Four Georgian and Pre-Revolutionary Plays: The Rivals She Stoops to Conquer The Marriage of Figaro Emilia Galotti PDF
Preview Four Georgian and Pre-Revolutionary Plays: The Rivals She Stoops to Conquer The Marriage of Figaro Emilia Galotti
FOUR GEORGIAN AND PRE-REVOLUTIONARY PLAYS Also edited by David Thomas and published by Macmillan Education SIX RESTORATION AND FRENCH NEOCLASSIC PLAYS PHEDRA, THE MISER, TARTUFFE, ALL FOR LOVE, THE COUNTRY WIFE, LOVE FOR LOVE Four Georgian and Pre-Revolu tionary Plays The Rivals She Stoops to Conquer The Marriage of Figaro Emilia Gaiotti Introduced and Edited by DAVID THOMAS Professor of Theatre Studies, University of Warwick Introduction, editorial matter and selection © David Thomas 1998 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 9HE. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his rights to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. ~ First published 1998 by ~ MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world ISBN 978-0-333-63677-0 ISBN 978-1-349-26947-1 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-26947-1 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 99 98 Typeset by Forewords, Oxford/Longworth Editorial Services Longworth, Oxfordshire. ~ Published in the United States of America 1998 by ~ ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC., Scholarly and Reference Division, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 ISBN 978-0-312-21398-5 cloth ISBN 978-0-312-21399-2 paperback Contents List of Illustrations vi Acknowledgements vii General Introduction viii England: The Cultural and Political Context viii France: The Cultural and Political Context x Germany: The Cultural and Political Context xii The Plays xiv A Note on Eighteenth-century Theatre in England, France and Germany xviii A Note on the Texts xxiii The Rivals Introduction 1 Text 13 She Stoops to Conquer Introduction 85 Text 93 The Marriage of Figaro Introduction 151 Text 167 Emilia GaIotti Introduction 233 Text 243 Bibliography 290 v List of Illustrations The original cast members of She Stoops to Conquer in a scene 92 from Act V: Mr Shuter as Mr Hardcastle, Mrs Green as Mrs Hardcastle and Mr Quick as Tony Lumkin. Mezzotint by W. Humphrey after a painting by T. Parkinson, 1775 A scene from Act IV of Le Mariage de Figaro, drawn by 166 St Quentin, reproduced from Beaumarchais, Le Mariage de Figaro (Paris, 1785) (Reproduced from the author's collection) vi Acknowledgements In preparing this volume, I have had invaluable help from staff in the Reading Room of the British Library, and the University Libraries of Warwick and Bristol. I should also like to record my thanks to the University of Warwick for generous research leave and for making a grant to cover some of the costs involved in preparing this volume for publication. In that context I would like to thank Kate Brennan for helping to key in the play texts for this volume. My thanks are also due to Professor W. D. Howarth, Emeritus Professor of French at the University of Bristol, and Honorary Professor at the University of Warwick, for his helpful comments on my intro duction to The Marriage of Figaro. As ever, the staff at Macmillan Press have given their unstinting help and support in bringing this volume to publication. I am particularly indebted to my com missioning editors, Margaret Bartley and Belinda Holdsworth. I would also like to thank Valery Rose and Nick Allen for their attention to detail in copy-editing and setting the text. On a more personal note, I would like to thank Coucou Lyall for her warm and untiring support. vii General Introduction England: The Cultural and Political Context After a century of rebellion and civil discord, provoked by power struggles between a succession of Stuart monarchs and parliament, the eighteenth century brought relative peace and stability to English society. Following the death of Queen Anne in 1714, the Protestant succession was guaranteed, in accordance with the Act of Settlement of 1701, by inviting George I (great-grandson of James I and Elector of Hanover) to be king of England. Speaking no English and with little interest in his new kingdom, George I was content to leave the government of the country to the group of powerful Whig grandees who had engineered his accession to the throne. This permitted the development of a system of government by cabinet, consisting of senior members of the dominant party in the House of Commons, presided over by a chairman or prime minister. Policy decisions for most of the eighteenth century were therefore shaped by elected politicians, including powerful prime ministers, such as Walpole and Pitt, and by rivalry between the political parties (the Tories and the Whigs), rather than by a destructive and damaging struggle for supremacy between king and parliament. In contrast to continental Europe, where middle-class aspirations remained largely thwarted by various forms of absolute rule, the power and wealth of England's middle classes had grown steadily since the Glorious Revolution of 1688, when the Catholic monarch James II had been ousted from the throne by his own daughter Mary and her Protestant husband, William of Orange. Throughout the eighteenth century, international trade and commerce (including the lucrative slave trade), as well as new opportunities for per sonal investment, brought increased potential for advancement to large numbers of people throughout the kingdom. Traditional class barriers still existed, but education and enterprise enabled viii General Introduction ix talented individuals to achieve a degree of social mobility that was unthinkable elsewhere in Europe. Although there was much grinding poverty, with all the brutality and suffering that followed from it, there was also the possibility of gracious living for those who knew how to benefit from an enterprise culture. The growing wealth of the middle classes brought with it opportunities for local craftsmen and artisans of all kinds, as well as architects and builders. The style of furniture, interior decoration and architecture that developed during the Georgian era represents a norm of functional elegance which still inspires the work of modem designers and architects. It was an age that likewise saw an unprecedented blossoming in the worlds of the arts and letters.1 These are some of the positive achievements for which the reigns of George I, II and III are remembered. But the Georgian era was also an age of remarkable hypocrisy. The middle classes prided them selves on their Protestant and even Puritan values, which led them to demand the banishing of all crudity and obscenity from theatres and places of public entertainment. Meanwhile, many were content to make their fortunes from the slave trade and others engaged in commerce with the kind of rapaciousness satirised in John Gay's Beggar's Opera. The same people who expected plays and novels to offer sentimental character drawing and plot lines were content to ignore the poverty and degradation confronting them, on a daily basis, in their towns and cities. Underneath the veneer of polite manners, gentility and sentimental attitudes in literature, there was a hard streak of selfishness and brutality just below the surface of Georgian society. It was this that Sheridan was to reflect so brilliantly in his icy masterpiece, The School for Scandal. The eighteenth century began and ended with major wars: the war of the Spanish succession in the first decade and the Napoleonic wars in the last. The only trace of these momentous events in the plays of the period is a fleeting reference to some of Marlborough's victories in Farquhar'S play The Recruiting Officer (1706). By the 1770s, the effects of the direct censorship imposed by the Lord Chamberlain's office and the indirect censorship exercised by the theatre managers of Drury Lane and Covent Garden ensured that contemporary playwrights avoided any subject matter that might give the least offence. In the 1770s when Sheridan and Goldsmith 1. See John Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century (London: Harper Collins, 1997).
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