I was unable to attend in person this year's conference held by the North American Association for the Study of Romanticism, but this morning I spoke on a virtual panel of the conference.
The panel was called "Insurrection and Drama" and all three panelists discussed historical insurrections that were staged in London theatres during the Romantic era, both in patent theatres and in the "illegitimate" minor houses.
I went first, discussing Felicia Hemans' verse tragedy The Vespers of Palermo which premiered at Covent Garden in 1823. Based on a 13th-century uprising in Sicily, the play used its remote historical setting to comment on more recent revolts, including the French Revolution.
Next, Yasser Khan talked about Tippoo Saib, an extravaganza that re-enacted the Third Anglo-Mysore War at Astley's Amphitheatre. Khan discussed how the physical layout of Astley's, which had a circus ring for equestrian acts in front of a traditional proscenium stage, could create a binary opposition, in which the "real" is staged in the ring in the middle of the audience, while the proscenium stage might be used for a more defined illusory world that could only be viewed from one perspective.
The third speaker, Abiodun Bello, gave a fascinating paper on Obi; or Three-Fingered Jack, the story of the Jamaican folk hero Jack Mansong recorded in a novel by William Earle and later staged repeatedly in London. I was particularly interested in Bello's contention that the character of Quashee effectively commits "class suicide" in betraying and killing Jack.
Incidentally, the Billy Rose Theatre Division of the New York Public Library has numerous toy theatre plates depicting Three-Fingered Jack. Here's one of them:
Sadly, I'll miss the in-person portion of the conference, but our panel was quite illuminating.
