Strategy for Reconciliation in English Drama of the Romantic Period: Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Illegitimate Theatre, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey

Abstract

In the 1790s playwrights attempted pungent satires, but they did not, or could not continue the satiric tones consistently: even though the plays contained social criticism it had to be reconciled by patriotic sentiments or assertions at all events.BR In this article I would like to study how British theatre was influenced by patriotic sentiments and how it in turn contributed to the reproduction of them. In doing this, I will focus on Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s less explored but still important play, The Critic (1779). I will also discuss other plays of illegitimate theatre to show the extensive influence of patriotic sentiments on British theatre. I will read Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey’s play, The Fall of Robespierre: An Historic Drama (1794) along with The Critic to explore the three playwrights’ strategy for reconciling patriotism with social criticism. For example the playwrights at this time could save their political remarks and avoid the suspicious eye of the magistrates by inserting patriotic spectacles in the concluding part. Thus some plays showed the abruptness and awkwardness of the transition from radicalism to patriotism; there was the unseen presence of the eye of the authorities, or the playwright’s anxiety about the censorship behind the transition. Playwrights at this time had to reconcile their social criticism with hints of patriotic sentiments.