User:Joshtruelove/sandbox

Reception History

Reception History
The reception history of Elizabeth Inchbald is the story of an unknown actress who became a celebrated playwright and author. As an actress, who at the start of her career was overshadowed by her husband, Inchbald was determined to prove herself to the acting community. Some scholars recognized this describing her as “richly textured with strands of resistance, boldness, and libidinal thrills”. A very important aspect of Inchbald's reception history is her workplace and professional reputation. Around the theatre she is known for upholding high moral standards. Inchbald has described having to defend herself from the sexual advvances brought on by stage manager James Dodd and theatre manager John Taylor. Her writing history began with different plays that Inchbald soon earned a reputation for publishing in times of political scandal. One of the things that separated Inchbald from her competitors at the time was her ability to translate plays from Germany and France into English works of art. These translations were very popular to the people due to Inchbald’s ability to make characters in her writings be so vivid and come to life. The majority of what she translated were farces that provided positive feedback from her reading audience. Over the next twenty years, she translated a couple of successful pieces a year, one of these was the very successful play, Lovers’ Vows. In this translation of August von Kotzebues original piece, Inchbald gained complements from Jane Austen, who put the translation in her popular book, Mansfield Park. Although Austen’s book brought more fame to Inchbald, Lovers’ Vows ran for forty-two nights when it was originally performed in 1798. Not only were her plays well liked, but her famous novel "A Simple Story" has always received praise. Terry Castle once reffered to it as, “the most elegant English fiction of the eighteenth century”. As she ended her career and decided to start critiquing in the theatre, the popularity level she had with her fellow male critics was very low. They believed that Inchbald was ignorant to Shakespearian literature and expressed it often.