Drury Lane Theatre Research Articles

‘... You'll be made a slave in your turn; you'll be told also that it is right that you should be so, and we shall see what you think of this justice’: Libido, Retribution and Moderation in The Island of Slaves

The Island of Slaves. Comedy of two acts, 1761. This is little more than a literal translation of L'Isle des Esclaves of M. Marivaux. It has not made its appearance in print, yet had at least as much merit as many of the petites pieces which we see frequently performed on the stage. It was acted one night only, for the benefit of Mrs Clive, and was the occasion of an epistolary dispute, in print, between her and Mr Shuter, whose benefit happened to fall on the same night. Biographia Dramatica, or a Companion to the Playhouse, 1764.1 When it was Catherine Clive's turn to choose the evening's programme and take the box-office profits at Drury Lane Theatre in March 1761, this popular comic actress decided to air a new afterpiece, The Island of Slaves, a translation of Marivaux's L'Isle des Esclaves of 1725. Actors often used their benefit night to showcase their own particular talents. Clearly this plot attracted Clive because there is a central role for her trademark character, the feisty, plot-stirring maidservant. From 1758 to 1761, for instance, she played arch and resourceful maids in The Intriguing Chambermaid, Amphitryon, The Confederacy and High Life below Stairs.2 However, this afterpiece featured a more politically serious version of the role. It is set on a fantasy island where a law inverts the status of those who are marooned there, giving slaves the ownership of their masters and the judicial task of confronting them with the truth of their exploitative behaviour. Thus it literally interrogates the master and slave relationship through this revelatory, reformatory process. The fascination with the island as a place of transformation clearly has timeless, Shakespearian theatrical resonances; but Marivaux's play also relates to the ethics of service and slavery in French society of the early Enlightenment. It was written for the exiled Comediens Italiens at the Palais Royal, to be embroidered freely with song and business; and though only a light, short comedy it successfully raises debate on a long-standing issue, working through to undermining national legitimation of slave ownership by suggesting that if there were more understanding of it as a relationship with a person, it would not be tolerated. This is remarkably enlightened, given the fact that, for another century, much of the world treated slavery as acceptable. It is intriguing to consider whether the play's potential for political bite was preserved and appreciated in the English version of 1761. The comment from the Companion to the Playhouse quoted above, claims that the translation followed the original literally; but that it had little impact, disappearing after one performance. However, the compilers seem aware that the play's disappearance was not necessarily a judgement on its quality. Furthermore, the manuscript which survives is the one read by the Examiner of Plays, John Larpent, under the terms of clauses III and IV of the 1737 Stage Licensing Acts and the legible marks of the cuts that he required have significance. This article ultimately aims to arrive at an understanding of why Clive's choice might have failed to fulfil the hopes she might have justifiably had for it. I will come to that in section iii. Firstly, I want to consider what the play stood for in Paris in 1725, whilst bringing out that the play's relation to France's policies also gave it relevance to England's.

The Virtual Infernal: Philippe de Loutherbourg, William Beckford and the Spectacle of the Sublime

In the autumn of 1781, shortly after being elected to the British Academy of Art as a landscape painter, Alsatian-born artist Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg was hired by the wealthy young aesthete William Beckford to prepare a private birthday spectacle at his mansion in Wiltshire. De Loutherbourg, who was also chief scenographer at Drury Lane theatre and the inventor of a recent commercial “moving picture” entertainment called theEidophusikon, promised to produce “a mysterious something that the eye has not seen nor the heart conceived.” Beckford wanted an Oriental spectacle that would completely ravish the senses of his guests, not least so that he could enjoy a sexual tryst with a thirteen year old boy, William Courtenay, and Louisa Beckford, his own cousin’s wife.The resulting three day party and spectacle staged over Christmas 1781 became one of the scandals of the day, and ultimately forced William Beckford into decades of exile in Europe to escape accusations of sodomy. However, this Oriental spectacle also had a special significance for the history of Romantic aesthetics and modern-day cinema. Loutherbourg and Beckford’s collaboration provided the inspiration for William to write his scintillating Gothic novel,Vathek, and impelled Philippe himself into revising his moving-picture program in dramatically new ways. Ultimately this saturnalian party of Christmas 1781 constituted a pioneering experiment in applying the aesthetic of the sublime to virtual reality technology. It also led Loutherbourg to anticipate the famous nineteenth-century “Phantasmagoria” of French showman, Gaspard Robertson, by producing in 1782 a miniature Gothic movie scene based on the Pandemonium episode in Milton’sParadise Lost.

TRICKS, TRAPS AND TRANSFORMATIONS

By the start of the Victorian era, British theatre had lost its popular audience. Following the demise of the ‘Golden Age’ of Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre, the Restoration period under Charles II saw only two theatres in the land licensed to present plays: the Theatre Royal Drury Lane and Covent Garden (the ‘patent’ theatres). Non‐‘legitimate’ forms of theatrical entertainment flourished: opera, ballet, melodrama, puppet shows and pantomime. Singing, narrating or speaking in rhyming couplets was allowed. With the repeal of the prohibitive legislation in 1843, there was widespread building of new theatres equipped with facilities to produce all manner of sensational effects in tune with popular taste. Where Shakespearian drama had created scenes in words only, there was a fondness of spectacle that crossed all class boundaries. Theatre now adopted many visual forms, which had grown in popularity; the proscenium theatre was even described as a ‘giant peepshow’ (and the stage presentation as a ‘picture’), with its proscenium arch and wings and borders receding towards large painted backcloths or other scenery. Advances in lighting—from oil through gas (1817) then limelight (1837) and electric light (arc lamps from 1848, filament lamps from 1881)—allowed actors to perform within the scenery upstage of the proscenium arch and for the auditorium to be blacked out. Scrolling panoramas were incorporated, images were projected from magic lanterns, translucent gauzes made for backlighting effects, coloured light on smoke and coloured flares were used, and all manner of machinery around, above and below the stage was incorporated, with the proscenium arch conveniently hiding all necessary men and machinery. The stage itself was hollow and accommodated removable panels, slots, lifts ‘scruto’ (slatted rolling surfaces), and hand‐operated and hydraulic trapdoor machinery. In transformation scenes, the whole huge visual presentation was changed before the audience’s eyes. It was a combination of magicians’ tricks on a vast scale using the many and varied facilities this machine called ‘the theatre’ could achieve—a combination of new and old technologies. Victorian pantomime is the best example of a genre defined by these new techniques. This article charts the development of these techniques, relating them to other illusions of the age and the work of early film‐makers.

Spectres of Quackery: The Fragile Career of Philippe de Loutherbourg

During the 40-odd years that the Alsatian-born, French-trained artist Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg lived in Britain, he became a triple celebrity. A decade after his migration to Britain in 1771 his achievements as a picturesque landscape artist were celebrated in election to the Royal Academy. During the same period he also worked for David Garrick at Drury Lane theatre as the highest-paid scenographer in Britain. Critics hailed him as a genius for revolutionizing Britain's dull staging traditions along the spectacular and naturalistic lines of France's Giovanni Servandoni. Finally, as the creator in 1781–82 of a pioneering commercial moving picture show, the Eidophusikon, he was acclaimed by leading arbiters of artistic taste such as Reynolds and Gainsborough. Well-heeled West End crowds flocked to performances, and the Eidophusikon was widely imitated in Europe, the United States, and the British colonies.Yet de Loutherbourg's professional and social standing remained surprisingly fragile. At periodic intervals he was accused publicly of charlatanry, or its British equivalent, quackery. This damaging smear surfaced on each of the three occasions that de Loutherbourg shifted career direction. And though he managed to redeem himself on each occasion, it was only by making serious artistic and professional compromises. In this sense, the spectre of quackery haunted and shaped Philippe de Loutherbourg's British career, making him a fascinating test-case of quackery's shifting valencies at the dawn of the modern industrial age.

Stealing thunder II

Stealing thunder II

Politesse and the Woman at Risk: The Social Comedies of Marie-Thérèse De Camp

The actress and playwright Marie-Therese De Camp (1774-1838) is described--by biographers of her more famous daughter, the actress, diarist, and playwright, Fanny Kemble--as dedicated to outdoor pursuits (principally angling and riding), moody, and, later in life, eccentric in her behavior. (1) She is additionally recorded as unimpeachably chaste, virtuous, and respectable, a habitual member of the London's Swiss congregation. Despite this reputation, the whiff of scandal touched her in 1795 when, as one of the young leading lights of the company of the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, she caught the inebriated attentions of the theater's actor-manager, John Philip Kemble. He burst into her dressing room and pressed his unwanted attentions upon the young lady--an incident that both Ellen Donkin and Claire Tomalin quite justifiably describe as an attempted rape. (2) The resulting furor attracted swift help and little damage seemed done to either party. However, immediately thereafter Kemble apologized in a remarkably public manner. The Times ran an announcement: I, JOHN PHILIP KEMBLE, of the Theatre Royal, Drury-lane, do adopt this method of publicly apologizing to Miss DECAMP, for the very improper and unjustifiable Behaviour I was lately guilty of towards her; which I do further declare her Conduct and Character had in no instance authorised, but; on the contrary, I do know and believe both to be irreproachable.--January 27, 1795. (3) The affair seemed to be over until, in 1800, Charles Kemble, John Philip's younger brother, announced his desire to marry his vivacious costar, De Camp. The elder Kemble at first refused to allow the match, eventually agreeing to it only if the couple would wait until Charles's thirtieth birthday. Thus, despite both being successful actors, in command of excellent incomes, and potentially independent, Charles Kemble and Marie-Therese De Camp waited the allotted span to marry, on 2 July 1806, with the blessing of the Kemble clan, and the determinedly patriarchal John Philip giving the bride away. (4) The odd collision of the indecorous and the prudent, the foolish and the circumspect that we see in John Philip Kemble's early association with his future sister-in-law frames not only De Camp's biography but also the lifestyle of the family into which she married, a family that worked hard to secure its status as respectable pillar of late Georgian and Regency Britain, despite the source of their fortune resting in the somewhat dubious world of the stage. (5) Particularly revealing as regards the mythology of the Kembles are the subjective opinions of De Camp's daughter, Fanny, who ascribes to her family the values of polite society, order and respectability earned and learned by them all: Whatever qualities of mind or character I inherit from my father's family I am persuaded that I am more strongly stamped with those I derived from my mother, a woman, who, possessing no specific gift in such perfection as the dramatic talents of the Kembles, had in a higher degree than any of them the peculiar organisation of genius. To the fine senses of a savage rather than a civilised nature, she joined an acute instinct of criticism in all matters of art, and a general quickness and accuracy of perception, and a brilliant of expression that made her conversation delightful. Had she possessed half the advantages of education which she and my father laboured to bestow on us, she would, I think, have been one of the most remarkable persons of her time. (6) De Camp's vividness of expression, as well as her keen eye for the rules, regulations, and affectations of the polite society to which success, fortune, and studied respectability admitted the Kembles, is the very stuff of her dramas. De Camp's plays are set in polite and respectable society, but they are emboldened by the threat of expulsion from it and a narrative interest in seduction plots, the nature of reputation, and in the complex role of the young gentlewoman at moral risk. …

The school of eloquence and “roasted square caps”: oratory and pedantry as fair theatrical game?

This article studies the topical significance of the satire by a woman in her unpublished afterpiece play,The School of Eloquence, 1780, of the phenomena of elocution, oratory and debating societies. Hannah Cowley's play was performed at Drury Lane Theatre where the manager was Thomas Sheridan, who played an important role in the growth of popular oratory through his educational theories and published lectures on elocution. Cowley engages with the discourse of rhetoric, aligning herself with the New Rhetoricians, and her satirical references to pedantry, oratory and teaching in the universities draw attention to the exclusion of women from an education enjoyed by men, in the use of their own and other languages. Cowley attacks pedantry and pretension in the use of language in several of her plays, and her popular farce,Who's the Dupe, also treats classical learning with disrespect.

Byron: a literary life

Preface and Suggestions for Further Reading Chronology Prelude: Byron's Gothic Inheritance The Noble Poet and 'the Trade': Juvenilia and Juvenalia The Traveller from the East Meets the 'Emperor of the West': Byron and Murray The Acting Tragedy and the Tragedy of Acting: Byron, Drury Lane Theatre and Romantic Drama From Pilgrim to Patriot: Byron as Poet of Exile The Bookseller to the Admiralty and the Board of Longitude Beset by Pirates: Byron, Don Juan and the Freedom of the Press The Eagle, the Wren and the Snake: Byron and The Liberal Postscript Index

Centlivre v. Hardwicke: Susannah Centlivre's Plays and the Marriage Act of 1753

The years between 1700 and 1800 saw Susannah Centlivre's plays performed 1,227 times in London theaters. Two plays, The Busie Body and A Bold Stroke for a Wife, accounted for 822 of these performances.1 The Busie Body was an immediate hit upon opening at the Drury Lane Theatre on 12 May 1709. After eighteen performances in its first season, it averaged more than six performances annually until 1 800, thus becoming the most popular female-authored play of the century. The second spot belongs to Centlivre, too. A Bold Stroke, first performed on 3 February 1718 at Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, enjoyed a relatively successful run of six nights. Yet, unlike The Busie Body, this play was not consistently popular with early-century audiences; indeed, after the initial run, it was not produced again in London for ten years. But after 1750 the play's popularity increased markedly so much so that by the end of the century it was performed almost as often as Centlivre's earlier play.2 Only a few critics have attempted to explain the popularity of these two plays. John Wilson Bowyer and Nancy Copeland both attribute the late-century success of A Bold Stroke to the popularity of the various actors who played the role of the hero, Colonel Fainwell. Thalia Stathis attributes the success to cleverly wrought stage business, intrigue, amusing male roles, structural unity, and concentrated action. Jess Byrd credits The Busie Body's popularity to Centlivre's preference for laughing comedy with an improved moral tone and characters and a plot that are amusing but inoffensive, and . . . satisfy the desire of the growing eighteeth-century middle-class audience for respectability on the stage. Similarly, Fidelis Morgan asserts that Centlivre's comedies in general managed to please a new and more po-faced audience, largely because compromise and adaptation for the mealy-mouthed were in demand in the latter

Sites for Music in purcell's Dorset Garden Theatre

During the Commonwealth era, most of London's theaters and playhouses were demolished by order of the Puritan Parliament. When theatrical entrepreneurs resumed activity upon the return of Charles II to the throne in 1660, the buildings that they used were either improvised or newly built.1 The Vere Street Theatre and Lisle's Tennis Court Theatre at Lincoln's Inn Fields were both converted from tennis courts. Among the newly built theaters, the old Drury Lane Theatre at Bridges Street, which operated from 1662 until its destruction by fire in 1672, the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, successor of the former and in operation from 1674 until beyond the end of the century, and the Dorset Garden Theatre, which opened in November of 1671, merit special notice.2

Getting into the Act: Women Playwrights in London, 1776-1829 (review)

Reviewed by: Getting into the Act: Women Playwrights In London, 1776–1829 by Ellen Donkin Sherry D. Engle Getting into the Act: Women Playwrights In London, 1776–1829. By Ellen Donkin. Gender in Performance Series. London: Routledge, 1994; pp. 256. $62.95 cloth, $17.95 paper. Ellen Donkin pursues a subtle first-person exploration that carries her reader along; probing, analytical questions lead to insights about eighteenth-century theatre personalities and practices, as well as the cultural mandates of the era which made it difficult for middle-class women to work in the theatre. Citing prefaces and epilogues to plays, entries in journals, and letters of theatrical and literary figures, she examines situations from various angles before drawing conclusions, wondering “at what point actresses writing plays crossed a certain line and became playwrights” (30). As she delves into seven individual stories, Donkin invites the reader to question and wonder along with her. This personal style helps in digesting a considerable amount of documentation on theatrical practices and contributes to an understanding of what it must have been like for a woman playwright during a time when prescriptive “social conduct required her explicit compliance with male authority” (184). Only three of the [End Page 531] seven women discussed in this book qualify as “long-term survivors” (Hannah Cowley, Elizabeth Inchbald, and Frances Brooke), but the experience of the others (Hannah More, Sophia Lee, Joanna Baillie, and Frances Burney) illustrates sometimes disturbing aspects of the playmaking process and the hazards the profession held for women. In her introductory chapter, Donkin states that she is “irresistibly compelled by how these women operated in their prefaces, their rehearsals, and their dealings with managers to create pressure for a voice and a presence in their culture, a subject position, the power to represent self” (28). This focus remains consistent throughout, even when the temptation might prove strong to load the narrative with biographical detail on her subjects. One exception where more personal material is provided is in the case of Frances Burney, whose father and brother both played instrumental roles in suppressing her writing for the stage in order to protect her from the “dangerous” world of the theatre; not until she was in her late forties did Burney finally defy her father, although this stand of independence came too late for her playwriting career. A secondary but integral emphasis regards the managers of the period to whom the women playwrights submitted their work. David Garrick, who managed the Drury Lane Theatre between 1747 and 1776, stands as one who “redefined theatre management” and who, according to Donkin, ran a “conspicuously clean shop” (25–26) in terms of moral respectability. Although the women he assisted were a relatively select few, Garrick took pride in helping female playwrights. Donkin connects the first three women—Frances Brooke, Hannah Cowley, and Hannah More—to Garrick in both negative (Brooke) and positive ways (Cowley and More). Garrick contributed significantly to an overall tentative acceptance of the woman playwright; his retirement from management left no immediate successor to fill his fatherly, mentoring role. Of the seven subjects in this book, the most successful was Elizabeth Inchbald, one of the most prolific and produced playwrights of her time. Unlike most women dramatists, Inchbald avoided many of the pitfalls of the profession by being an actress and having access to managers and on-site training in playwriting; as an insider, she was able [End Page 532] to bypass the mentor, creating “professional access for herself” (114). Rather than becoming beholden to one manager for the production of her plays, Inchbald, as Donkin shows, deftly played George Colman of the Haymarket Theatre and Thomas Harris of Covent Garden against one another. Writing in general was becoming more socially acceptable as a profession for women during this period, and all of the dramatists in Getting into the Act wrote in other forms, primarily novels and poetry. For those feminine writers who undertook the public venue of playwriting, however, ideals of eighteenth-century womanliness served as poor preparation for the “adversarial positioning” between playwright and manager and the “arena of business deals, name-calling, and artistic wrangling” (91). Some of the difficulties and hazards of...

An Outward Show: Music for Shakespeare on the London Stage, 1660-1830 by Randy L. Neighbarger

REVIEWS Randy L. Neighbarger. An Outward Show: Music for Shakespeare on the London Stage, 1660-1830. Contributions to the Study of Music and Dance, 27. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1992. Pp. xxii + 318. $49.95. Randy Neighbarger's An Outward Show is a useful factual resource for scholars interested in the music performed in productions and adaptations of Shakespeare's plays from the Restoration to the early Victorian period. The body of the text is a chronological, narrative history of Shakespeare productions which employed music whether as songs, as interludes between acts, or in operatic adaptations. The book outlines changes in musical styles and conventions between 1660 and 1830 and discusses how these trends affected the incorporation of music into Shakespeare productions. Some musical scores are reproduced , and the textual apparatus includes a number of useful charts and lists which assemble much of the available information on music associated with Shakespeare productions. While many of Shakespeare's plays require music in production, the early printed quarto and folio texts do not include much specific information about what was played. Characters in plays of all genres sing songs or call for music, and there are numerous cues for instrumental music in the lines of the plays. For example, The Tempest associates music with magic at many points, and in The Winter's Tale Paulina calls for music just before the statue comes to life. While traditional tunes are known for some of the songs included in Shakespeare's plays, no scores for the music played during the first productions of Shakespeare plays are known to exist. While Neighbarger's focus is theatrical music from 1660 to 1830, he opens with a brief discussion of what was known at the Restoration about the music of early Shakespeare productions. When, in 1660, two London theaters opened after eighteen years during which theatrical productions had been officially proscribed, many of the plays of the Jacobean and Caroline periods were revived and adapted. However, these revivals took place in a new context since early seventeenth-century theatrical and musical conventions were no longer familiar to performers and audiences. Also, some of the courtiers who supported the London theaters had spent the interregnum in France, where they had been introduced to continental conventions of theatrical and musical performance. Neighbarger discusses the interaction of English and European musical influences in theatrical productions of the Restoration and traces changing fashions in the way music was used. He notes that in the late seventeenth century songs were 394 Reviews395 sometimes omitted from the plays themselves, although musical interludes were often played between the acts. By the early eighteenth century , music was more central to the performance of Shakespeare, and operatic adaptations of some of the plays began to be performed. Neighbarger , tracing a complex history of operatic Shakespeare production from the early eighteenth century to the 1830's, discusses various forms of Italianate opera, English ballad opera, and comic opera with a focus on the musical scores. During this period there were few productions of Shakespeare's plays which were not adapted or revised, and these operatic productions are significant in the stage history of Shakespeare. Aside from operatic Shakespeare music, Neighbarger's other main interest in this work is the extensive body of non-operatic vocal musical settings composed for the songs in Shakespeare plays as well as for other lyric passages such as sonnets. Popular lyric pieces from Shakespeare's plays were performed not only in stage productions but as afterpieces, in concerts and in the home. Neighbarger pays close attention to the works of the prolific composer Thomas Arne the younger, whose music for Drury Lane Theatre's Shakespeare productions in the 1740's had a strong influence for the following fifty years. Some of Henry Bishop's compositions and adaptations from the early nineteenth century are also still known. The publication of simplified scores of some of this music helped make some tunes by Ame, Bishop, and other contemporary composers so familiar that they became accepted as "traditional" in later performances of the plays. The extensive apparatus of An Outward Show, like the body of the text, contains a large amount of factual information. The...

‘A Buzz in A Box’ The Re-opening of the Drury Lane Theatre

Evocation historique sur l'implication de G. Byron dans la polemique concernant l'allocution d'ouverture refusee du Drury Lane Theatre

Bourgeois Tragedy or Sentimental Melodrama? The Significance of George Lillo's The London Merchant

IS A MODERN BOURGEOIS TRAGEDY POSSIBLE? With The London Merchant; or, The History of George Barnwell, first performed on June 21, 1731, George Lillo presented his answer to theatrical public of London. In his Dedication, significantly written to well-known London merchant, Lillo left no doubt that he wanted to write tragedy about bourgeois life, a tale of private woe in which merchant's apprentice is seduced by prostitute who persuades him to embezzle his employer and then murder his uncle. While excusing his artless strains, however, Lillo feared that the novelty of this attempt' might offend tastes and expectations of contemporary audiences whose dramatic diet consisted of Shakespeare and neo-classical tragedies of Dryden, Otway, Rowe, and Addison. This anxiety was also shared by Theophilus Cibber, manager of Drury Lane theatre where play was performed. Accordingly, not only was play first performed during summer rather than run more hazardous fate of encountering winter critics,2 but copies of Elizabethan ballad, on which play was loosely based, were distributed and transformed into an entertainment of

Rediscovering the Toy Theatre—with a Review of George Speaight's The History of the English Toy Theatre

Rediscovering the Toy Theatre—with a Review of George Speaight's The History of the English Toy Theatre Suzanne Rahn (bio) We never know how much of our after imaginations began with such a peep-show into paradise. —G. K. Chesterton A lively John Leech engraving, from a series entitled Young Troublesome, or Master Jacky's Holidays, shows a group of delighted children, two girls and two boys, to whom a tall gentleman with elegant side-whiskers and an assisting servant present what looks to us like a good-sized television set. But this is 1845, and the tall gentleman's gift—a convenient emblem of the difference between childhood then and now—is not a TV but a toy theater. "Here Captain Clarence arrives with the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in miniature, and the Miller and his Men in a forward state of preparation." The engraving serves as frontispiece to George Speaight's The History of the English Toy Theatre (Boston: Plays, Inc., revised edition, 1969), where the curious twentieth-century reader may find a thorough, scholarly, and frankly seductive introduction to this nineteenth-century pastime. For those who study children's literature, the toy theater offers territory all but untouched, yet full of possibilities. It is a form of imaginative play, an elaborate toy, a species of drama, a phenomenon of popular culture, a rich source of material on the Romantic theater, an unexpected influence on Victorian literature. Historically, it was one of the earliest genres of children's literature to aim squarely at entertainment. Considered as a branch of children's theater—the "Juvenile Drama" was its other name—it was unique in adapting a wide range of plays originally designed for adults to performance by and for children. Children enthralled by it have included not only future men and women of the theater—Henry Irving, John Gielgud, Ellen Terry, Ralph Richardson—but artists (Millais, Frith, Beardsley, Dicky Doyle), writers (Dickens, Stevenson, Lewis Carroll, Masefield, Valery, the Sitwells, G. K. Chesterton), even Winston Churchill. What was the special appeal of the toy theater to these and thousands of other children? Just what would Master Jacky have [End Page 111] Click for larger view View full resolution From John Leech's Young Troublesome, or Master Jacky's Holidays, 1845. [End Page 112] missed out on, if Captain Clarence had brought him a TV instead? Even a brief overview of the toy theater and its literature—with emphasis on Speaight's History, the definitive work in its field—will suggest some answers. A toy theater is a miniature theater, tabletop size, in which plays are produced for the amusement of one's friends and family. The actors are tiny, brightly painted figures two or three inches high, cut out of paper and mounted on thin cardboard. Several figures in different poses will be needed to represent each of the main characters. Some young people (including Doyle and Beardsley) drew their own characters and even made up their own plays, but the common practice was to buy printed sheets of the characters, props, and scenery for each production; these were available in both "penny plain" and "twopence coloured" versions, along with specially adapted scripts. Set in tin "slides"—stands to which long wires are attached—the actors are pushed from the wings into the stage area, where they can move about freely and even deal with each other. Speaight, himself a veteran performer, explains that "The toy theatre convention is to indicate which character is speaking by a slight movement of its slide, the degree of movement depending upon the emphasis of the speech; this may seem silly at first, but one very soon accepts it as perfectly natural" (108). For some decades, all toy theater plays were based on real-life theatrical productions. Such favorites as The Miller and His Men, Guy Fawkes, Pizarro, Black-eyed Susan, Jack Sheppard, The Forest of Bondy, and Timour the Tartar were originally full-sized successes, whose colorful costumes, lavish scenery, and spectacular stage effects were faithfully reproduced in miniature for the toy theater. Those interested in the popular Romantic stage will find, Speaight says, that "A little imagination, or better still a...

Dryden with Variations: Three Prompt Books

Among the eleven promptbooks from the Morrab Library in Penzance sold at Sotheby's in 1964, by no means least interesting are three based on plays by John Dryden. After considerable study we are persuaded that all three were from Drury Lane Theatre. They came into the possession of H. C. Halliwell-Phillipps and were eventually presented to the City of Penzance as a token of his affection. We choose a musical term to suggest the great differences in origin and fortunes of the trio, for they represent a varied pattern: one comes from an early collaboration; one is a solo performance from late in the displaced laureate's career; one is a pastiche taken from a pair of heroic plays shortly after Dryden's death. At some risk of anticlimax we present them in the order of their appearance as promptbooks.

The Origin of Insanity as a Special Verdict: The Trial for Treason of James Hadfield (1800)

The pivotal case in the history of the plea of insanity occurred in London during the reign of George III. In the year 1800, James Hadfield discharged a horse pistol at the king as he entered the royal box at Drury Lane Theatre. Hadfield pleaded insanity to a charge of high treason and was acquitted. The verdict caused much judicial concern, for the law's power over him was at best unclear. Hadfield was taken to Newgate Prison while Parliament hastily passed the Criminal Lunatics Act of 1800, which enabled the government to detain Hadfield for the rest of his life. No longer was a defendant found not guilty on the grounds of insanity entitled to a general acquittal. Insanity became a special verdict linked with automatic confinement for an indefinite period of time. Three other provisions of the act called for the detention of mentally ill persons who were arrested for criminal offenses or found in circumstances that suggested criminal activity.

Sheridan and the Drury Lane Theatre, 1801–1809

The opening decade of the nineteenth century was the least happy in Sheridan's career. He broke away from his old colleagues in Parliament at one period and was separated from his wife for a time. Yet while certain compensations were offered to him in his political and personal life, his association with Drury Lane Theatre was marked by particular ill-fortune. The truth is that at this time his negligence and procrastination over many years brought his playhouse to the edge of ruin.

Loutherbourg's lighting innovations for eighteenth century spectaculars

Spectaculars were able to claim the stage during the closing years of the eighteenth century because of the increase in illumination, development of colored lights for special effects, and a movement in the direction of the real picture stage. These innovations were brought about by the scene designer at the Drury Lane Theatre, Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg.

“The Second Chronicler”: A Tentative Identification of the Unknown Hand in The MS. Diaries of the Drury Lane Theatre

Among the important collections of memorabilia concerning eighteenth-century London playhouses is that known as The Ms. Diaries of the Drury Lane Theatre, thirteen manuscript notebooks or theatrical calendars of quarto size among the holdings of The Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C. While there is a gap of two seasons, 1760–1762, and another of four seasons, 1764–1768, these documents are valued for their chronological record of theatrical seasons at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, throughout the management of David Garrick and his partner James Lacy, 1747–1776. Each night's reckoning is set down with the plays and entertainments produced, the box office receipts in round numbers, the numerical position of the performance in the particular season, and very often the prompter's notations concerning anything unusual about production, performers, the temper of the audience, or merely “the way things went” on a particular evening. Together with Course of Plays, 1740–1742, a similar calendar of the 1740–1741 season at Covent Garden Theatre and the 1741–1742 season at Drury Lane attributed to Richard Cross, these diaries have become known popularly as The Cross-Hopkins Diaries, after the two Drury Lane prompters, Richard Cross and William Hopkins, acknowledged compilers of the greater part of the series.