Sir John Vanbrugh Research Articles

Sir John Vanbrugh and the End of Restoration Comedy.

Sir John Vanbrugh and the End of Restoration Comedy.

Reviews

Reviews Sir John Vanbrugh and the End of Restoration Comedy . By GERALD M. BERKOWITZ . Pp. 222 . Amsterdam : Rodopi , 1981 . Paperbound 50 Dutch glds. FRANK MCCORMICK FRANK MCCORMICK Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume 29, Issue 6, December 1982, Pages 550–551, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/29-6-550 Published: 01 December 1982

Sir John Vanbrugh by Arthur R. Huseboe (review)

Sir John Vanbrugh by Arthur R. Huseboe (review)

The Architect Vanbrugh and the Wits

Boswell's reminder in the Life of Johnson that Sir John Vanbrugh's reputation as an architect had been assailed by the Wits, provoking Sir Joshua Reynolds's defense half a century later,1 comes as something of a surprise to most readers, for Vanbrugh was one of the leaders of this group. His plays are still considered among the best of the Restoration comedies, those sophisticated productions that delighted the Court and shocked the Puritans. Vanbrugh was also one of the Kit-Cats, and under the genial direction of Jacob Tonson disported himself with such figures as Congreve, Prior, Steele, Dorset, and Montague, with whom, apparently, he was on the best of terms.2 What, then, brought about the reversal of favor? To be sure, Vanbrugh's politics offended some (he may, for example, have received the commission to build Blenheim Castle because of his Whig leanings3), but this quality he shared with practically every other inhabitant of England. Actually, Vanbrugh's star began to sink, in the estimation of the ...

The Theater in the Old Southwest the First Decade at Natchez

JIR GILES OVERREACH was probably first character from JEnglish drama to tread boards in Old Southwest. In January, i8o6, a vaudeville artist and actor, a Mr. Rannie, who had appeared in New York, landed with his troupe at Natchez, Mississippi Territory. Rannie first baited his audience with a performance of feats of ventriloquism, bird mimicking, and magic. A fortnight later lines of Philip Massinger's A New Way to Pay Old Debts added a new note to somewhat less formal and more bawdy entertainments hitherto enjoyed in flesh-pots of Natchez-underthe-Hill. On same bill was The Provoked Husband, product of Colley Cibber's completion of a fragment left by Sir John Vanbrugh, the whole to conclude with a laughable combat between two Blind Fiddlers.' It is worth remarking that these plays were presented almost twelve years before date I8I7, given in a leading reference work on history of American theater for first performance in Natchez. In probably every intervening year, there was a regular season of drama. It was in i8o8, with organization of Natchez Theatrical Association, that Natchez gave itself to drama with an assiduity which lasted for two generations. Those citizens who were interested in drama entered subscriptions; and an English traveler, in August, found them fitting up old Spanish hospital on commons for a theater. A lovelv site it was a strin of _rass and

THE AUTHORSHIP OF SQUIRE TRELOOBY

* The leading character in English version, Squire Trelooby, is represented as a native of Cornwall, and name is derived, no doubt, from Cornish mining term treloobing, act of stirring and working loobs, or slimy earth of tin, in a slime-pit, that mud may partly wash off with water and ore settle at bottom (Century Dictionary). The name Trelooby might well have been suggested by Congreve as a result of his friendship with Walter Moyle, a native of Cornwall, to whom we find Congreve writing on August 13, I695, Moyle at that time being absent from his London friends to conduct his campaign for a seat in Parliament. In letter Congreve refers incidentally to Comish miners. See The Whole Works of Walter Moyle, Esq. (London, 1727), pp. 227-229. t See, for example, C. W. Ward, Sir John Vanbrugh (London, 1893), I, 1-lii. $ Issued from Nonesuch Press in four volumes, London, 1923. Squire Trelooby is included in third volume, pp. I I i-i 58. ? The reviewers of Mr. Summers's edition of Congreve have very generally accepted inclusion of Squire Trelooby without protest. Mr. Allardyce Nicoll, however, in The Year's Work in English Studies for 1923, p. 154, asserts that there is not a whit of evidence to associate Congreve with quarto as printed, indeed he himself, in a letter, disowned it; contemporaries were quite well aware that it was not his. Its inclusion in Mr. Summers's edition, therefore, can be allowed only on sufferance, and future biographers of Congreve should call attention to fact that printed quarto in all probability has nothing to do with Congreve whatsoever. This statement is not altogether consistent with Mr. Nicoll's praise (The Year's Work in English Studies for 1924, p. 189) of Sir Edmund Gosse's eminently careful and discriminating discussion of Squire Trelooby puzzle, for Sir Edmund Gosse (Life of Congreve (London, I924), p. 137) is not at all certain . . . that this Squire Trelooby of 1704 does not virtually represent the work of Congreve and his two collaborators.

THE EARLY YEARS OF THE FIRST ENGLISH OPERA HOUSE

THE story of the slow, laborious emersion of Italian Opera in England, of its struggles to displace the hybrid monstrosity which for over a lustrum flaunted itself in its name, this, as it has been written piecemeal by various hands, is a tangled skein before whose complexities even the keenest expert might well stand aghast. Error crept insidiously into the tale at its first telling, and subsequent historians, in striving to dislodge it, have only succeeded in rendering confusion the more confounded. When one finds an alert mind like that which was labelled Colley Cibber blundering over dates and circumstances well within its individual observation and experience, confidence is shaken and it is difficult to know on whom to place dependence. To-day, despite our scientific methods of attack, we are too remote from events of a painfully evanescent order to be able always to arrest their flight and so fully to restore order out of chaos. But the more difficult the task the greater its fascination for the researcher; and it may not be wholly presumptuous for a lifelong delver into both the virgin soil and the well-tilled fields of English musicodramatic history to attempt the blazing of a trail. Accustomed as we are to speak of that landmark of the Augustan age, the old Queen's Theatre in the Haymarket, as England's first Italian Opera House, we are apt to forget that initially the term does not apply, and that in it for long opera was, in drummer's phrase, nothing more than an occasionally useful side-line. Built in 1705 by Sir John Vanbrugh, architect by profession and dramatist by choice, the Queen's was primarily intended as habitat for the veteran tragedian, Betterton, and his associates of the little theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, who had found that their bandbox of a house hopelessly handicapped them in their uphill fight with the players of Drury Lane. Each camp in its endeavour to best the enemy had already fallen back on occasion on the adventitous aid of musical spectacle; and Vanbrugh as controller of the new house clearly foresaw that the same expedient would have to be resorted to. There was no idea in the beginning of the Queen's eventually becoming a substantive opera-house, and its ultimate transmutation was due, curiously enough, to a

Sir John Vanbrugh

Journal Article Sir John Vanbrugh Get access Notes and Queries, Volume s8-IX, Issue 232, 6 June 1896, Pages 459–460, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/s8-IX.232.459d Published: 06 June 1896

Sir John Vanbrugh, knt. (died 1726), dramatic poet and architect

Sir John Vanbrugh, knt. (died 1726), dramatic poet and architect

Sir John Vanbrugh's designs for rebuilding Grimsthorpe castle

Sir John Vanbrugh's designs for rebuilding Grimsthorpe castle

Sir John Vanbrugh's plays: "A crooked stick"

Sir John Vanbrugh's plays: "A crooked stick" Get access J. Speed, D. J. Speed, D. 1Sewardstone Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume s3-X, Issue 245, 8 September 1866, Page 197, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/s3-X.245.197-f Published: 08 September 1866

Sir John Vanbrugh's plays

Sir John Vanbrugh's plays

Sir John Vanbrugh's plays

Sir John Vanbrugh's plays

Sir John Vanbrugh's plays

Journal Article Sir John Vanbrugh's plays Get access Bushey Heath Bushey Heath Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume s3-X, Issue 238, 21 July 1866, Page 53, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/s3-X.238.53d Published: 21 July 1866

Sir John Vanbrugh's plays

Sir John Vanbrugh's plays

Sir John Vanbrugh's plays

Sir John Vanbrugh's plays

Sir John Vanbrugh's plays

Sir John Vanbrugh's plays

Sir John Vanbrugh's plays

Sir John Vanbrugh's plays

Was sir John Vanbrugh a Musician?

Journal Article Was sir John Vanbrugh a Musician? Get access Notes and Queries, Volume s2-XI, Issue 278, 27 April 1861, Pages 326–327, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/s2-XI.278.326e Published: 27 April 1861