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Miss Scott and Miss Macauley: “Genius Comes in All Disguises”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2009

J. S. Bratton
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Extract

The first third of the nineteenth century is described by most theatre historians, from the enormously influential William Archer down to the present day, as the “winter solstice” of the British stage. The generally held estimation of the theatre in Britain at this time is that it was a wilderness of vulgarity, bad writing, and self-indulgent acting that pandered to the lowest common denominator of popular taste. This judgment is, of course, an ideological construct, and one that began to be forged at the time to which it is applied. I would contend that “the decline of the drama” was a concept generated in the press and in critical writing of the period for the particular purposes of a newly ascendant hegemonic fraction, the literate (and overwhelmingly male) middle classes, whose project was to recapture the stage, a powerful medium of communication, for the exclusive transmission of their own voice. One tool of this appropriation was the assertion of a superior public morality; and for that purpose it was necessary to cleanse the stage of its immoral associations—especially its association with independent women. It has recently been argued, by Julie Carlson, that “anxieties about women…drive the age's antitheatricality” and account for the failure of the canonical Romantic writers to produce plays.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Survey , Volume 37 , Issue 1 , May 1996 , pp. 59 - 74
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1996

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References

1. Archer, William, The Old Drama and the New (London: Heinemann, 1923), 246Google Scholar.

2. Carlson, Julie A., In the Theatre of Romanticism: Coleridge, Nationalism, Women, Cambridge Studies in Romanticism 5 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3. “Memoir of Miss Macauley,” Oxberry's Dramatic Biography (London: George Virtue, 1826), 4:55, 109–118, 117Google Scholar.

4. For discussion of the actress', position in the public/private divide, see Davis, Tracy C., “Private Women in the Public Realm,” Theatre Survey 35:1 (May 1994), 65–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5. Quoted from surviving Sans Pareil bills. The titles of plays and entertainments cited in the following paragraphs all are derived from bills, and their dates and other details are verified from Alfred L. Nelson and Gilbert B. Cross, eds., The Adelphi Theatre Calendar, Part 1; and Donohue, Joseph, The London Stage 1800–1900: A Documentary Record and Calendar of Performances (New York: Greenwood Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

6. A History of Early Nineteenth Century Drama 1800–1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1930), 2:280–295 (the Dibdins)Google Scholar ; 2:387 (Scott).

7. Quoted in Nelson and Cross, 1.

8. Forman, W.C., “The Story of the Adelphi,” Notes and Queries 158 (14 June 1930), 419–422Google Scholar.

9. The source for Macauley's, early life is her Autobiographical Memoirs of Miss Macauley (London: Charles Fox, 1835), a publication intended to occupy three volumes in twenty-seven or twenty-eight numbers; only the first three appearedGoogle Scholar.

10. This information is from the Oxberry “Memoir,” which seems to contain circmstantial detail that is not necessarily to be discounted simply because the tone of the whole is so derogatory.

11. A Pamphlet on the Difficulties and Dangers of a Theatrical Life (Dublin: Stone, 1810)Google Scholar; Theatric Revolution, or Plain Truth Addressed to Common Sense (London, for the author, 1819)Google Scholar; Facts Against Falsehood! Being a Brief Statement of Miss Macauley's Engagements at the Winter Theatres, the Subterfuges by which she has been driven from the regular Exercise of her Profession, etc. (London: Duncombe, 1824)Google Scholar.

12. A Pamphlet, 3.

13. Autobiographical Memoirs, 5.

14. Facts Against Falsehood, 11.

15. Marmion, a melodrama…, 2nd ed. (Cork: John Connor, 1811)Google Scholar ; Macauley played Constance de Beverley.

16. Poetical Effusions (London: Sothern, 1812), ixGoogle Scholar.

17. Raymond, George, Memoirs of Robert William Elliston (New York: Benjamin Blom, 1969), 2:178–179Google Scholar.

18. Some Account of the English Stage from the Restoration in 1660 to 1830 (Bath 1832), 8:648.

19. In 1812; see Hunt, Leigh, Dramatic Criticism 1808–1831, Houtchens, Lawrence Huston and Houtchens, Carolyn Washburn, eds. (London: Oxford University Press, 1950), 72Google Scholar.

20. See Theatric Revolution etc., passim.

21. These events are the substance of her pamphlet Facts Against Falsehood, 24.

22. Oxberry, 1:124; 1:33; 5:163.

23. Ibid., 1:220; 5:199.

24. Quoted in SirMartin, Theodore, Helena Faucit (Lady Martin), 2nd ed. (London: Blackwood, 1900), 53Google Scholar.

25. Oxberry, 5:62.

26. Oxberry, Memoir, 116–117.

27. The Crisis, or the Change from Error and Misery to Truth and Happiness 1:3, Owen, Robert, ed., 16 June 1832 and 7 July 1832Google Scholar.

28. Letter dated 28 April 1831, The Lancashire and Yorkshire Co-operator (May 1831), 4Google Scholar.

29. Obituary notice, source unknown, pasted into the back of the British Library copy of Miss Macauley's First letter to the King on Magisterial Oppression, published as a penny pamphlet dated 29 October 1833 for the author.

30. Taylor, Barbara, Eve and the New Jerusalem (London: Virago, 1983), 71Google Scholar.

31. See, for example, Pearce, Charles E., Madame Vestris and Her Times (London 1923)Google Scholar , and and W[estmacott], Charles Molloy, Memoirs of the Life, Public, and Private Advenutres of Madame Vestris (London 1939)Google Scholar . The most recent biographies are Williams, C.J., Madame Vestris a Theatrical Biography (London 1973)Google Scholar ; and Appleton, William W., Madame Vestris and the London Stage (New York 1974)Google Scholar . Recuperative work has begun in, for example, Fletcher, Kathy, “Planche, Vestris, and the Transvestite Role: Sexuality and Gender in Victorian Popular Theatre,” Nineteenth Century Theatre 15:1 (Summer 1987)Google Scholar ; and Williams, Gary Jay, “Madame Vestris' A Midsummer Night's Dream and the Web of Victorian Tradition,” Theatre Survey 18:2 (November 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar . However, the widespread assumptions about the natures of her success and managerial innovation are as yet relatively untouched.

32. For a brief consideration of these two, see my “Working in the Margin: Women in Theatre History” New Theatre Quarterly 10:38 (May 1994), 122–131CrossRefGoogle Scholar.