Joanna Baillie's Circle

A recent issue of The Coleridge Bulletin published some new letters from Sara Coleridge, daughter of poet and dramatist Samuel Taylor Coleridge. I was surprised to learn that she was acquainted with the playwright Joanna Baillie, and the two had a number of friends in common.

I had known that Baillie frequently corresponded with the painter Thomas Lawrence and the writer Walter Scott, but the letters reveal that her circle also included not just Sara Coleridge, but other notables including the poet Maria Jane Jewsbury and the playwright William Sotheby.

Writing to Jewsbury on November 3rd, 1830, Sara Coleridge noted "Mrs. Baillie we often see and are more & more delighted with her" and that Baillie had "been staying a few days with Mr. Sotheby." Sotheby's play Julian and Agnes had been performed at Drury Lane in 1801, the year after Baillie's De Monfort premiered there. Both plays featured the same leads, the brother-sister duo of John Kemble and Sarah Siddons.

Two years later, Sara Coleridge wrote that "Mrs. J. Baillie has been at the point of death with a low fever, but is happily recovered." Baillie ended up living well into her 80s, and didn't die until 1851. She rose to fame after the first volume of her Plays on the Passions was published in 1798.

That volume included her comedy The Tryal, which will be getting a staged reading next month at the Theatre Royal in Bury St Edmunds. You can find more information about it here.

Robert Dighton's Caricatues

The author Dion Clayton Calthrop said in an article about the Regency-era artist Robert Dighton, “The essence of caricature is polite laughter and polished attack.” That description seems to fit Dighton’s theatrical portraits, which are well worth a look.

Dighton was born in 1752 and lived until 1814. He first exhibited his work at the Free Society of Artists when he was only seventeen, and he continued to exhibit from 1769 to 1773. In 1775 he exhibited some drawings at the prestigious Royal Academy, but his fame came from more popular works.

In December of 1806, Dighton published a portrait of Angelica Catalani, the famed opera singer who caused much controversy on the London stage. Rumored to be mistress to the brutal politician Lord Castlereagh, Catalani became a target of numerous xenophobic attacks. Dighton's hand-colored caricature of her is sympathetic, though, showing her in the opera Semiramide by Rossini.

Another famous caricature Dighton did was of the actor Stephen Kemble, who was famous for playing Falstaff without needing any extra padding for the role. Kemble allegedly weighed 18 stone, about 250 pounds. Sadly, Dighton's depiction of Kemble playing Hamlet is less than sympathetic.

By the way, Kemble was brother to both John Kemble and the enormously popular Sarah Siddons. Here's his vision of Siddons as Elvira in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's play, Pizarro:

Dighton's son Richard followed him into the print-making business. Richard Dighton later engraved a portrait of William Farren, an actor known as "The Cock Salmon" (don't ask) who famously appeared as Sir Peter Teazle in The School for Scandal, also by Sheridan.

Farren, by the way, essentially acted as stepfather to the Victorian actress Helen Faucit. Much to Faucit's embarrassment, Farren had carried on an illicit affair with her mother. The actor did eventually marry his live-in mistress, but only after Faucit's father died.

And you thought your parents were embarrassing....

A Forgery in the Library!

Yesterday, I was at the Rosenbach Library and Museum in Philadelphia, and what did I see there? A blatant forgery!

Don't worry. The Rosenbach knows it's a forgery. In fact, they acquired it because it was a known forgery... one of the most famous forgeries of all time.

The item in question is a supposed love letter by William Shakespeare to his mistress, Anne Hathaway, whom he later married. Obviously, it's not authentic. It was penned in the 1790s, not the 1500s, and not by William Shakespeare, but William-Henry Ireland.

Ireland fooled some of the best minds in England into thinking he had uncovered previously unknown writings by Shakespeare. These included letters, a profession of faith (conveniently confirming that the Bard held conventional religious beliefs and belonged to the official Church of England), and even a new play called Vortigern and Rowena.

That play had a rather infamous opening (and closing) night at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane on April 2, 1796, just one day late to be an April Fool's joke. The premiere was no laughing matter, though. It starred the famed actor John Philip Kemble as the ancient King of Britain, Vortigern. The comedic actress Dorothea Jordan, mistress to the future King William IV, took on the minor role of Flavia.

Together with screenwriter Matt Bird, I wrote a play about Ireland's forgeries. The piece is called Shakespeare or the Devil, and it was named a finalist for the Shakespeare's New Contemporaries program at the American Shakespeare Center. The play has a flexible cast of 5-10 actors playing multiple characters.

If you'd like to read the script with an eye for future production, please contact me. I would love to see it performed!

Rhetorical Gesture and Action

In 1807, the actor Henry Siddons, son of the famous tragedienne Sarah Siddons, published a treatise on acting--freely adapted from a German book--called Practical Illustrations of Rhetorical Gesture and Action.

In the "Advertisement" at the beginning of the book, Siddons defends his free adaptation of a work by Johann Jakob Engel. While a straight-forward translation of Engel's work might have proved "sufficient" Siddons argues that "as the application of his principles, in the original work, was adapted to the business of the German Stage, and as his references and examples were chiefly taken from the German drama, it became an essential duty of the Editor to Anglicise the matter, as well as translate the language of his author."

Siddons makes sure to give examples from English plays that were well known at the beginning of the 19th century, including Joanna Baillie's De Monfort, Matthew G. Lewis's The Castle Spectre, and William Congreve's Love for Love, as well as popular works by Shakespeare, such as Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and Hamlet. He also makes explicit reference to his mother. At one point,  he writes: "If the first actress now on our stage had never been present at the bed of a dying person, her acting, under such circumstances, might probably have lost one of its most natural and affecting traits." This was Siddons's trick of having her fingers twitch, but nothing else, as she had once seen in a person near death.

The book also includes illustrations, one of which is reminiscent of a painting of Sarah Siddons together with a very young Henry. That painting, Mrs. Siddons and Her Son in the Tragedy of Isabella by William Hamilton, shows a tall, stately mother with a small child to the left. Similarly, the illustration for "Affection" shows a mother and son, and the book draws attention to the fact that (as in the painting) the two figures are on different planes. Siddons writes: "First of all, my friend, let us suppose an object of desire placed more high than the person desirous of obtaining it; or what comes to the same point, that the personages are not of an equal height."

How much was Siddons's guide used as a practical tool for actors? It's difficult to tell, but in addition to being raised by the most famous actress of the era (not to mention being nephew to the actor John Philip Kemble), Henry Siddons was a famous performer himself. He was the leading man at the Theatre Royal in Edinburgh, where he originated the role of the Lord of Lorne in Baillie's The Family Legend.

Actors today might not want to follow the advice in the book, which as its title suggests is aimed at a rather rhetorical approach to performance, but it is a fascinating glimpse into the past.

Margaret Somerville Bunn

The actress Margaret Somerville made her debut at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane playing the female lead in Charles Robert Maturin's play Bertram opposite none other than Edmund Kean.

At the time, she was only 16 years old, at least if we can rely on The Biography of the British Stage, published by Sherwood, Jones, & Co. in 1824. That source gives Somerville's birth as being in Lanark, Scotland, on October 26, 1799.

Young Margaret, at the age of 10, began performing in private theatricals, taking on the role of Marcia in Joseph Addison's Cato in a performance of juveniles. Apparently, she grew into an impressive actress, and in 1815 Douglas Kinnaird, a member of the sub-committee running Drury Lane, managed to get her into rehearsal at the theatre in the starring role of Belvidera in Thomas Otway's Venice Preserved.

Alas, poor Margaret Somerville was dismissed from those rehearsals, being informed she was simply not up to the role. Undeterred, she appealed to John Kemble, then manager of the rival patent theatre at Covent Garden, but he declined to help her. She then returned to Kinnaird and performed some passages from Venice Preserved in an attempt to win a second chance. It so happened that Lord Byron, who was also on the sub-committee, was present, and he and Kinnaird both agreed that the young woman should make her debut immediately.

Bertram opened on May 9, 1816, with Somerville in the role of Imogine. The show was a success, and the actress was offered a three-year contract on "very advantageous terms" according to The Biography of the British Stage. In 1817, she obtained permission to perform in Bath for a engagement of ten weeks, lasting into the new year. It was there that she played the role of Bianca in H.H. Milman's tragedy Fazio. In 1818, she left Drury Lane and defected to Covent Garden, where she played Bianca again. That role had already been made famous in London by Eliza O'Neill, who subsequently appeared with Somerville in Jane Shore by Nicholas Rowe.

Somerville was frustrated with a lack of choice parts for her in London, though, and she left Covent Garden to tour the provinces. It was while performing in Birmingham that she met Alfred Bunn, whom she married in 1819. Bunn became part of the inner circle of Robert William Elliston who then took over Drury Lane, allowing Margaret, now Mrs. Bunn, to appear in London as Bianca again, as well as Hermione in William Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale and Cornelia in Sheridan Knowles's Caius Gracchus.

Perhaps Margaret Bunn's most famous role, however, was Queen Elizabeth in an adaptation of the Walter Scott novel Kenilworth. According to The Biography of the British Stage, she was applauded "to the very echo" in the role.

According to a local newspaper in south-central Minnesota, the Bunns' second daughter Helen immigrated to the United States, and Margaret, then widowed, joined her. She died in 1882 and is buried in Blue Earth, MN.

O'Neill's London Debut

On October 6th, 1814, the actress Eliza O'Neill made her London debut at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden. She played the role of Juliet in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, and for years afterward, the night would not be forgotten.

One contemporary said of her that "for grace, sweetness, delicacy, and refinement, she was unequalled." The painter Sir Thomas Lawrence marveled at how natural O'Neill's acting was, comparing her (as many people did) to Sarah Siddons, who had retired from the stage by that time.

Born in 1791 into a theatrical family, O'Neill allegedly made her first stage appearance being carried onstage in her father's arms. The family performed for years in her native Ireland, going back and forth between the Drogheda and Dundalk Theatres. These were decidedly small affairs, so she was quite fortunate to be spotted by a talent scout and invited to perform in Belfast.

O'Neill insisted that her entire family join her in Belfast, so her father, three brothers, sister, and a sister-in-law were all given engagements at the new theatre. It was O'Neill, however, who was undoubtedly the star, and the newspapers in Belfast were extremely favorable in their revues. After two years, the whole family moved to Dublin, where a dispute between a theatre manager and a star actress led to O'Neill getting an opportunity to appear as Juliet at the Crow Street Theatre.

After her successful appearance as Juliet, the manager of the theatre offered her a contract, agreeing to take on her father and brother as well. It was in Dublin that John Philip Kemble first spied the actress. "She has great talent and some genius," was Kemble's assessment. He offered her an engagement in London. Again, O'Neill asked that she be able to take her family with her. Kemble refused to employ them, but did agree to allow her brother Robert to accompany her as a personal protector and to have access to the theatre's green room.

And so it was that O'Neill was finally able to bring her celebrated Juliet to London. The actor William Charles Macready, recalling O'Neill's debut, hailed her "beauty, simplicity, and grace," as well as her "native elegance" and "feminine sweetness." Others commented on how as Juliet her character blossomed after she fell in love, and then fell into a heart-breaking despair. If she was ever perceived in a negative light, it was because audiences found her too boisterous and vehement for an era that still extolled classicism.

In fact, O'Neill helped to usher in a new era of Romantic acting. That January, Edmund Kean had made his debut at Drury Lane, and audiences were looking for a more emotional approach to the stage than had been taken by the previous generation. O'Neill obliged them, at least until 1819. That was when she left the stage to marry William Wrixon Becher, Esq., who soon after the marriage became a baronet. Thus, the once impoverished actress ended her life as Lady Becher.

Many theatre fans no doubt wished she had continued on the stage, but the former actress seemed happy in her retirement. She and her husband raised a family in Ireland, and she ended up living to the ripe age of 81. In any case, the revolution in acting she helped to bring about continued, and performers throughout the rest of the nineteenth century tended to adopt her emotion-filled style.

Happy Birthday, Sarah Siddons!

Today is the birthday of the actress Sarah Siddons, who was born in Wales on July 5th, 1755.

Her father Roger Kemble was Roman Catholic, and her mother Sarah Ward Kemble (who went by "Sally") was Protestant, so they decided to raise Sarah and the other girls as Protestants, while her brother John Kemble and the other boys were raised Catholic.

Sarah Siddons, who married in 1773, played a variety of roles, including Belvidera in Venice Preserv'd, Calista in The Fair Penitent, Isabella in The Fatal Marriage, and of course Lady Macbeth. Less attention has been given to her performances in another Shakespearean role: Hamlet.

Siddons first played Hamlet in Worcester in 1775. By this time, she had made her first failed debut at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, and was banished to the provinces. Two years later, she repeated the role, this time acting opposite her brother John, who played Laertes.

At that point, neither Sarah nor her brother were particularly famous, but as Siddons performed more frequently in Bath, which was second only to London in terms of the importance of its theatre scene, her reputation grew. She was already a star in Bath when she played Hamlet again in 1781, this time in Bristol. There appear to have been other appearances of Siddons in this role in Manchester and Liverpool around this time, though the exact dates are a bit unclear.

In 1782, Siddons made a second debut at Drury Lane, and this time she was a success. From then on, she was an outright celebrity, and she performed as Hamlet in Dublin during the 1802-3 season, and then again in 1805. When Siddons took on breeches roles in comedies, for instance playing Rosalind in As You Like It, she was ridiculed in the press, but her gift was never for comedy. As the greatest tragic performer of her day, however, she seems to have longed to play what was considered the greatest tragic role in the canon.

When she did play Hamlet, it was neither in traditional breeches, nor in a regular skirt, at least when she appeared in Dublin. We know this because a theatre fan named Mary Sackville Hamilton created watercolor sketches of some of Siddons's costumes. After seeing Siddons perform Hamlet in Dublin, she sketched out a costume for the noble Dane that was neither male nor female. We can still see legs, but a long black cloak creates the illusion of a skirt. The result is a costume that conveys androgyny rather than a single clear gender.

Reviews of Siddons's Hamlet were mixed. She studied fencing meticulously in order to get the duel scene right, and critics were surprised at how good she was in this scene. Once critic remarked that he "was never better pleased than by seeing her" in the role. An anonymous diarist recorded: "Mrs. Siddons enters with wonderful judgment into the various feelings of this very difficult character." However, the biographer Percy Fitzgerald wrote that "the general effect was that of a burly ill-formed man."

For whatever reason, Siddons never attempted to perform the part in London, but it seems to have been one she personally enjoyed. For that reason, I leave you with a sketch of her costume in that role, courtesy of the British Museum.

A Clown for All Seasons

Joseph Grimaldi was one of the great clowns of the early nineteenth century. His life story would have been fascinating no matter who recorded it. As luck would have it, though, his memoirs were put together by the greatest English writer of his day: Charles Dickens.

In 1838, the publisher Richard Bentley came out with two volumes of Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi that had been "Edited by 'Boz'," with the Boz in question being none other than Dickens. The cover page is perhaps misleading, since "Boz" had already "edited" The Pickwick Papers and was currently at work "editing" both Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby. In those cases, "edited" meant wrote from scratch. However, Grimaldi did leave a manuscript behind recalling his life story, so in this case, Dickens actually did just edit it (though he took a strong hand in the job).

A "clown" in Grimaldi's day was one of a number of stock characters on the British stage derived from commedia dell'arte, including "Harlequins, Pantaloons, and Columbines," as Dickens notes in his introductory chapter. These characters appeared together in the elaborate shows known as pantomimes that were staged every year around Christmas, often lasting until Easter. As a boy, Dickens had loved these shows, which is why when he was given a chance to edit Grimaldi's memoirs, he was "in a perfect fever" to undertake the job. Changing Grimaldi's first-person narrative into a third-person biography, Dickens was able to utilize the actor's personal recollections while combining them with his own writing style.

According to the account in the Memoirs, Grimaldi's father was a native of Genoa who became both a dentist and a dancing master in England, as well as playing the role of clown himself. His son, young Joe Grimaldi, was born in 1779, the same year the famous actor David Garrick had died. He made his debut on the stage of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane at the age of one year and eleven months. He also began to perform at Sadler's Wells in 1783, appearing in the "arduous character of a monkey." He would frequently appear onstage with his father, and on one occasion, his father was so angered, he beat the boy in earnest right in front of the audience. As the memoir relates, "This was all taken by the audience as a most capital joke; shouts of laughter and peals of applause shook the house."

The artist George Cruikshank provided illustrations for the Memoirs. One of these shows a famous incident where Joe was playing a monkey and his father was supposed to swing him around by a chain. According to the story: "One evening, when this feat was in the act of performance, the chain broke, and he was hurled a considerable distance into the pit, fortunately without sustaining the slightest injury; for he was flung by a miracle into the very arms of an old gentleman who was sitting gazing at the stage with intense interest."

Grimaldi's father died in 1788 and was buried in the churchyard of Exmouth Street Chapel. While he provided handsomely for his two children, the executor of his will, Joseph Hopwood, invested all of the family's money in his own business and subsequently went bankrupt. The family was left destitute, and it was up to young Joey to support the family as a child actor. The following year, his younger brother set sail as a cabin boy on a ship and disappeared.

As a teenager, Joey fell in love with Maria Hughes, who also happened to be the daughter of his employer at Sadler's Wells. On the very day that Grimaldi delivered his first love letter to her, there was a tremendous accident at the theatre, and a heavy platform fell on him, injuring his shoulder. The next day, Maria rushed to his bedside, much to the delight of Joey. Eventually, he obtained the consent of her parents, and the two were married at St. George's in Hanover Square.

In 1799, things couldn't have been going better for Grimaldi. He had a successful career, a wife he adored, and what was more, the couple was expecting a child. Unfortunately, it was not an easy pregnancy, and after many difficulties, Maria died, leaving Joey with neither child nor wife. Maria's body was buried in the Hughes family vault at St. James's Church, Clerkenwell. Two months later, the Christmas season demanded another pantomime, and Grimaldi had to once again go onstage and play the clown.

Eventually, Joey did remarry. After he injured his foot onstage, a certain actress identified in the Memoirs as "Miss Bristow" tended him in his illness, and the two ultimately wed, spending more than thirty years together before the lady died. This was Mary Bristow, who married Grimaldi on Christmas Eve, 1801, and within a year bore him a son, Joseph Samuel, known as J.S. In 1803, Grimaldi's family life was momentarily turned upside down when his brother mysteriously returned from a life at sea, though Joey had long given him up for dead. Strangely, however, the brother appeared for only one evening, and then vanished again forever.

During the early part of his career, Grimaldi performed at Drury Lane, as well as minor theatres like Sadler's Wells. In 1806, however, he gave up Drury Lane to appear at the rival patent house at Covent Garden. His first appearance at that theatre was not as a clown, but as Orson in the Romantic melodrama Valentine and Orson by Thomas Dibdin. Grimaldi frequently appeared in melodramas and other entertainments as well as pantomimes, though it was always as a clown that he was best remembered.

Two years after he joined the Covent Garden company, the theatre burned down, and the company had to perform in smaller venues until it could be rebuilt. When the new building opened in 1809, its manager (John Kemble) tried to raise ticket prices, which had remained fixed by tradition for many years. The result was a massive protest known as the O.P. Riots. The Memoirs describe the disturbances as "the great O.P. Row" and note that "noises made by the audience utterly overwhelmed every attempt that the actors could make to render themselves audible." A few audience members even "brought live pigs, which were pinched at the proper times, and added considerably to the effect of the performances."

Given the impossibility of performing dialogue in such an environment, Kemble asked Grimaldi to perform in a pantomime version of Don Juan. Grimaldi took the role of Scaramouch, as he typically did in Don Juan, and the first night he performed the piece, there was great applause when he entered and very little disturbance afterward. Kemble thought he had finally found a way to win over the audience, and asked Grimaldi to play the same role the next night. However, on the second night of Don Juan, the disturbances recommenced, and they did not let up until Kemble agreed to lower the prices.

In 1812, Joey was invited to dine with nobility at Berkeley Castle, and it was there that he first met Lord Byron, who had usually patronized Grimaldi's benefit performances at Covent Garden. Byron praised the famous clown in such lofty terms, that at first he thought the lord was being facetious. Later, Byron gave Grimaldi an engraved snuff box, which the actor cherished for the rest of his life.

Joey's son was getting older now, and eventually the elder Grimaldi took on the role of Don Juan while J.S. played Scaramouch. In 1823 Joey's health took a turn for the worse, and he was forced to stop performing. J.S. became the company's principle clown, which greatly pleased his father. Unfortunately, upon finding success, J.S. "abandoned himself to every species of wild debauchery and riot," according to the Memoirs.

After years of hard living, J.S. died. The coroner said that "his body was covered with a fearful inflammation" and he had been found in "furious madness, rising from his bed and dressing himself in stage costume to act snatches of the parts to which he had been most accustomed." Two years later, Grimaldi's wife Mary died as well.

The concluding chapter Dickens provided for the Memoirs recounts how Grimaldi himself passed away on May 31st, 1837. The cause of death was apparently natural, and the coroner's jury declared that he "had died by the visitation of God." He was buried at St. James's Chapel on Pentonville Hill. The graveyard where his body was laid to rest is now a public space known as Grimaldi Park.

Romanticism and Theatrical Experience

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.

Unfortunately, the list price for the book is almost $100, but that's what libraries are for, after all. If you get a chance, it's a compelling read for anyone interested in Romantic drama.

Back from England

I'm back now from England, where I was visiting my sister for the holidays, but also got a chance to see some great theatre.

On Boxing Day, I went ice skating at Canary Wharf, and in the evening we had tickets to see Hadestown at the National Theatre. Unfortunately, the intimate show got a little lost in the larger space of the Olivier Theatre, though it was still nice to hear the music again live.

As I previously wrote, I visited the Foundling Museum the following day, where there was a small exhibit on the actress Kitty Clive. They also had on display a famous cartoon lampooning John Philip Kemble and the Old Price Riots. Portraying Kemble as "King John" it makes reference to an old nursery rhyme, stating:

        This is the Manager full of scorn,
        who rais'd the price to the people forlorn.
        & employed the Thief-taker shaven & shorn,
        that took John Bull with his buglehorn,
        who hissed the Cat engaged to squall,
        to the poor in the pigeon holes, over the Boxes.
        let to the Great that visit the House that Jack Built.

The House named in the rhyme is Covent Garden, which Kemble rebuilt at great expense, then raising the prices of tickets to recoup his investment. When protests broke out inside the theatre, Kemble hired thugs to enforce decorum, but that apparently didn't stop crowds from hissing the opera singer Angelica Catalani, the Cat in the poem.

Friday, we took the train out to Stratford-upon-Avon to see Timon of Athens. The play was done quite well, but I was mostly excited to see the hometown of William Shakespeare. I hadn't been to Stratford since the 1990s, and while I got to see Shakespeare's grave at Holy Trinity Church then, I missed seeing the Bard's birthplace. This time, the birthplace was at the top of my list of things to see. It was decked out for the holidays and quite a sight to see, as was Holy Trinity at night. I wandered about the graveyard, much to my sister's consternation, but it was incredibly picturesque.

We spent the night in Stratford, and in the morning visited the site of New Place. The house, which was once the grandest in Town, was bought by Shakespeare after he became successful, but its owner in the 18th century burned it down out of spite. So what is there to see now? Beautiful, beautiful gardens. Though New Place no longer looks like it did in Shakespeare's day, it is well worth seeing. It's also right near the Chaucer's Head Book Shop, where I picked up a couple of choice finds, and while you're in the neighborhood, make sure to also check out the Guild Chapel.

A little further away is Hall's Croft, where Shakespeare's daughter Susanna lived with her husband, the doctor John Hall. The building is remarkably well preserved, and also has a nice garden. It also had (appropriately enough) an exhibit on period medicine. Though Shakespeare never lived in the house, he was likely a frequent visitor. Walking around, you still get a sense of the type of atmosphere that surrounded Shakespeare in Stratford.

We had to get back to London for Sunday, though, when we had tickets to see Christopher Marlowe's play Doctor Faustus at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. Seeing the show by candlelight was a real treat. The following day (New Year's Eve) I visited the Tate Britain, where they had on display a portrait of Mary Ann Yates in Arthur Murphy's play The Orphan of China, itself a reworking of a zaju play by Ji Junxiang.

After welcoming in the New Year, we visited Kensington Palace, which had on display costumes from the recent film The Favourite. After touring the palace, we went to the Victoria and Albert Museum, where I of course had to see the theatre collection. They had on view the Royal Patent which Charles II gave to Thomas Killigrew in 1662. That patent gave Killigrew a near monopoly on theatre produced in London, though he still had to compete with William Davenant, who had a similar patent.

I spent most of the following day in Greenwich, where (among other things) I toured the Queen's House, designed by Inigo Jones, who also designed masques during the Jacobean era. That night, we had tickets to see Danai Gurira's play The Convert at the Young Vic. I enjoyed the play thoroughly. However, the Young Vic is located dangerously across the street from The Bookshop Theatre, where I picked up a few more books to load down my luggage for the return trip.

The next day there was a trip to Pollock's Toy Shop, where I picked up the colored prints to make a toy theatre of Oliver Twist. I already have a modern toy theatre of another Charles Dickens novel, Great Expectations, but that is a modern design. These prints are facsimiles of actually 19th-century designs. When I will actually have time to build a toy theatre with them remains to be seen, but I'm glad I have them.

My final day in London was spent on another Dickensian errand: visiting the newly rediscovered portrait of the author at Philip Mould & Co. While on my way there, what did I pass but the site of the house where the actress Nell Gwyn once lived!

So it was a trip with many theatrical connections. It's good to be back, however, and now I need to settle in and do some writing. Happy New Year!

Almeyda, Queen of Granada

Sophia Lee's tragedy Almeyda, Queen of Granada ran for five nights at Drury Lane in 1796. That might not seem like a long time, but plenty of tragedies had shorter runs in the preceding decades, and the London stage hadn't seen a truly remarkable tragedy since Hannah More's Percy in 1777.

The success of Almeyda (such as it was) came largely from its leading lady, Sarah Siddons, who played the titular queen. Lee dedicated the printed version of the play to Siddons, and said she never would have written a second play (after her 1780 foray into comedy The Chapter of Accidents) if it hadn't been for the great actress.

"Not all the various charms you dignify the Drama with, can equal those of your sympathizing mind, and unassuming manners," Lee wrote in her dedication to Siddons. In a special advertisement to the reader, Lee went on to say that one "must have wanted taste and feeling, not to have been animated, by the exquisite talents of Mrs. Siddons" and that she was proud to have been "the means of displaying, in a new point of view, her various powers."

Though Lee created an original story for Almeyda, she acknowledged a debt to the Caroline playwright James Shirley. The play's prologue, written by Lee's sister Harriet, plays homage to other tragic writers as well, including William Shakespeare, Nicholas Rowe, and Thomas Otway. It urges the audience to cherish the "spark divine" of tragedy which had been all but extinguished in recent years:

                    Ah! gently fan the flame! lest fashion's breath
                    O'er the pale promise send the blast of death;
                    Nor let the wreath Thalia only wear,
                    Her sister muse deserves so well to share.

Thalia is the muse of comedy, and the comic works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Oliver Goldsmith, and John Gay continued to hold the stage even as tragedy had languished. However, according to Harriet Lee, tragedy "mends the morals while it fills the heart." Using strikingly gendered terms, the prologue urges the audience to not just enjoy making fun of folly and vice in comedy, but to "own the manly privilege to feel."

The title character in Almeyda is a Moorish princess who was raised in the court of Castile after the Spanish conquest of Granada. She converts to Christianity and falls in love with Alonzo, son of the King of Castile. However, at the start of the play, international politics call for Granada to be returned to the Moors, and for Almeyda to be installed as queen there. She remains devoted to Alonzo, but wonders if he will continue to love her, or if his patriotic duty to Castile will triumph:

                    Ah, no! For nature here makes distinction;
                    Forms man's large heart for many a various duty,
                    And blends his passions into a republic--
                    While woman, born for love and softness only,
                    Delights to feel love's absolute dominion!

This may sound sexist, and indeed it is, but perhaps not in the way it first appears. Remember, this was first performed in 1796, when the British monarchy was at war with Republican France. Patriotic audiences in London might well have cheered on the "absolute dominion" of woman while scorning the "republic" that represents the fickle heart of man.

Almeyda's uncle Abdallah seeks to control the throne of Granada by marrying her to his son, Orasmyn. Though Orasmyn is in love with his cousin Almeyda, he is too honorable to accept a forced marriage and hopes to truly win her heart. She, however, does not trust the policy of men. She recognizes that her honesty is not prudent, but she gains strength from the seeming foolishness of straight-forward sincerity:

                    --I would like you be guarded, prudent, selfish;
                    Preserve a silence might ensure my safety,
                    And rest upon the future.--But my soul
                    Disdains the mean, the temporising wisdom,
                    Nor knows to tremble in the cause of truth.

In Act III, we meet Alonzo, who was originally played by John Philip Kemble, the younger brother of Siddons. Like Almeyda, he is more passionate than judicious, and sneaks into the enemy palace at Granada in order to see his love. As he explains:

                    In vain would time, or distance, wrest her from me,
                    She, she alone, can shield me in the war,
                    Or nerve my arm at the fierce battle's onset.

Abdallah catches him though, and secure in the knowledge that no one knows Alonzo snuck into Grenada, imprisons him in a dungeon without fearing retribution from the Castilians. Orasmyn, out of both his own sense of honor and the love he has for Almeyda, rescues his rival Alonzo. Unfortunately, when Almeyda descends into the dungeon with her own rescue plan, she finds it empty and concludes that Alonzo has been cast into a gaping chasm. Her uncle appears, and she again uses honesty as her weapon against him, claiming:

                    I will have such revenge!--From thy black heart,
                    At once I'll pluck away its worldly veil,
                    And punish thee in mere sincerity.

In the final act, Abdallah realizes he will never get Almeyda to marry his son. He tries to get her to abdicate, and when that fails, he poisons her and then himself. As she is dying, Almeyda reconciles Alonzo and Orasmyn:

                    Orasmyn's gen'rous heart is virtue's temple!
                    Alonzo, dear Alonzo! honour--love him...
                    --And now, indeed, farewel!--A hand for each.
                    This gives away my crown; and this, oh! this,
                    The faithful heart that's in it!--I am cold;
                    And these dim eyes seek vainly for Alonzo!

Though Almeyda did not make its way into the permanent repertoire of Drury Lane, the performance of Siddons drew positive reviews. Lee's tragedy, even if it never became famous, added to the fame of Siddons by giving her acting a chance to shine.