden and William D’Avenant rewrote Shakespeare’s The Tempest, or The Enchanted Island (1667). Dryden still pursued the ideal of the unities in his adaptation of Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida (1702).1 Liberation from restrictive conventions was a leading impulse for the debate over the “three unities.” English critics in their defence of Shakespeare rightly objected that insisting on the unity of time over-­ simplified the experience of time, which is always complicated by recollections, anticipations, and intrusions. Referencing only the passing of the present moment imposed an unnatural constraint on the dramatic character, but also on the spectator’s experience of that character.2 Samuel Johnson, in the Preface to his edition of Shakespeare’s Plays, argued that the spectator was perfectly capable of responding to representations, scene © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 F. Burwick, Time in Romantic Theatre, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-96079-7_1

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by scene, of different times and places. All that is necessary is the cohesion of plot and character. “As nothing is essential to the fable, but unity of action,” Samuel Johnson argued, “and as the unities of time and place arise evidently from false assumptions, and, by circumscribing the extent of the drama, lessen its variety, I cannot think it much to be lamented, that they were not known by him [Shakespeare], or not observed.” Johnson took the argument even further: “the comprehensive genius of Shakespeare” resides not in his adherence to, but in his violation of, such rules.3 Joseph Harpur in The Principles of Philosophical Criticism (1810)4 provided a Romantic and post-Kantian appropriation of Aristotle’s Poetics that emphasized perception and awareness as the crucial mediating elements of the drama. Reception of Harpur’s Philosophical Criticism gained crucial support through the reviews in the Critical Review (Jan 1811) and Monthly Review (July 1815).5 Time, as the period in which dramatic action occurs, can remain constant or shift, depending on the circumstances and contexts of the plot. The series of events that constitute the drama must appear “connected and coherent” (Harpur, 187, 189; Poetics, Chap. 7). In response to Aristotle’s dictum that the duration of events in a tragedy ought to keep “within one revolution of the sun,” or near to it, Harpur reasserts Aristotle’s concern with defining the temporal scope of tragedy as finite, in contrast to the infinite scope of the epic (Harpur, 190–191; Poetics, Chap. 6). The distinction also involves the complexity of plot, which must be of a length to be taken in by the memory (Poetics, Chap. 8). The effects of tragedy, Harpur emphasizes, depend on the impression on the imagination, the retention by the memory, and “the energizing of the intellect” (Harpur, 196, 198). Mental time trumps the sort of regulatory time that can be set by the clepsydra (Poetics, Chap. 8). The Industrial Revolution gave to the reckoning of time a more severe urgency. Shakespeare had already dramatized consequences of commodifying and politicizing time. Antonio, the merchant of Venice, had absolute confidence that his ships would return to harbour by the scheduled time. That misjudgement of time almost cost him his life. Prospero, with the assistance of Ariel, orchestrates a convenient shipwreck that enables him to regain his position as Duke of Milan from his usurping brother Antonio. Time in the Romantic era had become more demanding than it had been to Shakespeare’s contemporaries, or even to the playwrights of the several intervening generations.

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Social interactions were once adequately ordered by measuring time in natural units: the sun’s rising and setting, the monthly phases of the moon, the annual passing of the seasons. The shadow on a sundial marked the hours by day; the burning of a notched candle designated the nocturnal hours. In antiquity, the most exact measurements were contrived by means of the sifting sand in an hourglass, or the steady dripping of water in the Roman clepsydra. Church bells and the tower clock in Shakespeare’s day were certainly capable of exercising authority in calling a populace to service and duty.6 These were far too primitive to meet the maritime needs of British ships. Commercial trade required precision in time-keeping in order to maintain schedules but also to avoid rocky shores. Shakespeare knew nothing of pocket-watches nor of the steam whistles that called labourers to the mills, mines, and factories; nothing of sidereal or longitudinal time; nothing of astronomical or geological time. Shakespeare’s plots unfold with a persistent awareness of time,7 but that awareness grew far more acute under the tyranny of managed labour and financial investment. Time became a controlling element in Romantic drama in response to global expansion and the investment in colonial enterprise and international trade, and to the longitudinal time of seafarers, pirates, and smugglers. Old time barriers were being broken, but new ones, more rigorous and demanding, were introduced. In addition to staging action in relation to historical, geological, geographical, astronomical, and longitudinal time schemes,8 playwrights were willing to stop time to capture the moment, as in the frequent use of tableaux vivants. Some plays were devoted to the ages and stages of individual life and progress. In many plays, chronology would be disrupted by a scene representing an event from the past or a scene depicting a future consequence. The fascination with the new technology of time-keeping devices stimulated the invention of all sorts of clockwork automata.9 In 1739, Jacques de Vaucanson displayed his Canard Digérateur, a mechanical duck, which could eat grain, and then defecate. Between 1768 and 1774, Pierre Jaquet-­ Droz advertised his skill as watch-maker by exhibiting three wind-up figures: scribe, draftsman, and pianoforte player.10 Cities all over Europe mounted in their clock-towers elaborate mechanical displays activated with the chiming of the hours. In her comedy Love at a Venture (1706), Susanna Centlivre introduced a character named Wou’dbe, “A Silly, Projecting Coxcomb.” Among his projections, he proposed city

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transportation by means of moving streets set into motion by clockwork (I.i.248–262).11 Even as clockworks became larger and more complex, they also grew smaller and more precise. As trade gave rise to an increasingly time-­ conscious population in the sixteenth century, clock-making flourished. While the clock on the tower and the church bell tolled the time for an entire village, wealthier homes were furnished with pendulum clocks, and wealthier citizens of sixteenth-century Europe made it a fashion to wear their timepieces, at first fastened to clothing or worn on a chain around the neck. By the seventeenth century, however, men wore watches in pockets rather than as pendants. Not surprisingly, time-telling and temporal references became more prominent in the plays of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. During Lent, when entertainment ceased at the theatres, educational programmes were offered in the place of plays. Audiences were kept spellbound by the theatrical display of gigantic orreries and other devices to show the clockwork movement of the heavens.12 Bonnell Thornton, the elder, was founder of the Drury Lane Journal, a satirical periodical which recorded scurrilous anecdotes of the theatre and lampooned Johnson’s Rambler, The Gentleman’s Magazine, and The London Magazine. His son, Bonnell Thornton, the younger, studied astronomy and clock-making, and exhibited his grand uraniscope (Coburg, 19 March 1819), “which gives clearest Insight into the sublime Science of Astronomy.” His lecture at the Coburg was accompanied “by Sacred Music, selected from the sublime Oratorios of The Creation, The Redemption, and The Messiah.”13 Another entrepreneur who crafted a successful astronomical lecture and exhibition was George Bartley, actor at Drury Lane, best known for his role as Falstaff. During Lent, Bartley presented his lecture on astronomy. In the playbill (Lyceum, 10 April 1821), it was announced as a “Lecture on Ouranologia, and the Structure of the Universe.” He introduced the “elaborate Machinery” of three gear-and-­ spring pieces: 1) “A Large Globe 18 feet in Circumference, showing all parts of Earth”; 2) “The Grand Planetarium, 100 feet in Circumference, showing earth, sun, and moon in relation to the Zodiac”; and 3) “The Magnificent Orrery. A circle of 130 Feet. Showing earth, sun, and moon in relation to all the other Planets and Satellites, and the path of the Comet of 1811.” He was invited to return in successive years through 1826.14 In the year of the Great Comet, visible to the naked eye for 260 days, Robert Evans Lloyd commenced giving an annual Astronomical Lecture with his grand, transparent orrery which could provide a “luminous and splendid

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Epitome of the Heavens,” and demonstrate “the Seasons, Eclipses, Tides, and Comets” (Surrey, 5 April 1811).15 His clockwork orrery, renamed as the Dioastrodoxon, was subsequently billed as “the largest and most magnificent in the British Empire.” The accompanying sacred music was performed on the celestina (Surrey, 27 February, 1 and 8 March 1822).16 Church bells still rang out the hours and summoned inhabitants to devotions, but the air also now reverberated with the factory steam-whistle calling workers to their long hours of labour.17 Astronomical time had identified itself in the theatres. The punch clock was not invented until 1888, and Taylorism18 had not yet exercised its tyranny in the workplace, but the dictatorial power of time was fully operative.19 The leisurely pace of the weaver’s trade as a cottage industry was more a fading memory than a surviving reality. New ways of reckoning time in narrative were among the influences of novels on playgoers and playwrights alike.20 Playgoers were fully prepared for novelistic plot shifts in dramatic time. The clock itself assumed larger and more frequent roles on stage. Katherine Biers traces the presence of the stage clock, visible and audible, as “instrumental in the exposition of anticipation and suspense in Romantic drama.”21 By the end of the Georgian era, the London stage no longer relied exclusively on relatively bare stages with painted backdrops, wing and drop sets. Instead, it had become three-dimensional, replete with mechanical devices in a furnished stage setting.22 On stage, large clockwork contraptions were devised for the transformations in Joseph Grimaldi’s escapades as Clown in the pantomimes at Drury Lane.23 Queries about time were often repeated in dramatic dialogue, consulting a pocket-watch was a common-place stage gesture, a pickpocket was a stock character, and the stolen or the broken pocket watch informed comic action and plot. An early example occurs in Henry Fielding’s Tumble-down Dick; or, Phaeton in the Suds (Haymarket, 1736), interlarded with comic interludes featuring Harlequin as a pickpocket.24 The pocket watch was the most common type of watch from its development in the sixteenth century until wristwatches became popular after World War I.25 The pocket watch as enticement to the pickpockets was described by Tom and Jerry, the ubiquitous denizens of the streets, in Pierce Egan’s Life in London (1821)26 and in the dramatic adaptations by Charles Dibdin27 and W. T. Moncrieff.28 Proud of its precision, Jerry consults his pocket watch: “Just 35 minutes and 3 seconds past,” he declares; in a subsequent scene, he discovers it has been stolen; and in a later scene,

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Sue conceals it in her pocket. In comedies of the period, the pocket watch was also a signal by which the fop communicated that he adhered to rules outside conventional norms. He would frequently consult his watch while making a show of being “fashionably late.” In his preferred social role, he rejects conventional time-keeping. More as a character reference than as a time-piece, Sir Philip’s broken pocket watch in Susanna Centlivre’s A Bold Stroke for a Wife (1724) is set in contrast to the precision of the Colonel’s pocket watch.29 Once the unity of time no longer commanded how a playwright must structure his work, opportunities opened up for experimentation. The grand social and political movements of these years—the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, the Riots, the Reform Movement— each brought new concerns that were reflected in the exposition of time in the drama. The steam-whistle could be heard in the dramatic exposé of the exploitation of factory workers—not always, but often.30 Being time-­ liberated meant that playwrights could invent or choose their means of manipulating or modulating the passage of time. Differences in the tempo of theatre performance responded to the awareness of an increasingly time-obsessed public. The liberation frequently entailed submission to a more comprehensive authority.31 This meant that plots were more frequently time-driven, and dramatic characters were more time-conscious. As the career of Sir Walter Scott attests, the Waverley novels responded to a keen interest in history and the ways in which events of the past could teach the present. When George Bolwell Davidge took over management of the Royal Coburg Theatre in 1824, he was determined to achieve a quality of performance that would rival London’s two patent theatres, Covent Garden and Drury Lane. Scott’s novels were being successfully adapted to the stage, and Edward Fitzball was a playwright who had contributed significantly to that success. His adaptations included The Fortunes of Nigel (Surrey, 25 June 1822), Peveril of the Peak (Surrey, 6 February 1823), and Waverley; or, Sixty Years Since (Adelphi, 11 March 1824). At Davidge’s invitation, Fitzball wrote William the Conqueror; or, The Days of the Curfew Bell (Coburg, 17 May 1824). His source was not Scott, but Samuel Rush Meyrick’s recently published Critical Inquiry into Ancient Armour (1824).32 “The Historical Period which forms the action of the present Drama,” Davidge declared, was “wholly new to the Stage.” That claim was not wholly true because, half a century earlier, Richard Cumberland staged The Battle of Hastings (Drury Lane, 24 January, 1778).33 Perhaps

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Cumberland’s play left no lasting impression. Fitzball was no doubt completely unaware of it. What mattered to Fitzball, as evident in his subtitle, was time and the curfew bell ringing across the battlefield. This was not the first time that William the Conqueror appeared on stage, but it was the first time for the Curfew Bell. Furthermore, Davidge arranged for Fitzball to join him in consulting with Meyrick regarding scenery, costume, and history. In attempting, for the first time, to introduce these Facts into the Drama, every care has been taken to unite Historical correctness with powerful interest and striking Theatrical effect. For this purpose, the Manager has spared neither research in discovering nor expense in procuring every authority extant that could direct, and every possible assistance of art that could heighten the general effect; and he is happy in having it in his power to state, that the kind condescension of Dr. Meyrrick, who most liberally granted the inspection of the whole of his extensive and recondite Collection of Ancient Armour, and especially the Drawings from the celebrated Bayeux Tapestry.34

Meyrick believed that the Bayeux Tapestry, commissioned by the brother of William the Conqueror, was an accurate contemporary visual account of the battle. It provided as well “a faithful display of Characteristic and Picturesque Scenery, Magnificent Armours, Costume, Properties and Decorations,” which Davidge utilized for historically accurate stage designs. The bell tower loomed large in every scene, and Davidge took for himself the role of Gurth, toller of the curfew bell. The curtain rises on a grand scene with the extensive castle, the turret of the bell tower, and the village. William arrives at Hastings Castle with his foot soldiers, archers, and cavalry. As night and darkness descend, William calls for the bell to ring a curfew (couvre feu, cover fire) for extinguishing fires, lamps, and candles. William used that darkness to send his cavalry across the fields and into the woods. On 13 October 1066, Harold arrived with his army. His plan for a surprise attack failed, because William’s scouts reported the approach of an English army. On the following morning, William led his Breton forces against the English. The Battle of Hastings lasted throughout the day. William’s troops fled the stage pursued by English troops, who were then cut off and vanquished by Norman cavalry. William ordered his archers to wait for the signal from the curfew

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Illustration 1.1  The Bayeux Tapestry, scene 52

bell, then aim high so that their arrows would rain down on Harold’s soldiers (Illustration 1.1). The Bayeux Tapestry, Dr. Meyrick claimed, depicted this rain of arrows and showed Harold’s death by an arrow to the eye. Fitzball achieved a stunning coup de théâtre when, at the cue of the curfew bell, hundreds of arrows dropped from the fly gallery down upon the horde of players who fell dead. The curfew bell again rang to announce the end of the day of battle. By linking the tolling of the curfew bell to William’s victory at Hastings, Fitzball’s historical drama exhibited that persistent awareness of time characteristic of plays throughout the Romantic period. As a stage device, as in the ballads, the curfew rang with dramatic significance.35 Each of the nine chapters in this volume gives emphasis to one of the strategies for manipulating time in Romantic drama. Most of these tactics were practised by Shakespeare to override the sort of regulatory time that can be set by the clock. In order to show the particular, and sometimes peculiar, ways in which sequential time is being altered in each of the plays, I rely on plot summary. By emphasizing the movement of time, my plot summaries recreate an experiential vantage that one would likely have as a member of the audience witnessing an actual performance. A few plays that I have chosen as representative of one mode of time manipulation also reveal time being turned and twisted in other ways as well. The plot summaries serve not only to familiarize modern readers with the diverse content of little-known Romantic plays, but also to illustrate the time-manipulation strategies that are the subject of this study. While it is

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not possible to recreate fully the experience of Romantic-era audiences, this book provides extensive insight into that experience through its inclusion of details about actors, acting techniques, scenery and settings, and the level of knowledge an audience would have had when viewing a play. This commentary contributes significantly to a modern reader’s appreciation of the experience of time in Romantic drama. Discussion of plots reveal the bold experimentation with time, and the integration of acting techniques, set design, publicity, audience reception, and other elements of Romantic theatre. In the opening chapter, I address the flashback and flashforward as frequently used to manipulate time. The reliance on the leaps and lapses of time, analepsis (flashback) and prolepsis (flashforward), are temporal shifts, narrated as well as enacted. Shakespeare frequently relied on these devices in unfolding the simultaneity of events. The Tempest opens with the shipwreck of Duke Antonio on an uncharted isle, where Prospero dwells with his daughter Miranda.36 In a flashback, Prospero narrates the events twelve years earlier, when his brother Antonio usurped his dukedom and cast him and his daughter adrift to perish at sea (I.ii.69–168). Henry V is framed by flashbacks dealing with Prince Hal’s ripening into kingship. His character is allowed to waiver between youthful escapades and mature responsibility. At the Boar’s Head Tavern in Act II and observing the camp in disguise in Act IV, Prince Hal’s prankish acts are abetted by the misrule of Falstaff. Crafting the action in his history plays, Shakespeare boldly compressed time. In Richard III, as in other history plays, events years apart were staged in rapid succession, with no indication of the many months passing between 1483 and 1485; rather, the audience witnesses an unrelenting obsession in Richard of Gloucester’s skulduggery from the winter of his discontent to his death on Bosworth Field. Shakespeare typically introduces a minor plot in thematic variation of the major plot. In King Lear, for example, the minor plot with Gloucester, Edgar, and Edmund parallels the plot that prompts Lear to favour the deceptions of Goneril and Regan over the honest loyalty and virtue of Cordelia. The two plots of the grateful versus the ungrateful child supposedly unfold simultaneously, which Shakespeare manages as “meanwhile” events in successive scenes. The largest leap in time occurs in The Winter’s Tale, when an irrationally jealous and vindictive Leontes is left behind at the end of Act III, apparently to experience remorse over banishing his wife Hermione and ordering the death of his infant daughter Perdita. The tragic action of the

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first three acts is resolved in the “happy ending” of the final two acts. The infant daughter, now a beautiful young woman, finds a faithful lover in Florizel, and Hermione is reintroduced at court disguised as a statue. Similar to The Winter’s Tale, in which Shakespeare skipped over sixteen intervening years, Coleridge in Zapolya37 required a twenty-year lapse between the Prelude and Act I, and for much the same reason—to allow the presumably slain child of the king to reach maturity while hidden among rustic peasants.38 As Coleridge explains, “Unity of time was not necessary, where no offence was taken at its lapse between the acts, or between scene and scene.” Unity is supplied by feeling, purpose, interest, and imagination.39 Thomas Holcroft’s Man of Ten Thousand40 (Drury Lane, 23 January 1796) is a play that depends totally on retrospect and anticipation. Holcroft tracks the behaviour of a young man careless with his income from his plantation in the West Indies until a hurricane abruptly closes that past, and his future must be renegotiated. In Road to Ruin (Covent Garden, 18 February 1792), Holcroft had earlier created a similar ne’er-­ do-­well character suddenly confronted with a financial crisis and a desperate need to reform. The strategy of flashbacks and flashforwards involved enacting or narrating past events or events yet to come. In dialogue or a scene recounting previous events, a flashback takes the narrative back in time from the current events to reveal relevant occurrences that took place in an earlier scene or prior to the play’s opening. Correspondence with the colonies in the East or West Indies had to cross wide longitudinal gaps of time. A temporal shift in the opposite direction, a flashforward, offers a glimpse into future events. Used less frequently than the flashback, the flashforward had a crucial place in plays of prophecy, with much the same function as in William Rowley’s The Birth of Merlin (1622). The seers and conjurors in Romantic melodrama often had a power to foresee the future, as in George Almar’s The Fire Raiser; or, The Haunted Tower (Surrey, 21 February 1831). Among the many stage adaptations of the Waverley novels of Sir Walter Scott, the majority featured a character reputedly gifted with powers of divination: Daniel Terry’s Guy Mannering; or, The Gipsey’s Prophecy (Covent Garden, 12 March 1816), John William Calcraft’s The Bride of Lammermuir (Edinburgh, 1 May 1822), and, adapted from Scott’s The Talisman, Samuel Beazley’s The Knights of the Cross; or, The Hermit’s Prophecy (Drury Lane, 29 May 1826). The title of Henry Siddons’s comedy, Time’s a Tell-tale (Drury Lane, 27 October 1807),41 refers to secrets exposed only after a passage of time,

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secrets that involve three women: Olivia Wyndham, in love with Philip, the son of one of her guardians; Lady Delmar, sister to Sir David, in love with Hardacre; and Zelidy, a ward of Sir David, in love with Blandford, a captain in the navy. Sir David resented that he must share custody of Olivia with Hardacre, a farmer, and resented even more that his sister has fallen in love with Hardacre, beneath her in rank, and that his son Philip has fallen in love with Olivia, who is similarly without title or estate. His arrogant pride in his aristocratic heritage is undermined by his vast debts which are generously paid by Hardacre. In a flashback at the end of Act IV, Blandford reveals that fourteen years earlier he had rescued the infant Zelidy from the terrors of an insurrection in Santa Domingo, brought her back to England, and placed her under the care of his uncle, Sir David. Hardcastle immediately recognizes that the rescued infant must be the daughter whom he lost in the insurrection. He confesses that his real name is Osborne. He had changed his name on returning to England to protect his family and the considerable wealth he had accrued from his plantations. Sir David blesses the marriage of his sister to Osborne, his ward Olivia to Philip, and Osborne’s daughter Zelidy to his nephew Blandford. As Charles Lamb stated in his epilogue, Siddons launched “the good ship Matrimony” under Commander Blandford, ready to sail “In all seas, straits, gulphs, ports, havens, lands, creeks.” Chapter 3 examines the concept of the fatal hour. Seeking originality in the ingenuity of manipulating time, place, and action, playwrights of the late eighteenth century restored from classical Greek tragedy the idea of fate or destiny. An overriding doom occasionally devoured the possibility of a “unity of time.” The determination of an inexorable fate deprived a character of any possible escape. In the final act of Doctor Faustus, Christopher Marlowe has his doomed protagonist count out the passing of the final hour of his pact with the devil. He attempts desperately to forestall the moment of final doom and eternal damnation (Sc. xiv, 1450–88). Marlow’s Doctor Faustus provided a model for a recurrent theme in Romantic drama: the demonic pact brought to the stage the struggle against time.42 Towards the end of the 1820s, several plays based on the medieval tales of Robert the Devil made their way from Paris to London. Sharing with the Faustian plays the anticipation of a fatal ending, they stood apart in featuring a time-altering device. In one, Robert had a magic ring that might secure his success in his sexual exploits, and in another, a magic bough capable of stopping time for all but Robert and his beloved.

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In her chapter on Zacharias Werner in On Germany (De l’Allemagne, 1810/1813), Germaine de Staël remarks that the clock in The Twenty-­ fourth of February (Der vierundzwanzigste Februar, 1808) fulfils its own ineluctable function within a dramatic revelation of destiny. The clock is not simply a stage prop; it is the insistent marker of inevitability.43 Charlotte Corday (Sadler’s Wells, 25 October 1832) raised hope against hope that history might be altered. Many playwrights reinforced an awareness of destiny by defining temporal limits to the action, and then, as the play’s conclusion draws near, emphasizing a race against time. The idea of fate underwent considerable change from the tragedies of Sophocles and Aeschylus to the Destiny Tragedy (Schicksalstragödie) as reasserted in George Lillo’s The Fatal Curiosity (1737) and revised by Thomas John Dibdin for audiences of the early nineteenth century. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, the concept evolved even further in the determinist causality of literary Naturalism in the plays of August Strindberg and Gerhart Hauptmann. It might be said that the causality of Naturalism was nature-driven, whereas the causality of Romantic doom was demon-driven. That distinction requires a modest amendment, for the demon may reside in the self or in an enchanted nature. In Constantine Paleologus, Joanna Baillie presents Constantine as a fatalist, whose fatalism seems justified by his awareness of his family history and present circumstances. In Matthew Gregory Lewis’s One O’Clock; or, The Kinght and the Wood Daemon, nature harbours supernatural beings. Appearing annually amidst an animated woodland nature, Sangrida, Lewis’s demon, exercises her power through vulnerable human agency. In order to advance the minute hand on the clock to force the time forward to the fatal hour, the titular One O’Clock, Leolyn must clamber up the life-size statues that hold aloft the giant timepiece. This scene was illustrated by Robert Cruikshank for the first publication of the play. The scene includes the demon Sangrida with her sceptre, Una on her knees pleading for mercy, and Hardyknute raising his knife to perform the murderous sacrifice. For his published series of plays, John Cumberland required fidelity to the performance in the illustrations (six are included in this volume). For this purpose, Robert Cruikshank was usually present on opening night in company with his engraver, George Watson Bonner.44 Edward Fitzball’s adaptation of Der Freischütz (Surrey, 6 September 1824) redirected the deadly trajectory of the “fatal bullet.” In James Robinson Planché’s The Vampire,45 an evil spirit from Fingal’s Cave on the

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isle of Staffa has usurped the body of Lord Ruthven. In Edward Fitzball’s The Flying Dutchman, the drowned Captain Vanderdecken bargained for his immortality with Rockalda, a demon of the ocean’s depths. Adhering to the conditions of a Faustian pact with the devil, these plays of fatal time have a strict expiration date. Chapter 4 examines synoptic time in the dramatic endeavour to present, scene by scene, a synopsis of individual life. Popular in the Romantic period were the plays devoted to the ages and stages of individual life and progress. Shakespeare has Jacques reflect on the Seven Ages of Man (As You Like It. II.vii.138–166). For performance as interlude at the Coburg, Douglas Jerrold prepared The Seven Ages as a series of brief dramatic sketches.46 These were subsequently published with hand-coloured illustrations.47 Regarded as the foremost master of the graphic narrative, William Hogarth’s storytelling series of paintings were promptly engraved as prints for popular consumption, and were ultimately adapted for stage performance. In the six scenes of The Harlot’s Progress (1731), the eight scenes of The Rake’s Progress (1733–35), the six scenes of Marriage a la Mode (1743–45), as well as in The Four Stages of Cruelty (1747), Hogarth created situations and settings that anticipated dramatic performance. In the twelve scenes for Idleness and Industry (1747), Hogarth created a dramatic narrative that had a close counterpart in George Lillo’s London Merchant (1731). Dennis Lawler’s Industry and Idleness (Surrey, 15 April 1811) deliberately sought to replicate Hogarthian settings and to animate the Hogarthian stereotypes. His purpose was to reaffirm Hogarth’s moral authority and to emphasize the broad moral relevance of Hogarth’s visual narrative. In a remarkably innovative use of composite time, a synoptic version of the Leatherstocking saga was performed in which James Fenimore Cooper was presumed to reside in the characters of the scout, the hunter, and the trapper. Taken together, the novels of the American frontier were interpreted as comprising an autobiography. The Long Rifle (Coburg, 21 November 1831) was written in three acts, each the synopsis of an entire novel. Thus, in Act I, “The Last of the Mohicans,” he is a scout in the English Service on the banks of the Hudson during the old French War of 1757. In Act II, “The Pioneer,” he is a hunter in the woods of Pennsylvania in the year 1781 at the close of the Revolution. In Act III, “The Prairie,” he is a trapper of fowl and small game in the wild prairies of the West in the year 1806. As the playbill states, the melodrama “affords a View of a strikingly original Character, in Youth, Manhood, and Old Age—each

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Period distinguished by the peculiar Circumstances of a New Employment.”48 The synoptic structure was well suited to representations of moral dissolution of the gambler or drunkard, as in Douglas Jerrold’s Fifteen Years of a Drunkard’s Life (Coburg, 24 November 1828) and Henry M. Milner’s, The Gambler’s Fate; or, A Lapse of Twenty Years (Drury Lane, 15 October 1827). A clever plot exhibiting the sharper’s trickery gives depth and complexity to the episodes of William Thomas Moncrieff’s The Heart of London! or, A Sharper’s Progress (Adelphi, 15 February 1830). Based on a tale by Isaac Bickerstaff, Douglas Jerrold’s Ambrose Gwinett (Coburg, 6 October 1828) dramatizes the vulnerability of the falsely accused, especially those of the lower classes. The title character and first-person narrator appears in the first and last scenes alone on the stage, pushing a broom as street-sweep at Charing Cross. In the course of three synoptic episodes, Jerrold creates a compelling character with astonishing fortitude. Chapter 5 examines time stopped. From the age of Shakespeare forward, accounts of gesture and body language in acting were identical with those of painting.49 Discussing how action could best be represented in painting, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing in his essay “On the Laocoon” argued that rising action communicated the potentiality and trajectory of movement. Thus, in painting a horse leaping over a fence, more of the dynamic power can be captured if the horse is seen commencing the leap than if it is depicted descending from the leap. The problem is much the same in depicting human action. As represented in the sculpture, Laocoon’s cry of agony is about to break forth from his open mouth. The challenges of representation in a history painting were almost identical to those of theatre painting. Many artists found lucrative commission in painting the stage designs and backdrops for the theatres. Also, actors were sometimes called upon to pose as painted figures within a picture frame, or the entire stage with the proscenium arch as the frame would serve to replicate the painting on the stage. The stop-time scene, the tableau vivant, was more than a passing novelty of the Romantic stage. At curtain fall, the “frozen” scene gave abiding persistence to a climactic moment that might otherwise fade away in the blur of change. At the end of the final act, the players would freeze in position. For William Thomas Moncrieff’s The Lear of Private Life (Coburg, 27 April 1820), the concluding stage directions for the “Picture” included the “Disposition of the Characters at the Fall of the Curtain.”50 Twice the action is stopped in George Dibdin Pitt’s The Eddystone Elf (Sadler’s Wells,

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7 April 1834): first when the murdered body of Traverson is tumbled down the stairs, then again at the parallel scene at play’s end when the body of Tourville, Traverson’s killer, tumbles down.51 The latter “Picture” is sustained for the curtain fall. In the height of action in The Rover’s Bride (Surrey, 30 August 1830), George Almar stops the action: Lawrence, wielding a pickaxe, rushes at Miles with murderous intent, when suddenly Bobby, with gun in hand, steps through the door. This moment is stopped as a “Picture” and held for a count of ten, before the situation is calmed and Lawrence lowers his axe.52 At midnight in the final act of Matthew Gregory Lewis’s One O’Clock; or, The Wood Daemon (Drury Lane, 1 April 1807),53 a blue light illuminates the two portraits of Leolyn’s parents, who step out of their frames and in pantomime reveal to Una the golden tassel which she must pull in order to rescue their son. Trying to hide as a figure in a painting provides the farcical situation in Charles Kemble’s Plot and Counterplot; or, The Portrait of Michael Cervantes (Haymarket, 30 June 1808).54 The work of art brought to life, as in the story of Pygmalion and Galatea (Ovid, Metamorphoses, X,.243 ff.), is a magical act often repeated in the drama.55 Shakespeare gave that magic to Paulina who enabled Hermione to step down from her pedestal in The Winter’s Tale (V.iii). Even in its simplest form, as in Jean Jaques Rousseau’s Pygmalion (Lyon, Hôtel de Ville, 1770), it was often revived and often imitated. The Animated Portrait (Lyceum, 30 July 1816) required minimal acting skills and minimal dramatic effort to achieve remarkable success. At the peak of the Reform Movement, Douglas Jerrold adopted the paintings of David Wilkie to create a powerful melodrama, The Rent Day (Drury Lane, 25 January 1832), on the exploitation of the labouring class. Tableaux vivants had never been put to better use. Jerrold’s play was inspired by David Wilkie’s paintings of poverty and hardship. In his paintings, The Rent Day (1808) and Distaining for Rent (1815), Wilkie conveyed the powerful emotions generated when a farmer and his large family face eviction. The predicament was sadly commonplace, because hundreds of tenant farmers faced financial ruin as a result of enclosures and the Corn Laws. Wilkie combined the realism of genre painting with the social criticism of visual documentary.56 In Chap. 6, I investigate time replayed. In usual everyday experience, time unfolds successively, one hour after another. On stage, however, events in successive scenes might be presented as taking place simultaneously. Among the ways, many and necessary, in which time was replayed

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on the Romantic stage, two were especially prominent: one was crucial to the crime-solving strategies in the melodrama of a court trial; the other involved structural simultaneity of two or more characters shown engaged in actions taking place at the same time. In The Tempest, three plots are developed in ensuing scenes which presume to unfold simultaneously. One plot relates the intent of Antonio to assist Sebastian in killing his brother, the King of Naples. The second plot is a comic parallel involving Stephano and Trinculo, the King’s butler and jester, who are enlisted in a plot to kill Prospero led by Caliban, malformed offspring of a witch, whose bravado is heightened by the euphoria induced by the beverage freely shared with his new friends. The third plot reveals Prospero exercising his magical control over the courtship of Miranda by Ferdinand, son of the King of Naples. For a court trial, it could be necessary to gather witness testimony to prove that the suspect charged with murder was actually at the site of the crime when the victim was known to have been killed. Reconstructing time from recollection, a serious matter in crime drama, was subject to the fallibilities of a witness’s testimony. The murder of Mary Ashford in August 181757 drew nationwide attention. In addition to coverage in the newspapers and periodicals, there were also crime dramas: Henry Roxby Beverley’s Chateau Bromege; or, The Clock Struck Four (Regency, 18 May 1818),58 S.N.E.’s The Murdered Maid; or, The Clock Struck Four (Warwick, 1818),59 and George Ludlam’s Mysterious Murder; or, What’s the Clock (Birmingham, 1817).60 The crime remained unresolved because of the inability of witnesses to establish a tenable sequence for the events.61 The playwright animates on stage the recollected time, place, and action in the testimony of each witness. The suspect is seen again and again in the vicinity of the murder during the minutes leading up to the fatal stabbing at four o’clock—in the vicinity, but never at the site, nor with sufficient time to reach the site. The Abbey Lands; or, Arden of Faversham (Coburg, 30 November 1824), an old play newly adapted, enacts in successive scenes, with different settings and characters, events that occur simultaneously. The fiction of supposing a subsequent scene took place at the very same time as the preceding scene was not always deftly managed in melodrama. Rather than actually posting an announcement, “Meanwhile …,” simultaneity in representing two separate plot developments might be managed with a divided stage or by references to time and place in the dialogue. The

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simultaneity of events leading up to the murder of Arden of Faversham was managed exceptionally well at the Coburg. Chapter 7 deals with the first instruments to measure longitudinal time and their representation in the nautical drama of a maritime nation. On 22 October 1707, four warships of the British Royal Navy were tossed upon the rocks off the Isles of Scilly. The shipwreck claimed the lives of more than 1500 sailors. The loss was caused by inability to determine longitude. Although this was the most severe disaster in British maritime history, other ships were being lost year after year for the same reason. In 1714, Parliament passed the Longitude Act which offered large financial rewards to the first person to develop a device that could enable the accurate calculation of longitude aboard a ship at sea. John Harrison invented the marine chronometer, and in 1773, he was rewarded for his life-saving instrument. Longitudinal time meant establishing the when’s where, or conversely the where’s when. Space and time were the coordinates of the ship at sea, and the Bakhtinian chronotope has nowhere else a more urgent relevance. As Bakhtin himself defined it, the chronotope referred to “the intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed in literature.”62 Shipwrecks were of special interest to maritime-minded English audiences, and a season seldom passed without staging a current or historical naval disaster. Coleridge was fond of the metaphor of literature as a ship sailing the seas of time.63 Ships sailing seas without longitudinal time, foundering in disorientation, were the subject of numerous plays, including J. H. Amherst’s The Shipwreck of the Grosvenor East Indiaman (1822), Joseph Ebsworth’s The Wreck of the Dauntless (1829), and Richard Raymond’s The Wreck of the Leander: or, The Fatal Coral Bank (1831). In theatrical performance of battles at sea, playwrights sometimes echoed the captain’s log in recounting the coordinates of longitude and latitude. Those coordinates were relevant to the first maritime battle of the War of 1812, a war declared principally in response to the pressgangs from British ships who had taken as many as 10,000 American merchant sailors into the Royal Navy. On July 12, the USS Constitution, commanded by Captain Isaac Hull, sailed from Chesapeake Bay, intending to intercept British ships on missions of “recruitment.” On July 17, a British squadron gave chase off the coast of New York. Evading her pursuers for two days, the Constitution docked in Boston to replenish water. Setting sail once again, the Constitution encountered a British frigate, HMS Guerrière, shortly after 2:00 pm on 19 August 1812.

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William Dunlap, the American playwright who celebrated the event, had reason to be specific about the coordinates: at five bells, the ship was at 41°42′ North and 55°33′ West, that is about 400 miles (640 km) southeast of Halifax, Nova Scotia. Dunlap’s specificity about where-and-when was territorial. Even though there were no international laws governing an ocean traffic lane, both British ships and American ships had their accustomed routes for travel. The Constitution was deliberately sailing a British seaway. The Guerrière was formerly a frigate of the French Navy, captured by the British in 1806. Within 35 minutes of closing with the Constitution, the Guerrière had been dis-masted, captured, and set on fire. Dunlap’s Yankee Chronology; or, Huzza for the Constitution (1812) opens with O’Blunder, anxious over the fate of the American ship, pestering the sailor, Ben Bundle, for details of the battle. Ben describes the British as enemies of “my own dear country,” enemies too of “sailors’ rights.” On the nineteenth of August, as we were cruising in latitude 41, 42 north, longitude 55, 33 west, at 2, P. M. a sail hove in sight to the southward—all hands a hoy to make sail—and before you’d say peas, we had her under top sails, stay-sails, and top ga’ntsails. Oh! ‘twould have done your heart good to see how she made the sea foam, while every sail swelled like the hearts of her crew at sight of the bragging tyrants of the ocean. (I.i.68–76)

To O’Blunder’s insistence on hearing the fate of the ships, Ben Bundle responds, “the Constitution is safe in port, after sending the Guerrière to Davy Jones’s locker.” The American ship had won the battle, and she had won it in waters ostensibly ruled by Britannia. In The Cataract of the Ganges; or, The Rajah’s Daughter (1823), a light-­ hearted comedy, William Thomas Moncrieff alludes to the potentially tragic dangers.64 As it flows into the estuary, the Ganges branches into multiple mouths, and the dangerous coast of the Bay of Bengal was made all the more treacherous by marauding pirates. Act II opens with Robinson’s comic song about being boarded by pirates while sailing across uncertain latitude and longitude in the midst of the Arabian Sea: Now sailing betwixt Ocean and Heav’n, The wind it began to grow stronger— The latitude, six was, or seven; The longitude, sixty or longer, When a Pirate, one Timothy Rogers, Whose crew sail’d without sailing orders,

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That they in our ship might be lodgers, Began all at once to be boarders. (II.i)

The pun on “boarders” is not the last comic element in the song. The ensuing stanzas reveal the comic fate that befalls the pirates. Robinson soon recognizes that when time and place are uncertain, comic luck will not hold: “But, zounds! sailing without knowing the longitude and latitude of the place, is being as bad off as Crusoe was in his cockboat without his compass. What am I to do?” (II.iii). The alternate time examined in Chapter 8 refers to events that took place at another time being performed in the midst of a scene currently taking place. Experimenting with non-linear, non-sequential time, playwrights brought to the stage a full enactment of a character’s dreams, or daydreams about roads not taken, or supernatural visitations and revelations. Bannockburn; or, The Ghost Seer (1827) is one reminder of how in Gothic melodrama a ghost might re-enact scenes from the past while wandering in the present.65 In Joanna Baillie’s The Dream (1812), the murdered brother of the Prior of St. Maurice appears in the identical dreams of two monks of the monastery and sets into motion the revelation of a past crime and its overdue punishment. In alternate mental time, guilt unfolds alongside the “real” time of events at the monastery. Similarly, the topos of the “rehearsal,” as in W. L. Rede’s Stars; or, A Dramatic Fête (Rehearsal) (1835), allowed for the staging of metadramatic “play” time. Pierre Corneille contrived an ingenious exposition of the private showing in The Theatrical Illusion (L’Illusion comique, 1636).66 The English reception of Corneille had been modest even after theatres reopened in the latter half of the seventeenth century. Charles Cotton’s translation of Corneille’s Horace was completed in 1665, published in 1671, but was not performed.67 The English adaptation of Corneille’s Cinna (Drury Lane, 19 February 1713)68 was performed, but not often revived. Translated by Samuel Foote, Corneille’s The Lyar, a comedy in three acts, was successfully performed and repeatedly revived at Haymarket and Covent Garden.69 Although available in eighteenth-century French editions, The Theatrical Illusion was not performed in London during the ensuing half century.70 Often cited as demonstrating the advantages of adhering to the three unities of classical theatre, Corneille chose to ignore them in The Theatrical Illusion, not simply in requiring a two-year leap between acts IV and V, but also in the shifts between present and past that

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accompany actors/characters stepping in and out of their roles, sometimes revealing no awareness that they are doing so. To demonstrate further the playwright’s effort to sustain the illusory presence of alternate time, this chapter will examine four plays in which physical and psychic phenomena merge in performance. In Joanna Baillie’s tragedy, The Dream (1812), the murder victim appears in dreams and, through exercise of inexplicable powers, manipulates events that lead to the execution of the guilty. In the anonymous melodrama, The Murderer’s Dream; or, The Abbey of Glenthorn (Olympic, 20 Oct 1818), the murderer, mistaken for the phantom of his victim, re-enacts the crime in his sleepwalking dream. The Gothic device of a “phantom” sleepwalker is turned to comedy in William Thomas Moncrieff’s The Somnambulist; or, The Phantom of the Village (Covent Garden, 19 February 1828), in which a maiden quests nightly for her betrothed. Rather than dreams and sleep-­ walking, Isaac Pocock in Tuckitomba; or, The Obi Sorceress (Covent Garden, 7 April 1828) introduces drugs and Obi spells to render the victim unable to resist abduction and rape. An alternate mental time on stage is conjured in her induced hallucination. Chapter 9, on forgotten time, deals with the circumstances of acquired awareness or memory regained. Anagnorisis, as Aristotle explains (Poetics, Chap. 10), refers to that point in a play, in which a principal character recognizes or discovers another character’s true identity or the true nature of her or his own circumstances. If there is anagnorisis, there must have been a previous ignorance, delusion, or forgetting to render possible the conditions of discovery, recognition, or revelation. Anagnorisis is the experience in which a character is suddenly aware of a situation previously not understood, or recognition of another character’s true motives or true identity. Played out large, the anagnorisis might affect other characters in a play when the identity of one character is revealed. The entire audience might also be caught up in the surprise of revelation. Horace Walpole’s The Mysterious Mother (1768), Benjamin Thompson’s The Stranger (1800; trans. from Kotzebue), and the tormented father in William Thomas Moncrieff’s The Lear of Private Life; or, Father and Daughter (Coburg, 27 April 1820),71 all feature a character whose blighted memory is crucial to the plot. In Byron’s Manfred (Covent Garden, 29 October 1834), the quest was not to recover but to vanquish memory. Manfred longs for forgetfulness to eradicate the pain of his past. In Tales of the Genii (1764), James Ridley told of the evil Sultan who sent Sadak in search of the Waters of Oblivion which he intended to use to seduce Kalasrade, Sadak’s wife.

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This plot was dramatized by Mary Russell Mitford in Sadak & Kalasrade; or, The Waters of Oblivion, (English Opera House [Lyceum], 20 April 1835).72 In the premier performance of The Monster of the Eddystone; or, The Lighthouse Keepers (Sadler’s Wells, 7 April 1834), George Dibdin Pitt had the advantage of aquatic dramatization with the theatre’s huge water tank. With the title changed, the melodrama reopened as The Eddystone Elf (Royal Pavilion, 18 August 1834).73 Pitt’s plot relied heavily on a series of coincidences, each of which expose facts of the family history that the father had preferred to forget and the daughter never knew. This father has vehemently opposed his daughter’s marriage; he then meets his daughter and her husband on the road to seek employment as a keeper of the Eddystone light. The father, too, wanted that position, so father and son-­ in-­law are both assigned to that remote post, where there dwells a strange sea creature, who nurtures an old hatred against the father. The creature murders the father, then seeks to murder the daughter as well. The last coincidence reveals that the father had seduced the former wife of the man who became the crazed sea creature and that the adulterous bride was the daughter’s mother. Pitt’s grotesque villain derived from the same sea lore that prompted the anonymous comic ballad, My father was the keeper of the Eddystone light And he slept with a mermaid one fine night From this union there came three A porpoise and a porgy and the other was me!

From the very outset, Horace Smith was ill-advised in The Absent Apothecary (Drury Lane, 10 February 1813)74 to make comedy out of physical and mental debility. The character of Romeo Jumbles has suffered a head injury, which left him severely forgetful and confused. Even with the skilled comic performance of John Betterton in the title role, the audience refused to cooperate in laughing at the man’s struggle to remember the thousand details of negotiating everyday life. If Smith had been a better playwright, he might have made a case for understanding and tolerance and provided a poignant portrait of forgetfulness, whether from dementia or traumatic injury. Epic time, as discussed in Chap. 10, no longer refers to narrative time as distinguished from dramatic time. In the course of the nine chapters, I have occasion to repeat again and again Aristotle’s edict that events on stage should not exceed in time the passage of a natural day, and that limit

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ought to accord with actions that could be retained in imagination or memory.75 The temporal scope of tragedy, Aristotle also asserted, was therefore finite, in contrast to the expansive scope of the epic.76 Throughout the Romantic era, many playwrights found success in offering spectacles of historical romance and epic grandeur. The curtain rose to reveal, as De Quincey said of his opium dreams, the unfolding of eons.77 Not in themselves wrong-headed as guides to playwrights, the “three unities” were nevertheless restrictive. The very fact that they were ignored by Shakespeare was reason enough to doubt their necessity. By the time they were overthrown in the eighteenth century, the way was clear for new modes of drama and for realms of representation. The Licensing Act of 1737 enforced the censorship of attacks on the clergy, nobility, or government, and it discriminated between licensed theatres, which could continue to perform spoken drama in the traditional manner, and unlicensed theatres, which were originally permitted to perform only in song and pantomime. The Theatrical Representations Act of 1788 altered the exclusivity by granting local jurisdictions the power to approve new theatres. With the advent of steam-powered industry, the population of London began to double every ten years. While Covent Garden and Drury Lane remained the sole fully licensed theatres, Haymarket was granted a summer license, and the number of unlicensed theatres increased with the growing population. No other single factor contributed as much to the development and change in the drama as that which was driven by the need to forge new theatrical forms in the unlicensed theatres. Indebted to the commedia dell’arte of the Italian players, the harlequinades had already been established in the latter years of the seventeenth century. Under the restrictions of the Licensing Act, the unlicensed theatres developed the harlequinades into an exquisite metatheatrical art of players stepping out of one role into another. Evolving from French origins in the vaudeville were the burlesques and burlettas. Each new play was submitted to the Examiner of Plays (from 1778 to 1824, that office was held by John Larpent), who accepted the argument that songs often needed to be introduced with a bit of dialogue. By the 1790s, the dialogue in a burletta claimed as much as one-third of the performance time. Melodrama, the most widely adopted of the new forms, gained an even larger ratio of dialogue to song and dumb show. Taking form well before the nineteenth century, melodrama was as much a product of the licensed as the unlicensed theatres. Drawing a larger share of its audiences from lower and middle classes, the

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unlicensed theatres offered more sensational fare. Melodrama derived its plots from popular novels, Gothic tales, bloody crimes, and historical events that might suggest parallels to the forbidden topics of current political affairs. Melodrama also served as a convenient form for enacting such brutal crimes as the murder of Mary Ashford in 1817 (see Chap. 9, on time replayed). Each of the nine chapters in this volume gives emphasis to one of the strategies for manipulating time in Romantic drama. A recurring plot element in plays of shipwreck and piracy, miscalculating longitudinal time could trigger disaster. Discrepancies of time and place could also undermine the reliance on witness memory in the plays of crime and courtroom interrogation. Ghosts may roam at midnight by the clock or by the guilt-­ tormented mind. The ambiguous nature of time, as Coleridge argued, made “unity of imagination” an apt substitute for the outworn insistence on a “unity of time.”

Notes 1. B.  Louise Schafer. “A Study of the Three Unities in Shakespeare’s Representative Plays.” The Sewanee Review 25.1 (January 1917): 65–73. 2. Claude Haas. “Blockierte Gegenwart? Überlegungen zur Einheit der Zeit im 17. Jahrhundert.” Internationales Archiv für Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur 42.1 (2017): 150–170. 3. Samuel Johnson. Preface to Shakespeare’s Plays, The Works of Samuel Johnson, 16 vols. The Harvard Coöperative Society (1912), 7:1–54. 4. Joseph Harpur. An Essay on the Principles of Philosophical Criticism, applied to Poetry. London: Law and Gilbert, 1810. 5. Anon. Review of Joseph Harpur, Philosophical Criticism in Critical Review. 3rd series II (Jan 1811): 60–79. Anon. Review of Joseph Harpur, Philosophical Criticism in Monthly Review. New series 77 (July 1815): 287–95. 6. Tiffany Stern. “Time for Shakespeare: Hourglasses, sundials, clocks, and early modern theatre.” Journal of the British Academy 3 (2015): 1–33. 7. Ricardo J.  Quinones. “Views of Time in Shakespeare.” Journal of the History of Ideas 26.3 (July/September 1965): 327–352. 8. Stephen Toulmin and June Goodfield. The Discovery of Time. Chicago: Chicago UP, 1965, 159–68. 9. Gaby Wood. Living Dolls: A Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life. London: Faber, 2003.

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10. Annette Beyer. Faszinierende Welt der Automaten, Uhren, Puppen, Spielereien. Munich: Callwey, 1983. 11. Susanna Centlivre. Love at a Venture. Printed for John Chantry, at the Sign of Lincoln’s-Inn Square, 1706. http://ota.ox.ac.uk/id/3867. Accessed 3 January 2021. 12. Harriet Wynter. The Clockwork of the Heavens; an exhibition of astronomical clocks, watches and allied scientific instruments presented by Asprey & Company with the collaboration of various museums and private collections. London: Asprey and Co., 1973. 13. British Library. Playbills 174. Coburg, 19 March 1819. 14. British Library. Playbills 324. Lyceum 1809–1821; Playbills 325. Lyceum and English Opera House 1822–1826. Bartley’s Lecture on Ouranologia, 10 April 1821, 22 February 1822, 14 February 1823. 10 February 1826. 15. Sarah Zimmerman. The Romantic Literary Lecture in Britain. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2019, 158–59. 16. British Library. Playbills 311. Surrey, 27 February 1822. Astronomical Lecture. 17. E. P. Thompson. “Time, Work-Discipline and Industrial Capitalism.” Past and Present 38 (1967): 56–97. 18. Frederick Winslow Taylor. The Principles of Scientific Management. New York/London: Harper & Brothers, 1911. 19. Gerhard Dohrn-van Rossum. History of the Hour: Clocks and Modern Temporal Orders [Die Geschichte der Stunde: Uhren und moderne Zeitordnungen. Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1992], trans. Thomas Dunlap. Chicago: Chicago UP, 1996, 217–28; 289–318. See also: David S.  A. Landes. Revolution in Time: Clocks and the Making of the Modern World. Rev. ed. Harvard: Belknap Press, 2000. 20. Christina Lupton. Reading and the Making of Time in the Eighteenth Century. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2018. Brian Richardson, “‘Time Is Out of Joint’: Narrative Models and the Temporality of the Drama.” Poetics Today 8.2 (1987): 299–309. 21. Katherine Biers. “Clock-Watching: Time in Romantic Drama.” Theatre Survey 59.3 (September 2018): 313–39. 22. Mary C.  Henderson. “Scenography, Stagecraft, and Architecture.” The Cambridge History of American Theatre, vol. 2: 1870–1945, ed. Don B. Wilmeth and Christopher Bigsby. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 487–513. 23. Andrew McConnell Stott. The Pantomime Life of Joseph Grimaldi. Edinburgh: Canongate Books Ltd., 2009. 24. Henry Fielding. Tumble-down Dick; or, Phaeton in the Suds. J.  London: Watts, 1736. 25. John E.  Brozek. “The History and Evolution of the Wristwatch.” International Watch Magazine (January 2004): 46–49. 26. Pierce Egan. Life in London; or, The day and night scenes of Jerry Hawthorne, esq., and his elegant friend Corinthia Tom, accompanied by Bob Logic, the

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Oxonian, in their rambles and sprees through the metropolis. London: Sherwood, Neely, and Jones, 1821. 27. Charles Dibdin. Life in London; or, The Larks of Logic, Tom and Jerry, an extravaganza in three acts. London: J. Lowndes, 1822. 28. William Thomas Moncrieff. Tom and Jerry; or, Life in London. An operatic extravaganza, in three acts. London: W.T. Moncrieff, 1826. 29. Susanna Centlivre. A Bold Stroke for a Wife. London: W.  Meres and F. Clay, 1724. 30. Frederick Burwick. British Drama of the Industrial Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2015, 116–57. 31. Nicholas Halmi. “Romanticism, the Temporalization of History, and the Historicization of Form.” Modern Language Quarterly 74.3 (2013): 363–89. 32. Review: Samuel Rush Meyrick. A Critical Inquiry into Ancient Armour, as it existed in Europe […] from the Norman Conquest to the Reign of King Charles II, 3 vols. London: Henry G. Bohn, 1824. The Quarterly Review 30 (January 1824): 334–51. 33. Richard Cumberland. The Battle of Hastings. London: Printed for the proprietors, under the direction of John Bell, 1793. 34. British Library. Playbills 174. Coburg, 17 May 1824. 35. Marcus Tomalin. “The Curfew Bell.” Literature and Time in the Eighteenth Century and the Romantic Period. Oxford Handbooks Online, 2016. Tomalin cites Thomas Percy’s note to “The Ancient Ballad of Chevy-­ Chace,” Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765). Percy explained that the lines “when they rung the evening-bell, / The battle scarce was done” referred to “the Curfew bell, usually rung at 8 o’clock.” 36. William Shakespeare. The Tempest (I.i). 37. Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Poetical Works, 6 vols. Ed. J.C.C.  Mays. The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 16. Princeton UP, 2001. 3, part 2: 1327–1425. 38. Burwick. Playing to the Crowd. London Popular Theatre, 1780–1830. New York: Palgrave, 2011, 53–69. As the Playbill advertised, the “grand MeloDrama”: Monday, 9 February 1818. 1st time, a grand Melo-Drama, in Three Acts, founded on Mr. Coleridge’s favorite dramatic Poem, Zapolya; or, The War Wolf. The Overture and Music composed by Sanderson; Scenery painted by Wilson, H. Wilson, and Assistants; Dresses: Brett, Miss Freelove, and Assistants. 39. Coleridge. Lectures 1808–1819: On Literature, 2 vols. Ed. Reginald A.  Foakes. The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 5. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1987. 1:518–19; 2:55, 316, 362, 513. 40. Thomas Holcroft. The Man of Ten Thousand: a comedy. London: Printed for G. G. and J. Robinson, 1796.

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41. Henry Siddons. Time’s a Tell-tale. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1807. 42. Christopher Marlowe. Doctor Faustus, 1604–1616. Parallel Texts, ed. W. W. Greg. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1950. 43. Katherine Biers. “Clock-Watching: Time in Romantic Drama.” Theatre Survey 59.3 (September 2018): 313–39. The drama was performed on de Stael’s estate Coppet on 13 October 1809. Zacharis Werner. Der vierundzwanzigste Februar. Tragödie in einem Akt. Leipzig and Altenburg: Brockhaus, 1815. 44. Graham Everett. English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. London: Sonnenschein, Le Bas, and Lowrey, 1886, 89–124. 45. James Robinson Planché. The Vampire; or, The Bride of the Isles. A Romantic Melo-Drama, in two acts: preceded by an introductory Vision (performed at the Theatre Royal English Opera House, August 9th, 1820), in Plays, ed. Donald Roy. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986. 46. The Mirror of the Stage, 26 January 1824. 47. Shakspeare’s Seven Ages of Man, illustrated by Henry Thomas Alken. London: E. and C. McLean, 1824. Consists of seven colored lithographs, five dated “June 20th, 1824” and two dated “June 15th, 1824,” accompanied by a page of text quoting the passage from As You Like It. 48. British Library, Playbills. The Long Rifle. Coburg, 21 November 1831. 49. Burwick. “Georgian Theories of the Actor.” Oxford Handbook to the Georgian Playhouse, ed. Julia Swindells and David Taylor. Oxford: Oxford UP 2014, 177–96. 50. William Thomas Moncrieff. The Lear of Private Life. London: T. Richardson, 1820. 51. George Dibdin Pitt. The Eddystone Elf. London: John Cumberland, 1834. 52. George Almar. The Rover’s Bride. London: John Cumberland, 1830. 53. Matthew Gregory Lewis. One O’Clock! or, The Knight and the Wood Daemon. 1rst ed. London: Lowndes and Hobbs, 1811; 2nd ed. New York: D. Longworth, 1813. 54. Charles Kemble. Plot and Counterplot; or, The Portrait of Michael Cervantes; adapted from Le portrait de Michel Cervantes by Michel Dieulafoy. London: Printed for C. Chapple, 1812. 55. Annegret Dinter. Der Pygmalion-Stoff in der europäischen Literatur. Heidelberg: Carl Winter Verlag, 1979. 56. Nicholas Tromans. David Wilkie: The People’s Painter. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2007, 156–215. 57. John Fairburn. The affecting case of Mary Ashford, a beautiful young virgin, who was diabolically ravished, murdered, and thrown into a pit, as she was returning from a dance: including the trial of Abraham Thornton for the wilful murder of the said Mary Ashford: with the whole of the evidence, charge to the jury, &c.: tried at Warwick Assizes, before Mr. Justice Holroyd, on the 8th of August, 1817. London: John Fairburn, 1817.

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58. Henry Beverly. Chateau Bromege; or, The Clock Struck Four. Carchett, 1818. 59. S.N.E. The Murdered Maid; or, the Clock Struck Four!!!: a drama, in three acts. [Performed in Warwick, 1818. Preface signed S.N.E.]. Norwich, 1820. 60. George Ludlam. The Mysterious Murder; or, What’s the Clock? Birmingham: Printed and sold by the author, 1817. 61. David Worrall. Theatric Revolution: Drama, Censorship and Romantic Period Subcultures, 1773–1832. Oxford: Oxford: UP, 2006, 310–13. 62. Bakhtin, Mikhail. ‘Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel.’ The Dialogic Imagination, trans. Caryl Emerson & Michael Holquist. Austin: Texas UP, 1981, 84–258. 63. Coleridge. Lectures 1808–1819: On Literature. 1:78, 287; 2:478. 64. William Thomas Moncrieff. The Cataract of the Ganges; or, The Rajah’s Daughter, a grand romantic melo-drama in two acts. London: Simpkin & Marshall, 1823. 65. Diego Saglia. “The Frighted Stage: The Sensational Proliferation of Ghost Melodrama in the 1820s.” Studies in Romanticism 54.2 (July 2015): 269–93. 66. Pierre Corneille. L’Illusion comique. Paris: Bossange, Masson & Besson, 1797. 67. Corneille. Horace, trans. Charles Cotton. London: Printed for Henry Brome, 1671. 68. Corneille. Cinna’s Conspiracy, trans. Colley Cibber. London: Printed for Bernard Lintott, 1713. 69. Corneille. The Lyar. London: Printed for W. Lowndes, J. Rivington and Sons, and S. Bladon, 1786. 70. Corneille. Théâtre de Pierre Corneille. Tome IV, L’Illusion comique, Cinna ou la clémence d’Auguste, Jules César. Paris: Bossange, Masson & Besson, 1797. Corneille. Oeuvres de P. Corneille. Tome II, La Suivante—La Place Royale—Médée—L’illusion comique—Le Cid. Paris: A.A. Renouard, 1817. 71. William Thomas Moncrieff. The Lear of Private Life; or, Father and Daughter: a domestic melo-drama, in three acts. London: T. Richardson, 1820. https://archive.org/details/learofprivatelif0000monc/page/n3/ mode/2up. Accessed 3 January 2021. 72. Mary Russell Mitford. Sadak & Kalasrade; or, The Waters of Oblivion. London: S. G. Fairbrother, 1835. 73. George Dibdin Pitt. The Eddystone Elf. London: John Cumberland, 1834. 74. Horace Smith. The Absent Apothecary (1813). Henry E.  Huntington Library and Art Gallery. Manuscript: Larpent 1758. 75. Aristotle. Poetics, chap. 8. The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon. New York: Random House, 1941. 76. Harpur. Philosophical Criticism, 187–91; Aristotle. Poetics, chaps. 6 and 7. 77. Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, 1821–1856. The Works of Thomas De Quincey, vol. 2, ed. Grevel Lindop. London: Pickering and Chatto, 2000. 2:66–67.

CHAPTER 2

Flashback and Flashforward

The flashback and flashforward (analepsis and prolepsis) are among the most frequent means in the drama to vary or alter the linear thrust of sequential time. As mentioned in the Introduction, Joseph Harpur, in his The Principles of Philosophical Criticism (1810), sought to reaffirm Aristotle’s Poetics by emphasizing the mental as well as physical processes integral to Aristotle’s exposition of the drama. In discussing “unity of action,” Aristotle distinguished between “dramatic action” (praxis) and “mental action” (proairesis). The latter refers to a character’s deliberations and choices, without which a character remains flat and undefined. “Unity of time” refers to a coherence of the period in which dramatic action occurs. Time can remain constant or shift, depending on the circumstances and contexts of the drama.1 The series of events that constitute the drama must appear “connected and coherent.”2 In response to Aristotle’s dictum that the duration of events in a tragedy ought to keep “within one revolution of the sun,” or near to it, Harpur reasserts Aristotle’s concern with defining the temporal scope of tragedy as finite, in contrast with the infinite scope of the epic.3 In addition to the passing of a single day, Aristotle also sanctioned the duration of time that can be remembered, vividly retained in imagination or memory.4 The effects of tragedy, Harpur emphasizes, depend on the impression on the imagination, the retention by the memory, and “the energizing of the intellect.”5

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The time that it takes to stage a play may be very different from the time that is presumed to elapse in the events dramatized; different, too, from the mental time, as communicated through a character’s flashback recollections and flashforward anticipations. The storytelling in dialogue or monologue intrudes on the temporal sequence of the drama. In Greek tragedy, prolepsis often occurs as prophecy. The fate of Oedipus is foretold: he will sleep with his mother and kill his father. In Sophocles’s tragedy, fate is inescapable. Further examination of Greek drama reveals many such thresholds into alternate time were traversed in the chorus. The pathos of Iphigenia’s death, for example, is heightened by an analepsis to dinner parties at Argos in which she participated. Iphigenia’s joyful singing at Argos contrasts with her enforced silence at Aulis, the feast, the sacrifice.6 In Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, Antonio accepts Shylock’s terms that he forfeit a pound of flesh if his loan is not repaid by the specified date. Antonio is confident that more than one of his ships, laden with rich merchandise, will “come home a month before the day.” Antonio’s proleptic hopes fail to reckon with the fickle and unpredictable seas. Not one of his ships has returned in time, so Antonio must pay the bloody bond. Portia, disguised as a doctor of law, rescues the defendant by distinguishing between flesh and blood. Before the close of the final act, three of Antonio’s ships return belatedly to harbour, and Antonio is once again a wealthy man. As a maritime nation, England naturally developed an interest in nautical drama.7 That circumstance prompted repeated readjustments of time while crossing from England’s shores to 71.0589 ° longitude to Boston or 64.7505 ° to Bermuda. To measure latitude, the quadrant and the astrolabe were instruments long familiar to mariners. The marine chronometer, necessary to ascertain longitude, was introduced in 1730, but was not in general use until the end of the century (see Chap. 7 of this volume). At the close of the eighteenth century, ships still frequently went astray in crossing the Atlantic. Messages sent between England and its ports abroad crossed modest spans in relatively short time, but even with fair weather, good winds, and efficient navigation, disruption of correspondence and delays in the transmission of news were commonplace. In 1796, the crossing from Bermuda to Liverpool might take four weeks under favourable conditions, six weeks would be average, sixteen weeks when confronting foul weather. A more precise estimation of time would depend upon the size of the ship, the size and number of sails, the time of year it sailed, its

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hull shape, and whether the ship was in heavy cargo, light cargo, or a warship. The vagaries of the weather, winds, storms, fogs, and ice could add days and weeks to a crossing. It mattered, too, whether the ship was eastbound or westbound, with or against the winds or the currents. Sailing time also depended on whether the ship had the advantage of navigational instruments or whether the ship’s captain had acquired the experience of many crossings. Any person with business, investments, relatives in Bermuda, in the Indies East or West, would regularly consult Lloyd’s List to discover which ships would be docking at, or sailing from, a specific port of interest.8

Thomas Holcroft, Man of Ten Thousand For the analepsis of investments in distant colonies, and the prolepsis of anxiously awaited gains from those investments, many examples are identified in the theatre playbills. For this chapter, discussion of Thomas Holcroft’s Man of Ten Thousand9 (Drury Lane, 23 January 1796) is well suited, especially because it exemplifies the analepsis/prolepsis of action in the wings of a mental stage. Holcroft shifts attention from physical time to mental time. In the de casibus tradition, inevitable misfortune results in a fall from fortune, which then must be met with despair, madness, or moral fortitude.10 Holcroft implicates three sources of Dorington’s financial fortune and misfortune: colonial investments, gambling, and the lottery. All three involve potential risks, but none threaten idly or abstractly, because all three influence only through the agency of other characters. The play, which appears fairly early in the Romantic period, is by a playwright who reflected extensively on his craft in the eight instalments of his “Essay on Dramatic Composition” in The Theatrical Recorder.11 From Samuel Johnson’s “Preface to Shakespeare,” Holcroft cites the reappraisal of the “three unities.” The unity of action requires only the unity of character, whose words and actions must be consistent. Unity of place and time need not be rigorously upheld because the spectator accepts the stage illusion as illusion, and never really thinks that he is witnessing the actual transfer from Rome to Alexandria, nor the time-travel to ancient Egypt in the days of Antony and Cleopatra. “There is no reason,” Johnson declared, “why a mind thus wandering in extasy should count the clock, or why an hour should not be a century in that calenture of the brains that can make the stage a field.”12

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Like Harpur in his Philosophical Criticism, Holcroft, too, distinguished between mental time and physical time in Aristotle’s Poetics, and like Johnson, he considered the consciousness of time as a reaction in the mind of the spectator: If we reflect on the operations of mind, when strongly excited, they will be found to be multifarious, mingled, and rapid, beyond its own recollection. It cannot itself distinguish the minuteness or the interval of time, in which it can suppose itself at Rome, hearing Marc Antony harangue over the dead body of Cesar, be called to recollection by the noise or elbow of a neighbouring spectator, and again be back at Rome, listening, and connecting the past and the present.13

The activity in the mind of the spectator must also be assumed in the mind of the player. In speaking to the people of Rome over the dead body of Caesar, Marc Antony’s mental activity must also be represented as “multifarious, mingled, and rapid.” His flashbacks recollect Caesar’s captives who filled the coffers of Rome, Caesar’s refusal of the crown thrice, Caesar’s mantle worn at the defeat of the Belgian tribe, now torn and bloodied by the daggers of Cassius, Casca, and Brutus. With a flashforward, Antony invites his auditors to think what these gaping wounds, were they mouths, might speak, then he tells of the gifts Caesar had planned to bequeath to his people (Julius Caesar, Act III.ii). The mind seldom tarries on the present moment but is ever turning to deeds past and those to come. With that commitment to drama as representing mental time in the development of character, Holcroft in his comedy, Man of Ten Thousand, created a situation of disrupted communication that forces Dorington, his central character, to renegotiate former conditions and future prospects. In his abundance of wealth, Dorington had fallen into profligate habits, willing to accommodate the money-leeching of false friends and his own careless gambling. Olivia, a wealthy heiress who loves him, has come to realize that, unless he breaks his reckless spendthrift habits, she must reject him. Of a sudden, his wealth seems to be gone. The source of his income, an estate and plantation in the West Indies, has reportedly been destroyed, flattened by a storm, and all money lost. Another relevance of the analeptic/proleptic turn in the drama of the period was the rags-to-riches or, more frequently, the riches-to-rags circumstances of the gambling houses. The proleptic desires are blighted.

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William Hogarth’s The Rake’s Progress (eight paintings, 1732–34; engraved, 1734) shows the decline and fall of Tom Rakewell, whose story is similar to Dorington’s. As the heir of a rich merchant, the spendthrift Rakewell comes to London; wastes all his money on luxurious living, prostitution, and gambling; and in consequence is imprisoned in the Fleet Prison and ultimately in Bethlem Hospital for the insane. A character of contrasting fortitude, Dorington does not despair but sets to work to earn a new fortune. The sixth engraving, “The Gaming House,” shows Rakewell pleading in desperation for the aid of the Almighty after he has lost all at a gambling table in White’s club in Soho.14 Closer in time to Holcroft’s The Man of Ten Thousand, James Gillray’s satirical plate, “The loss of the faro bank; or—the rooks pigeon’d” (2 February 1797), depicts a scene of duplicity and desperation in a private gambling house.15 Similar to Holcroft’s Lady Taunton, Lady Buckinghamshire ran a faro table in her house. Gillray depicts the moment when Lord Buckingham appears at the door to announce that the bank has been robbed. Suspicions were raised that the robbery had been faked for the financial gain of the table holders. “All the party were reduced at times to considerable distress by their gambling propensities.”16 Accustomed to receiving a very large income from his property in the West Indies, Dorington—like Shakespeare’s “fair-hearted” Timon—is profuse and undiscriminating in his generosity. In Act III, Hudson, his agent and manager of his properties, arrives from Barbados with the intelligence that Dorington’s estate is totally demolished by a hurricane. Again, like Timon, Dorington is deserted by his “trencher friends” and “summer birds.” Unlike Timon, whose mood darkens in misanthropy, Dorington bears his loss with equanimity and determination to build a new fortune. His positive attitude is wounded only when Curfew denies him company with Olivia. That setback is soon overcome by his discovery that the refused admission was at Curfew’s order, not Olivia’s. Upon discovering Curfew’s ill-treatment of Dorington, she defies her guardian. After his false friends have flown, Dorington discovers that his true friends are his servant Herbert and his cousin Hairbrain. Restoring fortune’s favor, Hudson brings the report from a ship newly arrived from Barbados: Dorington’s plantation had been spared the wrath of the tornado after all. To complete the happy ending, Dorington marries Olivia. In his summary of the premier performance, John Genest conjectured that this “moderate Comedie … might be turned into a good play in 3 acts.”17 Genest refers to the three-act genre that was gaining popularity in

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London’s unlicensed theatres. Although the term “melodrama” had not yet been applied to the three-act genre, Genest tracked its emergence in Thomas Holcroft’s plays. Translated from Jean Nicolas Bouilly’s L’Abbé de l’Épée (1800), Holcroft’s Deaf and Dumb18 (Drury Lane, 24 February 1801) was also in five acts, but it made dramatic use of the mute and sign language on the stage. Because the unlicensed theatres were still negotiating restrictions in the Licensing Act of 1737 on spoken language, the mute had become a recurrent character in the three-act genre. Just one year later, again translating from the French, Holcroft brought René-­ Charles Guilbert de Pixérécourt’s Coelina (1800) to the London stage as A Tale of Mystery, a melo-drame19 (Covent Garden, 13 November 1802). Divided into two acts, this play again features a mute who must communicate by gestures and by writing. On the opening performance, Genest wrote that this “was the first of those Melo-drames, with which the stage was afterwards inundated—tho’ this mixture of dialogue and dumb show, accompanied by music, be an unjustifiable species of the drama, yet it must be acknowledged, that some of the Melo-drames have considerable merit—the Tale of Mystery was the first and the best.”20 In order to reduce to three the five acts of The Man of Ten Thousand, Genest proposed shortening several scenes and “leaving out the characters of Herbert and Annabel.”21 Were it not for the fact that the character of Herbert is redeemed by asserting himself as Dorington’s loyal friend, one might dismiss him, as Congreve advised, as the playwright’s attempt at humour by laughing at a speaker’s idiosyncrasies of language.22 But Holcroft has also elevated Herbert as the voice of the outsider, “a poor Devonshire lad,” who observes the greed of the fashionable elite: Herbert: Don’t ee speak so kindly to I. I do zee you worse used every day of my life; and I can’t help it, nether! Al a begging and a borrowing! and you a never zaying nay! Money! Money! I do zee well enough, avore they’ve adone, they won’t leave you a morsel to put i’ your mouth. (I.i.9–10)

Herbert shifts analepsis to prolepsis. He recalls Dorington’s generosity in response to “begging and borrowing,” but he predicts that Dorington will be left without “a morsel.” In representing a character’s manners and language, Congreve advised the playwright to avoid mocking the defects of speech such as stuttering. The foreigner should not be scorned for his struggles with English. Possible stains of bigotry are easier to avoid with sources of laughter

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derived from expressions peculiar to a profession or trade, the affectation of social status, the argot of the gaming table or race-track. In his comedies, Holcroft sought the catchphrase, the unique verbal gesture that triggers anticipation and recollection in the audience. A word or an expression that is used repeatedly and conveniently to represent a character will be remembered after the final curtain falls. The success of a Romantic comedy was often linked to a character’s catchphrase. An example of one of the most successful was the title character of John Poole’s Paul Pry (Haymarket, 13 September 1825), who, upon retrieving an umbrella he deliberately left behind, always re-entered with the apology, “Hope I don’t intrude.” William Hazlitt called attention to another remarkably successful catchphrase in Holcroft’s Road to Ruin (Covent Garden, 18 February 1792). Goldfinch was the character who, as Hazlitt said, “contributed most to the popularity of the piece”: his language consists entirely of a few cant words; yet the rapidity with which he glances from object to object, and the evident delight which he takes in introducing his favourite phrases on all occasions, have all the effect of the most brilliant wit. “That’s your sort” comes in at least fifty times, and is just as unexpected and lively the last time as the first, for no other reason than because Goldfinch has just the same pleasure in repeating it.23

By Hazlitt’s estimation, nine persons out of ten who went to see the Road to Ruin, went for the sake of seeing Goldfinch. Holcroft tried to create a similar character in Major Rampart. Although repeated virtually every time the Major speaks, the character’s identifying bluster, “Humph, Hays? Do you take me? Damme! Blow me to atoms!” was not very catching. When the play was published, Holcroft added an “Advertisement” explaining his intention: The character of Major Rampart was intended to represent one of those persons who imagine they have uttered volumes, without having said a word: whose eager looks inform us how important they suppose their own conceptions to be; but, being too mighty for utterance, language sinks under them, and they expect the assent and applause of their companions to their Humphs? Hays? and expletives. These expletives, as used by the Major, are omitted in representation; because they offended. They are here restored, and left to the consideration of the reader. It may be necessary to add, they should not be pronounced in an articulate and emphatical manner; but with

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a half-muttering rapidity: accompanied by equally rapid glances, looking round for, and demanding, admiration.24

As a traditional miles gloriosus, the Major is caught in the past, repeating his flashback tale of his role in the Siege of Prague. In his “Essay on Dramatic Composition,” Holcroft urges the playwright to resist narrative exposition as a substitute for dramatic action. By their very nature, however, the flashback and the flashforward tend to be told rather than enacted. Holcroft demonstrates how the narrative flashback can be dramatically animated. Performing his own recollected role, the Major also creates an animated dialogue with “von Dondertronc,” whom he has speak in dialect: I chanced to affirm at Laudohn’s Levee (I served the Emperor at that time) to affirm that Frederic the Great commanded the right wing, in person, at the battle of Prague. Mein Herr, said Von Dondertronc, very respectfully taking off his hat (I give you his manner and phrase) Mein Herr, you am a committa mistake a. Carnage and gunpowder, General, said I, interrupting him, do you mean to tell me that I am mistaken? Von Dondertronc was as daring as he was polite. Herr Mayor, said he, for this von littel timea you am a commita mistake a—He knew it was signing his own death warrant, damme! Humph? Hay? Yet he said it! Blow me to atoms, said I, a barrel of gunpowder! Quick! And a fire-brand! Humph? Hay? Do you take me? Damme! Humph? Contradict me? (I.i.5–6)

The Major addresses a question to his auditor at the close of this flashback. Would he dare contradict his tale? Yes, he would, because that auditor is Curfew, Olivia’s guardian. “Candor is my character,” Curfew says of himself. Whatever another character asserts, he will refute or deny. On this occasion, he simply informs the Major that he “never tell this story twice the same way.” Lord Laroon elaborates a bit in assessing Curfew’s character: “You have it every way! You are neither this, that, nor the other: every thing and nothing: the most facetious, melancholy, complaisant, rude, polite, pleasant, impertinent person I ever beheld” (I.i.5–6). By confessing her own modest manner, Olivia asks whether she could possibly rival Lady Taunton, who has invested extensively in her faux appearance and affected elegance: What can an “unfinished, scarce half made up,” simple creature, like myself, oppose; to all a fashionable Lady’s borrowed beauties, and bought perfec-

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tions? Hair sheared from the dead, teeth plucked from the living, a shape bespoke of a mantua-maker, a complexion purchased in Spain, grace imported by figurants, taste by Italian fiddlers, elegance by French ­courtezans, and manners improved by the polite conversation of grooms, and the attic wit of gamblers! (II.ii.18)

In contrast to Lady Taunton, who strives to retrieve and re-enact her younger self, Olivia exerts her efforts in securing an honest and honourable future. How small and how large are the temporal intrusions of analepsis and prolepsis? A single word may suffice to conjure a moment past or future, and such a moment may be expanded to dominate an entire scene. Herbert recollects times of poverty and plenty with compound terms for personal experience: “I war used to play at pinch-belly, and now the game is choak-­ throat.” When storytelling takes the place of enactment, the engagement of alternate time might easily extend to an entire scene. This occurs in The Tempest, Act I.ii, when Prospero relates to the slumbering Miranda the circumstances of his wicked brother’s usurpation; or again, in As You Like It, when the First Lord recounts melancholy Jacques weeping over the fate of a wounded stag (II.i). The temporal shifts in The Man of Ten Thousand function primarily to position in stark contrast the sudden shifts in fortune. Dorington may be at the centre of these shifts, but others around him share in the experience. When Herbert laments that he cannot care for Anna, Dorington encourages him to abandon those thoughts of the past and think instead of his future as “the heir of landed property: of which … you will very shortly be in possession.” Dorington has provided him the deed to this property (I.ii.10–11). In the pages of “An Essay on Dramatic Composition” devoted to “The Moral Nature of Tragedy and Comedy,” Holcroft argues that it is not enough for the playwright to avoid immorality—he must also advocate morality when the occasion arises. The issues of right and wrong were, for Holcroft, political as well as moral.25 He was excited by the ideals of the French Revolution as they emerged in 1789. He assisted Thomas Paine in publishing the first part of The Rights of Man in 1791. He joined the Society for Constitutional Information in 1792. He joined the London Corresponding Society in early 1794. The suspicion aroused by his political engagement resulted in his arrest for high treason in the autumn of 1794. He was held in Newgate Prison during the trials of Thomas Hardy and John Horne Tooke. With their acquittal in early December 1794, Holcroft was released without trial.

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Scarcely more than thirteen months after Holcroft’s release from prison, The Man of Ten Thousand opened at Drury Lane. In this play, Holcroft develops a comic yet strident moral indictment of the aristocracy as leeches guilty of exploiting the unwary. Lord Laroon, who has a share in Lady Tauton’s gaming house, delights in observing the misery of those ruined at gambling. Dorington is an easy dupe. He has no sense of the value of his inheritance. His generosity is dispensed irresponsibly, sometimes to the deserving, more often to the greedy. As the character who shares Dorington’s faults, Hairbrain is careless in spending and clueless in his investments. Since those habits have rendered him penniless, he turns to Dorington for financial backing. When Dorington tells him that he arrives at “unseasonable hours,” Hairbrain damns the hours, declaring he has nothing to do with hours. “Time,” he says, “is all soul,” and should time have any substance, “he is a sneaking scoundrel; and I would kick him out of company.” But time is relevant to debts and investments. He wants Dorington’s money in order to pursue his current scheme for cure-­ all pills, investing £500 for a return of £1000 a year. Hairbrain promises that the investment will enable him to assume proper hours: “I will be an orderly, sedate, considerate, putt! I will go to bed at ten, get up at six, eat posset, scold my servants, and wear a scratch! Oh! You shall see such a reform!” Absolutely convinced that these salubrious and salutary pills will cure all ills, Hairbrain extols their potency: “A wonderful discovery! One dose is sufficient! Profits prodigious! Make a cart-load for a crown: sell a single box for a guinea!” (I.iii.12–13). In Act I, Holcroft relies on analepsis primarily for efficient exposition of character. The Major’s triumphs in battle, Hairbrain’s money-making schemes, Herbert’s gratitude to Dorington, and Dorington’s own careless disregard of management are all contained within the subtle flashbacks. The dramatic action is sustained by circumstances of chance, a time of risks and uncertain outcomes. Circumstances are set at play in gambling at the faro table, in hazarding income from colonial investment, in jeopardizing love in aloof irresponsibility. A flashforward reveals Olivia’s hope for a future with Dorington, but also her concern over his profligacy. Dorington is too confident of Olivia’s love, and too accustomed to his seemingly endless source of money to imagine a future without either. Victor Hugo opposed the custom of playwrights to push crucial action into the wings, where it remained unseen by the audience, and only narrated subsequently on stage.26 The catastrophe on the island, followed by Hudson’s account, would be an example of the sort of dramaturgy Hugo

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denounces. But for Holcroft’s purpose, the disparity of the twice-told tale is crucial to the crisis and denouement. Furthermore, Holcroft employs analepsis and prolepsis as a kind of action in the wings of the mental stage. Another playwright might have these recollections and anticipations enacted on the stage. Holcroft, however, keeps them in the province of a mental stage, revealed only in dialogue or monologue. Act II commences with a series of dark prophecies (prolepsis). Lord Laroon predicts that Lady Taunton, because of the attraction of her faro tables, will succeed in her rivalry with Olivia (II.i.15–16). Incapacitated by her loss, Olivia will no longer attend to the safety of her maid. This proleptic insight enables Lord Laroon to tell Annabelle that he shall make love to her (II.ii.20). Lord Laroon’s lechery is matched by the leeching of Lady Taunton’s faro games. In addition to his own losses at the tables, Dorington agrees to loan Sir Pertinax £2000 more on top of the £5000 pounds that Sir Pertinax has already borrowed from him (II.iii.28–29). Played by the rules, faro is a game in which a banker deals cards to several players. Winning or losing occurs when a card turned up by the banker is a pair to one already exposed in clockwise succession by a player in the circle. In a fair game, the house held only a moderate advantage over the players. Holcroft hints that Lady Taunton’s wealth might be enhanced by shuffling a few extra paired cards into the deck, allowing the dealer to claim half of the bets on that card. The Man of Ten Thousand played to spectators familiar with the national obsession with faro. Whig radical Charles James Fox, MP and twice Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, preferred faro to any other game. Faro was also the game played by Lord Ruthven, the vampire in John William Polidori’s novel (1819). At the beginning of Act II, Lord Laroon, anticipating (prolepsis) Dorington’s loss of Olivia’s favour, dared to claim Olivia’s maid as the object of his lust. Act III begins with bad news, ends with worse. Lord Laroon, having observed Dorington’s extensive losses, is emboldened to address his overtures to Olivia. The dialogue is a flashback of the events at Lady Taunton’s tables. “The Dowager is a person of fashion,” he declares. “Her rout is fashionable; her faro bank is fashionable. All the world was there” (III.i.30). “Some of them,” Olivia responds, “are now execrating all the world.” Delighting in this occasion to rejoice over the agonies of the losers, Lord Laroon acknowledges that a dozen of his friends suffered severe losses, and recounted in particular the case of Lady Hotwater. “Her last stake was a desperate venture. Her frame distorted, her cheeks livid, her hand palsied, she cut a card, lost, shrieked, fell in a fit, was carried out

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in convulsions, and is this morning parted from her husband. It was a high scene.” The dialogue of Act III consists of an interchange of flashback and flashforward. With visible trepidation Olivia asks, “And was Dorington a loser?” This was Lord Laroon’s awaited signal to gloat (III.i.30). Laughing heartily, he tells her that the sum was far greater than he can reckon. Laughing even more, he relates how he and Sir Peter Pertinax “got him to piquet, and touched him for ten thousand.” Dorington’s losses at faro were even more. Sir Pertinax “completely wiped off an old score of seven thousand.” Lord Laroon boasts that he has draughts for £3000. The losses are a matter of the past. Lord Laroon’s amusement lies in the future, in his proleptic vision of “the ruin that follows Dorington’s prodigality”: what is it to me, if my friend be disposed to ruin himself? My time would be well employed, were I to preach maxims of wisdom to all who choose to play the fool. I must tell every man I meet he is a blockhead; and get my throat cut fifty times a day. Dorington is my dear friend; but, like many more of my dear friends, he is a damned— (III.i.31).

Lord Laroon is not content with telling Olivia that Dorington is a fool. In a flashforward, he suggests to Dorington a darker scene of despair, drugs, and suicide: What does a hero, like you, mind the loss of a few thousands? Your half-­ souled fellows, on such an occasion, will take opium over night, and a pistol the next morning: but you brush such trifles from your mind, as your footman does powder from your coat. (III.i.31)

Not “half-souled,” Dorington is fully confident that he can redeem his losses. Olivia cautions him, “Be not too confident. A single cloud will conceal the sun.” Dorington embraces her clouded prolepsis within his more expansive optimism: “A few acres I grant may be overcast; but his rays, at the same instant, shine refulgent on the remaining world” (III.i.33). Dorington declares his love to Olivia and apologizes for his “follies” of the previous night—not for the vast sums he has squandered, but for the irrationality of his actions (III.i.33–34). Appraising past and future, Olivia remains unconvinced that Dorington will indeed overcome the “dissipated spirit, male coquetry, and depravity of manners” that have

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dominated his previous behaviour. She cannot accept that future in which she is “the wife of one whom passion prefers; but whom the understanding rejects” (III.ii.34). Lord Laroon is the gleeful harbinger of more bad news: “there has been a great storm at some of our West India Islands.” Not just the properties have been demolished, he tells Dorington, “hundreds, some say thousands, of the inhabitants have perished” (III.iii.35). This report is confirmed with the arrival of Hudson, who serves as agent and manager of Doringtopn’s Bermuda properties. He was able to get away by ship just before the tornado struck. Consol, the court and city broker, also arrives to inform Dorington that what the tornado has done to his vast estates, it has also done to his finances, blown them away like “dust before the wind” (III.iv.37). In Hudson’s opinion, the tornado was merely a physical manifestation of the devastation of Dorington’s habits: “Nurtured in splendour, encouraged in waste, accustomed to scatter with a prodigal munificence,” Hudson tells him. “You are now the most desolate, the most helpless of men” (III.v.37–38). Hudson’s flashback conjures more than he could possibly have seen from the deck of the storm-tossed ship as it escaped the tornado’s fury: Sweeping destruction, and prodigies unheard! The misery is general; though on that side the Island where late your fruitful lands were situate most complete. Your ponderous vessels, mills, stores, and buildings, were wrested from their distracted beds, and swept into the sea! Your vast domains loaded with vegetation, incredible to tell, were torn up and whirled like chaff to the clouds; leaving behind mephitic lakes, whose stench infects the air! Universal nature was convulsed! The elements all waged horrible war; while heart-­ rending and intolerable cries, roars, and howlings, made the bursting thunder seem a whisper. (III.v.38)

As will be revealed in Act V, Hudson had this account of the devastation from other trade ships. But even at its worst, the news prompted Dorington engage boldly in the “mighty trial” (III.v.39). Frustrated that he shows none of the convulsions of misery, Lord Laroon predicts in a flashforward the decline that awaits him in poverty: Tasting and smelling will go first. Because, as you know, faculties not exercised are lost. Creditors will next come to your door: animals that have very discordant voices. They will clamour, vociferate, and possess the miraculous gift of making you deaf. They will insolently demand why you are a—

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Hem! …Here you will be struck dumb! … They will meet you in the street: and while their eyes shall be riveted upon yours, you will be stone blind. (III.v.43–44)

Even Hudson affirms that in poverty he will be the subject of insult and derision. Dorington scoffs at the forecast of future misery. The real misfortune is the fate of “the poor wretches whom the afflicting heavens have left shelterless.” In the opening scene of Act IV, Annabel pleads with Olivia not to ignore Dorington’s generosity. Olivia acknowledges his virtues, but fears that he has sullied himself “with the vices of contagious custom,” and has debased himself in immoral associations (IV.i.48). Curfew, her guardian, insists that her engagements henceforth must exclude all contact with Dorington. Olivia, however, conceives of future visits that will strengthen his resolve. Shifting the locale of the analeptic/proleptic interchange, the next scene depicts Dorington working with Hudson on salvaging what value might remain in the wreck of his possessions. He is concerned with providing “some poor pittance of relief” to the “wretched sufferers” who have survived (IV.ii.50). The survivors would be the plantation slaves. Holcroft was an aggressive abolitionist and reformer. His daughter Fanny Holcroft was the author of the influential anti-slavery poem, “The Negro” (1797).27 Dorington wants to know how many lives were lost. Again, Hudson conceals the fact that he is only speculating. “Numbers were hurried through the air, and dashed against the rocks; or overwhelmed by the mad and incomprehensible ocean. … many put timely to sea, of whom I was one. But still the Negroes and the Poor remained.” As one who “put timely to sea,” Hudson was no witness to the “facts” and flashbacks that he rehearses. To aid those possibly injured and certainly homeless, Dorington resolves to use his “health, strength, courage, and common sense” to rescue and rebuild (IV.v.52). His relationship with Olivia remains in jeopardy, and he was refused entrance on his attempt to visit (IV.v.53). Curfew instructed his servant to say that the door was closed to him on Olivia’s orders. Olivia discovers this deceit upon being denounced by Dorington’s angry servant, Herbert, who has come to retrieve Annabel from her service as Olivia’s maid. Questioning the servant, Olivia discovers that her guardian had instructed, in her name, to shut the door to Dorington. She also learns from the servant that Dorington’s West India estates were demolished in a storm (IV.vii.56–57).

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Whether past, present, or future, the illusions of time in the drama are conjured and sustained, Samuel Johnson said, by a “calenture of the brains.” The most comic flashforward in the play recreates a Malvolio-­ Olivia situation with the Consol as the one who imagines his own irresistible attraction, even without cross-gartered calves. Consol arrives in response to Olivia’s letter to meet with her. She intends to arrange for a sum to be transferred to assist Dorington. He imagines that Olivia is attracted to him now that Dorington is ruined. I wonder what she can want with me. Not money; for she is rich and has not learned to squander. … A comical thought has crossed me! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! It can be only that! Ha, ha, ha! She has taken a fancy to me! Fallen in love with me! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! I have hit it! I have the whole clue! I am the rich Consol! … She knows I am one of the richest, ergo, one of the greatest men breathing! Then there are agreements, similarities between us! She is prudent, economical, and cunning! So am I: She is rich, young, and beautiful: so am—? Yes—so am I! Five and forty is young enough: and as for handsome, your plump, round-faced, smug-looking, person is always agreeable: and I have a remarkable smile—Ha, ha, ha! She is a good one! She knows two and two make four. ’Tis a deep thought! Her vast fortune added to mine, I shall soon be able to buy up the Bedford rent roll! It is a grand idea!—Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! Oh she is a good one! (IV.xi.64–65)

Act IV comes to a close with Olivia dashing cold water on Consol’s “calentures of the brain.” Act I ended with Hairbrain being forced to abandon investment in cure-all pills. Act V begins with Hairbrain’s excited ravings on winning £20,000 pounds on the lottery (V.i.71). Admiring Homer’s great fantasy, Aristotle formulated a rule for giving a degree of credence to the incredible: better “probable impossibilities” than “improbable possibilities” (Poetics, 63). Holcroft stretched the rule. Whatever the probability might have been, Holcroft provides Hairbrain with the winning ticket to demonstrate honesty and integrity outside the elite circle of Lady Taunton’s faro tables. Hairbrain’s winning ticket in the lottery had been purchased for him by Dorington, who is now in need of money. Hairbrain hastens to meet his friend in order to put the £20,000 into Dorington’s hands. (V.ii.72–73). Dorington’s circumstances turned very grim in Act III.  In Act V, as Dorington foretold, the dark cloud is blown away and all is bright again. Dorington is once more hip-deep in prosperity. Hudson informs Dorington that his properties were shielded from the worst damages of the tornado.

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His buildings and crops survived. Dorrington observes the extraordinary disparity with Hudson’s previous account. How could he have been so wrong? Confessing that “inexpressible terrors” prompted him to abandon his post, he had not actually witnessed the onslaught of the approaching hurricane. Instead, he fled the island on a ship departing for England. Details for his earlier report were gleaned from other departing vessels. Hudson deemed the accounts were true, because all agreed that the devastation swept the island. This second flashback radically revises the first. Recent intelligence from the Barbados confirms that Dorington’s properties were sheltered by high lands, and his crops, because of losses elsewhere, doubled in value. Refusing to profit from the misfortune of others, Dorington rejects charging double the standing price. He advises Hudson to hasten back to the island to distribute at no cost all that his crops and stores might provide as relief to the general distress. He cautions Hudson to be gradual in dispensing foods to avoid a greedy recipient from hoarding for their own profit. (V.ii.72). For the remainder of Act V, a guilt-ridden Olivia searches for Dorington, so that she can explain that the door was closed to him at her guardian’s command, not her own. She meets Hudson, who reassures her that Dorington has not lost his confidence in her love. She is surprised, however, that Hudson will not deliver the letter and funds that she wants to send to Dorington. Hudson explains that letter and funds are no longer necessary. Hudson’s explanation, however, failed to mention that funds were no longer necessary because his plantation survived undamaged. Still supposing him to be a ruined man, Olivia persuades Hairbrain to deliver her letter to Dorington (V.v.77). Upon learning that Dorington “is restored to honour and happiness,” Olivia’s great joy for him is undermined by the realization that her letter, addressed to the impoverished Dorington, will be read by Dorington restored to wealth. In this altered context her letter will make her seem like one of the odious false-friends ready to embrace him in wealth after closing the door to him in poverty. In her monologue past and future rush in from the wings onto her mental stage: I am fallen into the contempt, the scorn, which motives so mean as those imputed to me would well have merited! And who will believe them other than they have appeared? When he was poor, I seemed to abandon him. Now he no longer needs my friendship, I fly to afford him aid!—It must not be! He is lost. Conduct so abject as this shall never be imputed to me!—And

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is it thus?—A heart so munificent! A soul so capacious! Manners so gentle! Fortitude so unshaken! Is there no hope? Am I for ever cut off from their benignant influence? I am! For ever! He is lost; and annihilation is come upon my soul! (V.vi.78)

Her letter expressed remorse for the false actions of Curfew. She pledges that even in his financial ruin, “The door will not be shut in your face.” But now in his wealth, she fears that her message will sound more like sycophancy than sincerity. Her feelings express the shared mechanism of anachrony: the temporal disparity of prolepsis and analepsis, recalling the past anticipating the future. As was Hudson’s first report on the hurricane, Olivia’s message is out of synch with actual time and events, and the delay is not yet at an end. After Hairbrain neglected to present the letter, Dorington discovered it by chance. Seeing that it is addressed to him, he breaks the seal and reads her confession: “I have been unintentionally guilty of gross injustice, have listened to the malevolent, and have insulted your exalted character.” Certain that the letter will “seem like the meanest of cunning,” Olivia attempts to retrieve it before it reaches him. Instead, she meets him in the very moment that he has read it. She tells him that the letter was not intended for him, but for “the ruined Dorington.” He assures her that she herself is the only treasure he has desired (V.vii.79). In the last lines of the play, Olivia shifts from reflection on the past to prognosis for the future: Husband your raptures! Let us be sober, even in our joys. Let us emulate my nobleminded Dorington! Be full, yet tranquil, in felicity: active, yet smiling, in misfortune! Let us reflect on the past for improvement, and meet the present with equanimity. We shall then obtain approbation for our good deeds, and indulgence for our mistakes. (V.ix.83)

The best of Holcroft’s playwriting skills were expended in his early plays. His own success influenced the success of others. Holcroft’s technique of managing stage time shaped the plays by his rivals. The social and political conditions of the times, as addressed under the conditions of the Licensing Act, required unique skills in identifying where and when. There was an audience keenly engaged in the debates over colonization and slavery, gambling and the economics of risk. Holcroft was masterful in managing prolepsis as prophetic vision (which will be examined in Chap. 3). Holcroft

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defined his hero in his Prologue. Dorington is not a weak-willed character, but one whose moral fortitude is unflagging: In conscious rectitude confirmed, and bold, To-night appears a man of different mould: Who meets misfortune; fate defies; and braves The rolling thunder; and the surging waves: Rides safe among the rocks, though tempest-tost, Where many a tall-built bark lies wrecked and lost.

By engaging the reader’s imagination, prose fiction readily manages “flashing back” to an earlier point in the story (analepsis) or “flashing forward” to a moment later in the chronological sequence of events (prolepsis). In order for drama to manage successfully these leaps in time, they must first be shown in the thoughts of the characters on stage, who then relay the causality of unfolding comprehension to the audience.

Notes 1. Aristotle. Poetics, chap. 6, 1460–62. 2. Joseph Harpur. The Principles of Philosophical Criticism. London: Law and Gilbert, 1810, 187, 189. 3. Harpur, Philosophical Criticism, 190–91; Aristotle. Poetics, chap. 5. 4. Aristotle. Poetics, chap. 7. 5. Harpur. Philosophical Criticism, 196, 198. 6. Jonas Grethlein. “Choral Intertemporality in the Oresteia.” Choral Mediations in Greek Tragedy, eds. Renaud Gagné and Matianne Govers Hopman. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2013, 78–99. 7. Arnold Schmidt, ed. British Nautical Melodramas, 1820-1850, 3 vols. London: Routledge, 2019. 8. Lloyd’s List. London: Corporation of Lloyd’s of London, 1796. 9. Thomas Holcroft. The Man of Ten Thousand: a comedy. London: Printed for G. G. and J. Robinson, 1796. Act and scene numbers are given, but no line number. I indicate page numbers instead. 10. Andrew Duxfield. “De casibus tragedy: Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great. The Genres of Renaissance Tragedy, ed. Daniel Cadman, Andrew Duxfield and Lisa Hopkins. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2019, 11–28. 11. Thomas Holcroft. “Essay on Dramatic Composition.” The Theatrical Recorder, 2 vols. London: H. D. Symonds, 1805–06; rpt. New York: Burt Franklin, 1968. 1:139–43, 213–16, 275–78, 349–54, 422–26; 2:27–50, 195–200, 414–19.

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12. Samuel Johnson. “Preface to Shakespeare.” The Works of Samuel Johnson, 16 vols. Harvard: Harvard Coöperative Society, 1910, 12:7–9. 13. Holcroft. “Dramatic Composition,” 1:277. 14. Elizabeth Einberg. William Hogarth: A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 2016, nos. 74–81. 15. Meredith Lynn Young. “Gambling as Motif in Late Eighteenth-Century Drama.” Diss. St. John’s University, 1982. See also: A.  A. Markley. “Aristocrats Behaving Badly: Gambling and Dueling in the 1790s Novel of Reform.” European Romantic Review 17.2 (April 2006): 161–68. William Brewer. “Mary Robinson as Dramatist: The Nobody Catastrophe.” European Romantic Review 17.3 (July 2006): 265–73. 16. Thomas Wright and R. H. Evans. Historical and Descriptive Account of the Caricatures of James Gillray. London: Henry G. Bohn, 1851; rpt. New York: Benjamin Blom, 1968, 426–27. 17. John Genest. Some Account of the English Stage, 10 vols. Bath: H. E. Carrington, 1832. 7:231–32. 18. Genest. English Stage, 7:501–03. 19. Holcroft. A Tale of Mystery, a melo-drame. London: Richard Phillips, 1802. 20. Genest. English Stage, 7:579. 21. Genest. English Stage, 7:232. 22. William Congreve. “Concerning Humor in Comedy” (1696). European Theories of the Drama: An Anthology of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, ed. Barrett Harper Clark. London: Crown Publishers, 2nd ed. 1947, 211–16. 23. Hazlitt. Works, 3:122–23. 24. Holcroft. “Advertisement,” The Man of Ten Thousand. 25. Holcroft. “The Moral Nature of Tragedy and Comedy.” “Dramatic Composition,” 1:142–43. 26. Victor Hugo. “Preface to Cromwell” (1827). European Theories of the Drama, 375–76. Albert W. Halsall. Victor Hugo and the Romantic Drama. Toronto: Toronto UP, 1998, 67. 27. A.  A. Markley. “Transforming Experience into Reform in Holcroft’s Memoirs and Literary Works.” Re-Viewing Thomas Holcroft, 1745–1809: Essays on His Works and Life, eds. Miriam Wallace and A.  A. Markley. London: Routledge, 2016, 181–96, 188–92. In addition to his involvement in the anti-slavery movement, Holcroft dedicated his reform efforts to eliminating criminal charges based on presumptive evidence, improving prison conditions, restricting use of capital punishment. See: Thomas Holcroft. Memoirs of Bryan Purdue, 3 vols. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1805.

CHAPTER 3

The Fatal Hour

This chapter on the Fatal Hour, a plot moment recurrent in Romantic melodrama, studies a particular use of flashbacks and flashforwards reviewed in the previous chapter. Here the playwright uses the flashback to feed, strengthen, and intensify the flashforward. As more time passes, the anticipated event of the future becomes more certain and more threatening. Frequently adapted to the Romantic stage was the traditional motif of a pact with the devil. In introducing the hero of his mock-epic Don Juan, Byron reminds his readers that “We all have seen him, in the pantomime/ Sent to the devil somewhat ere his time” (Canto I.i). Since the premiere of Thomas Shadwell’s The Libertine (Dorset Garden, 1676),1 Don Juan/Don John remained the stage character most often sent to hell. He was joined by Faust and Robert the Devil as similar hell-bent characters, who pursued their course of wanton crimes and sexual exploits, disregarding their entrapment in an inexorable fate of eternal damnation. From Greek tragedy to the determinist underpinnings of Naturalism, the concept of a controlling fate has a long history. On the German stage in the late eighteenth century, it emerged in the form of destiny drama (Schicksalstragödie). In the “self-fulfilling” fatalist psychology of her “Plays of the Passions,” Joanna Baillie created characters doomed by their own mental obsessions. The playwright may heighten the sense of fate, doom, or destiny through a succession of coincidences that mark a trajectory of inevitable consequences. Alternatively, the playwright may choose to dictate ineluctable causality at the very beginning of the play. As exemplary © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 F. Burwick, Time in Romantic Theatre, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-96079-7_3

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plays of inescapable fate, this chapter will give attention to three by Edward Fitzball; one each by Joanna Baillie, Matthew Gregory Lewis, and James Robinson Planché; and three adaptations by Thomas John Dibdin. All commence with a scene that arouses awareness of time ticking towards a specified fate in fulfilment of supernatural conditions, premonitions, or looming conflict.

Christopher Marlowe, Faustus. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust Christopher Marlowe’s Faustus is a play that neatly delineates the controlling fate from the first scene to the last. The finality of that fate is voiced in the desperation of Faustus’s last monologue, delivered in exactly fifty-­ eight lines, counting line by line the final minutes of his life’s pulse. He begins when the clock strikes eleven              Ah, Faustus, Now hast thou but one bare hour to live, And then thou must be damn’d perpetually! Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven, That time may cease, and midnight never come; Fair Nature’s eye, rise, rise again, and make Perpetual day; or let this hour be but A year, a month, a week, a natural day, That Faustus may repent and save his soul! O lente, lente currite, noctis equi!2 The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike, The devil will come, and Faustus must be damn’d.

Faustus has spoken exactly thirty lines of this monologue, when the clock strikes the half-hour. Ah, half the hour is past! twill all be past anon O God, If thou wilt not have mercy on my soul, Yet for Christ’s sake, whose blood hath ransom’d me, Impose some end to my incessant pain; Let Faustus live in hell a thousand years, A hundred thousand, and at last be sav’d! O, no end is limited to damned souls!

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Just as Faustus has reached the fiftieth line of his monologue, the clock begins the twelve bells of midnight. O, it strikes, it strikes! Now, body, turn to air, Or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell!   [Thunder and lightning.] O soul, be chang’d into little water-drops, And fall into the ocean, ne’er be found!   Enter DEVILS. My God, my God, look not so fierce on me! Adders and serpents, let me breathe a while! Ugly hell, gape not! come not, Lucifer! I’ll burn my books!—Ah, Mephastophilis!3 (lines 1450–1508)

In Germany, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe laboured throughout his lifetime on this master work of German literature.4 He designed a very different fate for his Faust, radically modifying the conditions of the traditional pact with the devil. The condition of his damnation is to say to the moment, “Linger a while, you are so beautiful” (“Verweile doch, du bist so schön.” Faust, line 1700). Damnation is the surrender to passivity, inertia, stasis; whereas the vital engagement in life is active and dynamic. The first English performance of Goethe’s tragedy, titled Faustus; or, The Demon’s Victim (Coburg, 7 June 1824), was cleverly assembled by Henry M. Milner from passages translated by Lord Leveson Gower,5 John Anster,6 Percy Bysshe Shelley,7 and an anonymous translation attributed to Samuel Taylor Coleridge.8 Like Marlowe’s Faustus (and not Goethe’s), Milner’s Faustus succumbs to the fear of damnation only in the final scene. Goethe’s ontological challenge of activity (Tätigkeit) as opposed to stasis has neither echo nor hint in Milner’s version. Instead, his pastiche presents an ageing sage turning from the pursuit of knowledge to retrieve the sensual pleasures of youth. Milner grants the “master genius” of his sources, but nevertheless faults “their deficiencies for Stage Representation.” To give the composition “a Theatrical shape,”9 Milner depicted the rapid dissipation of Faustus’s restored youth. The speed of passing time is reinforced by copying the set designs, scenery, and costumes from the line engravings by Moritz von Retzsch.10 Scene by scene, his decrepitude advances. Old Faust appears in his academic robes; young Faust in doublet and tights. In the Garden scene, Retzsch communicates, as well, the contrast between innocence and decadence.

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In the scene set in Martha’s Garden,11 Milner animates Retzsch’s plate by having the characters stroll the circular path, taking turns downstage like the figures of fair and foul weather in a Swiss clock (Illustration 3.1). Goethe divides his play into scenes. Milner adds a division into three acts. Curiously, he also rearranges the scenes and imposes “a lapse of Ten Months … between the Second and Third Scenes of the Second Act,” that is, between the scene in the garden behind Martha’s house, when Faustus succeeds in gaining Margaret’s affections (Goethe’s Faust, lines 3414–3543), and the scene in the tavern in Leipzig (Goethe’s Faust, lines 2073–2336). Milner’s reason for inverting the sequence was to allow

Illustration 3.1  “The Garden Path, Mephistopheles with Martha, Faust with Margaret”

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Margaret time to bear her baby. Coming out of the tavern, Faustus encounters Margaret’s brother Valentine. They engage in a duel, and Valentine falls with a dying curse upon his sister. Prior to the seduction of Margaret in Act II, the events of Act I involve the visit to the Witch’s Kitchen, where Faustus encounters the apparition of Helen of Troy in a magic mirror and drinks the witch’s potion that restores his youth and arouses his desires. Act I concludes with the ascent of the Brocken and the gathering of the witches to celebrate Walpurgis Night. The transformation of the purity of nature through the perverse intervention of the demonic orgy is enhanced with a shift in lighting which tints “the cold and silvery light of the Moon” to “an intense Crimson glow,” bathing the entire scene in a lurid hue. Act II ends with the murder of the baby. Mephistopheles, not Margaret, drowns the infant. Act III begins with Margaret in the dungeon awaiting execution. Faustus attempts to persuade her to escape, which she refuses to do. Aiming to please his London audience, who anticipate, as finale, the scene of fiery damnation, Milner puts Goethe aside and substitutes a scene with Margaret ascending the scaffold to be executed. His moral sensibility reawakened, Faustus “signs the irrevocable Bond, and claims the Liberation of Margaret, when, on a Signal from Mephistopheles, the whole Scaffold with the Persons thereon, sinks into the Earth.” In the penultimate scene, Mephistopheles distracts the guilt-ridden Faustus with a sumptuous festival. In the midst of a “Guaracha” performed by the Coburg ballet troupe, the musicians and dancers are silenced by the appearance of Margaret’s Spectre, who summons Faustus to meet his fate. The gates of Hell are opened to expose a lake of liquid fire. Demons clothed in billows of flame advance to seize Faustus. With cries of frantic despair, he surrenders to his eternity of torment. In most versions of bargaining with the devil, free will is sacrificed to determinism, or in religious terms the damnation of the soul. In Chap. 9, I will discuss Manfred’s scene with the Witch of the Alps, the most Faustian scene in that Faustian play. Manfred makes it very clear that surrender of the will is not a condition he will consider. When she proposes that Manfred “swear obedience to my will,” his response, “Never,” will allow no compromise (Manfred, II.ii.155–160). Byron, who was reared under the influences of Calvinist tenets, resisted the concept of predestination and its denial of self-determination.12 George Soane, who had translated passages from Goethe, may have also borrowed from Manfred in his own version of the tragedy. Byron’s Manfred, asserting himself as their equal, calls upon the seven spirits.

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Soane’s Faustus, in his delusion, goes one step further: he imagines himself their superior, capable of commanding them. Soane turned to Daniel Terry to manage the dialogue. Their collaborative Faustus (Drury Lane, 16 May 1825)13 augmented performance with a musical score by Sir Henry Bishop. Faustus was acted by James William Wallack, known for his role as Victor Frankenstein in Presumption; or, the Fate of Frankenstein (English Opera House, 28 July 1823). Mephistopheles was a character of contrasting identities—one, the seemingly obedient servant played by Terry; the other, an increasingly malignant demon played by Richard John Smith. Always billed as O. Smith, and familiar in a dozen roles as a stage pirate, he was so well practiced in the dialect of Bristol and the West Country that he could not repress the strong rolling “arrr” of his pirate characters. He performed as the silent, progressively menacing demon of smoke and fire. Terry, known for his stage adaptations of the novels of Sir Walter Scott, gave Mephistopheles the dialect and refinement of a Scottish gentleman. Terry’s Mephistopheles communicated an assurance of a timeless continuation of Faustus’ reign of power. As agent of the relentless passage of time and approaching damnation, Smith’s Mephistopheles made evident that Faustus’s assumed power was waning. The dual identity enabled Soane to recreate a distinction akin to Goethe’s opposition of dynamic and static time. In the play’s opening scene, Faustus thinks he has discovered a charm to control the spirits. Mephistopheles answers his summons—first in his demonic form, then in his benign disguise. After aiding Faustus in his seduction of Adine, Mephistopheles pretends to assist Faustus in the abduction of Rosalia, but betrays him into capture and imprisonment. The play ends with the transformation of the obedient Mephistopheles into the demonic. With the ground beneath his feet bursting into flames, Faustus is swallowed up by hell, disappearing through the trap door built into the stage to facilitate such dramatic exits or entrances. In many productions, the principal characters lapse into mere stereotypes. For that reason, there is a pleasure in discovering a new twist, even such as the anonymously presented (possibly by John Hamilton Reynolds) The Devil and Dr. Faustus (Regency, 19 September 1825). This Dr. Faustus is not the aged scholar, but a recent graduate, who understands the sciences as a mastery of magical tricks. The scenes of magic performed by the devil of Marlowe and Goethe do not create the grand transformations of Lucifer, nor do they awaken the enthusiasm with which this Dr. Faustus apprentices himself to the Master to learn his charms and conjurations. Faustus has found a Book of Charms, from which he has learned to

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inscribe a magic circle and recite the incantation to summon Lucifer. Lucifer’s first magical act is to transform a remote glen in the woods into a crowded carnival in Venice. In a Venetian Square, commedia dell’arte players perform a harlequinade. Faustus falls passionately in love with Columbine, which arouses jealousy in Harlequin. Just as the players engage in an arousing bolero, the entire scene vanishes as quickly as it had been conjured. Demonstrating his control over time and space, Lucifer cautions Faustus that all time drifts into the everlasting, and all space ultimately lapses into heaven or hell. Faustus begs Lucifer to teach him how to conjure that street in Venice so that he can seek Columbine. Act I of this two-act play ends with Faustus successfully returning to the enchanted street in Venice. Here he encounters the jealous Harlequin. They duel, and Harlequin falls dead at his feet. In Act II, Faustus is united with Columbine as his bride, and they dwell in luxury in a grand palace. Their contentment is thoroughly dispelled when officers of the Inquisition capture him and place him in chains in a dank dungeon cell. Lucifer reminds Faustus that time and space are transitory illusions. Pledging his loyalty to Lucifer, Faustus signs the fatal bond. The walls of the dungeon collapse, and the clock strikes the hour of damnation. Faustus looks desperately for a place to hide, but he is quickly seized by Lucifer who arrives in a Chariot of Fire and carries him off to hell. Robert the Devil is a legend of medieval origin about a Norman knight who discovers he is the son of Satan. His mother, despairing of heaven’s aid in order to obtain a son, had turned to the devil, who then claimed the soul of his child. Two very different plays were produced in London in response to the libretto prepared by Eugène Scribe and Germain Delavigne and published prior to the performance of Giacomo Meyerbeer’s opera, Robert le Diable (Paris Opéra, 21 November 1831). Edward Fitzball, collaborating with John Baldwin Buckstone, produced Robert le Diable; or, The Devil’s Son (Adelphi, 23 January 1832). A different version, Richard John Raymond’s Robert the Devil, Duke of Normandy (Covent Garden, 2 February 1830) had been performed earlier as Robert the Devil; or, The Bridal Ring (Coburg, 28 November 1829) and with a similar shift in title as Robert the Devil; or, The Wizard’s Ring (Coburg, 21 June 1830). The “Ring” in the title indicates Raymond’s debt to another play with a medieval source: L’anneau de la fiancée (Théâtre de Nouveautés, 28 January 1828) by Felice Blangini and Mathurin J. Brisset. In Scribe’s version, as adopted by Fitzball, Bertram persuades Robert to use a magic bough in order to satisfy his sexual desires for Isabelle. With

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the power of the branch, Robert stops time (see Chap. 5) for everyone except himself and Isabelle. In Raymond’s version, Robert thinks that a magical ring creates secret interludes of time and renders his seductive charm irresistible. With the enchanted bough in Fitzball’s version, Robert can stop time. With the magic ring in Raymond’s version, Robert can retreat with his paramour into a bubble of sequestered time, even as regular time persists in its never-pausing passage. Raymond’s Robert has tired of his bride Matilda. Casting her aside, he goes in quest of new sexual adventures. He is attracted to Blanche, but his courtship is interrupted by Matilda. In order to halt Matilda’s intrusions, Robert has his ring placed on the finger of Matilda’s statue.14 The effect is not what he anticipates. While Robert pursues the seduction of Lodine, a peasant girl, the statue of Matilda is animated by Matilda’s vengeful spirit. With Robert’s ring firmly on her finger, she finds Robert and grasps his hand. Together they sink into a gaping inferno. In the background, Robert’s castle is engulfed in flames. Either anticipation or surprise may contribute to an effective theatrical finale. The Fitzball/Buckstone version of Robert le Diable effectively provided both: the audience anticipates a finale with a fiery damnation; they are surprised when Bertram, not Robert, is carried into the infernal abyss. When Robert’s mother prayed to the devil to give her a son, Bertram, diabolically possessed, fulfilled that impregnation. Still serving his evil master, Bertram torments his son, now Duke of Normandy. Commissioned by the devil to procure Robert’s soul, Bertram plans as well to seduce Robert’s beloved Isabella. Bertram attempts to persuade Robert to sign a contract of indentured servitude to ensure his eternal life. Informed that Bertram is his true father, Robert decides to sign the oath out of filial devotion. Before he can do so, his half-sister Alice arrives with the news that the Prince of Granada has been prevented from marrying Isabelle. Sustained by her belief in divine intervention, Alice delivers the will his mother drafted before her death. Robert reads his mother’s message, in which she warns him that the man who seduced and ruined her will seek his son’s damnation. Robert is wracked by indecision. At the appointed hour of midnight, Bertram comes to procure Robert’s soul for the devil. At this moment Isabella returns. Her radiant beauty, the power of her faith, and her love for Robert combine with such power that Bertram’s resolve is weakened and his evil intentions are delayed. The clock in the castle tower strikes the hour of midnight. The time for Bertram’s coup is past. He is drawn down to hell. Robert is reunited with Isabella.

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Edward Fitzball, The Devil’s Elixir In yet another plot of foreordained damnation, Fitzball borrows two tales from German Romanticism which feature a demonic doppelgänger and a perverted religious communion. Fitzball encountered little resistance from the Examiner of Plays in gaining approval for his melodrama, The Devil’s Elixir; or, The Shadowless Man (Covent Garden, 20 April 1829).15 Perhaps George Colman, then Examiner of Plays, thought that the censorship was not particularly relevant because Fitzball had imported his work from E. T. A. Hoffmann’s The Devil’s Elixirs (1815),16 and the religious issues were German not English, Roman Catholic not Anglican. One religious issue was the effect of communion, and the possibility that the transubstantiation of the sacramental wine had its counterpart in the concoctions identified as the devil’s elixirs. Or whether such elixirs would annihilate the presumed efficacy of confession, prayer, and penance for the remission of sins. Hoffmann’s tale of the corruption of pious Brother Medardus had its English source in Matthew Gregory Lewis’s novel, The Monk (1796). Lewis’s account of the increasing depravity of Father Ambrosius is Hoffmann’s model for Brother Medardus, a pious monk who is perverted into a pursuit of lechery and his irrepressible desire for Aurelia, who is engaged to the Count. Hoffmann’s tale was reviewed by Walter Scott in “On the Supernatural in Fictitious Composition,” in the first issue of the Foreign Language Review (July 1827).17 The tale was then adapted for the stage in Fitzball’s melodrama, with music by George Rodwell. Lewis’s Father Ambrosio and Hoffmann’s Brother Medardus are again renamed as Fitzball’s Brother Francesco. Secretly in love with Aurelia, his brother’s fiancée, Francesco drinks of the elixir which enables his transformation into his brother’s doppelgänger. The elixir has an attendant, a demonic genie in the bottle named Gortsburg, whose assistance Francesco can secure only by signing a fatal pact. Fitzball added a motif from a second tale, Adelbert von Chamisso’s Peter Schlemihl (1814), in which a test is proposed to distinguish the identical brothers. The one who is demonically transformed will cast no shadow.18 The Count has Francesco imprisoned, but Gortsburg intervenes to exchange the two look-alikes. Francesco is about to marry Aurelia, when he learns that the Count is to be executed. In an act of remorse, Francesco orders his brother released and rejoined with Aurelia. Repentant, he takes his final refuge in the monastery. The term of the pact is now expired. Gortsburg arrives at the monk’s cell to carry Francesco off

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to hell, but the stones crumble beneath his feet, and he is struck by a thunderbolt. John Genest judged the play, with its run of twenty-nine nights, a “moderate” success, with the reservation that “the foundation is better than the superstructure” (Illustration 3.2).19

Illustration 3.2  Playbill, The Devil’s Elixir (Covent Garden, 1 May 1829)

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The Covent Garden playbill identifies James Warde in the role of Francesco and Richard John “O.” Smith as the demon of the elixir. Both roles were considerably less important (as font size declares) to the grand scenic backdrops provided by London’s most prominent scene painters, Thomas Grieve (1799–1882) and William Grieve (1800–1844), who provided illusions of vast space with the exterior and interior scenes of the Silver Palm Tree Monastery and the Castle of Hartzmore. More wonderous were the tricks of lighting that allowed the Mystic Cavern to grow old, seeming to crumble into ruin, then with the rejuvenation of its occupants, revive again to sturdy youth. Another trick of the Grieve Brothers’s architectural design occurs in the concluding scene, when the very rocks of the Shrine of St. Anthony succumb to mortal time. Just as the Demon approaches, stone after stone tumbles down, burying the Demon in the rubble.20 Plotting a play that puts a character on the course towards an inevitable doom, a fatal hour which he cannot escape, overrides the question of free will. John Calvin taught that damnation is the consequence of sin, but that the salvation of the elect is granted solely by God. Marlowe’s Faustus, even in his final hour, presumed that he once had a choice but failed to exercise it. Now that time is running out, he pleads for “A year, a month, a week, a natural day,/ That Faustus may repent and save his soul!”

Destiny Drama: From Classical Greek to Naturalism The fatal hour as the dramatic finale must be plotted from the beginning. Its dramatic effect arises from anticipation. Thus, a prophecy, prediction, or pact is most often revealed at the opening, and the entire play is directed towards its concluding fulfilment—or not, should the devil be foiled. The playwright might not insist on an all-governing principle, fate, or destiny. It may suffice if fate operates only through a single character. On stage, destiny might be doled out among a few recipients, while all others seem to exercise the bounty of free will. The former is as much an illusion as the latter. Dramatic characters are determined. Nevertheless, Aristotle stipulated, free will is an illusion that must be nurtured. The “imitation of human action,” as noted above, required mental action (proaireses) as well as physical action (praxis). Deliberations and choices are as crucial to the representation of dramatic character as leaping or weeping.21 Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex was for Aristotle a prime example of successful tragedy, and yet Oedipus is a character whose power to choose has been usurped, his

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free will has been annulled by the oracle’s prophecy that he will murder his father and marry his mother. The Bride of Messina (Die Braut von Messina; Weimar, 19 March 1803) was Friedrich Schiller’s attempt to revive in contemporary theatre the destiny drama of Euripides and Sophocles. Not among the several translations of Schiller’s plays in the Romantic period, it was not translated until the early years of Victoria’s reign.22 As did these great playwrights of Greek antiquity, Schiller closed his tragedy with the downfall of an entire noble line. His use of the chorus, as commentary on the revelations of fate, reinforced his appropriation of Sophoclean destiny. For Sophocles, fate and free will could coexist, even though fate would inevitably prevail. Calvin’s arguments of free choice and predestination involved a similar paradox. Predestination is a knowledge that exists in the mind of an omniscient God who knows the outcome of all choices an individual will make. Fate in Greek drama is the destiny that is foretold. In Sophocles’s example, Oedipus cannot avoid or hide from the events that are destined. The Gothic melodrama, with its supernatural elements and medieval setting, may differ in many respects from the Schicksaltragödie, but both types provide protagonists who set in motion, or fall victim to, a mechanism of cause and effect, of crime and retribution, sometimes a generational curse. Both kinds furnish studies of evil, and call forth horror, gloom, and mystery.23 In order to indicate the apparent source of this type of dark tragedy, the spectators of the British plays adopted the epithet “German.” These were the plays that Samuel Taylor Coleridge referred to as “orgasms of a sickly imagination”24 and William Wordsworth called “sickly and stupid German tragedies.”25 But Coleridge was quick to point out the misnomer. “The so-called German drama … is English in its origin, English in its materials, and English by re-adoption.”26 The Gothic play had developed its own national brand of horrors, beginning with Horace Walpole’s The Mysterious Mother (1768).27 German “improvements,” Coleridge observed, began to be imported by the English poets and playwrights in the 1790s. What then ensued was a rampant import-­ export trade such as witnessed in dramatizing a monk’s depravity from Lewis, to Hoffmann, to Fitzball. Rather than adopt the representation of fate in the manner of classical Greek tragedy, a few German playwrights of the second decade of the nineteenth-century chose to assume a more stringent causality. At odds with Aristotle, these playwrights allowed “improbable possibilities”28 in the form of radical coincidence. The emphasis was on the deliberate

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unfolding of consequences. This form of Schicksalstragödie was introduced by Zacharias Werner, whose The 24th of February (Der vierundzwanzigste Februar; Hoftheater Weimar, 24 February 1810)29 not only demonstrated characters scourged by the consequences of their words and thoughts as well as deeds, but also made effective use of simultaneous action (see Chap. 6, “Time Replayed”) on a divided stage, showing parallel events occurring in two rooms. Adolph Müllner refined Werner’s exposition of fatal time passing minute by minute in the tightly woven causal connections of a one-act play, The Twenty-ninth of February (Der neun und zwanzigste Februar, 1812). Müllner’s The Guilt (Die Schuld, 1813; publ. 1816)30 demonstrated that a structure of causal links could effectively replace the dramatic monologue as means to reveal a character’s motives and deliberations. For several years, Schicksalstragödie on the model of Die Schuld dominated the German stage. In 1821, Christoph Ernst Houwald published four fate-tragedies. Of the four, The Picture (Das Bild, 1821)31 was the most successful in sustaining the causal links necessary to plot and character, but even here Houwald relied on dialogue, rather than on action, to disclose a self-fulfilling prophecy.32 Determinism for the playwrights of the Romantic era referred to universal laws of causality that attributed coincidence and chance to ignorance, and regarded free will as no more than an illusion. Or a playwright might resort to the grander illusion of a pervasive power that worked with retributive justice on the actions of mortals. Following the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859), determinism was defined in terms of the processes of nature or nurture. The one, biological or genetic determinism, considered human behaviour as directly controlled by an individual’s genes or some component of their physiology. The other determinism looked to family, social conditions, and immediate factors of environment as the motivation for behaviour. Darwinian assumptions are evident in the plot and character of the naturalistic plays. Naturalism as a movement in European drama held sway in the 1880s in the plays of August Strindberg: The Father (1887), Miss Julie (1888), and Creditors (1889), and in the 1890s in the plays of Gerhart Hauptmann: The Weavers (1892) and Drayman Henschel (1898). As a literary movement, naturalism favoured everyday speech forms and familiar settings. By contrast, the determinism of Romantic melodrama still tolerated ghosts, spirits, or demonic entities intervening in the human action. Fatal consequences in naturalism resulted from natural, not supernatural, causes. Oppressive conditions, social and industrial, perverted human interaction.

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Tragic Fatalism Although best known for his comedies, operas, farces, Thomas John Dibdin also adapted several important tragedies from the works of other authors. Dibdin augmented the concept of fatalism in several adaptations, including his versions of George Lillo’s The Fatal Curiosity (1818, 1826) and Joanna Baillie’s Constantine Paleologus (1817). Another play in which this Romantic version of fatalism commands the plot is Johann Friedrich Kind’s libretto for Carl Maria von Weber’s opera Der Freischütz (Schauspielhaus Berlin, 18 June 1821). For his version, The Fatal Marksman (1824), Thomas De Quincey turned, as did Kind, to August Apel’s tale “Der Freischütz” in the Gespensterbuch.33 Stage adaptations by James Robinson Planché and Edward Fitzball also engage the ironic twists in De Quincey’s version of the tale. Without that irony, characters would remain in bondage to causality as casualties of their own self-fulfilling prophecies. This inevitability was characteristic of German Schicksaltragödie, which owed an apparent debt to Lillo’s representation of time as unwavering in its fated trajectory. Karl Philipp Moritz appropriated such a plot in his Blunt, oder der Gast (1781), which dramatized the murder of a son who, though believed to be dead, returned home to aid his aged parents. It was readily assumed that The Fatal Curiosity was Moritz’s source,34 and that both playwrights were progenitors of the drama of fatal time subsequently practised by Zacharias Werner and other destiny-dramatists. With Denis Diderot’s Jacques the Fatalist and his Master (Jacques le fataliste et son maître) informing his sense of fatalism, Thomas Dibdin saw the inherent contradictions in the very presumption of fatal time in character and action. Although Diderot’s novel was written during the fifteen years ending in 1780, the first French edition was published posthumously in 1796.35 The manuscript circulated widely throughout Europe. In 1785, Friedrich Schiller published his translation of key passages, and that German translation was translated back into French in 1793. In the meantime, Wilhelm Christhelf Sigmund Mylius, known as well for his translation of Voltaire’s Candide, oder der Optimismus (1778), completed a second German version of Jacques in 1792. The novel traces the relationship between the valet Jacques and his master. His master is unnamed, and the destination of their journey is unrevealed. Jacques is requested by his master to tell the story of his loves, but that story is continually interrupted by other

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characters and various comic mishaps. A partial story is related, but that story was borrowed from Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy (1759–1766). Other characters also attempt to tell their stories, but they, too, are interrupted. Diderot has even invented an impatient “reader,” who interrupts Jacques with objections that he has the facts wrong or has left out a crucial detail. Mixing comedy with romance or stifled eroticism, the disrupted tales are often exposed as the storyteller’s deception. Insisting upon his philosophical conviction that all choices, however insignificant, are wholly predetermined, Jacques repeatedly claims that time holds them in an inescapable course towards doom. He nevertheless responds to events as if he were untethered in a world of unpredictable variety. He argues that everything that happens to us down here, whether for good or for evil, is already written in the great scroll above (“tout ce qui nous arrive de bien et de mal ici-bas était écrit là-haut”). Jacques himself is a character of contradictions whose actions belie his proclaimed fatalism. He seems to exchange roles, so that servant becomes master and master becomes servant. The characters encountered on the journey are self-contradictions as well: best friends are depicted constantly duelling; Father Hudson, an active church reformer, lives a life of debauchery. The story of the book’s publication is as much a matter of ironic twists as the interrupted stories within the book. So, too, is its reception. Not in France, nor among the French novelists, nor even the French intellectuals, Jacques the Fatalist was noted. It found its first enthusiastic reception in Germany in the translations of Schiller and Mylius, in the criticism of Schiller and Friedrich Schlegel, in the novels of Jean Paul, in the historical drama of Schiller, and in the fiabesque plays of Ludwig Tieck. Friedrich Schlegel referred to Jacques the Fatalist in his critical fragments (3, 15) and in the Athenaeum fragments (201). Jacques’s affirmation of fatalism, even as he acts in disregard of its possible dictates, was similar to Figaro with Count Almaviva in the comedies of Beaumarchais.36 Jacques’s edification of his master aligned with a rising tide of revolutionary resistance. The anti-authoritarian conjunction of fatalism and freedom is recapitulated in Schlegel’s concept of irony. The literary construction of identity, whether in narrative or in drama, profits from the irony of digression and disruption, the mixture of reason and absurdity, sentimental and naive.37 Among the modes of irony particularly applicable to the drama, Schlegel describes Aus-der-Rolle treten (parabasis) and Illusionsdurchbruch.38 The former, an Aristophanic

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device, occurs when an actor steps out of his character role to address the playwright or audience; the latter is breaking the illusion of the entire performance. In Diderot’s Jacques, these moments occur when the “reader” interrupts the dialogue or storytelling.

Friedrich Schiller, The Robbers and Wallenstein In describing the naïve in contrast to the sentimental, Schiller attributed the achievement of Aeschylus and Shakespeare to their unencumbered naïvité, that is, their ability to describe characters responding to unfolding events directly and accurately. The sentimental author is entrapped in introspection, self-reflection, and a consciousness, unsure of its bondage to tradition. While the naïve author beholds circumstances unaffected by personal fears and desires, the sentimental poet is burdened by experiences affecting his perception of his material. Not pleased with being identified as naïve, Goethe objected to the distinction, even after Schiller explained that the naïve and the sentimental are both states of mind. The former is achieved not by innocence but by disciplined intuition; the latter is the consequence of estrangement versus entrapment, acquiescence to circumstances, and persistent intrusion of moral and rational self-consciousness. Tragic and comic elements may occur in all literature. Naïve objectivity has an advantage in tragedy; the sentimental fantasy favours comedy.39 Should an unresolved contest persist between the two, the “contradiction between the actual and ideal” will result in irony and satire. Because contradiction dominates thought in contemporary society, satire proliferates as a modern literary genre. Both comedy and tragedy respond to incongruities. Of the two, Schiller asserts, comedy ranks the higher. While in a tragedy, the subject matter generates what happens, in comedy everything happens because of the playwright. This means, in turn, that plot and character are more liberated. Comedy responds more fully to the call to be free. Comic characters, because they are free and at ease, are beautiful; tragic characters are sublime, but they can be free only by fits and starts, and with a struggle.40 Like tragedy, comedy, too, tracks human striving, but it does so without the torment of passion. It regards self and others with clarity and composure, and most important it finds everywhere more chance than fate. Therefore, it laughs at the absurdity of surrendering to fatalism, whereas tragedy can only rage or weep at the cruelty of fate.41 Schiller had two advocates in England: Coleridge and Carlyle. Schiller’s trilology—Wallenstein’s Camp (Wallensteins Lager), Prologue, The Piccolomini (Die Piccolomini), and Wallenstein’s Death (Wallensteins

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Tod)—had not yet been published in Germany, when Coleridge’s translation of the latter two plays appeared in England.42 As Coleridge recognized, Schiller upheld his belief in art “as a happy citizen, who calls to me, ‘Be free like me’” (“ein glücklicher Bürger, der mir zuruft: ‘Sei frei wie ich’.”) Resorting to propaganda would be superfluous, because art itself is the model for freedom. “Beauty is freedom in appearance.” (“Schönheit ist Freiheit in der Erscheinung.”)43 His trilogy counters the notion of destiny by presenting a character committed to the delusion that his fate is predetermined. As a leading general during the Thirty Years’ War, Wallenstein has trusted in the stars and has met victory after victory as commander-in-chief of the imperial army. He falters when the auspicious stars no longer shine. He awaits a sign whether he should continue to fight for Roman Catholicism in loyal service to his emperor, Ferdinand II, or should shift his allegiance to support the Lutheran and Calvinist cause. Believing that his fortune will be guided by the stars, he waits too long. His emperor perceives betrayal. Wallenstein’s delay thus determines his tragic end. In addition to translating The Piccolomini and Wallenstein’s Death, Coleridge also adapted characters and conflict from Schiller’s The Robbers for his Remorse. Schiller dramatized the conflict between Karl and Franz Moor, the sons of Count Maximilian. A university student swayed by revolutionary sentiments, Karl seeks to maintain his close relationship with his conservative father. Franz, as the younger brother, resents that Karl is the designated heir to the family estate. While Karl is at the university, Franz uses his absence to arouse his father’s anger against his elder son’s wayward activities and to convince Amalia to abandon her devotion to him. By aligning freedom and authority with the arguments concerning free will and determinism, Schiller, even in his earliest play, touches on topics subsequently developed in his aesthetics of freedom. The play opens with Franz intercepting a letter from Karl to the Count, declaring that he has ceased his gambling and carousing and will no longer be sending his frequent requests for money. Franz destroyed the original letter and substituted a forged one, claiming to be from a concerned friend, who fears that Karl’s dissolute habits have become dangerously destructive. In addition to drinking, gambling, and womanizing, Karl has turned to murder and theft in order to pay his debts. The false letter, together with Franz’s lies, persuades the old Count that, in order to preserve the family integrity, Karl must be disinherited. Assured of his role as heir and future head of the family, Franz then casts out the old Count, so

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that he will have no occasion to change his mind. He also intends to take Amalia as his bride. Goodness is rendered impotent, incapable of propagating itself. Evil, by contrast, spawns with fetid fecundity. Franz delights in disgust—“Pfui, pfui! mir ekelt”—at the portrait of Karl, he conjures to persuade Amalia that her lover is rotting away, his body ridden with infectious lesions, his putrid flesh falling from his bones. “His kisses are pestilence; his lips will poison yours” (I.iii). Time in fatalist drama is measured by inescapable consequences. A brief interlude of seeming freedom may intervene, but it cannot forestall the foreordained doom. The old Count, whom Franz abandoned as a beggar on the road, is rescued by Karl. Seeing the band of robbers arrive at the castle, Franz assumes he is about to be brutally murdered, so he takes his own life. The robbers deliver Amalia from the castle to join with Karl. She finds him alive and well, not the heap of putrescent decay described by Franz. Amalia experiences a moment of happiness. But fate is still ticking towards the hour of disillusion and death. The feeble old Count becomes aware that Karl is the leader of the robber band. Lacking the strength to cope with a truth far worse than Franz’s lie, the old Count dies in despair. Karl tries to leave the robber band, but his followers remind him of his oath to lead them. He cannot keep the promise to his men and at the same time be with Amalia. Once Amalia realized that she could not be with Karl, she begs to be slain. Karl himself performs that bloody task. He then determines that he no longer has the will to lead the band. Knowing that he will be hanged, Karl decides to surrender to the guardians of the trade roads. A second influential advocate in England was Thomas Carlyle, who launched his own career by celebrating the playwright and philosopher in his Life of Schiller (1825). Carlyle argues that the fatalism of the dramatic action is not confined to the stage—it infects the audience. “The Robbers produces an effect powerful even to pain; we are absolutely wounded by the catastrophe; our minds are darkened and distressed.” Because Schiller has invested Karl with “a towering grandeur,” “a whirlwind force of passion and of will,” Karl holds the admiration of the audience even in his “blind madness” and “most delirious of enterprises.” Together with Karl and the robbers, the audience is caught in the fevered tempo of fervent exploits that grow “more and more audacious.” Even though they recognize that Karl “is at arms against the conventions of men and the everlasting laws of Fate,” the audience is held by the same spell of fatalist time: “we follow him with anxiety,” Carlyle claims, “where he wanders,

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encompassed by peril, inspired by lofty daring, and torn by unceasing remorse; and we wait with awe for the doom which he has merited and cannot avoid.”44 In England, The Robbers was widely read, but seldom staged. Censorship blocked the way. Alexander Tytler’s translation (1792)45 attracted readers, but all attempts to have it staged were rejected. The play was deemed incendiary, likely to stir passive resignation into violent insurrection. Karl’s grand fatalism might spread through the audience like a contagious disease infecting the masses with revolutionary madness. Tytler had substituted a milder rhetoric for the more rebellious passages, but not mild enough to appease the Examiner of Plays. For her private production of The Robbers at Brandenburgh-House Theatre, Lady Craven, Margravine of Anspach, published a new translation of The Robbers.46 She claimed that she published her translation in order to exonerate herself from the “ungenerous and false aspersions of newspaper writers, who have … insinuated that it was played with all the Jacobinical Speeches that abound in the original.” She and her audience at Brandenburgh House were members of that aristocracy denounced in Karl’s “Jacobinical speeches.” The author, she contended, was among the most brilliant playwrights of the age and should not be identified with a fictional character. By depriving the play of its most passionate motivation, she has redefined his ideology as an ineffectual champion of liberty and law (i.e. upholding aristocracy and tradition). Franz’s creepy lechery and deceit is left to persist in its ineffectual impotency.47 The first playwright to succeed in bringing The Robbers to the London stage was Joseph George Holman. He succeeded only because of his persistence and his willingness to alter and emend. The ideological sanitization of the staged version retained only tamed down shadows of the original. The new title, The Red-Cross Knights,48 suggests that the Robbers have converted from their former evil ways. Holman’s correspondence with John Larpent, Examiner of Plays, reveals how extensive his revisions became. In a letter to Larpent (29 March 1799), Holman responds to previous objections and declares himself ready to make another round of changes.49 Three issues seem to have prompted Larpent’s rejection. The first was Schiller’s reliance on the fatal course of time. Fatalism was either a doctrine of hopelessness, and therefore a force in the dissolution and decay of social well-being; or it was a perverse appropriation of the Calvinist belief in God’s omniscient awareness of all time and space. Every rape, murder,

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or sickness is known to God and will occur just as preordained. Holman acknowledges that both modes of fatal time seem to be at work, but he assures Larpent that he has again examined the play and can eliminate their effects with minor revision. “I find the doctrine of predestination will with the omission of a very few lines, be totally excluded.” Holman understated how often that conviction of fatal time is reasserted not just by Franz, Karl, and Amalia, but also by Spiegelberg among the bandits, by Hermann the bastard son of a nobleman, and by Maximilian in response to the betrayal by his sons. Larpent’s second objection was to the character of Francis (Franz). Holman responds by reaffirming that villains are supposed to be disliked. “The Author has invariably exhibited him an object of detestation.” Schiller is more consistent in this delineation than Shakespeare. “Unlike Richard III, Iago, and characters of a similar nature, he is drawn without courage, or any one point, that can render him, for an instant, capable of inspiring a sensation but of abhorrence.” Larpent’s third objection was to Charles (Karl). In the context of any other play, his actions would identify him as the villain, not the hero. He lies to his father and to his beloved. He leads a gang of highway robbers. He chooses to stay with them rather than to care for his intended bride. When she declares that she would rather die than live without him, he obliges by plunging a knife in her chest. After she is dead, he decides that he really does not want to lead the bandits after all. Holman tries to contain all this bad behaviour within the Aristotelian concept of a “tragic flaw.” With no admission of incongruity, Holman insists that in the character of Charles, Schiller has “sketched a picture of morality.” His defence of Charles seems to be that, when he is good, he is very good, and when he is bad, he is horrible: “In him we see every trait of character, which commands admiration, when devoted to a good cause, become a torment to the possessor, when perverted from the proper channel.” Holman insists that Schiller adheres to the same dramatic exposition of fate’s trajectory that we see in Macbeth and other tragic heroes. He begs to be permitted to revise or remove “any passage that may be deemed improper.” His final plea concerns the “great celebrity” of the play and the playwright. Nothing can be gained by blocking the performance of a play that is available in every bookshop.50 While Friedrich Schiller and Friedrich Schlegel are responsible for shaping much of aesthetics, literature, and criticism for subsequent generations, their own concepts of fate and fortune had been reformulated by

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Diderot’s exposition of a fatalism that has a giggle-fit in the midst of a threatening tirade about impending doom. In the Aesthetic Letters, Schiller describes the artistic impulse in terms of a creative play with form (genre, structure) and matter (the data of the senses). By itself the Formtrieb generates only restrictive rules; by itself, the Stofftrieb accumulates only impressions. The Spieltrieb allows the artist to combine form and matter in the free play of creativity.51 Schlegel conceives Romantic poetry as a fragmentary combination of wit and irony, an endless, historically situated compulsion. Schiller asserts the liberating potential of art wrought in freedom. Schlegel identifies the liberating potential of art in raising and demolishing illusion, delusion, and disillusion. Schiller emphasized play; Schlegel stressed the functions of irony.52 Largely through Schiller and Schlegel, Jacques the Fatalist crossed to England. Although written in dialogue, it was not intended for the stage. Jacques nevertheless fell into the hands of playwrights who recognized the stage potential of interrupted dialogue, half-told tales, and Gibbonian ruin just around the corner. Jacques arrived in England at the time when harlequinades were well established as a clever interlude of comic metadrama, in which a familiar story (e.g. “Mother Goose” or “Aladdin’s Lamp”) would be enacted up to a climactic point in which all story characters would resort to their identity in commedia dell’arte as Harlequin, Columbine, Punch, Pantaloon, and Clown.53 Theatre entertainment was also being redefined by the emergence of melodrama as a popular form, usually performed in three rather than five acts, combining comedy with tragedy, and drama with song. Matthew Gregory Lewis was fully aware of Schiller’s ironies of appearances and role-playing when he adapted Kabala and Liebe as The Harper’s Daughter (Covent Garden, 4 May 1803).

George Lillo to Thomas John Dibdin, The Fatal Curiosity The Fatal Curiosity, the blank verse tragedy by Lillo, was first produced in 1736, half a century before Diderot taught the German Romantics the ironies of fatalism. Lillo said his tragedy was based on an old story of a Cornish murder, but a similar plot recurs in many literatures. Lillo’s version is recognized as an influence on Werner and Schicksaltragödie. Henry Fielding, manager of the Little Theatre in the Haymarket, advertised Lillo’s new tragedy as Guilt Its Own Punishment; or, Fatal Curiosity (27

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May 1736). The play was published as Fatal Curiosity: A True Tragedy (1737).54 Guilt Its Own Punishment succinctly defines that mode of the self-torment that a sin-plagued mind might impose upon itself. Such mental torment may well be the most frequent outcome of fatalist retribution. But Fielding also saw Lillo’s play as addressing the pervasive human compulsion to poke and pry. This compulsion provided George Colman’s plot for his Blue Beard (Drury Lane, 16 January 1798). Charles Dance appropriated the same title, The Fatal Curiosity, for his adaptation of Blue Beard as a burletta (Lyceum, 8 August 1842). Fielding’s two-part title was intended to anticipate the dramatic content. Granted that curiosity might foster such an irrepressible urge that it could drive a person to invade another’s property. But was that urge strong enough to motivate the ageing Wilmots to murder their guest? I have observed that Lillo was considered a forerunner of destiny-drama. In revealing the conditions which brought the Wilmots into hunger and poverty with no apparent rescue to their desperate plight, The Fatal Curiosity might also be seen as a forerunner of the literary naturalism of the 1880s (“Destiny Drama: from Classical Greek to Naturalism” is surveyed earlier in this chapter). With his son gone off to India and now many years absent, Old Wilmot and his wife have fallen into extreme poverty. The play opens with the report of a ship from India having struck a rock at the entrance to the harbour. Among the survivors is the long missing son. Returning from India with considerable wealth, the son hopes to surprise his parents. Knocking at their door and requesting lodging, he is recognized by neither parent. Persisting in his incognito status, he decides to meet old friends in the village to prepare for his revelation. During his absence, his father and mother pry into his bags and discover the cache of his wealth. At the urging of his wife, Old Wilmot agrees that they should murder the stranger and steal his valuables. Only in the aftermath do they discover the initials on his bags and realize that their victim was their son. The melodrama of fatal time evolved directly from the drama of destiny, but the meaning of fatalism had shifted. Thomas Dibdin twice adapted Lillo’s Fatal Curiosity, each time taking the adaptation further from the original, each time elaborating the irony of the events. The shifting concept of tragic fatalism from Enlightenment to Romanticism complicated the Aristotelian dictum that a character is brought to ruin by some inherent tragic flaw.55 An audience may well reject a playwright’s attempt to represent as heroic his character battling guilt over his own past misdeeds. Larpent repeatedly rejected Holman’s efforts to render Schiller’s Karl

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Moor suitable for the English stage. Shakespeare had rendered Macbeth heroic despite the evil of his “vaulting ambition” and his “black and deep desires.” Macbeth gains sympathy in his struggle with “doubts and fear,” and admiration for his bold encounter with Macduff. With the Oedipus Rex of Sophocles as his example, Aristotle identified the tragic flaw of Oedipus as an overweening pride that prevented him from understanding the prophecy of the Sphinx that he would kill his father, Laius, and marry his mother, Jocasta. The prophesied events are dictates of fate and cannot be adverted. The dramatic irony arises from the audience fully understanding the prophecy, while Oedipus remains ignorant of its most profound implications. Oedipus understands only that he must drive off the plague currently devastating his kingdom, and he must find and punish the man who murdered his father. He remains unaware that, just as the Sphinx foretold, he himself has murdered his father, he himself has wed his mother. When those truths are exposed, Jocasta hangs herself, and Oedipus, self-condemned for patricide and incest, inflicts upon himself the punishment of blindness, gouging out his own eyes.56 Fatal might simply mean lethal without any implication of an unfolding destiny. For example, the title of John Thomas Dibdin’s The Fatal Island (Royal Circus, 28 July 1817) could possibly reveal that some unknown and unanticipated calamity would strike visitors dead. Instead, Dibdin has the crew members in this nautical melodrama debate the destiny-driven nature of their voyage. Similar self-awareness distinguished Dibdin’s The Murdered Guest (Royal Circus, 13 October 1818) from Lillo’s Fatal Curiosity. Old Wilmot does not know that the stranger is his son. The son, for his part, does not anticipate that poverty will drive his parents to commit an act of ruthless murder. Dibdin, in his version of 1818, rejects the fatalism which operates, as in Oedipus Rex, only through the ignorance of the characters. Young Wilmot in Lillo’s tragedy is unaware that his parents intend to murder him. Dibdin allows Young Wilmot to overhear the plot, yet the fatalism persists in spite of his naïve trust and love of his parents. He is so confident that they will recognize him that he willingly risks his life. Dibdin’s second version, The Fatal Experiment; or, The Murdered Guest (Sadler’s Wells, 28 December 1826), makes even more of a fatal irony in presenting characters aware of the evil, yet untormented by the impending doom, and willfully confronting the crime. The experiment for the parents is whether the stranger will anticipate the plot; for Young Wilmot, the experiment is whether his parents will come to their senses and abandon their murderous intentions.57

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Fatalism for the playwrights of the Romantic era was often compounded, sometimes confounded, with the determinism dictated by universal laws of causality. With no need to appeal to the irrefutable links of cause and effect, fatalism in Gothic melodrama readily granted a supernatural force in prophecy and prediction, in premonition and presentiment, in the foreboding or the hunch in daily life. Determinism, by contrast, attributed coincidence and chance to ignorance or inadequately informed understanding and regarded free will as no more than an illusion born of hubris. In Jacques the Fatalist, Diderot exercised the irony in having his character shift from one discourse to the other, appealing to determinism to explain his fatalism, and vice versa.

Joanna Baillie, Constantine Paleologus Joanna Baillie, in teaching herself the art and craft of playwrighting, studied Corneille, Racine, Molière, as well as Shakespeare, Voltaire, and Diderot.58 From the former she acquired an appreciation of the formal rigor of the drama; from the latter she learned how to reveal the inner life, the thoughts, feelings, and mental conflicts of her characters. In the “Introductory Discourse” to her Plays of the Passion, Baillie affirms an instinctive compulsion to observe the behaviour of others, a compulsion which can be discretely indulged and satisfied in the theatre. She explains that the “chief object” of her Plays of the Passion is “to delineate the progress of the higher passions in the human breast.”59 Time is measured in the incremental changes in a character as the boundaries of normalcy are trespassed and the passion becomes an obsession, a madness. In De Monfort (1800), the audience witnesses the title hero succumb to a jealous rivalry that ends in madness and death.60 In Orra (1812), the title character stoutly resists the deliberate efforts to undermine her courage until her mind is forced to yield to fear.61 In these plays, her portrayals of a character’s fears, fantasies, and visions reveal her skill in transforming psychological motives into tragic character. In Chap. 8, Joanna Baillie’s The Dream (1812) is discussed as an example of alternate time. It might well have been discussed here for it also provides an exposition of the mode of fatal time that devolves alongside of causal time. Osterloo, by a series of seemingly chance circumstances, is brought to a village churchyard, where in a previously unknown, unmarked grave lies the body of a man whom he murdered many years in the past. His victim manifests himself in the dreams of others and dictates the

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conditions for exposing the crime and bringing the murderer to justice. The fatal prosecution is enacted in Osterloo’s mind.62 Baillie’s passion-­ possessed characters “deny their own delusions, deny the destructive nature of the unconscious or subconscious fears, deny their own psychological responsibility.”63 Acknowledging the authorial challenge in confronting political turmoil, Lord Byron praised Voltaire and Edmund Gibbon as the “gigantic minds” who met that challenge “Titan-like.” Voltaire’s weapons were the “fire and fickleness” of his protean wit. Not Voltaire, but Gibbon won Byron’s praise as “The lord of irony,” a weapon that cast a “master spell,/ Which stung his foes to wrath” (Childe Harold, III.cv-cvii). Gibbon’s irony grew with the awareness that not Rome alone, but all empires are destined to fall. Political upheaval, visions in dreams, cultural destruction, psychological turmoil, and illusions of power recur in several of Baillie’s plays, but perhaps more extensively in Constantine Paleologus: the Last of the Caesars (1805). With all the “master-spell” of ironic fatalism intact, Baillie adapted plot and character from Gibbon’s account of the siege by the Turks of Constantinople (28 May 1453).64 In Baillie’s dramatization, a key attribute of that irony lies in the liberation and advancement that accompanied the dissolution and demise of the city that had been a centre for the arts and science. As John Lemprière explained, the House of Medici, the Pope, the princes of Italy offered protection and support, and thus rescued the poets, artists, and scientists and secured a progress of learning in Europe.65 Baillie departed from Gibbon’s account in her development of the character of Constantine and her introduction of Valeria as Constantine’s wife. When the curtain rose on Constantine Paleologus, the audience might well have thought the performance would be another version of the fall of the effete king in the tradition of Marlowe’s Edward II or Shakespeare’s Richard II. In Baillie’s own words, “the last of the Caesars” was a modest, affectionate, domestic man; nursed in a luxurious court in habits of indulgence and indolence; without ambition, even without hope, rousing himself up on the approach of unavoidable ruin; and deserted by every Christian prince in Europe, deserted by his own worthless and enervated subjects.66

As the play opens, the siege is already upon the city. Mahomet and his vast army are tented before the walls. Constantine has been abandoned by his

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own people and remains supported by a brave and loyal band of strangers, who nevertheless recognize the peril of the circumstances. Although convinced that an inexorable fate has run its course, Constantine rises from the lethargy of resignation, determined to confront the overwhelming storm of a battle he cannot win. His fatalist philosophy has forced his recognition that he must perform the role that has been foreordained. He is the last of a long line of kings, the last of the Romans. Therefore, he must meet his fate with all the nobility and dignity that he can muster.67 As Constantine’s devoted wife, Valeria also provides a counterbalance to her husband’s acquiescence to an irresistible fatalism. Although not mentioned by Gibbon or his sources, Valeria is given a crucial role in encouraging Constantine to valiant resistance, and rallying other characters to join him on the barricades. For Baillie, fatalism is a condition of mental surrender. Not just Constantine as “the last of the Caesars,” but his court too, the metropolis of Constantinople, and its inhabitants are the last remnants of a once refined, learned, and vital civilization. As part of the opposition of Constantine’s fatalism and Valeria’s temporal commitment to duty and everyday responsibility, Baillie maintains attention to the uncontrollable violence of pagan forces that assault individual human dignity. As a major cultural hub, Constantinople and its leaders once upheld the pride of civilization. From the opening action, Constantine admits that the culture is degenerating. From Gibbon’s account of advancing barbarism usurping the vacancies of cultural decline, Baillie became attracted to periods of, in her own words, “discord, usurpation, and change.”68 Not just individuals, but entire cities, entire cultures could fall into emotional or mental dissolution. Thomas John Dibdin altered Gibbon even further when he appropriated Baillie’s tragedy for performance as a melodrama, Constantine and Valeria; or, The Last of the Caesars (Royal Circus, 23 June 1817). In Constantine Paleologos, Baillie is consistent in depicting the growing threat of the Turkish hordes as an inhuman tide. War transforms rational humanity into insect or beast, feeding on the soul of the city. A voice calls from the wall, describing the invaders: “See! see! how, cluster’d on each other’s backs,/They mount like swarming bees, or locusts link’d/In bolt’ring heaps!” (V.i). The devastation continues: “midst yon streams of liquid fires,/And hurling ruins and o’erwhelming mass/Of things unknown, unseen, incalculable … man’s strength is naught” (V.i). Constantinople’s disintegration is inseparable from the disintegration of its people:

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Ah, see how sadly changed the prospect is Since first from our high station we beheld This dismal siege begin! ‘Midst level ruin, Our city now shows but its batter’d towers, Like the jagg’d bones of some huge animal, Whose other parts the mould’ring hand of time to dust resolves.             (V.i)

Valeria provides an articulate questioning presence throughout the play. Like her husband, she suffers distress and dividedness: supportive and dedicated to him, yet needing love and reassurance, she feels the strain of uncertainty, and thus succumbs to the “dark progression” of fatalism: Each day comes bearing on its weight of ills, With a to-morrow shadow’d at its back, More fearful than itself—a dark progression— And the dark end of all, what will it be? (I.ii)

The nocturnal flight of the imperial eagle she accepts as an omen: Be it good or ill, His fate is mine, and in his fate alone I seek to know it.             (II.iii)

Prepared to join Constantine in the tomb, Valeria declares herself liberated, “I now am free to wander where I list.” Not Mahomet’s intent in his conquest, the entire culture of Constantine’s Byzantine empire was liberated as well. The grand architecture was in rubble. The artists and scholars had fled to Rome. Converting a tragedy into a melodrama was not always a desecration. Modifications were imposed to transform one genre into another. This was common practice in adapting a novel to the stage, or adjusting a foreign play. Immensely popular were episodes from the novels of Scott, or the plays of Schiller or Kotzebue. Restructuring usually meant reducing from five to three acts, trimming the dialogue, adding a few songs and a bit of comedy. Thomas John Dibdin was among the most active practitioners. Earlier in this chapter, we considered some of the differences he imposed in his two adaptations of Lillo’s Fatal Curiosity. In adapting Baillie’s tragedy, he omitted much of the dialogue of Othiva, Rodrigo, Justiniani, Heugho, and Othoric. But he kept every word of Valeria, the

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character whom Baillie added as a major alteration of Gibbon’s story. Appreciating the dominant relevance of their dialogue, Dibdin modified the title, Constantine and Valeria; or, The Last of the Caesars (Royal Circus 23 June1817) and focused on the acute emotional desperation as husband and wife endeavoured to understand their love in terms of time, fate, and death. Valeria takes on Constantine’s fatalism; he adopts her rational practicality.

Edward Fitzball, Der Freischütz The fatalism of this Romantic tale is a fascinating variation on the many stories of a pact with the devil and the devil’s hold on the lives of those who have surrendered to his thrall. With a prior existence in folklore, this tale, “Der Freischütz,” was first published by August Apel in the Gespensterbuch (Ghost-book, 1811).69 A decade passed before the tale rose to fame, transformed by Johann Friedrich Kind into the libretto for Carl Maria von Weber’s opera Der Freischütz (Schauspielhaus Berlin, 18 June 1821). For his version, The Fatal Marksman (1824), Thomas De Quincey turned, as did Kind, to Apel’s tale.70 His version confirms that the devil must have his due. There is no Kilian as mortal rival. Instead, there is in service to the Black Horseman a crazed old witch and an old soldier with a wooden leg. There is different count of the bullets, and, as the Horseman commands, a different fate for their targets: “Take the balls which thou hast cast; sixty for thee, three for me; sixty go true, the three go askew; all will be plain, when we meet again” (3: 309). While casting the bullets, the old witch prophesied the target of the fatal bullet. Shoot in the light, shoot in the dark, Thy bullets, be sure, shall go true to the mark. “Shoot the dove,” says the word of command: And the forester bold, with “the skilful hand,” Levels and fires: oh, Marksman good! The dove lies bathed in its innocent blood! (3: 306–307)

Katharine dreams that she is the dove killed by the devil’s bullet. That dream comes true when the commissioner instructs William to fire at a dove perched on a pillar. He fires and the bullet is lodged in the very middle of her fractured forehead. Her parents die of grief. The forester spends his remaining days in a madhouse (3: 311–312).

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De Quincey’s translation of Apel followed soon after the premiere of Weber’s opera at the Schauspielhaus in Berlin in 1821, but a long delay ensued before a theatrical response reached London. In the meantime, Der Freischütz was being performed to German audiences in Dresden, Leipzig, Hamburg, Munich, Karlsruhe, Königsberg, and Prague. During a period in which England was struggling for reform, it may be that Apel, and Kind with him, had developed a plot in which the Prince may seem to act as an accomplice to the devil. How would a London audience respond to the climactic scene in which Ottokar, the sovereign prince (De Quincey’s commissioner), gives the fatal command to shoot the dove? When governed by fatalism, drama moves from scene to scene in anticipation of a fatal event. Anticipation, as Kind realized, can also be resolved in surprise. It would be wrong, ethically and aesthetically, to have Max kill his beloved Agathe (De Quincey’s William and Katharine). The devil must have his due, but so too must dramatic propriety. To provide a more satisfactory target for the devil’s bullet, Kind introduced the character of Kilian. As Max’s rival, Kilian has already made his pact with the devil. Desperate to save his soul, he intends for Max to make the same bargain for the magic bullets, so that the devil will accept Max’s soul instead of his own. Having experienced success throughout Europe, Weber’s Der Freischütz, with Kind’s surprise ending, finally came to London in 1824. Because of his success in translating German lyrics to the settings by Franz Schubert, including “Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel” from Goethe’s Faust, W.  McGregor Logan was chosen to translate Kind’s libretto.71 Success of the opera’s London performance can be measured in the reviews and in several imitations. Thomas Potter Cooke played Zamiel in the London premiere of Weber’s Der Freischütz, (Lyceum [English Opera House], 22 July 1824), where Max was performed by John Braham, foremost stage tenor of the age.72 Three different adaptations followed in rapid succession and secured a fair share of the success: Edward Fitzball, Der Freischütz; or, The Demon of the Wolfs Glen, and the Seven Charmed Bullets, music by Weber (Surrey, 6 September 1824); James Robinson Planché, Der Freischütz; or, The Black Huntsman of Bohemia, music by B. Livius, based on Weber (Covent Garden, 14 October 1824); and a version of Weber’s Der Freischütz, with a musical score arranged by Henry Rowley Bishop, Der Freischütz, libretto based primarily on Logan’s translation of Kind (Drury Lane, 10 November 1824).

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Among these versions, none enthralled audiences more effectively than Fitzball. Planché succeeded more in sentiment. Logan was too conscientious as a word-by-word translator to give full strength to the passions of desire and fear. The invention of Caspar was the most significant of Kind’s alterations; also significant was the dramatic economy in reducing the number of bullets from sixty-three to seven, only one of which is controlled by the devil. Not until only one is left can Max be certain that this is the one that belongs to the devil, but even then he cannot guess how the devil might use it. Fitzball heightens the suspense in order to make the surprise more effective. Set in a Bohemian forest, Act I commences with the close of the first day of a contest of marksmanship among the foresters. Max, conceded to be the best marksman, has performed poorly. He is all the more distressed because Cuno, the chief forester, has declared that the prize in the next day’s contest will be the hand in marriage of his daughter Agathe. Unknown to Max, he lost the first day’s contest only because Caspar had secretly enlisted evil powers to alter Max’s sure aim. Cuno tells the assembly of foresters the cautionary tale of the unerring bullets which Zamiel, the Devil of Wolf’s Glen, will provide to any forester foolish enough to barter his soul. The marksman will have seven charmed bullets, six to hit without fail the marksman’s intended target and one to strike as the Devil wishes. Following drinks at the tavern, Caspar asks Max what he thinks of the tale. Max rejects the notion that the devil has such powers. Caspar points to a distant target and tells him that, even after missing shots all day, he can now hit what he wants. Max takes Caspar’s gun, points casually, and is astonished to see the distant target fall. Caspar tells him that it was one of the charmed bullets, and that if Max agrees to meet him in Wolf’s Glen, Max can procure charmed bullets for himself. Desperate because he knows that he is at risk of losing his beloved, Max agrees. Determined by his decision at the close of Act I, in Act II Max follows a fatal trajectory from his reassurances to Agathe to his meeting with Zamiel. Agathe prays for Max’s recovery from the torment of his lost skills, and she is reassured by his good spirits when he arrives at Cuno’s house. Her relief is quickly dispelled when he tells her that he must confront and overcome his fears by visiting Wolf’s Glen before the midnight hour. In the meantime, Caspar has arrived at Wolf’s Glen before Max. Zamiel appears at Caspar’s summons. Having already bartered his own soul, Caspar negotiates a new bargain, offering Max’s soul instead of his own. Not realizing that Max’s soul is not his to trade, Caspar believes he

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gained a bargain by which Agathe will fall as victim to the last of the magic bullets and Max will be executed for her murder. In this anticipation of the fatal denouement, Kind comes close to Apel’s grim conclusion. Act II ends with Max’s arrival in Wolf’s Glen, the forging of the bullets, and the bargain with Zamiel. As Act III opens, Agathe is again at her prayers. Her agitation, she explains to her friends, is due to a frightening dream in which she is a white dove and Max fires the fatal bullet which kills her. The shooting match commences, and Max succeeds at each target. Presiding over the event, Prince Ottokar announces that Max has won the contest, but to demonstrate that he fully deserves his new role as master marksman, he must shoot the white dove that has alighted on a distant pillar. Only the seventh bullet remains, but Max cannot refuse the challenge. Too late, Agathe cries out for him not to shoot. She falls. Baffled by his schemes, Caspar falls too. Agatha only fainted. Caspar lies mortally wounded, cursing Zamiel who sent the bullet to his chosen target. Max confesses that he has wrongly bargained with Zamiel. As Prince Ottokar deliberated on a deserved punishment, an old forester proposes that Max undergo a year-­ long trial to prove himself capable of withstanding evil temptations and worthy of Agathe as his bride. Shooting with magic bullets that will hit whatever target the marksman wishes requires of the marksman no skill at all. Shooting with the devil’s bullet relinquishes to the devil the moral cause-effect of the act. Among the ironies of fatalism is the suspension of free will and moral responsibility. There is, however, moral retribution in Caspar’s death by the devil’s bullet. Similar to the fatalism of Diderot’s dialogue, there is inevitable trajectory among multiple possibilities in play. The on-stage audience anticipate another display of Max’s marksmanship; the theatre audience, if they believe that Caspar has successfully persuaded Zamiel, anticipate the death of Agathe. With a fatal irony that inverts dramatic irony, the devil has made a moral choice. Bargaining with the devil provided the rationale for the fatal moment in numerous plays of the Romantic era. London in the 1820s had an actor who was acknowledged as unrivalled as either demon or victim. This was Thomas Potter Cooke, who played Zamiel in Der Freischütz, but also the Monster in Richard Brinsley Peake’s Presumption; or, the Fate of Frankenstein, Lord Ruthven in James Robinson Planché’s The Vampire, the ghostly Captain Vanderdecken in Fitzball’s The Flying Dutchman. To transform himself visibly into the subject of fatal control, Cooke would

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make it appear as if he were a puppet on strings or held in a mesmerist’s power. To suggest that he was being steered by an invisible agent, he would interrupt a graceful stride with a lurch or stagger.73 As Frankenstein’s Monster, he never moved on-stage without musical accompaniment. Following the stage success of The Vampire and Presumption, Cooke continued to develop his “ballet acting” and his pantomimic body language and hand gesture.74 Just as Weber’s music gave rhythm to Cooke’s movement as Zamiel, he was similarly accompanied by the music of Joseph Binns Hart in The Vampire, T. Watkins in Persuasion, George Rodwell in The Flying Dutchman. For his role as Zamiel, he was not simply the demon-dispenser of magic bullets. Cooke adapted relevant movement and manner to mock the stride and gesture of Caspar and Max. He adopted as well lecherous posing to hint at a threat to Agathe. Much of his success was due to his mastery of pantomime. Frankenstein’s Monster is deprived of speech but learns to communicate through gesture. Vanderdecken must keep an oath of silence during his quest for a bride. His villainous characters gain a degree of sympathy for the reluctance and remorse they express for the evil they are compelled to perform (Illustration 3.3). In addition to playing the demonic role, Cooke advised on the special effects. For Der Freischütz, he designed the scene for the Wolf’s Glen. As director of the “Melo-dramatick business,” Cooke himself arranged the setting for his performance as Zamiel. Most of his optical scare tactics were accomplished with a magic lantern: ghostly apparitions, grotesque creatures, phantom monsters, wheels of fire that carry a demon coach, wild chase of a skeleton stag pursued by skeleton horsemen and hounds, concluding with the appearance of Zamiel himself, stepping forth from a ring of fire. Cooke arranged, too, the magical events of the marksman’s shot, the flight of the white dove, the death of Caspar, and the final vanishing of Zamiel. In his role as Zamiel, confirmed as well in the reviews of his other Gothic roles, Cooke revealed a conscious art of acting as victim or perpetrator of a fatal pact. Fitzball’s Der Freischütz, Fitzball’s Flying Dutchman, Planché’s Vampire, and Peake’s Persuasion were plays that received incredibly long runs and enjoyed frequent revivals. These roles shared a common curse of fatal entrapment. Cooke performed in them repeatedly, yet always managed to dance through with appropriate dramatic despair.

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Illustration 3.3  Wolf’s Glen, Der Freischütz (Lyceum [English Opera House], 22 July 1824). Thomas Potter Cooke as Zamiel; John Braham as Max. (II). Peltro William Tomkins, artist and engraver (17 February 1825)

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Matthew Gregory Lewis, One O’Clock; or, The Wood Daemon Both stage versions of Matthew Gregory Lewis’s The Wood Daemon (Drury Lane, 1 April 1807; Lyceum [English Opera House], 1 August 1811) utilized elaborate stage machinery and special effects. The Holstein Castle provided a properly Gothic interior, a hidden passageway, and secret closet essential to the plot. The stage settings, including paintings that come to life (tableaux vivants, see Chap. 5) and a golden giant bearing a clock upon his shoulder, remind the audience of the fatal passage of time. The latter version of The Wood Daemon, originally planned for 30 March 1811, had to be postponed because the illness of a mechanic delayed the preparation of scenery, machinery, and decorations. Michael Kelly had written the songs, including choruses and singing dialogue, for the first version. For the revised version, an overture was added by M. P. King.75 The opening scene depicts a moon-lit glade with a cottage in the woods. As Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote of Limbo, “That is lovely--looks like Human Time.” The curtain has no sooner been lifted than the still scene is animated. Trees and rocks open, and Wood Spirits emerge. What “looks like Human Time” is revealed to be non-human, a supernatural alternate time (see Chap. 8). In their song and dance, the Wood Spirits announce that the alternate time will prevail, for the hour has come for the appearance of Sangrida. A storm arises, the moon turns red, thunders roar, and red lightnings flash. Fiery clouds descend, and from their midst the dreadful Sangrida steps forth. She announces that this is the day and hour of her annual visit to claim her victim “when the Clock strikes One!” The cock crows—a signal that for this fatal day human time and alternate time now coincide. Sangrida disappears with her Elves, while the other Spirits return to the trees and rocks. The light increases, and Paulina steps forth from the cottage. Reckoning by the time of wish and promise, she laments that her friend Rolf has not arrived—“Yet he promised so faithfully to be here before Sun-rise … But Lord! What does it signify, what those Devils the Men promise?” She sings a song of a wolf snatching a girl’s lamb while she sleeps. When Rolf arrives, Paulina scolds him. Rolf protests that he was delayed by the peculiarly blazing storm that recurs “regularly every year on the same day and at the same time; on the sixth of August, exactly one hour before day-break.” At the moment of this revelation, “Leolyn is seen to

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cross the Mountains in great alarm.” Paulina reveals that she knows the nine-year history of child abduction that happens every 6th of August. On this day a dreadful storm arises and a child disappears, never to be seen again. The blame has been levelled against the Wood-Daemon. Extending her flashback, Paulina tells how the Countess Alexina witnessed the abduction of her son from his cradle within the Holstein Castle, and how Hardyknute took over the rule of the land in the absence of the infant heir. Her narrative is interrupted by the arrival of young Leolyn, whom she does not recognize as the long missing heir of Holstein. The boy cannot speak but manages to communicate that he is fleeing from a band of Gypsies. While the boy hides in the hollow of an oak, Rolf and Paulina engage in a musical dialogue with the Gypsies, convincing them that he has raced into the distance. Paulina informs Rolf that she must go to the castle to sing at Count Hardyknute’s wedding with Una. By days as well as by nights, Rolf reveals, the peace of the realm is disturbed by a figure previously confined in dark romance. The Count has led an expedition to fight Hacho, “the Gigantic Knight of the Black Rock.” Until he returns for his nuptials, Una can be trusted to protect the boy from his pursuers. Rolf closes the scene with a song on how his former life as a sailor was altered by Paulina’s kiss. Act I, scene ii, opens with Una’s lament in the great hall of the castle. A former peasant, she is uncomfortable with her present riches. Granting that Count Hardyknute is “the handsomest Knight in all Europe,” she declares that she is unhappy and unable to forget Oswy, her former lover. Guelpho, the court Seneschal, chides Clotilda, Una’s sister, for deprecating the Count’s generous protection. In a flashback, he tells how Hacho abducted the sisters, whom he intended to use for his pleasure. They were rescued by the Count and treated to the opulent life in the castle. Clotilda says that the first abduction was followed by another. In spite of their lavish robes, they are still prisoners. The wedding simply ratifies that the Count’s intentions are as lurid as the Giant’s. Time in Holstein is measured pre- and post-Hardyknute, which coincides, for reasons not yet revealed, to the annual supernatural interventions of the Wood Daemon. Continuing his narrative of former times, the Seneschal praises Hardyknute for taking the Giant prisoner and destroying his fortress. The flashback recalls even earlier times, when Hardyknute first arrived in Holstein as “a poor unknown Warrior.” His previous deeds remained concealed. By saving the life of the King of Denmark on the field of battle, and by securing the friendship of Ruric, former Count of Holstein, Hardyknute

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was granted the succession until Leolyn, Ruric’s only son, was of an age to rule. Should Leolyn die in infancy, Hardyknute’s reign would be permanent. With more to tell of past events, the Seneschal adds to the story commenced by Paulina. What happened nine years ago to the infant heir? The Wood-Daemon had entered the castle by night and stolen the child from its cradle. The widowed Countess was inconsolable. It was believed that Leolyn had been devoured. In his account of events to Una, the Seneschal now returns to the present, describing the preparations underway for the Count’s marriage to Una. To celebrate the advent of glorious new times, there is to be “a grand Ballet of the Seasons.” The court festivities provide another sort of temporal break as a play-within-a play. Similar to Bottom and Flute performing as “Pyramus and Thisbe” in Midsummer Night’s Dream, the Seneschal and Paulina perform the lead roles in “Bacchus and Ariadne.” The comic interlude is also sustained by the Seneschal’s son, Willikind, a character similar to Mrs. Malaprop in Sheridan’s The Rivals. Malaprop misuses words; Willikind misuses proverbs. As the time for the marriage approaches, to be performed as soon as the Count returns, Clotilda becomes increasingly desperate to dissuade her sister from going through with the wedding. Willikind reported the march of the Count, his soldiers, the Giant in chains. The wedding is as much a “fatal hour” for Una, as the clock striking one is for Hardyknute. Una confesses her continuing love for Oswy, but claims that Hardyknute exerts an irresistible spell over her when he is present. Since Leolyn’s abduction, Clotilda has kept a secret. Confronting a dire situation, she can keep it no longer. The tale of Leolyn’s abduction, as related by Paulina and the Seneschal, was actually a fiction told by Countess Alexina in her attempt to save her child. Less than a month had passed since Count Ruric’s death when the Countess began to suspect that Hardyknute had poisoned Ruric in order to hasten his acquisition of the realm. Now the Countess fears that her child, as true heir, would also be killed. She persuaded Clotilda to keep the child hidden from Hardyknute’s henchmen. The Countess invented the story of the child being snatched by the Wood Daemon, but she realized Hardyknute never believed it. Shortly after Clotilda took the child under her care, the Countess died. A physician, who diagnosed the child’s mute condition, reassured Clotilda with his prognosis that in his ninth or tenth year a moment of “violent exertion” would restore his power of speech. For nine years Clotilda kept Leolyn safely hidden, until this fatal 6th of

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August when the Gypsies stole him away. Una had joined her sister in the search of the child, when they were seized by the Giant Hecho. In telling her secret, Clotilda unravelled much of the mystery of Leolyn’s abduction. Further flashbacks, further exploration of the past, gradually expose Hardyknute’s identity, the purpose of Sangrida’s seemingly cannibalistic quest, and the motive compelling the fatal hour. Clotilda sings a ballad of a haughty lord who scorns his newly wed bride. Oswy enters with two minstrels to sing at the festival, which he learns is to be the wedding of his beloved Una. Clotilda promises to arrange a secret tryst, so that Oswy may meet with Una at noon on her stroll through the private gardens. Oswy sings a lament of lost love. Act I.iii begins with the report that the Count’s banners have been seen, and the drawbridge is lowered for his arrival. Guelpho, the Seneschal, fears the ballet must be cancelled because “poor little Spring has got the measles.” Paulina introduces Leolyn as a Gypsy Boy, who can dance the part and play the guitar as well. Insisting on knowing the boy’s identity, Leolyn is given a pencil and asked to tell his story. He writes, “I was stolen from my Mother by Gypsies.” At this moment, Clotilda enters, rushes to Leolyn, and cries for help to save her child. Because he has the features of his parents and also has a birthmark of a red arrow on his wrist, Hardyknute is sure to recognize him. Clotilda departs with Leolyn in an urgent effort to keep him hidden from Hardyknute. Act II opens with Una’s dream. The stage is filled with radiant clouds. Auriol, the guardian genius of Holstein, sits among them and explains to the sleeping Una various visions. The cloud beneath him opens to reveal a proleptic vision: Leolyn is seen in chains, and Sangrida with bloody dagger stands nearby. Leolyn’s parents then appear in the clouds on either side. In those above, children in white, crowned with flowers, are revealed, pointing to iconographic wounds upon their hearts. The clouds and visions disperse, and the stage becomes a flower garden with ornate bowers. Una’s abiding love for Oswy enables her to resist the magic charms of Hardyknute to compel her acquiescence. Foiled in his effort to seduce Una, Hardyknute confronts Oswy (II.ii). Knowing that Hardyknute will destroy Oswy, Una takes him to the concealed closet in her chamber and leaves him in the hope that the Count will not know of the hiding place. When Una departs, Clotilda, avoiding Willikind’s advances, visits her chamber, realizing that this was formerly the chamber of Countess Alexine, the very chamber from which she had fled nine years before. Leolyn wants to dance and play his guitar at the festival, but Clotilda convinces him that

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the danger of discovery is too great. As soon a Clotilda departs, Willikind enters, discovers and releases Leolyn. Upon hearing Hardyknute with Una at the door, Willikind hides in the darkness of the secret closet. A stage scramble ensues. Hardyknute believes Una has hidden Oswy. Clotilde believes that it is Leolyn. Hardyknute is baffled by finding Willikind. In the Gothic hall the celebration is underway with the Ballet of the Seasons (II.iii). Hardyknute recognizes Leolyn’s birthmark. Sangrida appears. The galleries in the magnificent hall are filled with spectators. There is a large window at the centre, with two bronze doors on either side, with stairs leading to them. Hardyknute and Una are seated on a throne. The pageant of the seasons continues: each season with appropriate banners, emblems, and attendants. Summer’s car is drawn by what the licenser’s manuscript calls “Wood Nymphs,” Autumn’s by Reapers, Winter’s by White Bears, Spring’s by Zephyrs. Presently the guests discover in their midst a female figure thickly veiled in black. Whether this is the Wood Daemon or merely her messenger is not clear, but she serves to remind Hardyknute of the date. Horrified he follows her up the staircase and through one of the bronze doors. Reappearing pale and wild, Hardyknute rushes down with sword in hand. Another thunderclap and the great window bursts open, revealing Sangrida in a car drawn by dragons. She points at Leolyn and ascends in a shower of fire. “Remember!” she cries. In Act III the action is marked, as in the final monologue of Marlowe’s Faustus, by the clock ticking away the final hour of doom. But even in this forward thrust of time, there is still a necessity for flashback revelations. The first scene is in the State Bedchamber, where Clotilda in the uncertain firelight seeks the way to Leolyn. She locks the door and raises alarm in the castle. Hardyknute erroneously thinks he “gains time” by binding Leolyn in chains. Una recalls her dream, “My dream, it must have been prophetic.” At the stroke of midnight, a blue light illuminates the two portraits of Leolyn’s parents. As figures in tableaux vivants, they step forth, kneel before Una, and point to the golden tassel beside the bed. This is the clue she sought. As the twelfth gong resounds (III.ii), she seizes a firebrand, leaps to the bed, draws the tassel, and cries, “Leolyn! I will rescue thee or die! Away!” The bed sinks and the portraits return to their places. Hardyknute confesses for the first time his “fatal bond” and the “ages of agony” that await him if he fails to deliver a blood sacrifice “before the Clock Strikes ‘One’.” He would be forced to resume his “native deformity” and his control over others. Una steals the key and is able to enter

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Hardyknute’s Necromantic Cavern (III.iii), where Leolyn is chained to a bronze pillar. Grated doors secure the Cavern, and at a bloody altar, curl two enormous snakes supporting a golden platter on their heads, and the statue of a giant kneeling upon a pedestal holds a clock on his shoulder, which now marks the time as half past twelve. Above the cave is a gallery along which Una guides herself with her firebrand. Having again captured Una, who is to be sacrificed alongside of Leolyn, Hardyknute continues his confession: “I was proud and a Peasant; voluptuous, and born deformed; Poor, and the Rich trampled on me; Hideous, and the Lovely turned from me in disgust.” The pact with the Wood Daemon fulfilled his desires. In The Deformed Transformed (1824), Byron’s Arnold engages a similar bargain with a Stranger in order to escape his deformity and fulfil his desires. Hardyknute, for a short term, gained even more. He was now “invulnerable in battle,” protected by “perpetual youth and health,” possessed of “a magic charm to dazzle female eyes and seduce all female hearts.” In return, Sangrida demanded an annual human sacrifice. If he fails to drain a victim’s blood at the altar by one o’clock, she will take him as her sacrifice and his deformed remains must serve forever as her slave (Illustration 3.4). Because she has with the stolen key set Leolyn loose from his chains, Una must die in his place. The clock shows that fifteen minutes remain. Una begs for five minutes, which Hardyknute grants her. In this brief stay of execution, Leolyn clambers up the statue holding the clock. He slips to Una the strip of paper. Hardyknute sees her reading and snatches the note. “The Clock shall strike, and you shall hear it. Gain but a few minutes and you are safe.” To gain those few minutes, Leolyn tries to push the hands of the clock forward. Hardyknute spots the boy’s efforts, drops his wand and dagger in order to pull him down. In that moment Una grabs the dropped wand and hands it to Leolyn, who now successfully pushes the minute hand forward. The ancient Greeks had two words for time: chronos and kairos. The former refers to chronological or sequential time, while the latter signifies a proper or opportune time for action.76 Leolyn deftly shifts the former to the latter. When the hand of the clock is pushed forward, time is altered. During Hardyknute’s incantations, blue fire issues from the jaws of the snakes and a gigantic golden head rises from the altar. Candles light themselves. Discordant music sounds. When the clock strikes one, Sangrida rushes from behind a rock and stabs Hardyknute, four fiends drag him to the altar, and the snakes twist about him. Altar and figures sink, the whole

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Illustration 3.4  Leolyn altering time, One o’Clock; or, The Knight and the Wood Demon

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scene vanishes, and the characters are once more in the great hall—Una together again with Oswy, Paulina with Rolf, and Clotilda calling upon the wedding guests to celebrate instead the restoration of Leolyn as the rightful Count of Holstein. “The midsummer-dream, with which the piece opened,” the Monthly Mirror reported, “was exquisitely beautiful, and the clouds were managed with peculiar ingenuity.”77 That opening tranquillity prefigured the mission of Sangrida, to whom Hardyknute has pledged to sacrifice a child annually at the preordained hour of one o’clock. The conditions of this pact are not revealed until the final act is almost at an end. This is the crucial difference that distinguishes Lewis’s One O’Clock; or, The Wood Daemon (Drury Lane, 1 April 1807) from James Robinson Planché’s The Vampire (English Opera House, 9 August 1820) and Edward Fitzball’s The Flying Dutchman (Adelphi, 1 January1827). The latter two plays open with a Vision revealing the conditions under which their respective characters return from the dead in a quest for a bride and victim. All three end with a fatal hour of doom which befalls each respective villain upon having failed in his quest. Although Lewis’s plot shares those same elements, Lewis alone concealed from the audience, and from other characters in his play, the conditions of the fatal pact. Lewis compounds the confusion by interweaving the subplots, by frequent recollections of past events which are only gradually assembled like pieces in a puzzle, and by having his characters more preoccupied with the passage of time in the intervening hours, and far more anxious in anticipating the final hour.

James Robinson Planché, The Vampire The Vampire and The Flying Dutchman were among the most popular melodramas representing the command wielded by dark powers over the realm of the spirits and over those who yield to their influence. Both plays feature a creature who overcomes death through a pact with demonic forces that require the sacrifice of a fair maiden.78 Even in a world not under the sway of supernatural powers, contractual time limits were set on responsibilities to be met and debts to be paid. What had first been written as a fragmentary tale by Lord Byron,79 then converted into a novel by John Polidori,80 adapted as a French play by Charles Nodier,81 was then translated back into English by Planché for the London stage.82 Nodier had transposed the action from the Levant to the Western Isles of Scotland.

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Fingal’s Cave on Staffa, site of the bloody exploits sung by MacPherson in Ossian, serves as setting of the supernatural death and resurrection.83 Although he objected to the absurdity of the Scottish setting, Planché made the most of it. In the opening Vision, Lady Margaret slumbers in Fingal’s Cave, where she sought shelter from a storm. Two spirits, Ariel and Unda, explain that the vampire spirit of Cromal, “the bloody,”84 has taken possession of the body of Lord Ruthven. The motif of fatal time heightened the desperation of the vampire in securing a bride whose blood he must drink. Planché’s ingenuity as a playwright is evident in three unique attributes of his exposition of fatal time. The first was his strategy to make the marking of the time prominent in every scene. From Marlowe’s Faustus to Lewis’s The Wood Demon, awareness of a clock ticking away commenced only with the final hour in the final scene. In Planché’s The Vampire, Lord Ruthwen has time until the moon sets to secure a bride and drink her blood. Scene for scene, the moon is visible. The bright globe slowly descends from its position high in the sky until it hangs partially obscured by the roof tops. A second attribute was the guilty hesitations of a reluctant vampire, who retained a human regard for the sanctity of life, and who felt an evident disgust for the gory means by which he must prolong his own existence. Rather than hasten to accomplish the deed, he delays and postpones even as the moon is already on the horizon. A third attribute is Planché’s staging of the final moment of the fatal time: no sooner has the moon dropped out of sight, than Lord Ruthwen is engulfed in a puff of smoke, and with a flash of light his body is gone. Lord Ruthwen’s body has vanished, but the invisible spirit on stage may be his animating demon, Cromal, seeking a residency in a new body. Soane and Terry used a stage-trap for the damnation scene in Faustus (Drury Lane, 16 May 1825). Five years earlier, the stage-trap had already been installed for The Vampire (English Opera House, 9 August 1820). Planché reserved its use for his coup de théâtre just before the curtain falls.

Edward Fitzball, The Flying Dutchman Edward Fitzball’s The Flying Dutchman found an enthusiastic audience when it opened on New Year’s Day (Adelphi, 1 January 1827). By no means as powerful as the score composed by Richard Wagner for his own adaptation of the legend (Dresden, Königliches Hoftheater, 2 January 1843), the music by George Rodwell, director of the Adelphi,

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nevertheless provided stirring accompaniment to Fitzball’s melodrama. The enchantment was enhanced with clever illusionism: surging tides, sinking ships, flickering flames, sudden appearances and disappearances (Illustration 3.5).

Illustration 3.5  The Ghost Ship in Fitzball, The Flying Dutchman. Robert Cruikshank, artist; George W. Bonner, engraver

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Fitzball created more than just a showcase for stage magic and startling special effects. He also crafted a well-integrated dialogue between onstage and offstage action. Fitzball’s The Flying Dutchman opens with a conjuring scene in which Rockalda informs the resurrected sea-captain that he has twenty-four hours in which to take a bride and drink her blood in order to prolong his life. This scene in an ocean cave imitates Planché’s opening scene in Fingal’s Cave. A backstage magic lantern projects an image of a moonlit seascape on the dropcloth; eerie blue flames are reflected on the tinsel-covered rocks, and a red-yellow flame flickers on a prominent rock centre stage. The stage is otherwise darkened. Rockalda, Evil Spirit of the Deep, is discovered seated on her Grotto Throne. Eight grotesque little Water Imps enter two and two, alternately from right and left, to dance before Rockalda’s throne. During a flourish of demonic music, the imps depart, and she rises and circles the stage. With the sound of a gong, she returns to her throne, and Vanderdecken, long-drowned captain of the phantom ship, “The Flying Dutchman,” appears from the waves amidst blue flames. Pale and haggard, he bears a black flag, the Jolly Roger. Placing the flag at her feet, he kneels in submission to her will. The victim of the ghostly Vanderdecken’s quest for a mortal bride is revealed in the next scene. Lestelle Vanhelm, niece to Captain Peppercoal, is lodging in a chamber of the Fortress at the Cape of Good Hope. A telling detail in this chamber is the large painting of a ship, bearing a date one century earlier, 1727, and representing the fatal voyage of Vanderdecken’s ship, “The Flying Dutchman,” reputedly “still seen in the Cape seas in foul weather.” After his efforts were baffled again and again by Lestelle’s protectors, Vanderdecken seems to have succeeded in abducting a bride and winning the race against time. The final scenes take place in a semi-­darkened sea cave. At the rear rises a gigantic cliff, down which the sea is rolling with terrific violence carrying with it rocks and sea-weed. The cave appears to be sinking ever deeper into the ocean. Vanderdecken enters with Lestelle in his arms. He places her on the bank, then listens for pursuers to arrive from the wings. When Lestelle revives, he gestures that she must now sign the fatal book as his eternal bride. In Act III, scene iv, Mowdrey arrives at the cave to rescue Lestelle. He is, of course, no match against Vanderdecken’s supernatural powers.

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Lestelle has again refused to sign the magic book. Vanderdecken grasps her hand in the attempt to force her signature. Lestelle screams and sinks at the base of the rock. Footsteps from offstage loudly echo. As Vanderdecken listens, Mowdrey emerges from behind a rock. Laughing at this mortal’s futile attempt, Vanderdecken draws his sword. Although repeatedly stabbed by Mowdrey, the ghostly pirate is unfazed by the blows. Vanderdecken lifts his foe on high and furiously throws him down. Exulting in his victory, Vanderdecken shouts out: “Mortal, die!” A thunder blast is heard, and the pirate immediately realizes that he has broken the vow of silence and the spell that resurrected him. He is doomed to another hundred years aboard his phantom ship. Mowdrey’s loyal seaman, Varnish, has followed his captain into the cave and now challenges the weakened Vanderdecken. No longer protected by Rockalda’s spell, he is still sustained by her magic book, in which she has recorded the everlasting curse upon him. He survives as long as the book survives. This hopeless impasse is quickly resolved by the resourceful seaman, who snatches up a torch, sets fire to the demonic book, and shouts triumphantly “’Tis done! ’Tis done!” Among the many plays staged during the Romantic period, far more than the few reviewed in this chapter, relied on the dramatization of a demonic due-date for agreed upon services. Marlowe’s Faustus was the direct antecedent and model for those relying on demonic agency: Marlowe’s Mephistophilis in Faustus (1604), Fitzball’s Groteburg in The Devil’s Elixir; or, The Shadowless Man (Covent Garden, 20 April 1829), Lewis’s Sangrida in One O’Clock; or, The Wood Daemon (Drury Lane, 1 April 1807), Planché’s Cromal in The Vampire (English Opera House, 9 August 1820), Fitzball’s Rockalda in The Flying Dutchman (Adelphi, 1 January 1827). The latter two plays both opened with a Vision revealing the conditions under which their respective characters return from the dead in a quest for a bride and victim, and both end with a fatal hour of doom which befalls each of those characters upon having failed in their quest. Lewis’s plot shares many elements with Planché and Fitzball’s, but Lewis’s characters are more insistent in retrieving the past, more preoccupied with the passage of time in the intervening hours, and more unremitting in anticipating the final hour. In maintaining awareness of the passage of fatal time, none succeeded better than Planché with his descending moon.

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Notes 1. Thomas Shadwell. The Libertine, the Tragedy of Don John (1676) was also frequently in pantomime productions such as a Don Juan; or, the Libertine Destroyed and Don Giovanni; or, the Spectre on Horseback. The pantomimes were performed at Drury Lane and Covent Garden as well as at the illegitimate theatres. Genest. English Stage, 10:xxxiii, lxix. 2. Ovid. Amore. Liber I, XIII, Line 40: “O, run slowly, slowly, horses of the night!” 3. Christopher Marlowe. The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus (1604, 1616), ed. W. W. Greg. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1950, 288, 290. 4. Johann Wolfgang Goethe. Faust, ed. Erich Trunz. Hamburg: Christian Wegner Verlag, 1963. Passages of the Urfaust, were developed between 1772–1775; Faust, a Fragment, published in 1790; “Faust. Eine Tragödie” 1808; “Faust. Der Tragödie zweiter Teil” 1832. 5. Faust: A Drama by Goethe; and Schiller’s Song of the Bell, trans. Lord Francis Leveson-Gower. London: John Murray, 1823. 6. John Anster. “The Faustus of Goethe.” Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine VII.39 (June 1820): 235–258. 7. Percy Bysshe Shelley. “Scenes from the Faust of Goethe” [“Prologue in Heaven” and “Walpurgisnacht”]. The Liberal 1 (26 October 1822); complete transcription in Posthumous Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Edited by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. London: John and Henry L. Hunt, (1824). 8. Faustus: from the German of Goethe. London: Thomas Boosey and Sons, 4 Broad-Street, Exchange, and Rodwell & Martin, New Bond-Street, 1821. Faustus. From the German of Goethe. Embellished with Retzsch’ series of 27 outlines, ill. of the tragedy engraved by Henry Moses. With portr. of the author. 3rd ed. London: Thomas Boosey and Sons, 1824. 9. British Library, mic.c.13137. Playbills 174. 10. Scenery by Jones, Phillips, Danson, and W. Stanfield; costumes by Smythers and Mrs. Follet. Umrisse zu Goethe’s Faust. Erster und zweiter Theil. Gezeichnet von Moritz Retzsch. Stuttgart: Cotta, 1816. 11. Illustration: “The Garden Path,” plate 9. Moritz Retzsch. Twenty-Six Outlines Illustrative of Goethe’s Tragedy of Faust. London: Boosey, 1820. 12. Fiona MacCarthy. Byron: Life and Legend. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002, 9–11. 13. George Soane, with Daniel Terry. Faustus. Cumberland’s British Theatre, with remarks, biographical and critical. Printed from the acting copies, as performed at the Theatres Royal. Vol. 33. London: John Cumberland, 1829. 14. Paull Franklin Baum. “The Young Man Betrothed to a Statue.” PMLA, 34.4 (1919): 523–79.

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15. Edward Fitzball. The Devil’s Elixir; or, The Shadowless Man. London: John Cumberland, 1829. 16. E. T. A. Hoffmann. Die Elixiere des Teufels, 2 vols. Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 1815, 1816. 17. Walter Scott. “On the Supernatural in Fictitious Composition; and particularly on the Works of Ernest Theodore William Hoffmann.” Foreign Quarterly Review 1 (July 1827). Reprinted in Sir Walter Scott on Novelists and fiction, ed. Ioan Williams. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1968, 312–53. 18. Larry Stephen Clifton. The Terrible Fitzball: The Melodramatist of the Macabre. Bowling Green: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1993. 19. Genest. English Stage, 9:482–83. 20. Rosemary Hill. God’s Architect: Pugin and the Building of Romantic Britain. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 2007, 82. 21. Aristotle. Poetics, chap. 6. The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon. New York: Random House, 1941, 1460–62. 22. George D.  Irvine. The Bride of Messina. London: John Macrone, 1837. Frederick Burwick. “Schiller’s Plays on the British Stage, 1797–1825.” Who is this Schiller Now? Essays in his Reception and Significance, ed. Jeffrey High, et al. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2011, 302–20. 23. Gerhart Hoffmeister. “The Romantic Tragedy of Fate.” Romantic Drama, ed. Gerald Gillespie. Amsterdam: John Benjamin, 1993, 167–80. 24. Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Biographia Literaria, 2 vols. Ed. W.  J. Bates, James Engell. The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1983. 2:211. 25. William Wordsworth. “Preface to the Lyrical Ballads (1800).” The Prose Works of William Wordsworth, 3 vols., eds. W.  J. B.  Owen and Jane Worthington Smyser. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974. 1:128. 26. Coleridge. Biographia Literaria. 2:211. 27. Bertram Evans. Gothic Drama from Walpole to Shelley. Berkeley: California UP, 1947, 119–32. 28. Aristotle. Poetics, chap. 24. 29. Zacharias Werner. Ausgewählte Schriften, 5 vols. Grimma: Verlags Comptoir, 1840–1841; rpt. Bern: Herbert Lang, 1970. 30. Adolf Müllner. Die Schuld. Leipzig: G.J. Göschen, 1816. 31. Christoph Ernst Houwald. Das Bild: Trauerspiel in fünf Akten. Leipzig: G.J. Göschen, 1821. 32. Jacob Minor. Die Schicksals-Tragödie in ihren Hauptvertretern. Frankfurt/ Main: Rütten & Loening, 1883. 33. August Apel. “Der Freischütz.” Das Gespensterbuch, vol. 1 of 5 vols. eds. August Apel and Friedrich Laun. Leipzig: J.G. Göschen, 1811–1815.

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34. Francis E.  Sandbach. “Karl Philipp Moritz’s ‘Blunt’ and Lillo’s ‘Fatal Curiosity’.” Modern Language Review 18.4 (Oct. 1923): 449–57. 35. Denis Diderot. Jacques le Fataliste et son Maitre, 2 vols. Paris: Buisson, 1796. Oeuvres Complètes de Diderot, 21 vols. Paris: Garnier, 1875–1877. 6: 1–287. 36. Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais. Le Barbier de Séville (1775), Le Mariage de Figaro (1781), and La Mère coupable (1792). 37. Friedrich Schlegel. Gespräch über die Poesie. Anthenäum. Eine Zeitschrift von August Wilhelm und Friedrich Schlegel (1810). vol. 1, Berlin: Friedrich Vieweg d. Ä., 1798; vol. 2–3, Berlin: Heinrich Frölich, 1799–1800; rpt. Stuttgart: J.G. Cotta, 1960, 113, 116, 126. 38. Burwick. “Romantic Irony.” Romanticism: Keywords. Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell, 2015, 258–67. 39. Schillers Werke, Nationalausgabe, ed. Julius Petersen et al. 43 vols. Halle: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1943. 20: 442. 40. Schillers Werke. 20: 445. 41. Schillers Werke. 20: 446. 42. Coleridge. Wallenstein. A Drama in two parts, Translated from the German of Frederick Schiller. London: T. N. Longman and O. Rees, 1800. 43. Kallias-Briefe (1793) and Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen (1794). Schillers Werke, vol. 20, Part 1 and 2. 44. The Life of Friedrich Schiller. Complete Works of Thomas Carlyle, 20 vols. New York: P. F. Collier & Son, 1901. 20:15–24, 20. 45. Schiller’s Die Räuber (Nationaltheater Mannheim, 13 January 1782), was a tremendous success. The Robbers: a tragedy. Translated [by Alexander Tytler] from the German of Frederick Schiller. London: Printed for G. G. J. & J. Robinsons, 1792. 46. The Robbers: A Tragedy: in Five Acts. Translated and Altered from the German [of Schiller]. As it was Performed at Brandenburgh-House Theatre; MDCCXCVIII.  With a Preface, Prologue and Epilogue, Written by Her Serene Highness the Margravine of Anspach. London: W. Wigstead, No. 40. Charing Cross; and M. Hooper, No. 212, High Holborn, 1799. 47. Burwick. “Schiller’s Plays on the British Stage.” Who is this Schiller Now? 302–20. 48. Joseph George Holman. The Red-Cross Knights (Haymarket, 21 August 1799). London: Printed and published by Geo. Cawthorn; sold also by Messrs. Richardson; H.  D. Symonds, J.  Wallis, and W.  West; and J. Wright, 1799. 49. Holman to Larpent (29 March 1799), Folger MS W b 67 (63–63v). Leonard W.  Conolly. The Censorship of English Drama, 1737–1824. Huntington Library, 1976. 50. Conolly. The Censorship, 88–102.

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51. Schillers Werke. 20:344–53. 52. Thomas Nenon. “Play and irony: Schiller and Schlegel on the liberating prospects of aesthetics.” Kant, Kantianism, and Idealism. London: Routledge, 2010, 96–120. 53. Burwick. “Harlequinade.” Romanticism: Keywords, 103–06. 54. George Lillo. The Fatal Curiosity, ed. William H. McBurney. Lincoln, NE: Nebraska UP, 1966. 55. Harpur. Philosophical Criticism, 192–93. 56. Sophocles. Oedipus Rex, trans. R. C. Jebb. The Complete Greek Drama, 2 vols., eds. Whitney Oates and Eugene O’Neill. New York: Random House, 1938. 1:369–417. 57. The Reminiscences of Thomas Dibdin, of the theatres royal, Covent-­Garden, Drury-­Lane, Haymarket, &c. London: Henry Colburn, 1827, 152. 58. Introduction. The Dramatic and Poetical Works of Joanna Baillie. 2nd ed. London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1851, ix–x. 59. Baillie. “Introductory Discourse.” The Dramatic and Poetical Works, 1–7. 60. Baillie. De Monfort (1798). Dramatic and Poetical Works, 76–105. 61. Baillie. Orra (1812). Dramatic and Poetical Works, 235–259. 62. Baillie. The Dream (1812). Dramatic and Poetical Works, 260–273. 63. Janice E. Patten. Dark Imagination. Poetic Painting in Romantic Drama. Diss. University of California Santa Cruz, 1992, 70. 64. Edward Gibbon. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776–1789), 7 vols., ed. J. B. Bury. London: Methuen, 1914. 7:185–212. 65. John Lemprière. “Constantinople.” A Classical Dictionary: Containing A Full Account Of All The Proper Names Mentioned In Ancient Authors. London: Printed for D. Cadell, 1788; London: Routledge, 3rd ed., 1987, 163. 66. Baillie. Constantine Paleologus: The last of the Caesars (1805), Dramatic and Poetical Works, 390, 446–78. 67. Baillie. Constantine Paleologus, Works, 390–91. 68. Baillie. Works, 8. 69. August Apel. “Der Freischütz.” Das Gespensterbuch, vol. 1 of 5 vols., eds. August Apel and Friedrich Laun. Leipzig: Göschen, 1811–1815. 70. Thomas De Quincey. “The Fatal Marksman.” Popular Tales and Romances of the Northern Nations, 3 vols. London: W.  Simpkin, R.  Marshall, and J. H. Bohte, 1823. Also: The Works of Thomas De Quincey, 21 vols., ed. Grevel Lindop, et  al. London: Pickering and Chatto, 2000–2004. 3: 291–312. 71. W. McGregor Logan also edited the dual language editions, Collection of Italian Proverbs and Collection of Spanish Proverbs. London: Seguin, 1830.

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72. Christina Fuhrmann. “Continental Opera Englished, English Opera Continentalized: Der Freischütz in London, 1824.” Nineteenth-Century Music Review 1.1 (June 2004): 115–42. 73. The Literary Chronicle and Weekly Review 281 (Saturday, October 2, 1824). 74. Review of Presumption. London Morning Post, Tuesday July 29 and Wednesday July 30, 1823. Review of Presumption. The Mirror of the Stage; or, the New Dramatic Censor. Vol. 3 (4 August 1823): 11–13, 76. 75. M. G. Lewis. The Wood Daemon; or, “The Clock has Struck” (Drury Lane, 1 April 1807); music Michael Kelly. Lewis. One O’Clock or, the Knight and the Wood Dæmon. A grand musical romance, In Three Acts. First performed at the Theatre Royal, Lyceum [English Opera House] 1 August 1811); music by M.  P. King and M.  Kelly. The overture by M.  P. King. The Melo-­ ­ Dramatic music by M.  Kelly. London: Lowndes and Hobbs, Sherwood, Nealey and Jones, [1811]. 76. Steven Schwarze. “Environmental Melodrama.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 92.3 (August 2006): 239–61. 77. Monthly Mirror (April 1807): 279–280. Quoted in Louis F. Peck. A Life of Matthew G. Lewis. Harvard: Harvard UP, 1961, 334. 78. William Thomas Moncrieff. The Vampire (Coburg, 22 August 1820). London: T. R. Richardson, 1829. 79. Byron. “A Fragment,” appended to Mazeppa: A Poem. London: John Murray, 1819, 57–69. 80. [John Polidori]. The Vampyre. A Tale. London: Sherwood, Neely, and Jones, 1819; rpt. Oxford/New York: Woodstock Books, 1990. 81. Le Vampire (1820) was a collaboration: Charles Nodier wrote together with Achille Jouffrey and Pierre Carmouche. See: F.W.J. Hemmings, “Co-authorship in French Plays of the Nineteenth Century.” French Studies: A Quarterly Review 41.1 (Winter 1987), 37–51. 82. Burwick. Romantic Drama Acting and Reacting. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009, 230–37. 83. Fingal’s Cave is the famous basaltic landmark on the Island of Staffa. For the bloody exploits of Fingal, see: MacPherson, The Poems of Ossian (1796). For example, I:29. 84. The name Cromal is adapted from MacPherson, The Poems of Ossian; see: “Croma,” I:113–124; and “Calthon and Comal,” I:125–136.

CHAPTER 4

Synoptic Time

Plays devoted to the ages and stages of individual life and progress were popular in London theatres of the Romantic era. Not yet a subgenre, the characteristic condensation of a life story emerged earlier. Shakespeare has Jacques reflect on the Seven Ages of Man. William Hogarth anticipated the dramatic potential in The Rake’s Progress, The Harlot’s Progress, as well as in The Stages of Cruelty and Idleness and Industry which had a close counterpart in George Lillo’s London Merchant (1731). The synoptic structure was well suited to representations of moral dissolution of the gambler or drunkard, as in Douglas Jerrold’s Fifteen Years of a Drunkard’s Life (1817). Also following in the Hogarthian mode, W.  T. Moncrieff appropriated the tales in the Newgate Calendar into the episodes of A Sharper’s Progress (1830). In a remarkably innovative use of composite time, a synoptic version of the Leatherstocking saga was performed in which James Fenimore Cooper was presumed to reside in the characters of the scout, the hunter, and the trapper. Taken together, these three novels of the American frontier were interpreted as comprising an autobiography. Cooper names himself Natty Bumppo, Hawkeye, and Leatherstocking.

The Long Rifle The Long Rifle (Coburg, 21 November 1831) was written in three acts, each the synopsis of an entire novel. The purpose of the author, the playbill declares, had been to provide the life story of a lone settler who © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 F. Burwick, Time in Romantic Theatre, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-96079-7_4

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adapted to time and place by learning “Indian Habits and Principles.” His condition is undermined and ultimately destroyed “by the Progress of Civilization and Population.” Thus, in the first Work “The Last of the Mohicans,” he is a Scout in the English Service, on the Banks of the Hudson, during the old French War of 1757. In the Second, “The Pioneer,” he is a Hunter in the Woods of Pennsylvania, at the Close of the Revolutionary Struggle. And in the Third, “The Prairie,” he is a Trapper of Birds and Beasts in the wild Prairies of the West, at the Commencement of the present Century. This Plan not only affords a View of a strikingly original Character, in Youth, Manhood, and Old Age—each Period distinguished by the peculiar Circumstances of a New Employment—but presents a picturesque Panorama of the Changes in American History and Manners.1

In 1831, when Cooke assumed the role of Natty Bumppo, there were indeed only three novels in the Leatherstocking saga. The late additions, The Pathfinder (1840) and The Deerslayer (1841), are prequels, describing events when Natty was at the peak of his powers. The Long Rifle was totally original and unique as a drama summarizing three novels through the fictional career of an American frontiersman. The playwright combined these new elements with four additional elements that were attractively familiar to a London audience: (1) a synoptic plot, (2) a favourite actor in the lead, (3) a blazing finale, and (4) an author whose novels had already become familiar as stage adaptations in London theatres. A fifth element would be the playwright, but I can only speculate who that might have been. It is beyond debate, however, that Thomas Potter Cooke was among the most admired and versatile actors of the melodramatic stage: a frightening monster and a brave British tar. Introduced in his role as the demon in Der Freischütz (Chap. 3), Cooke defined the Romantic version of the night-prowling blood-thirsty Lord Ruthven in James Robinson Planché’s The Vampire (English Opera House, 9 August 1821). He was the original creature in Richard Brinsley Peake’s Presumption (English Opera House, 28 July 1823), the stage adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. He was Zamiel, the Black Huntsman in Edward Fitzball’s Der Freischütz (English Opera House, 22 July 1824),2 and he was Vanderdecken, the ghostly mariner in Fitzball’s The Flying Dutchman (Adelphi, 4 December 1826). He was also immensely popular in such nautical roles as William in

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Douglas Jerrold’s Black-Eyed Susan (Surrey, 8 June 1829). Before the Leatherstocking Tales were adapted for performance in London, two of Cooper’s nautical novels—The Pilot (1824), The Red Rover (1828)—were performed at the Adelphi. In Fitzball’s The Pilot (Adelphi, 31 October 1825), Cooke played Long Tom Coffin, a role that was a mainstay in his repertory on tour. The play was especially popular in seaside communities familiar with the British/American maritime conflict.3 In the stage adaptation of another of Cooper’s pirate novels, Fitzball’s The Red Rover (Adelphi, 9 February 1829), Cooke was Dick Fid, an American driven to piracy by British colonial oppression during the mid-eighteenth century. Because Fitzball had created four of Cooke’s most successful roles, it is quite possible that George Davidge, manager of the Coburg, turned to Fitzball on the occasion of Cooke’s six-day special appointment in November 1831, to provide an attractive new role for that occasion. At his previous six-night engagement at the Coburg in June 1831, Cooke performed on five of those six nights as Long Tom Coffin in Fitzball’s adaptation of Cooper’s The Pilot (15, 16, 17, 18, and 20 June 1831). One reason for omitting mention of the playwright from the playbill would have been the emphasis on Cooper as storyteller and central character of the performance. If experience in adapting Cooper for the stage had been a criterion for soliciting a playwright for The Long Rifle, Davidge might have called on Thomas John Dibdin, a prolific writer who turned out as many as a dozen theatrical pieces a year. His The Wigwam; or, The Men of the Wilderness (Covent Garden, 12 April 1830) was drawn from Cooper’s The Pioneers.4 William Bayle Bernard was another playwright who might have secured an invitation from Davidge to prepare the Leatherstocking Tales for the stage. A few years earlier, Davidge had prompted Bernard to write a rival version of The Pilot: A Tale of the Sea (Coburg, 17 July 1826). Cooper’s frontier novel, The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish (1829), was also adapted by Bernard, and it opened at the Adelphi on the very same day as The Long Rifle (21 November 1831). That coincidence might mean that Bernard could not at the same time have written for the Adelphi and the Coburg. But perhaps he did. At any event, Davidge welcomed Bernard’s return three and half months later for a second run of The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish (Coburg, 1 March 1832). Subsequent to the production of The Long Rifle, there were rival stage adaptations of Cooper’s The Bravo (1831), one by C. Z. Barnett (Surrey, 21 February 1833) and the other by John Baldwin Buckstone (Adelphi,

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11 February 1833). No other probable candidates have occurred to me. During the months immediately preceding and following The Long Rifle, Buckstone collaborated twice with Fitzball, first on The Sea Serpent (Adelphi, 3 October 1831) and then on Robert le Diable (Adelphi, 23 January 1832). Collaboration, too, might explain the anonymity on the playbills. For reasons I have suggested, Fitzball seems the most likely playwright, and I will observe a few related characteristics of Fitzball’s manipulation of time in his other plays. The manipulation of time in The Long Rifle is far more complex than mere synoptic condensation, which of necessity occurs in every adaptation of novel into play. The sequence of events is altered in narrative telling, rather than dramatic showing. A key attribute of Cooper’s technique of characterization is to have a character reveal identity by telling a story of her or his circumstances. Flashbacks and secondary plots interweave disparate threads of action. To create a sense of the great expanse and labyrinthine mazes of the American woods and planes, George Davidge made full use of the huge stage (34 feet wide, 92 feet deep = 10.36 metres by 28 metres). “The features of American Scenery,” the playbill stated of the extensive stage designs, presented “strongly marked Varieties of the luxuriant, the wild, and the sublime.” Also, the dramatizations sought to provide a degree of documentary on Indian lore and pioneer life over a fifty-year span of history. The unifying element of the three-act play was the long-term experience of its central character, and the lore he acquired from living beyond the frontier of civilization. Between Acts I and II, twenty-two years have passed, and when Act III commences, twenty-seven more years had elapsed. That same span was true for Cooper’s three novels, which depicted the progressive loss of the American wilderness and the usurpation of the lands of the Native Americans. Act I ends with the death of Uncas and Chingachook as the last of the Mohicans; Act II depicts the westward retreat of Natty Bumppo and his Mohican companion; in Act III, Natty Bumppo has outlived his historical relevance as frontiersman and survives in the open prairies as a hunter of small game. In the final scene, the stage adaptation radically departs from the original. The opening scene of Act I takes place in the barrack yard of Fort Edward on the Hudson River. Major Effingham was played by Thomas James Serle, who had performed Macduff to Edmund Kean’s Macbeth during his six-night engagement at the Coburg in June of that year. Effingham has called his troops for a rifle practice in this scene which does

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not occur in The Last of the Mohicans, but was similar to the climactic scene in Fitzball’s Der Freischütz, and anticipates the marksman competition with Jasper Western in The Pathfinder. The crack shot of the Fort was Sergeant Swartz, a Hanoverian rifleman played by George Maynard. Swartz has just ordered a pigeon released and brought it down with a single shot. Natty, known as Hawkeye the Scout, asks for two pigeons, waits for them to cross in flight, then brings both down with a single shot. The Scout is welcomed to join the expedition being led by Effingham to return Alice Munro, played by Mrs. Lewis, to her father, the commandant at Fort William Henry. Also joining them is David Gamut, a singing-­ master from Connecticut, a comic role performed by W. Bennett. Act I, scene ii, depicts their overnight encampment on the banks of the Hudson. Magua, a renegade Huron, has joined the English contingent but still serves as spy both to his tribe and to the French troops. Betrayed by Magua, Effingham’s party is captured in an ambush, but the Scout and his Mohican companion are able to escape and temporarily rescue Effingham. At this juncture in the novel, Cooper introduces an abandoned blockhouse where they take refuge and Chingachook narrates the battle of the Mohicans and the Mohawks. They are on the site where his people are buried. The play avoids the flashback (analepsis), but follows the novel in splitting the action into a sequence of supposedly simultaneous scenes (see Chap. 6, Time Replayed) involving the warring Hurons, the beleaguered English forces at Fort Edward, and the ruthless French Ambuscaders led by Sergeant Bombadier Bellerophen, played by Davidge. Scene ii ends with another successful rescue by Hawkeye and his unerring long rifle. Scene iii is set in a Huron village with wigwams set around a central fire. Magua, the spy, arrives with Effingham and Alice in custody. The Scout, disguised as a tribal witch-doctor, performs a Powwow ritual, which enables him to go from tent to tent in search of Alice and Effingham. Scene iv takes place in the interior of a wigwam, where the Scout has enabled Effingham to escape before being captured himself. In the novel, David Grant, disguised as a French doctor, was first to search the village, followed by Hawkeye wearing a medicine man’s bearskin. Scene v depicts the preparations being made in Magua’s village to burn the Scout alive. There is no such corresponding scene in the novel. Instead, Cooper told of Magua killing Uncas, the young Mohican, the last of his tribe. Hawkeye with his long rifle sends a bullet to the top of a distant hill that stops Magua’s escape. Act I ends with a celebration of the English victory and the defeat of the French and the marauding Huron tribe.

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The Pioneers, the novel, identifies the setting as 1793. The play, however, commences action ten years earlier to coincide with the Treaty of Paris formally ending the American Revolutionary War. Aged 26  in the first act, the Natty Bumppo of the novel would now be an old recluse of 63 years. The playwright, however, has chosen a date ten years earlier. The 53-year-old Leatherstocking is still very much the rugged individualist. The novel opened with a scene in which Leatherstocking and his young companion, Edward Oliver, argue with Judge Temple over the shooting of a deer. Leatherstocking’s bullet is in the deer, and Edward has been wounded by the judge’s bullet. This opening sets up the prevailing opposition between the earlier settlers who still retain strong English loyalties versus those who have affirmed allegiance to the new government of the states. Leatherstocking is suspected of being the former. Judge Temple, proprietor of the Settlement, is very much an adherent to the latter. Cooke and Mortimer played these two roles as if they were crochety old men of the same age. Thomas James Serle continued his role from Act I as Major Effingham, formerly an officer of authority, now a refugee Royalist. No matter whose bullet brought down the deer, it was killed on the judge’s property and therefore belonged to the judge, while Leatherstocking was a trespassing poacher. But the playwright omitted such a scene and commenced, instead, with a scene that contrasted the busy time of the villagers investing in community works with the suspiciously secretive time of the Hunter and friends who lurk as loners outside the social realm. Act II, scene i, displayed a “View of a Settlement on the Susquehanna. Pioneers felling trees, Artizans rearing Houses, building boats.” Amidst their activities, citizens raise questions about the unseen doings of the outsiders. Their resentment of the shirkers is accompanied by the suspicion that the recluse might secretly be delving in the underground riches of Susquehanna’s mines, the amethyst, rubies, rose quartz, emeralds, and other gemstones. Assuming that he has a concealed mine shaft beneath his hut, they march as vigilantes to search and seize the Hunter’s hidden treasures. They are persuasively halted by the Hunter who stands guard in his doorway with his long rifle ready to fire. When Hiram Doolittle, magistrate and keeper of the strong room, attempts to force his way into the hut, the Hunter picks him up and throws him down the embankment. Act II, scene ii, is set in the Ostego Hills, where the elder Effingham, persecuted as a Royalist, has sought refuge. Eliza Temple, the judge’s daughter, has fallen in love with the Edwin Oliver, not knowing that he was Effingham’s son. Strolling through the Ostego woods, she is attacked

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by a panther. Mid-pounce, the beast falls dead, shot by the unerring Long Rifle. Scene iii takes place in the judge’s chamber. As a novelist, Cooper is fond of flashbacks that pose difficulties for the playwright who risks surrendering dramatic action to narrative. Charged with assault on Doolittle the magistrate, Leatherstocking is required to account for his activities at the hut and his meetings with Edwin Oliver and Effingham. He is found guilty, sentenced to a month in jail, and hours in the stocks. The flashback is animated by means of Leatherstocking’s gestural performance of the events and by Doolittle’s interruptions, endeavouring to elicit a confession of criminal deeds. In the novel, flashbacks may add temporal depth to the narrative. Flashbacks are used to recount events that happened before the story’s primary sequence of events to fill in crucial backstory. In scene iv, in the strong room, Doolittle struts and chortles over Leatherstocking’s humiliation. Eliza brings him food, and he reveals his plan to escape. She agrees to meet him atop the Ostego Hills. Eliza encounters Indian John in war costume, who reveals in a second flashback his identity as Chingachook. Before they reach the mountain top, a forest fire compels Eliza and the Mohican chief to join Natty and Edward in a cave, where they had also hidden Effingham, whose hardship had left him feeble in mind and body. After the fire passes, the sheriff and judge arrive. Edward Oliver, in a third flashback, reveals that he is son of Effingham and Alice Munro, who lost her life when he was still and infant. Because his father was forced into hiding as a royalist, Edward concealed his family name. Little of Cooper’s ending is retained. The novel closed with the judge’s recognition of Effingham as his former business partner and the true owner of the properties that the judge has claimed in the absence of the outlawed Royalist. The properties are transferred to the younger Effingham, who marries the judge’s daughter and cares for his father in his dying days. The play comes to a very different conclusion, made possible by the ten-year change in date. Scene v, set on the banks of the Susquehanna, shows the captured Royalist being blindfolded before a firing squad. Leatherstocking dashes into this scene bringing news of the peace. Following the British defeat at Yorktown, support for the war in America faded, and the Treaty in Paris declared an end to the Revolutionary War. Act III, drawn from The Prairie, presents Natty Bumppo as an aged Trapper on the prairies a few years after the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. Action consists entirely of captures and escapes. Much of the capturing is done by the Sioux, who abduct the women from the caravan of settlers travelling westward from the Mississippi. The caravan is led by the

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unscrupulous Ishmael Bush, played by Thomas Cobham, still cheered for stealing the show the previous June in his performance as Iago to Edwin Kean’s Othello. Eliza Temple, who became Eliza Effingham, was played by Mrs. Harrison in Act II and by Miss Watson in Act III. Her reappearance in the play, not the novel, was a substitution for Inez, the abducted wife, perhaps motivated by an effort to secure a degree of continuity. Members of the caravan include Ishmael’s sons, Anber and Asa, Abiram White, with the kidnapped Eliza, and Dr. Obed Bat (Battius in the novel), on a “Tour of Zoological Discovery.” Other characters are Captain Haverill of the American Rangers in search of his abducted wife, and the tribe of Sioux. The first scene opens with a “View of the Prairies of Louisiana. Fields of tall grass peculiar to those plains, which rise in ridges; here and there presenting a solitary rock or tree.” Slowly from the tall grass rises the aged Trapper with his Long Rifle aimed for game. In the distance (remember the stage depth of 92 feet/28 meters), teams of squatters pass across the prairies. In a Cooperesque flashback, Natty Bumppo tells the story of his years following events of the Susquehana. Again, Leatherstocking’s performative telling transforms the past events into present action. Scene ii offers another view of the prairies, with Ishmael and his sons hunting for buffalo. Unseen by their father, the elder brother is shot in the back. A search for the missing boy occurs on the following morning. Scene iii takes place in the squatter’s camp. The women are missing, and the wagons, cattle, and goods are in disarray. In scene iv, the dead body is discovered. The fatal ball is displayed and soon determined to belong to the Trapper. Ishmael is certain that the old Trapper killed his son. Knowing his life is in peril if he fails to make his case, the Trapper appears in scene v in the squatter’s camp. He shows that the markings on the ball did not come from his long rifle, but were shot from the rifle of Abiram. Again, the playwright departs radically from the novel. Cooper has Ishmael give Abiram a choice, either to starve or hang himself. The old Trapper spends his final days with a Pawnee tribe. When visited by the army captain, Bumppo manages to stand and, as if answering a military roll call, shouts out “Here,” then falls down dead. The gesture is emotionally apt for the account in a novel, but on stage would have been comic. Davidge was fond of the pyrotechnical conclusion: notable examples were the fiery deus ex machina of George McFarren’s Guy Fawkes; or, the Gunpowder Treason (Coburg, September 1822) and H. M. Milner’s The City of the Plague, and the Great Fire of London (Coburg, 26 December,

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1825). The playwright would have had Davidge’s blessings in substituting a conflagration as a grand finale. Wind-driven flames sweep the prairie.5 The squatters circle for refuge, and the Sioux attempt an attack but are driven back and must surrender their captives, the captain and Eliza. Anticipating the cinematic trope of the cowboy riding off into the sunset, the Trapper strides into the blazing conflagration.

Dennis Lawler, Industry and Idleness The topic of this chapter, synoptic time, was defined in the opening paragraph as focused on the key events of a single life or career, and as constituting a fairly extensive subgenre of melodrama. While melodrama at large has been charged with the relying on stereotypes rather than on fully developed characters, the synoptic exposition was for the most part guilty of propagating the most meagre of stereotypes and superficial characters. Hogarth’s The Rake’s Progress, The Harlot’s Progress, The Stages of Cruelty, and Idleness and Industry deserve credit for fostering the genre visually even before they were developed for the stage. In The London Merchant; or, The History of George Barnwell (Drury Lane, 21 June 1731), George Lillo dramatized the fate of the two apprentices in a manner that readily informed Hogarth’s series of twelve plot-linked engravings. The two apprentices begin on even-footing working at the looms. But the idle apprentice falls into evil ways in company of a harlot, while the industrious apprentice applies himself diligently to his labours and is rewarded. Hogarth’s final plates show Idle executed at Tyburn and Industrious being celebrated as Lord-Mayor of London. In Lillo’s version of this moral tale, George Barnwell engages in an affair with the prostitute Sarah Millwood. After stealing money from Thorowgood, his employer, to fund his relationship, Barnwell robs and murders his uncle. Both Barnwell and Millwood are arrested and executed for their crimes. Apparently of the mind that evil is more interesting than good, Lillo gives much less attention to the successful progress of Trueman, who was apprenticed alongside of Barnwell. At the end, however, Thorowgood and Trueman visit Barnwell in his prison cell. They console and forgive him. In the end, George is truly repentant for his sins and is at peace with himself, his friends, and God. Trueman ends the show with a brief monologue urging people to avoid the wrong and seek the right. As a capable playwright, Lillo avoided simplistic dialogue and stereotypical characters. Dennis Lawler, by contrast, adopted the stereotypes as

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pertinent to his endeavour, which was to solicit Hogarth’s moral authority and to emphasize the broad moral relevance of Hogarth’s visual narrative. Lawler’s Industry and Idleness (Surrey, 15 April 1811) was supported by overture and music by James Sanderson. The scenery by Marchbanks imitated, rather than replicated, the Hogarth plates. The action followed but freely enhanced the source. Lawler introduced, at every hint by Hogarth, complementary scenes of spectacle and historical extravaganza. In addition to scenes conforming to each of the plates, Marchbanks painted massive backdrops depicting London life: “London Bridge with waterfall; East India House; Storm and Shipwreck on coast of Cornwall; Blackfriar’s Bridge; Guildhall, illuminated.” The scene of shipwreck followed the scene of the idle apprentice being “turn’d away, and sent to Sea.” In the playbill, Lawler described the grand finale: The concluding scenes will display, on a scale of extraordinary magnificence, a faithful, and an entirely novel, representation of the ceremonies & pageantries exhibited on the River Thames, in the streets of London, and in the interior of the Guildhall, in the annual celebration of the Lord Mayor’s Day.6

Hogarth incorporated images of carnivalesque debauchery at the execution at Tyburn (plate 11). He depicted, too, drunken antics among the crowd gathered to cheer the parade accompanying the gilded coach on Lord Mayor’s Day (plate 12). Surely, you might think, Lawler must have relied on a modest suggestion of the crowds and a trimmed down version of the pageantry and procession. Not at all. Instead, he ushered as many as possible onto the stage. The fall of one apprentice, the rise of the other was an exhibition of stereotypes. Lawler made up for the simplicity of plot and character with the grandeur of spectacle, especially at the conclusion. Mounted on horses and wearing full suits of armour prepared by Marriott, manufacturer in brass and iron in Fleet Street, Richard John Smith and Thomas Potter Cooke twice crossed the stage before they were followed by two more horses, drawing the Lord Mayor’s gilded carriage. It may have been Lawler himself who bargained with Sir Claudius Hunter to borrow the actual carriage for use on the Surrey stage. In return for that munificence, for the following Lord Mayor’s Day (9 November 1811), Smith in iron armour and Cooke in brass armour again mounted horses to proceed the Lord Mayor’s coach on its rounds through the streets of London.

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No doubt even older than the biblical tale of the prodigal son, the wastrel or ne’er-do-well was a familiar character in English comedy. In Henry IV: Part I, Shakespeare created a telling version of the prodigal role in Prince Hal whose carefree, fun-loving escapades looked wayward and corrupt to his father. But Shakespeare’s Hal, like the biblical prodigal, is redeemed and assumes responsibility. In the Romantic period, few comedies offered a more popular profligate than Harry Dornton in Thomas Holcroft’s The Road to Ruin (Covent Garden, 18 February 1792). Although his title indicates a steady line to perdition, Holcroft manages Harry’s conversion from idleness to dedicated industry. Hogarth’s Tom Rakewell experiences no such reversal. The Rake’s Progress portrays him as totally unprepared to manage his inherited wealth. But he is no virtuous innocent, as is evident in his treatment of Sarah Young, his pregnant fiancée (plate 1). Easily duped, he fails to learn from his losses. Rather, his waywardness leads him deeper into depravity. His character on stage is as shallow as Hogarth conceived it, but without the incredible detail that enhances Hogarth’s narrative. As Charles Isaac Dibdin realized in The Rake’s Progress (Surrey, 10 July 1826) and William Leman Rede in The Rake’s Progress (City, 28 January 1833), the synoptic structure was well suited to representations of moral dissolution. The same may be said of the synoptic representations of the gambler or drunkard, as in Douglas Jerrold’s Fifteen Years of a Drunkard’s Life (Coburg, 24 November 1828) and George Dibdin Pitt’s The Drunkard’s Doom (Coburg, 21 September 1832). The drunkard’s character was defined only by his incremental addiction to alcohol, but no further attributes were needed for the nonconformists, chartists, and other advocates of temperance. Under the influence of the Hogarthian source, The Harlot’s Progress was imitated in dozens of plays on the plight of the country girl newly arrived in the city, or the hired maid, or the abandoned bride. The topic suited well the synoptic progression of marked-off periods of time, as in the anonymous melodrama, Ten Years of a Woman’s Life; or, The Fruits of Bad Advice (Royal Pavilion, 21 April 1834).7 The ten years of Elizabeth’s life allow the audience to accompany her from scene to scene through her experiences as a school girl among naughty boys, as a shop girl acquiescing to the advances of the shop owner, as a kept women of a wealthy merchant, as one of the enterprising ladies of a bawdy house, as a street prostitute, as a drunk vagrant held in a work house, as a victim of syphilis assigned to a hospital ward for the dying. The synopsis of her life gains

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dimension scene by scene in the monologue in which Elizabeth responds to the advice she has received and expresses her thoughts on her own past, present, and future.

Henry M. Milner, The Gambler’s Fate; or, A Lapse of Twenty Years Victor Ducange’s Trente ans, ou la vie d’un joueur (Paris, Théâtre de la Porte-Saint-Martin, 19 June 1827) brought him reasonable success, and its several adaptations for the London stage were even more successful. The first two English versions were both the work of Henry M. Milner, and both fairly true to their source: The Hut of the Red Mountains; or, Thirty Years of a Gambler’s Life (Coburg, 3 September 1827); The Gambler’s Fate; or, A Lapse of Twenty Years (Drury Lane, 15 October 1827). The difference was in the larger cast and expanded dialogue at Drury Lane. Neither of these versions, in spite of the jump in time of twenty or thirty years, is synoptic in the sense defined in this chapter. The time leap is similar to Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale or Coleridge’s Zapolya (see Chap. 2). To be sure, Milner reveals the phases in Albert’s decline, but they occur in such rapid sequence that there is little exposition of synoptic time. The “hut” in the title of the performance at the Coburg refers to the hovel in which Albert and his wife Julia have found shelter in their extreme poverty after Albert has gambled away Julia’s fortune. In Act I, Albert and Malcour initially are good friends, until Malcour’s gambling and intemperate habits undermine Albert’s behaviour. Albert marries Julia, whose wealth is drained to pay his gambling debts. His father, saddened by his son wasting his wife’s wealth along with his own, dies in despair. In the second half of this melodrama, blood is spattered and the two gamblers are burned alive. Lindorf arrives at the hut seeking a guide. Albert murders him for his money. Malcour has discovered the hut and intends to visit his old friend. Albert attacks him with an axe. Malcour manages to placate him, and the two leave the hut to talk. In their absence, Henry arrives and is greeted by his mother, Julia. Because of Albert’s obsessive gambling, Henry has been raised by his maternal grandfather. When Albert and Malcour return, they learn that Henry is carrying £5000. Malcour stabs Henry and steals the money. Julia reveals to Albert that Henry was their son. Horrified and repentant, Albert falls to his knees.

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Just then lightning strikes the hut, which bursts into flame. In a fit of madness, Albert shoves Malcour into the fire and falls in after him. Another production opened at the same time at the Adelphi, Thirty Years of a Gambler’s Life (15 October 1827). This appears to be an independent adaptation or translation from Victor Ducange. So, too, was Andrew V.  Campbell’s The Gambler’s Life in London (Sadler’s Wells, 1 January 1829). An anonymous version followed a couple of years later: Thirty Years of a Gambler’s Life (Coburg, 10 January 1831). The huge passage of time in these plays enables the playwright to fast-forward to the gambler’s final state of murderous depravity, but it abbreviates the steps in mental and moral decline. In The Heart of London! or, A Sharper’s Progress (Adelphi, 15 February 1830; revived at the Coburg, 10 January 1831), William Thomas Moncrieff restores the synoptic stages, and he is especially concerned with thieves and the jargon of their profession. No part of vocabulary evolves more rapidly than the slang and cant of popular use.

William Thomas Moncrieff, The Heart of London! or, A Sharper’s Progress A century intervened between Hogarth’s The Rake’s Progress and Moncrieff’s The Sharper’s Progress. The same characters—the pick-pocket, the cut-purse, and other sly predators of the street—are still exercising the tricks of their trade. But their language was under constant revision. The debt to Hogarth was significant, but the debt to Pierce Egan was equally relevant. As a writer for the newspapers on sports events, especially boxing and the horse races, Egan had absorbed the argot of the ring and the track into his prose. Egan’s Life in London, or Days and Nights of Jerry Hawthorne and his elegant friend Corinthian Tom (1821) urged the importance of knowing the latest slang. Tom and Jerry; or, Life in London (Adelphi, 26 November 1821) was a stage adaptation by Moncrieff, who transformed Egan’s characters into comedic commentators on negotiating the many scams to be encountered by a visitor to the city. Pierce Egan subsequently brought out his edition of A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1823).8 Returning to Egan’s Life in London and his Dictionary, Moncrieff found a way to integrate the comic exposé of the various cheats and frauds of London into the synoptic structure of The Heart of London! or, A Sharper’s Progress (Adelphi, 5 February 1830).9 Moncrieff joined Egan in a literary endeavour that had

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been well exploited in Robert Greene’s The Cony-Catching Pamphlets (1592). Greene, an English poet and playwright contemporary with Shakespeare, made a specialty in writing about the sordid life among the whores and thieves. He produced a series of six pamphlets on the ploys and deceptions used by swindlers to catch a cony—literally a rabbit, but slang for a vulnerable, gullible dupe. In the course of describing the cony-­ catchers, Greene employed and deciphered the slang of their discourse. The “sharper” of the title is Fitzhazard, the illegitimate son of the late Sir J. Haughton. Lady Haughton and their daughter Emily have inherited Sir Haughton’s entire estate. Fitzhazard has grown up among the elite of society. Excluded from his father’s will, he has perfected the art of pilfering jewellery and other valuables from the careless members of this wealthy circle. As the play opens, he is plotting how he might cheat his half-sister out of a lion’s share of the inheritance. Moncrieff has divided the synoptic exposition of Fitzhazard’s career into three episodes: the sharper’s plot is followed by the second episode one year later, and the third occurs after another five years.10 In the hands of a skilled sharper, the dupe does not realize he is being duped. Thus, Wilton perceives no reason to be suspicious of the friendship that Fitzhazard has bestowed upon him. Wilton had worked as a clerk for a London banker but, after an evening of heavy drinking, had found himself enlisted in the royal army. Fitzhazard sympathizes with his plight and promises to assist him in establishing a new identity. In this first episode, Wilton has been introduced to Lady Haughton and Emily as a French marquis. Wilton commanded enough French to manage the disguise, and soon realizes that he shares a mutual attraction for Emily. They are soon engaged, and Fitzhazard insists that the wedding follow at once, before Wilton is called back to France on business. As bride and groom are leaving the church, a sergeant from the local regiment recognizes Wilton as the deserter. Fitzhazard comes to his defence, with the result that both are locked up in Newgate. But remember, in the hands of a skilled sharper, the dupe does not realize he is being duped. Fitzhazard has duped Wilton—and the audience, too. From a quiet corner in the tavern, Fitzhazard had ordered that Wilton’s glass should be kept full. Once Wilton was drunk, Fitzhazard led him to a recruitment officer. Feigning friendship, Fitzhazard assisted his desertion, his disguise, and his courtship of Emily. It was also Fitzhazard, of course, who alerted the sergeant to the identity of the groom departing from the church.

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The second episode opens a year later in Newgate Gaol, where Fitzhazard and Wilton have been confined. Moncrieff uses this setting for a thorough review of rogues and their slang. As the prison guard calls each name, the criminal acknowledges his crime: pinching pocket watches, peddling smuggled goods, distributing false coins, household burglary, highway robbery, and several more crimes described in the colourful language of the profession. Most of this episode is devoted to a Newgate roster derived from Pierce Egan and from the Newgate Calendar.11 Two events in this episode are crucial to the synopsis of the sharper. First is the visit to Newgate from Shuttleworth, a friend of the late Sir J.  Haughton, who reports that the Haughton estate has been plundered and vandalized. Emily tries to sustain Lady Haughton and herself with the pittance she can earn through needlework. Fitzhazard pretends shock at this news. But in fact, he is even now negotiating with a go-between to sell the remaining furniture, paintings, and precious goods. Silently exulting in his triumph as bastard son over the family that had disinherited him, Fitzhazard contemplates the utter subjugation of Emily as the final step in his revenge. This second episode closes with a second crucial event. Still faking his friendship for Wilton, Fitzhazard pledges to help Wilton escape Newgate, so that he will be able to assist Emily in her desperation. With the assistance of several prisoners, Fitzhazard manages to distract the doctor on his visit to the infirmary, then have Wilton, disguised as the doctor (with requisite wig, glasses, overcoat, and black bag), exit to the streets upon completing his rounds. Wilton’s escape is not discovered until the real doctor is ready to depart. The third episode opens in the Christmas season, five years after Wilton’s escape. Aware of her half-brother’s dishonesty, Emily promptly forgave Wilton for his disguise as the French marquis. To conceal his identity as an escaped prisoner, he and his wife have adopted the name Foster. With financial assistance from Shuttleworth, now a wealthy banker, the “Fosters” have jointly established successful trade as mercers. Their happiness is abruptly darkened by the reappearance of Fitzhazard. After six years in Newgate, he has at last escaped from prison. The money he had gained from looting the family estate disappeared with the looters. Desperate for funds, he and his companion James have planned to rob Shuttleworth’s bank of securities, £20,000 in gold bar. Because he knows the true identity of the “Fosters,” Fitzhazard is able to coerce their cooperation. Emily, however, secretly informs Shuttleworth of the plot.

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The plan was for James to run out with half the gold, followed by Wilton with the other half. Fitzhazard would exit second. James was instructed to wait for Wilton to exit third and stab him. Fitzhazard and James would take the stolen gold to the mercer’s shop where they could hide until there was no danger of police pursuit. Emily disrupted the plan, so that she, wearing a cloak, would exit second, and Fitzhazard, not Wilton, carried the remaining load of gold and was third to leave. Instructed to stab the third to exit the bank, James plunged his knife into Fitzhazard’s back. Suspecting James’s betrayal, the dying Fitzhazard shot his partner in the head. Emily promptly brought Wilton to her side, so that they could join Shuttleworth, following the police, who had arrived to halt the bank robbery. At the bank entrance, gold bars were strewn between the dead bodies. As innocent onlookers, the “Fosters” stand apart and casually walk away.

Douglas Jerrold, Ambrose Gwinett Ambrose Gwinett (Coburg, 6 October 1828) dramatizes the vulnerability of the falsely accused, especially those of the lower classes. Gwinett is the first-person narrator in the melodrama Douglas Jerrold based on a tale by Isaac Bickerstaff. In adapting the tale for the stage, Jerrold retained the device of the first-person narrator by having his character, a lame street-­ sweep at Charing Cross, alone on stage for the opening and closing scenes.12 By means of these framing monologues, Jerrold enables his central character to attain a far more fully developed personality and audience rapport than is usually achieved by a stage beggar of the period (Illustration 4.1). The action, which is another example of the shrewd reliance on synoptic time, is developed in a sequence of flashbacks from the opening narrative: a young apprentice, spending a night at an inn where a robbery and murder take place, is accused of the murder, and tried, condemned, executed; reviving on the gibbet and being rescued by a dairy-maid, he takes to the sea to avoid further prosecution, but is captured by pirates and sold into slavery; escaping and making his way back to England, he is a lame and penniless man with no surviving relatives. The courtroom, the gibbet, and the pirate ship are the setting of the three principal scenes. The surprise twist in the plot occurs aboard the pirate ship where Gwinett encounters the man whom he was accused of murdering. The blood of the supposed victim came from a bloody nose, which prompted the man to

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Illustration 4.1  Ambrose Gwinett was cruelly beaten. Douglas Jerrold, Ambrose Gwinett. Robert Cruikshank, artist; George W. Bonner, engraver

leave the inn for a short sea-side walk, where a press-gang captured him and took him to sea. In the final scene, the lame street-sweep of Charing Cross bids the audience a kind farewell. The representation of time as a synopsis still had its unity, but it was a unity of coherent sampling from an evolving lifetime. Causality and

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consequence defined the plot of passing time. The next chapter on time stopping is also about time moving. In developing as a Gesamtkunst, the performative arts laid claim to a larger share of the visual arts. Painted settings and backdrops had their moving parts, which often marked the passage of time. Conversely, actors might step in and out of a painting, or cease motion to assume a timeless identity as a statue or a portrait. Time itself became an object of performance.

Notes 1. British Library, Playbills. The Long Rifle. Coburg, 21 November 1831. 2. Edward Fitzball. Der Freischütz; or, The Demon of the Wolf’s Glen, and the Seven Charmed Bullets. London: G.H. Davidson, Peter’s Hill, 1824. 3. British Library, Playbills. The Pilot; or, A Tale of the Sea was performed at Adelphi, 31 October 1825; Coburg, 17 July 1826; Royal Pavilion, popular for Newgate drama, 15 October 1830; the smuggling port of Hastings, 27 October 1826, 6 November 1826, 18 December 1826, 9 July 1827; Edinburgh Theatre Royal, 1828 and 1829; the New Shakespearean Theatre, Stratford-on-Avon, 29 December 1828 and 13 February 1829; the port theatre of Southampton, where T.  P. Cooke appeared as Frankenstein’s Monster as well as Long Tom Coffin, 12 January 1831; the Theatre of Arts, Lynn-Street, in the market town of Swaffham, 15 September 1834; the port theatre of Swansea, with T. P. Cooke again as Frankenstein’s Monster and as Long Tom Coffin, 25 September 1834, 30 September 1834; the market town of Hadleigh, Suffolk, 18 January 1836; the market town of Huntingdon, 31 August 1836. 4. Genest. English Stage, 9:518–519, mistakenly wrote that this play was “Never acted,” which he subsequently corrected to “acted 21 times.” 5. Burwick. “Explosions, Conflagrations, and other Happy Endings.” British Drama of the Industrial Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2015, 230–54. 6. British Library. Playbills 310. Surrey Theatre, 1811–1819. Dennis Lawler. Idleness and Industry (Surrey, 15 April 1811). The scene designer and painter Marchbanks served the Royal Circus and occasionally, as playbills show, the Surrey Theatre and Drury Lane. 7. British Library. Playbills 377. Ten Years of a Woman’s Life; or, The Fruits of Bad Advice. (Royal Pavilion, 21 April 1834). 8. Pierce Egan. A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. (1823). Egan’s edition was an extension of Francis Grose, Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue: A Dictionary of Buckish Slang, University Wit, and Pickpocket Eloquence

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(1811). See also: George Kent, Modern Flash Dictionary (1835); John Camden Hotten, A Dictionary of Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words (1860). 9. Moncrieff. The Heart of London! or, A Sharper’s Progress (Adelphi, 15 February 1830). London: J. Dicks, 1830. 10. Dramatic Magazine, vols. 2–3 (1830): 59. 11. Newgate Calendar (1719–forward): exploits of famous and lesser-known criminals. It was repeatedly updated in subsequent editions. Moncrieff would presumably have consulted The Newgate Calendar (1824) or The New Newgate Calendar (1826), both edited by Andrew Knapp and William Baldwin. 12. Douglas Jerrold. Ambrose Gwinett; or, a Sea-side Story. London: John Cumberland, 1828.

CHAPTER 5

Time Stopped

An exhibition that offered its visitors an opportunity to purchase folio and quarto-sized prints of the paintings on view, the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery may have been one of the great entrepreneurial experiments of the 1790s, but it was also an entrepreneurial failure. Fourteen years after the opening of the gallery in Pall Mall, it was forced to close its doors in bankruptcy in 1805. John Boydell blamed the war with France for having closed off a major market for the prints and the bound volumes. Boydell had good reason to conceive the Gallery as a highly lucrative investment, for his publishing house had been instrumental in heralding the reproduction of art as commodity. For some, commercialization may have implied a depreciation of aesthetic value. Once to be seen exclusively in churches, government buildings, and wealthy estates, paintings were reproduced, enabling the merchant class to bring art into their homes. The shift began earlier in the century with the popularity of the illustrated book, and a financial demarcation was established with Benjamin West’s income from The Death of General Wolfe (1771): the international acclaim West achieved was brought about by Boydell, who published and distributed William Woollet’s engraved version. Boydell held only a one-third share in the print, yet, as Winifried Friedman has reported, “in the first fifteen years he garnered £15,000 from this source.”1

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West earned three times as much from the prints as he had from the original painting. To secure a similar advantage, many artists formed exclusive partnership with an engraver. The anticipation of expanding the artist’s market place with engraved reproductions attracted other entrepreneurs. The Gallery of the Poets, which Thomas Macklin opened in the former Royal Academy building in 1788, survived until 1797. In the same building, Henry Fuseli exhibited his Milton Gallery in 1799. With sixty paintings illustrating David Hume’s The History of Great Britain, Robert Bowyer managed his Historic Gallery in Schomberg House at 87 Pall Mall from 1793 to 1806. High expenses and inadequate sales left Bowyer with debts totalling £30,000. Like Boydell, Bowyer petitioned Parliament to be allowed to conduct a lottery for the paintings in order to recoup a percentage of his losses.2 The entrepreneurship of the galleries was a risky endeavour, but others found ways to secure a profit in bringing art before the public. Alternate modes of display existed on the British stage. Each of the paintings in the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery presumed to represent a theatrical scene. I intend to explore the opposite sort of adaptation—representing a painting in a theatrical scene. Following the suggestion of Angelica Kauffman, William Hamilton sought to capture the theatrical manipulation of the temporal moment in his depiction of the conjuration in the last scene of The Winter’s Tale (Illustration 5.1).3 Drawing the curtain of the little stage upon the stage, and revealing Hermione in her pose as a statue, Paulina announces her power to make the statue move: I’ll make the statue move indeed, descend And take you by the hand; but then you’ll think— Which I protest against—I am assisted By wicked powers.

The charm of animation, she declares, will work only if all witnesses hold perfectly still: It is required You do awake your faith. Then all stand still; Or those that think it is unlawful business I am about, let them depart.

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Illustration 5.1  Paulina brings the statue of Hermione to life. The Winter’s Tale (V.iii). William Hamilton, artist; Robert Thew, engraver

Accepting her vow that she relies on no dark magic, Leontes assures her “No foot shall stir.” While the entire court ceases all motion, Paulina commands unseen musicians to strike the magical chords: Music, awake her; strike! Music ‘Tis time; descend; be stone no more; approach; Strike all that look upon with marvel. Come, I’ll fill your grave up: stir, nay, come away, Bequeath to death your numbness, for from him Dear life redeems you. You perceive she stirs.

The spell of the frozen moment is lifted when Hermione steps down from her pedestal. It was not necessary for Hamilton to stop the action on stage: Shakespeare has done that for him. Following the libretto prepared by Eugène Scribe and Germain Delavigne for Giacomo Meyerbeer’s opera, Robert le Diable (Paris Opéra,

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21 November 1831), Edward Fitzball made the most of the coup de théâtre in his Robert le Diable (Adelphi, 23 January 1832). In Chap. 3, this drama was discussed in terms of fatal time. Here, as an example of time stopped, we need to appreciate Fitzball’s strategy of slowing down and speeding up, rather than simply stopping and starting the action in the court. Bertram persuaded Robert to use a magic bough in order to abduct the fair Isabelle. With the power of the bough, Robert stops time for everyone except himself and Isabelle. Having intended Robert to the bough to seduce Isabelle, Bertram’s scheme is foiled, when Robert innocently obeys Isabelle’s request that he break the branch (IV.ii). Linking painting and performance through the temporal device of the tableau vivant has a spatial counterpart in the scene painting that grew progressively more elaborate in the course of the two preceding centuries. Several of the contributing artists of the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery accepted lucrative commissions to paint sets at the theatres. Previous generations also engaged prominent artists to provide theatre scenery. During the first half of the seventeenth century, Inigo Jones was theatrical designer for several dozen masques for the royal court in collaboration with Ben Jonson. Under David Garrick’s management at Drury Lane, Philip James de Loutherbourg was paid £500 a year to design scenery, costumes, and stage machinery. During his eight years at Drury Lane, Loutherbourg developed startling new lighting effects with a laterna magica and coloured transparencies, which enabled him to show the passage of a day or even of the seasons, providing the autumnal change of green trees turning first yellow then russet, or to exhibit the rising moon partially hidden by clouds. James Cobb provided the libretto for The Pirates (King’s Theatre Haymarket, 21 November 1792),4 with a musical score by Stephen Storace. Cobb has the wayward pirates converted from their evil ways in a romance of loyalty and love. When attended by King George III (16 May 1794), the maritime merriment of Cobb’s pirates won royal approval, in spite of the peculiarity in the closing scene of a tableau vivant with the American patriot, Patrick Henry. As in several other collaborations of Cobb and Storace,5 the lead roles were performed by Michael Kelly and Anna Storace, the composer’s sister, as Don Altador and Fabulina. The finale introduced the life-sized images of a laterna magica. Singing in trio, Altador, Fabulina, and Fidelia each assumed an “attitude” by stepping into the projected image so that it appeared superimposed directly onto their bodies: Maria Teresa Bland as “The bleeding Warrior,” Michael Kelly as

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Patrick Henry, “The Patriot …/Invoking Liberty or Death,”6 and Anna Storace as the anxious Hero awaiting Leander. We the veil of fate undraw In our Laterna Magica, Approach the mystic scene with awe, In our Laterna Magica. Here if tragic scenes delight, The bleeding Warrior meets your fight; The Patriot here resigns his breath, Invoking Liberty or Death, In our Laterna Magica. Or if to Paphian groves we turn, See Love’s eternal altar burn, Whence lovers eyes can catch a ray, To tell you more than I can say, In our Laterna Magica.7

A rallying cry of revolution in 1775, Henry’s “Give me liberty or give me death” would have acquired a different valence in 1792. On stage, the emphasis, as it had been throughout the comic opera, was on the play-­ acting rather than on the truth of representation. Wrought by having the players step into the projected image, the three tableaux vivants acquired a playful dimension that overcame the otherwise tragic import of the images. Thomas Greenwood, the Elder, a portrait and landscape artist, for many years provided the scenery for the ballets and musical spectacles at the Royal Circus or the Surrey Theatre. When he transferred to Drury Lane, he was the artist favoured by the composer and librettist team, Storace and Cobb. For their production of The Haunted Tower (Drury Lane, 24 November 1789), declared the reviewer in the Times, Greenwood “had the opportunity of displaying the wonders of his magic pencil.” His scenes were “an equal to the best we have seen of Loutherbourg.” The Siege of Belgrade (Drury Lane, 1 January 1791) was “the most splendid” spectacle “that our Theatres ever produced.” On this occasion, Greenwood provided Storace and Cobb with twelve scenes in “a succession of beautiful and correct views of Belgrade, and the surrounding country.”

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Acknowledging the panoramic expanse opening as to a traveller’s eye in a sequence of scenes, the reviewer goes on to observe that Greenwood “has fully evinced his wonderful skill in perspective,” creating illusions of depth and distance. The scenes display, the reviewer concludes, “what may truly be termed a splendid exhibition of paintings.”8 Byron, who indulged more sarcasm than praise in his English Bards and Scottish Reviewers, compliments Greenwood for being a more gifted contributor to the drama than the foppish actor and playwright Sir Lumley Skeffington: “whose genius ne’er confines/ Her flight to garnish Greenwood’s gay designs” (ll. 600–601). Similar to the gallery exhibition that Greenwood provided for The Siege of Belgrade, William Hodges furnished scenes of Kolkata for the production of Storace and Cobb’s Love in the East (Drury Lane, 25 Feb. 1788). The engraved plates by William Byrne had not yet been published, so the backdrops at Drury Lane were presumably prepared from Hodges’s paintings and sketchbooks. The opening scene of Love in the East was a large-­ scale rendering of Hodges’s representation of Kolkata. “It is so exact a resemblance,” said the reviewer in the Times, “as to give an idea of each particular house belonging to the principal inhabitants.” The last scene “affords a picturesque and elegant view of an Indian garden” and “the grove of Bettle trees is novel and striking.”9 Following the success of his Travels in India (1793), Hodges was invited to join James Cook’s second voyage to the Pacific Ocean. His reputation rested largely on the sketches and paintings of locations he visited on that voyage as landscape painter. He began his career as a scenery painter for the theatre in Derby, and later he painted backdrop scenery and vedutas for the English Opera and Drury Lane. For the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery, Hodges painted two scenes: from As You Like It: Jacques and the Wounded Stag (II.i), engraved by Samuel Middiman; and from The Merchant of Venice, Grove and Lawn before Portia’s House (V.i.), engraved by John Browne.10 Both paintings make full use of Hodges’s abilities as a landscape artist. A river winding through the vast and deep woods is the setting for Jacques and the wounded stag, a scene not staged, but only described by the First Lord to Duke Senior. The scene before Portia’s House, by contrast, is preparatory for the culminating revelation of the rings (Illustration 5.2). During the year that Hodges was at work on his scene from the final act of the play, John Philip Kemble appeared as Shylock in his own adaptation of The Merchant of Venice (Drury Lane, 10 March 1795). Sarah Siddons

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Illustration 5.2  Grove and Lawn before Portia’s House, The Merchant of Venice (V.i). William Hodges, artist; John Browne, engraver (1 Dec 1795)

performed as Portia. The scenery was painted by Gaetano Marinari, assisted by Hodges’s sketches. Marinari was skilled in trompe l’oeil, and he had adopted Loutherbourg’s lighting of scenery from above the proscenium in creating illusions of passing time.11 But he resisted Hodges’s preference for the back-lit backdrop. The scene that Hodges’s painted for the Shakespeare Gallery is a critique of Marinari and a celebration of his own ingenuity as a scene-painter. Not for the small stage at Derby, Hodges’s moon-lit park is designed to open up the full proportions of the stage at Drury Lane. The previous theatre had been demolished in 1791, and the gigantic new theatre opened in 1794, accommodating more than 3600 spectators with seating in five tiers of galleries above the broad pit. The stage was 83 feet (25 metres) wide and 92 feet (28 metres) deep. The three seemingly diminutive actors indicate the size of the scene. At the beginning of Act IV, Portia saved the life of Antonio, and in the subsequent scenes she and Nerissa acquire the

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rings. In the one lengthy scene of Act V, Hodges appropriates Loutherbourgian lighting with a moon descending and a sun rising. For the opening of the scene, Hodges presents a moon-lit setting for the tryst of Jessica and Lorenzo. Time and space and the animate and the inanimate are commanding constituents. Partially occluded by clouds or branches, the back-lit moon descends with scarcely perceptible motion, casting its light on the slightly more animate lovers, seated on the garden bench, engaged in the exchange of kisses and vows. Their subdued animation is accentuated by the two marble statues: the one a herm with the head of a bearded man, but deprived of the usual genitalia; the other a nymph, hesitating in her act of disrobing. Posed directly behind the lovers, the inanimate statues provide a silent commentary on the lovers’ vows. Lorenzo begins: The moon shines bright: in such a night as this, When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees And they did make no noise, in such a night Troilus methinks mounted the Troyan walls And sigh’d his soul toward the Grecian tents, Where Cressid lay that night. (V.i.1–6)

Jessica continues by recalling Thisbe frightened away from her tryst with Pyramus; Lorenzo replies with Dido awaiting the return of Aeneas; Jessica recalls Medea rejuvenating old Aeson; Lorenzo adds the personal case that in such a night Jessica, “with unthrift love did run from Venice/ As far as Belmont.” Stephano pauses on the stairs, about to descend into the garden to announce the return of Portia. In accusations of infidelity and threats of cuckoldry, Portia and Nerissa taunt Bassanio and Gratiano over the loss of their rings. Although the lovers conjured at the beginning of this scene—Troilus and Cressida, Pyramus and Thisbe, Dido and Aeneas— all end tragically, Shakespeare had Portia and Nerissa steer the conclusion to a happy ending by confessing how they themselves had conspired to secure the rings. The theatrical art gallery of scene-paintings continued to evolve with the advances in lighting (Clegg lamps, Argand lamps, and in the 1820s the limelight). Hired by Kemble at the reopening of Drury Lane, William Capon utilized sliding wings set at irregular angles to create perspectival illusions of labyrinthine halls, corridors, narrow winding streets, Gothic chambers, and Tudor halls. Capon’s architecturally detailed view of “The

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Powder Plot Cellar beneath the Palace of Westminster” (1799) provided the backdrop for a Drury Lane production of a Guy Fawkes play. In marine scenery, Clarkson Stanfield was the acclaimed artist of unsurpassed nautical realism. Surrey and Adelphi hired Tomkins and Pitt at salaries considerably more than paid to actors in their supporting cast.12 The Covent Garden artists of the 1820s were David Roberts and the famous family of scene painters, Mssrs. Grieve, and T. and W. Grieve. The science of optics also influenced stage design, and Sir David Brewster was hired by Drury Lane to devise new stage illusions. With scenes from everyday life, such as markets, streets, and inns, as well as domestic interiors, genre painting was appropriated directly into the scenery painting for melodrama or for domestic comedy or tragedy. Similarly incorporated were history paintings, travel scenes of exotic adventure, and the theatre paintings of Shakespearean scenes. The tableau vivant emerged as a significant dramatic device in the eighteenth century. In the 1750s and 1760s, Denis Diderot argued that stage productions should create an emotional and moral effect like the painting by presenting stop-action tableaux for emphasis at critical moments in the drama.13 Diderot first articulated his theory of a drama of tableaux in Entretiens sur le Fils naturel (1757) and the Discours de la poésie dramatique (1758). His character Dorval proposes that the stage tableau could replace the traditional coup de théâtre, which, by its surprising turn of events, often defies probability, more often disrupting rather than enhancing credibility. A good play would offer the spectator “autant de tableaux réels qu’il y aurait dans l’action de moments favorables au peintre.” Just as in an art gallery, the spectator would experience the altered tempo of visual events. The stage is thus “une toile où des tableaux divers se succéderaient par enchantement.” In contrast to Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s discrimination of art as a spatial, and narrative as a temporal medium, Diderot advocated dramatic representation as a succession of scenes like the figurative paintings of a gallery. Rather than giving primacy to the text, word and image would merge. A drama of successive scenes would far more effectively engage the imagination and the emotions. This new mode of dramatic representation, Diderot also predicted, would result in a drama far more attentive to visual composition, which meant that playwrights would have to acquire a different way of writing for the stage in order to make the most of scenic tableaux. In its etymological origin, audience is defined by participation in an auditory experience. The new drama, however,

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presupposes a spectator. Every aspect of the theatrical production must be developed for a beholder, someone who is going to watch and not just listen. Much more is involved when the work of a contemporary artist defines not just a momentary scene but also the action of an entire play. Several playwrights turned to William Hogarth’s richly nuanced pictorial satires, both the single plates and the series. The elder George Colman concluded his long career as a playwright with a “Musical Entertainment” called Ut Pictura Poesis! or, the Enraged Musician (Haymarket, 17 May 1789).14 Prominently displaying a playbill for The Beggar’s Opera posted next to the musician’s window, Hogarth’s satire in The Enraged Musician (engr. 1741) contrasts the elegant refinement of Italian operatic music with the sounds of the street. In his visual scene, Hogarth conjures the auditory. Colman supplements the contrast by giving sound to the silence of Hogarth’s depiction. The overture, airs, and recitative were composed by Samuel Arnold, who orchestrated the flageolet player, the bell-ringer, the messenger with a post horn, as well as screech of the knife-grinder, the barking dog at his feet, the balladeer with a crying baby, the howling cats on the rooftop, and the several other noise-makers of the scene. The Hogarthian satire serves as a structuring device in which the audience may behold, one after another, the characters gradually coming together and taking their place on the stage for the concluding tableau vivant. Colman’s use of the tableau, however, involves two twists on the genre: first, the audience is given abundant clues to anticipate its coming; second, when it does come, the assembled noise-makers are not suddenly silenced. Rather, even after the curtain closes the scene, the cacophony continues.15 For the sake of a plot, Colman has added three characters. The musician, Castruccio, has a pupil, Picolina, and a daughter, Castruccina, who elopes with Young Quaver. The play begins inside Castruccio’s music room. Castruccio sings with Castruccina and Picolina, interrupting the girls with criticism of their vocal faults. Picolina’s attempt to sing a “Welsh madrigal” is halted with Castruccio’s command for the “Welsh goats” to cease. The singing is further interrupted by a thundering cannon. A milkmaid delivers a letter for Castruccina from Young Quaver. The ensuing scene presents the street outside Castruccio’s window. A knife-grinder agrees to distract Castruccio so that Young Quaver and Castruccina can run off together. Seeing them disappear into the crowded street, Castruccio throws up the window and delivers his curse in operatic recitativo. Then

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comes a glee, a rhyming counterpoint to the recitativo curse and the street cries. The characters are now in the proper positions for the concluding tableau vivant, with two notable changes: Quaver and Castruccina, now married, return to kneel before the window. The little boy whom Hogarth had depicted urinating, is now equipped with a penny trumpet to accompany the drummer boy and the little girl swinging a wooden rattle. The noise rises to a crescendo as the curtain falls. Among the several dramatic adaptations of Hogarthian visual narratives, Colman’s collaboration with David Garrick on The Clandestine Marriage (Drury Lane, 20 February 1766) should be mentioned even though it involves only in its first scene a debt to the first plate of Marriage a la Mode. As Garrick made clear in his prologue, the financial stipulations of the marriage contract were a point of departure for the play, which then developed a very different course of events. To-night, your matchless Hogarth gives the Thought, Which from his Canvas to the Stage is brought. And who so fit to warm the Poet’s Mind, As he who pictur’d Morals and Mankind? But not the same their Characters and Scenes; Both labour for one End, by different Means: Each, as it suits him, takes a separate Road, Their one great Object, MARRIAGE-A-LA-MODE!16

Maintaining closer visual and situational fidelity to Hogarth, Dennis Lawler devised each scene of his Idleness and Industry (Surrey, 26 April 1811) to open as a tableau vivant of the corresponding plate from Hogarth’s sequence. Lawler also absorbed a share of George Lillo’s The London Merchant; or The History of George Barnwell (1731) into his dialogue. That Hogarth’s visual narrative was conducted in synoptic segments was discussed in the previous chapter. Except for the omission of the scene depicting the Viscount visiting a quack doctor with a young prostitute with syphilis, Thomas H. Reynoldson was conscientious in recreating the remaining five scenes in Hogarth’s Marriage à la Mode (Surrey, 1 April 1839). The adulterous disregard of the marriage vows, Reynoldson emphasized, was the consequence of converting marriage and aristocratic title into marketable commodities.17 Departing radically from the contemporary interpretations of Christoph Lichtenberg18 or Reverend John Trusler,19 Reynoldson redefines perpetrators and victims. The

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reviewer in the Examiner acknowledges that, in giving voice and motive to the characters, the playwright “has enlarged upon the subject”: The author has evinced some skill and ingenuity in uniting the situations of these well-known pictures with an interesting and effective drama. To a certain extent, of course, he has enlarged upon the subject Hogarth has chosen, but he has been happy in not departing from the details, and in being able, without injuring the fidelity of the tableaux, to link them with matter which adds to the interest of the piece.20

The “fidelity of the tableaux,” however, requires some discrimination of what the viewer sees in the expressions of Hogarth’s characters and Reynoldson’s players. The wealthy but miserly merchant covets an aristocratic title for his daughter, whom we see idly playing with her wedding ring. Reynoldson introduces her, not as a self-indulgent voluptuary but as a virtuous young woman being forced into a marriage she does not want. She has long been in love with the young lawyer, and the lawyer, for his part, is not a wicked seducer, but in fact the rightful heir to Lord Squanderfield’s estate, which he hopes to regain once he has exposed the deceitful schemes of his foppish rival. No longer morally corrupt characters who receive their just deserts, the wronged lawyer and the sold bride are the victims in a melodramatic tragedy. Reynoldson’s reconception of the relationships required, as well, a rearrangement of the subsequent pictorial scenes. Through the construction of the tableaux, Reynoldson realized new arrangements and groupings, aspects of dramaturgy that were at this time further developed in France than in England. Having provided commentaries to dozens of the plays published by John Cumberland, George Daniel was alert to the stop/start effect of opening a scene with the in media res effect of a tableau vivant being animated, the quiet stage suddenly exploding into action. The delight of recognition in beholding the living counterpart of a well-known original image sustained itself, Daniel also observed, as though the ensuing action was precisely what Hogarth had intended to capture. The reconfiguring of good and evil, as informed by the lawyer and the bride in Reynoldson’s Marriage à la Mode, also redefined the character of Tom Rakewell in William Leman Rede’s The Rake’s Progress (City, 28 January 1833),21 and was further elaborated in Rede’s second version (Edinburgh, 4 July 1841). An earlier version, The Rake’s Progress (Surrey, 10 July1826) by Charles Dibdin, Junior, offered a faithful rendition of

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Hogarth’s series. Dibdin’s tableaux vivants were true to the originals but inadequate as a play.22 Rede, by contrast, developed the dramatic circumstances, primarily from Hogarth’s first plate, which provided the tableau vivant of Act I, scene iii. Subsequent scenes from Hogarth are merely suggested rather than replicated. In adapting Hogarthian satire into Romantic melodrama, Reynoldson added an essentially incompatable sentimentalism, transforming the relationship of lawyer and bride from adultery to true love. A similar melodramatic sentimentalism is evident in Rede’s representation of Tom as naive victim of the greed and exploitation of others, “more sinned against than sinning.” In order to relieve Tom of guilt in his apparent mistreatment of the pregnant Sarah Young, Rede presents their relationship as chaste. She has been abandoned by another, and Tom generously provides for her care with funds from his inheritance. He is beset by parasites and swindlers who exploit his inexperience and expose him to prostitutes and gamblers. Soon destitute, he obtains temporary relief by marrying Sarah’s wealthy aunt. Still burdened by gambling debts, Tom is sent to debtor’s prison and from there to the madhouse, where the faithful Sarah Young continues to care for him. An anonymous adaptation, The Progress of a Rake; or, Three Degrees of Crime (Coburg, 4 March 1833) retained all eight scenes, but without the stop-action tableaux vivants. This version depicted Tom’s profligacy as self-destructive in a manner much closer to Hogarth. Disregarding the love that Sarah persists in offering him, Tom plunges into a life of excess that takes him speedily from wenching and gambling to poverty and madness. Because the tableau vivant gained wide popularity as a parlour entertainment, it was difficult to maintain its credibility as high art. In melodrama, the replicated scenes were of genre painting rather than the higher order of history painting. In spite of the not entirely undeserved sniggering over the supposed classicism being only a lightly veiled eroticism, Lady Emma Hamilton’s “Attitudes” introduced a new aesthetic standard for the tableau vivant. Her poses replicated the figures on the Grecian urns in her husband’s collection, also preserved in the drawings by Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein.23 Commissioned by Sir William Hamilton to sketch her performances, Friedrich Rehburg rendered each pose in line drawing similar to the style adopted by Tischbein and by John Flaxman in his illustrations to Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.24 Draping herself in diaphanous fabrics and posing as a figure from Greco-Roman mythology, Lady Hamilton’s “attitudes” evolved into an

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evening’s entertainment of performance art in which a single statuesque pose was held but briefly, which then gave way through dance and gesture to a second, third, and fourth pose.25 The first recorded performance took place at Sir William’s home in Naples in spring of 1787. Emma created a living gallery of statues and paintings. In his title Rehberg claimed to have “Copied from Nature.” For her part, Emma claimed to copy from antique vases, in order to give, as George Romney proposed, a modern allure to classical form.26 Through the distinguished audiences gathered in Naples, Emma gained a following throughout Europe, promoting a new fashion for Grecian dress, and giving rise to stage performances mimicking her manner. Invited to compare the art forms of the stage with those of a painting, the audience would be alert to the presence of a living media and to the slightest betrayal of movement, especially in those tableaux vivants comprising scantily veiled young ladies. William Leman, who staged The Rake’s Progress, prepared a simple burletta, titled A Model of a Man (Adelphi, 12 November 1838), made up of eight songs in one act. The performance culminated with the implicit irony of voyeurism punished in the tableau of “Diana and her Nymphs at the Bath,” with Miss George, Miss Grove, Miss Cotterill, Miss Paris, and Miss Conway inviting voyeuristic attention as the nymphs.27 As related in Ovid’s Metamorphosis (III:165–252), Acteon is killed for spying on naked Diana. Among the many paintings of this scene, Rede chose the version by Angelica Kauffman, who also provided for the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery the scene from Troilus and Cressida (V.ii), when Troilus spies on Cressida caressing Diomedes. At a performance of John Cross’s Black Beard the Pirate; or, The Captive Princess (Stockport, 2 November 1801), complaints were lodged that patrons in the gallery were rude and rowdy in their response to the scantily clad female slaves. Although less revealing garments were provided for subsequent performances, Nicholson, the stage manager, protested that the purpose of the costumes had been to display the fine silk fabrics of the Stockport mills. Because the silk trade had suffered under the war with France, there was keen hope that the preliminary treaty of peace (signed 1 October 1801) would revive the sales of silk, which had suffered more than other textile production. Nicholson had Mrs. Jarvis, his leading lady, appear in a silk gown to deliver “Lines on the Peace, written by a Gentleman of Stockport” (7 October 1801), and she also appeared as Britannia, with her entire court posing in translucent silks at the subsequent exposition of “Brilliant Illuminations and Transparencies, Celebrating the happy return

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of Peace, Displayed upon an extensive Scale, completely filling the Stage with upwards of Three Hundred Variegated Lights, with emblematic Devices, Pyramids, &c. &c.” (14 October 1801).28 Ida Brun, who had witnessed a performance by Lady Hamilton in 1796, successfully developed her own repertoire for the salons hosted by her mother in Denmark. A singer and dancer as well as classical mime artist, Ida Brun created an elaborate theatrical show of becoming a statue or bringing a statue to life.29 Reanimating the “frozen moment,” her tableaux generated in spectators an anticipation of the start and stop action similar to a game of musical chairs. Also, it enabled Brun to control the peep-­show revelations of her whirling Grecian gowns. In representing Emma Hamilton posing for Friedrich Rehberg, Thomas Rowlandson imagines rather extensive revelations. The artist presumably transforms the nude model into an aesthetic object; the nude posing, as Rowlandson reminds the viewer in his depiction of Emma Hamilton as Artist’s Model (1790), may be in a state prior to that transformation. Similarly, the tableau vivant may occupy the threshold between art and flesh, between aesthetic and erotic. In the 1820s and 1830s, four contemporary artists secured popular gallery presence on the stage. Of these four, Charles Eastlake served the robber melodrama, David Wilkie the melodrama of social reform. Thomas Rowlandson and George Cruikshank followed the Hogarthian tradition of translating foibles and fashions into visual satire. Similar to Hogarth’s narrative series, Rowlandson illustrated William Combe’s Hudibrastic comic verse “tours”: Dr. Syntax in Search of the Picturesque (1812), Dr. Syntax in Search of Consolation (1820), and Dr. Syntax in Search of a Wife (1821).30 As adapted for the stage, the barbed critique was largely replaced by the simple delight in bringing the comic character to life and animating the familiar predicaments and situations. For the stage production of James Robinson Planché’s Dr. Syntax; or, Harlequin in London (Adelphi, 26 December 1820), the scene painters, Franklin, Mason, and Phillips, created fifteen scenes in Rowlandson’s style, all of which commenced with a tableau, briefly motionless before bursting into action. Of the original thirty-one plates illustrating Dr. Syntax in Search of the Picturesque, the Adelphi artists closely copied seven: (1) Dr. Syntax in his Study, (2) Setting Out, (3) Losing his Way, (4) Sketching the Ruins [and Tumbling into the Water], (5) Sketching the Mountains [and Sketching the Lake]. These are followed by seven scenes in Rowlandson’s style, depicting Dr. Syntax visiting London shops. In adapting the “tour”

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as a Christmas harlequinade, Planché used three of the tableau scenes to prepare for the required transformation. Structured to reveal the stock characters performing in their “story” roles, then dropping those roles to complete the plot in their commedia identity, the harlequinade’s transformation reinforced the already established doubleness of art and performance. Rather than beginning with a tableau, Planché ends scene 13, “Interior of lodging house,” with a replication of Rowlandson’s plate 23, “Dr. Syntax Reading his Tour.” As Syntax narrates his adventures, the guests at Dun Cow all fall into a slumber. The stage darkens. When the stage again lightens, Syntax is discovered asleep in his library, replicating Rowlandson’s illustration of “The Dream” (Dr. Syntax in Search of the Picturesque, plate 27). The tableau is progressively animated as one book after another takes flight from the shelf and swims through the air as a grotesque with a scholar’s head and a fish’s tale. The scene lapses into a noisy “battle of the books” among all the Greek and Latin authors whom Syntax has studied. In the final scene, a Temple of Fancy, Dr. Syntax is revealed as Pantaloon, Hodge has become Harlequin, Mrs. Syntax is transformed into Columbine, and all are under the spell of Fantassini, the Fairy of the Temple, and her imps. Planché’s adaptation was performed again as Doctor Syntax in London (Sadler’s Wells, 31 March 1823). The version by Charles Dibdin, Jr., Doctor Syntax and another Doctor (Royal Amphitheatre, 5 May 1823), attended to costuming and the comic situations with no attempt at time-­ stopping tableau scenes. Just as in the Rowlandson-Combe collaboration, Planché allowed image to precede text. The “battle of the books” was an innovative scene, and his tableau with sleeping figures and his animation of the dream were among the early experiments in externalizing subjective events. Another such endeavour one year earlier was the presentation of Queen Katherine’s Dream in Henry VIII, IV.ii (Drury Lane, 20 May 1822) as a phantasmagoria hovering over the heads of the queen and her attendants, Griffith and Patience, all in sleep. Following his Doctor Syntax in London, Planché’s The Brigand (Drury Lane, 18 November 1829)31 achieved an even greater success in the dramaturgy of the tableau vivant. His success derived in part from his clever interplay of image and plot, but it also had the advantage of the spring-­ loaded scenes painted by Charles Lock Eastlake, featuring the weary but wary figures of the brigand and his wife. In 1816, Eastlake travelled to Rome where he joined fellow artists Sir Thomas Lawrence and J.  M. W.  Turner. In their circle he met Mary, Lady Callcott, who

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persuaded him to paint the Italian banditti for her travel book, Three Months Passed in the Mountains East of Rome, during the Year 1819 (1821),32 which was then illustrated with engravings after Eastlake by J. Clark. During his lengthy stay in Europe, Eastlake regularly sent paintings back to London for exhibition. By 1827, when he was elected a member of the Royal Academy, Eastlake’s scenes of Italian brigands had been repeatedly engraved and widely distributed. “In this melodrama,” Planché wrote of The Brigand, “I introduced three tableaux from Eastlake’s well-known pictures … engravings of which had been just published by Messrs. Moon, Boys, & Graves, and were in all the printshop windows.”33 The mezzotints by Samuel William Reynolds had first been published three years earlier,34 and were well suited to Planché’s strategy of animation. Adapted from Marie-Emmanuel-­ Guillaume-Marguerite Théaulon’s Le Bandit. (Théâtre des Nouveautés, 12 September 1829), Planché’s The Brigand reconceived the characters, and even the plot, in terms of artists among the brigands. Gaetano Marinari and Clarkson Stanfield mimicked Eastlake’s style in the scenery of rocks and trees and shadowy recesses. The central characters, the brigand and his wife, are Allessandro Massaroni and Maria Grazie, played by James William Wallack and Ann Barrymore (née Adams), who were costumed exactly as in Eastlake’s paintings. In his stage directions, Planché emphasizes attention to the setting and the tableau: Scene 1st Summit of the Mountain of Guadagnola with the Mediterranean in the distance. On the right of the Spectator large Masses of Rock intermingled with shrubs and trees in the front of which upon a detached fragment Massaroni is discover’d reclining; his wife Maria seated at his head watching him. At the angle of the Rock and on the brink of the precipice stands an oak or Ilex its branches stretching over the abyss—beside it a Brigand is seen on guard. The distance is shrouded in mist at the rising of the curtain and becomes clear during the execution of the following Round the Symphony to which must be sufficiently long to allow the contemplation of the picture formed from the 1st of the popular series of Mezzotinto Engravings after Eastlake—“an Italian brigand chief reposing &c.”35

In addition to repeated references to painting throughout the play, and the crucial tableaux from Eastlake, The Brigand also introduced two travelling artists in Act I, and unveiled a painting as coup de théâtre in Act II. Having halted the artists on the road and found them without money,

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Massaronari declares that Albert and Theodore are to be spared on the condition that they sketch his picturesque attitudes and his exploits. The artist soon has a daring exploit to sketch when the brigands rob the steward of the Convent of St. Arnold. The first act comes to a close as Maria springs upon a jutting rock, under the oak-tree, c., grasping with her left hand a branch that overhangs the precipice, and looking anxiously down the mountain.—Forming the second picture from Eastlake’s Series, ‘The Wife of a Brigand Chief watching the result of a Battle,’ &c.36

The apparent spontaneity is achieved by repose exploding into action in a scene that replicates Charles Lock Eastlake’s The Wife of a Brigand Chief Watching the Result of a Battle. Massaroni’s particular nemesis is Prince Bianchi, played by William Farren, much feared for exploiting and abusing his subjects. Act II opens at the villa of the Prince Bianchi, where Massaroni appears disguised as an Italian nobleman and boldly plays at cards with the Prince. His identity is soon discovered, and the Prince calls for his guard. As the guests flee the room, the Brigand seeks an escape. Spotting a drapery hanging on the wall, Massaroni pulls it down, thinking that it might conceal a door. Instead of a door, he unveils a large portrait. By a miniature that he carries with him, he recognizes it to be the portrait of his mother. In this imperilled flash of recognition—Aristotelian Anagnorisis (to be discussed in Chap. 9, Forgotten Time)—Planché has Massaroni stop in his tracks. Not frozen in another tableau, he is momentarily paralyzed by shock of restored memory. With vague recollections of his early childhood, Massaroni now recognizes he was the illegitimate son of Prince Bianchi. In fear that the Prince would kill the unwanted heir, his mother had him sent away. Theodore enters ahead of the Prince’s soldiers and helps the Brigand escape, but not before Massaroni is shot. Mortally wounded, he manages to rejoin Maria in the woods. The play ends with the last picture of the series: The Brigand, wrote the reviewer in The Dramatic Magazine, “abounds with romantic incidents, effective situations, and excellent acting. Mr. Wallack, as the Brigand Chief, gave a splendid specimen of melo-­ dramatic acting; his attitudes were very striking and picturesque.”37 The “striking and picturesque” poses in the three tableaux were to be held, Planché insisted, until the audience applauded.38 The music, composed by Thomas Simpson Cooke, was to continue throughout the display of each tableau. Planché took credit not only for the success of The Brigand

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Illustration 5.3  The Rent Day (1807). David Wilkie, artist; Abraham Raimbach, engraver (1817)

as picture-play but also for promoting “the adoption of this attractive feature in several subsequent dramas.” As Planché saw it, without his own accomplishment, Douglas Jerrold would never have conceived The Rent Day as a play founded on David Wilkie’s celebrated genre paintings (Illustration 5.3).39 In The Rent Day (1808) and Distaining for Rent (1815), Sir David Wilkie painted the dire consequences of poverty and hardship among the labour class. In these scenes, widely distributed in the prints engraved by Abraham Raimbach,40 Wilkie conveyed the powerful emotion generated when a farmer and his large family face eviction. The predicament was sadly commonplace, because hundreds of tenant farmers faced financial ruin as a result of the Corn Laws of 1815.41 Wilkie depicts the expressions of the farmer’s despair, his neighbours’ angry protest, and the richly attired bailiff’s aloof disdain as his obedient servants proceed mechanically with an inventory of the farmer’s household goods to be seized in payment.42 Wilkie’s work demonstrated a shift from the sentimental appeal of genre painting to the serious engagement of economic crisis that was

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characteristic of the novels of Charles Dickens and was later to evolve into the harsher depictions of Naturalism. Plays that depicted the humanitarian benevolence of reformers and philanthropists relied on a “feel good” aesthetic that might promote a similar sense of charity among the spectators. An opposite strategy was practised by playwrights such as Douglas William Jerrold who sought instead to arouse outrage against the insensitive greed and selfish cruelty of the wealthy landlords and factory owners. Jerrold’s The Rent Day exhibits poverty exacerbated by greedy landlords and factory owners. In The Rent Day (Drury Lane, 25 January 1832),43 Jerrold constructs plot, characters, and dialogue to bring Wilkie’s paintings to life. As the curtain is raised, the audience beholds a tableau vivant of Wilkie’s The Rent Day. The players briefly hold their pose before the action commences. That movement is reversed as Act I comes to a close, with all the characters positioned in a second tableau vivant representing Wilkie’s Distraining for Rent (1815). Jerrold’s enactment of the scene relied on such stark documentary fidelity that dramatic representation seemed all too real. A rich example of simplicity occurred to delight the audience at Drury Lane on one of the nights during the representation The Rent Day. Amidst the pathos of the ‘distraining scene,’ when the Farmer was telling the legal harpies, in the accents of despair, to take all, a worthy individual in the Pit started up, and with the most emphatic commiseration, offered a £20 note from his own pocket, to stay the course of the proceedings. The burst of mistaken generosity produced no little sensation on the beholders. The enthusiastic philanthropist was, however, pacified; and Leadbeater, the officer, was privately stationed in his vicinity to prevent the crafty attempts of any possible claimants for the twenty pounds, under the assumption of authority from the supposed suffering party.44

The play was intended to arouse public sympathy for those entrapped in poverty by the current economic circumstances, and the repeated stagings confirmed the power of performance to elicit emotional response and secure, at least for the moment, public support. Embarrassingly precise in his costuming, Planché could hint at the identity of the intended target of the social satire by replicating the dress of a character.45 When performed in the provinces, the theatre manager would post prints alongside the playbills, specifically advertising the intimate

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connection between the art work and the play. Thus, the playbill for Rent Day; or, The Importunate Landlord (Royal Olympic Theatre, Cardiff, 23 August 1833) announced: “Incidental to the Piece, will be embodied and presented by the whole of the Characters, two complete Tableaux Vivants of Wilkie’s celebrated Pictures, ‘Distraining for Rent’ and ‘Rent Day’.”46 Perhaps to assert his independence from both Planché and Jerrold, Wilkie declared that his interest in tableaux vivants was stimulated upon witnessing in a German theatre a tableau after a painting by David Teniers. With no assistance from the playwrights, Wilkie began arranging figures after famous paintings and literary works.47 In his best known examples, based on the stories of Sir Walter Scott, Wilkie constructed elaborate scenes requiring weeks’ preparation, all for brief performance.48 Just as a stage manager might cast a play, Wilkie cast his tableau vivant, and from this representation he might then prepare sketches for a final painting. In other words, instead of the players posing from the painting, the painting is taken from the pose. The latter, of course, is the way that artists usually relied on models in creating their painting. Wilkie’s tableau vivant merely enhanced the theatrical. The medium of paint on canvas was replaced by the medium of people on stage. Wilkie was widely engaged as an artist of tableaux vivants. In a letter to Sir William Knighton (9 January 1833), he explained his embarrassment at an interruption of his commission with Her Majesty, Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, in order to fulfil the request of the Duke of Wellington “to assist at the tableaux proposed by the Marchioness of Salisbury.” Wilkie began by sketching scenes, “all from Sir Walter Scott’s novels,” providing details of appropriate costumes and indicating the “the arrangement of the figures.” He then discovered that his services were also required in rehearsals. “I am expected as an assistant at Hatfield, and have been consulted here by several ladies who are to appear in the tableaux.”49 Report of the event appeared in The Spectator (19 January 1833): A grand entertainment, which had been announced for some time, was given by the Marchioness of Salisbury on Wednesday last, at Hatfield House. The guests appeared in the costume of the various characters in the Waverley Novels. After the exhibition of the tableaux, dancing commenced, and subsequently the whole of the characters paraded round the room to the sound of military music.50

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The tableaux as entertainment for the aristocracy was very different from the tableaux of the popular theatre. Amidst the great drive for reform in the 1820s and 30s Wilkie was the artist of the lower classes. Allan Cunningham said of Wilkie’s The Blind Fiddler, “It tells the story as plainly as if the actors spoke: the very name of the work is superfluous, for no one can look upon it without feeling and understanding the whole.”51 The paintings of Wilkie’s early career remained best known to theatre audiences. In 1838, the playbill for the City of London Theatre in Bishop’s Gate advertised the opening of Charles Webb’s The Vagrant, his Wife and Family,52 to feature “in Act 1st, a New Tableau, realizing the Splendid Picture of ‘The Vagrant’.” The stage tableaux of nineteenth-century reform were a gallery for Francis Wheatley, David Wilkie, and Frederick Walker. During the last years of his life, Francis Wheatley contributed twelve scenes from the comedies to the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery.53 Posthumously, like Wilkie after him, he remained better known for his paintings of vagabonds, rustic subjects, and street vendors, as in his series, Cries of London (1792–1795). Dickens, too, devoted his works to social reform, especially in providing education and preventing exploitation of children. George Cruikshank, caricaturist and illustrator, collaborated with William Hone in his political satire The Political House That Jack Built (1819) and created the well-­ known images of Tom and Jerry for Pierce Egan’s Life in London (1821), before working with Dickens as illustrator of Sketches by Boz (1836), The Mudfog Papers (1837–38), and Oliver Twist (1838). Even as the fourteenth (chapters 31–32) of twenty-four monthly instalments appeared in Bentley’s Miscellany, C. Z. Barnett’s adaptation of Oliver Twist was staged (Royal Pavilion, 31 May 1838). Miss Josephine Carson played the title role. Henry Roxby Beverley, actor, manager, and occasional playwright,54 performed as Mr. Bumble, the “fat and choleric” parish beadle. Beverley was also instrumental in transforming into tableaux vivants twelve of Cruickshank’s twenty-four engraved plates. These twelve scenes are indicated on the playbill. Costume, gesture, and grouping, Beverley insisted, were the crucial elements of an effective tableau. His attention to the visual setting may have been influenced by his younger brother, William Roxby Beverley, one of the most sought-after scene painters of the era. George Almar’s adaptation of Oliver Twist opened at the Surrey (19 November 1838). Two weeks later, with the appearance of chapters 44–46, Thomas Greenwood’s Oliver Twist was performed for an audience eager for the conclusion (Sadler’s Wells, 3 December 1838). Although the

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three-volume novel was published in 1838, the final serialized instalment, chapters 52–53, was not published until April 1839. Edward Stirling’s Oliver Twist (Adelphi, 25 February 1839) was a production which again featured Beverley’s tableaux vivants. At the Adelphi, Mary Anne Keeley, née Goward, played Oliver; Frederick Henry Yates performed as Fagin; and Elizabeth Yates appeared as Nancy, the prostitute in love with Bill Sykes, played by O.  Smith. Edward Wright was John Dawkins, the “artful dodger.” At the same time that Almar’s Oliver Twist opened at the Surrey, the Adelphi staged Edward Stirling’s Nicholas Nickleby; or, Doings at Do-the-Boys Hall (19 November 1838). Smike was performed by Mary Anne Keeley. For this production, Beverley played the role of John Browdie, a Yorkshireman. He also managed the tableaux vivants representing the illustrations by Phiz, Hablot Knight Browne. For the Holiday harlequinade, Beverley wrote Harlequin and the Silver Dove; or, The Fairy of the Golden Ladder (Adelphi, 26 December 1838), which concluded with three muscle men of the cast (Etheridge, Stafford, Hipple) exhibiting “Gladiatorial Feats of Strength; or, Classical Tableaux.” Like Fitzball in his Robert the Devil, Beverley did not stop time abruptly, but slowed it down until the exact pose was attained, then reversed the process when time was restored. Before he returned to London to perform at the Adelphi, Beverley arranged the tableaux vivants in Nicholas Nickleby and Oliver Twist at the Queen’s Theatre, Liverpool. As advertised to the public, his presentation of a Shakespeare Gallery (12 March 1832) would provide the appropriate visual setting and enlist the talents of his entire troupe, “Embodying and portraying a series of Tableaux Vivants, or Animated Pictures, illustrating the most interesting Scenes from the Immortal Poet.” The twelve scenes in this entertainment recreated the Boydell engravings with a few slight modifications. Caliban was omitted from Fuseli’s depiction of Prospero, Miranda, and Ariel. The scene with Hamlet and the Ghost adhered closely to Fuseli. Ophelia’s mad dance before the King and Queen was apparently just as in Benjamin West’s scene. The success of the first series of tableaux prompted Beverley to introduce two weeks later seven new tableaux in a second series of the Shakespeare Gallery (31 March 1832).55 For the second series, Beverley turned to scenes engraved for Boydell’s quarto prints. As Wilkie had realized, a tableau vivant need not represent a known work of visual art. It could, just as well, be an original composition. By the same token, a tableau might well be a visualization of a verbal scene. The stage manager, no less than a book illustrator, might identify a pertinent

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literary scene. Strongly committed to tableaux vivants as a feature of their annual performances between 1821 and 1836, the Theatre Royal in St. Peter Port, Guernsey,56 selected eight familiar literary passages for a “Series of Tableaux Vivants from the works of Lord Byron and Sir Walter Scott” (Guernsey, 25 November 1836). On the darkened stage, the actors would take their positions for the scene, the lights would then brighten, and an offstage voice would intone the relevant passage: Manfred: By the strong curse which is upon my soul, The thought which is within me and around me, I do compel ye to my will—Appear. Rob Roy There’s a day of reckoning at hand. Think on’t; dream on’t! .... You have not yet subdued Rob Roy. Lady of the Lake: “Father! Malcolm! Was thine the blast?” Bride of Abydos: ‘Tis thine, Abdallah’s murderer. The father slowly rued thy hate, The son hath found a quicker fate. The Corsair: Is it some seraph sent to grant him grace? No, ‘tis some earthly form with heavenly face. Ivanhoe: Frondeboeuf. Now hated offspring of a hated race, See’st thou these scales? In these shalt thou weigh me out one thousand silver pounds. Heart of Mid-Lothian: Madge Wildfire. ‘Tis past, ‘tis past, it’s all past away; Don Juan: Haidee. On me, ... let death Descend—the fault is mine; this fatal shore He found—but sought not. I have pledged my faith; I love him—I will die with him:—I knew Your nature’s firmness—know your daughter’s too.

Three weeks later, with the same positive response that Beverley experienced in Liverpool, the Guernsey theatre offered a second “Series of Tableaux Vivants from Shakespeare” (Guernsey, 13 December 1836). Again, these six were not indebted to the Boydell Gallery.57 In the course

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of the month, two new programmes were introduced, a “Series of Tableaux Vivants from the Passions” (Guernsey, 23 December 1836). Without indicating the particular sources, the playbill explained that the passions— “Fear, Anger, Despair, Hope, Revenge, Pity, Jealousy, Melancholy, Cheerfulness”—would be as exhibited in popular plays. Then at the end of the month, the theatre announced a “2nd Series of Tableaux Vivants from Shakespeare” (Guernsey, 29 December 1836).58 The performances in Guernsey, including the “frozen” scenes, were also staged in Weymouth for the simple reason that the two theatres were linked by the Channel Island Packet boats. Tourists, and performers too, travelled back and forth between Weymouth and Guernsey, so that it was predictable to see a playbill announcing Tableaux Vivants from Shakespeare (Weymouth, 20 October 1837).59 A tableau vivant as finale to a melodrama was far from universal, but it occurred frequently throughout the 1820s and 30s, serving instead of a curtain call or a final bow at the end of a performance. A splendid example was the stop-motion scene that concluded J.  T. Haines’s The Unhallowed Templar (Coburg, 16 April 1827), an historical melodrama depicting Richard Coeur de Lion and the Crusaders in Damascus. Danson, the stage artist, appropriated scenes from David Roberts. In the first act, Danson’s backdrop recreated Roberts’s depiction of the Ruins near Damascus, and for the finale he replicated Roberts’s Damascus Gate. In the concluding scene, the Crusaders and the Saracens are on the battlements of Damascus. With the triumph of the Crusaders, the prisoners are released and all pose in triumph for the Grand Tableau.60 When Matthew Gregory Lewis’s Timour the Tartar was performed in WelshPool (28 October 1835), a concluding tableau vivant was showered by the sparkling cinders of Greek Fire, a not altogether harmless stage flame made from a varied recipe of tree sap, sawdust, sulphur, and bone meal. Timour is defeated in his attack on Zorilda’s fortress. With the slain Timour at their feet, Agib, the rightful Prince, and Zorilda, his heroic mother, stand together as virtual statues in a monument. The tableau vivant flickers under the fireworks.61 Engravers led the revolution of mass-production in the visual arts. The illustrated book was the foremost medium, followed by the production of single prints, displayed and distributed in the shops of printers and publishers. As mentioned earlier, Benjamin West’s lucrative partnership with William Woollet provided a model for other artists and engravers. The exhibition galleries of the 1790s promoted the sale of engraved prints.

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Some artists, like Loutherbourg, Hodges, and Roberts, accepted commissions as scenery painters for the theatres. The Boydell Shakespeare Gallery engaged artists to represent scenes from the plays; theatres too begin to engage their performers to pose motionless as if they were in a painting of their own performance. As tableaux vivants gained popularity, many playwrights exercised increasing ingenuity in integrating the picture into the play. Hogarth’s narrative series, such as The Rake’s Progress or Marriage à la Mode, were easily adapted to the theatrical scenes momentarily “frozen,” then reanimated in sequential action. Diderot anticipated a genre transformation resulting in greater reliance on visual composition and new modes of representing time and space. The idea of the picture-play allowing characters to move into and out of tableau vivant was further developed by Planché. So successful was the theatre in bringing art before the public, that Eastlake and other artists considered the possible dramatic adoption in their composition and choice of themes. After Jerrold integrated Wilkie’s paintings into his reform drama, The Rent Day, Wilkie adopted the tableau as his own art media. In consequence, the tableaux acquired two radically different functions: one was a private entertainment at the fancy balls of the aristocracy, the other was a tool of social critique enacted on the public stage. As a device for stopping time to impress upon an audience a scene of poverty or some instance of injustice, the dramatic tableau served an effective function in the reform movement, superceded in later years by the stop-action of photojournalism.

Notes 1. Burwick. Introduction, The Boydell Shakespeare Gallery, eds. Burwick and Walter Pape. Bottrop: Peter Pomp, 1996, 18; Winifried Friedman. Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery. New York: Garland Publishing, 1976, 224. 2. “Mr. Bowyer’s History of England Lottery. Historic Gallery, Pall-Mall.” London Gazette (15805), 7 May 1805: 621; “Mr. Bowyer’s History of England Lottery,” London Gazette (15907), 5 April 1806: 441. 3. Burwick. The Boydell Shakespeare Gallery. William Hamilton: Winter’s Tale. Engraved by Robert Thew, published 4 June 1793. 4. Stephen Storace. The Pirates: an Opera in three acts, as performed at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane. Libretto by James Cobb. London: Printed and sold by J.  Dale, No. 19 Cornhill & No. 132 Oxford Street opposite Hanover Square, 1792.

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5. William H.  Husk. “Storace, Stephen.” Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 10 vols., ed. Eric Blom. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 5th ed., 1961. 8:103–104. Storace and Cobb collaborations at Drury Lane include: The Doctor and the Apothecary (25 October 1788), The Haunted Tower (24 November 1789), The Siege of Belgrade (1 January 1791) The Pirates (21 November 1792), The Cherokee (20 December 1794); Storace also composed the music to George Colman’s The Iron Chest (12 March 1796). 6. On March 23, 1775, during the Virginia Convention held at St. John’s Church, Richmond, Virginia, Patrick Henry delivered the speech that famously ended with the words, “Give me liberty, or give me death!” This revolutionary cry was celebrated a century later in a print published by Currier & Ives, 1876. 7. Songs, duets, trios, chorusses, &c. in The Pirates, an opera in three acts, now performing at the King’s Theatre, Haymarket. London: Printed for E. Cox, Queen Street, Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields, 1792, 27. Storace, The Pirate. London: J. Dale, 1792. 8. Theodore Fenner. Opera in London: Views of the Press, 1785–1830. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP, 1994, 578. 9. Fenner, Opera in London, 578. William Hodges, Travels in India during the years 1780, 1781, 1782 and 1783. London: Printed for the author, and sold by J. Edwards, 1793. 10. Boydell Shakespeare Gallery, I:23: William Hodges, The Merchant of Venice. Act V, scene i. Grove and Lawn before Portia’s House, Engraved by John Browne, 1 December 1795. Lorenzo & Jessica. I:25: William Hodges, As You Like It, Act II, scene i. 29 September 1791. Engraved by Samuel Middiman. Jacques and the wounded Stag. 11. Susan Crabtree, Peter Beuder. Scenic Art for the Theatre: History, Tools, and Techniques. Amsterdam/Boston/Heidelberg: Elsevier, 2005, 394–401. 12. “A Gossip about Scenery and Scene-Painters.” The Era (4 February 1866): 59. Sybil Rosenfeld. Georgian Scene Painters and Scene Painting. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1981. 13. Diderot, Denis. Salons (1761), eds. Jean Seznec and Jean Adhemar. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1957. 1:141–44. Oeuvres Complètes 10:107–50. 14. George Colman. Ut Pictura Poesis! or, the Enraged Musician. London: Printed for T. Cadell, 1789. 15. Martin Meisel. Realizations: Narrative, Pictorial, and Theatrical Arts in Nineteenth-Century England. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1984, 104–06. 16. George Colman and David Garrick. The Clandestine Marriage, a Comedy. London: Printed for T. Becket and P. A. DeHondt, et al., 1766, [vii]. 17. The Curse of Mammon; being a Fac-simile Embodyment of Hogarth’s Marriage a-la-Mode. A Pictorial Drama, in Five Acts. London: John

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Cumberland, 1839. Announced on the playbills as The Curse of Mammon; or, The Earl’s Son and the Citizen’s Daughter. 18. Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. Ausführliche Erklärung der Hogarthischen Kupferstiche mit verkleinerten aber vollständigen Copien derselben von Ernst Riepenhausen. Göttingen: J. C. Dieterich, 1794–1835. 19. John Trusler. Hogarth Moralized: a complete edition of all the most capital and admired works of William Hogarth, accompanied by concise and comprehensive explanations of their moral tendency. London: Printed by W. Nichol, for John Major, 1831. 20. Examiner, 7 Apr. 1839, 216; quoted in Meisel, Representations, 117. 21. The Rake’s Progress: A Melo Drama, in Three Acts … The Only Edition Correctly Marked, By Permission, From the Prompter’s Book. London: Duncombe, n.d. 22. Charles Dibdin, Jr. The Rake’s Progress (Surrey, 7 October 1826). 23. Johann Heinrich Tischbein, and Sir William Hamilton, eds. Collection Of Engravings From Ancient Vases Of Greek Workmanship: Discovered In Sepulchres In The Kingdom Of The Two Sicilies But Chiefly In The Neighbourhood Of Naples During The Course Of The Years MDCCLXXXIX and MDCCLXXXX Now In The Possession Of Sir Wm. Hamilton, His Britannic Maiesty’s Envoy Extry. And Plenipotentiary At The Court Of Naples, 4 vols. Naples: W. Tischbein, 1791–1795. 24. Friedrich Rehberg. Drawings faithfully copied from nature at Naples; and with permission dedicated to the Right Honourable Sir William Hamilton, his Britannic Majesty’s envoy extraordinary and plenipotentiary at the Court of Naples, by his most humble servant, Frederick Rehberg, historical painter in his Prussian Majesty’s service at Rome. Engrav’d by Thomas Piroli. Roma: Niccola de Antoni, 1794. See also: Pietro Antonio Novelli, The Attitudes of Lady Hamilton, etched by Francesco Novelli. Venice, 1791. 25. Andrei Pop. “Sympathetic Spectators: Henry Fuseli’s Nightmare and Emma Hamilton’s Attitudes.” Art History 4.5 (November 2011): 934–95. 26. Noah Heringman. Sciences of Antiquity: Romantic Antiquarianism, Natural History, and Knowledge Work. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2013, 164. 27. William Leman Rede. A Model of a Man. Play submitted to the Lord Chamberlain, London. Includes untitled songs without the music. Original copy in the British Library Add. Ms. 42,949 (20). 28. British Library Playbills 284, Stockport. 29. Preston, Carrie J. Modernism’s Mythic Pose: Gender, Genre, Solo Performance. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2011, 264. 30. Combe, William. Doctor Syntax’s Three Tours. London: Chatto & Windus, 1895. 31. “The Brigand Chief. A Drama in Two Acts with Music.” Lord Chamberlain’s Plays, British Library, Add. MSS 42898. Subsequent direc-

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tions are quoted from the published version, The Brigand, a Romantic Drama in Two Acts. 32. Lady Maria Callcott. Three Months Passed in the Mountains East of Rome, during the Year 1819. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown; A. Constable and Co., 2nd ed. 1821. 33. A Catalogue of engravings, by the most esteemed artists, after the finest pictures and drawings of the schools of Europe. London: Moon, Boys, and Graves, 1829. 34. Samuel William Reynolds. The Dying Brigand. London: Hurst, Robinson, & Co., January 1826. 35. J.  R. Planché. ‘The Brigand Chief.” Lord Chamberlain’s Plays, British Library, Add. MSS 42898. 36. J.R. Planché. The Brigand: a Romantic Drama, in Two Acts; printed from the acting copy, with remarks, biographical and critical, by D.—G. [George Daniels]; as now performed at the Theatres Royal, London; embellished with a fine engraving by Mr. Bonner, from a drawing taken in the theatre, by R.[Robert Isaac] Cruikshank. London: Charles Cumberland, 1829. See also: Robert Isaac Cruikshank. ‘Wallack, as Alessandro Massaroni in The Brigand [single plate portrait, engraved by John Rogers]. London: Whittaker, Treacher & Co., 1830. 37. The Dramatic Magazine. London: Whittaker, Treacher, & Co. 1829. I:293. 38. J R Planché. The Recollections and Reflections of J.R.  Planché. 2 vols. London: Tinsley Brothers, 1872. 1:152–153. 39. Planché. Recollections and Reflections (1872), 1:152–153. 40. Abraham Raimbach. Memoirs and Recollections of the late Abraham Raimbach, Engraver. Frederick Shoberl, 1983, 68–82. The Print-­Collector’s Quarterly 7.3 (October 1917). 41. Edward Palmer Thompson. The Making of the English Working Class. London: V. Gollancz, 1963; revised New York: Penguin, 1968, 348. 42. Meisel, Realizations (1983), 148–49. 43. British Library, Playbills 278, Drury Lane, 25 January 1832. 44. The Original, a weekly miscellany of humour, literature, and the fine arts. 1.6 (7 April 1832): 95. 45. Planché. History of British Costume. London: Cox, 1847. 46. British Library, Playbills 274, Cardiff, 23 August 1833. 47. Steven Jacobs. Framing Pictures: Film and the Visual Arts. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2011, 90. 48. Sara Stevenson. “Tableaux, Attitudes and Photography.” Van Dyck in Check Trousers: Fancy Dress in Art and Life, 1700–1900. Scottish National Portrait Gallery, 1978, 46. 49. Allan Cunningham. The Life of Sir David Wilkie. III:67. 50. The Spectator (19 January 1833), 9.

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51. Cunningham. The Life of Sir David Wilkie. II:144–145. 52. Charles Webb. The Vagrant, his Wife and Family; a melodrama in two acts … As performed at the Royal City of London Theater. To which are added original remarks, sketches … Embellished with an engraving, from a drawing taken in the theatre during representation. London: J. Pattie, 1838. 53. Pape and Burwick. Shakespeare Gallery, 195. 54. John Joseph Knight. “Beverley, Henry Roxby.” Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1885. 55. British Library, Playbills 244, Liverpool. Beverley’s first series: Tempest I.i. Prospero, Miranda, Ariel; Hamlet IV.i, Ophelia; Romeo and Juliet II.v. Juliet, Nurse; Othello IV.ii, Othello, Desdemona; King Lear III.iv, Mad Tom; Romeo and Juliet II.iv, Nurse, Peter; Hamlet I.iii, Hamlet, Ghost; Merchant of Venice IV.i. Shylock’s bond; Macbeth V.last scene, Macbeth, Macduff. Beverley’s second series: Macbeth I.iii, Macbeth, Witches; Tempest IV.ii, Trinculo, Calibnan, Stephano, Ariel; Coriolanus IV.v, Coriolanus, Commenius, Citizens; Richard III II.iii, Richard, Lady Ann; King John III, Prince Arthur, Hubert, Executioners; As You Like It II.v, Touchstone, Audrey, William; Catherine and Petruchio [Taming of the Shrew], Petruchio, Catherine, Grumio, Tailor. 56. Gregory Stevens-Cox. St Peter Port, 1680–1830: The History of an International Entrepôt. Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1999, 187–88. 57. “Series of Tableaux Vivants from Shakespeare” (Guernsey, 13 December 1836). Macbeth. Macduff—Let the angel whom thou still hath served/ Tell thee, Macduff was from his Mother’s womb untimely ripped.” King John. Constance: “If thou, that bidst me be content, wert grim,/Ugly, and slanderous to thy mother’s womb” Henry IV, Part 1. Hotspur: Oh! Harry, thou hast robbed me of my youth.” Henry VIII. Katherine: “Sir, I most humbly pray you deliver/This to my Lord the King.” Richard III. KING RICHARD “Let not the heavens hear these/Tell-tale women rail on the lord’s anointed.” Henry IV Part 2. Pistol: “Sir John, thy tender lambkin now is King.” 58. British Library, Playbills 279, Guernsey. 59. British Library, Playbills 287, Weymouth. 60. British Library, Playbills 175, Coburg. 61. British Library, Playbills 287, Welsh-Pool.

CHAPTER 6

Time Replayed

A haunting ghost in Gothic melodrama is frequently depicted as entrapped in the moment of death, constantly re-enacting the events of an unresolved crime. This mode of repeating time invokes a supernatural revelation that is played out along with the continuum of time in the other dramatic events of the play. A play with a minor as well as a major plot may require that the playwright back up and replay a given moment over again with a different set of characters. That temporal gambit creates an artificial illusion of simultaneity. Actual dramatic simultaneity could be achieved by engaging two or more individuals or groups active on stage at the same time—active but not necessarily interactive. Excellent examples of the temporal strategies of succession, simultaneity, and convergence are found in three melodramas based on well-known murders: the anonymous Arden of Faversham (Coburg, 30 November 1824), Henry Beverley’s Chateau Bromege; or, The Clock Struck Four (Regency, 18 May 1818), and Edward Fitzball’s Jonathan Bradford; or, The Murder at the Road-side Inn (Surrey, 12 June 1833). Rather than resorting to ghosts, these three melodramas rely on the circumstances of actual crimes: Thomas Arden was murdered by his wife and her lover in 1550; Mary Ashford, named Maria Sorbier in the melodrama, was murdered on her way home from a tavern; Jonathan Bradford, charged with a murder he did not commit, was executed in 1771. The first of these melodramas repeatedly sets back the clock in order to stage a different set of © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 F. Burwick, Time in Romantic Theatre, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-96079-7_6

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events that were taking place at the same time. The second recreates a virtual Zenoan paradox of time by trying to establish a timeline for the actions of the suspected murderer. The third melodrama did more than any other play of the period to distract and baffle audiences with plot and subplot taking place on stage simultaneously. Events can take place either one after another (successively) or all at the same time (simultaneously). As performed on stage, the presentation scene by scene will naturally be presumed successive, but the playwright may introduce clues to indicate that a subsequent scene should be understood as taking place simultaneously with the previous scene. Consider, for example, the plot of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Given the fact that the events happening in the play are supposed to take only three hours, one must presume that the various subplots presenting the different groups of people dispersed over the island must take place roughly at the same time. At the beginning of Act II, Alonso and Gonzalo are lulled to sleep by Ariel’s music, while Sebastian and Antonio plot their murder. Occurring at the same time, Caliban encounters Trinculo and Stephano. Their carousing, continued in III.ii, apparently takes place at the same time as the conversation between Miranda and Ferdinand in III.i. A sense of simultaneity is created here exactly because different plot lines alternate without being presented separately in strings of immediately successive scenes.

Arden of Faversham The dramaturgy of simultaneous action did not occur to the anonymous contemporary of Shakespeare, whose tragedy, Arden of Faversham, was entered into the Register of the Stationers Company on 3 April 1592. The plot was taken from Holinshed’s Chronicles, which records the circumstances of the horrid murder that took place on a Sunday evening, 15 February 1550.1 As adapted for performance in 1590,2 staging the many bungled efforts to murder Thomas Arden resulted in jumbled scenes of attempted murder that left the audience bemused, rather than horrified, by the greed and blood lust of the clumsy perpetrators (Illustration 6.1). Nor did simultaneity occur to George Lillo, who was concerned with keeping the bloody scenes offstage, rather than attaining temporal cohesion among the fragmented events.3 Lillo left his alterations incomplete at his death (3 September 1739). John Hoadley finished the revision in 1759. The tragedy was performed first at Drury Lane (19 July 1759),

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Illustration 6.1  Arden of Faversham, woodcut, 1592

printed in 1762,4 and performed again thirty-one years at Covent Garden (14 April 1790). The quality of melodrama is presumed to be constricted by stereotype characters, simplistic plots, and a narrow range of dialogue and gesture expressing emotional excess through exaggerated posturing. The villain may master the deceit of hypocrisy and disguised intentions, but ultimately exposes actions of pure evil. The morally good is often no more than inexperienced naiveté. In these terms, melodrama may be judged an inferior mode of dramatic performance. In the case of Arden of Faversham, the transformation of tragedy into melodrama actually resulted in a more carefully wrought production. The original play commands effective blank verse, but shows little regard for the unity of time or any alternate means bringing coherence to the seemingly discontinuous and haphazard passage of time. The movement from place to place is uncoordinated; action is exceptionally violent, even in comparison to the bloody tragedies of the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage. As in The Spanish Tragedy or Macbeth, guilty murderers are haunted by images of blood. Revised as a melodrama, The Abbey Lands; or, Arden of Faversham was announced for performance at the Royal Coburg Theatre (30 November

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1824). George Bolwell Davidge assumed management of the Coburg beginning with the 1824–1825 season. The playwright responsible for converting Arden of Faversham from a five-act domestic tragedy to a three-act melodrama might well have been Douglas William Jerrold, who had just married at the season opening.5 Davidge offered the twenty-one-­ year-old Jerrold steady employment to produce dramas and farces.6 A few years would pass before Jerrold exhibited his mastery of maritime melodrama: Descart, the French Buccaneer (Coburg, 1 September 1828), Ambrose Gwinett; or, A Sea-side Story (Coburg, 6 October 1828), Black Eyed Susan (Surrey, 8 June 1829), and The Flying Dutchman (Surrey, 15 October 1829).7 Of these later plays, only Ambrose Gwinett challenged the representation of time to a comparable degree. The playwright of Arden of Faversham uses the succession of events in Act I, then indicates in Act II that the passage of time in paired scenes occurs simultaneously. As in The Tempest, the simultaneity is indicated by a shift in setting. The several plot lines alternate scene and setting, whereas continuous temporal action is conveyed with no scene change. Act I, a single scene set in Arden’s house, introduces most of the major characters with ingenious coordination of entrances and exits. In the course of this single scene, nine attempts to murder Arden are described. Five more attempts are foiled or failed before Arden is killed at a game of backgammon, when one hired thug knocks him to the ground, his wife’s lover strikes him with a fire iron, a second hired thug inflicts a serious wound with his knife, and his wife finishes him off by slitting his throat. The motives are sex or money. In the instances of murder for hire, payment, too, is offered in sex or money. In the playbill for the opening performance, Davidge announced: “The present Piece has been considerably altered from Lillo’s Play on the same subject; the Additions have been made with historical exactness, and every situation has been heightened, so that the effect must be at once striking and intense.”8 The cast was well assembled for their assigned roles: Thomas Cobham, who had previously acted as Iago and as Rob Roy, might seem to require less cunning and less courage for his performance as Arden, but in this role the hapless husband must deal with repeated evidence that he is surrounded by those seeking his death. In converting the genre from tragedy to melodrama, comedy must be integrated into the tragic action. The admixture is accomplished through the characters of the two hired assassins, Black Will played by Henry Kemble, best known for his stage pirates9 and his title role in Moncrieff’s The Vampire. His sidekick,

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Shakebag, was played by Bradley, who had performed as Lawless in H. M. Milner’s The Bandit of the Blind Mine. The creepiest of the wouldbe assassins in the melodrama was a consolidation of two of Lillo’s characters. The character of Clarke, an artist and dispenser of poisons, was absorbed into Green, a rival claimant to a portion of the abbey lands. As an artist, Green (nomen est omen) is familiar with the toxic and poisonous properties of the pigments he mixes for his paintings.10 Arsenic green is the deadliest among them. This role is performed by H. H. Rowbotham, known to the Coburg audiences in the title role in Lady Carolyn Lamb’s Glenarvon, adapted for the stage by John H. Amherst, and as Woodville, the merry murderer in The Gamblers. Mosby, Alicia’s lover and co-­ conspirator, was played by Bengough, who also played the victim in The Gamblers. Michael, Arden’s disloyal servant, was E.  L. Lewis. Arden’s benefactor, Sir Thomas Cheyney of Shurland Hall in the Isle of Sheppey, was played by Henley, who also played Kenrick in The Spectre of the Castle, adapted from Matthew Gregory Lewis. Franklin, Arden’s sole ally, was admirably performed by Goldsmith, also familiar as Captain Manson in Fitzball’s The Pilot, based on the novel by James Fenimore Cooper. Alicia, murderous wife to Arden, was played by Miss Watson, who also performed Lady Malvine, the victim of Moncrieff’s vampire, Desdemona, the murdered bride of Othello, and Elinor St. Clair in Glenarvon. Maria, sister to Mosby and maid to Alicia, was played by Mrs. Lewis, who performed as Columbine in several harlequinades, also appeared as Evelina, the title role in The Spectre of the Castle. As Maria, Mrs. Lewis acted a part more flirtatious and compliant, quite willing to become the bride to whomever was successful in murdering Arden. Green, the painter/poisoner hoped to be the one to carry her to the marital bed, but Michael, servant to Arden (played by Mrs. Lewis’s real-life husband), was equally zealous to perform in the same capacity. The melodramatic version is remarkable for its structuring the time, three days, during which fourteen attempts on Arden’s life are proposed, plotted, and planned, and the fifteenth succeeds with the combined effort of four assailants. At the play’s opening, Arden, in conversation with his friend Franklin, remarks on his good fortune at the Dissolution of the Monasteries in receiving from Sir Thomas Cheney the lands of the Abbey of Faversham. Arden hired Mosby as steward to attend to properties. Alicia, his sexually unsatisfied wife, conspires with Mosby to kill Arden. Aware of the illicit affair, Arden vows to take a bloody revenge. His friend Franklin, his only friend, advises him to make peace with his wife and

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steward. Arden is unaware that he is surrounded by those with whom his wife and her lover have conspired to murder him: Green, an artist, dispenser of poisons; Black Will and Shakebag, assassins for hire; Michael, a servant in the Arden household; Maria, the maid and Mosby’s sister. To motivate the success of either Michael or Green in their rivalry to kill Arden, Alicia offers as bribe the promised pleasures of wedding and bedding Mosby’s sister. Act I is a single scene of sequential events, deftly managed through an ingenious orchestration of entrances and exits. As the characters come and go in the Faversham house, ten different murder plots are proposed. The curtain rises on Arden’s conversation with Franklin in which Arden acknowledges both his good fortune and the domestic disaster of his wife’s sexual intimacy with his steward. He tells Franklin of waking to find Alicia standing over him with knife in hand. Rather than succumbing passively to their assault, he would much prefer to take a bloody revenge. Franklin recommends that Arden should attempt to win his wife back with gentle words. When Alicia comes in, Arden’s gentle words turn into angry accusations. He tells her that in her sleep she called her lover’s name and expected to find Mosby at her side. Arden declares abruptly that he must go to London for a month. Arden and Franklin depart to attend to a shipload of goods on the quay. With her moment alone on stage, Alicia exults in the prospect that Arden will soon be dead, and that she will have Mosby in her arms. Her joy is interrupted by Adam, a messenger Mosby has sent to her from the tavern. Alicia hoped it would be a summons for her to join him. Instead, it is his declaration that they should not meet. Knowing that he cannot resist the pleasures she provides, she sends Adam back with a message telling Mosby to visit her right away. As Adam leaves, Arden’s servant, Michael, enters. Alicia has bribed him by offering him Mosby’s sister, Maria, in marriage. Maria’s flirtations made that bribe especially enticing. Michael promises that Arden will be dead within a week. Mosby enters, glaring at both Michael and Alicia, and refusing to speak. Alicia dismisses Michael and embraces Mosby, who is quickly reassured of her love. He tells her that he has met an artist, who can paint a poisoned portrait that can be used to kill Arden. Alicia doubts whether the most poisonous of pigments would be strong enough to kill. Mosby explains that he has invited the artist, so that she can interview him herself. Right on cue, Green is at the door. He bears a grudge against Arden who rejected his claim for a share in the abbey lands. The interview reveals that Mosby has bribed Green in the same way that Alicia has bribed

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Michael—by offering Mosby’s sister as a bride. Alicia insists that she would not want Arden to die, if only she could have Mosby as she pleased. The lovers explain to Green that the poisoned picture would be a danger to others in the household. He gives them a poison to put in Arden’s food or drink. With choreographed timing, Green exits just as Arden and Franklin return. When Arden asks Mosby to explain his presence, Mosby claims an interest in a parcel of the abbey lands. Arden replies that he has no desire to relinquish any of the property. He asks Alicia to bring him breakfast. With Alicia out of the room, Arden rebukes Mosby for being familiar with his wife. Arden then seizes Mosby’s sword, telling him that he is no gentleman and may not wear one. As a mere menial, Arden tells him that he must not presume to woo a lady such as Alicia, even if she were unmarried. Mosby admits that he had formerly loved Alicia, but those days had passed. He now tends to the abbey lands and visits the house solely to see his sister. Arden accepts this account and assures Mosby that he may continue as friend and steward if his words are true. Not convinced that the words are true, Franklin suggests that it would be proper for Mosby to stay away from the house. Arden counters that Mosby should come as a welcome guest to allay any gossip. At this moment, Alicia brings in breakfast. Arden detects something peculiar in the taste and refuses to eat. Alicia angrily dashes his breakfast to the floor and berates him for being unappreciative of her labours. With Franklin’s intervention, husband and wife reach a truce. Arden is reluctant to depart for London, but business requires the trip. He exits with Franklin. Now alone with Mosby, Alicia embraces him and rejoices that they can continue their affair even though Arden is still alive. Mosby reminds her that he has sworn an oath to Arden not to importune his wife. She scoffs at the oath, but Mosby will not break his word while Arden lives. If that is the impediment, Alicia says, they must arrange to have Arden murdered in London. Again with a convenient exit and entrance, Mosby departs as Green arrives. To Alicia’s complaint that her husband immediately detected the poison, Green tells her that she need use only a few drops. He repeats to her his claim to some of the abbey lands. Alicia affirms that all claims are void as long as Arden is alive. Green says that he will be revenged on Arden for taking his land. Alicia expresses sympathy for his cause, stating that Arden is a cruel man who neglects her. When she expresses her reluctance to try poison again, Green says that he would be ready to assist. Alicia advises him to hire someone to kill Arden. She gives him £10 with

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the promise of an additional £20 and the return of his lands after the deed is done. At that moment Mosby returns. Mosby is quite pleased with the deal that Alicia has made with Green, but he is upset that she promised to give his sister to Michael. Recognizing the advantage of the marriage in securing Green’s loyalty in the crime, Alicia advises that Green should woo Maria for himself. This action is conducted with astonishing rapidity offstage. Green and Maria return, and Alicia is able to confirm that the amorous Maria no longer has thoughts of Michael. Even though Green is thrilled with his prospective bride, Mosby will assent only if Green supplies him with a poisoned crucifix, so that they are equipped with an alternative murder weapon. Green explains that with the crucifix worn around the neck, the poisonous fumes would kill their victim within a day. Act I concludes with Mosby expressing concern that Alicia had informed too many about her intentions. Act I is constructed with efficiently contrived entrances and exits all within a single scene. Act II pairs several scenes at different locations revealing simultaneous events. The murderous assault is planned for ten o’clock, so the clock must recommence its ticking for each of these scenes. Act II opens with a quarrel and sword fight between Black Will and Shakebag, a demonstration to show off the stage swordsmanship of Bradley and Kemble. Because they fight over who has made the most money out of villainy, they also establish their credentials as murderers for hire. This scene and subsequent scenes move inside and outside the tavern. Back inside the tavern, an itinerate tradesman and former highwayman points out Black Will and Shakebag to Green, who introduces them, in turn, to Michael. Black Will and Shakebag agree to murder Arden for the sum of Alicia’s money that Green pays them. Michael promises to leave the main door to Arden’s house unlocked. When the clock strikes ten, the hired murderers will enter the house. With the plot now confirmed, Green drafts a letter to inform Alicia. Arden and Franklin enter the tavern, unnoticed by Green and Michael. Eager to secure the affections of Mosby’s sister, Michael reads out a letter that he has written to Maria to inform her that his love for her has prompted him to this dangerous deed to help her brother. Arden and Franklin overhear him. Furious over the disloyalty of the two servants in his household, Arden decides to return home at once and dismiss them both. Lurking on the street outside the tavern, Black Will and Shakebag see Arden exit alone. They decide to follow and cudgel him when he turns down the darkened lane. By chance, an apprentice, shutting up the

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windows to his stall, strikes Black Will on the head. Arden escapes untouched when one of his would-be killers is felled with a bloodied head. Back inside the tavern, Green sees the returning assassins and fears that they have been defeated in conflict with Arden. They explain that, not Arden but the chance closing of a shop window caused the injury. Not until Arden is dead, Black Will pledges, will the blood be washed away. They return to their plan to assault Arden at ten o’clock. Michael sketches for them the way from the door to the room where Arden sleeps. The unlocked door is crucial to enable Black Will and Shakebag to enter the darkened house at ten o’clock. That hour is rapidly approaching as Michael returns to the house. Back in Arden’s counting house at the very time the villains are rehearsing the intended murder, Franklin is trying to convince Arden to forgive Michael’s errant appeals to Maria and to cease fretting about his wife’s past infidelity. Franklin assures him that their trip to London will provide a needed distraction. Michael enters to announce that it is almost ten o’clock. Arden heads to bed, followed shortly after by Franklin. Alicia, anticipating the fatal hour, has already retired to her room. Meantime, Michael trembles with doubts. If he does not unlock the doors for the conspirators, Alicia will not fulfil her promise to make Maria his bride. In the last minutes before the tenth hour, Michael succumbs to panic and cries out. His scream arouses Arden and Franklin. Michael says a nightmare had frightened him. Arden asks whether the doors are locked. Michael pretends not to remember. Arden discovers that they were not and promptly bolts them. Shakebag and Black Will again leave the inn and approach the house. Arriving at ten o’clock, they find the door locked. They listen at the door and hear voices within, which they believe to be evidence that Michael has deceived them. The following morning, Arden tells Franklin about a dream in which he was caught in a hunter’s net. Franklin attributes Arden’s dream to his overwrought state and Michael’s nightmare outburst. Arden proposes that they conduct their business in London quickly, so that they can return without delay. They will dine at the inn before returning to Faversham. The action taking place simultaneously at the inn involves Black Will, Shakebag, and Green. They have summoned Michael, whom they intend to pummel in punishment for his betrayal. Green wants to give Michael an opportunity to explain what went wrong. Michael assures them that Arden has no suspicion of their plot. He tells them the doors were unlocked when Arden, thinking that Alicia might be planning a rendezvous with

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Mosby, found the unlocked doors and locked them. With Michael admitted back into the intrigue, they plot how to kill Arden on his trip to London. Alone in the Faversham counting house, Mosby despairs over the failed attempts to murder Arden. Too many people are involved. He must provoke the killers to murder each other afterwards, for if they are caught, they will place the blame on him. He imagines that Alicia may be fickle. Her unrestrained sexuality may drive her to seek other lovers. Mosby thinks that he ought to rid himself of her as well. As soon as she enters, Alicia senses his mood. She tells him that she will try to control her passion for Mosby. Telling him not to think about the hours they have spent in each other’s arms, has the opposite effect of arousing his desires. She asks him whether it was only her wealth that has attracted him. Mosby assures her that he has loved her solely for herself. They are about to kiss, when a messenger appears with Green’s letter. In London, Black Will and Shakebag have once again failed in their attempt to murder Arden. They will try again on the homeward journey. In keeping with the musical requisites of melodrama, Act III opens with a representation of the Fair of Faversham, with a Rural Ballet in celebration of the Hop Harvest. The combat at the beginning of Act II and musical interlude that opens Act III are both announced in the playbill, which also gives credit for the overture and interspersed music to T. Hughes, composer and conductor at the Coburg for the dozen seasons from 1818 to 1829. In Act I, the playwright relied on sequential time. In Act II, scenes were paired and presented as if simultaneous. Act III also presents simultaneous action, but with both events on stage at once, first separate and then converging. The very next scene shows that simultaneously two opposing groups enter from opposite sides of the stage, each supposedly oblivious of the other. Arden, Franklin, and Michael are still miles from town. Michael alone is aware that they are followed stealthily by Green, Black Will, and Shakebag. With both groups on stage at once, the simultaneity nears the moment of convergence. In one group Green urges haste so that Arden does not get away. In the other group, Michael announces that their packhorse is limping and that he must return to Rochester for a new shoe. Arden tells Michael to hurry after them, but Michael knows that an ambush lies ahead. He lamed his horse deliberately so that he would not witness Arden’s murder. Franklin, while in the midst of telling a comic tale of a promiscuous wife, suddenly stops still. He has an inexplicable premonition of disaster. He cannot explain what that disaster might be, but he insists that they

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hurry on to Rainham Down. Here the two groups converge. The villains are ready to fire on Arden and Franklin when Lord Cheyney and his men appear. When Lord Cheyney sees Black Will, he too has a premonition, predicting that the scoundrel will soon be hanged. The two groups again separate. Arden, Franklin, and Cheyney and his men depart in the same direction. Cheyney invites them for dinner. Arden postpones dining together until the following day. Now alone on stage, Black Will shares with Shakebag his rage over once again failing in their attempt to murder Arden. Black Will had just taken aim to fire a fatal shot at Arden’s head, when Lord Cheyney intervened. Green, who stood back from the encounter, is told what happened. They must now return to Faversham and face Alicia’s anger over their failure to kill Arden. Another day has passed. It is now time for Arden and Franklin to go to the Isle of Sheppey to dine with Lord Cheyney. Alicia rebukes Arden for leaving home again so soon. Franklin suggests that Alicia should go with them, but she declines, suggesting that Arden is no longer fond of her company. She smiles when Arden declares that Alicia is dearer to him than life. Promising to return before night, Arden, with Franklin and Michael, is ready to depart, when Michael, again not wanting to be present at the ambush, says he has lost his purse. Arden tells him to hurry and rejoin them after he has found it. After they leave, Green enters, encounters Michael, and argues over Maria. Alicia breaks them up. Having done what she asked, Green expects Alicia to keep her promise of giving him Maria as a bride. Alicia complains that the hired murderers have bungled repeated attempts. Green promises her the poisoned crucifix which will not fail. Green tells Alicia that even now Black Will and Shakebag are hiding at the ferry waiting to ambush Arden. The ensuing scene then changes to the simultaneous event at the foggy ferry crossing to the Isle of Sheppey. Arden and Franklin have arrived, eager to cross, but the ferryman is cautiously slow because of heavy mists. At this moment, Black Will and Shakebag, lost in the mist, discover that they have also arrived at the ferry crossing. The convergence of the assassins and their victims seems imminent, when Shakebag stumbles and falls in a ditch. His cries alert the ferryman, who is armed as he secures his passengers aboard. Echoing Lord Cheyney’s prophecy, the ferryman tells Black Will that he will be hanged. A brief time has passed, the sun has cleared the mist, and Alicia arrives with Mosby at the ferry crossing ready to shed tears over the corpse of her husband. Black Will and Shakebag explain that the mist thwarted them.

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They will wait for Arden’s return. Alicia gives them some money and tells them to go to the inn so that Shakebag can wash away the ditch slime. Alicia proposes that she and Mosby should meet Arden arm in arm to provoke a quarrel. When he draws his sword, she shall call out bloody murder. Black Will and Shakebag shall appear and slay Arden. This plan pleases Mosby. On the return to Faversham, Arden tells Franklin that Alicia may come to meet them. Franklin advises him not to tell her how well Lord Cheyney entertained them. At the entrance to the abbey lands, Black Will and Shakebag confront Arden, insulting him by calling his wife a whore. Alicia and Mosby enter arm in arm. Mosby draws his sword ready to defend Alicia from the attack of the ruffians. Arden rebukes them and fights with Mosby. Black Will and Shakebag also wield swords in attacking Arden. Both Shakebag and Mosby are wounded. Alicia protests that neither she nor Mosby had conspired against Arden. Rather, they had deliberately provoked the fight in order to force these two villains to expose themselves, so that her husband could free himself from further assaults. No sooner has she praised Arden as an excellent swordsman, than she turns that praise into blame for having misused his skills to injure the innocent Mosby, who had only entered the fray to uphold Alicia’s virtue. Arden asks for her forgiveness. Alicia requires him to show his sincerity by apologizing to Mosby and tending to his wounds. Detecting further deceit, Franklin warns Arden against the false friendship. In the next scene, Green proposes that the hired thugs should abandon their enterprise. Alicia’s purpose can be more subtly attained by giving her husband a radiant green crucifix to wear around his neck. Neither Shakebag nor Black Will is willing to risk their reputation as capable cut-throats. Ill-­ luck has conspired against them. They are dedicated to accomplishing this one simple murder. Michael tells Alicia of the reconciliation between Arden and Mosby. Arden has invited Mosby to dinner. Anticipating a perfect situation in which to entrap her husband, Alicia tells Michael to persuade Mosby to come to her at once. If he succeeds, Alicia assures him, Maria will be his. Black Will declares that he and Shakebag should also attend the party, under the pretext of apologizing to Arden for the mistaken identity that led to the seemingly hostile event at the ferry crossing the previous night. The injured Mosby enters. Alicia is so affected by the severity of his wound that she declared herself ready to kill Arden herself. He shall be slain before another night passes. Mosby has a plan. Green will persuade Franklin to judge a painting in an adjacent room, while Mosby

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will invite Arden to play backgammon. Black Will and Shakebag will remain in the kitchen until they hear Mosby shout, “Now I will take you.” The words will seem to refer to their game of backgammon, but in fact they will be the signal for Black Will and Shakebag to strike. The conspirators agree on how Arden is to be killed and how they will dispose of his body. Happy that she shall soon be rid of her husband, Alicia pays the villains £20 and promises them another £40 after the deed. She longs to have Mosby in her arms. Michael announces the arrival of Arden and Mosby. Alicia instructs Michael to lock the door. Pretending to be upset that Arden has brought Mosby, Alicia complies with affected reluctance to her husband’s insistence that she must treat Mosby as a welcome guest. Arden and Mosby sit down to a game of backgammon. Alicia states that supper will be served when they finish the game. A few minutes into the game, Mosby declares loudly, “Now I will take you.” At this signal, Black Will throws a cloth over Arden’s head and knocks him out of his chair. Arden screams for help, as Mosby strikes him with a fire iron. Shakebag stabs him, and Alicia administers the coup de grâce by slitting his throat. In the aftermath of their crime, the perpetrators feel no guilt, but only distrust of their accomplices. Black Will expresses his distrust of Michael. Green says that Franklin heard the scream. Shakebag advises Black Will to join him in immediate flight to Southwark. Alicia engages Maria in washing the blood off the floor, but the blood has already stained the wood. Mosby brings in some rushes to cover the stain. Mosby observes that Alicia is distraught. Michael notices that Maria, too, is afraid that all will be revealed. Promising to marry her, Michael tells her to prepare to run away with him in the morning. With some of the poison Green gave to Alicia, Michael plans to kill Alicia before she betrays them all to the mayor. Alicia sends the very suspicious Franklin to search for Arden. With Maria’s help, Alicia pulls Arden’s body to the threshold of the counting house. Mosby confirms that Franklin suspects them of murder. Michael reports that the mayor and the watch are coming to the house. Alicia pleads with Mosby and Green to carry the body into the field and then spend the night at the inn. The mayor and the watch arrive to apprehend Black Will. They are going to search the house. Franklin informs the mayor that Arden has been murdered, and he proceeds to produce the evidence, first revealing the cloth and the knife, then the blood stains, which Alicia claims are pig’s blood. The mayor is then shown the footprints in the snow leading from

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the house to the body. In a trial of cruentation, Alicia is brought before her husband’s corpse. Just as the old lore predicted, the corpse began to bleed profusely.11 She confesses. Mosby says that he hired Black Will and Shakebag. Franklin is issued a warrant to apprehend them. The murderers of the household are tried. Alicia blames Mosby. If he had not played upon her discontent and her desire, she would have had no part in the fatal assault that Mosby alone had instigated. Maria claims innocence. She was only a maid to a wicked mistress. She knew nothing about the murder until after it was committed. The epilogue is a final synthesis of time: Franklin announced the fate of each culprit, who was then led offstage. Shakebag fled to Southwark, where he murdered a former mistress, but was caught and executed. Black Will fled to Flushing in Holland, where he was pursued and poisoned by Green. Green was to be hanged at Osbridge in Kent. Michael will be hanged in Faversham. Mosby and Maria were to be executed at Smithfield in London. Alicia will be burnt in Canterbury. For posterity a print of Arden’s body survived in the grass for many years.

Chateau Bromege; or, The Clock Struck Four The playbill for Chateau Bromege (Regency, 18 May 1818) declares that the play was “founded on a melancholy Fact” and “written expressly for this Theatre” by H. R. Beverley, lessee and manager of the Regency. In the preceding chapter on stopped time, Beverley was identified as the playwright who prepared tableaux scenes at Guernsey, Liverpool, and other theatres. For a Christmas harlequinade (Adelphi, 26 December 1838), Beverley introduced three Gladiators who achieved their classical pose from John Flaxman12 in a sequence of slowing down, then stopping briefly in tableau before returning to normal tempo. Equally ingenious slow down and stop was utilized in re-enacting on stage the testimony of each witness, each concluding with slowing down and stopping at a moment, in which the presumed killer, Thornville [Thornton], is depicted as caught in time somewhere distant from the site of the murder. Following S.  N. E.’s The Murdered Maid (Warwick, 1818), George Ludlum’s The Mysterious Murder (Birmingham, 1818), as well as a

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sensationalized narrative by John Fairburn (London, 1817), the Regency performance offered no brutal scene of sexual assault, but aimed instead at heightening curiosity and speculation. The playbill promised, in the words of the Ghost to Hamlet, “Murder most Foul as in the best it is; / But this most foul, strange, and unnatural” (I.v.27–28). With its full Shakespearean implication, the words are also a challenge to avenge the crime. But who is the perpetrator? Hamlet wanted King Claudius to expose his guilt before he could pursue revenge. The audience at the Regency attended a performance in which the consequences of the flirtation between Mary Ashford and Abraham Thornton (Thornville and Maria Sobier, in the play) were not staged. In the trial scenes, the witnesses provide conflicting testimony, and the evidence remained inconclusive. All three playwrights—Beverley, S. N. E., and Ludlum—dramatize the temporal confusion at the trial in establishing a tenable sequence of events. “What’s the Clock?” and the “The Clock Stuck Four” (with or without the exclamation points) are references to the actual court testimony. Beverley’s play opens in a tavern, where two young servant girls have arrived late for a dance. The names of the characters in the play replace the actual names of the victim and those involved in the criminal case. The murdered girl, Mary Ashford, is named Maria Sorbier in the play. Her friend and fellow servant in the household of her uncle is Hanna Cox, named Arietta Dolet in the play. They are escorted to a table by the landlord, Bertrand, the character representing Daniel Clarke. The young ladies are soon joined by Abraham Thornton, called Thornville in the play, subsequently accused as rapist and murderer. At the end of the dance, Arietta and her friend Benjamin (actually named so in the trial and played by Walter) leave the tavern together with Maria and Thornville, but rather than stay with Arietta on the pathway to her uncle’s house, they separate, and Maria and Thornville go in a different direction. Act I closes with a scene of Maria and Thornville kissing in the moonlight. Act II commences with Thornville strolling homeward, alone, through a grey dawn, to Chateau Bromege. There are a series of encounters which function in the subsequent trial scene to establish the time of Thornville’s action. First he meets with Paul the milkman, then William Jennings at the trial: What’s the clock? Just 4:30 a.m. He next sees Phillippe, the gamekeeper at Chateau Bromege, the real-life Haydon. Noting the time as 4:50, the gamekeeper listens to Thornville boast of the fine time he has had with a young lady. The next scene shifts to the room that Maria shares with Arietta. The time is just before 4 a.m. Maria explains that she must

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change into her working clothes and meet with her uncle before market time. The final scene of Act II returns to the courtyard of Chateau Bromege. Bertrand, from the L’Auberge du Cheval Blanc, tells Thornville that Maria has been found dead. Thornville declares that she was alive and happy when he left her as the town clock struck four. Together, Bertand and Thornville depart for the tavern. Act III is set in the tavern that is serving as the court of Justice Edward Holroyd, called Mersenne in the play. In spite of the animosity that Thornville confronts when brought before the judge, Marsenne calls for an orderly review of the witnesses. Arrietta saw Maria just before 4:00. Thornville swears that he left Maria as the village clock struck 4:00. The milkman saw him at 4:30, and the gamekeeper greeted him at Chateau Bromege at 4:50. Marsenne is baffled by the testimony. In order for Thornville to be considered guilty, the court would have to be convinced that he met with Maria a second time after 4:00 and had then murdered her and raced the three miles back to Chateau Bromege, where he met the gamekeeper at 4:50. According to the milkman’s testimony, however, Thornville was sauntering at a leisurely pace along the pathway at 4:30, presumably after the murder had taken place. Announcing the play as “founded on a melancholy Fact,” a crime that had taken place in Warwickshire just a year earlier, the production shrewdly distances the event, as if both crime and trial occurred elsewhere. The original jurors and subsequent audiences were baffled by irreconcilable testimony of times and places. In reality, Thornton was acquitted. As the audience also knew, that acquittal had been followed by public outrage, and a second trial of appeal was granted to William Ashford, brother of the murdered Mary. This appeal came to naught when Thornton demanded his right to trial by battle, a medieval usage that remained in the statutes. When a trial by battle was granted as legally permissible, Ashford declined, and Thornton was again declared free. Neither of the earlier plays deal with the second trial. The Mysterious Murder ends with Thornville, as Ludlam also named him, shooting himself in the witness box. The Murdered Maid includes a scene in which Thorntree carries the unconscious Maria offstage, and concludes with an apotheosis in which the spirit of Maria is engulfed in clouds and points to a monument engraved with words declaring that she was a “victim to Cruelty and Lust.”13

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Edward Fitzball, Jonathan Bradford; or, The Murder at the Road-side Inn For the inventive use of sequence, simultaneity, and convergence in the management of stage time, Richard Brinsley Peake’s The Haunted Inn (Drury Lane, 31 January 1828), Edward Fitzball’s The Innkeeper of Abbeville (Surrey, 13 May 1822), and Jonathan Bradford; or, the Murder at the Roadside Inn (Surrey, 12 June 1833) provide remarkable examples, especially in the merging of plot and subplot. The shift from outside to inside, such as the scenes at the inn in Arden of Faversham at the Coburg, required the curtain to drop in order for Stanfield’s scenery to be mounted and Lewis and Craddock to utilize the machinery to move larger pieces. At the Surrey, the machinery was deftly managed by Thomas Hagley, who adapted the eccyclema of Greek drama. This was a façade mounted on a turntable that allowed an exterior wall to be revolved to reveal an interior wall. An example is The Knight of Rhodes (Surrey, 15 May 1820), a two-act melodrama adapted from the historical tragedy by James Bland Burgess. Act I features a grand procession of the Knights of Rhodes through the central plaza of the city of Rhodes. In Act II, the setting, by means of the revolving base, turns to reveal the interior of the palace of the Grand Master. On the Georgian stage scene changes were accomplished by scenes painted on flats, fitted into grooves, and pushed onto stage as “sliders.” Striving for a practical efficiency in avoiding frequent and complex scene changes, some playwrights contrived to divide the stage to represent two or more rooms simultaneously. In Act II of Le roi s’amuse (Comédie Française, 22 November 1832), Victor Hugo divided the stage with an angled wall, showing the interior of Triboulet’s garden on one side and the street on the other; Acts IV and V depicted a wooded scene with Saltabadil’s hideaway, the exterior wall removed so that the audience beheld events taking place in the upstairs and downstairs rooms. The stage design simply actualized the familiar reference to the “invisible wall.” Fitzball accomplished similar effects with the staging of Jonathan Bradford; or, the Murder at the Roadside Inn (Surrey, 12 June 1833). The interior of the inn is exposed in a cross-section with two downstairs rooms and two upstairs rooms: the murder is committed in full sight of the audience. In an act of dramaturgical legerdemain, Fitzball tricked the spectators into focusing on events in another room, so that if they want to see the actual murder, they have to return on a subsequent night to watch a second performance.

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More than most playwrights, Fitzball worked closely with the scene designers and the stage mechanist to integrate plot, setting, and special effects.14 Although the inn was a site readily adaptable for a number of plots, there was nevertheless a challenge in constructing one setting that would credibly convey the illusion of an actual inn and at the same time suit the simultaneous movement and action of the characters on stage. For the production of his Jonathan Bradford; or, the Murder at the Roadside Inn, Fitzball required a cross-section of an inn, exposing four rooms with simultaneous action sometimes occurring in more than one of the rooms.15 Among the most notorious cases of a guest murdered at the inn was that involving Jonathan Bradford, who kept an inn at Oxford. This was a case with a twist. When arrested and brought to trial, Bradford confessed in 1736 that he had indeed been tempted to rob and murder the wealthy guests who visited his inn. Bradford insisted, however, that someone else had committed the deed before he arrived at the victim’s room, knife in hand. Other guests testified that they had seen Bradford bending over the body at the very moment the victim died with a slit throat. No one saw Bradford commit the act, and Bradford swore that he was innocent, but the circumstantial evidence was overwhelmingly damning. Found guilty of the crime he did not commit, Bradford was duly executed. Among the many dramatizations of this crime, Fitzball’s melodrama garnered the greatest success. Jonathan Bradford ran for 260 nights.16 Leigh Hunt told the story in his London Journal (1834),17 and the case was often cited in the controversy over presumptive evidence.18 The success of Fitzball’s melodrama derived from crafting the play not simply as another intrigue and gory spectacle but as a true murder mystery. Moreover, it was a murder that unfolded step by step before the very eyes of the audience. Fitzball exposed to the audience the actual crime, but they had to watch carefully to see it, and many returned to the Surrey a second night or third night to witness what they had previously missed. Mr. Hayes, a gentleman attended by a servant, arrived in the evening at Bradford’s inn. He dined with two other gentlemen also staying at the inn. All three retired at the same time to their respective chambers. The downstairs portion of the set showed the inn’s dining room stage left and the innkeeper’s quarters stage right. In the centre there was a staircase connecting to the upstairs which was also divided, the room stage left occupied by Hayes and his servant, across the hall stage right was the room occupied by the two gentlemen.

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After all had retired to bed, lanterns in each of the rooms were extinguished. The entire stage is darkened, then after a few moments there is a clatter in the innkeeper’s room and he is seen lighting his lantern, fetching a large knife, and ascending the stairs. As this is going on, the two gentlemen, aroused by the noise, rise from bed to investigate the cause. In the meantime, the innkeeper with his lantern and knife entered the room which is filled with the groans of a dying man. Previously illuminated by the pale light of an unseen stage moon shining through the window, the innkeeper’s lantern shines directly on Hayes with his throat cut, lying drenched in his own blood. The two other gentlemen stride forward and apprehend the astonished landlord. Who slit the throat of poor Mr. Hayes? If anyone in the audience had not focused attention on the innkeeper in the downstairs room stage right, but had watched instead the upstairs room stage left, she or he would have seen the servant rise from his cot, slit his master’s throat, steal his purse, then clamber out of the window and disappear into the night. At trial, the argument was presented that the frightened servant had fled to preserve his own life. Bradford is declared guilty and executed. Years later, the vanished servant on his deathbed confessed the crime, revealing that he had committed the deed, stolen the purse, and escaped through the window in the very moment that the landlord entered the room to commit the act that had just been done. Not readily seen by most spectators, Fitzball had nevertheless fully exposed the crime on stage. Most plays depict events as if the sequence, scene by scene, were taking place successively. In order to present events as occurring simultaneously, the playwright must provide the audience with clear indications of concurrence. In Arden of Faversham, examples of that effect were achieved by specific reference to time, as, for example, Michael bolting the doors and Shakebag and Black Will expecting to find the doors unbolted. In Chateau Bromege; or, The Clock Struck Four, the testimony of each witness supposedly fixes where Tornville was at the moment Maria was murdered. Locating Thornville’s place on the road is replayed over and over. Rather than replaying the simultaneous events room by room in the fatal inn, Fitzball in Jonathan Bradford relies on a divided set that represents the upstairs and downstairs rooms, enabling the audience to watch several scenes of action being played out all at once. Fitzball performs a few tricks of distraction, so that the audience fails to keep their eyes on the room where the murder takes place.

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Notes 1. Raphael Holinshed. Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande, 2 vols. (1586). London: J. Johnson, 1807–1808; rpt. AMS Press, 1965. 2:1062–1066. Supplements to Holinshed were recorded in the anonymous manuscript, A short history of Lord Cheyne, Lord Shorland, and of the murder of Mr. Thomas Arden, of Faversham; and also of the persons concerned in the tragedy of Arden, [1829]. James Marshall and Marie-Louise Osborn Collection, Beinecke Library, Yale University. Manuscript account of the murder of Thomas Arden, 43 pp. 2. The Tragedy of Master Arden of Faversham. Ed. M. L. Wine. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1973. 3. David Scott Kastan, Peter Stallybrass. Staging the Renaissance: Reinterpretations of Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama. London: Routledge, 1991. 4. Arden of Feversham (1762). Three Centuries of English and American Plays. Ed. Henry W. Wells. New York/London: Hafner Pub. Co., 1963. 5. In Chap. 4 above, I present a similar argument that Thomas John Dibdin may have authored The Long Rifle, also under Davidge at the Coburg. 6. Michael Slater. Douglas Jerrold: A Life (1803–1857). London: Gerald Duckworth, 2002. 7. Arnold Schmidt. British Nautical Melodramas, 1820–1850, 3 vols. London: Routledge, 2019, 2: 287–288. 8. British Library, Playbills 174–175. Coburg. Tuesday. 30 November 1824. 9. Burwick and Manushag Powell. British Pirates in Print and Performance. New York: Palgrave, 2015, 2–6. 10. Kassia St. Clair. The Secret Lives of Colour. John Murray, 2016, 224–26. 11. R.P.  Brittain. “Cruentation in legal medicine and literature.” Medical History 9 (January 1965 Jan): 82–8. 12. John Flaxman. The Iliad, Flaxman’s Illustrations to Homer (1805), drawn by John Flaxman; engraved by William Blake and others; edited, with an introd. and commentary, by Robert Essick and Jenijoy LaBelle. New York: Dover Publications, 1977. 13. David Worrall. Theatric Revolution: Drama, Censorship and Romantic Period Subcultures, 1773–1832. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006, 324–29. 14. Larry Clifton. The Terrible Fitzball. Bowling Green State UP, 1999, 75–107. 15. Victor Hugo. Le Roi s’amuse (1832) used a “divided set” for Acts 4 and 5, depicting Saltabadil’s hideaway with rooms up- and downstairs. Burwick, Illusion and the Drama. Critical Theory of the Enlightenment and Romantic Era. University Park: Penn State UP, 1991, 261. 16. Fitzball. Jonathan Bradford! or, The Murder at the Road-side Inn. London: T. H. Lacy, 1833.

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17. Leigh Hunt. “Romance of Real Life. The Murderer who was no Murderer.” Leigh Hunt’s London Journal 50 (Wednesday, March 11, 1835): 76. 18. “Remarkable Cases of Circumstantial Evidence: Bradford the Innkeeper.” The Evergreen. A Monthly Magazine of New and Popular Tales and Poetry. 1 (1840): 268; Samuel Phillipps and Samuel Warren. Famous Cases of Circumstantial Evidence. New York: James Cockcroft, 1873, 144–48.

CHAPTER 7

Longitudinal Time

This chapter on nautical drama of ships lost at sea or wrecked on rocks addresses the one mode of manipulating time in a play that was not anticipated by Shakespeare. As acknowledged in previous chapters, Shakespeare dealt with delayed ships in The Merchant of Venice and with wrecked ships in Twelfth Night and The Tempest: in the first case, as a plot device to introduce the risky loan; in the second, to explain how Viola, separated from her brother Sebastian, was compelled to protect herself disguised as a man; in the third case, to display Prospero’s magic and Ariel’s agency in creating the storm that drives his brother’s ship onto the rocks. Not until the eighteenth century did maritime England develop the devices necessary to chart longitude as well as latitude in order to navigate the high seas with less risk. In the effort to show what is happening back in port, or when a ship is tossed upon the rocks, the popular nautical drama of the age provides further examples of time replayed. In the maritime plays discussed in this chapter, the focus is on the recalculations imposed as a ship sails through longitudinal time. The dramatic action of the voyage may derive from dangers in misinterpreting the ship’s precise longitudinal where and when. As maritime commerce increased along with colonization and national investment abroad, accurate navigation at sea became increasingly imperative. The compass, astrolabe, and sextant were the traditional instruments in navigation. A sea captain relied on the “dead reckoning” of following a

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 F. Burwick, Time in Romantic Theatre, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-96079-7_7

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given latitude from port to port. Sun and stars sufficed to determine latitude. Determining longitude was a dangerous guessing game. How dangerous was revealed by the naval disaster of 22 October 1707, when four warships lost their bearings in stormy weather amidst the Isles of Scilly. More than 1500 sailors perished with the foundering ships. The disaster aroused an anxious urgency in enabling navigators to calculate their positions with accuracy.1 In 1714, the British government offered up to £20,000 to be awarded to the inventor of a device capable of accurately determining longitude at sea. Precise time-keeping for navigation required an accurate maritime clock. Longitude, after all, is simply a cartographer’s demarcation of time on the globe, which rotates 360° per day, or 15° per hour (360° divided by 24 hours). There is a direct correlation between time and longitude, and that time expands or contracts in proximity to the equator or the poles. The position of a ship at sea could be determined with reasonable accuracy if a navigator could refer to a clock that lost or gained less than about 10  seconds per day. This clock could not contain a pendulum, which would be virtually useless on a rocking ship. Isaac Newton was among the many who were pessimistic that a clock of the required accuracy could ever be developed. At that time, there were no clocks that could maintain accurate time while being subjected to the rolling, pitching, and yawing of a ship at sea, even without the tempestuous pounding of wind and waves. Motivated by the large award, skilled clockmakers sought to develop an improved timepiece that might work even on an extended voyage. Such a timepiece was eventually built by John Harrison with his marine chronometer known as H-4. Harrison built five, two of which were tested at sea. His first, H-1, was built in 1735 but not tested under the conditions required by the Board of Longitude. The Admiralty required that it travel to Lisbon and back. It performed excellently, but the perfectionist in Harrison prevented him from sending it on the required trial to the West Indies. He instead embarked on the construction of H-2, immediately followed by H-3. Each model revealed possible improvements. Harrison produced H-4 in 1761 to which he added bearings to reduce friction and weighted balances to compensate for the ship’s pitch and roll. This version of the maritime chronometer lost fewer than five seconds over a ten-week period. With several rewards between 1730 and 1750s, and £10,000 in 1765, Harrison received more money than any of his rivals.2 Though rewarded again for

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his marine chronometer in 1773, Harrison’s chronometers were not widely employed because of their expense. Tobias Mayer, astronomer at the University of Göttingen, devised a method to determine lunar distances. He corresponded with Leonhard Euler, mathematician at the Berlin Academy, who formulated the equations to describe the motions of the Moon.3 Based on this work, Mayer had produced a set of tables predicting the position of the Moon more accurately than ever before. In 1755, he sent a proposal to the Admiralty. Reliance on the lunar distance method continued well into the nineteenth century.4 Initially time-consuming because of the complex calculations to establish the Moon’s position, early measuring of lunar distance could involve as many as four hours. Starting in 1767 the Board offered £5000 for improvements to Tobias Mayer’s lunar charts, and £10,000 (worth over £1.30 million in 2021) for determining longitude at sea to an accuracy of not greater than one degree of longitude (equates to 60 nautical miles [110 km; 69 mi] at the equator).5 The reward was to be increased to £15,000 if the accuracy was not greater than 40  minutes, and further enhanced to £20,000 if the accuracy was not greater than half a degree (£100 in 1820 increased in purchasing power two centuries later to about £9585).6 Also in 1767, Nevil Maskelyne, the British Astronomer Royal, began publishing the Nautical Almanac, which contained astronomical tables prepared by a small network of mathematicians during the period 1765–1809.7 The Nautical Almanac provided tables of pre-calculated distances of the Moon from various celestial objects at three-hour intervals for every day of the year, reducing the time for calculations to less than 30 minutes and as little as ten minutes with some efficient tabular methods. During the course of the first half of the nineteenth century, affordable, reliable marine chronometers became available in large numbers,8 replacing the reliance on lunar distances. Ship owners would often purchase two or more relatively inexpensive chronometers, serving as checks on each other, rather than resorting to a sextant and lunar tables.9

Shipwreck and Longitude Of the fleet of twenty-one returning from Gibraltar, four ships—HMS Association, HMS Eagle, HMS Romney, and HMS Firebrand—were sailing into the English Channel on the night of 22 October 1707 (new calendar: 2 November), when they were storm-tossed among the Isles of

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Scilly, 28 miles (45 kilometers) off Land’s End. This was the naval disaster that I cited at the beginning of this chapter. The reefs of the five larger islands and the hazardous maze of the 140 small rocky islets snared many a ship even in clear weather, but never with this enormous loss of life. The Admiralty was compelled to seek a prompt means to provide their navigators with the instruments necessary to determine longitude. The chronometer was the wanted device. A century later, when mass production of the gears made the assembly much cheaper and reliable, chronometers had also become cheaper. To sail the high seas without a chronometer was folly. The wreck of the Arniston, on 29 May 1815, provided a moral exemplum against such folly. The ship did not have a chronometer, and Captain George Simpson10 did not have £100 to purchase one from a dealer at the Port de Galle, formerly a possession of the Portuguese, then of the Dutch East India Company.11 After the British took possession of Sri Lanka in 1796, they renamed the island Ceylon and ruled it as a colony from 1815 to 1948. Among the ships that sailed the Silk Road, The Arniston East Indiaman was subject to the dictates of the East India Company, which placed profit over the lives of the crew. Unwilling to purchase a chronometer, they threatened to discharge the captain if he persisted in his defiant claim that he would not sail without a longitudinal instrument.12 The chronometer, they declared, was a superfluous toy, totally unnecessary because the Arniston would be sailing in a convoy of six other East Indiamen, under the escort of His Majesty’s ships, Africaine and Victor. With its cargo loaded, the Arniston set sail with the convoy on 4 April 1815. Among her 378 passengers were fourteen women, twenty-five children, and a number of discharged soldiers and sailors. During the passage from Ceylon across the Indian Ocean, ships equipped with chronometers regularly signalled each other their longitude. Even without a chronometer on board, Captain Simpson was able to map their course with accuracy. The owners were right: the chronometer was superfluous, as long as the Arniston remained in the convoy. That benefit was lost while rounding the southern tip of Africa. On 26 May, the Arniston’s sails were torn due to bad weather, and she was separated from the convoy.13 Worse, she was separated from the source of accurate updates of longitudinal position. Captain Simpson’s recourse was to navigate the latitude by dead reckoning, but that alternative was hazardous because strong ocean currents, combined with inclement weather, prevented a reading of the skies. At dawn on 29 May, land was sighted to the north. The captain’s estimation of latitude was not too far off, but the ship had been slower than

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he calculated. He assumed that he had already reached 18.47° longitude and the land in view was the Cape of Good Hope. Instead, the Arniston had not yet reached 20° longitude and the land was Cape L’Agullas. Under the false belief that he was passing the Cape of Good Hope, the Captain steered west until late afternoon on 29 May, then turned north intending to make port at St. Helena. Instead, he was on a collision course for the rocky Agullas Bank. In spite of the error, the captain might have been able to steer away from the reef, if another storm had not taken hold of the ship. The torn sails could not bear the ship away from the rocks, nor could the anchors prevent further battering. By late afternoon of 30 May, Captain Simpson chose to scuttle the Arniston in order to save the lives of the 378 people aboard. But the ship was still half a mile offshore when the hull was split by the rocks. The relentless pounding of the waves soon splintered the ship. Caught in the tumultuous surf, crew and passengers were engaged in a panicked effort to reach land.14 Only six men survived.15 From port to port, the tale was retold of ship owners causing the death of hundreds because they were too greedy to invest in a chronometer.16 With the failure to invest in the device that could provide reliable longitudinal measure, the blame fell on the British East India Company. The shipwreck of the Arniston was not among the maritime disasters transformed into a London melodrama. A more favourable depiction of the East India Company was provided by the nautical enactment of the heroic efforts of Captain John Coxon of the Grosvenor East Indiaman, which, forty years before the Arniston, had also miscalculated the distance from the Cape and drove upon the rocks.

John H. Amherst, The Shipwreck of the Grosvenor East Indiaman Actor, playwright, and historian, John H. Amherst wrote for several London theatres before immigrating to America in 1838. As a dramatist, he specialized in the genre of colonial melodrama. He represented the final defeat of the Mysore army in Tippoo Sahib; or, The Storming of Seringapatan (Coburg, 20 January 1823). He was also the author of The Burmese War; or, Our Victories in the East (Royal Amphitheatre, 27 March 1826) and The Demon of the Ganges; or, The Tiger Tribe (Sadler’s Wells, 20 Oct 1834). When Amherst brought to the stage his maritime spectacle, The Shipwreck of the Grosvenor East Indiaman (Royalty, 14 October 1822),

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he was rightly more concerned with the delusions on land than the “raptures” wrought from lengthy exposure to the ocean’s broad expanse. The navigational miscalculations failed to correct the crew’s optical illusions. Amherst links the delusions at sea to the survivors’ subsequent false perceptions on land. In the early morning hours of 4 August 1782, driven by a southwesterly gale, the 729 tonne English East India Company vessel, the Grosvenor, reputed to be a “treasure ship” fully equipped with the current moon charts, had seriously miscalculated time and place. Sailing west near the Cape Coast at just after midnight, Captain John Coxon and crew were distracted by a phenomenon they thought might be akin to the northern lights. The hovering band of light, they were certain, had occurred in the sky, not on land. When it vanished, it was given no further thought. They soon discovered, however, that the light was a ridge of grassfires burning on a headland directly on their course, and their disappearance was due to their being hidden by the brow of the hill. Just as the illumination of dawn was beginning to spread, Thomas Lewis reported that he thought he could see land. That idea was counter to their calculation of longitude by lunar distance. The commanding officer of the watch, Thomas Beale, assured the crew that they were at least 200 miles (320 km) out to sea. The quartermaster Mixon, after some hesitation, alerted the captain, who instantly came on deck. In spite of the calculations of the moon, the eastern coast of Africa was directly in front of them and beneath them. Too late to turn, the Grosvenor was impaled upon the rocks. Still convinced that they were far from the African shore, the crew imagined that they had struck an uncharted isle. In fact, the ship had been forced by a storm in a gully to the northeast of Tezani Stream on the coast of Pondoland. With a change in the wind direction, the captain felt that they could refloat the Grosvenor and run her aground in some more convenient place. A fortuitous change in the wind allowed the stern section of the ship, where most of the passengers were trapped, to be hauled into a sheltered inlet. Of the 150 people aboard, all but 15 reached the shore alive. Laden with a cargo of luxuries, the East India Company seemed primarily concerned with avoiding financial loss. The loss of lives, in comparison to other shipwrecks, was relatively small. Amherst, describing the events forty years later, hints that amidst the worst of the shipwreck, worse was yet to come. The stunning scenery at the Royalty Theatre was provided by Robert Jones, apprenticed to master scene-designer Clarkson Stanfield.17 John

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Lewis constructed the stage machinery that allowed a two-third size replica of the quarter deck of the Grosvenor to glide onto the stage when the curtain was raised for Act I.  The crew is seen gazing in wonder at the strange lights in the night-time sky, when the calm is interrupted by a sudden storm. The force of the storm results in the springing of the main mast, which topples towards the audience. With accompanying sound effects, the vessel is seen to lurch abruptly. In the darkness, the crew shouts out that they must have struck an uncharted island or reef. They still believed their miscalculated longitude and were convinced they were far from the African coast. Act I.ii depicts the terrible situation of the passengers trapped between the decks. As the playbill describes the scene, “The whole Stage laid into a Tempestuous Sea.” The stage machinery creeks as the Captain moves the replica Grosvenor in the hope of rescuing the passengers. Act I.iii shows the long boats swamped by the waves, women and their infants swept away, sailors struggling in the rescue, and signal guns firing in the darkness to guide the survivors. When they gather on shore, they find that fifteen of their number are missing. The setting for Act II.i is Jones’s painting of “A Beautiful View of an Island near Trincomalee.” For Act II.ii, Jones created “The Interior of a Coral Grotto,” with a burning altar and the throne of the Pondo Indian King. The cave opens into the sea, “a Scene occupying the whole stage from End to End.” Pondoland, territory of the former Pondo Kingdom, is situated on the South African shores of the Indian Ocean. Act III.i, presenting the perils of the long trek southward to the Dutch Cape Colony, is set before Jones’s panoramic backdrop, “An East Indian Forest, with a great variety of Beautiful Shrubs and Flowers peculiar to the Climate.” The beauty was deceptive, for many of the fruits were toxic or poisonous. The survivors could not hope for rescue in Pondoland. Because of the apparent hostility of the local people and the scarcity of provisions, they must seek the nearest colonized port. Captain Coxon insisted that they could reach it within sixteen days. This was a miscalculation far more tragic than the miscalculation of longitude at sea. The distance to the Dutch Cape was almost twice as far as the Captain had estimated. A total of 128 survivors set out on the epic journey. Jones’s backdrop for Act III. ii, showed “A Wild and Romantic View of distant Mountains.” In the foreground, his depiction of “Water and Fruits” was more an illusory wish than a reality. Following the shoreline for well over 1000 kilometers, the majority of those that set out were to die of privation. Only a handful were

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still alive when they reached their goal. Act III.iii is set in the “Interior of an Indian Tent.” The melodrama concludes with the arrival of a British fleet. The East India Company opened an investigation and sent out agents to determine the cause of the wreck, the whereabouts of the cargo, and the fate of those lost on the trek.

Douglas Jerrold, The Press-Gang; or, Archibald of the Wreck Following his stunning success with Black Eyed Susan; or, All in the Downs (Surrey, 8 June 1829), Jerrold was determined to extend his achievement in nautical melodrama with two further exposés of prevailing evils in the naval services, The Mutiny at the Nore (Royal Pavilion, 7 June 1830) and The Press Gang; or, Archibald of the Wreck. (Surrey, 5 July 1830). As the title indicates, the latter of these dealt with two evils: the press-gangs and the wreckers. The wreckers brought the extreme evils of death and destruction to their enterprise of wrecking a ship, drowning crew and passengers, in order to loot the cargo. Among their strategies to wreck a ship, as dramatized by Fitzball in The Floating Beacon; or, The Norwegian Wreckers (Surrey, 9 April 1824), was to move or extinguish the oil-lamp buoys intended to guide a ship away from rocks or into the harbour. The wreckers in Jerrold’s play rely on a member of the crew who alters the longitude in the captain’s navigational charts, so that he steers his ship into disaster. Jerrold’s victim of a press-gang is Arthur, played by Thomas Potter Cooke, who had the role of William in Black Eyed Susan. The victim of the wreckers was Archibald, played by David Webster Osbaldeston. Steering the Pallas into the storm-clouded Firth of Forth on the night of 18 December 1810, Captain Maunk (the real captain was G. P. Monke) had no notion that his charts had been tampered with. His course through the wide waters were clearly marked latitude 56.077° north, longitude 2.641° west. Following those coordinates, the Captain steered head-on into the steep-sided volcanic pillar known as Bass Rock. With the Pallas sinking fast, the Captain ordered the lifeboats dropped. One, with a single sailor aboard, was already rowing towards the northern shore. Another lone sailor was seen clambering onto the rock. Having lost one of their lifeboats, the crew cheered the arrival of a rescue team from Dunbar. Another boat brought armed members of a press-gang who were collecting sailors to be forced into labour on another ship. The lone sailor on

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Bass Rock was Archibald. Among the sailors abducted by the press-gang was Arthur. Arthur is twice taken by a press-gang. On the first occasion he was so badly treated on a royal ship, that he deserted it. He felt secure serving for a year on a merchant ship. Returning, he fulfils his plan to marry. A press-­ gang has waited to seize him while coming from church with his bride. Again in bondage on board a King’s ship, his officer discovers that he had previously served in the navy, and that he had deserted the fleet. Recaptured, he is to be flogged for his offence. Once more he escapes and is able to meet briefly with his wife. Recaptured a second time, he must resign himself to the execution of his sentence that is to be twice as severe, for he has twice defied orders. At this juncture, Arthur is saved by Archibald of the Wreck. By incredible coincidence, Archibald, who has been living all this time in the wreck of the Pallas on Bass Rock, has decided to give up his life as a recluse and to recommence his service in the navy. Archibald is able to identify Arthur as the son of a fellow officer. Archibald admits that he had killed Arthur’s father in a fair duel in India. Because of shame in response to that death, he chose to remain as a recluse with the wreck of his ship. Archibald further informs Arthur that he is the heir to the title and estate of the Earl of Rothsay. The reviewer for The Times admits that this denouement, “though not much in keeping with the main incidents of the piece, … produced a very striking effect.”18 The reviewer for the Atheneum complained that, in spite of the double threats of a press-gang and wrecking, “the action exhibits only the skeleton of a good story.” The problem is that the threats require more elaboration than the playwright delivers. “The idea is clear, but not sufficiently developed.” Even though he draws his plot from actual historical events, the facts tumble forth too rapidly “to receive the sanction of minds.” What had been “within the bounds of possibility,” loses credibility with the fairy-tale revelation that Arthur is the long-lost heir to a peer of the realm.19

Richard Raymond. The Wreck of the Leander Frigate Richard Raymond’s The Wreck of the Leander Frigate; or, The Fatal Sandbank (Coburg 14 July 1828; revived at the Royal Pavilion, 18 July 1831) was a popular melodrama and a totally fanciful piece of history. Although Raymond’s Castle of Paluzzi (Covent Garden, 27 May 1818) and his State Prisoner (Royal Amphitheatre, 25 October 1819) had

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previously met with moderate success, he achieved his first sensational response with The Wreck of the Leander Frigate, when his limited skills as a playwright were augmented by the elaborate stage machinery and special effects of Watkins Burroughs. On 13 March 1818, the HMS Leander, a 50 tonne frigate, was driven ashore five nautical miles south of Peterhead, Aberdeenshire. All but two of the crew were lost. The chronometer on board was to no avail, for the ship could not steer against the landward blast of the storm. That the ship was wrecked was the only fact that Raymond got right, but Raymond knew nothing of chronometers or longitudinal time. He moved the latitude from the northern to the southern hemisphere and the longitude from the North Sea to the South Pacific. For melodramatic excitement, Raymond introduced marauding pirates and friendly Indians. Music was by T. Hughes, band leader and composer at the Coburg, who provided the love song, “The young blooming Bride,” which Captain Falkland sings to Valentine, and the greeting song which the Indian maid, Ulah, sings to celebrate the survivors of the Leander. For stunning stage effects, Watkins Burroughs, who became stage manager under proprietor Davidge, provided the machinery, enabling the prow of the ship to loom on stage while striking “The Fatal Sandbank.” The wreck of the Leander, according to Raymond, occurred while the Boatswain tried to manoeuvre an escape from the pursuing pirates. The role of the brave English sailor, Ben Block, was played by the most popular stage sailor of the era, Thomas Potter Cooke. The melodrama closes with the rescue of the stranded passengers and crew by an arriving convoy, Captain Catteret, commander of the Discovery.20

The North Pole; or, The Arctic Expedition Raymond’s The Wreck of the Leander Frigate was a melodramatically falsified version of an actual shipwreck. The melodrama, The North Pole; or, The Arctic Expedition (Coburg, 22 June 1818), was an imaginary anticipation of an expedition that had not yet taken place. Under the revised Longitude Act of 1818, the prizes were redesignated to reward improvements in navigation in general, and furthering the search for the Northwest Passage in particular. Under orders of the Admiralty, John Ross set out in April 1818 to find the Northwest passage. Ross commanded the HMS Isabella and was accompanied by the HMS Alexander under Lieutenant William Edward Parry. The two ships sailed around Baffin Bay repeating the observations made by William Baffin two hundred years before. In

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August, Ross and Parry entered Lancaster Sound, which later proved to be the eastern entrance to the Northwest Passage. But Ross turned back after advancing a dozen miles westward. The straits were blocked, he contended, by a range of mountains, which he named in honour of John Wilson Croker, then first secretary of the Admiralty. He then returned to England despite the protests of Parry and several of his officers, who thought he should have more thoroughly examined the “Croker Mountains.” On his subsequent voyage, Parry proved that there were no “Croker Mountains.” Indeed, no mountains at all block the passage between Devon Island and Baffin Island. Having dispelled Ross’s mirage at longitude 84° west and latitude 74.2° north, Parry found and navigated the Northwest Passage. As Secretary to the Admiralty, however, Croker continued to be known for his geographical site, the Croker Mountains. The Croker of the false mountains was also chided as the Croker of the false judgements in his rancorous literary criticism in the Quarterly Review, such as his notorious denunciation of John Keats’s Endymion. John Ross, in publishing his Voyage of Discovery (1819), attempted to ignore his claim for the Croker Mountains and to emphasize the positive advances of his Arctic expedition.21 John Ross set out on his expedition in April 1818. On 17 June 1818, according to his Voyage of Discovery published the following year, Ross was sailing the dangerous waters of threatening icebergs. At this date, when the expedition was less than two months underway, Davidge staged his stunning melodrama of the yet unseen, unknown events of the voyage, The North Pole; or, The Arctic Expedition (Coburg, 22 June 1818). On this fictive voyage, the captain is neither Ross nor Parry, and their ships are no longer the Isabella and the Alexander. The playbill prophesied a shipwreck which fortunately did not occur. The Subject of the Melo-Drama is partly founded on the present Expedition to the Arctic Regions, and intended to give as correct an idea as possible of the dreadful dangers and hardships our gallant Countrymen are about to expose themselves to, for the benefit of present and future ages. By a succession, therefore, of truly interesting and critical situations,—The Crew of one of the vessels, after suffering the horrors of Shipwreck, will be exposed to that of Famine; and, as interest follows interest, so shall anxiety attend each opening Scene, till the termination shall prove, that native Courage and Perseverance, with Providence on their side, will triumph over difficulties, and ensure that success which has ever attended British Intrepidity.22

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Not shielded from the blasts of bitter cold, the intricate parts of the chronometer on the Adventure froze. A group of desperate sailors huddled around the frozen apparatus would not serve the purpose of tragic action, so Davidge depicted instead the aftermath of the shipwrecked crew struggling to save themselves by clambering on the ice. Such a scene was intended for the climax of the action. The opening required officers and crew to gather in solemn commitment to the dangerous enterprise of their quest for the Northwest Passage. The performance was divided into three parts: the Introduction, the Vision, and the Melodrama. In the Introduction to the theatrical expedition, Captain Steadfast was played by Davidge himself. Following this dedication of officers and crew to fulfill their challenging mission, the scene changes to the Captain’s cabin on board The Adventurer. This is transformed into Neptune’s Palace, in which appears a spectacular allegorical vision anticipating the constant intervention of the powers of nature, among them the four elements; the four seasons; the winds of north, south, east, and west; and a team of playful water sprites, all overseen by Britannia, Neptune, Amphitrite, and Aeolus. As the scene again reverts to the Captain’s cabin, three paintings on the walls are composed as tableaux vivants with animated figures: the Eddystone off Plymouth; the Port of Elsineur and Cromberg Castle; the Coast of Labrador. As this third and last tableau is animated, the figures take up their roles in the Melodrama, which reveals an extensive Ice Island, with the wreck of the Adventurer. Accompanying Captain Manly on this expedition are his wife Bertha, their young son Edward, and his brother, Lieutenant Henry Manly. Just as Parry’s ship followed Ross’s in the actual expedition, Manly’s ship is followed by the security ship also navigated by a Captain and Lieutenant. To heighten the peril of the survivors of the shipwrecked Adventure, they are terrorized by an aggressive polar bear. Among the survivors are a group of mutineers, who think their best hope is to commandeer the ship’s lifeboat and sail to some possible safe harbour. The subsequent scenes of Part III, the Melodrama, include a backdrop of the survivors’ makeshift hut and the crystal cave where they seek more adequate protection from the elements but encounter the bear. The audience is next treated to a picturesque view of the island, followed by a scene depicting the mutineers in the ship’s lifeboat being tossed by the storm on the Arctic Sea. The mutineers’ boat is no sooner destroyed than the scene is calmed and illuminated by moonlight. The playbill describes the grand finale:

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Splendid last Scene representing a Ship of Immense Size, fully rigged and Manned, with a crew of sixty persons, effecting her passage through Floating Islands of Ice, which on separating, will shew an expanse of Ocean Covering the whole Stage, far surpassing any Scene of Magnitude ever yet produced.23

As elaborate prophetic speculation, the melodramatic celebration at the Coburg shared few of the relevant facts of the Arctic Expedition as reported in Ross’s Voyage of Discovery. The reliance on chronometers enabled Ross to determine accurately the longitude of Baffin Bay and Lancaster Sound, which aided Parry, in turn, to determine longitude and latitude for the entire channel of the long sought Northwest Passage. At the Coburg, audiences of The North Pole; or, The Arctic Expedition (22 June 1818) were treated to the events of an expedition before it happened. At the Royal Pavilion, audiences of Captain Ross; or, The Hero of the Arctic Regions (28 October 1833) were given an opportunity to commemorate the expeditions after they occurred. Neither play was more than casually factual, but the anticipatory version was more conscientious in representing the urgency in maintaining an accurate measure of longitudinal time. Plotting the coordinates of time and location was a widespread enterprise in the colonial expansion following the Napoleonic Wars. Because of the rivalry, shipping lines kept secret the precise charting of longitude and latitude for their sailing routes, and there were also carefully guarded secrets in the construction of the marine chronometers. Long voyages and extreme temperatures tested the performance of chronometers, so the manufacturers of precision instruments would not reveal the specifics of their improvements. The frozen instrument of the melodrama was a fiction. As Ross and Parry readily testified, the chronometers built by the firm of William Parkinson and William James Frodsham functioned perfectly. Because they utilized parts built by other manufacturers, there were rival claimants to the success of the chronometers, and the secrecy of construction made it impossible to resolve the controversies over who was entitled to claim credit for a particular instrument. Longitudinal time, and the instruments to measure it, were engulfed in secrecy. As a result, the very term “longitude” became a metaphor for the hidden and inaccessible. In Fashionable Levities (Covent Garden, 2 April 1785), Leonard MacNally wanted only to indicate spatial expanse: “my conscience cannot boast such extensive latitude and longitude as yours, you have a convenient conscience, it stretches or contracts like India

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rubber:” (IV.i). James C. Cross has a sailor in The Apparition (Haymarket, 3 September 1794) extend the metaphor into an account of an intended voyage of seduction “to find out the longitude” and commandeer “the vessel I’m cruising after.” John Tobin in The Honey Moon (Drury Lane, 31 January 1805) also referred to longitude as a metaphor for the exploratory voyage of courtship until the lover has “hit upon the longitude, And plumb’d the yet unfathom’d ocean” (II.iii). Thomas Dibdin in The Cabinet (Covent Garden, 9 February 1802) appealed to dimensions beyond those attained in “Talk of longitude and latitude!” In The World (Drury Lane, 31 March 1808), James Kenney possibly implicated time as well as space, when the character Echo, having consumed too much alcohol, declared himself no longer “in a condition to discover the longitude” (IV.iii). For William Thomas Moncrieff in The Cataract of the Ganges (Drury Lane, 27 October 1823), “sailing without knowing the longitude” (II.iii) meant reckless risk-taking. In The Nymph of the Grotto (Covent Garden, 15 January 1829), William Dimond proposed a confidence in navigation when “the longitude itself no longer were a desperate discovery” (III.i). In his aquatic burletta, Perseus and Andromeda (Olympic, 6 December 1833), James Robinson Planché has a character scolded for giving “yourself strange latitude of speech, And for your longitude—!” Many more examples can be cited, but this sampling is ample evidence that longitude, as a spatial marker and way-finder, retained its stage presence even as it was absorbed into the popular discourse.

Notes 1. Dava Sobel. Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time. London: Fourth Estate Ltd., 1998, 6. 2. Sobel, Longitude, 8–10. 3. The Euler-Mayer correspondence, 1751–1755: a new perspective on eighteenth-­ century advances in the lunar theory, ed. Eric G.  Forbes. London: Macmillan, 1971. 4. David S. Landes. Revolution in Time: Clocks and the Making of the Modern World. Revised ed. Harvard: Belknap Press, 2000. 5. Dereke Howse. “Britain’s Board of Longitude: The Finances, 1714–1828.” Mariner’s Mirror (1998): 415–17. 6. According to an online calculator, the pound experienced an average inflation rate of 2.32% per year during this period.

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7. Mary Croarken. “Tabulating the Heavens: Computing the Nautical Almanac in 18th-Century England.” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 25.3 (July-Sept. 2003): 48–61. 8. Rupert T. Gould. The Marine Chronometer. Its History and Development. London: Printed by M. Cunningham & Co., 1923, 66. 9. Frederick James Britten. Former Clock & Watchmakers and Their Work. London: Spon & Chamberlain, 1894, 228. 10. “Ship’s Journals: Arniston.” India Office Records: Marine Department Records (1812). British Library. 11. Basil Hall. “On the Proper Method of laying down a Ship’s Track on Sea Charts.” The Edinburgh Philosophical Journal. Archibald Constable for Royal Society of Edinburgh 2 (4 April 1820): 276–82. 12. Hall. “Chapter XIV. Doubling the cape.” Fragments of Voyages and Travels, 3rd series. London: Bell and Daldy, 1833. 13. Hall. “On the Proper Method,” 276–82. 14. Terence Grocott. Shipwrecks of the Revolutionary & Napoleonic Eras. London: Caxton Editions, 1997. 15. “Nautical Notices: Loss of the Arniston, Cape Lagullas.” The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register. Black, Parbury, & Wm. H.  Allen. Ser. 1, Vol. 2 (7 July 1816): 32–4. 16. Hall. “On the Proper Method,” 276–82. 17. Pieter van der Merwe. “The Spectacular Career of Clarkson Stanfield, 1793–1867: Seaman, Scene-Painter, Royal Academician.” Catalogue of a 1979 exhibition at the Tyne and Wear County Council Museums. 18. Anon. Review of Jerrold, M.D. The Press-Gang; or, Archibald of the Wreck (Surrey, M. 5 July 1830). The Times (12 July 1830): 4. 19. Anon. Review of Jerrold, M.D. The Press-Gang; or, Archibald of the Wreck. The Athenaeum. (10 July 1830): 429. 20. British Library, Playbills 174–75. The Wreck of the Leander Frigate (Coburg, 21 July 1828). 21. John Ross. A Voyage of Discovery, made under the orders of the Admiralty, in His Majesty’s ships Isabella and Alexander, for the purpose of exploring Baffin’s Bay, and inquiring into the probability of a north-west Passage. London: John Murray, 1819. 22. British Library, Playbills 174–75, The North Pole; or, The Arctic Expedition (Coburg, 22 June 1818). 23. British Library, Playbills 174–75. The North Pole; or, The Arctic Expedition (Royal Coburg, 22 June 1818.).

CHAPTER 8

Alternate Time

Representing “alternate time,” the plays examined in this chapter address the simultaneous staging of events supposedly occurring at different times. Amidst a scene of enacted events, there comes a performance of another sequence. This secondary scene may be a dreamer acting out a dream, a ghost repeating events from long ago, a victim entranced by drugs or a spell, a prophet revealing a deed destined to occur. This secondary scene, even though it may represent another time, usually coexists with, rather than usurps, the primary time. An exception is the time-travelling indulged by Charles Dance in A Dream of the Future (Olympic, 6 November 1837). The reviewer in The Literary Gazette praised the playwright for having keenly observed the past and having effectively used the present. The characters are the youth of Act I, the aged of Act II, and restored youth in Act III.1 This use of time might overlap with the exposition of synoptic time (see Chap. 4). Synoptic time in a play typically focuses on the changes in a single character over the course of a few years or a lifetime. In discussing “time replayed” (Chap. 6), it was useful to set aside the plight of the ghost in Gothic melodrama. Replaying time requires setting the clock back, so that the playwright can reveal what a different set of characters in a difference place were doing at the same time. In the present chapter, it is appropriate to retrieve that ghost caught in a time-loop and doomed to re-enact the moment of death until released by some act of retribution. The haunted moment is an instance alternate time, a © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 F. Burwick, Time in Romantic Theatre, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-96079-7_8

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supernatural revelation coincident with the course of dramatic action, not a shift to another time or place. Another alternate time lies in the influence the events in one frame of time can exercise on the next. Written in collaboration with Mark Lemon, John Brougham’s burletta, The Demon Gift; or, Visions of the Future (English Opera House, 29 June 1840), examines the curse of having a glimpse into the future. A more thorough revelation of successive times, designed to strike the lurking Scrooge in every spectator, contributed to the emotionally powerful dramatization of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol; or, A Dream of the Past, Present and Future (Strand, 12 February 1844). Experimenting with non-linear, non-sequential time, the playwright of Bannockburn; or, The Ghost Seer (Coburg, 5 February 1827) reveals how a ghost, in re-enacting scenes from the past, might give historical credibility to the supernaturalism of Gothic melodrama. The titular ghost-seer visits Stirling castle and the battlefield of Bannockburn, where he witnesses the dead of both sides still engaged in the conflict in which they perished over 500 years before. The blood had long since seeped deep into the ground, but ghosts of the fallen still rise where Robert the Bruce defeated Edward II at Bannockburn (1314). Charles Farley, in staging The Battle of Bothwell Bridge (Covent Garden, 22 June 1820), borrowed from Sir Walter Scott not only the account of the battle, but also the character of Old Mortality, who travelled from churchyard to churchyard to re-chisel into their tombstones the names of the Covenanters who fell in that battle, so that their memory might be preserved a little longer. In Farley’s play, inscribing the names conjured the spirits. Similarly, the topos of the “rehearsal,” as in William Leman Rede’s Stars; or, A Dramatic Fête (Queen’s, 30 May 1835), allowed for the staging of metadramatic “play” time. Over the course of the eighteenth century, harlequinades developed into a two-part genre. Harlequinades were also well suited to the purposes of satire of serious social or political issues. Donning or doffing the masks of Mother Goose or Fairy Tale created a suitable ambiguity in which the subject matter could shift between fact and fable, effectively baffling the effort of the Examiner of Plays to impose censorship. When the opening story reaches a crisis or the lovers are in imminent danger, a good fairy, tutelary spirit, or other benevolent agent allows the lovers to change into players as Harlequin and Columbine. Or a malevolent agent prevents their escape by changing the pursuers into Pantaloon and Pierrot. Or the Clown decides that it is time for magical

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merriment. Potentially, this is a moment of Aristophanic parabasis—when a character steps out of a role and critiques the part that he has been required to play. Potentially, the shift may provide a metadramatic and self-reflexive situation, akin to the play-within-a-play or the play-about-a-play. William Shakespeare, acknowledged as innovator in the theatrical manipulation of time in most chapters of this volume, utilized the play-­ within-­ a-play in apt but very different applications with the Death of Gonzago in Hamlet and Pyramus and Thisbe in Midsummer Night’s Dream. The Taming of the Shrew, enacted for the entertainment of the Tinker Sly when he is aroused from his drunken stupor, apparently implicates both spectators and players in the illusionism of performance. The examples of the cleverly deceptive illusionism of the play-within-a-play in the long tradition of metatheatricality range from Aristophanes in The Acharnians (425 BC) to Luigi Pirandello in So it is, (if you think so) (Così è (se vi pare), 1917), or Tom Stoppard in Arcadia (1993). Pierre Corneille, the playwright responsible for initiating two centuries of debate over the “unity of time,” also shifted adroitly into alternate time in his The Theatrical Illusion (L’Illusion comique, 1636).2 Act I opens with the remorse of Pridamant, who regrets his severe treatment of his son Clindor, who left home and has not been heard from for the past ten years. Pridamant consults Alcandre, a sorcerer, who assures him that his son has endured many adventures and still lives. Alcandre offers to use his conjuring powers to give Pridamant a vision of his son’s adventures. Act II depicts Pridamant watching in awe as magically through the wall a scene appears in which Clindor, enamoured with the fair Isabelle, must act as intermediary for the gallant Matamore. Although Isabelle has pledged her love to Clindor, she is still wooed by Adraste as well as Matamore. Isabelle’s maid, who also loves Clindor, angered at being rejected, informs Adraste of Clindor’s success with Isabelle. In Act III, Adraste, who has the approval of Isabelle’s father, intends to force Isabelle into marriage. In the meantime, Matamore, having overheard intimate whisperings between Clindor and Isabelle, threatens Clindor with death for his disloyalty and deception. Clindor is able to resist Matamore, but is then confronted by Adraste. They draw swords. Adraste is killed; Clindor is sentenced to be executed. Matamore is presumed complicit in Adraste’s death. In Act IV, the vision continues with Lyse seducing a gaoler in order to rescue Clindor from prison. After hiding for four days in Isabelle’s house, Matamore escapes into the country. Lyse helps Isabelle gather

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valuables from her father’s house, and together with Clindor and his gaoler they flee the country. Act V reveals Isabelle accusing Clindor of infidelity. He admits his trespass but vows that the sin will never be repeated. The henchmen of the wronged husband of the other woman have tracked down Clindor as the guilty adulterer. He is slain on the spot. Isabelle dies of grief. The scene ends with the funeral march as the two coffins are carried to the tomb. As the vision closes, Pridamant collapses in a fit of grief. Alcandre assures him that Clindor and his wife Isabelle are well and have found success in acting. The visions were merely scenes from a make-shift drama performed for the occasion. Pridamant applauds his son, his son’s bride, and their chosen career. He welcomes this moment of reconciliation. Alcandre is praised for his conjuring power in bringing such scenes to life. In Corneille’s French title, he affirms that this play-within-a-play is a comic illusion, the tragedy of Clindor and Isabelle is a comic parody of bad tragedy. Among other discourtesies against proper form, the unity of time was stretched into absurdity. Not the least function of Corneille’s play-within-­ a-play was to celebrate dramatic illusion.3 Alcandre, as master illusionist, might stand in for the playwright himself, much as Vincentio, the “duke of dark corners” in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, or Prospero in The Tempest. Another well-known example of the play-about-a-play (as opposed to the play-within-a-play, which also relies on an exposition of alternate time)4 was The Rehearsal (Theatre Royal, 7 December 1671) by George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham.5 The play presents the efforts of the playwright—Bayes, a parody of John Dryden—to stage a play largely composed of scenes from The Conquest of Granada (1670), an actual play by Dryden. Just as the mock tragedy in Corneille’s The Theatrical Illusion, Buckingham appropriates it merely for mockery. The passages have been assembled in a way that renders the rhymed couplet of the dialogue more noticeably artificial and ridiculous. Bayes, as playwright and director, repeatedly interrupts the rehearsal to instruct his players, and the critics who have gathered to witness the preparations. His instructions are so placed between the scenes to highlight the incongruities in Bayes’s officious advocacy of the French model for heroic drama. The rehearsal of a play, as the subject for this play in the Restoration period, used the medium as satire and parody of the genre more than as an attack on the playwright. By means of Bayes’s absurd praise of the ennobled dialogue and the examples, Buckingham succeeded in chasing heroic drama off the Restoration

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stage. In the Romantic period, satire and parody still dominated in the pretended rehearsal, but the more common target was the player and character. Prominent actors were likely to be the subject for an impersonator or impressionist. An actor onstage performing as a dramatic character, for example Sarah Siddons as Lady Macbeth, mediates a dual relationship with the spectator, who observes both the character and the performer, perhaps varying the intensity of his attention to one or the other. At Siddon’s farewell performance (Covent Garden, 29 June 1812), the curtain dropped following her sleepwalking scene at the close of Act IV.6 A similar dominance of performer over character took place when Edmund Kean, noted for impersonations of Lord Byron, actually brought that skill to the stage in his role as Selim in William Dimond’s stage version of The Bride of Abydos (Drury Lane, 5 February 1818). The audience was treated to Kean playing Byron playing Selim, making the most of Selim’s affection for his sister Zuleika. Although Byron confessed that he had been induced “to alter their consanguinity and confine them to courtship,” the stage version kept the mystery of Selim’s parentage a secret until midway through Act II, and Kean enacted the passion of Selim for Zuleika with full anticipation that his audience would see in his furtive caresses the guilty passion of the poet for his sister. Because the alternate times were superimposed, the spectator might attend to Selim’s love for Zuleika, or Kean’s impersonation of Byron, or Byron’s relationship with Augusta Leigh.7 The staging of alternate time adds rival dimensions to the spectator’s perception of events being performed. The events that represent another time are like a subplot being played out simultaneously with the major plot. Several situations of plot and character, popular in the period, enabled playwrights to experiment with these temporal intrusions: hauntings from the past, visions of the future, rehearsals of a play, impressions or impersonations of persons of another era, dreamers enacting their dreams, subjects of mind-control (mesmerism, drugs, obi voodoo). Although similar to the “rehearsal” as a means to present “a play about a play” or “a play within a play,” the impersonation requires the audience to see both the impersonator and the impersonated. An impressionist is a performer whose act has a more limited range. Kean could impersonate Byron in voice and gesture through an entire performance. An impressionist will typically mimic a few phrases, hand movements, and facial expressions, which are readily associated with familiar personages. An impressionist may well develop a series of “impressions,” each offering a parody or

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critique of current events. William Thomas Moncrieff’s The Actor in Distress; or, How to Raise your Salary (Coburg, 1 May 1820) was written especially as a showcase for John Reeve to give his impressions of several contemporary actors.

Douglas William Jerrold, Popular Felons For his burletta, Popular Felons (Coburg, 5 June 1826), Douglas William Jerrold devised a mock trial in which close to two dozen culprits are brought before the bar, charged with having overextended their intrusion on the public. “Its purpose being to sweep away, to annul, to annihilate the numerous Individuals who have for a length of time, been persecuting the town, thereby opening way for fresh Candidates for Notoriety.” The performance conjures precisely what it pretends to abjure. Charles Mayne Young was a tragedian who rose above an ageing John Philip Kemble, but was subsequently ranked below Kean and Macready in the great Shakespearean roles. On this occasion, bringing with him vestiges of his Hamlet, he appeared before court as Carl Maria von Weber, composer of Der Freischütz (Schauspielhaus Berlin, 18 June 1821), which had been translated for production at four London theatres in 1824. Weber is charged with “conspiring against the simplicity of English Song and causing all the British Composers to put Kettledrums, Trombones, Bassoons, and Bugles, on double duty.” In addition to his tempestuous transformation of English song, he is also charged with serious damage caused by his Hunting Chorus, “by which his Majesty’s Subjects whilst going about their several duties, have been grievously annoyed, wounded in the head, and otherwise maltreated.” The audience quickly adjusted to the series of alternate times, as the court-room setting at the Coburg played host to parodies of performances that had in recent years taken place at various London theatres. As renegades from Richard Brinsley Peake’s Presumption; or the Fate of Frankenstein (English Opera House, 28 July 1823), the scientist and the creature are charged “with a malicious attempt at perverting the Morals of the Land, and doubling the price of Eau-de-Cologne, and Sal Volatile.” The greatest success of the season was John Poole’s Paul Pry (Haymarket, 13 September 1825), with John Liston in the title role. In the trial on the Coburg stage, John Baldwin Buckstone impersonated Liston in his role as Pry, being charged “for having feloniously introduced among the received and stapled greetings of Society,” the catchphrase “I hope I don’t intrude.”

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O. Smith reprised his own role as Faust in the production based on the translation by Lord Francis Leveson Gower (Coburg, 7 June 1824). Among Jerrold’s Popular Felons were those guilty of identity theft. A master of impersonations, Charles Mathews was indicted “for conspiring against the Interest of the Drama and its Adherents, presenting in himself a whole Company.” Impersonating Mathews was Frederick Henry Yates, who had studied under Mathews. Then Yates himself was charged “for an attempt at the same enormity,” a charge he sought to escape by shifting the blame to several other actors, whose identity he assumed in rapid succession. The court then turned to two defectors from the Coburg, John Reeve and James P. Wilkison, “for having some time since monopolized to themselves full Audiences at the Adelphi Theatre.” The next four plays to be discussed reveal remarkable ingenuity in sustaining the illusory presence of alternate time as a merging of physical and psychic phenomenon. In Joanna Baillie’s tragedy, The Dream (1812), a murder victim appears in the dreams of two monks, and through further exercise of inexplicable powers, manipulates events that lead to the execution of the guilty. In the anonymous melodrama, The Murderer’s Dream; or, The Abbey of Glenthorn (Olympic, 20 October 1818), the murderer, mistaken for the phantom of his victim, re-enacts the crime in his sleepwalking dream. The Gothic device of a “phantom” sleepwalker is turned to comedy in William Thomas Moncrieff’s The Somnambulist; or, The Phantom of the Village (Covent Garden, 19 February 1828), in which a young woman quests nightly for her betrothed. Rather than dreams and sleepwalking, Isaac Pocock, in Tuckitomba; or, The Obi Sorceress (Covent Garden, 7 April 1828), introduces drugs and Obi spells to render the victim unable to resist abduction and rape. An alternate mental time on stage is conjured in her induced hallucination.

Joanna Baillie, The Dream Published in the third volume of her Plays of the Passion (1812), Joanna Baillie’s The Dream is a Gothic tragedy on the passion of fear.8 That passion, instigated by the power of dreams to reflect the past and predict the future, gains strength as the alternate time intrudes more and more in the minds of the implicated characters. Set in mid-fourteenth century in the cloistered confines of the monastery of St. Maurice, the monks are in great anxiety over the plague that has broken out in the neighbouring village. Two of the monks, Jerome and Paul, have shared the same prophetic

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dream, in which a mysterious phantom leads the dreamers to a grave in the churchyard. He then instructs them in the steps they must take to banish the sickness. They must stop the next troop of Imperial soldiers on their march through the pass, then have them draw lots, first the soldiers and then the officers. Whoever, by this chance lottery, should draw the marked lot must stay for a single night “to undergo certain penances for the expiation of long concealed guilt” (I.iii). Jerome and Paul are the only monks to have been visited in dream by an unknown spectre. A third monk, Benedict, is sceptical and chides them for having infected each other with their fantasies. Convinced that the shared dream cannot be a chance illusion, they repeat their story to the Prior, who points out the unlikelihood that Imperial soldiers will ever choose the difficult route over St. Gotthard’s Pass to march by the monastery of St. Maurice. Many years had gone by since last a military contingent had passed their way. The Prior had just asserted this fact, when news came that soldiers were approaching the monastery. The dream spectre has instructed that a soldier or officer must be chosen by lots to visit the churchyard. Persuaded by the superstitious fears rising among the plague-­ stricken villagers, the Prior has the lots prepared to distribute among the soldiers. Osterloo, their commanding officer, agrees to participate in this unusual drawing of lots, and to everyone’s surprise draws the lot that requires him to visit the specified spot in the churchyard and spend the night at the monastery. The soldiers are sent ahead so that they might reach the Imperial palace at the expected time. The dream spectre had led Jerome and Paul to the site of a grave. “Let the suffering be such as the nature of the crime and the connexion of the expiator therewith shall dictate,” so the spectre informed the monks. “This spot of earth shall reveal—” (I.iii). The Prior had already sent out a worker to dig the designated site and expose the coffin. When Jerome and Paul described the size, dress, and manner of the dream figure, Osterloo became agitated, as if he recognized the identity of the dead. When the coffin is broken open and the skeleton exposed, it is seen that it had once been a man of exceptionally large stature. The right hand is missing. Hallucinating, Osterloo sees the grave open and the buried corpse rise up before him (II.i). The Prior offers to receive Osterloo’s troubled confession in his private chamber. The circumstances, he admits, were “all in my mind as the indistinct horrors of a frenzied imagination. I did it in a narrow pass on St. Gothard, in the stormy twilight of a winter day.” He admits his jealousy of

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Montera, a noble Hungarian who had lost an arm in battle with the Turks. At the revelation of the name, Montera, the Prior recognizes that the victim was his long-lost brother (II.ii). Upon confessing his guilt, Osterloo reveals that he had long been haunted by the apparition of his huge victim, clothed just as Jerome and Paul described. That this smothered horror should burst upon me at last! And there be really such things as the darkened fancy imageth to itself, when the busy day is stilled. An unseen world surrounds us: spirits and powers, and the invisible dead hover near us; while we in unconscious security—oh! I have slept upon a fearful brink. (II.iii)

Osterloo’s servant, who had carried the corpse from the pass to the monastery, died after leaving Montera in the unmarked grave. Instead of penance, the Prior, who “can think of nothing but revenge” (II.ii), sentences Osterloo to death for murder. Leonora admits to Agnes her love for Osterloo, but she was already married, a young bride to a much older husband. After he died, she was responsible for the maintenance of the castle and the care of his children by a former marriage. She regrets her flirtation with Montera, which had aroused Osterloo’s jealousy. Benedict tells her of the Prior’s verdict. She and Agnes disguise themselves as monks and set out for the monastery to free Osterloo (II.iii). Leonora and Agnes gain access to monastery through a secret entrance. Baldwain gives them a key to escape the prison cell (II. iv). Jerome attempts to comfort Osterloo in the cell. As he awaits execution, Osterloo copes with “inward agonies of imagination,” succumbing to the final despair of an ignoble death (III.i). Attempting to leave the cell, Leonora and Agnes discover that Baldwain has deliberately deceived them with the wrong key. Osterloo, with superhuman strength, splinters the massive door, but Wolvereid and the Prior’s guards wait beyond. He disarms them and might escape, but Leonora is held. He fights valiantly to free her until overcome by more guards (III.ii). The Imperial Ambassador and his retinue arrive. Alarmed by Leonora’s account of the eminent execution, he agrees to alert the King Ludwig. The Hall is prepared for the execution. At the last possible moment—the executioner’s axe is raised— the Imperial messenger arrives with the decree to halt the execution. Kneeling with his head on the block, Osterloo is already dead.

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Joanna Baillie designated no actor to play the role of the slain Montero. The dream visitations take place alongside of the waking activities of monastery. So, too, the dream search for the unmarked grave in the churchyard is introduced in dialogue prior to the actual scene at the graveside. Frightening events are conjured in dialogue rather than visually on stage: the corpse rising up from the grave to confront Osterloo; the murder, ten years earlier in the mountain pass. Seeming coincidences, at odds with probability, are left as inexplicable supernatural occurrences. An army marches on the road from St. Gotthard Pass, where no army had marched for years. There is a lottery drawing in which the fatal lot is drawn by chance by the very person intended. Baillie allows seeming coincidence to become the tool manipulated by the dead Montera, who commands from the alternate time of his grave the causality in the events currently unfolding in the monastery. After biding his time for ten years in the grave, he is mysteriously alerted to the approach of his murderer. The Prior, too, seems to have been called to service at the monastery to be on hand to enact the revenge. The normal causality of events has been usurped by a supernatural lust for revenge that is promulgated in the minds of the characters. As mental affects, the guilt and fear aroused by the relentless compulsion for revenge cannot be encompassed in a single image. Not even the phantom image of the one-handed Hungarian giant would suffice. Percy Bysshe Shelley had his Demogorgon declare, “the deep truth is imageless.” Baillie has Osterloo exclaim, “what thoughts can give an image of that which overpowers all thought!” (III.i).

The Murderer’s Dream; or, The Abbey of Glenthorn The Olympic Theatre, opened on 1 December 1806, was an enterprise of Philip Astley, who ran it as a smaller version of his Pavilion, which was a showcase for equestrian drama. Lacking an arena for displays of horsemanship, Astley’s Olympic accommodated trained animal shows, jugglers, and acrobats. When Robert William Elliston purchased it in 1813, he renamed it the Little Drury Lane, not just because of its proximity to the large Drury Lane Theatre, but also to signal Elliston’s intent to upgrade the dramatic quality. As an unlicensed theatre, the Little Drury Lane could not compete with the big one. Nor was he allowed to keep that pretentious new name. But he was able to refurbish the interior and to convince the Examiner of Plays that the melodramatic burletta he was offering conformed to the restrictions of the Licensing Act. Elliston gathered excellent

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players, and his playwrights included William Thomas Moncrieff, William Oxberry, James Robinson Planché, and John Poole. In the summer of 1818, Elliston had the theatre substantially rebuilt, and he reopened it with Moncrieff’s comedy Rochester—or, King Charles the Second’s Merry Days (16 November 1818).9 Although the date, “Olympic 20 October 1818,” is given on the title page of the manuscript of The Murderer’s Dream; or, The Abbey of Glenthorn, the first performance must have been later. Submitted by G. W. Reeve, musical director at the Olympic, to the Examiner of Plays, the manuscript was accompanied by the request for permission to perform on 18 October 1818.10 On that date, however, the Olympic was closed for repairs. Elliston reopened the following month with the performance of Rochester, which was the fifth of Moncrieff’s plays for Elliston’s Olympic. Partially due to reconstruction of the theatre, a full year had passed since the last premier of a Moncrieff play. It may well be that Elliston had originally slated The Murderer’s Dream for production, but then decided that he could draw larger crowds with Rochester, with its revelations of scandalous behaviour that might suggest parallels to current rumours about the Prince Regent. Following Rochester, no further play by Moncrieff was offered to the Olympic. If The Murderer’s Dream were by Moncrieff, who was no longer writing for the Olympic, the play might have been put aside unperformed, or performed anonymously later in the season. Not unique among Gothic melodrama, The Murderer’s Dream closely follows setting and plot of a French melodrama by Scribe:11 a wandering somnambulist is mistaken for a ghost returning to the scene of assassination. By adding witnesses to the deed, and details to the enactment, the effect achieves a doubling, not unlike the performance of The Murder of Gonzago, the play that Hamlet introduced into the court of Claudius (Hamlet III.ii). This melodrama opens amidst the ruins of the partially fallen Glenthorn Castle in 1718. Four years earlier, George, Count of Glenthorn, was murdered at the tomb of the Countess in the Abbey of Glenthorn. Suspicion has fallen on his nephew, Alfred, who left the manor at the time of the murder. Two feudal chiefs, Randolph and Desmond, oversee the labour and governance of the count’s estate. Randolph supports Alfred’s innocence, and his daughter, Flora, is steadfast in her love for Alfred. Desmond, who has been relentless in charging Alfred with the murder, has also spread the rumour that Alfred died in battle. While Count Edward has grown increasingly feeble and distraught during the years since his brother’s death, Desmond has gained a corresponding influence

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over the Count’s thoughts and decisions. He has persuaded the Count to order Desmond’s marriage to Flora, an order that Randolph and his daughter must accept. In the opening scene, Edwin and vassals are listening to Evan, a Scottish fisherman, as he relates his strange encounter with the wraith of the deceased Count George of Glenthorn. Evan was the one who first saw the body of the old Count and saw, too, the Count’s nephew, Alfred, running from the site. Edwin, one of the superior vassals, acknowledges that the rumour has prevailed for the four years since the murder, and that it is widely believed that “his spirit walks to demand vengeance.” That spirit is subsequently revealed to be the present Count Edward, whose guilt-­ ridden mind has compelled him to wander in his sleep to his brother’s tomb in the Abbey. Although Desmond assures the Count that his vassals mistake him for the wraith of his dead brother, and therefore “look upon you with terror, as a thing from the world of shadows,” he tries to keep the Count confined by night so that he does not expose his guilt. In Act I, the circumstances of the murder are set forth, and the route of the wraith through the ruined Abbey is described. It is also revealed that Desmond intends to make Flora his bride. Act II presents the return of Alfred, his reunion with Flora, followed by his capture and trial, which involves the false testimony of Desmond and Count Edward. In Act III, Flora is able to rescue Alfred from the prison cell in which he awaits execution. Their plan is to have Evan sail them to freedom on the Scottish coast. Having detected Alfred’s escape, the guards pursue Alfred and Flora into the Abbey. Count Edward, again in the grips of his recurrent nightmare, re-enacts the murder of his brother. In his efforts to awaken the Count, Desmond reveals his complicity in the crime. The present urgency, to recapture Alfred and return him for execution, is totally absolved in the revelations of the guilt-tormented somnambulist. The entire court and vassals are witness to the Count’s pantomimic performance of his deeds four years earlier. He imagines his brother kneeling in prayer at the tomb of the Countess. Raising an imaginary dagger, he hesitates and turns to Desmond—the Desmond of 1718 who happens to stand in the very same spot in which he stood in this murderous moment of 1714. Desmond fails in his attempt to feign innocence. Count Edward strikes the fatal blow, then steps to a broken pillar as if to hide his phantom dagger—instead he retrieves the actual murder weapon encrusted with the dried blood of his victim. The murder weapon was not Alfred’s sword that Desmond had plunged into the wound in order to incriminate the Count’s

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designated successor. Desmond was not simply complicit in the crime—he was the sole instigator. He manages to convince Edward that he is the rightful successor of his brother, who has wrongfully named Alfred as his heir. Even while pretending sympathy for Alfred, Desmond assembled circumstantial evidence against Alfred. The Murderer’s Dream stages a dramatic finale in which the fictions of real time are exposed by the truths of alternate time.

William Thomas Moncrieff, The Somnambulist; or, The Phantom of the Village Other than the fact that, ten years after The Murderer’s Dream, Moncrieff has a success with The Somnambulist; or, The Phantom of the Village (Covent Garden, 19 February 1828), there is little to connect the two plays. Both plays achieve a stunning denouement: in the former, Count Edward exposed his guilt through his sleepwalking; in the latter, Ernestine demonstrates her innocence in her perilous walk across the rooftops and over the turning mill-wheel. The setting is a romantic village in the Isle of Camargue between the two arms of the Rhône near Arles. In this latter play, two events have captured the thoughts of the inhabitants. Colin announces one event: “Tomorrow our neighbour, Master Edmund Beauchamp, is to be married to the pretty orphan, Ernestine Dormeuil, worthy Dame Michaud’s adopted daughter; the contract is to be signed tonight, the Baillie will be here directly” (I.i). Although this event dominates the mind of Dame Michaud, she cannot ignore the mysterious phenomenon currently commanding village gossip: “We shall have it quite night, soon, and then the white phantom will be coming ’Tis no phantasy: we all of us have seen it” (I.i). Colin reports that the phantom is tall enough to peer over the top of high buildings: “I saw it with my own eyes walk out of that very door.” He points to a pavilion, and then adds, “It was about six times as high as our church-steeple, and broad in proportion.—I saw it peep over the house-top once.” Ernestine, the bride-to-be, played by Fanny Kelly, confesses that she is fond of the pavilion and often dreams about it. For his part, Colin can only repeat his catchphrase, “But it won’t bear thinking of.”12 Returning from his travels, Rosambert, a wealthy landowner and lord of the village, has just heard the story of the mysterious woman in white who haunts by night. When he is informed that the phantom frequently

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ends her wanderings at the pavilion of the local inn, Rosambert informs Madame Gertrude that he would like to spend the night in the pavilion. Oliver, servant to Madame Gertrude, shows Rosambert to the bed that has been prepared for him in the pavilion (I.ii). Madame Gertrude is also on hand, eager to let Rosambert know that, as a widow, she is eager to find a husband to whom she could offer her bounties and charms. Rosambert is less interested in her than in the peculiar attraction this pavilion might have for the White Phantom. The pavilion is on the site where the Romans slaughtered the Visigoth warriors. In recent times, the pavilion served as a lazarette for the plague-­ stricken. The maid of the mill last saw her parents when they were brought here to die. Not attracted to the widow, nor deterred by her stories of the dead, Rosambert is determined to pass the night in the pavilion with the hope of seeing this White Phantom. He is not disappointed for the Phantom does indeed enter his room. He is surprised, however, to discover that the Phantom is Ernestine, who has arrived at the pavilion by walking in her sleep (Illustration 8.1). Believing that it would be dangerous to awake her, Rosambert climbs out the window and continues on the road to his chateau outside the village. Ernestine lies down on the bed which had been prepared for Rosambert. The next morning the baillie, Edmund and Madame Marchaud arrive to greet their Lord, and find Ernestine in his place. She is lying asleep on the bed that had been made for him. Assuming that she had gone to the pavilion to be with Rosambert, Edmund tears the marriage contract. Angry and hurt, he proposes to marry Madame Gertrude. Act II opens at the mill of Madame Marchaud, where the villagers, not yet informed of the shocking discovery at the pavilion, prepare for the imminent nuptials. Colin arrives to inform them that there shall be no wedding. That news is promptly altered when Madame Gertrude arrives to announce her own wedding with Edmund. Pained by Ernestine’s apparent infidelity, Edmund has pledged his love to Gertrude. Claiming innocence, but also ignorance of how she arrived in the pavilion, Ernestine weeps at the accusations against her. Revealing himself to be the new master of the chateau, Rosambert provides his account of the somnambulant whom he left to slumber in the pavilion. Edmund rejects the story as a gentleman’s fabrication to preserve a woman’s honour. As they prepare to march to the church, Madame Marchaud produces the shawl that Madame Gertrude left on Rosambert’s bed. Rosambert again affirms Ernestine’s innocence; Edmund again rejects the defense.

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Illustration 8.1  Rosambert. What do I see? the white phantom! Good heavens! ’tis Ernestine! (I.ii). Robert Cruikshank, artist; George W.  Bonner, engraver. William Thomas Moncrieff, The Somnambulist; or, The Phantom of the Village

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At this moment they all behold Ernestine climb out of her garret window. With a candle in her hand, she again commences her sleepwalking— from the garret of the old mill, along the roof’s edge, in great peril across the loose plank above the turning mill wheel. This scene of her somnambulist journey was a coup de théâtre that stimulated great anxiety among the spectators, who could not see the wire strung to keep Fanny Kelly from plunging off the narrow walkway high above the stage. Once Edmund had beheld her in the act of sleepwalking, he was compelled to believe her nightly passage as the White Phantom. It was now clear how she resorted to the pavilion in her sleep. At last convinced of Ernestine’s innocence, Edmund begs her forgiveness. Madame Gertrude relinquishes her vows, confesses her flirtation with Rosambert, and agrees to marry Colin. In the alternate time of her dream, Ernestine sought to meet once more with her dying parents. One critic objected that any other bride would have been “in a state of mind which would, in all probability, have prevented her from sleeping.”13 In his remarks on the play, George Daniels registered displeasure with Colin as comic character: “We dislike catch-­ words—they do not add to the humor of a part; and their frequent repetition always tires, and often disgusts.” In Daniels’s judgement, Colin had trespassed tolerable limits with his often repeated catchphrase, “But it won’t bear thinking of.” Daniels especially praised two scenes: “The scene between Ernestine and Rosambert, where every vicious thought is extinguished from the breast of the latter,” and the concluding scene of the precarious sleepwalking. These scenes “swell the heart with emotion; indeed, the latter awakens a suspense and dread almost amounting to agony.” Affirming the power of pantomimic acting, Daniels claimed that the somnambulist’s finale was unsurpassed: “We question if dumb show ever excited more intense feeling than those which thrill the audience when Ernestine passes over the water-wheel.”14 Before the curtain closes, Rosambert quickly revives the marital celebration and directs Edmund and Ernestine, as well as Colin and Gertrude, on their march to the church.

Isaac Pocock. Tuckitomba; or, The Obi Sorceress The scene is set on the island of Jamaica, and the plot resurrects the popular fascination with the Obeah magic in the British colonies of the West Indies. The occult phenomena had first been introduced to the stage in John Fawcett’s Obi, or Three-Finger’d Jack (Haymarket, 2 July 1800).15

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Fawcett based his plot on William Earle’s history of the rebel slave, Jack Mansong.16 Isaac Pocock’s Tuckitomba; or, The Obi Sorceress (Covent Garden, 7 April 1828)17 turned to the tales of the “Nanny of the Maroons,” a female practitioner of Obeah, who combined her mesmerizing spiritual powers with a mastery of herbal potions and the brewing of drugs and poisons. She was a feared and respected leader of the Windward Maroons through the years of resistance, 1725 to 1740, against the British colonists.18 While attending to his island properties, Matthew Gregory Lewis reported on Obi medicine.19 Subtle dosages rendered the victims unaware of the mind-control to which they were being subjected, and stronger dosages rendered them totally acquiescent.20 The title role, Tuckitomba, was played by Richard “Obi” Smith, who played the role of Three-Fingered Jack in John Fawcett’s original.21 Twenty-eight years after Obi, or Three-Finger’d Jack, Pocock’s Tuckitomba; or, the Obi Sorceress was produced by Fawcett at Covent Garden.22 “Messrs. Grieve, T. Grieve, W. Grieve, the stage artists at Covent Garden, provided the stunning backdrops of the plantation, the interior of the island, the cave of the sorceress, the sea shore, and the deck of the pirate ship.” Pocock recycled colonial themes and settings of the Caribbean, bringing together pirates and slave magic in a plot of sexual abduction. Smith’s ingenuity in pantomime rendered him “eminent in assassins, sorcerers, the moss-trooping heroes of Sir Walter Scott’s poems, and other romantic characters in which a bold, rather gigantic figure could be turned to good account.”23 Smith was Captain Ruthven, the pirate and smuggler in Henry M.  Milner’s Preventive Service (Coburg, 23 February 1823), the ghostly pirate Vanderdecken in Edward Fitzball’s The Flying Dutchman (Adelphi, 4 December 1826), and he had the title role in Lolonois; or, the Bucanniers of 1660 (Surrey, 10 August 1828). Tuckitomba has become obsessed with Clara, the beautiful quadroon girl (played by Mary Anne Goward). She has rejected his formal addresses, even his offer to make her his bride and dress her in her choice of jewels from his acquired treasures. Frustrated at being rejected, he vows to make her his personal sex slave. To render Clara pliable to his advances, he engages Esther, the Obi Sorceress (Fanny Vining).24 Esther keeps the ingredients to mix a variety of brews, to induce utter passivity or wild abandon. Colonists’ anxiety in response to Obeah was prompted by evidence that practitioners were secretly brewing and dispensing mind-altering drugs and poisons to numb the nerves and muscles. Pocock had no need to exaggerate that lore. Esther was the creation of colonist fears.

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Obeah-women, who had greater access to colonist households, were even more suspect than Obeah-men. In his Journal of a West India Proprietor, Lewis discussed the case of a young woman brought to trial for attempting to poison her master.25 Lewis characterized the accused women as being manipulated by Obeah-men. Because families of British plantation owners were occasionally drugged, abducted, and held in hostage by rebelling slaves,26 laws were passed to halt all gathering of Obeah plants and other medical sources. The law passed in Barbados in 1818 specifically forbade the possession of “any poison, or any noxious or destructive substance.”27 Tuckitomba resorts to various methods and assumes different garbs, originally intending to seduce but then to abduct Clara. Deciding to use an Obi potion to render Clara pliable to his advances, he engages the Obi Sorceress. With her assistance, Johnny Edwards, infant son of a planter of that name, is stolen from Clara, who served as nurse to care for the child. Esther has her own motives for assisting in the abduction. The boy’s father is guilty of some unnamed wrong inflicted on the Sorceress. Too, she owes a debt of gratitude to the pirate for past favours. She finds a double pleasure in facilitating Tuckitomba’s lust. The pirate and the Obeah-woman plot to take advantage of Clara’s affection for her young charge. Her eagerness to rescue him will lead her into the snares which have been laid for her, and thus place her person at the disposal of a ruthless predator. To make success the more certain, the charm of Obi is practised against nurse and child, who accordingly succumb to the power of the conspirators. Like the Evil Queen transformed into the Wicked Witch offering the apple to Snow White,28 Esther dupes Clara into drinking her tea. The alternate time of Clara’s drug-induced trance is communicated much in the same way as the dream-imaginings of the somnambulist. Clara, in a slow-motion pantomime, surrenders her feeble resistance and begins to act out the fantasies suggested by Tuckitomba’s lecherous commands. Exploiting her vulnerability with his lewd caresses, Tuckitomba tells her that she is a princess being conveyed to her glorious palace to celebrate her nuptials. She reacts in her stupor with an expression of childish play-acting. Attempts to rescue Clara and Johnny from the pirate’s captivity are made in vain by the child’s father, and by Clara’s devoted admirer, Goliah Fletcher (played by Robert Keeley).29 All seems lost when Clara and Johnny are carried off on board of Tuckitomba’s ship, The Sturdy Beggar. At sea, the pirate is pursued by the protective navy of the

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islands, and The Sturdy Beggar is raked fore and aft. Clara and Johnny are rescued. Tuckitomba goes down with his ship.30 Many ghosts rise up in the alternate time of Bannockburn; or, The Ghost Seer (Coburg, 5 February 1827) and the clever parallel haunting in John Eilliam Calcraft’s The Battle of Bothwell Bridge. (Edinburgh, 3 May 1823). An entire cast would be involved in performing the metadrama of a “rehearsal.” A series of impressionists and impersonators are called forth in Jerrold’s Popular Felons. Although many could be involved, most often a character’s appearance in alternate time was a solo performance in a majority of the plays of the Romantic era. Further, that solo performance was frequently a somnambulist in pantomime. In The Dream, Joanna Baillie required no actor perform in the role of the murder victim, to whom she gave vast powers in alternate time to control the causality of coincidence, from the instructions given in the dreams of two monks, to the presence of the victim’s brother to impose the sentence of execution on the murderer. In The Murderer’s Dream; or, The Abbey of Glenthorn, the murderer, burdened with the guilt of having killed his brother, is doomed to sleepwalking nightmares in which he repeats his murderous deed. The Gothic pantomime of a phantom sleepwalker is again deployed in William Thomas Moncrieff’s comedy, The Somnambulist; or, The Phantom of the Village. On the eve of her wedding, an innocent bride is discovered in a gentleman’s bed, where she has arrived as a result of sleepwalking. In Tuckitomba; or, The Obi Sorceress, Isaac Pocock sends an island maiden into the lurid dimensions of alternate time by means of drugs and Obi spells. In these plays alternate time is conjured on stage as a mental phenomenon, a dream or a spell.

Notes 1. The Literary Gazette: A Weekly Journal of the Belles Lettres, Arts, and, Science. No. 1021 (21 January 1837): 725. 2. Pierre Corneille. L’Illusion comique. Paris: Bossange, Masson & Besson, 1797. 3. Burwick. Mimesis and its Romantic Reflections. University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 2001, 164. 4. Burwick. Illusion and the Drama. Critical Theory of the Enlightenment and Romantic Era. University Park: Pennsylvania UP, 1991, 279–280. August Wilhelm Schlegel introduced the term, “play about a play,” distinguished

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from “play within a play,” in his review of Ludwig Tieck’s Puss-in-Boots (Der gestiefelte Kater, 1797). 5. Tiffany Stern. Rehearsal from Shakespeare to Sheridan. Clarendon Press, 2003, 135–39. 6. Terry F.  Robinson. “Sarah Siddons.” The Encyclopedia of Romantic Literature. Eds., Frederick Burwick, Nancy Moore Goslee, Diane Long Hoeveler. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012, 1252–61. 7. Burwick. Playing to the Crowd. London Popular Theater, 1780–1830. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, 82. 8. Also on fear, Baillie’s Orra (1812). Dramatic and Poetical Works, 235–259. 9. Christopher Murray. Robert William Elliston, Manager. Society for Theatrical Research, 1975, 61–64. 10. The Murderer’s Dream; or, The Abbey of Glenthorn (Olympic, 20 October 1818). 11. Eugène Scribe. Le songe, ou, La chapelle de Glenthorn: mélodrame en trois actes et à grand spectacle. Paris: Chez Fages, 1818. 12. William Thomas Moncrieff. The Somnambulist; or, the phantom of the village: a dramatic entertainment, in two acts; printed from the acting copy, with remarks, biographical and critical, by D.-G.[George Daniels]; embellished with a fine engraving, by Mr. Bonner, from a drawing taken in the theatre, by Mr. R. Cruikshank. London: John Cumberland, 1828. 13. Genest. English Stage. 9:430–31. 14. D.-G [George Daniels]. “Remarks,” Moncrieff. The Somnambulist, 10. 15. John Fawcett. Obi, or Three-Finger’d Jack (Haymarket, 2 July 1800); published as: Obi, or Three-Finger’d Jack. A Serio Pantomime in Two Acts. London: Duncombe and Moon, n.d. [c. 1825?]; ed. Charles Rzepka, Romantic Circles Praxis. http://www.rc.umd.edu/praxis/obi. Accessed 1 January 2021. 16. William Earle. Obi: or, The History of Three-Fingered Jack. London: Earle and Hemet, 1800; ed. Srinivas Aravamudan. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview, 2005. 17. Review: Pocock. Tuckitomba; or, The Obi Sorceress. Theatrical Observer (8 April 1828). 18. Jenny Sharpe. Ghosts of Slavery: A Literary Archeology of Black Women’s Lives. Minneapolis: Minnesota UP, 2003, 3. 19. Matthew G.  Lewis. Journal of a West India Proprietor, 1815–1817, ed. Mona Wilson. London: G. Routledge & Sons, 1929, 149–150. 20. Emily Senior. The Caribbean and the Medical Imagination, 1764–1834. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2018, 165–70. 21. John Adcock. “Richard John Smith, or O. Smith—1776–1855.” Yesterday’s Papers (17 May, 2013) http://john-­adcock.blogspot.com/2013/05/ richard-­john-­smith-­or-­o-­smith-­1776-­1855.html. Accessed 1 January 2021.

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22. Isaac Pocock. Tuckitomba; or, the Obi Sorceress. Plays Submitted to the Lord Chamberlain, British Library, 1828, 533–602. 23. “The Theatre.” The Monthly Magazine. July 1826, 54. 24. Philip H.  Highfill, Kalman A.  Burnim, Edward A.  Langhans, eds. A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers & Other Stage Personnel in London, 1660–1800, 16 vols. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP, 1993. 15:179. 25. Lewis. Journal of a West India Proprietor, 149–50. 26. Joseph John Williams, S.J. Voodoos and Obeahs: Phases of West Indian Witchcraft. New York: Dial Press, 1932. 27. “Colonial Intelligence.” Times [London]. 5 Dec. 1818: 2. The Times Digital Archive. https://www.newspapers.com/paper/the-­times/. Accessed 3 December 2020. 28. Walt Disney Productions. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. RKO Radio Pictures, 21 December 1937. Based on the German fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm. 29. National Portrait Gallery, Mary Ann Goward, born 22 November 1805 in Ipswich, Suffolk, debuted 1825 on the London stage in comic opera; married fellow-actor Robert Keeley in 1829; https://www.npg.org.uk/ collections/search/personExtended/mp02482/mary-­anne-­keeley-­nee-­ goward?tab=biography. Accessed 8 November 2021. 30. The Museum of Foreign Literature, Science and Art, 9:253.

CHAPTER 9

Forgotten Time

Forgetting entire episodes of past experience is a terrifying condition that has been abundantly documented in case studies and appropriated with similar frequency into drama and novels. Physical or psychological trauma may eradicate memories and leave holes in what a person can retrieve of former times.1 But the opposite may also occur when the tormented mind struggles to forget events of pain or shame. Lord Byron’s Manfred and Mary Russell Mitford’s Sadak and Kalasrade; or, The Waters of Oblivion will be examined as deliberate efforts to erase memory. These plays bring onto stage the desperate, even suicidal, quest to obliterate conscious awareness of former time. Opium may be enlisted as an agent capable of altering memory and the sense of time. Injury might result in amnesia; old age in dementia; or the mind itself, tormented by events too painful to remember, might take the plunge into madness. George Dibdin Pitt’s The Eddystone Elf and William Thomas Moncrieff’s Lear of Private Life are both plays that echo the crisis of estranged and deranged relationship between a father and his daughter. Rather than depicting characters searching for the means to eradicate time, Pitt and Moncrieff depict characters so obsessed with a single moment that all other memories are crowded out of consciousness. Melodramatic plots, as they recur in popular cinema, replay from the Romantic stage a struggle to retrieve crucial spans of time that have been obliterated by trauma. As represented in film, the loss of memory through © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 F. Burwick, Time in Romantic Theatre, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-96079-7_9

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injury or trauma is a key factor in a plot of disrupted love. A plot of espionage may turn on amnesia deliberately induced. Random Harvest (MGM, 1942) featured a WWI soldier (Ronald Colman) whose amnesia blocked all memory of his wife (Greer Garson). In Love Letters (Paramount, 1945), Allen Quinton (Joseph Cotten) agrees to help a fellow soldier, Roger Morland (Robert Sully), by writing love letters to Singleton (Jennifer Jones), his girl back home. Moved by the sincere passion in the letters, she falls in love with Roger and marries him at the end of the war. Roger becomes a drunken, abusive husband. Singleton’s stepmother intervenes and stabs him to death while he is beating her. Singleton goes into shock, rendering her unable to recall the murder, while her stepmother has a stroke, rendering her unable to write or speak. Accused of murder, Singleton is sentenced to a year in jail. Allen, in the meantime, hears about the murder and visits Singleton, and the two fall in love. In the future world of Total Recall (TriStar, 1990), artificial memories can be implanted in the brain. Douglas Quaid (Arnold Schwarzenegger) discovers that he is the recipient of such an implant, and he is now pursued by agents who fear that he will retrieve his actual memories. In 50 First Dates (Sony, 2004), Henry (Adam Sandler) romances Lucy (Drew Barrymore), but she has short-term memory loss and cannot remember anything that happened the previous day. So Henry must commence the courtship anew every day. Set in a future world, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Focus Features, 2004) describes former lovers Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) and Clementine Kruczynski (Kate Winslet), whose relationship has taken a hostile turn, prompting each of them to hire a technician to erase all the memories of mutual experiences. In revisiting the memories, Joel re-­encounters happier times and strives to preserve vestiges of his memory of loving Clementine. The five films in the Bourne series included The Bourne Identity (2002, Universal), The Bourne Supremacy (2004), The Bourne Ultimatum (2007), The Bourne Legacy (2012), and Jason Bourne (2016). Bourne (Matt Damon), a former CIA agent suffering from dissociative amnesia, must discover his true identity and escape the espionage team trying to kill him. The Vow (Spyglass Entertainment, 2012) traces the mental crisis of Paige Collins (Rachel McAdams) caused by a car accident just ten weeks after her marriage to Leo Collins (Channing Tatum). Paige’s brain trauma has erased all memories of her marriage and their entire relationship before marriage. Before I Go to Sleep (Clarius Entertainment, 2014) is a thriller describing the growing sense of persecution experienced by Christine Lucas (Nicole Kidman), who has no

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memory of her past life nor any recollection of the accident that caused her amnesia. As she struggles to retrieve clues of the lost past, emerging details prompt her to question the motives of those around her, especially her husband (Colin Firth) and her doctor (Mark Strong). Other examples might be added to this brief list of forgetting as a persistent plot element in film. The films named here are intended only as a reminder that the recurrence has an extensive trajectory. Experiencing the onset, recovery, or further decline, the character reveals awareness of his condition and fate. The character, sensing memory loss, could also be conscious whether lost time is being recovered, or if, rather, the mind no longer has access to previous times. In comedy, amnesia and madness were usually short-termed or pretended conditions, and in performance scarcely distinguished from intoxication or a drugged twilight somnolence, as in Samson Penley’s The Sleeping Draught (Drury Lane, 1 April 1818).2 Penley, actor-manager of the Peckham theatre, adapted this comedy from Boccaccio’s Decameron (Day 4, Novel 10). In the lead role as Popolino, John Pritt Harley, who performed at Drury Lane from 1815 to 1835, and again from 1840 to 1848, had occasion to exercise one of his favourite parts as a Shakespearean clown. As servant to Rinaldo, Popolino is sent to Dr. Vincolo, where he is supposed to deliver a secret message to his beloved Francesca, Dr. Vincolo’s niece. In the doctor’s waiting room, Popolino drinks an opiate potion which had been prepared for another patient. When Francesca and her maid Nonna discover Popolino in a deep slumber, they think that he may be dead. They hide him in a chest, so that the death won’t be blamed on the doctor. The chest is conveyed to the house of a wealthy farmer. Still under the influence of the drug, Popolino emerges from the chest, imagining himself on stage performing as Bottom in the embrace of Titania: “I have an exposition of sleep come upon me” (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, IV.i.23). As an actor playing the role of an actor playing a Shakespearean clown, Harley was in his element. Popolino, for the moment, has totally forgotten his identity, until other characters gradually coax him out of the delusion that he is an actor on stage. As in previous chapters, I have argued that historical and cultural changes rendered reliance on the “three unities,” once regarded as mandatory rules, no longer compulsory, for many playwrights no longer relevant. On the “unity of time,” Aristotle wrote only that “tragedy endeavours to keep as far as possible within a single circuit of the sun or something near that.”3 An element of plot that is twice recommended by Aristotle is discovery (anagnorisis). In addition to a discovery that might be made

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about the identity or motives of another character, Aristotle stated that the discovery might also be a remembered deed or attribute of the self.4 The plot of forgotten time introduces past moments as pieces in a scattered jigsaw puzzle that become recognizable only as they are reassembled. This chapter focuses on those moments in the drama in which memory recovers forgotten time, or discovers that its own powers have failed, leaving past times hauntingly present or tormentingly irretrievable.

Shakespeare, King Lear Shakespeare knew nothing of Aristotelian anagnorisis, but he mastered the dramatic exposition of the subjective moment of self-discovery. The madness of King Lear is poignant because Shakespeare has Lear fully aware, not just of his waning powers but also of the devastating assault on his mind. By the end of the first act, Lear is already frightened by indications of his reason breaking down. O let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven! Keep me in temper, I would not be mad! (I.v.42–44)

From scene to scene, Lear’s mental disintegration progresses. As a king who has lost the command of reasoning, he becomes almost inarticulate with rage. He denounces Goneril and Regan and threatens revenge, but he has no idea of what that revenge might be or how he might wield it: No, you unnatural hags, I will have such revenges on you both That all the world shall—I will do such things— What they are yet I know not; but they shall be The terrors of the earth ….

Overcoming his rage, the king seems to recover himself momentarily, then lapses back into his fear of mental obliteration: You think I’ll weep. No, I’ll not weep. I have full cause of weeping; but this heart Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws Or ere I’ll weep. O Fool, I shall go mad! (II.iv.259–281)

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Gradually Lear becomes purged of his anger. By Act IV, he has drifted into a childish state, playing among the wild flowers, challenging imaginary wildlife. Even in this mental docility, he still recalls a former self that contrasts with a present state in which “I am cut to the brains” (IV.vi.194). In the next scene, when Cordelia resists his pathetic attempts to demonstrate his love for his daughter (“No, sir, you must not kneel”), he does not rage, as he might have done before. Instead, he concedes his frailty: Pray do not mock me. I am a very foolish fond old man, Four score and upward, not an hour more nor less, And, to deal plainly, I fear I am not in my perfect mind. (IV.vii.59–63)

In this state of enfeebled self-knowledge, Lear utters the unpretentious truths of human mortality. Reconciled with the daughter he once repulsed, Lear and Cordelia establish a communion not possible earlier in the play. They will “sing like birds i’ the cage.” The demented philosopher, pulsing in Lear’s decaying brain, proposes that Cordelia join him in exploring “the mystery of things /As if we were God’s spies” (V.ii.17–18). The scene of the weeping king trying to revive the dead body of his executed daughter affected audiences even more strongly than the endings of Shakespeare’s other tragedies. In 1681, Nahum Tate revised King Lear, so that audiences could witness Cordelia restored and embracing her father. Tate’s “happy ending” held its place on the stage throughout the Georgian era. John Philip Kemble performed as Lear with his own revisions to Tate’s version (Covent Garden, 27 February 1809). There was no further performance of King Lear throughout the ensuing decade. The exclusion was a polite silencing of unwanted allusions to Britain’s benighted king. George III suffered mental lapses from October 1788 to March 1789. Following a relapse occurring in 1801 and again in 1804, late in 1810 the King became more seriously distracted. Speculations on the cause of his illness remain inconclusive, but many contributing factors have been documented. Cataracts rendered him partially blind. Rheumatism subjected him to constant pain. Then Princess Amelia died (10 November 1810). The Princess’s nurse reported that George, like Lear, held the deceased body of his youngest daughter in fits of inconsolable weeping. “The scenes of distress and crying every day were melancholy beyond description.”5 The mad King was kept in seclusion at

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Windsor Castle until his death. His eldest son, George, Prince of Wales, ruled as Prince Regent until his father’s death (29 January 1820), when he succeeded as George IV.

Moncrieff, The Lear of Private Life After a ten-year hiatus, King Lear was again performed (Covent Garden, 13 April 1820), with Lear played by Junius Brutus Booth6 and Cordelia by Sarah Booth (not his actual daughter, but many in the audience believed she was). Just two weeks after he commenced his role as Shakespeare’s Lear at Covent Garden, Booth was on the southern side of Waterloo Bridge to perform the lead role in Moncrieff’s The Lear of Private Life; or, Father and Daughter (Coburg, 27 April 1820). Moncrieff took his story from Amelia Opie’s novel, The Father and Daughter (1801). The novel appeared at a time in which concern with the precarious mental condition of George III made insanity a topical interest. While Opie availed herself of contemporary discussion on the treatment of the mentally ill, Shakespeare’s depictions of madness (Ophelia, Lady Macbeth, as well as Lear) were apparently not among her sources. Immediately obvious to the audience was Moncrieff’s Shakespearean source for the balcony scene in the wooing of Agnes (Illustration 9.1). His title indicated as well that his transformation of Opie’s novel also involved adapting Shakespeare’s tragedy into the popular medium of domestic melodrama. The experience of Booth’s acting undoubtedly persuaded many in the audience that Moncrieff had perhaps borrowed more from Shakespeare. The large share of that borrowing resided in Booth’s voice, gesture, and delivery through which he infused Lear’s breakdown into the character of Fitzhenry. Moncrieff’s Lear of Private Life was not the first theatrical adaptation of Opie’s The Father and Daughter. In their edition, Shelley King and John B. Pearce provide an account of two earlier stage versions: Fernando Paër’s L’Agnese, libretto by Luigi Buonavoglia (1809; London, 15 May 1817), and Marie Therese Kemble’s Smiles and Tears (Covent Garden, 12 December 1815).7 The death of George III at the end of January 1820 was followed by a series of national disasters. The Cato Street conspiracy was exposed on 23 February, and during the two weeks prior to the opening of the Lear of Private Life, the Radical War broke out in Scotland and Yorkshire, with 60,000 striking weavers under attack by the militia.8 On 1 May the Cato Street conspirators were beheaded outside Newgate Prison

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Illustration 9.1  Alvanley pledges his love to Agnes, The Lear of Private Life. (I.iii). Robert Seymour, artist; Welch, engraver. Richardson, 1820

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in London. Throughout the month of June London was in turmoil over the fate of Queen Caroline. On 5 June riots broke out in support of Queen Caroline. On 15 June the guards in the King’s Mews mutinied for the return of the Queen. On 27 June evidence bags were examined in secret by fifteen peers. The Pains and Penalties Bill, intended to strip Caroline of the title of queen and dissolve her marriage, passed narrowly in the House of Lords, and there was no chance that it would be passed in the House of Commons.9 Public unrest over the bill was widespread. Blamed for his own immoderate indulgence, and for driving Caroline into exile, George IV received little public sympathy in charging his wife with adultery. For the remainder of the season, from its opening in April through the end of June, the Lear of Private Life continued to draw a full house for fifty-three performances at the Coburg. Moncrieff’s dramatization echoed national issues. Reform of the lunatic asylums was progressing when Opie, years before the mad king was sequestered, visited the lunatic asylum of Norwich. Moncrieff shared Opie’s interest in the treatment of madness which had gained impetus during the Regency.10 The plight of the underpaid and unemployed workers enabled Opie, and Moncrieff as well, to cast the rejected Agnes as an exemplum of prevailing poverty. Agnes also belonged to the order of fallen women. Seduced maidens and adulterous wives were already prominent in literature at the time Opie wrote her novel. But when Moncrieff penned his stage version, the debate over Queen Caroline aroused more aggressively charged discussion.11 A key element to be discussed in the Lear of Private Life is how loss of memory alters perception of the passage of time. The play opens with the reapers singing as they labour in the fields. Gilbert arrives happy in anticipating the death of his aunt, and then saddened by news of her good health. An inheritance is his sole hope to acquire land in order to marry Meriel. Fitzarden (Fitzhenry in the novel) arrives on the scene, dispenses wages to his workers, and offers Gilbert a settlement so that he need not delay his wedding. This scene established Fitzarden’s munificence. His happiness is complete, he says, “but one cloud darkens my felicity. Alvanley!—there is something in him makes me shudder at his presence.” His fears for his daughter are allayed by his confidence that “she has too much virtue” to fall prey to his wiles (I.i). The next scene shows Alvanley (Clifton in the novel) exercising those wiles, and Agnes agrees to a secret assignation. No sooner has Alvanley departed that Fitzarden enters. He senses an unusual nervousness in his daughter’s behaviour. Agnes is defensive, but her words define exactly her father’s suspicions:

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Agnes. Does my father suspect that Agnes would ever be seduced to violate her duty, or endanger her honour … unkind suspicion. Fitzarden. I spoke in haste; forgive it and forget it. (I.ii).12

Agnes, for the first time, is dishonest with her father. His response, “forgive and forget,” is developed by the playwright as more than a glib cliché. Agnes endures years of remorse, because ultimately she can neither forgive nor forget. She may in the passion of her tryst forget her father’s words, but that convenient amnesia wears off as soon as her destitute condition forces the understanding of her father’s words back into her consciousness. Her father can forget only because his memory drives him mad. For Fitzarden, time is brought to a standstill. For mutual comfort on the night before she departs, Agnes sings a song her father taught her, “Tears, such as tender fathers shed.”13 They wish each other good night, each filled with doubts and a sense of broken trust (I.ii). From the scene in which he asserts the suspicions which she denies, the play turns to the scene in which Agnes succumbs to Alvanley’s overtures (I.iii). Then Meriel and Gilbert come on stage, deliriously happy that their wedding day has arrived (I.iv). The wedding is to take place on the lawn before Fitzarden’s mansion, but the festive mood is abruptly disrupted by the discovery that Agnes is gone. There is no gradual deterioration of Fitzarden’s mind. His madness is sudden and complete, as if major vessels in his brain had burst. Fitzarden. Alvanley has destroyed her. Treason’s abroad—we’ll convert our plough-shares into swords, and mow the damned traitor to the earth.

When he pauses in his wild rave for revenge, Fitzarden’s friends gather round to calm him. Fitzarden. I am not mad—I know ye all. (I.v)

Alvanley has ensconced Agnes in an apartment in London, where she is kept as a mistress rather than as bride-to-be. Alvanley repeatedly postpones a wedding date with excuses that he must first attend to his parents. In Opie’s novel, Agnes discovers her true situation while seated in a box at the theatre, where she overhears Alvanley’s friends discussing his engagement to a wealthy heiress, and laughing over the fate of his mistress.

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Moncrieff transfers this scene of revelation to her London apartment, where Agnes is concealed behind a screen listening to the proof of Alvanley’s lies and false vows (II.i). In another scene from the comic subplot, Meriel and Gilbert appear as blissful newlyweds, in contrast to Agnes’s fate as outcast fallen woman (II.ii). The next scene takes place in the woods, where Agnes encounters a run-away from a lunatic asylum. She recognizes her father and attempts to console him as he weeps and raves over the loss of his daughter. Entrapped in the time of her disappearance, he tells Agnes that his daughter was murdered by her false lover. Witnessing her father caught in the temporal web of agony, raving against the monster and murderer, she wonders whether any balm from her world of time might dissolve the chains that bind him to that one instant that holds him frozen in time. He forgives her in his delusion that she is dead. In his madness, he blames himself for her death and remains a captive to the moment of his loss. “Can a whole life of tears,” she asks, “wash out the deep remembrance of the hour.” Although he fails to recognize her, Agnes is convinced that she could guide him to recovery if only she could care for him. Having tracked him down, the keepers put him in chains to return him to the asylum. She pleads in vain for custody of her father (II.iii). Opie excluded a reconciliation between Clifton and Agnes. In the novel, Fitzhenry and Agnes are reunited, but both have endured so much suffering that they die in quick succession. Arrangements are made for them to be buried in the same grave. By mere chance, Clifton encounters the funeral procession. He expresses no remorse over his treatment of Agnes, but he does acknowledge Edward as a son, whom he will care for as his heir. Moncrieff, adapting the plot for the melodramatic stage, chose to show Alvanley’s conversion from rake to devoted lover. He returns to his lodgings and finds that Agnes and her child have fled. He regrets his selfish actions and pledges to redeem his vow (II.iv). The following scene is set in the mansion of Fitzarden’s friend Goodall on the occasion of the wedding of his daughter Emily. Shocked to find Agnes and her ailing child at their door, Emily offers shelter. Agnes will accept a small sum to care for Edward (II.v). Act III begins in the cottage of Gilbert and Meriel. Once more the scene of marital bliss contrasts with the wretched plight of Agnes. They insist that Agnes stay with them, reminding her that their cottage and land was a gift from her father. Agnes accepts, and in the next scene she returns to Goodall, this time to petition his aid. He is prepared to restore to Agnes the entire Fitzarden mansion and wealth that have been under his

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supervision since her father commenced his wild wanderings. Agnes has a more specific wish. Fitzarden, before his mental crisis, had established a foundation for the construction and maintenance of a local lunatic asylum. That asylum, too, has been sustained by Goodall. Convinced that she might restore her father to his reason, Agnes presents her urgent request: “Let me become a servant in the Asylum.” Goodall responds, “It shall be so” (III.ii). With the news that Agnes had eloped with Alvanley, Fitzarden’s mental collapse was sudden and complete (I.v). When Agnes found him in the woods, he remained ensnared in that devastating moment. Together with him in the lunatic asylum, Agnes seeks to arouse some shared memory that will help him overcome his conviction that she had died in that moment. He half recognizes her, but his delusion of her death keeps the presence of his living, breathing daughter beyond comprehension. In the asylum, Agnes finds herself blocked from entering the time-prison of a tormented mind which holds her father captive. The anagnorisis is forestalled. Fitzarden (turning round sees Agnes, utters a cry of joy, and runs toward her.) Ah, it is her! But, no! no! no! it cannot be! Fool, fool, she died within these arms! (Returns to the table.) Agnes. He does not recognize me: still I will hope; let me observe him. (Draws back.) Fitzarden. (begins to hum over in a low voice the first part of the song “Tears such as tender fathers shed.”) Agnes. He sings, then there is hope. Fitzarden. (after having in a low voice made various attempts in the manner of one who endeavours to recollect something, suddenly breaks for with transport) “Tears such as tender fathers shed.” Agnes. Ha! ’tis the song that oft in happier days he loved to hear me sing. Fitzarden. “Warm from aged eyes descend. “For, for”—I cannot remember the rest; can you? Agnes. Oh, yes! yes! “for joy—” Fitzarden. Aye! so it is: I had forgotten “joy” but ‘tis no wonder; for she is dead—cold—gone. Oh! (Groans) go on, sing for the love of heaven, sing again! Agnes. I will, I will. (III.iii)

This was the song that Agnes often sang for her father, and last sang on the night before her elopement with Alvanley (I.ii). Moncrieff borrowed

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it from Handel’s Deborah (1733). In Samuel Humphrey’s libretto, this is the song that Abinoam sings to celebrate his son Barak’s victory over the Canaanites: Tears such as tender fathers shed, Warm from aged eyes descend, For joy, to think when I am dead My son will have mankind his friend.

Her father insisted that in the last line she substitute her own name, “Agnes,” for “My son.” In recollecting the words of the song, he remembers as well his daughter singing them. In spite of the superimposition of then and now, Fitzarden, in his time-stopped delusion, insists that “she can sing it no more now, for she is dead.” Agnes. Do you still love her then? Fitzarden. Love her! When can a father cease to love his child? Vipers have stung and vultures gnawed my breast, drank up my blood, eat in my sinews, half destroyed my mind, but they’ve not reached my heart: no. no. ‘tis whole and healthful yet—feel how it beats? One, two—I can’t keep count. Agnes. Should’st thou remember her, wert thou to see her. Fitzarden. Remember her—oh, when can I forget her? Ha! I see her now. Agnes. Where! Where! Fitzarden. Here, look how she stands, arrayed in virgin white, her golden ringlets playing luxuriantly o’er her snowy brow. Oh! see those heaven blue eyes, that seraph form—would she but speak to me! oh! she is gone! (III.iii)

Fitzarden’s delusion is protective, for a dead Agnes can be mourned. Whereas the living Agnes, who had betrayed her father, hurt him deeply, and left him with a rage that could only be dampened by the conviction that she was dead. The restorative effects of the song, and the bits of memory that it awakened, brought Fitzarden close to the threshold from madness into sanity. Thinking that he will pardon his penitent daughter, she kneels before him and asks forgiveness. The delusion of a dead Agnes may divert, but does not diminish his anger. “Were she at my feet,” he tells his daughter, “I’d strike the wanton lifeless to the earth, and shew the terrible revenge of injured fathers.” As the asylum keeper leads her away from the raging old man, Agnes promises to return (III.iii). When the audience last saw Alvanley, he had discovered that Agnes and her child had left him (II.iv). His search for her has brought him to the

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river’s edge, where the discovery of a veil and a shawl seemed to indicate her death. Alvanley pulls out his pistol and declares that suicide will enable him to join her. Emily and her husband intervene and assure him that Agnes and child still live, and they act with Goodall’s help to promote a reconciliation (III.iv). Goodall’s good deeds continue, for he arranges for the sleeping Fitzarden to be brought to his own home and placed upon a couch in his favourite room. At the centre of the room is a large painting, concealed with a green cloth, depicting Agnes seated at a harp. Goodall is convinced that the familiar surroundings will enable Fitzarden to escape the bondage of his self-imposed time-trap: “if I don’t prove a good doctor in this case, I’ll never take out a diploma for insanity, but confess myself more mad than my patient” (III.v). The experiment seems to work. When he initially awakens, he still imagines the dead Agnes sleeping her “sleep of death.” As he grows aware of his surrounding, he sees that he is not in the lunatic asylum, and perhaps therefore no longer a lunatic. Fitzarden: Sleeping! Would I could sleep like her! in her lone cell, she sleeps the sleep of death; how long will this continue? I had a dream of days long past, bright days! Would it would come again. Great Heaven! what change, what place is this? Oh, I should know this spot: is reason dawning, or is madness coming? No cell, no chains, no straw? No, no, I am not mad.” (III.v)

Although he is still imprisoned in that moment in which Agnes left him and his mind declared her dead, he now senses that his mental bondage has its limits. “How long,” he asks, “will this continue?” Other images are now returning to his consciousness like “a dream of days long past.” Awareness of time returns. “I am not mad” (I.v), he had declared when he first descended into madness. “I am not mad” (III.v), he repeats as he ascends back to reason. It is a slippery ascent. Goodall and his daughter Emily inform Fitzarden that Agnes and Alvanley are reunited, and both come to ask him to forgive them for their wrongs and to bless their marriage. This information pushes him back into his defensive hallucination: “I tell you she is dead, poor Agnes. Cold! Cold! Cold!” Moncrieff here resorts to the same trick that Shakespeare had Paulina perform on Leontes when she called to life the statue of Hermione (Winter’s Tale, V.iii). Emily draws back the green cover over the supposed painting of Agnes at her harp. “Has not this portrait,” she coyly asks, “some resemblance to her?”

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Fitzarden. Ha, hide her! hide her! she has shot lightning through my veins: and see, see at her command the spirits of departed joys flit quickly by, pointing and mocking at me, as they pass—Quick, let me fly!

As Fitzarden prepares to rush away, Agnes accompanies herself on the harp and sings, “Tears such as tender fathers shed.” Her father stops. “That voice! And yet, oh, tell me art thou real or sent by hell to tantalize my soul!” Agnes steps forth from the frame and embraces her father. She kneels at his feet, joined first by Alvanley, then Gilbert and Meriel enter with the child, then Goodall with Emily and Rattleton. The curtain falls on this tableau vivant, Fitzarden stands, surrounded by his kneeling daughter and friends.

Pitt, The Eddystone Elf Although 1828 is the date given in the earliest published version of this play, that edition declares that it is based on an acting copy, “As performed at the Metropolitan Minor Theatres,” Allardyce Nicoll identifies one performance with the title, The Monster of the Eddystone; or, The Lighthouse Keepers (Royal Pavilion, 17 February 1834), and two with the title, The Eddystone Elf (Sadler’s Wells, 7 April 1834; Royal Pavilion, 18 August 1834).14 Also published with the title, The Eddystone Elf,15 this edition contains lists of the cast for performances in 1833 and 1834 (p. 4). The time of the dramatic action can be determined more precisely, for George Dibdin Pitt depicted in the final scene the destruction of the Eddystone Lighthouse, which occurred in the Great Storm (27 November 1703) that struck Henry Winstanley’s tower, completed only five years before, with such force that no trace was left on the rocks. Pitt has given further historical context by presenting his hero, Richard Clifton, as a veteran of the Siege of Namur (1695), when he fought with the Grand Alliance under William III to recapture Namur from the French. Impressed by Clifton’s bravery as the first to plant a scaling ladder, the king personally promised to reward him. “Richard Clifton,” the king said, “I give you my word that I’ll remember you for your bravery” (I.i). As the play begins, Mark Traverson is on the road to Plymouth. Not just the place, the date is also defined: it is 25 November 1703. The action of the play occurs over the next three days until the lighthouse is toppled by storm. Traverson is seething with anger at his disobedient daughter, Lucy, who has defied him and ran off with Richard Clifton, an

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unemployed discharged soldier, who can offer her neither shelter nor bread. His anger at Lucy is exceeded only by his hatred for her wicked seducer. Traverson arrives at an inn, the Old Ram, where he informs the host, Peter Partlet, that he intends to apply as lighthouse keeper and would like to know the duties. Partlet assures him that the labour is slight and the pay is exceptionally generous. In spite of these advantages, there are frequent openings because none of the keepers stay long, Partlet. … within the short space of eight months, there have been no less than eight men employed. One was drowned; two deserted; one was found dead; two were frightened out of their senses; another lost his speech; and the eighth swore he had seen that, he wouldn’t look at again for all the king’s wealth. (I.i)

Dismissing the innkeeper’s tales of demons as the howling winds and crashing waves, Traverson refuses to be “scared by such nonsense.” The excess of ingratitude he has experienced renders a life in solitude especially attractive. Partlet points out another possible drawback. By government order, two men are always assigned. “You may not like your companion.” Traverson declares himself prepared to cope with a companion, “if he’s a sensible man.” Should he be a fool, however, “I shall not trouble my head about him; and if he annoy me, I’ll toss him over the rock, as a present for the fishes” (I.i). Murderous thoughts come easily to Traverson’s tormented mind, so too do the thoughts of his former crime. Traverson. My child’s ingratitude, and my own reflections, have unfitted me for social life, and I will embrace the offer of government. My ill conduct to my unfortunate friend, De Tourville, whose wife, in an accursed hour, I seduced, seems to be terribly avenged. He is now doubtless dead: would I were so, too! (I.i)

This is the first mention of the “unfortunate friend,” whose wife Traverson seduced. The consequences of that “accursed hour,” the cause of De Tourville’s assumed death, and the apparent avenging of Traverson’s “ill conduct” are left unexplained. Further hints of De Tourville’s identity are revealed at the end of Act I. In the next scene, Clifton and Lucy are on the same road to Plymouth, approaching the Inn of the Old Ram. They lament that Lucy’s father rebuffed their pleas harshly and refused any assistance. Discharged from

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the military, and still seeking employment, Clifton plans to meet with Captain Brilliant, Agent for Government, to request employment as a lighthouse keeper. Lucy is worried over the terrible stories told about the lighthouse, and she is also concerned about the length of their separation. Clifton seeks to console her with the fact that keepers are changed after every month or two. Also, from the generous wages, half will be paid in advance, so that Lucy can live in comfort during his absence. The fact that Lucy is pregnant did not soften her father’s stern rejection. As Clifton reminds her, “your father refuses his forgiveness, my regiment is disbanded, and starvation stares us in the face.” When Lucy declares that “my father will not look upon me—has erased the remembrance of our consanguinity from his bosom,” she realizes that he has similarly withheld mention of her mother. In the final scene of Act I, improbable coincidence brings Clifton and Traverson together for a month-long isolation as keepers of the Eddystone Lighthouse. Clifton’s attempts to make friends are repeatedly repulsed, and Traverson affirms that there is no possibility: Traverson. I cannot pardon him, yet did I do worse in early life—seduced the affections of an angel entrusted to my care by the best of friends and of men. Oh, De Tourville! did you yet live, how should I dread to meet you! But ere this he doubtless sleeps under the green turf, or in ocean’s oosy bed. Yet e’en his skeleton remains would strike such horror to my coward heart, no torture could exceed. (I.v)

Traverson’s hatred of Clifton is but a displacement of his self-­condemnation, for he is plagued with guilt for a far worse crime of his youth. At the end of Act I, the audience is reminded of the previous confession in the opening scene. Entrusted with the care of his best friend’s wife, he seduced her in his friend’s absence. When that friend suspects betrayal, he hastens home. In a duel his former friend is shot and falls wounded. Traverson and his adulterous bride board a ship and flee the country. De Tourville recovers and boards another ship in pursuit. That ship was wrecked on the Eddystone Rocks in 1685. De Tourville was the sole survivor, and for the next eighteen years he survived in a cave among the rocks. For the first eleven years, he subsisted on what he could glean from the sea. Then in 1696, boats were regularly crossing the nine statute miles from Rame Head to construct a lighthouse. Even as a wild man clothed in fish skins, De Tourville might have revealed himself and gained passage back to

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Plymouth. But over the years, the Rock had become his home, and the lust to avenge the horrible wrong grew into a monomaniacal obsession. One day Traverson would come to this lighthouse. One day De Tourville would wreak his revenge. Improbable as it might seem, fate (as in Chap. 3) would drive Traverson to the Rock to be slain. De Tourville lived in the anticipation of this moment. He remembered the bride he lost. But far more lively in his mind was the image of the forthcoming retribution. The passage of time was irrelevant. He was locked into a moment that consisted only of the anticipation of Traverson’s arrival. Interceding moments might bring opportunities for occasional pranks on the workers who came to the Rock. He would always check their faces to see whether Traverson was among them. That Clifton had dared to abduct his Lucy was to Traverson a re-­ enactment of his own betrayal of his friend, and now he was cramped together with Clifton in the tower’s small rooms. Clifton, too, fretted at the prospect of creeping hours confined with a morose and embittered man who hated him. For the moment Clifton was alone. Traverson had sought privacy in some cranny of the lighthouse. Outside a storm was rising. Astonished by the intensity of the lightning, Clifton recalled the superstitious account of the sailor who rowed him across (Illustration 9.2). Clifton. What horrid meteoric fires flit over the boiling waves!—How terrible the thunder! I cannot blame the trembling wretch whom I relieved but now; for, indeed, it doth require a more than common stretch of mind to battle with imagination’s toys. He spoke, too, poor simple being! of having seen a frightful form, the fabled fiend of the Eddystone. I smiled at his credulity. (I.v)

In that instant a terrible shriek is heard. A sea-gull’s cry? A curlew’s scream? At the second shriek, Clifton imagined the storm as demonically possessed, “shrieking a dirge over the coralled bones of the drowned!” With the third shriek, Clifton realized that something evil had broken loose, for this shriek was followed by a groan, and the groan by insane laughter. The stage directions indicate the action: The tempest becomes more terrific … a private door … suddenly bursts open, and a preternatural-looking figure rushes in, bearing on his shoulder the murdered body of Mark Traverson—his form is gigantic—some old remnants of dress hang about him, but the chief part of his clothing is made of fishes skins—

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Illustration 9.2  Clifton: Horror!—What sight is this? (I.v). George Dibdin Pitt, The Eddystone Elf. Robert Cruikshank, artist; George W. Bonner engraver. John Cumberland, 1828. (Courtesy of Amherst College. Archives and Special Collections. Plimpton Collection of Dramas 4 197 1833)

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his hair and beard are thick and long—his face and hands covered with blood. … Clifton. Horror!—What sight is this? De Tourville. His murdered body! [Throwing it down.] Take it, weak mortal! Here have I fed a deep and dark revenge! He died by the hand of the fiend of the Eddystone! (I.v)

The day of vengeance had arrived. For eighteen years each day of waiting had passed in time-halted monotony. There was no need to mark days all alike. But now there was a change—the days of waiting were over. Now commenced the days of jubilation. For the madman whose name, De Tourville, had faded, his only remaining task was to obliterate the name Traverson as well. No offspring of the evil seed that he planted in his stolen whore-wife could be allowed to survive. Act II commences with the crossing of three sailors in a boat, bringing food and water to the keepers for the first time in three days, having been hindered by storm and winds. One of the three sailors is Lucy in disguise. Clifton knows that he will be charged with murder, for only two keepers were assigned to the lighthouse, and one lies dead. Yes, he had seen the horrid monster, but “no trace whatever of the mystic assassin remains.” The testimony of former keepers who had seen the monster was no sooner reported than discredited. “My story of the monster,” Clifton realized, “will be considered absurd, and a despicable subterfuge.” Worse, all who witnessed the two together were aware of the hostility between them. Worse still, Lucy will share the conclusion that he had killed her father (II. ii). “I know not how he met his fate,” Clifton tells the three sailors. “Tell that to the marines,” one replies, “we sailors are not to be gammoned.”16 Certainly the three sailors find the evidence overwhelming. “You and the old man quarreled on land; and when you got here, you thought you’d fight it out;—you couldn’t beat him with fair fighting, so you tackled him tooth and nail” (II.ii). Incapable of describing the maniac in terms that seem rationally credible, Clifton resorts to the language of the supernatural. Traverson, he protests, was “destroyed by a fiend, a monster of so subtle a nature, that human eye cannot detect his means of egress.” Lucy, still in her disguise as a young sailor, rejects Clifton’s explanation: “Believe it not—‘tis false! Traverson has been murdered!” (II.ii) Two of the sailors carry the body to the boat, intending to report the murder to their admiral, who will presumably prepare for Clifton’s trial and execution. The

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young sailor is given “a couple of pistols, primed and cocked,” with instructions to shoot the prisoner if he causes trouble. Furious at the man whom she trusted, the man whom she married, Lucy is no sooner alone with him than she accuses him with vehemence: “Murderer! dost thou not tremble at thy approaching fate?” Declaring her right to interrogate him, she doffs her hat and reveals her identity. When he attempts to embrace her, she spurns his approach: Lucy. Approach me not, Richard, with those hands stained with my father’s blood! Ah! how have I dreaded strife between ye! I vainly thought I held such firm possession of your heart, that the remembrance of your Lucy would have withheld your arm. (II.ii)

Unable to accept Clifton’s claim of innocence, countered by the fact that he alone was in the tower when Traverson was killed, and lacking proof of the existence of any such creature as “the fiend of the Eddystone,” Lucy imposes a trial of cruentation: “Approach the mangled form of my father, and, in the presence of thy Maker, swear thou didst not take his life.” Such a trial, in Chap. 6 “Time Replayed,” was performed in The Abbey Lands; or, Arden of Faversham (Coburg, 30 November 1824). Alicia was brought before her husband’s corpse. Just as the old lore predicted, the corpse began to bleed profusely.17 Fortunately for Clifton, no more of Traverson’s blood flowed as he knelt before the corpse and placed a hand on it. Instead a moonbeam shone through a pane and cast its light on Clifton’s face. “Enough, my husband,” Lucy confirms she is persuaded by Heaven’s own evidence, “though all the world condemn thee, still do I believe thee from my soul!” (II.ii). Absolved in Lucy’s eyes, Clifton describes to her the torment of the past three nights spent at the side of the corpse. “Whenever, worn by misery, I have fallen into feverish slumber, by thy father’s pale and mangled form, the monster fiend would seem to hang over me in fearful joy; and when in agony I awoke, as you now stand before me, so did the terrible vision, in all the living lineament of horror” (II.ii). Although he has no doubt that the creature was repeatedly in the room, Clifton has been unable to discover how he managed entrances and exits. With no proof, “circumstantial evidence will convict me, and, ere morning, at the yard-­ arm of the admiral’s ship—.” Lucy faints at that thought of Clifton hanging from the yard-arm. Clifton rushes forward to catch her, but the fiend is there before him. Having entered through a secret panel, the fiend of

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the Eddystone throws Lucy over his shoulder, draws one of her pistols, and aims it at Clifton. De Tourville identifies himself as the fiend, confesses the murder of Traverson, and declares his intent to kill Traverson’s child. In his attempt to rescue Lucy, Clifton is shot. Although severely wounded, Clifton intends to follow the lunatic who has abducted Lucy. He inspects the spot where a hidden door must be, and at last it yields (II.ii). Carrying his prey into his lair, the no longer entirely human madman descends the steps into his secret cave and places her on a rocky ledge. Regaining consciousness, Lucy asks the wild man clothed in fish skins whether he is responsible for the death of Traverson. Her question triggers an animated recollection and re-enactment of the scenes that infested his brain incessantly for his eighteen years on the rock. Murdering Lucy’s father was but half the consummation that he longed for. Traverson’s adulterous partner must die as well. She is the “green and festering spot” that still rots in his brain. She may have died, but in his mind he sees her again and again acquiescing to the seduction of “the arch villain, Mark Traverson.” The full tale unfolds once more in his rankling thoughts. I married happily, and my wife and friend were my pride and boast. Compelled to embark for India, I left my wife with this modern Judas. Fortune blessed my endeavours; and I wrote to Traverson to bring my wife in the next outward-bound ship. Time rolled on, and they came not. ’Twas then the horrible suspicion flashed across my brain. I set out privately for England, and traced the guilty pair. Picture the moment of our encounter. I spoke not, but fixed my eye intently on each fear-struck countenance. The pale traitor shrunk from my gaze. Oh! may such moments ever wait upon the wretch, who, in defiance of the laws of God and man, tears hearts in twain, and devotes a husband to eternal woe! (II.iv)

In telling this tale of the past, De Tourville seems a creature of reason. That recollection of the past, however, is his sole recollection. All that follows reveals his increasing lust for revenge. He tells of a duel in which he fell severely wounded, of Traverson’s flight with his stolen wife, of his own attempt to follow disrupted by shipwreck. I alone escaped. Having discovered this cavern, here for eighteen years have I lived in misery, cut off from all commerce with the world. Yonder spring, and the bounties of the deep, supported nature; but my brain flickers at intervals, and I know not what I do. When the ingenuity of man constructed

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the dwelling above us, in my moments of insanity, I removed a plank: two fools were fear-struck, and they died. I know not what has happened since. (II.iv)

Night after night, De Tourville has dreamt of his moment of revenge, never doubting the insane possibility that it would be delivered to him. Their phantoms appeared before him: Here, as I lay on the cold rock, my feverish brain retraced the past in all its horrors. Amid the vivid lightning’s flash, I deemed your mother stood where you do now, pale, and supplicating for forgiveness. I rushed towards her: at that moment, your father descended those steps. With a tiger’s rage, I darted on my prey. Judge my astonishment when I found I really grasped the throat of my traitor friend! Our glaring eyeballs held a horrible commune—our lips but breathed each other’s name. I dashed his skull against the rock—I tore out his heart—[Laughing hysterically] Ha! ha! ha! I was at length revenged! (II.iv)

De Tourville had performed this deed thousands of times before. Sequestered in time forgotten by others, time re-enacted only in his delusions, he experiences “astonishment” on finding that this time his hands are really around the throat of his hated adversary. With Lucy’s parents now deceased, De Tourville has but one more deed to perform: to rid the world of “the wretched offspring of their adultery” (II.iv). The very improbability that father and daughter would be delivered to him on this remote rock is proof of Heaven’s “retributive justice,” proof, too, that he is the appointed “avenging minister.” As De Tourville threatens his victim, Clifton descends the stairs and seeks to stop De Tourville. Throwing Clifton to the ground, De Tourville boasts that he has loosened the bolts that anchor the lighthouse to the rock. The tower will soon collapse (II.iv). Lucy attempts to appeal to his emotions and his memories. Tears come to his eyes as images of long-forgotten love flicker in his mind. The stage direction indicates that “the sternness of De Tourviile subsides—his whole frame is terribly convulsed, his eyes roll, and he stands in maniac horror.” The blood-lust of his insanity quickly returns with the sound of the sailors returning to the rock. He rushes off, intent on sating himself “with human gore.” The fiend’s distraction gives Clifton and Lucy the moment they need to escape the lighthouse. Inside the tower, one of the sailor’s has

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encountered the murderous madman. Dropping a lantern, he has inadvertently set the lighthouse on fire. Because the moorings had been cut, the tower has begun to sway and shift, and burning beams are falling. When Lucy and Clifton exit the tower, awaiting sailors attempt to capture him. The sailor in the tower runs out shouting, “He’s innocent!” Pointing to De Tourville, he adds, “That’s the murderer!” Then De Tourville himself cries out his confession, “I am the murderer!—My hour is come, and thus I expiate my crime!” He turns to rush back into the blaze. With loud explosion, the lighthouse breaks apart and falls into the sea. The body of De Tourville is stretched dead on the rock. As the curtain descends, the characters are disposed in a tableau vivant—Clifton and Lucy stage right, the sailors stage left, and centre stage the body of the deranged victim of the sole monomaniacal memory in a disintegrating mind. Requiring a series of most improbable coincidences, Pitt’s melodrama relates a first-generation love affair, with consequences that spill into a second generation. The improbability lies in circumstances that bring all participants to the lighthouse. Forgetfulness is overridden by the freakish causality of fate, fortune, and fickle coincidence. The recognition (anagnorisis)18 relies on the obsessive and singular memory of a madman who has forgotten all else. Other plays to be examined in this chapter further the focus on moments in the drama in which memory recovers forgotten time, or discovers that its own powers have failed, leaving past times hauntingly present or tormentingly irretrievable.

Mary Russell Mitford, Sadak and Kalasrade; or, The Waters of Oblivion In Tales of the Genii (1764), James Ridley told of Amurath, the Caliph of Persia, who, lusting after Kalasrade, sent her husband Sadak on a death mission.19 John Martin’s painting, “Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion,” depicting a seemingly impossible quest, was exhibited in 1812. Two years later the tale was staged, in an anonymous adaptation, as Sadak and Kalasrade; or, The Waters of Oblivion (Covent Garden, 4 May 1814), which had a musical score by Henry Bishop and William Henry Ware. When revived twenty years later, it was still a romantic opera in two acts, but it now had an entirely new score by Charles Sandys Packer.20 A graduate of the Royal Academy of Music in London, Packer had only a short career in London,21 but his “oriental” songs effectively discriminated

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male, female, and fantasy voices. As bride of Sadak, Kalasrade is defined as absolutely loyal and devoted to her husband. As the play opens, Sadak, Commander of the Persian Army, is on his return from his successful victory. Achmet, the Grand Vizier, and Azim, the Captain of the Caliph’s Guard, plot with Amaruth to steal Sadak’s bride. In the night Sadak’s palace has been burnt to the ground, and the women abducted, including Kalasrade and her sister, Zulema. A “Chorus of Good Spirits” reveal that they may escape their present danger by seeking the Mystic Fountain which is fed by the Waves of Oblivion that flow in the caves of the Enchanted Island. A flask of those waters must be brought untasted to Amurath. When the Good Spirits have vanished, Azim tells her that the quest would not secure her escape, because no one who sought the Water of Oblivion had ever returned. Having commanded that the captive Kalasrade be brought to him, the Caliph offers to fulfill any wish. She requests liberty. Amurath amends his promise: any wish except one that would separate them. Kalasrade quickly alters her request: “Next to freedom/ I’d crave forgetfulness.” At this moment Sadak bursts in and demands the immediate return of his wife. Amurath sees a possibility for possessing Kalasrade and forever ridding himself of the rivalry of Sadak. Kalasrade had requested the Waters of Oblivion. Let Sadak be the one to “bring the cup/ Untasted hither.” Again the Chorus of the Good Spirits appear, encouraging Sadak to undertake the adventure and promising his success. Amurath imposes a condition of time. Sadak must return with the water within one month of this very day as the gong strikes this very hour, as the sun sets and the “evening passes into night.” As Act II commences, three days remain of the allotted month. Kalasrade’s anxiety for Sadak’s fate increases; so too does Amurath’s impatient lust to make Kalasrade his own. The second scene shows Sadak on the Enchanted Island. The vessel that brought him across the sea was shattered by tempestuous waves. He is the sole survivor. A Chorus of Evil Spirits taunts him, but a Chorus of Good Spirits guide him onwards. There are further tests: in order to reach the Waters of Oblivion, he must climb the steep rock, cross a flow of lava, pluck fruit from a withered tree, feed the fruit to the guardian serpent so that it slumbers. Awaiting him at the fountain is a Nymph, who wishes him to taste the cup, to quench his thirst with a cool draught. Sadak suspects that “some evil/ Lurks in the sparkling cup.” He remembers too that “the untasted waters must be straight conveyed/ To Amurath.” The Nymph argues that oblivion is

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man’s chief balm. Sadak affirms the opposite: “man is born/ Still to remember, never to forget/ His duty or his love.” Sadak’s refusal of the proffered drink has released the Nymph of the Fountain from her nine-­ hundred-­year captivity. She can now return from forgotten time to the vital world of remembered events. In the world of time, the single month granted by Amurath is about to expire. The Nymph takes Sadak aboard her magic car for an enchanted ride to deliver “the untasted cup,/ Evil to the evil” (II.ii). From the lattice window in their apartment in the Caliph’s palace. Kalasrade and Zulema are frantic in their fear at Sadak’s delay. This is the last day of the month, and the sun is even now sinking on the horizon (II. iii). Seated on his throne, Amurath has called Kalasrade and Zulema to his side. A large gong is suspended behind his throne, and a slave with a hammer stands ready to strike. Just as Amurath is ready to command the striking of the gong, the Nymph’s car descends. Sadak steps from the car: “I bring the Waters of Oblivion. Lo!/ The untasted cup.” Twice the Nymph urges the Caliph to drink. Unlike Sadak, he does not hesitate, for he remembers “the ancient prophecy,/ That fortunate for Persia and for love/ Would be the draught.” He drinks and dies. The Nymph repeats the wisdom that Sadak had discovered at the fountain: “Death is the price man pays for cold oblivion; / Memory and life are one” (II.iv).

Horace Smith, The Absent Apothecary The fact that Horace Smith’s farce, The Absent Apothecary (Drury Lane, 10 February 1813), originally titled, A Bolus Bewitch’d,22 was “unequivocally condemned” on the night of its premier performance, ought to suffice for excluding it from further attention. Samuel James Arnold, manager at Drury Lane, thought otherwise. He ran it for a second night knowing that it would fill the house with patrons outraged that the performance was repeated and determined to shut it down.23 Humor, William Congreve advised, should not be sought in a person’s disability. “Ridiculing natural deformities, casual defects in the senses, and infirmities of age” are not decent and caring objects of comic laughter. The playwright exposes his own ill-nature, “when he proposes by showing a man deformed or deaf, or blind, … to raise their mirth by what is truly an object of compassion.”24 With incredible insensitivity, Smith constructed his comedy almost exclusively on the struggles of a character’s mental affliction. The dialogue

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is insipid. The cast consisted of exceptionally fine players, who could not overcome the negative response of the audience. Yet another reason for its failure was that the lead character, Romeo Jumbles, was performed all too well by the gifted comic actor, John Bannister. Prior to the performance, the cast assured Smith that his farce would be applauded. Arnold wanted Bolus Bewitch’d to appear on the playbill just below the top billing still being performed, Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Remorse (Drury Lane, 23 January 1813). The character of Romeo Jumbles, a former actor, had suffered a head injury during rehearsal which left him severely forgetful and confused. As explained by his servant Dick (played by Henry Johnstone), Jumbles was on stage, when a screw came loose and the clouds came crashing down, striking Jumbles on the head. Although he had to abandon his acting career, he sometimes forgets that he is no longer on stage. For employment after his accident, he has become an apothecary. “Absent” in the title, The Absent Apothecary, refers to Jumbles’s absent-mindedness. The alternate title, “Bolus Bewitch’d,” referred to Jumbles’s inadvertent concoction of a drug that temporarily overcame forgetfulness with delusion. In the first scene, Smith introduces the character, following Dick’s explanation of Romeo’s condition, with Romeo’s voice offstage: Romeo: (speaking without) Why Holla, Dick, Dick, I wish you’d come and tell me what it is I have got to say to you—(Enter) ’Zounds where am I? (I.i)

All of the comic action in this farce derives from Jumbles’s forgetting where he is and which role, actor or apothecary, he is playing. This switch in identity, time, and place is akin to parabasis in Aristophanic comedy, when an actor appeared to step out of the role in order to critique the play or the playwright. Bannister was so convincing in this manoeuvre that the audience thought that this was an elaborate aside to the audience—or that Bannister had actually forgotten his lines and was reciting lines from Shakespeare ad libitum. It is easy to imagine the confusion: Bannister was playing a former actor, Jumbles, who occasionally imagined he was on stage performing to an actual audience. The recitation of Shakespeare rendered the performance and character similar to George Colman’s Sylvester Daggerwood; or, New Hay at the old Market (Surrey, 25 March 1811), with Robert Elliston in the title role as an unemployed overly theatrical Shakespearean actor.

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Even at the conclusion, Romeo Jumbles has not recuperated from his injury. He still forgets where he is, and what role he ought to be performing. Two characters, ready to horsewhip Romeo for his errors, are calmed by Sophia (played by Fanny Kelly): Sophia: Nay, nay, be more generous to me who is so entirely at your mercy— and as his follies are now over, I hope all present will allow me to intercede in favour of Bolus Bewitch’d. (Curtain falls. Romeo left in front of Curtain) Romeo: So do I, Miss—and I have only one observation to make, and that is—is—is—let me see what I was going to say—I have it—very much to the point.—Bless me! How came I to be not there (Observing the Curtain) How came I to be out here?—Hallo! ’Zounds! Ha, ha. Droll! (Runs out) (II.ii)

Apparently the audience were too much affected by Bannister’s convincing portrayal of the victim of traumatic head injury to appreciate Bannister’s skill in performing a scene of comic parabasis. After the failure of this farce, Horace Smith swore to abandon his occupation as playwright. His attempt to render comic the sad plight of a head injury may be cited in support of Congreve’s caveat.

Byron, Manfred From his opening monologue in the premier performance of Manfred (Covent Garden, 29 October 1834), Henry Gaskell Denvil in the title role sought to impersonate the author, though dead and gone, reanimating himself as the character condemned to an internal vigil (I.i.6–7) (Illustration 9.3). John Murray, Byron’s publisher, was complicit in the effort to understand Byron’s poetry as autobiographical or at least semi-­autobiographical. William Dimond prepared the stage script for The Bride of Abydos (Drury Lane, 5 February 1818), in which Edmund Kean did a very convincing imitation of Byron in performing as Salim, in love with his supposed half-­ sister Zuleika. When John Murray published The Corsair (1814), queues formed at the booksellers. Ten thousand copies were sold on the first day of sale, and a seventh edition was printed within the first month. Making the most of the prevailing gossip about the semi-autobiographical revelations in the adventures of Conrad, Murray released book-sized prints of

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Illustration 9.3  Portrait of the actor Henry Gaskell Denvil, in character as Byron’s Manfred. Drawn and lithographed by J.  W. Gear (John Miller, Covent Garden, 1834)

the portrait by Thomas Phillips, and for the second edition Murray added two illustrations of The Corsair in which Conrad was drawn to resemble Byron.25 Competing as an illustrator for Murray, Mather Brown submitted his portrait of Byron as “Conrad in Prison” (1814), representing The Corsair (Canto II, ix, 366–377). Also exploiting the public equation of Byron as Conrad, Charles Dibdin Jr. brought forth his theatrical adaptation of The Corsair (Sadler’s Wells, 1 August 1814).26 If the concept of a character infused with autobiographical traits was Byron’s literary

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strategy,27 the popularization of the Byronic hero was certainly central to Murray’s marketing strategy. Byron died seven years after Murray’s first publication of Manfred (1817), and ten years before the first staging. During those years, the quest for autobiographical hints of his personal life in his poetry dominated the reception. Even when critics first noted the similarities to Goethe’s Faust, it was observed that Byron himself had adopted Faustian traits.28 Not a Faustian trait, forgetting has no part in Faust’s bargain with Mephistopheles. For Manfred, however, forgetting becomes crucial to his quest. Damnation for Faust is not forgotten time, but time halted. Damnation is to cease participation in the dynamic flux of time. If he should say to the moment, “Stay, you are beautiful” (“Verweile doch, du bist so schön”), Faust would surrender himself to chains. Mephistopheles, as Goethe has him define himself, is the spirit of negation (“der Geist der stets verneint”). Goethe’s Faust confronts a struggle between the static and dynamic. For Byron’s Manfred, the struggle is between the active engagement of the will and the passive surrender to oblivion. In Manfred, physical place and time are subordinated to the far more complex entanglements of their mental counterparts. From the very beginning, the passage of time is removed from the physical world to be measured, instead, by the clock and calendar of the mind. Further, this mental time is variously synchronized with mythic time. In addition to the time-scheme imposed by the Faustian motif, Byron adapts the legend of Tannhäuser as time-trapped by Venus in her subterranean realm to his scene of Manfred’s bargaining with the Witch of the Alps. Manfred encounters forgotten time in the Hall of Arimanes, where the Prince of the Underworld from the Persian/Zoroastrian cult reigns over the realm divided from the living by the river Lethe which drugged with forgetfulness all who drank its waters. The Abbot of St. Maurice offers yet another scheme of time in which an afterlife of bliss is stretched to all eternity for those who achieved the blessing of the church, or an eternity of torment for those who did not. Although Manfred claims repeatedly that he wants forgetfulness or oblivion, he also maintains a vigil, an internal watch, that is so urgent that he commands others to join him. Oblivion opposed to perpetual vigil is not the same as stasis opposed to dynamism in the activity-philosophy (Tätigkeitsphilosophie) of Goethe’s Faust. Manfred announces the urgency and persistence of the vigil in the opening lines:

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Manfred. The lamp must be replenish’d, but even then It will not burn so long as I must watch: My slumbers—if I slumber—are not sleep, But a continuance of enduring thought, Which then I can resist not: in my heart There is a vigil, and these eyes but close To look within.                 (I.i.1–7)

Keeping watch has a military sense, in which a guard is posted to be on the outlook for an enemy approach. Keeping a vigil has a similar sense, but is also used in terms of devotion, especially nocturnal prayers, keeping alert during the time usually spent asleep. This prompts the first of two major questions: against what encroachment must Manfred stay alert? When Manfred conjures the Seven Spirits (“Earth, ocean, air, night, mountains, winds, thy star”), they ask his bidding. His one request: “Forgetfulness.” The First Spirit, the star of Manfred’s destiny, poses further questions: “Of what—of whom—and why?” What he wants to forget, Manfred answers, is “that which is within me.” The spirits will know it, but he cannot speak. Readers or spectators of the play might surmise that the answers to both questions are essentially the same. That for which he must watch is the same as that which he strives to forget. The Spirit of his destiny grants him a share of the powers over which they have control, but forgetfulness is not among them. They can grant him death, but not oblivion. If “the mind, the spirit, the Promethean spark,/ The lightning of my being, is as bright, / Pervading, and far-darting” as theirs, then he too is faced with an eternity of consciousness (I.i.135–160). Although the Seventh Spirit cannot grant forgetfulness, it can command memory as it transforms itself into the shape of Manfred’s lost love: “if it be thus, and thou / Art not a madness and a mockery, / I yet might be most happy—I will clasp thee” (I.i.189–191). The figure vanishes, and Manfred falls into a faint. Act I opened in Manfred’s Gothic gallery at midnight. It closes at dawn, with Manfred on an Alpine abyss. Manfred abjures his previous quest of the supernatural, and now claims the present moment as the province of his study. The past cannot be changed, the future cannot be known, only the present can offer revelation (I.ii.4–7). In the scenes with the Chamois hunter (I.ii and II.i), Byron contrasts Manfred with the figure of the free Swiss citizen drawn from Rousseau’s Julie, or the New Heloise (1761) and Emile, or On Education (1762) and

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Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell (1804). The Chamois hunter has acquired natural virtue, fortitude, and patience in adversity by living a solitary life, close to nature, and exposed to the perils of his Alpine home. When he comes upon Manfred, apparently ready to leap from a high cliff, the Chamois hunter immediately pulls him back: “Hold, madman!—though aweary of thy life,/ Stain not our pure vales with thy guilty blood” (I.ii.111–112). In the subsequent scene, the Chamois hunter attributes Manfred’s tormenting guilt to “some half-maddening sin” (II.i.31) for which he persecutes himself. Although Manfred has accepted the present as his temporal province, he is forced to distinguish between external and internal time. The Chamois hunter, having witnessed Manfred at the brink of suicide, has concluded that he lacks the fortitude to bear the hardship of life. With the command that the Chamois hunter, “Look on me,” Manfred insists that he bears difficulties and yet lives. “This is convulsion,” the Chamois hunter tells him, “and no healthful life” (II.i.38–43). From the opening monologue, in which Manfred described his internal vigil (I.i.6–17), physical place and time are subordinated to the far more complex entanglements of their mental counterparts. Thus, he rejects the Chamois Hunter’s claim of senior years, and in doing so, defines the mental attenuations beyond physical time: Manfred. Think’st thou existence doth depend on time? It doth; but actions are our epochs: mine Have made my days and nights imperishable, Endless, and all alike, as sands on the shore, Innumerable atoms. (II.i.51–55)

Actions, whether impulsive or premeditated, may take up permanent residency in memory and gradually usurp more and more of conscious reflection. Blake could see “a World in a Grain of Sand,”29 and within De Quincey’s brain, “a theatre seemed suddenly opened and lighted up” and “vast processions passed along in mournful pomp.”30 Manfred’s actions were transformed into “days and nights imperishable,/ Endless,” revealing the nature of his introspective vigils. The Chamois hunter has a prompt diagnosis: “Alas! he’s mad.” Were that the case, Manfred explains, then he could dismiss his visions as “a distempered dream” (II.i.59–61). Still perplexed by the nature of these visions, the Chamois hunter asks, “What is it/ That thou dost see, or think thou look’st upon?” Manfred assures him that his external vision is true and clear. Only when “I look within—”

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Manfred commences but abruptly halts his revelation—“It matters not— my soul was scorch’d already!” (II.i.62–65, 73–74). He provides only a hint of his unnamed act: “my embrace was fatal” (II.i.88). Byron’s borrowing from Faust is most apparent in the scene with Manfred and the Witch of the Alps. Like Goethe in narrating the event of the Walpurgis Night,31 Byron drew from the legend of Tannhäuser and the Venus of the Mount. The Brothers Grimm documented the tale in the collection of German Saga (1816).32 The femme fatale was already a being of mythic prowess in that episode of the Odyssey (Book 7), which described Calypso’s enchanting Odysseus with her singing, dancing, and weaving on her loom with a golden shuttle. By holding Odysseus on her island, Calypso intends to make him her immortal husband. After seven years under her seductive spell, Odysseus wished for change.33 While living in Birmingham, England, Washington Irving wrote of “Rip Van Winkle” (1819), who fell asleep in the Catskill Mountains and woke up twenty years later, having missed the American Revolution. Johann Karl Christoph Nachtigal’s folktale, “Peter Klaus” (1800), describes the fate of a goatherd, being led deep in the woods where others are playing games. He tastes their wine, falls asleep, and awakens twenty years later.34 Apparently Praetorius is the author to whom Manfred refers when he says, “I read that thou wilt pardon to a son/ Of Earth” (II.ii.28–29). Even more than Goethe’s Faust, Manfred resembles the Minnesinger in Praetorius’s account of a wandering penitent whose sensibility rather than lust caused him to tarry in the witch’s grotto: Witch.—what wouldst thou with me? Manfred. To look upon thy beauty—nothing further. (II.ii.37–38)

Among the many sources, Manfred’s encounter with the Witch of the Alps is closest to the tale recorded by Praetorius of the noble knight become a guilt-ridden penitent.35 He answers, “To look … nothing further,” but he nevertheless wants due reciprocity: “Look on me in my sleep,” he tells her, “Or watch my watchings” (II.ii.127–129). To her he has confessed more of the guilt that he continues to bear “since that hour” (II.ii.106–122). Longing to free himself from the bondage of memory, he has “pray’d/ For madness as a blessing … Forgetfulness / I sought in all” (II.ii.122–150) (II.ii.133–150). The oblivion that he seeks, she assures him, may be his “if thou/ Wilt swear obedience to my will.” Surrendering his will is too high a price: “Obey! and whom? the spirits/ Whose presence I command, and

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be the slave/ Of those who served me—Never!” (II.ii.155–160). Although he can tell the Witch of the Alps that in his watching he has “made Mine eyes familiar with Eternity” (II.ii.89–90), he must acknowledge the difference between her immortality and his mortality. When she departs, he laments: We are all the fools of time and terror: Days Steal on us and steal from us; yet we live, Loathing our life, and dreading still to die. (II.ii.164–166)

In his ensuing monologue, Manfred surveys the few in history who have reached across the threshold of life and death. He recalls the Witch of Endor, who summoned for Saul the spirit of Samuel (1 Samuel 28). More relevant to his own vigil, he thinks of Pausanius, who in darkness mistook for an enemy his mistress, Cleonice, and stabbed her. Pausanius summoned her spirit to ask for forgiveness. Instead of forgiveness, she tells him that he is soon to die (II.ii.167–205).36 In recounting the fate of Pausanius, Manfred anticipates his own fate in the summoning of Astarte. His agent in this conjuration is Nemesis, fulfilling the role that Nemesis always performs as inescapable agent of demise. Thrice he begs her “Speak to me,” thrice she utters his name, thrice she bids farewell. Manfred’s dread and loathing are absolved in the sole sentence communicated by the Phantom of Astarte: “To-morrow ends thine earthly ills” (II.iv.152). Once “stripp’d of this mortality” and liberated “from the fleeting things without” (III.iv.133, 134), the discriminations of finite time and place are rendered irrelevant. Irrelevant, too, are the overtures of the Abbot, who encourages him to accept the intercessions of the church. Manfred, as he made clear when he refused to kneel before Arimanes, would kneel together with him before “the overruling Infinite—the Maker” (II.iv.49–50). Manfred is no atheist, but rather a believer in the spiritual, the afterlife, and the divine. He does not believe, however, in the mediation of the church or its priests (III.i.52–56). He has been one to “watch all time, and pry into all place” (III.i.118). “Look on me!” (III.i.138, 149), Manfred twice enjoins the Abbot, so that he might discern one who aged, not with the passing of time, but with watching. By defining the play’s operative temporal and spatial structures as mental rather than physical, Byron offered a mode of dramatic exposition liberated from the strictures of pseudo-Aristotelian time, place, and action.

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The dictum of the “three unities,” attributed to Aristotle and advocated by playwrights and critics of neoclassicism, had been widely repudiated by the latter half of the eighteenth century. Among the Romantic authors, Byron frequently elaborated time-transcending moments. As recognized by many critics of his Manfred, Byron thrice borrowed the declaration by Satan in Paradise Lost: The mind is its own place, and it itself Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven (PL, I.254–255).

In his third paraphrase (first, I.i.252; second, III.i.73–74) of the Miltonic lines, Byron adds that the mind is not only its own place but its own time as well. The mind which is immortal makes itself Requital for its good or evil thoughts— Is its own origin of ill and end— And its own place and time. (III.iv.129–132)

When Milton had Satan insist upon the primacy of mind in constituting its own place as a heaven or hell, he did not anticipate that poets of some future generation would adopt that dictum as proper to revolutionary and post-revolutionary Europe. The opening scenes acknowledge a transition from night to morning, but Manfred’s vigil is unceasing. Among the spirits, in the grotto of the Witch, in the Hall of Arimanes, the measure of Manfred’s time, as Coleridge said of Limbo, is as “unmeaning …/ As Moonlight on the dial of day” (lines 23–24). Months in the external world seemed to have passed during the Walpurgis Night Faust spent on the mountain, as did the years during Tannhäuser’s stay with Venus of the Mount. Awakening from playing nine-pins with the dwarves and imbibing their brew, Rip van Winkle feels disoriented on discovering twenty years have passed. The audience, too, experiences a need for reorientation on leaving the theatre and the temporal illusions of the drama, bringing with them fictional memories. Whether there is unity or disunity of time on the stage, it is an imaginary time never quite in synch with real time.

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Notes 1. Sarah E.  MacPherson, Sergio Della Sala, eds. Cases of Amnesia: Contributions to Understanding Memory and the Brain. London: Routledge, 2019. 2. Samson Penley. The Sleeping Draught, a Farce in Two Acts. London: R. White and T. Searle, 1818. 3. Aristotle. Poetics, chap. 5 (see also chap. 8). 4. Aristotle. Poetics, chaps. 11 and 16. 5. Christopher Hibbert. George III: A Personal History. London: Penguin Books, 1999, 394–96. 6. Stephen M. Archer. Junius Brutus Booth: Theatrical Prometheus. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP, 2010, 7. Junius Brutus Booth, father of John Wilkes Booth, assassin of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln. 7. Amelia Opie. The Father and Daughter, with Dangers of coquetry, ed. Shelley King and John B.  Pearce. Peterborough, ONT: Broadview, 2003, 29–34. 8. Burwick. British Drama of the Industrial Revolution, 116–33, 160–66. 9. Flora Fraser. The Unruly Queen: The Life of Queen Caroline. New York: Macmillan, 1996, 434. 10. Michael Brown. “Rethinking Early Nineteenth-Century Asylum Reform.” The Historical Journal 49.2 (June 2006): 425–452. 11. Sos Eltis. Acts of Desire: Women and Sex on Stage 1800–1930. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2013, 13. 12. William Thomas Moncrieff. The Lear of Private Life; or, Father and Daughter: a domestic melo-drama, in three acts. London: T. Richardson, 1820. 13. Georg Friedrich Händel, libretto Samuel Humphreys. Air: “Tears, such as tender fathers shed,” Deborah (King’s Theatre, 1733), HWV 51: Act III, scene ii. 14. Allardyce Nicoll. A History of English Drama, 1660–1900, 6 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1955–1959. III: 372. 15. George Dibdin Pitt. The Eddystone Elf: a Melo-Drama, In Two Acts. London: John Cumberland, 1828 [1834?]. 16. This popular retort to one who is suspected of exaggerating or lying first appeared in print in John Davis’s novel The Post Captain; or, the Wooden Walls Well Manned; Comprehending a View of Naval Society and Manners (1804). The phrase implies that the Marines are gullible and sailors are discerning. Sir Walter Scott used the phrase in Redgauntlet (1824). 17. R.P.  Brittain. “Cruentation in legal medicine and literature.” Medical History 9 (January 1965 Jan): 82–8. 18. Aristotle. Poetics, chaps. 11 and 16. 19. James Ridley. Tales of the Genii, 2 vols. London: Printed for J. Wilkie, 1764.

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20. Mary Russell Mitford. Sadak and Kalasrade; or, The waters of oblivion: a romantic opera, in two acts (Lyceum, English Opera House, 20 April 1835). Published as Mary Russell Mitford. Sadak & Kalasrade; or, The Waters of Oblivion. London: S. G. Fairbrother, 1835. 21. Charles Sandys Packer was convicted of embezzlement and sentenced to penal transportation as one of 290 convicts aboard the Mangles, 21 November 1839. After his release, he became a successful teacher and performer in Australia. His fortunes again reversed when he was convicted of bigamy. E.  J. Lea-Scarlett. “Packer, Charles Sandys (Stuart Shipley) (1810–1883).” Australian Dictionary of Biography. National Centre of Biography, 1974. 22. Horace Smith. Absent Apothecary. Huntington Library. http://www.eighteenthcenturydrama.amdigital.co.uk/Documents/Images/HL_LA_ mssLA1758/Thumbnails/3. Accessed 2 January 2021. 23. Arthur Henry Beavan. James and Horace Smith: A Family Narrative Based Upon Hitherto unpublished private Diaries, Letters, and other Documents. London: Hurst and Blackett, 1899, 253–256. 24. William Congreve. “Concerning Humor in Comedy” (1696). European Theories of the Drama, ed. Bennett Clark. Cincinnati: Crown Publishers, 1947, 212–13. 25. Byron. The Corsair, a tale (1814). 26. Adapted for melodramatic production, The Corsair was presented as if it were autobiography. The name Conrad was replaced by Byron’s own name as the hero of the adventure: Lord Byron in Athens; or, The Corsair’s Isle (Sadler’s Wells, 6 February 1832). 27. Byron. Journal, 10 March 1814, Byron’s Letters & Journals, 3:250. 28. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, on Byron’s Manfred. George Gordon, Lord Byron. Manfred, ed. Joseph Black, et  al. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview, 2017, 82–88, 125–126. 29. William Blake. “Auguries of Innocence.” The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake, ed. David Erdman. Berkeley: California UP, 1981, 490. 30. Thomas De Quincey. “The Pains of Opium.” Confessions of an English Opium Eater, ed. Grevel Lindop. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996, 67–68. 31. Albrecht Schöne. Götterzeichen, Liebeszauber, Satanskult. Neue Einblicke in alte Goethetexte. Munich: C. H. Beck, 1982, 125–126. 32. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. “Der Tannhäuser.” Deutsche Sagen. Berlin: Nicolaische Buchhandlung, 1816. No. 170 [renumbered 171], 246–47. 33. Homer. The Odyssey, 2 vols. with translation by A.T.  Murray. Harvard: Harvard UP; William Heinemann, Ltd. 1919. Book 7. 34. Johann Karl Christoph Nachtigal. “Peter Klaus.” Volcks-Sagen. Nacherzählt von Otmar. Bremen: Friedrich Wilmans, 1800.

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35. Johannes Praetorius. Blockes-Berges Verrichtung oder ausführlicher geographischer Bericht von den hohen trefflich alt- und berühmten Blockes-Berge. Scheibe: Arnst, 1668, 19–25. 36. Plutarch. Plutarch’s Lives, 11 vols. Greek and English trans. Bernadotte Perrin. Harvard: Harvard UP; William Heinemann, 1914. 2: chap. 6, §§1–6.

CHAPTER 10

Epic Time

In the Introduction to this study of time in Romantic drama, and again in the opening of Chap. 2, I cited the critique of Aristotle’s Poetics in Joseph Harpur’s The Principles of Philosophical Criticism (1810). Agreeing that the series of events which constitute the drama must appear “connected and coherent,” Harpur reappraises Aristotle’s dictum that the duration of events in a tragedy ought to keep “within one revolution of the sun,” or near to it. That dictum was based on Aristotle’s sense of the limits of the mind to remember a duration of time. It is not time that must be remembered, but the succession of events. Harpur suggests that the limits depend on the nature of the details. For example, a skilled gambler might be able to retain the sequence in which playing cards were turned by four players over a five-minute round. For that task, five minutes may exceed the limits of most observers. A traveller, returning from a six-week tour of Italy, might keep her auditors enthralled an entire evening as she recounted her adventures in Venice, Florence, Naples, and Rome. The limits of attention depend on the nature of details, which means the revelations on the stage might well cover the events of months as easily as the events of hours. In addition to the passing of a single day, Aristotle also acknowledged that the limits might be set by what could be vividly retained in imagination or memory.1 The effects of tragedy, Harpur emphasizes, depend on the impression on the imagination, the retention by the memory, and “the energizing of the intellect.”2 Harpur also addresses Aristotle’s concern © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 F. Burwick, Time in Romantic Theatre, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-96079-7_10

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with defining the temporal scope of tragedy as finite, in contrast to the infinite scope of the epic.3 Crucial to the exposition in the previous nine chapters has been how the representation of time, not necessarily successive, affects plot and character. In his account of the porter’s scene in Macbeth (II.iii), De Quincey explains the apparent disruption as actually a necessary temporal threshold, the means by which Shakespeare could manage an alternate time frame (similar to those discussed in Chap. 8). “Another world has stepped in,” De Quincey says of the porter, “and the murderers are taken out of the region of human beings, human purposes, human desires.” This is a crucial juncture, for “the murder must be insulated.” As the time of everyday life is reaffirmed, the spectator becomes “profoundly sensible of the awful parenthesis that has suspended them.”4 De Quincey himself related his mode of “psychological criticism” to the affective aesthetics of his “Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts,” where the moment of the impending but suspended act intensifies an excruciating reader-response. Performance and participation, as he emphasizes in “The Vision of Sudden Death,”5 are achieved only by active determination. Aesthetic response is an active involvement. In that involvement, as De Quincey further delineated in his essay on Shakespeare for the Encyclopaedia Britannica, time becomes encapsulated as an involute of consciousness.6 The playwright commands time to be experienced as an extendable/collapsible moment. In his Poetics, Aristotle formulated two modes of literary time. For tragedy, the playwright should represent the action in a play as occurring within a period of no more than twenty-four hours. His only reference to the time in narrative is his distinction between the epic and tragic forms: Epic poetry agrees with Tragedy in so far as it is an imitation in verse of characters of a higher type. They differ, in that Epic poetry admits but one kind of metre, and is narrative in form. They differ, again, in their length: for Tragedy endeavours, as far as possible, to confine itself to a single revolution of the sun, or but slightly to exceed this limit; whereas the Epic action has no limits of time.7

Shakespeare, who remained untouched by the neoclassical appropriation of Aristotle’s rules, had already engaged in shifting the genre, prompting critics to refer to Measure for Measure as a “dark comedy,” The Merchant of Venice as a “tragicomedy,” Troilus and Cressida as a “problem play,”8 as if these plays took their place along a sliding scale in which comedy became

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tainted by the sinister elements of tragedy. A separate genre was also claimed for Shakespeare’s history plays, acknowledging an extensive debt to the chronicles, which identified their affiliation closer to epic narrative than to tragedy. Epic drama, unacknowledged by Aristotle, is no contradiction in terms. The theatres of the Romantic era offered a rich fare of plays adapted from contemporary novels. Episodes from Sir Walter Scott’s historical novels made it onto the stage within weeks after they appeared in print. Richard Brinsley Peake’s Presumption; or, The Fate of Frankenstein (English Opera House, 28 July 1823) gave a significant boost to the sales of Mary Shelley’s novel (1818). James Robinson Planché’s The Vampire (English Opera House, 9 August 1820) was the most successful of the several adaptations of John Polidori’s novel (1819). Three of James Fennimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales (1823, 1826, 1827; excluding later two, 1840, 1841) were combined in The Long Rifle (Coburg, 21 November 1831). William Thomas Moncrieff’s Lear of Private Life (Coburg, 27 April 1820) was based on Amelia Opie’s Father and Daughter (1801). The last three of these plays were discussed in previous chapters (Chaps. 3, 4, and 9, respectively). As asserted in the Introduction, the Licensing Act encouraged, inadvertently, experimentation in dramatic form, which resulted in a fluidity of genre and an inventive use of time. As a conclusion to this study of time in Romantic drama, I will examine two fulsome specimens of epic melodrama: the first, a key episode from Torquato Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered (1581);9 the second, an adaptation to the stage of Robert Southey’s Roderick the Last of the Goths (1814).10 These two epic plays reveal the extent to which, less than a century after the Licensing Act of 1737, the playwrights had developed the subtle means to address matters of governance that the Licensing Act had intended to proscribe. As an innovative hybrid, epic drama has no fully formulated tradition of characteristics other than a claim to grand historical scope. Grand history plays, such as Henry Milner’s The Reign of Terror (Coburg, 27 December 1824), also achieved a scope of epic proportions, and utilized clever means of structuring time, but they relied less on myth, fancy, or allegory, and more on a chronology of incident. A cohesive plot was not the highest priority for either history plays or epic drama. The strategies of manipulating time, as described in the preceding nine chapters, all concern their use and f­ unction in Romantic drama and melodrama. Epic drama—complementing the venue of comedy, tragedy, historical drama, and melodrama—provided a

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fifth vehicle for these same strategies. This concluding chapter, therefore, allows for revisiting temporal concepts, differing primarily in the claim of epic to larger narrative structures and to extensions of time as duration and continuation.

The Marriage of Camacho; or, All Correct Rather late in the Romantic period, George Almar, who wrote primarily for Sadler’s Wells and the Surrey theatres, produced a fine comedy, Don Quixote, the Knight of the Wonderful Countenance; or, The Humours of Sancho Panza (Adelphi, 7 January 1833).11 Almar was clever in manipulating brief scenes of recollected adventures, units of time. Sancho Panza was cast as a one-man Greek chorus, commenting as eiron on the exploits of the errant knight as alazon. He was also given the responsibility for weaving together the episodic units of time, for establishing sufficient “unity of time” to indicate a coherence in Quixote’s madness. Because Cervantes created an international model for the comic satire of the epic romance, and because his Quixote is supposed to have gone mad from reading too many epic romances, one might have expected more frequent adaptations as epic comedy for the stage. Its presence may have been persistent, but always in a minor form, almost exclusively in pantomime. Excerpts were performed as ballet, as interlude, as harlequinade, and as burletta.12 A notable exception was an earlier play, The Marriage of Camacho; or, All Correct!!! (Coburg, 11 August 1818). Founded by James King and Daniel Dunn, the Royal Coburg Theatre had just opened, and the proprietors felt it important to announce their expertise and mastery in dramaturgy with a parody of the unity of time in French neoclassicism. As they announced in their playbill, this piece was intended “to give Visitors an opportunity of judging the comparative merits of the French and English Stages.” Not the characters, but rather the structure must be presumed to be “All Correct.” Correct status is reserved for the adherence to the French model, which will “preserve the same unities of time and place, consistency of action, simplicity of arrangement, and striking effect, so evident in the Melo-Dramas of the French Theatre.” Further, the present piece will have “one Scene in each Act,” so that “the interest and attention of the Spectator are not disturbed by the change of the place, person, or situation.” With attention to formal requisites, “The Progress of Time is distinctly marked in this first Act of this Burletta by the Scenery exhibiting the various effects of Sunset, Twilight, and Moonlight, all in the same

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Scene,—a novel species of Dramatic Theatrical delusion, but hitherto imperfectly attended to in this Country.”13 Because this melodrama was structured as a two-act burletta with an elaborate ballet for its finale, it did not depart from contemporary representations of Don Quixote as performed at other London theatres—except in its satirical mockery of the “unity of time.” The main incident is the episode in Chapter 22, “Where the wedding of Camacho the Rich is recounted together with what happened to poor Basilio.”14 With a vocal and instrumental score by John Erskine, The Marriage of Camacho opens on a noisy scene with Carrasco, an old muleteer, berating his daughter, Quitieria, for resisting the agreement that she should marry Camacho, a wealthy, arrogant patrician. Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are invited to the wedding celebrations. Don Quixote perceives only the similarities to his own love for the peerless Dulcina. Quitieria loathes Comacho and loves the talented but impoverished student Basilio. Encouraged by the love of Quitieria, Basilio, a dramatist of the College of Salamanca, uses his university studies as a playwright to create scenarios that will enable him to forestall the wedding to Camacho.15 When Basilio exercises his acquired skills as a playwright, he also furthers the parody of “Correct” adherence to the French model. Basilio alters the neoclassical “unity of time,” but he does so by adopting the very metatheatrical ploy exercised in Corneille’s The Theatrical Illusion (see Introduction and Chap. 8). Time is altered in the sequence of the clever scenes staged by Basilio. Depicting future moments arriving faster than a clock might allow, each of these enactments succeeds in deluding Comacho, much as Pridamant was deluded by Clindor. Before Basilio can escape with Quitieria, however, the scene is disrupted by Quixote, who, in his inability to distinguish illusion from reality, believes he must intervene to rescue Quitieria. His total acceptance of illusion ultimately comes to support the lovers. Basilio pretends to stab himself and begs Comacho to allow him to marry Quitieria, so that he can die happy. Quixote is so passionate in his pleas to grant Basilio’s dying wish, that Comacho is overwhelmed with pity and assents to the ceremony. The wedding of the expiring groom and the weeping bride is no sooner accomplished than Basilio’s fatal wound is healed. Conceding that he has been outwitted, Camacho blesses the bride and groom. The marital celebration gives way to a gathering on stage of the entire cast of cooks, students, bridesmaids, muleteers, and peasants, who make up an entire Corps de Ballet to perform “a grand Spanish Ballet in Celebration of the Nuptials of Quitieria.”16

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With his series of vignettes strung together by Sancho Panza as stage narrator, George Almar substituted units of time for unity of time. In The Marriage of Camacho, the playwright directly spoofed the legitimacy of “unity of time” and effectively parodied the residual influence of the French model. But even in creating leaps of time that had all the duration of soap-bubbles, he was far from transforming Don Quixote into epic comedy. “Epic drama,” more so “epic melodrama,” may seem a contradiction in terms precisely because of Aristotle’s astute discrimination of the finitude of tragedy and the infinitude of epic. Yet there were those playwrights of the Romantic stage who responded to the challenge. The infinitude of epic is not achieved by creating a narrative that stretches out forever, but by creating an illusion of the duration of adventures past and a continuation of adventures yet to come.

William Barrymore, The Crusaders! Or Jerusalem Delivered An epic drama, like its narrative counterpart, ought to generate by the final act a sensation that one has known the characters for a very long time. Because Torquato Tasso managed the illusions of duration and continuation persuasively well, William Barrymore17 needed only to preserve a similar sensation of epic time in the dramatic form of The Crusaders! Or Jerusalem Delivered (Coburg, 3 April 1820). To retain dramatic continuity, he also needed to trim away several of the subplots. Barrymore omitted episodes concerning the loves of Sophronia and Olindo, Clorinda and Tancred, also Hermine and Tancred. He focused exclusively on Armida and Rinaldo. Armida is a witch, modelled on Circe in Homer, or Calypso in her attempt to keep Odysseus on her island, or the witch Alcina in Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso (1516). She belongs among the predecessors of the Witch of the Alps in Byron’s Manfred (Chap. 9). Act I opens in the mystic cell of Hidraotes, a powerful magician, who is casting a spell to summon Armida, an enchantress with power equal to his own. He solicits her help in supporting the pagan resistance to the invasion of the Christian Crusaders. She agrees to journey to the Christian camp, where she will use her wiles to seduce the Christian Knights, so that their desires will distract them from their military duties. Arriving in the interior of the city of Jerusalem (I.ii), Armida surveys the local defences. Using her powers, and the theatre’s aerial cables, she soars over the camp

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of the Crusaders outside the city walls (I.iii). She descends into Prince Godfrey’s tent, in which she conducts her survey of Godfrey’s knights. One after another, ten of those knights succumb to her enticements and are turned into rutting beasts.18 Rinaldo alone resists her charms and asserts himself as an intrepid warrior rather than a pet to be cuddled and stroked (I.iv). The next scene, set in a mountainous landscape, reveals a gathering of the leaders of the opposing armies of Christians and Saracens. To avoid great bloodshed, they agree to let victory be decided by single combat. Argante, a battle-scarred chief of the pagans, sends a challenge to the Christian camp. Without hesitation, Rinaldo accepts the challenge (I.v). The combat is to be fought on the expansive plain along the shore of a wide lake. Argante faces off against Rinaldo in sight of both armies to the left and right. Armida swings aloft. Rinaldo’s prowess is not enough to deflect the mighty blows of Argante. He stumbles, falls, and is about to receive the fatal stroke, when he is revived by Armida, who lifts him up and, with her magic power, animates his limbs. The hits and strikes that she enacts are repeated full strength as Rinaldo is enabled to hammer down on Argante, who is subdued and slain. Armida, not Rinaldo, has won that victory. In triumph, she bears his exhausted form away as a trophy (I.vi). In the six scenes of Act I, Barrymore has effectively stretched out the impression of passing time. Just as required of the playwright in conjuring epic time, the experience of time is far more extensive than the playing time. This distinction is not simply in reference to the lapse of time indicated by the dramatic action, but also in reference to the duration of what the audience feels they have experienced. Barrymore has wrought this sense of duration through a series of radical scene changes (cave, city, tent, mountain, plain) accompanied by radical changes in action (conspiracy, seduction, negotiation, battle). Also, the tempo is varied: the series of seductions in the tent do not occur in the same rhythm and pace as the hand-to-hand combat on the plain. By eliminating the subplots, Barrymore gained dramatic cohesion but sacrificed further epic duration. Tasso augmented temporal depth and complexity through simultaneous narrative. In The Tempest and Arden of Faversham (Chap. 6), the clock was turned back to allow the audience to see what another set of characters were doing at the same time. Barrymore did not use simultaneity to enhance the illusion of duration, but he did have his characters revisit the same site to rehearse their accomplishments during an interim “expanse” of time.

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The setting of Act II.i is a return to the setting of Act I.i. Armida again appears in the cell of the magician Hidraotes. This scene varies principally in offering a distant view of Fortunate Island and Armida’s enchanted castle. Punctuating the performance of epic drama with repetition and return is another useful strategy for enhancing the sense of duration. Also, the dialogue refers to events past, present, and future (remembered, occurring, and anticipated). Hidraotes urges Armida to kill Rinaldo at once. Convinced that he is now completely under her power, she decides to keep him for sensual amusement. The next scene takes place in an apartment in Armida’s palace. Alternating her sweet inducements with threats of dire consequences, Armida increases her power over Rinaldo’s weakened will (II.ii). Dressed in silken robes among the pillowed loft in Armida’s enchanted chamber, he is close to acquiescing to her overtures when he falls asleep. Rinaldo’s Dream of the Siege of Jerusalem is communicated by a shadowy narrator, Fame, and a transparent painting that descends over his slumbering body (II.iii). Fame then approaches the dreamer and awakens in him the recollection of brave deeds and the glories of battle (II.iv). The next scene, the Bower of Bliss, represents Armida’s renewed effort to seduce Rinaldo to a life of pleasure. Charles Le Clercq, the ballet master of the Royal Coburg, had his dancers perform an enticing version of Le retour du Zephyr composed by Daniel Steibelt (II.v). Awakening from another slumber, Rinaldo finds himself at a grotto by the sea side. Urania, the guardian genius of the Christians, induces him to leave the Fortunate Island, sail across the Black Sea, and return to Jerusalem to rejoin the Crusaders. This final scene of Act II involves a coup de théâtre which is announced in the playbill as “an extensive piece of Machinery, never before attempted at any other Theatre, calculated to give a full and perfect idea of the horrors of a Storm.”19 The grand stage machinery is a replica of a ship, forty-feet long and “fully manned,” moving across the stage. Furious that her lover is endeavouring to escape her island, Armida raises a storm and bombards the ship with thunderbolts (II.vi). Act III opens with a panoramic view of the outer walls of Jerusalem. The battlefield is strewn with wounded and fallen Crusaders. The next scene shows Rinaldo, rescued from the shipwreck by Urania, recuperating at a fisherman’s hut (III.ii). Rinaldo regains strength as Urania leads him safely to the Christian camp at the city walls. Rinaldo musters his soldiers in a grand attack of the Christian Forces (III. iii). Barrymore puts on a show of swordsmanship (a specialty in his acting). The valiant knights

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succeed in scaling the walls and breaking through the gate. The Crusaders triumph and Jerusalem is delivered (III.iv). “It is over, but it is not over.” In the present age of cinematic sequels, audiences are accustomed to the final scene interspersed with hints of continuation. But the spectators at the Coburg in 1820 were not accustomed to seeing the final curtain drop, but then rise again with further revelations. Barrymore enhanced the illusion of epic duration and continuation by merging his melodrama with the afterpieces. Tasso’s romance of the First Crusade (1095–1099) celebrated the end to one European campaign to recapture Jerusalem and the Holy Land from Muslim control. But other crusades followed. Contributing to the illusion of continuation, the child acrobats of the afterpiece, dressed in costumes that matched those of the crusaders, performed their feats of acrobatic agility on tight ropes stretched high across the stage still displaying the setting of the city walls. The acrobatic interlude was followed by The Golden Dream; or Harlequin Statue. The audience certainly would be surprised to see in the harlequinade a continuation of the epic melodrama in an episode that Barrymore omitted. The wicked King Aladine (Clown) is attracted to the Virgin Mary in his erotic dream. He plans to steal the statue of the Virgin (Harlequin) and have it placed in his chamber. But the statue disappears. Sophronia (Columbina) confesses to the theft. Aladine orders that she be burned at the stake, but Olindo (also Harlequin) intervenes to rescue Sophronia. At this point, the players drop their “story” characters and continue the mad chase as commedia characters. This experiment in epic melodrama may have achieved an illusion of duration, but it also trespassed the usual duration of performance time. The playbill therefore promised “the Accommodation of numerous Visitors from Greenwich, Deptford, &c. a Coach calls at the Theatre a Quarter before Eleven. At which time the Performances terminate.”

William Thomas Moncrieff, Roderic the Goth; or, The Vision of the Cavern Another example of the epic romance transformed into an epic melodrama was William Thomas Moncrieff’s Roderic the Goth; or, The Vision of the Cavern (Coburg, 19 June 1820). Barrymore was far more experienced as actor and stage manager than he was as a playwright. Nevertheless, his epic melodrama exhibited considerable ingenuity in conveying the temporal

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possibilities of the challenging genre. Moncrieff’s credentials were the opposite of Barrymore’s. He achieved considerable success as a playwright, but had less success as a manager beyond his early endeavours in 1810–1811 at the Regency, and later with Vauxhall Gardens in 1827 and City Theatre in 1833. His major successes as playwright were Tom and Jerry (Adelphi, 26 November 1821), a satire on sport fans based on Pierce Egan’s Life in London; and The Cataract of the Ganges; or, The Rajah’s Daughter (Drury Lane, 27 October 1823), addressing colonial interests in the East Indies.20 Moncrieff has already been examined in previous chapters for his inventive manipulation of time. His The Heart of London! or, A Sharper’s Progress (Adelphi, 15 February 1830) uses synoptic episodes (Chap. 4) to delineate the downfall of a thief and conman. In his The Somnambulist; or, The Phantom of the Village (Covent Garden, 19 February 1828), dream time as alternate time (Chap. 8) moved the plot towards a spectacular finale. His Lear of Private Life (Coburg, 27 April 1820) brought to the stage, from Amelia Opie’s novel, the sorrows of a father whose suffering was exacerbated by a blighted memory (Chap. 9). Moncrieff intended that role for Junius Brutus Booth, as he did in adapting the title character from Robert Southey’s epic poem, Roderick the Last of the Goths (1814). Another of the three plays that Moncrieff conceived especially for Booth’s engagement at the Coburg, Roderic the Goth; or, The Vision of the Cavern (Coburg, 19 June 1820), was the most effective in creating the impression of grand deeds and prolonged duration necessary to the illusion of epic time. In 1811, following Moncrieff’s term, Samson Penley became manager of the Regency Theatre in Tottenham Street, but he, too, gave it up after three years of meagre profits. Together with John Jonas, he founded a theatre in Peckham. Junius Brutus Booth joined Samson Penley’s troupe, playing in provincial theatres throughout England, and even accompanying the troupe on a tour of the Low Countries in 1814. Booth continued to perform with Penley and Jonas after their return to Peckham, but two years later he was ready to attempt more. He created a sensation with his debut in the title role of Richard III (Covent Garden, 12 February 1817).21 Charles Kemble, manager at Covent Garden, promoted Booth’s position as a potential rival of Edmund Kean. But Kean himself persuaded Samuel Arnold, manager at Drury Lane, to offer Booth a more attractive contract. From 1817 to 1821, Kean and Booth often performed in the same plays, Kean as Othello to Booth as Iago, and vice versa. Followers of the two actors, Boothites and Keanites, would occasionally try to outshout

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each other during performances. Perhaps sensing an entrapment, Booth ended his career at Drury Lane to pursue his acting fortunes in the United States. The era of John Philip Kemble and Sarah Siddons had prevailed for a quarter of a century. Kemble adhered to an acting style that was thoroughly choreographed. Siddons was a heroine of stoic reserve giving way to explosive crescendo.22 Edmund Kean infused his roles with a new dynamic movement, totally spontaneous and seemingly unrehearsed. Samuel Taylor Coleridge refers to a similar quality in his delivery with its “rapid descents from the hyper-tragic to the infra-colloquial.” Coleridge describes the abrupt fits and starts of Kean’s acting “like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning.”23 Kean’s first London appearance was as Shylock (Drury Lane, 26 January 1814), with subsequent leading roles in Richard III, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, and King Lear. Booth, whose London career began three years after Kean’s, developed a contrasting style of acting, marked by slowdown and pause.24 A major element in the manipulation of time in the drama is governed by the actor and acting style. This truth becomes evident and particularly relevant, when a playwright composes a play with a specific player in mind. Such was the case when Moncrieff, as house playwright at the Coburg, began creating roles especially for Booth and his time-stretching mastery of pantomime. During his three engagements at the Coburg in 1820, Booth performed in the premiere productions of three plays that Moncrieff had crafted especially for him: The Judgment of Brutus; or, Tarquin and Lucretia (Coburg, 24 January 1820); The Lear of Private Life (Coburg, 24 April 1820); and Roderic the Goth; or, The Vision of the Cavern (Coburg, 19 June 1820). In each of these three, Booth is given a role fully exploiting his signature style of slowdown and pause. An adaptation of Colley Cibber’s compiled version of Shakespeare’s Richard III (Coburg, 27 December 1819) was selected for Booth’s first performance in his first engagement at the Coburg. Accustomed to playing the unadulterated Shakespearean Richard at Drury Lane, Booth felt handicapped by Cibber’s version. For his second week, Booth performed as Publius Horatius in George MacFarren’s The Horatii and Curatii (Coburg, 3 and 5 January 1820). When Booth’s engagement was extended, Thursday through Saturday, 20, 21, and 22 January 1820, he continued his role in MacFarren’s play. Similar to Rinaldo meeting Argante on the plain to avoid the slaughter of entire armies, the three Horatii agree to battle the three Curatti of Alba

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Longa. All three of the Curatii are wounded, two of the Horatii are slain, but Publius remains standing uninjured. Booth has Publius slow down and pause. He could defeat each of his opponents in one-on-one, but the three opponents closing in on him are sure to kill him. He ponders, he taunts, he runs, and the three Curatii run after him. The strongest of the three catches up with him. He falls before the second brother arrives, who falls in turn before the third brother becomes the last to be slain. Returning home with the armour of the Curatii as his trophies, Publius Horatius is met by his sister Carmilla, who had been engaged to one of the defeated Curatii. Realizing her betrothed has been slain, she kneels in grief and wails his name. Denouncing her for mourning an enemy of her family and her country, he slowly turns, slowly draws his sword, then with a swift blow strikes his sister dead. He is brought to trial, but his acquitted by the assembly. Booth was clearly comfortable with this role, and it met with strong audience approval. But back at Drury Lane the proprietors were increasingly discontent that he was drawing away a part of their regular audience. Together with Covent Garden, the two licensed theatres charged the Coburg with violating the Licensing Act by having Booth perform in a formal tragedy. The management of the Coburg denied the charge: The Proprietors of the Two Patent Theatres, taking Offence at the Attraction of this Gentleman [Junius Brutus Booth], have thought proper to institute a Prosecution, by the way of Information, against the Coburg Theatre for the alleged Offence of rationalizing their Performances, and bringing them within that pale of Perfection which they would claim exclusively to themselves. … the Proprietors of the Coburg Theatre will take every means in their Power to resist this attempt at abridging their Sources of Amusement, and instituting a Monopoly, which by crushing Emulation, will be fatal to the efforts of Genius, and the generous Exertion of every species of Excellence.25

The complaint was not directed against the engagement of Booth, but rather against the performance of The Horatii and Curiatii as a formal tragedy, which violated the legal strictures against spoken drama as opposed to pantomime and the musical forms of burletta and melodrama. As proprietors, James King and Daniel Dunn argued that the procession, pageantry, and spectacle of The Horatii and the Curatii kept the representation clearly apart from the traditional genre of tragedy. It was solely the

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superior acting of Booth that elevated the quality of the performance. The hostility from Covent Garden and Drury Lane further reveals the extent to which the very restrictions of the Licensing Act prompted the innovation in dramatic form being developed by the unlicensed theatres. In creating new roles for Booth, Moncrieff was also constructing new variations on traditional generic forms. Two weeks later, the proprietors were able to announce that “Mr. Booth is Re-Engaged at this Theatre for Six Nights.” For his third performance, Moncrieff prepared a new melodrama, The Judgment of Brutus (Coburg, 24 January 1820). Moncrieff followed the story as told by Shakespeare in The Rape of Lucrece. Booth’s role commences with a seemingly lethargic Brutus slowly rousing from his feigned slow-witted indecision to become a forthright liberator of Rome’s antimonarchical cohort. Tarquin’s rape of his kinswoman gives Brutus the circumstance he needs to provoke the populace to overthrow the king. Tarquin goes into hiding. Lucretia shifts from rage to despair and back to rage again. After confessing to Collatine, her husband, what had taken place, she commits suicide. Collatine is prepared to kill himself as well, but Brutus convinces him that vengeance is the proper retribution. When his soldiers carry Lucretia’s body through the streets, Brutus rouses the citizens to condemn Tarquin and banish him from Rome. Moncrieff accurately perceived that Booth’s acting relied on his physical command of a character’s deliberative turning from hesitation to haste, from passive withdrawal to active engagement. Moncrieff deserves only partial authorial credit for The Judgment of Brutus. He was, however, an astute compiler. In addition to using Shakespeare as his source, Moncrieff compiled his historical melodrama with passages from Nathanial Lee’s Lucius Junius Brutus (1680), William Duncombe’s Junius Brutus (1734), Volatire’s Brutus (1730), Hugh Downman’s Lucius Junius Brutus (1779), and Richard Cumberland’s Sybill, or the Elder Brutus (1813; Drury Lane, 3 December 1818). These sources were acknowledged in the playbill to underscore the argument that the performance was not a formal tragedy, but only a series of dramatic recitations. Passages from these sources, with “numerous Additions, Alterations,” were arranged to form a composite drama, but each was also selected to showcase Booth’s acting and delivery. In response to the objections from the licensed theatres, it was answered that Booth performed in a series of dramatic recitations. The playbill announced that Booth’s engagement had been extended for six nights, and that he would appear “in the

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Principal Character of Mr. Moncrieff’s New Historical Drama, entitled The Judgment of Brutus; or, Tarquin and Lucretia” (Coburg, 24 January 1820). In addition, the performance would be accompanied by “Glees, Chorusses, &c. Music by T. Hughes and Feron.” The proprietors of the Coburg further defended the right of their patrons to enjoy the same beneficial exposure to the arts as the privileged patrons of the licensed theatres. They intended to give the Public an opportunity of judging, by comparison, not only of the opposite Conceptions of Actors, and competed Genius of Artists, elicited by generous Emulation; but of the comparative Merits and effective Dramatic tact of Authors, setting the question of superiority between the Native Talent and self resources of Minor Theatres, and the Patent Rights and descended Material of Royal Theatres at rest forever. A considerable degree of apprehension being understood to exist in the Public mind, that it is intended, in consequence of the late proceeding of the Royal Theatres, to depart from the present style of Performances, which have met with such distinguished Approbation at this Theatre. The Proprietors proudly beg leave to inform the Public, that nothing has hitherto transpired to lead them to suppose so deteriorating a proceeding will be at all necessary, or in the slightest degree insisted upon by the high Authority under which they have the honor of Entertaining the Public. 26

In addition to “setting …at rest forever,” the vaunted superiority of the licensed theatres, the proprietors of the Coburg declare that they will persist in offering the “the present style of Performances.” Moncrieff followed The Judgment of Brutus with The Lear of Private Life (Coburg, 24 April 1820), as his second play crafted specifically for Booth in the lead role. The proprietors announced that during his engagement Booth “will Personate the Principal Character, in an Entirely New Domestic Melo-Drama, founded on one of Mrs. Opie’s most affecting and Popular Tales, and calculated to display his peculiar Powers in the most striking manner.” On the one hand, Moncrieff must maintain “deference to the great talents of the Author of the Novel,” The Father and Daughter (1801); on the other, he must depict the father, Fitzarden, in a manner that will allow Booth the full expression of his abilities as tragic actor. Previously discussed as a play of forgotten time (Chap. 9), the emphasis was on the passage of time defined by the loss of memory. Here we must acknowledge Booth revealing in his body language how memory drove him mad. His Fitzarden exists in a condition in which time is

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brought to a standstill of grief. His mind is still capable of celebrating glimpses of the youthful Agnes. But those memories are shattered by hallucinations of her death. His calm gives way to a storm. Booth slows down, pauses, explodes in anger and despair. His fits of madness are sudden and complete. As described in the playbill, “the grand Talents of Mr. Booth” reveal “the Heart-broken and Distracted Father, overpowered with filial tenderness and Parental suffering.”27 Moncrieff’s Roderic the Goth; or, The Vision of the Cavern (Coburg, 19 June 1820) provided Booth with a third role for his engagements at the Coburg, but also one that specifically aligned itself with epic romance rather than with traditional tragedy. The playbill referred explicitly to the subtitle and the visionary experience in the “Cavern of Destiny.” As a convention in the epic, the vision is proleptic, a prophecy of future events, perhaps for the dreamer or visionary a revelation and conversion as well.28 In Barrymore’s epic melodrama, The Crusaders! Or Jerusalem Delivered (Coburg, 3 April 1820), Rinaldo escapes Armida’s erotic spell by means of a dream of battle to arouse him from his acquiescence to lascivious pleasures. Rinaldo’s dream of the Siege of Jerusalem is communicated by Fame, who elucidates a painting of the battle which glows over his slumbering body (II.iii). In Moncrieff’s epic melodrama, the effect of the vision is also to arouse a conversion scene, but the vision comes in a more elaborate allegory, and the conversion occurs only at the end (III.v). Like drama, epic too implicated earlier literary and historical forms and traditions. In Don Juan, Byron enumerated the requisite ingredients: twelve books; three episodes, a list of ships, captains, and kings (Canto I: cc, 1593–1600). Byron also acknowledged the epic convention of beginning in the middle: Most epic poets plunge “in medias res”; (Horace makes this the heroic turnpike road), 29 And then your hero tells, whene’er you please, What went before—by way of episode.30 (Don Juan, Canto I:iv, 41–44)

Byron notes that beginning in the middle leaves a debt to be paid. A new middle must be inserted in which the true beginning, ab ovo, can intrude with all the necessary background information concerning the characters, their circumstances, passions, and troubles. For Roderic, the last king of the Goths, that means primarily “his unhappy Passion for Florinda, the Daughter of his General Count Julian.”

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The opening, in media res, takes place in the Moorish camp in the mountains of Granada (I.i). The military might of the Moors is represented in a spectacular epic procession of troops and the arrival of Muezzin, the Moorish leader, with his troops from Barbary (I.ii). Moncrieff did nothing to disguise the implicated conflicts of Southey’s version: suggesting that the conflict between Islam and Christianity were somehow related to revolution and monarchy, or that the Moorish invasion of Spain was replicated in Napoleon’s invasion. The poem’s story begins shortly after the Moors invade. The Goths are conquered, and Roderic’s rule is ended. He escapes pursuit, abandons the active life of a warrior, and seeks a contemplative life disguised as a priest. He is plagued with remorse for his rape of Florinda, which has brought suffering to the entire country. The sin was further exacerbated by his pretence as priest. Through his guilt and remorse over his rape of Florinda, Booth endeavours to arouse sympathy for the character. That sympathy is subsequently augmented by Florinda’s confession that she had deliberately excited his passions. As revealed by street gossip, the loyalties of governance are complicated by the personal affairs (I.iii). Florinda, daughter of the Spanish Count Julian, is secretly in love with Zamoro, a Moorish prince and heir to the throne of Granada. Count Julian, who was expected to strengthen the Spanish resistance by enlisting the aid of their former enemies, the Goths, has learned of his daughter’s rape and now pledges his military support to the Moors (I.iv). With a romantic landscape in the background, the setting in the prison tower of Roderic’s palace is rendered less threatening (II.i). The ensuing scene, delivered in Booth’s deliberative style, reveals the background details of Roderic’s loss of power and the new struggle for dominance between the Spanish and the Moors (II.ii). Florinda admits that her own desires misled Roderic and caused the incident (II.iii). She escapes the tower, and Zamoro is captured. Appealing to Roderic’s remorse over their sin, Florinda secures the subsequent release of Zamoro (II.iv). The succession of time is effectively halted and replaced by mental time. During his ensuing dramatic monologues, Roderic contemplates the relevance of religion in politics and in individual experience (II.v). In terms of actual performance, the soliloquies stop the progression of the plot in order to expose Roderic’s otherwise hidden motives and emotions. In addition to providing occasion for more character development than was usual in melodrama, Moncrieff also created fitting circumstances for the slowdown and speed-up rhythms of Booth’s movement on stage.

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In Act III, Roderic must confront the extent of his own isolation. His people, the Goths, have been forced into hiding. Under his own rule, he oppressed the Spanish and fought against the Moors. In the impoverished dwelling of Peroquillo, a half-starved Spanish hidalgo, Roderic is given food and a pallet (III.i). Peroquillo’s humble compassion does not erase his memory of the Goth subjugation of the Spanish. In his encampment, Count Julian meets with Moorish troops (III.ii). Florinda confesses to Roderic that she had willingly submitted to his advances. She feels guilt over the seduction because she has now transferred her affections to Zamoro. Roderic is in a state of conflict. His guilty self-torment persists, as he vacillates between anger and anguish. Time and external conflict are again suspended when he enters the confessional at Seville (III.iii). The next scene is climactic. This is the scene of vision and conversion. Roderic pauses at the threshold, standing between the colossal statues of Time and Destiny, wavering whether he should enter the Cavern of Destiny (III.iv). The vision enables Roderic to foresee his fate, a prophetic prolepsis (as in Chap. 2). Roderic realizes that Spain is his only country and his mission must be to protect and preserve Spain (III.v). The battle in the final scene, which confirms the downfall of the Goths, is followed by the union of Florinda and Zamoro (III.vi). As did Barrymore’s The Crusaders, Moncrieff’s Roderic sought to create the epic dimensions of duration and continuation. Barrymore, as theatre manager, could actually achieve continuation by utilizing the interlude and the harlequinade as extensions to the action of the play. Moncrieff had the advantage of writing for an experienced tragic actor who was especially skilled in performing the shifts from physical time to mental time. One did not have to be familiar with Southey’s epic poem to recognize that Moncrieff had adapted only a fraction of the narrative. Southey himself concluded with time’s continuation: “Days, months, and years, and generations pass’d,/ And centuries held their course” (Canto xxv). Having witnessed a finale in which Roderic, after his conversion, now fights to uphold Spain, the audience recognized that the old warrior had many more battles yet to fight. In epic melodrama appropriated from the epic romances of Tasso and Southey, neither playwright attempted to bring more than an excerpt to the stage—much in the usual manner of excerpting a novel for stage performance. Epic time is fostered through the illusion that the events dramatized far exceed the actual time for performance. A sense that the enacted time on stage is longer than real time is characteristic of most drama, especially

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after the overthrow of “unity of time.” Epic drama achieves a greater disparity but relies on the same strategies covered in the previous eight chapters. The playing time of a dramatic piece, of course, always depends on the tempo with which an actor performs individual scenes. Booth in the role of Roderic exercised a range of subtleties in relaxed and rapid pace. The role of Rinaldo was performed by Henry Kemble, who had little of the skill shared by other members of his great acting family.31 Subtleties of any sort were not a part of his repertory. The Coburg at this period had an exceptionally fine troupe, and it was the theatre in which three dozen of the plays discussed in this volume had their premiere performance.

Conclusion In recognizing the emergence of time as a prominent element in Romantic dramaturgy, this book makes a significant contribution to the study of early nineteenth-century theatre. The survey of experimentation on how time functioned on stage is by no means complete, but nevertheless sufficient to identify recurrent patterns and variations among the themes and strategies. Temporal entrapment occurs more frequently than plots of liberation and escape. For better or worse, time had become a dominant force in plot and action. Familiar plays open up new perspectives when considered in the context of lesser-known contemporary dramas which share similar techniques to manipulate temporality. And lesser-known plays may reveal surprising ingenuity. Time in Romantic Theatre explores how dramatists, actors, composers, musicians, and scene painters manipulated the passage of time in early nineteenth-century plays. Audiences during the years from the 1790s to 1830s were more preoccupied with time than in any earlier period. Time had become dictatorial. With colonial expansion and the advent of global trade, shipping cargo and mercantile goods dictated adherence to time charts. This book contends that the increased preoccupation with time in Romantic drama was the effect of the industrial revolution, trade, and colonization, which brought about the need for more precision in time-­ keeping (especially with regard to nautical time), increased awareness of clock time, and a feeling of acceleration in the pace of life. No longer expected to adhere to “unity of time,” playwrights were free to explore other options for keeping time on the stage. In setting and in dialogue, time asserts its dramatic presence: characters allude to time in dialogue; the playwright specifies time in plot and in stage directions;

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clocks become necessary stage props; church bells provide crucial sound effects. Because drama of the period frequently engaged in documentary or in social satire and commentary, real external time intruded upon the stage. Each of the chapters in this volume examines a major strategy for manipulating time, but also acknowledges combination with multiple strategies. Time gained a virtually dictatorial power in domestic life, the work-place, and throughout the entire social structure. Audiences were thoroughly conditioned to recognize how character, plot, and action were made to unfold under the control of time. Recollections and anticipations intrude upon thoughts and actions. Consequences loom. The quest for oblivion to obliterate a guilty conscious is a psychological gambit to alter time or the awareness of time, as it weighs on Byron’s Manfred or Moncrieff’s Roderic. In Gothic melodrama, a frightening circumstance is the persistence of a past that cannot be purged or forgotten, a figure from the past who cannot be banished or exorcised. The “eternal return” (“ewige Wiederkehr”) of evil becomes a defining attribute of Vanderdecken in Edward Fitzball’s The Flying Dutchman (Chap. 3). So, too, the return of Brunhilde in George Almar’s Wake not the Dead; or, The Spectre Bride (Coburg, 18 October 1824). Time is charted and calculated in old and new ways. Tower clocks and church bells still rang the hours as of old, but merchants as well as sailors now consulted longitudinal time as a life-or-death measure. In the eighteenth century, steam whistles were introduced as low-water alarms for steam-engine boilers; in the nineteenth century, the steam-whistle became as well the crack of the whip that commanded workers to their labours in factories, mills, and mines. Although sometimes denigrated for reliance on formulaic plots and stereotypical characters, Romantic plays were more responsive to, and engaged with, social conditions than any other genre. No longer obliged to restrict action to the presumed limits of a natural day, the Romantic theatre provided a stage open to a wide range of experimentation with new measures and motions of time. Each chapter gives attention to a specific strategy in representing time: flashbacks and flashforwards; impending doom of destiny or a fatal hour; an entire lifetime, from youth to age, collapsed to the synoptic time of a few hours on stage; time stopped as magical timeless interlude or posed as a tableau vivant; time replayed in witness testimony in a crime melodrama; the longitudinal time of nautical dramas; the alternate time of plays in which events supposedly happening at different times are staged simultaneously; time forgotten or partially

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suppressed to erase traumatic memories; epic time which rivals the vast vistas of narrative in staging entire episodes of imaginary or historical events. Providing plot summaries of dozens of better- and lesser-known plays, Time in Romantic Theatre analyzes the representation of time in relation to attributes of acting and performance gleaned from contemporary reviews. With the awareness that theatre performance is Gesamtkunst, this study provides frequent reminders of the relevance of painting and set designs, music with song and dance, costume and the construction of historical period and cultural milieu. Conjuring the experiences of theater audiences in the Romantic period, this study animates the efforts of playwrights in their repudiation of “unity of time” and their innovative deployment of other modes of representing time in a period of increasing appreciation of Shakespeare’s violations of that stricture. The playwright manages time as a structuring principle, but also as a performative element.

Notes 1. Aristotle. Poetics, chap. 7. 2. Harpur. Philosophical Criticism (1810), 196, 198 3. Harpur. Philosophical Criticism, 187–191; Aristotle. Poetics, chaps. 5 and 6. 4. Thomas De Quincey. “On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth.” The Works of Thomas De Quincey, 21 vols. London: Pickering and Chatto, 2000–2003. 3:150–154. 5. De Quincey. “The Vision of Sudden Death,” Works 16:429–49. 6. Burwick. “Murder and the Aesthetics of Violence.” “Shakespearean Involutes.” Thomas De Quincey: Knowledge and Power. New York: Palgrave, 2001, 67–87, 88–111. 7. Aristotle. Poetics, chap. 7. 8. Ira Clark. Rhetorical Readings, Dark Comedies, and Shakespeare’s Problem Plays. Gainesville: Florida UP, 2007. 9. Torquato Tasso. Jerusalem Delivered, trans. Edward Fairfax. New York: Capricorn Books, 1963. 10. Robert Southey. Roderick, the last of the Goths. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1814. 11. George Almar. Don Quixote, the Knight of the Wonderful Countenance; or, The Humours of Sancho Panza, printed from the acted copy, with copious remarks, critical and explanatory, by W. T. Moncrieff. London: Richardson and Clarke, 1833.

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12. Ballet. Don Quichotte; ou, les noces de Gamache (Haymarket, 14 February 1809). Ballet. Don Quixote; ou, la finesse de l’epe (Coburg, 6 July 1818). Charles Dibdin. Interlude The Spanish Gala; or, Cervantes Knight (Sadler’s Wells, 7 June 1813). Pantomime. Harlequin and Don Quixote (Pavilion, 11 January 1813). Pantomime. Harlequin and Don Quixotte; or, Sancho Panza in his Glory (Covent Garden, 27 December 1819). Burletta. Don Quixotte and his Man Sancho Panza (Royal Amphitheatre, 13 September 1831). 13. British Library, Playbills 174–175. The Marriage of Camacho; or, All Correct!!! (Coburg, 11 August 1818). 14. Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra. Don Quixote. Editor, translator John Rutherford. London: Penguin Classics, 2003. 15. Review: The Marriage of Camacho; or, All Correct. Theatrical Inquisitor, or Monthly Mirror. 13.7 (July-August 1818):153. Without any apparent awareness of parody or satire, the reviewer repeats from the playbill that the play is “written with the same attention to the unities of time and place which characterize the French drama.” 16. In addition to this burletta, Don Quixote, chap. 22, was also source for the libretto of Felix Mendelssohn’s Singspiel in two acts, Die Hochzeit des Camacho (Berlin Schauspielhaus, 29 April 1827). 17. “William Barrymore, 1759–1830.” Gentleman’s Magazine (October 1830) 375; Philip H.  Highfill. A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers (1973) 1:355. 18. Cf. Homer. Odyssey 10.238, Circe, an enchantress who turned men into pigs; Spenser, Faerie Queene, Book II.xii, Acrasia, an enchantress who turned men into pigs. 19. British Library, Playbills 174–175. The Crusaders; or, Jerusalem Delivered (Coburg, 3 April 1820). 20. William Thomas Moncrieff. Selections from the dramatic works of William T. Moncrieff. Chosen for their extreme popularity from between two and three hundred dramas, &c. produced and performed at the Theatres Royal, Drury Lane, Covent Garden, the Haymarket. London: H. Lacy, 1851. 21. Burwick. Playing to the Crowd. London Popular Theatre, 179. 22. Burwick. “Ideal Shattered: Sarah Siddons, Madness, and the Dynamics of Gesture.” Notorious Muse: The Actress in British Art and Culture 1776–1812, ed. Robyn Asleson. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 2003, 129–149. 23. Coleridge. April 27, 1823. Table Talk, 2 vols. Recorded by Henry Nelson Coleridge. Ed. Carl Woodring. The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 14. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1990.

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24. Burwick. “Georgian Theories of the Actor.” Oxford Handbook to the Georgian Playhouse, eds. Julia Swindells and David Taylor. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2014, 177–96. 25. British Library, Playbills 174–175. “Appeal to the Public!” (Coburg, 10 January 1820). 26. British Library, Playbills 174–175. “Announcement to the Public.” (Coburg, 24 January 1820). 27. British Library, Playbills 174–175. The Lear of Private Life (Coburg, 24 April 1820). 28. Richard H. Lansing. “Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso and the Homeric Model.” Comparative Literature Studies 24.4 (1987): 311–25. M.  D’Alessandro. “Type, antitype, figure and exemplum: Dream and vision in Tasso’s epic poetry.” Quaderni d’Italianistica 24 (January 2003): 74–6. 29. Horace. The Art of Poetry: an Epistle to the Pisos. Epistola ad Pisones, de arte poetica. London: Printed for T. Cadell, 1783; rpt. AMS Press, 1976. II, iii, 148. 30. Virgil, Spenser, and Milton adhere to Horace’s “in media res” as epic law. An example of the explanatory background episode is Aeneas’s tale to Dido in Æneid, II. 31. Burwick, and Manushag Powell. British Pirates in Print and Performance. New York: Palgrave, 2015, 2–7.

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Index1

A The Abbey Lands; or, Arden of Faversham [revised from anonymous play attributed to Kyd, Marlowe, or Shakespeare] (Coburg, 30 November 1824), 16, 151, 228 Aeschylus, 12, 64 Almar, George Don Quixote, the Knight of the Wonderful Countenance [from Cervantes] (Adelphi, 7 January 1833), 250 Don Quixote, the Knight of the Wonderful Countenance; or, The Humours of Sancho Panza, printed from the acted copy, with copious remarks, critical and explanatory, by W. T. Moncrieff. Richardson and Clarke, 1833, 266n11

The Fire Raiser; or, The Haunted Tower (Surrey, 21 February 1831), 10 Oliver Twist. [from Dickens] (Surrey, 19 November 1838). V. Dicks, n.d., 140, 141 The Rover’s Bride (Surrey, 30 August 1830). J. Cumberland, 1830, 15 Amherst, John H The Burmese War; or, Our Victories in the East (Royal Amphitheatre, 27 March 1826), 175 The Demon of the Ganges; or, The Tiger Tribe (Sadler’s Wells, 20 Oct 1834), 175 Glenarvon, [from the novel by Lady Carolyn Lamb] (Coburg, 13 July 1819), 153

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 F. Burwick, Time in Romantic Theatre, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-96079-7

285

286 

INDEX

Amherst, John H (cont.) The Shipwreck of the Grosvenor East Indiaman (Royalty, 14 October 1822), 17, 175–178 Tippoo Sahib; or, The Storming of Seringapatan (Coburg, 20 Jan 1823), 175 Arden of Feversham (1762). Three Centuries of English and American Plays, ed. Henry W Wells. Hafner Pub. Co., 1963, 168n4 B Baillie, Joanna Constantine Paleologus: The last of the Caesars (1805). The Dramatic and Poetical Works. 446-478, 12, 62, 72–76 De Monfort (1798). Dramatic and Poetical Works. 76-105, 97n60 The Dream (1812), Dramatic and Poetical Works. 260-273, 19, 20, 72, 97n62, 193–196, 205 Orra (1812). Dramatic and Poetical Works. 235-259, 72, 97n61, 206n8 Bannockburn; or, The Ghost Seer (Coburg, 5 February1827), 19, 188, 205 Barnett, C. Z. The Bravo [from Cooper’s novel] (Surrey, 21 February 1833), 101 Oliver Twist [from Dickens’s novel] (Royal Pavilion, 31 May 1838), 140 Barrymore, William, 252–256, 261, 263 The Crusaders! Or Jerusalem Delivered [from Tasso] (Coburg, 3 April 1820), 252–255, 261, 263

Beaumarchais, Pierre-Augustin Caron de, 63 Le Barbier de Séville (1775), Le Mariage de Figaro (1781), and La Mère coupable (1792), ed. Jean Delabroy. Pocket Classiques, 2010, 96n36 Beazley, Samuel, 10 The Knights of the Cross; or, The Hermit’s Prophecy [from Scott’s Talisman] (Drury Lane, 29 May 1826). J. Cumberland, 1826, 10 Bernard, William Bayle The Pilot: A Tale of the Sea [from Cooper’s novel] (Coburg, 17 July 1826), 101 Beverley, Henry Roxby Chateau Bromege; or, The Clock Struck Four (Regency, 18 May 1818). Carchett, 1818, 16, 27n58, 149, 162, 167 Harlequin and the Silver Dove; or, The Fairy of the Golden Ladder (Adelphi, 26 December 1838), 141 Shakespeare Gallery, “Embodying and portraying a series of Tableaux Vivants” (Liverpool, Queen’s Theatre 12 March 1832), 141 Shakespeare Gallery, second series (Liverpool, Queen’s Theatre 31 March 1832), 141 Blangini, Felice, 55 L’anneau de la fiancée (Théâtre de Nouveautés, 28 January 1828), 55 Bouilly, Jean Nicolas, 34 L'Abbé de l'Épée (Théâtre-Français, 14 December 1799). Velhagen et Klasing, 1865, 34 Brougham, John, 188

 INDEX 

The Demon Gift; or, Visions of the Future (English Opera House, 29 June 1840), 188 Buckingham, George Villiers, 2nd Duke of, 190 The Rehearsal. The Rehearsal (Theatre Royal, 7 December 1671; publ. 1672), ed. Edward Arber. English Reprints, 1869, 190 Buckstone, John Baldwin, 55, 56, 101, 102, 192 The Bravo [from Cooper’s novel] (Adelphi, 11 February 1833), 101 Burges, James Bland The Knight of Rhodes (Surrey, 15 May 1820), 165 Byron, George Gordon, Lord The Deformed Transformed. Printed for J. and H. L. Hunt, 1824, 87 Manfred (Covent Garden, 29 October 1834). Broadview, 2017, 20, 235–242 C Calcraft. John William The Battle of Bothwell Bridge [based on Scott’s Old Mortality]. (Edinburgh, 3 May 1823), 205 The Bride of Lammermuir [from Scott’s novel] (Edinburgh, 1 May 1822), 10 Campbell, Andrew V., 111 The Gambler’s Life in London [adapted from Ducange] (Sadler’s Wells, 1 January 1829), 111 Captain Ross; or, The Hero of the Arctic Regions (Royal Pavilion, 28 October 1833), 183

287

Carmouche, Pierre, 98n81 Le Vampire (1820), ed. Ginette Picat-Guinoise. Droz, 1990, 98n81 Centlivre, Susanna A Bold Stroke for a Wife. (Lincoln’s Inn Fields, 3 February 1818). W. Meres and F. Clay, 1724, 6 Love at a Venture (Bath, New Theatre, 1706). Printed for John Chantry, at the Sign of Lincoln’s-Inn Square, 1706, 3 Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel De, 267n14 Don Quixote. Editor, translator John Rutherford. Penguin Classics, 2003, 267n14 Cibber, Colley, 257 Richard III [compiled version of Shakespeare] (Coburg, 27 December 1819), 257 Cobb, James The Haunted Tower [adaptation of Marquis de Sade, “La Tour enchantée”; ms at Clark Library]. Music by Stephen Storace (Drury Lane, 24 November 1789). Printed for P. Burne; and J. Jones, 1790, 123 Love in the East. Music by Stephen Storace (Drury Lane, 25 Feb. 1788). Printed for W. Lowndes, 1788, 124 The Pirates: an Opera in three acts, as performed at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane. Music by Stephen Storace (King’s Theatre Haymarket, 21 November 1792). Printed and sold by J. Dale, 1792, 144n4

288 

INDEX

Cobb, James (cont.) The Siege of Belgrade. Music by Stephen Storace (Drury Lane, 1 Jan. 1791). Printed, and sold by the booksellers, 1791, 123 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor Remorse (Drury Lane, 23 January 1813), 234 Zapolya: A Christmas Tale. Rest Fenner, 1817, 10, 110 Colman, George, the Elder The Clandestine Marriage [opening scene from Hogarth] (Drury Lane, 20 February 1766). T. Becket and P. A. De Hondt, 1766, 129, 145n16 Ut Pictura Poesis! or, the Enraged Musician [based on Hogarth] (Haymarket, 17 May 1789). Printed for T. Cadell, 1789, 128 Colman, George, the Younger, 57, 70, 234 Blue Beard (Drury Lane, 16 January 1798), in The Broadview Anthology of Romantic Drama, ed. Jeffrey Cox and Michael Gamer. Broadview, 2003. 75-96, 70 Corneille, Pierre Cinna’s Conspiracy, trans. Colley Cibber. Printed for Bernard Lintott, 1713, 27n68 Horace, trans. Charles Cotton. London, 1671, 19, 27n67 L’Illusion comique. Bossange, Masson & Besson, 1797, 27n66, 205n2 The Lyar. Printed for W. Lowndes, J. Rivington and Sons, and S. Bladon, 1786, 19, 27n69

Oeuvres de P. Corneille. Tome II, La Suivante - La Place Royale Médée - L’illusion comique - Le Cid. A.A. Renouard, 1817, 27n70 Cross, James C., 184 The Apparition (Haymarket, 3 September 1794), 184 Cross, John, 132 Black Beard the Pirate; or, The Captive Princess (Stockport, 2 November 1801), 132 Cumberland, Richard The Battle of Hastings. Printed for the proprietors, under the direction of John Bell, 1793, 25n33 Sybill; or, The Elder Brutus (1813; Drury Lane, 3 December, 1818), 259 D Dance, Charles A Dream of the Future (Olympic, 6 November 1837), 187 The Fatal Curiosity [adapted from Colman’s Blue Beard] (Lyceum, 8 August1842), 70 Delavigne, Germain, 55, 121 Libretto; musical score Giacomo Meyerbeer, Robert le Diable (Paris Opéra, 21 November 1831), 121 Dibdin, Charles, Junior The Corsair [based on Byron] (Sadler’s Wells, 1 August 1814), 235, 236 Doctor Syntax and another Doctor (Royal Amphitheatre, 5 May 1823), 134

 INDEX 

Life in London; or, The Larks of Logic, Tom and Jerry, an extravaganza in three acts. [based on Egan] J. Lowndes, 1822, 25n27 The Rake's Progress [based on Hogarth] (Surrey, 10 July 1826), 109, 130 The Spanish Gala; or, Cervantes Knight [interlude from Cervantes] (Sadler’s Wells, 7 June 1813), 267n12 Dibdin, Thomas John The Cabinet (Covent Garden, 9 February 1802), 184 Constantine and Valeria; or, The Last of the Caesars [from Baillie, Constantine Paleologus] (Royal Circus, 23 June1817), 74, 76 The Fatal Experiment [from Lillo, The Fatal Curiosity] (Sadler’s Wells, 27 December 1826), 71 The Fatal Island (Royal Circus, 28 July 1817), 71 The Murdered Guest [from Lillo, The Fatal Curiosity] (Royal Circus, 13 October, 1818), 71 Zapolya: or the Warwolf [from Coleridge] (Royal Circus [Surrey], 9 February 1818), 25n38 Dickens, Charles, 138, 140, 188 A Christmas Carol; or, A Dream of the Past, Present and Future (Strand, 12 February 1844), 188 Dimond, William The Bride of Abydos [from Byron] (Drury Lane, 5 February 1818), 191, 235 The Nymph of the Grotto (Covent Garden, 15 January 1829), 184

289

Don Quichotte; ou, les noces de Gamache [ballet from Cervantes] (Haymarket, 14 February 1809), 267n12 Don Quixote; ou, la finesse de l'epe [ballet from Cervantes] (Coburg, 6 July 1818), 267n12 Don Quixotte and his Man Sancho Panza [from Cervantes] (Royal Amphitheatre, 13 September 1831), 267n12 Downman, Hugh, 259 Lucius Junius Brutus; or, the expulsion of the Tarquins [from Voltaire]. Printed for J. Wilkie; Fielding and Walker; G. Kearsley; P. Elmsley; W. Davis, 1779, 259 Dryden, John, 1, 190 The Conquest of Granada (two-part drama, TheatreRoyal), 1670 and 1671. 1672; 6th edition. Printed for J. Tonson and T. Bennet, and sold by R. Wellington, G. Strahan, and B. Lintott, 1704, 190 Ducange, Victor Trente ans, ou la vie d'un joueur (Porte Saint-Martin, Paris, 19 June 1827). J. B. Dupon, 1827, 110 Duncombe, William, 259 Junius Brutus [from Voltaire] (Drury Lane, 1734). Printed and sold by J. Roberts, 1735, 259 Dunlap, William, 18 Yankee Chronology; or, Huzza for the Constitution. D. Longworth, Dramatic repository, Shakespeare-Gallery, 1812, 18

290 

INDEX

E Ebsworth, Joseph, 17 The Wreck of the Dauntless. London, 1829, 17 F Farley, Charles, 188 The Battle of Bothwell Bridge [from Scott’s Old Mortality] (Covent Garden, 22 June 1820), 188 Faustus; or, The Demon's Victim [adapted from translations of Goethe’s Faust] (Coburg, 7 June 1824), 106 Fawcett, John Obi, or Three-Finger'd Jack (Haymarket, 2 July 1800); published as: Obi, or Three-­ Finger'd Jack. A Serio Pantomime in Two Acts. Duncombe and Moon, n.d. [c. 1825?]; ed. Charles Rzepka, Romantic Circles Praxis, 202 Tuckitomba, submitted 21 February 1828. British Library. Plays Submitted to the Lord Chamberlain, London, 1828ff., 533-602, 203 Fenner, Theodore, 145n8, 145n9 Opera in Views of 2005. the Press, 1785-1830. Printed Southern Illinois UP, 1994, 145n8 Fielding, Henry, 5, 69–70 Tumble-down Dick; or, Phaeton in the Suds. printed for J. Watts, 1736, 5 Fitzball, Edward [in collaboration with Buckstone] Robert le Diable [based on Eugène Scribe’s libretto to the opera by Giacomo Meyerbeer] (Adelphi, 23 January 1832), 55, 56, 102, 121, 122

[in collaboration with Buckstone] The Sea Serpent (Adelphi, 3 October 1831), 102 Der Freischütz; or, The Demon of the Wolf’s Glen, and the Seven Charmed Bullets (Surrey, 6 September 1824). G.H. Davidson, 1824, 12 The Devil's Elixir; or, The Shadowless Man (Covent Garden, 20 April 1829). J. Cumberland, 1829, 57 The Flying Dutchman (Adelphi, 1 January 1827). G. H. Davidson, 1827, 90, 93 The Innkeeper of Abbeville (Surrey, 13 May 1822). Thomas Hailes Lacy, 1871, 165 Jonathan Bradford! or, The Murder at the Road-side Inn (Surrey, 12 June 1833). John Dicks, 1833, 165 The Pilot [based on Cooper’s novel] (Adelphi, 31 October 1825). Simpkin and Marshall, 1825, 101 Red Rover [based on Cooper’s novel] (9 Adelphi, 9 February 1829), 101 William the Conqueror; or, The Days of the Curfew Bell (Coburg, 17 May 1824), 6 G The Gamblers; or, The Murderers at the Desolate Cottage (Coburg, 17 November 1823), 153 Garrick, David, 122, 129 The Clandestine Marriage [opening scene from Hogarth] (Drury Lane, 20 February 1766). T. Becket and P. A. De Hondt, 1766, 129, 145n16

 INDEX 

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 50–56, 64, 77, 237, 240 Faust, ed. Erich Trunz. Christian Wegner Verlag, 1963, 50–56, 77, 94n4, 237 The Golden Dream; or Harlequin Statue [from Tasso] (Coburg, 3 April 1820), 255 Greenwood, Thomas, 123–124, 140 Oliver Twist [from Dickens] (Sadler’s Wells, 3 December 1838), 140 H Haines, John Thomas, 143 The Unhallowed Templar (Coburg, 16 April 1827), 143 Händel, Georg Friedrich, 220 Deborah (King's Theatre, 1733), 243n13 Harlequin and Don Quixotte; or, Sancho Panza in his Glory [pantomime from Cervantes] (Covent Garden, 27 December 1819), 267n12 Harlequin and Don Quixote [pantomime from Cervantes] (Pavilion, 11 January 1813), 267n12 Holcroft, Thomas Deaf and Dumb [from Bouilly, L'Abbé de l'Épée] (Drury Lane, 24 February 1801). J. Ridgway, 1801, 34 The Man of Ten Thousand: a comedy. (Drury Lane, 23 January 1796) G. G. and J. Robinson, 1796, 10, 31, 46n9 Road to Ruin (Covent Garden, 18 February 1792). J. Bragg, 1792, 10, 35, 109

291

A Tale of Mystery, a melo-drame [from Pixérécourt, Coelina (1800)] (Covent Garden, 13 November 1802). Richard Phillips, 1802, 34 Holman, Joseph George, 67, 68, 70 The Red-Cross Knights. (Haymarket, 21 August 1799). Printed and published by Geo. Cawthorn; sold also by Messrs. Richardson; H. D. Symonds, J. Wallis, and W. West; and J. Wright, 1799, 67 Houwald, Christoph Ernst, 61 Das Bild: Trauerspiel in fünf Akten. G.J. Göschen, 1821, 61 Hugo, Victor, 38, 165 Le roi s’amuse (Comédie Française, 22 November 1832). Nelson, 1937, 165 Humphreys, Samuel, 243n13 (libretto), Deborah (King's Theatre, 1733), 243n13 J Jerrold, Douglas Ambrose Gwinett; or, A Sea-Side Story [from a tale by Isaac Bickerstaff] (Coburg, 6 October 1828), 14, 114, 152 Black-Eyed Susan (Surrey, 8 June 1829). Purkess, 1830, 101 Descart, the French Buccaneer (Coburg, 1 September 1828), 152 Fifteen Years of a Drunkard’s Life (Coburg, 24 November 1828). Samuel French, 1830, 14 The Flying Dutchman (Surrey, 15 October 1829). T. Richardson, 1829, 152

292 

INDEX

Jerrold, Douglas (cont.) The Mutiny at the Nore (Royal Pavilion, 7 June 1830). J. Cumberland, 1828, 178 Popular Felons (Coburg, 5 June 1826), 192 The Press Gang; or, Archibald of the Wreck. (Surrey, 5 July 1830), 178 The Rent Day (Drury Lane, 25 January 1832). Comedies and Dramas by Douglas Jerrold. Bradbury and Evans, 1854, 15, 138 Jouffrey, Achille, 98n81 Le Vampire (1820), ed. Ginette Picat-Guinoise. Droz, 1990, 98n81 K Kemble, Charles, 15, 256 Plot and Counterplot; or, The Portrait of Michael Cervantes [from Le portrait de Michel Cervantes by Michel Dieulafoy]. Printed for C. Chapple, 1812, 15, 26n54 Kenney, James, 184 The World. (Drury Lane, 31 March 1808) Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1808, 184 L Lawler, Dennis L., 13, 107–110, 129 Industry and Idleness [from Hogarth] (Surrey, 15 April 1811), 13, 108 Lee, Nathanial, 259 Lucius Junius Brutus (1680), ed. John Loftis. Nebraska UP, 1967, 259

Lemon, Mark, 188 The Demon Gift; or, Visions of the Future (English Opera House, 29 June 1840), 188 Lewis, Matthew Gregory The Harper’s Daughter [adapted from Schiller’s Kabala and Liebe] (Covent Garden, 4 May 1803). M. Carey, 1813, 69 One O’Clock; or, The Knight and the Wood Daemon (Drury Lane, 1 April 1807). D. Longworth, 1813 [based on London edition, 1811], 15, 89, 93 Timour the Tartar. (Covent Garden, 29 April 1811). Lowndes and Hobbs, 1811, 143 Lillo, George The Fatal Curiosity, ed. William H. McBurney. Nebraska UP, 1966, 97n54 The Fatal Curiosity (Haymarket, 21 March 1737), in The Works of Mr. George Lillo, With Some Accounts of His Life. T. Davies, 1775, 12 The London Merchant; or, The History of George Barnwell (Drury Lane, 21 June 1731), in The Works of Mr. George Lillo, 1775, 13, 99, 107, 129 Lolonois; or, the Bucanniers of 1660 (Surrey, 10 August 1828), 203 The Long Rifle [from Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales] (Coburg, 21 November 1831), 13, 99–107, 168n5, 249 Ludlam, George, 16, 164 Mysterious Murder; or, What’s the Clock. Birmingham. Printed for and sold by the author, 1817, 16

 INDEX 

M MacFarren, George Guy Fawkes; or, the Gunpowder Treason (Coburg, September 1822), 106 The Horatii and Curatii (Coburg, 3 and 5 January 1820), 257 MacNally, Leonard, 183 Fashionable Levities (Covent Garden, 2 April 1785), 183 Marlowe, Christopher, 11, 50–56, 59, 73, 86, 90, 93 The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus (1604, 1616), ed. W. W. Greg. Clarendon Press, 1950, 94n3 The Marriage of Camacho; or, All Correct (Coburg, 11 August 1818), 250–252 Mathurin J. Brisset, 55 L’anneau de la fiancée (Théâtre de Nouveautés, 28 January 1828), 55 Mendelssohn, Felix, 267n16 Die Hochzeit des Camacho; libretto, Friedrich Voigts [from Cervantes] (Berlin Schauspielhaus, 29 April 1827), 267n16 Milner, Henry M. The City of the Plague, and the Great Fire of London (Coburg, 26 December, 1825), 106 Faustus; or, The Demon’s Victim [adapted from translations of Goethe’s Faust] (Coburg, 7 June 1824) The Gambler’s Fate; or, A Lapse of Twenty Years [based on Ducange’s Trente ans, ou la vie d’un joueur] (Drury Lane, 15 October 1827), 14, 110–111

293

The Hut of the Red Mountains; or, Thirty Years of a Gambler’s Life [based on Ducange’s Trente ans, ou la vie d’un joueur] (Coburg, 3 September 1827). T.H. Lacy, n.d, 110 Preventive Service (Coburg, 23 February 1823), 203 The Reign of Terror (Coburg, 27 December 1824), 249 Thirty Years of a Gambler’s Life [adapted from Ducange; cf. Gambler’s Fate and Hut of the Red Mountain] (Adelphi 15 October 1827; Coburg, 10 January 1831). Davidson, 1827, 111 Mitford, Mary Russell, 21, 209, 231–233 Sadak and Kalasrade; or, The Waters of Oblivion [from Ridley, Tales of the Genii] (English Opera House, 20 April 1835). S.G. Fairbrother, Lyceum Printing Office, Exeter Court, Strand, [1835?], 244n20 Moncrieff, William Thomas The Actor in Distress; or, How to Raise your Salary (Coburg, 1 May 1820), 192 The Cataract of the Ganges; or, The Rajah’s Daughter, a grand romantic melo-drama in two acts. Simpkin & Marshall, 1823, 18, 184, 256 The Heart of London! or, A Sharper’s Progress (Adelphi, 15 February 1830; revived at the Coburg, 10 January 1831). John Dicks, n.d., 111

294 

INDEX

Moncrieff, William Thomas (cont.) The Judgment of Brutus; or, Tarquin and Lucretia [from Shakespeare’s The Rape of Lucrece] (Coburg, 24 January 1820), 257, 260 The Lear of Private Life; or, Father and Daughter [based on Opie’s Father and Daughter] (Coburg, 27 April 1820). T. Richardson, 1820, 20, 214 Rochester; or, King Charles the Second’s Merry Days. (Olympic, 16 November 1818). Dicks, No. 528; Lacy, vol. 83, 1819, 197 Roderic the Goth; or, The Vision of the Cavern [based on epic by Southey] (Coburg, 19 June 1820), 255–264 Selections from the dramatic works of William T. Moncrieff. Chosen for their extreme popularity from between two and three hundred dramas, &c. produced and performed at the Theatres Royal, Drury Lane, Covent Garden, the Haymarket. H. Lacy, 1851, 267n20 The Somnambulist; or, the phantom of the village: a dramatic entertainment, in two acts; printed from the acting copy, with remarks, biographical and critical, by D.-G.[George Daniels]; embellished with a fine engraving, by Mr. Bonner, from a drawing taken in the theatre, by Mr. R. Cruikshank. John Cumberland, 1828, 206n12 The Somnambulist; or, The Phantom of the Village (Covent Garden,

19 February 1828). The Music-Publishing Company, Limited, 19 Peter's Hill, St. Paul's, 1828, 20, 193, 199, 201, 205, 256 Tom and Jerry; or, Life in London [based on Egan, Life in London] (Adelphi, 26 November 1821). James L. Huie, 1826, 111 The Monster of the Eddystone; or, The Lighthouse Keepers (Royal Pavilion, 17 February 1834), 222 Müllner, Adolf, 61 Die Schuld. G.J. Göschen, 1816, 61 The Murderer’s Dream; or, The Abbey of Glenthorn [from Scribe, Le Songe] (Olympic 20 October 1818), 20, 193, 197, 205 N Nodier, Charles, 89 Le Vampire (1820), ed. Ginette Picat-Guinoise. Droz, 1990, 98n81 The North Pole; or, The Arctic Expedition (Coburg, 22 June 1818), 180, 181, 183 P Peake, Richard Brinsley The Haunted Inn (Drury Lane, 31 January 1828), 165 Presumption; or, the Fate of Frankenstein [based on a novel by Mary Shelley](English Opera House, 28 July 1823). John Dicks, 1823, 54, 192, 249

 INDEX 

Penley, Samson, 211, 256 The Sleeping Draught (Drury Lane, 1 April 1818), 211 Pirandello, Luigi So it is, (if you think so) (Così è (se vi pare), 1917. Collected Plays, ed. and trans. Robert Rietty. J. Calder; Riverrun Press, 1988, 189 Pitt, George Dibdin, 14, 21, 109, 127, 209, 222–231 The Eddystone Elf (Sadler's Wells, 7 April 1834; Royal Pavilion, 18 August 1834). John Cumberland, 1828 [1834?], 14, 222 Pixérécourt, René-Charles Guilbert de, 34 Coelina (1800), in Théatre choisi de G. de Pixerécourt; précédé d’un introduction par Ch. Nodier; et illustré par des notices littéraires dues à ses amis, membres de l’Institut, de l’Académie française, et autres hommes de lettres, 4 vols. Tresse, 1841–43, 34 Planché, James Robinson The Brigand [based on Le bandit by Théaulon and Eastman’s illustrations to Lady Callcott, Three Months Passed in the Mountains] (Drury Lane, 18 November 1829), 134–136 The Brigand Chief. A Drama in Two Acts with Music, Lord Chamberlain's Plays, British Library, Add. MSS 42898, 146n31 The Brigand: a Romantic Drama, in Two Acts; printed from the acting copy, with remarks,

295

biographical and critical, by D.---G. [George Daniels]; as now performed at the Theatres Royal, London; embellished with a fine engraving by Mr. Bonner, from a drawing taken in the theatre, by R. [Robert Isaac] Cruikshank. Charles Cumberland, 1829, 147n36 Der Freischütz; or, The Black Huntsman of Bohemia [from Kind’s libretto] (Covent Garden, 14 October 1824), 77 Doctor Syntax in London [based on Rowlandson’s illustrations to Combe] (Sadler’s Wells, 31 March 1823), 134 Perseus and Andromeda (Olympic, 6 December 1833), 184 The Rent Day (Drury Lane, 25 January 1832), 15 The Vampire; or, The Bride of the Isles. A Romantic Melo-Drama, in two acts: preceded by an introductory Vision [from Polidori’s novel] (English Opera House, 9 August 1820), in Plays, ed. Donald Roy. Cambridge UP, 1986, 89, 93, 249 Pocock, Isaac, 20, 193, 202–205 Tuckitomba; or, The Obi Sorceress (Covent Garden, 7 April 1828). British Library. Plays Submitted to the Lord Chamberlain, London, 1828ff., 533-602, 20, 193, 203 Polidori, John William, 39, 89, 249 The Vampyre, a Tale. Printed for Sherwood, Neely, and Jones, 1819, 98n80

296 

INDEX

Poole, John, 35, 192, 197 Paul Pry (Haymarket, 13 September 1825). John Duncombe, 1825, 35, 192 The Progress of a Rake; or, Three Degrees of Crime [based on Hogarth] (Coburg, 4 March 1833), 131 R Raimbach, Abraham, 137 Memoirs and Recollections of the late Abraham Raimbach, Engraver. Frederick Shoberl, 1843, 68-82, 147n40 Raymond, Richard John Castle of Paluzzi (Covent Garden, 27 May 1818), 179 Robert the Devil, Duke of Normandy (Covent Garden, 2 February 1830). Also: Robert the Devil; or, The Bridal Ring (Coburg, 28 November 1829) and Robert the Devil; or, The Wizard's Ring (Coburg, 21 June 1830), 55 State Prisoner (Royal Amphitheatre, 25 October 1819), 179 The Wreck of the Leander Frigate; or, The Fatal Sandbank (Coburg 14 July 1828; revived at the Royal Pavilion, 18 July 1831), 179 Rede, William Leman A Model of a Man (Adelphi, 12 November 1838). British Library Add. Ms. 42949 (20). Play submitted to the Lord Chamberlain, London. Includes untitled songs without the music, 132 The Rake's Progress [based on Hogarth] (City, 28 January

1833). John Duncombe, 1833; Rede’s second version further elaborated character and visual detail (Edinburgh, 4 July 1841), 109, 130 Stars; or, A Dramatic Fête (Rehearsal) (Strand, 1835), 19 Reynolds, John Hamilton, 54 The Devil and Dr. Faustus (Regency, 19 September 1825), 54 Reynoldson, Thomas H., 129–131 The Curse of Mammon; or, The Earl's Son and the Citizen's Daughter; being a Fac-simile Embodyment of Hogarth's Marriage a-la-­ Mode [based on Hogarth]. (Surrey, 1 April 1839). J. Cumberland, 1839, 145n17 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 15, 238 Pygmalion. Music by Horace Coignet (Lyon: Hôtel de Ville, 1770). J. Vanden Berghen, 1772, 15 Rowley, William, 10 The Birth of Merlin (Curtain Theatre, Shoreditch, 1622). Thomas Johnson for the booksellers Francis Kirkman and Henry Marsh, 1622, 10 S Schiller, Friedrich The Bride of Messina (Die Braut von Messina; Weimar, 19 March 1803), trans. George Irvine. John Macrone, 1837, 60 The Bride of Messina. Trans. George Irvine. John Macrone, 1837, 95n22 Die Braut von Messina (Weimar, 19 March 1803), 60

 INDEX 

Die Räuber (Nationaltheater, Mannheim, 13 January 1782), 96n45 The Robbers: A Tragedy: in Five Acts. Translated and Altered from the German [of Schiller]. As it was Performed at Brandenburgh-­ House Theatre; MDCCXCVIII. With a Preface, Prologue and Epilogue, Written by Her Serene Highness the Margravine of Anspach. W. Wigstead, No. 40. Charing Cross; and M. Hooper, No. 212, High Holborn, 1799, 96n46 The Robbers: a tragedy. Translated [by Alexander Tytler] from the German of Frederick Schiller. Printed for G. G. J. & J. Robinsons, 1792, 96n45 Wallenstein. A Drama in two parts, Trans. Samuel Taylor Coleridge. T. N. Longman and O. Rees, 1800, 96n42 Scribe, Eugène Le songe, ou, La chapelle de Glenthorn: mélodrame en trois actes et à grand spectacle. Chez Fages, 1818, 206n11 musical score Giacomo Meyerbeer, Robert le Diable (Paris Opéra, 21 November 1831), 55, 121 “2nd Series of Tableaux Vivants from Shakespeare” (Guernsey, 29 December 1836), 143 “Series of Tableaux Vivants from Shakespeare,” (Guernsey, St. Peter Port Theatre Royal, 13 December 1836), 142, 148n57 “Series of Tableaux Vivants from the works of Lord Byron and Sir

297

Walter Scott” (Guernsey, St. Peter Port Theatre Royal, 25 November 1836), 142 Shadwell, Thomas, 49 The Libertine (Dorset Garden, 1676), 49 Shakespeare, William, 1–3, 8–10, 13–15, 22, 30, 31, 33, 64, 68, 71–73, 99, 109, 110, 112, 121, 126, 150, 171, 189, 190, 212–214, 221, 234, 248, 249, 257, 259, 266 Siddons, Henry, 10, 11 Time’s a Tell-tale (Drury Lane, 27 October 1807). Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1807, 10 Smith, Horace, 21, 233–235 The Absent Apothecary (Drury Lane, 10 February 1813). Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery. Manuscript: Larpent 1758, 21, 233 S.N.E. [as signed in Preface]. The Murdered Maid; or, The Clock Struck Four (Warwick, 1818; Norwich, 1820). Printed for the Author, by Heathcote and Foden, 1818, 16, 27n59 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs [based on tale by the Brothers Grimm]. Walt Disney Productions. Los Angeles: RKO Radio Pictures, 21 December 1937, 207n28 Soane, George, 53, 54, 90 Faustus (Drury Lane, 16 May 1825), 54, 90 Sophocles, 12, 30, 59, 60, 71 Oedipus Rex, trans. R. C. Jebb. The Complete Greek Drama. I: 369-417, 71

298 

INDEX

Stirling, Edward Nicholas Nickleby; or, Doings at Do-the-Boys Hall [from Dickens] (Adelphi, 19 November 1838), 141 Oliver Twist [from Dickens] (Adelphi, 25 February 1839), 141 Stoppard, Tom, 189 Arcadia (1993), with a foreword by the playwright, an introduction by Diana Ketcham and four views of Sidley Park by William Matthews. Arion Press, 2001, 189 Storace, Stephen, 122–124 Songs, duets, trios, chorusses, &c. in The Pirates, an opera in three acts, now performing at the King’s Theatre, Haymarket. Printed for E. Cox, Queen Street, Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields, 1792, 145n7

Nouveautés, 12 September 1829; Théâtre-Royal, 1836). À la librairie dramatique, 1829, 135 Thompson, Benjamin, 20 The Stranger, trans. from Kotzebue. The German Theatre, 6 vols. Vernor and Hood, 1800, 20 Tieck, Ludwig, 63 Der gestiefelte Kater [Puss-in-Boots] (1997), ed. Helmut Kreuzer. Reclam, 1984, 206n4 Tobin, John, 184 The Honey Moon (Drury Lane, 31 January 1805). Printed for E. Bronson, 1805, 184

T Tableaux Vivants from Shakespeare (Weymouth, 20 October 1837), 143 Ten Years of a Woman's Life; or, The Fruits of Bad Advice. (Royal Pavilion, 21 April 1834), 109 Terry, Daniel Faustus (Drury Lane, 16 May 1825), 54, 90 Guy Mannering; or, The Gipsey’s Prophecy (Covent Garden, 12 March 1816) [from Sir Walterr Scott], 10 Théaulon, Emmanuel, 135 Le bandit. Music by Jean-Simon Eykens. (Paris: Théâtre des

W Walpole, Horace The Mysterious Mother (1768) [based on The Fatal Discovery, 1698]. Printed for J. Dodsley, 1781, 20, 60 Webb, Charles, 140 The Vagrant, his Wife and Family; a melodrama in two acts ... As performed at the Royal City of London Theater. To which are added original remarks, sketches ... Embellished with an engraving, from a drawing taken in the theatre during representation. J. Pattie, 1838, 148n52

V Voltaire [François-Marie Arouet], 259 Brutus (1730), The Dramatic Works, 2 vols. Printed for J. Walker [etc.], 1781, 259

 INDEX 

Weber, Carl Maria von Der Freischütz (Schauspielhaus Berlin: 18 June 1821; Lyceum [English Opera House], 22 July 1824). C.F. Peters, n.d.; rpt. Dover Publications, 1986, 62, 76 Der Freischütz, score adapted by Henry Rowley Bishop, libretto trans. and adapted by W. McGregor Logan from Friedrich Kind (Drury Lane, 10 November 1824), 77 Werner, Zacharias

299

Ausgewählte Schriften, 5 vols. Verlags-Comptoirs Comptoir, 1840-1841; rpt. Herbert Lang, 1970, 95n29 Der vierundzwanzigste Februar (Coppet, private theater of Madame de Stael, 13 October 1809). Brockhaus, 1815, 12, 61 Wilkie, David, 15, 133, 137–141, 144 The Rent Day (Drury Lane, 25 January 1832). Comedies and Dramas by Douglas Jerrold. Bradbury and Evans, 1854, 15, 138