THE ROMANTIC STAGE: HOLDING THE MIRROR UP TO NATURE AND CULTURE

Abstract

The aim of this volume is to re-examine late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century British theatre and drama in belief that they were rich and innovative phenomena and that they made an essential contribution to aesthetic and ideological complexity of British culture in Romantic period. The theatrical event represented an important part of an Englishman's constitution,1 and many intellectuals of including P.B. Shelley and Leigh Hunt, maintained that dramatic representation had a close connection to social, political and ethical conduct,2 as it encourages and refines [the audience's] humanity.3 William Hazlitt's was, arguably, voice that synthesized in most suggestive way this intimate connection between theatre and British culture of day. In Preface to A View of English Stage (1818), a volume collecting some of his most notable reviews, Hazlitt affirms:The Stage is one great source of public amusement, not to say instruction. A good play, well acted, passes away a whole evening delightfully at a certain period of life, agreeably at all times; we read account of it next morning with pleasure, and it generally furnishes one leading topic of conversation for afternoon. The disputes on merits or defects of last new piece, or of a favourite performer, are as common, as frequently renewed, and carried on with as much eagerness and skill, as those on almost any other subject .... [P]lays and players ... are the brief chronicles of time, epitome of human life and manners. While we are talking about them, we are thinking about ourselves. They hold mirror up to Nature; and our thoughts are turned to Stage as naturally and as fondly as a fine lady turns to contemplate her face in glass .... Yet how eagerly do we stop to look at prints from ZOFFANY'S pictures of GARRICK and WESTON!How much we are vexed, that so much of COLLEY CIBBER'S Life is taken up with accounts of his own managership, and so little with those inimitable portraits which he has occasionally given of actors of his time! How fortunate we think ourselves, when we can meet with any person who remembers principal performers of last age, and who can give us some distant idea of GARRICK'S nature, or of an ABINGTON'S grace!4In this passage (and his further development of this argument in Preface) Hazlitt is indeed presenting a view of English stage, but most importantly he is establishing an interplay between theatre and everyday life, so that his outlook on stage becomes a mirror or vehicle for his view of English culture and society at large: plays and players ... are 'the brief chronicles of time,' epitome of human life and manners.5 Hazlitt's passionate description of how people would stop in streets only to contemplate better beautiful theatrical conversation pieces portraying Garrick and other celebrities in character; or his annoyance at Colley Cibber on account of his decision to devote only two chapters of his voluminous autobiography to actors that he knew; or, again, fascination that one could receive from meeting not a real actor, but even somebody who was lucky enough to have seen actors of his day in person: these are all expressions of Romantic writer's fascination with theatre and of his belief in its social centrality.Nevertheless, Romantic Theatre has been object of critical prejudice for decades, if not for two centuries. Even modern criticism has helped promulgate general opinion according to which Romantics had an aversion to theatre. George Steiner's The Death of Tragedy (1961), Peter Brooks' The Melodramatic Imagination (1976) and Jonas Barish's The Antitheatrical Prejudice (1981) have contributed in various degrees to portraying nineteenth-century Britain in a way that often collides with passionate descriptions of early nineteenth-century writers such as Hazlitt, Coleridge, and Hunt. …