Popular Appeal in English Drama to 1850 PDF
Preview Popular Appeal in English Drama to 1850
POPULAR APPEAL IN ENGLISH DRAMA TO 1850 Also written by Peter Davison Contemporary Drama and the Popular Dramatic Tradition in England Songs of the British Music Hall: a Critical Study Edited by Peter Davison Shakespeare, Richard II Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice Shakespeare, 1 Henry IV Shakespeare, 2 Henry IV Marston, The Dutch Courtesan The Fair Maid of the Exchange (with Arthur Brown) Theatrum Redivivum (17 vols) Literary Taste, Culture, and Mass Communications (with Rolf Meyersohn and Edward Shils) (14 vols) The Library Uournal of the Bibliographical Society) (1971- 'The Flaying of Sisamnes' by Gerard David POPULAR APPEAL IN ENGLISH DRAMA TO 1850 Peter Davison © Peter Davison 1982 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1982 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission First published 1982 by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD London and Basingstoke Companies and representatives throughout the world ISBN 978-1-349-05182-3 ISBN 978-1-349-05180-9 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-05180-9 For Sheila Contents 'The Flaying of Sisamnes' by Gerard David frontispiece Preface 1x 1 Introduction 1 2 The Medieval Tradition 12 3 Shakespeare and the Comics 34 4 Jonson and his Contemporaries 79 5 The Muse's Looking-Glass 108 Appendix I: A Chronological List of Plays and Acts Discussed 165 Appendix II: Recordings of Music-Hall Performances Quoted 169 Notes 170 Select Bibliography 204 Index 211 Preface The origins of this study go back to my doctoral thesis 'Humour as a Tragic Force in Modern Drama in English' (University of Sydney, 1962) in which, among other things, I discussed the popular tradition of drama in the previous hundred years or so, and its influence on contemporary legitimate drama. This led to my being invited to give a Kathleen Robinson lecture at the University of Sydney in 1963, 'Contemporary Drama and Popular Dramatic Forms', in which the routines of Dan Leno, Arthur Roberts, and Flanagan and Allen were compared with aspects of the drama of Beckett and Pinter. A little later, in a book on music-hall songs, I touched on a number of occasions in which the worlds of legiti mate and illegitimate drama interacted, and, in particular, the effect this had on the production in Britain of drama involving alienation.1 At about the same time, I was also teaching Jacobean and Caroline drama and this led to a re-examination of the accusations that this drama is decadent and escapist. It seemed to me that in Massinger's The Roman Actor, for example, 2 there was clear comment on the role of the king - and King James VI and I in particular - and that this was dramatised through theatre imagery. In addition, Massinger pointed to parallels between the stage and contemporary life as epitomised in James I's speech to Parliament of 21 March 1610: 'Kings Actions (euen in the secretest places) are as the actions of those that are set vpon the Stages, or on the tops of houses.'3 I also argued that Massinger's use of allusions to Shakespeare's work did not stem from a lack of inventive power, but because reference back to the idea of the player in Hamlet, Macbeth and Richard II enabled him to make more tellingly the points he wished to get across. Massinger, to adapt his own words, was 'deciphering on the stage, to the life, what honours wait on good and glorious actions, and the shame that treads upon the heels of vice' (The Roman Actor, I.i.22-5). I tried also to argue that even work of a kind so readily dismissed as showing a 'withdrawal from the pursuit of reality'4 might have a serious concern with then current political events. Indeed, tragicomedy might have owed part of its popularity in the time of Beaumont and Fletcher to the fact that it attempted, through drama, to reconcile conflicts of ix Preface X absolutes that, in the event, only civil war would resolve. The relation ship of Phi/aster to contemporary affairs, it was suggested, was not only to be found in the many parallels between that play and James l's speeches and writings, but in the link between the publication of Q2 in 1622 and the bitter Parliament of January 1621-January 1622. The ending of Q2, with the degradation and brutal baiting of Prince Pharamond, is very different from the much more restrained conclusion to Q1 of 1620. It was also suggested that the curious victory over royalty of the buffoon-like Country Fellow made use of dramatic tradition in an important political way: 'A poor man that is true is better than an e,arl, if he be false.' 5 In this study I have taken this interest in the relationship of the real and play worlds back to the late Middle Ages, in particular to Fulgens and Lucres. I discuss Shakespeare's relationship with the clowns and show how their material (including the bad pun) was used in the Elizabethan period. The use of the induction is discussed, in masqqes (by Jonson and Shirley) as well as in plays, and in the final chapter the origins of the rehearsal play are traced, and the way Fielding and later dramatists used this form is analysed. The major break in the English dramatic tradition is seen as occurring, not with the closing of the theatres in 1642, but some two hundred years later, with the end of a drama that consciously drew attention to the nature of theatre. I have tried not to repeat what has already been well done by S. L. Bethell, Olive Mary Busby, Leonard Dean, Doris Fenton, Robert J. Nelson, Anne Righter, Thelma Greenfield, Alan Somerset and Robert Weimann, referring to their work when it will make my points for me. 6 I agree with much of what Anne Righter has so lucidly put in her Shakespeare and the Idea of the Play, but cannot agree with her conclusion: Europe was moving away from the Renaissance, with its complex balances and clarity of form, into the Baroque. In England, this movement spelled the end of a great theatrical tradition. Long before the closing of the theatres in 1642, the Elizabethan relationship of actors and audience, a near-perfect accomplishment, a brilliant but perilous equilibrium, was gone beyond recall. (p. 207) As my analysis of The Roman Actor (published in the same year as Anne Righter's book) will suggest, I see the use made of 'the great theatrical tradition' by Massinger as still lively and significant. That Massinger was not the playwright Shakespeare was is not to prove that he could not achieve that 'perilous equilibrium', even though his drama is less remarkable. Much of this study attempts to argue that 'the idea of the
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