Henry Crawford as Master Betty: Jane Austen on the “Disabling” of Shakespeare

Abstract

Jane Austen’s novel Mansfield Park with its direct quotes from Shakespeare’s Henry VIII and its underlying plot reference to King Lear may be read as a cri de cœur from Austen at the poor state of the British theatre in the early nineteenth century. At a time when Shakespeare’s plays were performed in altered versions to please audiences, when the dialogue was known to many only in fragments, and when children such as Master William Betty were lionized equally by the same audience for playing Hamlet and sentimental roles in the clap-trap comedy Lovers Vows, Mansfield Park calls for the nation to return to the Complete Works of Shakespeare to rediscover pride in itself, its heroes, and its heroines and to know Fanny Price as the proper subject for a novel.