Part of an Englishwoman’s Constitution: Frances Burney, Sarah Harriet Burney, and Shakespeare

Abstract

ABSTRACT By the end of the eighteenth century, the English national “bard” William Shakespeare had become an increasingly familiar figure of literary and moral authority upon which novelists and playwrights could draw for creative inspiration. For authors and half-siblings Frances Burney (1752–1840) and Sarah Harriet Burney (1772–1844), Shakespeare’s writings not only served as an influence over their published works, but were also frequently cited and discussed in their private writings and personal correspondences. This article examines the detailed engagement with the works of Shakespeare in the letters, journals, and fiction of both Frances and Sarah Harriet Burney. The Burneys not only demonstrated an extensive knowledge of Shakespeare and his plays in their private letters and journals, but also used Shakespeare as both a source of plot and an integral tool for characterization within their novels. While Sarah Harriet and her characters express a bardolatrous admiration for Shakespeare and his writings, Frances offers a more skeptical approach to the unquestioning adulation of Shakespeare that had come to pervade eighteenth-century literary criticism and culture.