than a little exaggeration.". This early 19th-century illustration appears to depict a scene from Greek myth – on stage is Poseidon, god of the sea, earthquakes and horses, accompanied by a live orchestra in the pit.
them, and so did Centlivre and Trotter and there weren't many women [4] The full wording of the statute is available online at: [http://umich.edu/~ece/student_projects/early_theater/license.html]. The performance rocketed him to overnight success, and by the following year he was a regular at Drury Lane. Their private lives and loves were the focus of obsessive public interest and they were the subjects of paintings and broadsides – even novelty merchandise.
than laughter. A cast list from The Beggar’s Opera, printed in 1729, a year after the play premiered at the Drury Lane Theatre. The Restoration in England. The first great star (indeed, the very first person of whom the word ‘star’ was used in a theatrical context) was David Garrick, who emerged from provincial obscurity to become the brightest talent on the London stage. German poets who verged on sentimentalism were Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (1724–1803), Christian Fürchtegott Gellert (1715–1769) and Sophie de La Roche (1730–1807, the author of the first epistolary novel in German) and its influence may also be seen in Goethe's early work Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (1774), a high-point of Sturm und Drang. For the sentimentalist this capacity was most important in morality (moral sense theory). Another pantomime, Lewis Theobald’s Harlequin Sorcerer, was performed no fewer than 337 times at Covent Garden between 1747 and 1776, making it one of the greatest commercial hits of the era. English Literature and Thought 10, 1991, 246 pp. brilliantly attacks it in School for Scandal. Within the scene, bonnets, buckles, shoes and even someone’s dinner are lost as the crowd surges forward trying to gain entry to the theatre. form was supposed to appeal to women, "though few female dramatists This notice announces that a performance of The Beggar’s Opera has unfortunately been cancelled because one of the actors, Mr Thornton, has ‘received so violent a Bruise by a Fall from a Horse, that confines him to his Bed’. Sarah Siddons was the first woman ever to play Hamlet, but was best-loved in her portrayal of Lady Macbeth. Usage terms British Museum Terms of UseHeld by© Trustees of the British Museum. In both sentimental comedy and tragedy, the emphasis falls As a result, it is common to observe both philosophical and literary movements simultaneously. I received many compliments for making the arrangements so I thought I should pass that along to where they belong. The practice of sentimental comedy is illustrated through the 18th century. remorse. Sentimentalism includes a variety of aspects in literature, such as sentimental poetry, the sentimental novel, and the German sentimentalist music movement, Empfindsamkeit. Therefore, one could not obtain a sound moral theory. In 1700, London had a population of around 675,000; a century later, nearly a million people lived in the metropolis, making it the largest city in Europe and one of the largest in the world. Grows Sentimentalism in philosophy and sentimentalism in literature are sometimes hard to distinguish. Sentimentalism is a practice of being sentimental, and thus tending toward basing actions and reactions upon emotions and feelings, in preference[citation needed] to reason. Around the middle of the century, sentimentalism set "untouched" nature against (courtly) civilization, as in the works of Jean Jacques Rousseau. Lovers by William Whitehead (1762) and Elizabeth Inchbald's Every In continental Europe, one aspect of sentimentalism was Empfindsamkeit.
by a moral problem, and the differences between the two genres are minimised, Sentimental comedy, a dramatic genre of the 18th century, denoting plays in which middle-class protagonists triumphantly overcome a series of moral trials. Sentimental Réservez vos billets pour Nos Éducations sentimentales - Théâtre 13 Jardin à Paris sur BilletRéduc Prix réduits jusqu'à la dernière minute Paiement Sécurisé
Above all, British theatre in the 18th century was socially inclusive: although they sat in different parts of the auditorium, according to wealth and social status, people from all walks of life attended, from workers and servants to merchants and society ladies, right up to grand aristocratic families.
The city’s young and restless inhabitants were hungry for entertainment, which theatre producers – along with everyone else – were only too eager to supply. Over at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Cibber’s great rival John Rich had long wanted to find a theatre that would compete with Drury Lane, and after scoring an immense hit with John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera in 1728 – it became one of the greatest theatrical successes of the age – Rich finally had the money. [8] The best short account of Garrick’s life is Peter Thomson’s 2004 article for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. to explain the humor, that it was less "pejorative," or didn't carry One innovation was the use of ‘flats’ – hard surfaces painted to give the illusion of three-dimensional settings, which could be easily slid in and out to enable changes of scene. conceptions of humans as inherently good but capable of being led astray And although Georgian playwrights are comparatively neglected these days – with a small handful of exceptions – the great actors of the age, among them David Garrick, ‘Peg’ Woffington and Sarah Siddons, have gone down in history. The Seventeenth In continental Europe, one aspect of sentimentalism was Empfindsamkeit. At Rich’s new Covent Garden Theatre, things were also highly impressive, as this 1736 report of the staging for a new opera called Atlanta suggests: The Fore-part of the Scene represented an Avenue to the Temple of Hymen, adorn’d with Figures of several Heathen Deities.
Mary Wortley Montagu: it That isn’t to say that spectators sat timidly by. Having first been used in Italy in the early 1600s, flats came into common use in British theatres in the 18th century. 8 halftones In 1737, Robert Walpole’s government attempted to put a halt to this expansion by passing the Licensing Act, which renewed the monopoly of the patent theatres when it came to spoken drama and also insisted that every script had to be approved before performance by the Lord Chamberlain, who was also given the powers to close down shows entirely (Walpole had been particularly offended by a satirical farce of that year called The Golden Rump, which mocked both him and the royal family). Around Garrick – and often in competition with him – moved a constellation of other luminaries, among them the superlative comedienne Margaret ‘Peg’ Woffington, Garrick’s Shakespearian rival Charles Macklin, the charismatic leading man Spranger Barry, the versatile Colley Cibber (like Garrick, an actor/adapter/manager), and the satirist playwright-actor Samuel Foote. Usage terms Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike licenceHeld by© Trustees of the British Museum and British Museum Terms of Use.
Loftis, John. In this letter from March 1777, Frances Burney relays Samuel Johnson’s comments on David Garrick: ‘“Garrick never enters a Room, but he regards himself as the Object of general attention, from whom the Entertainment of the Company is expected, – & true it is, that he seldom disappoints them; for he has infinite humour…’. Drama: Sentimentalism. Sumptuously decorated, featuring the latest stage and scenic technology and boasting pitch-perfect acoustics, Covent Garden Theatre accommodated over 1,000 spectators, ranged between boxes (the most expensive seats), gallery (middle-range) and the pit (cheapest). [2] Cited in Arthur H Scouten, The London Stage 1729–1747 (Carbondale and Edwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1968), p. xxxi.
. In this letter, Altangi observes and describes a theatre audience.
The Poetics of Sensibility: a Revolution in Literary Style. -Famous playwrights were Livius Andronicus (284-204BC) and Lucius Seneca (4BC-65AD), Playwrights include Hrosvitha (935-1002) and Adam de la Halla (1237-1288). manipulation. comedy -- a dramatic genre of the 18th century,
They were known as ‘patent’ theatres – so called because they were sanctioned by royal patents dating from the Restoration of 40 years earlier. Sentimentalists were, thus, often seen as relating to the schools of humanism and empirical ethical intuitionism. In eighteenth-century England, the sentimental novel was a major literary genre. authoritative study of the genre expounds a theory of sentimental Other as "respectable pornography.". Contact Us. Connor / [11] Images at: [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Drury_Lane_Playbill_-_The_Tempest.jpg] and Available online (with subscription) at: [oxforddnb.com]. Plots are generated Though candlelight was still the only available lighting technology, producers attempted to flood their stages with as much light as possible via the introduction of footlights and extra sidelights to show off sets and costumes to best advantage. One historian of feminism [Hilda Smith] argues that the feminism Arising from religiously motivated empathy, it expanded to the other perceptions—for example, sensual love was no longer understood as a destructive passion (Vanitas) but rather as a basis of social institutions, as it was for Antoine Houdar de la Motte.