Crossref Citations
This article has been cited by the following publications. This list is generated based on data provided by Crossref.
Prescott, Sarah
2003.
Women, Authorship and Literary Culture 1690–1740.
p.
15.
Article contents
The Stage Career of Eliza Haywood
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 October 2010
Extract
Female playwrights of varying degrees of quality were reasonably plentiful in late seventeenth and early eighteenth century England; but, except for Eliza Haywood, few of these playwrights doubled as actresses, at least with sufficient success for us to be aware of their talents. Even the stage career of Mrs. Haywood, one extending at least from 1715 to 1737, has not been documented in its entirety before now. It deserves attention because it adds some details to the scanty biography of this woman who is best known as a novelist, a novelist who turned out scandal chronicles long before Richardson made the novel morally acceptable, and who in 1751 produced what may be the first domestic novel in English, The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless. Along the way she had some success as a publisher, as the first woman writer of a periodical for women, as a poet, and as a playwright and actress. It was her efforts in the theater that drew the attention of such men as Jonathan Swift and Richard Savage and brought her into a rather lengthy association with Henry Fielding. And it was her theatrical experience that contributed much to her eventual skill as a novelist. She liked the stage, and much of what we like in her later work she owed to the stage.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1964
References
NOTES
1 Cited in Whicher, G. F., The Life and Romances of Eliza Haywood, (New York: 1915), p. 3.Google Scholar
2 According to Clark, William Smith, Timon was presented in the first month or six weeks of the 1714–1715 season. The Early Irish Stage (Oxford: 1955), p. 150.Google Scholar
3 Whicher, p. 6.
4 Clark, p. 208.
5 The London Stage 1660–1800, Pt. 2, 1700–1729, ed. Emmett L. Avery (Carbondale: 1960), Vol. I, p. 446.
6 In Bonnell Thornton's parody of Henry Fielding's Covent Garden Journal called Have at You All, or the Drury Lane Journal, Madam Roxana Termagant, who carries the battle to Drawcansir, Knt. writes her biography in number 2, January 23. 1752. It is not certain that she is modeled after Eliza Haywood, of course, but when she is discussing the speculation as to her true identity she writes, “… one party confounding me with that prolific inexaustible authoress, who has lately oblig'd us with the history of Miss BETSY THOUGHTLESS; another (with less reason) asserting me to be the Sister of a noted Justice.” Roxana claims to have been a strolling actress in her youth who took to translating and hack writing when she was finally convinced of her small talents for the stage. Her biography is certainly similar enough to Mrs. Haywood's in other respects to allow us to consider this as support for the belief that Mrs. Haywood had been a strolling actress.
7 The London Stage, Pt. 2, II, pp. 618, 647.
8 Whicher, p. 7.
9 The London Stage, Pt. 2, II, pp. 1018–1019.
10 The heading of Chap. XVIII of the third volume of The History of Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy (1753) is apparently a reply to the critic in the Monthly Review.
11 There are a remarkable number of selections from Mrs. Haywood's plays in The Beauties of the English Stage (1737), almost all of them from Frederick, Duke of Brunswick-Lunenburgh.
12 The London Stage 1600–1800, Pt. 3, 1729–1747, ed. Arthur H. Scouten (Carbondale: 1961), Vol. I, p. 48.
13 The London Stage, Pt. 3,1, p. 194. See also Nicoll, Allardyce, A History of English Drama 1600–1900, (Cambridge: 1952), II, p. 365Google Scholar; and Dobree, Bonamy, English Literature in the Early Eighteenth Century 1700–1740 (Oxford: 1959), pp. 254–255.Google Scholar
14 Cross, Wilbur L., The History of Henry Fielding (New Haven: 1918), Vol. I, p. 209.Google Scholar
15 Ibid., p. 217.
16 Ibid., p. 233.
17 Whicher, p. 21. “During the next decade she wrote almost nothing, and after her curious allegorical political satire in the form of a romance, the ‘Adventures of Eovaai’ (1736), the authoress dropped entirely out of sight.”
18 These were The Busy-Body; or Successful Spy and Anti-Pamela, both published in 1741, and possibly written by Mrs. Haywood, herself.
19 The Poems of Jonathan Swift, ed. Harold Williams (Oxford: 1937), Vol. I, p. 148. For the argument that Mrs. Haywood is the actual Corinna, see John R. Elwood, “Swift's Corinna,” N&Q, New Series, II (1955), pp. 529–530.
20 Haywood, Eliza, The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless (London: 1751) Vol. I, p. 50.Google Scholar
21 Hammond, Geraldine B., “Evidences of the Dramatist's Technique in Henry Fielding's Novels,” Bulletin of the University of Wichita, No. 10 (October 1941), p. 27.Google Scholar
22 Fielding, Henry, The Complete Works of Henry Fielding, ed. Henley, W. E. (New York: 1902), Vol. III, p. 143.Google Scholar
23 Betsy Thoughtless, Vol. IV, p. 272.
24 Ibid., p. 101.
25 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 210–211.
26 Ibid., p. 102.
27 Ibid., p. 270.
- 1
- Cited by