I recently read
Jonathan Mulrooney's book Romanticism and
Theatrical Experience. It provides an excellent analysis of the actor
Edmund Kean, the critic William Hazlitt, and the poet and playwright John
Keats. It also delves into how each of these three figures in turn influenced one another.
The first part
of the book is divided into two sections, one on theater and the daily news,
and another on Britain's theatrical press during the first three decades of the
nineteenth century. As Mulrooney observes, the eighteenth century had always
had people writing about the theater in periodicals, but it wasn't until the
end of that century that audiences were able to read day after day the events
that had just taken place in the playhouses at Drury Lane and Covent Garden.
According to
Mulrooney, the role of the reviewer shifted from being an advertiser to being
an independent reporter. Reviews became longer and more substantial. A
watershed moment came with the Old Price Riots, when audiences at Covent Garden
disrupted performance night after night to protest an increase in ticket
prices. After that, reviewers took to both giving their aesthetic judgments on plays
and reporting how they saw audiences respond during the evening. Even people who
were not there that night could then participate in the performances
vicariously.
Mulrooney next
details the different theatrical periodicals available in London from 1800 to
1830. The Theatrical Gazette, for
instance, though it didn't last long, was able to give accounts of both Drury
Lane and Covent Garden throughout the 1815-1816 season, focusing on alternating
houses each night. Of more lasting importance was the Examiner, founded by Leigh and John Hunt. Mulrooney finds the Examiner to be "the most innovative
periodical to publish theatrical criticism in the Romantic-period" because
it represented theater "as a public experience equal to politics and
commerce."
Perhaps no
figure in Romanticism was as much a creature of the theatrical press as Edmund
Kean, who created a sensation after he appeared at Drury Lane as Shylock in
1814. Mulrooney sees Kean as troubling class differences, since he came from and
appealed to the working class. According to Mulrooney, he "embodied a kind
of theatrical bad taste, a mobile, sexually ambiguous, working-class and even
Cockney subject." Unlike the great John Philip Kemble, Kean avoided stately
orations and statuesque gestures. Instead, his acting seemed natural, almost
improvised. This made his performances best viewed from the pit, not the
expensive boxes.
The same year
Kean took to the stage at Drury Lane, Hazlitt began working as critic for both The Examiner and The Morning Chronicle. Mulrooney sees Hazlitt's writing as playing
a role in the shift not just from the acting style of Kemble to that of Kean,
but in "a fundamental change in the understanding of what a 'mental state'
is, what a self is, and how that self is to be represented on stage." Hazlitt
focused on cultural receptions to performances. Kean's class-defying
performances in turn allowed him to write not just about theatre in the
hallowed halls of the patent theaters, but also about jugglers, boxers, and
other entertainers not generally covered in the press.
Kean influenced Keats,
as well, as can be seen in his famous "negative capability" letter
written in December of 1817. As Mulrooney notes, "the letter begins with
Kean" and "represents a vital connection between Keats's theatrical
experience and his poetry." Keats also wrote three substantial
theater reviews in the Champion,
covering for his friend John Hamilton Reynolds when he was out of town. Though
some critics see Keats as a bit of a social climber, his championing of Kean
firmly allies him with the working class.
