Women in British Romantic Theatre: Drama, Performance, and Society, 1790–1840

by Edited by Catherine Burroughs

• ISBN13: 9780521662246
• ISBN10: 0521662249
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-12-11
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This collection of essays examine the extraordinary contribution of women playwrights, actors, translators, critics and managers who worked in British theatre during the romantic period. Focusing on women well known during their day but neglected for some 150 years, the volume provides a crucial perspective that revises historical narratives and reflects the rapidly changing terrain of scholarship in the complex field of romantic theatre and drama. Eleven specially commissioned essays by a distinguished team of scholars explore the role of numerous theatrical women including the eminent actress Sarah Siddons and two of the period's most prolific playwrights Elizabeth Inchbald and Joanna Baillie. The book strikes a balance between literary and theatrical approaches, showing how the period's preoccupation with categories such as text and performance, closet drama and stage, provide a key to 'uncloseting' an important group of female theatre artists.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	xi
Notes on contributors	xii
Acknowledgments	xv
Introduction: uncloseting women in British Romantic theatre	1	(22)
Catherine B. Burroughs
I. HISTORICAL CONTEXTS: REVOLUTION AND ENTRENCHMENT
Baillie, Siddons, Larpent: gender, power, and politics in the theatre of Romanticism	23	(25)
Jeffrey N. Cox
Reviewing women in British Romantic theatre	48	(31)
Greg Kucich
II. NATIONS, HOUSEHOLDS, DRAMATURGY
Women and history on the Romantic stage: More, Yearsley, Burney, and Mitford	79	(23)
Katherine Newey
English national identity in Mariana Starke's The Sword of Peace: India, abolition, and the rights of women	102	(30)
Jeanne Moskal
Women's sovereignty on trial: Joanna Baillie's comedy The Tryal as metatheatrics	132	(29)
Marjean D. Purinton
III. PERFORMANCE AND CLOSET DRAMA
Outing Joanna Baillie	161	(17)
Susan Bennett
The management of laughter: Jane Scott's Camilla the Amazon in 1998	178	(29)
Jacky Bratton
Gilli Bush-Bailey
IV. CRITICISM AND THEORY
Elizabeth Inchbald: a woman critic in her theatrical culture	207	(16)
Marvin Carlson
Authorial performances in the criticism and theory of Romantic women playwrights	223	(34)
Thomas C. Crochunis
V. TRANSLATION, ADAPTATION, REVISION
Suicide and translation in the dramaturgy of Elizabeth Inchbald and Anne Plumptre	257	(28)
Jane Moody
Remaking love: remorse in the theatre of Baillie and Inchbald	285	(26)
Julie Carlson
Bibliography	311	(24)
Index	335