Outside the Box: The Female Spectator, The Fair Penitent, and the Kelly Riots of 1747

Abstract

This essay investigates the participation and agency of women performers and spectators in the eighteenth-century playhouse through an examination of a protracted conflict known as the Kelly Riots that took place in Dublin in 1747. This conflict, which was sparked by actor-manager Thomas Sheridan's attempt to end the custom of allowing male spectators access to the area behind the scenes during the performance, has traditionally been read as part of a renegotiation of the conception of the "gentleman." This article examines the role that women played in this conflict—not, as the standard interpretation has it, as endangered victims, but as members of a new constituency that appeared to be forming across lines of class, religion, and ethnicity, and which for that brief historical moment suggested an alternative model of identity that might threaten some of the power structures that were supporting and supported by the legitimate theater. The essay concludes with an extended reading of the performance that ended the first phase of the riots—the 19 March 1747 benefit performance of Nicholas Rowe's The Fair Penitent—which offers a new perspective on the play as well as on the impact that the imposition of a stable and unbreakable curtain line had on the agency of the female spectator.