Talk:Augustan drama/Archive 1

Ready
It is ready. Any passing horseman may nominate it for Featured Article status, if she or he wishes, but I vowed not to do so, myself, after the monster of Augustan literature. For whatever it's worth, this article pursues an independent thesis from that. Instead of trying to provide a strict narrative of "then this happened, then this, then this," it tries to show the contours of a dramatic evolution from courtliness in the Restoration to largely vaccuous domestic drama in the 19th century. How is it that "there is no Augustan drama?" How did this amazingly potent dramatic tradition of the Restoration give way to 'amusing' plays and the adventures and further adventures of Pollyanna? What knocked the wind out of the sails, and why did the audiences turn away from a drama that we now consider great to embrace a type of drama we now consider insipid? If there is no right or wrong about it, what history and fashion conspired to make this happen? That's what this article attempts. I think it's a good survey of "this then this then this" as well, but it's not serving the same master as Augustan literature. Geogre 03:40, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Before you ask...
Since this article is about to go on the main page, I might as well address a concern that scholars might have. I treat Fielding as a Tory. Martin Battestin says he was a Whig. Well, Fielding was a Whig, at least nominally, but he was a Patriot Whig, if anything, and he was pretty clearly against Walpole. I know that he went to Tom Thumb with Walpole, etc. (the evidence presented in Battestin's biography of Fielding), but that's awfully shallow proof, if you ask me, compared with the text itself. After all, John Gay was pleased enough that Walpole liked The Beggar's Opera before he hated it. No author would have refused or said, "Ummm, Bob, that's you up there." I found nothing in Battestin's biography to convince me that Fielding was very Whiggish when he was a Whig, and his satirical gambits, like Henry Carey's, reiterate the Tory points. If there is more proof besides that presented in Battestin's biography, I'm open to hear it, and, of course, anyone may edit this article (the beauty of Wikipedia), but I was not ignorant of the view that Fielding was a Walpole-embracing Whig. I just don't buy it even a little bit. Geogre 13:33, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Deleted?
I'm assuming the article that goes with this talk page should exist, but right at the moment it doesn't. SS451 07:08, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

But now it's back. Well, good. SS451 07:09, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
 * That was me, sorry. I tempdeleted it in order to remove some very egregious edit summary vandalism from the history--didn't want it sitting there decorating the history with shit and piss and ...well, never mind. Sorry for the surprise. I hurried as much as I could, and I think I got it done in under a minute. Bishonen | talk 07:21, 12 August 2006 (UTC).
 * Yeah, it was just very weird to see the featured article of the day as a red link. Glad it's all worked out. SS451 07:30, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Sic transit gloria mundi
And this article goes off the main page, too. Now, either our vandals are on school break, or this topic finally bored them more than any other, including Ormulum, as it got remarkably few defacings. As ever, my thanks to all the sharp eyed and dedicated reverters of vandalism. Geogre 02:30, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

"Third-night take"?
What is it? The article references it several times, but I couldn't find an explanation in the 'pedia.

Could anybody give a shor explanation? -- Syzygy 09:17, 14 August 2006 (UTC)


 * It is discussed further on, but could be explained earlier: "Additionally, prior to 1737 the economic motivations for dramatists were vast. A playwright received the house take of the third night of a play. This could be a very large amount of money, and it would be renewed with each season (depending upon arrangements). Thus, John Gay grew wealthy with The Beggar's Opera." -- ALoan (Talk) 11:30, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

This is an editing mistake. This article began as a piece of Augustan literature, where I explained it before I referred to it confidently. When I finished it as a stand-alone article, I had, in the interim, done a string of articles on particular plays, where, again, I explained it. Therefore, I simply forgot that I hadn't explained it here. My apologies. I should explain it at first occurrence and will in a moment. Geogre 11:52, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Possible references to add
Geogre et al, here are some possible references that can be added, in whatever manner of choosing, that can verify/backup some of the more generic claims of the article in case anyone wants to quell the demands for citations (by adding 15-20 inline citations):

Legouis, Emile. A History of English Literature, trans W. D. MacInnes and Emile Legouis. New York: Macmillan Company, 1957. p. 715 "It is in this sense that the work itself of Steele and Addison is at the very centre of the final advent of classicism; with them, a rational artistic impulse, and the desire for a benevolent, slightly sentimental correctness in behaviour, approach so closely to each other as to enter into intimate contact."

"Neither from the aesthetic nor from the psychological point of view can it be said that the literature of the age of Pope is the exclusive product of a single effort and of a simple quality. The authors have temperaments, in which very often an irrepressible instinct gives rise to the personal, lively, emotive impulses which are condemned by the theory of a rational art; and in their subconsciousness there is still the dim memory of all the former ardour of Elizabethan genius. Sensibility, imagination, a lyricism which the repressive action of culture cannot always reduce to correct limits, show through in a word, an image, a movement, an accent, with all the writers of this age."

Munns, Jessica. "Theatrical culture I: politics and theatre" in The Cambridge Companion to English Literature 1650-1740 Ed. Steven Zwicker. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

pp. 82-83 "Charles II landed at Dover in May 1660, and by August he had granted a monopoly to run two theatre companies to William Davenant and to Thomas Killigrew.... The speed with which these grants ensuring governmental control of theatrical performance were issued is indictative of the extent to which the 'restoration' of theatre was a significant part of the Stuart resumption of control int he capital."

pp. 88-89 Restoration theatres depended on patronage

p. 97 "By the 1690s the theatre lacked royal patronage and there is strong evidence that the 'ladies' had campaigned consistently for a reformation of stage morals; in such a context, the effectiveness of Jeremy Collier's attack on the sexual laxity of the theatre... is scarcely surprising. The theatre had to find new plays more in tune with the altered moral codes of representation. Unfortunately, two of the most brilliant new dramatic talents, Geogre Farquhar and William Congreve, did not last long" (Farquhar died in 1707 and Congreve stopped working after 1700).

"From the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries onwards, there was an influx of professional female dramatists - Susannah Centlivre, Mary Pix, Catherine Trotter, Jane Wiseman, and Delarivier Manley. This was in part due to the fact that playwriting was not sufficiently profitable to produce intense male competition."

p. 98 "Courtly insults to the merchant class were replaced by judicious estimations of their benefit to the nation. Merchants, Joseph Addison wrote in The Spectator, no 69 (1711), 'knit Mankind together in a mutual Intercourse of good Offices, distributed Gifts of Nature, find Work for the Poor, add Wealth to the Rich, and Magnificence to the Great.' These sentiments, alien to the earlier theatrical culture, are echoed in Richard Steele's The Conscious Lovers" also in George Lillo's The London Merchant

p. 99 "Eighteenth-century drama is often regarded as a decline from that of the late seventeeth century insofar as it expresses bourgeois values of comfort rather than glory, and esteems trade rather than war. The emergent dramatic mode has been characterized as 'genteel' with 'sentimental' comedies, and 'pathetic' domestic tragedies. However, the traditions of the stage were powerful, older plays continued in repertory, and many of the trends on the eighteenth-century stage had earlier antecedents."

"Seemly and exemplary dramas with improving moral agendas were not the only new dramatic fare. Anti-governemnt satirical ballad operas..." Beggar's Opera and Grub-Street Opera "...played at much the same time as George Lillo's didactic London Merchant, or Sophonisba." James Thomas talked about civil rights and liberties. John Rich and John Lun were Harlequin.

"Lacking the unifying patronage of the court, competing rather than dominant trends emerged in the early decades of the eighteenth century as theatre engaged with a more varied audience than before. The changes that took place were not necessarily generic nor uniformly signaled by the emergence of affective sensibility."

List of theatres.

p. 100 "This proliferation was not welcomed by the government which had long been seeking to reassert control over the theatres. Walpole had attended a performance of The Beggar's Opera and pretended to be amused - but Gay's follow-up, Polly, was swiftly banned. In 1737 the Little Theatre in the Haymarket, whose company had come under Henry Fielding's management, attempted to stage The Golden Rump, a skit on Walpole and the king, which provided the precipitate occasion for the Licensing Act of 1737. This reduced the London theatres to the two licensed companies and provided that all the new plays, prologues, epilogues and altered old plays must be submitted for approval to the Chamberlain's office." transition to the novel

Winn, James "Theatrical culture 2: theatre and music" in The Cambridge Companion to English Literature 1650-1740 Ed. Steven Zwicker. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

p. 112 "During the first decade of the eighteenth century, there were several attempts to stage Italian operas - some sung in Italian, some translated into English (in whole or in part), some in the form called pasticcio, in which favorite arias were strung together without much pretense of connected plot."

"During the period of experimentation and ferment, English semiopera held its own. As late as 1706, Betterton produced George Granville's The British Enchanters, a semiopera written and set aside during the 1680s, to considerable applause."

p. 113 "Although there was clearly some interest in opera, imported singers demanded huge salaries, which led in turn to high ticket prices, frequent changes of management, bankruptcies, and vain appeals for payment by the performers."

After Handle started become popular - "When the artistic reaction came, in a powerfully orginal work by John Gay, who had served as Aaron Hill's secretary when Hill was working with Handel, it involved a return to a mixture of spoken dialogue and singing. The melodies in The Beggar's Opera (1728), which includes no less than sixty-nine musical numbers, are largely drawn from the familiar repertoire of British ballads, though Gay also borrows tunes from Purcell and Handle. Much of the irony that delighted the original audiences came from the disjunctions between the well-known words to these ballads and the new words written by Gay"

pp. 113-114 "Framed by the witty spoken dialogue and neatly incorporated into an effective plot, the songs appear without elaborate instrumental introductions and without the ceonventinal repetition of the da capo aria. Gay's brilliant satire has many targets, including the excesses of Italian opera, but it is misleading to suppose that his main purpose was to poke fun at Handel, with whom he remains on cordial terms. Nor should we give The Beggar's Opera blame (or credit) for the failure of the Royal Academy, which was doomed by its own financial structure. Gay was more interested in lampooning the corruption of the Walpole administration and gaining his own audience than in damging the Italian opera" his piece ran for 62 nights the first season "is largely the result of his genius, but may also indicate the stubborn survival of the British preference for forms of musical theatre combining the spoken and sung word."

I have other books, but this is just a start. Ottava Rima (talk) 17:56, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

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