Early English Melodrama

Buckley, Matthew

doi:10.1017/9781316155875.003

Cited by 9 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 76 publications

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“…As Matthew Buckley puts it in the first essay of this volume, 'If melodrama arrived in England from France, it was from England, and through the forms developed there in its first four decades of growth, that it reached the world.' 3 Not only was French melodrama grafted onto English stock during the first decades of the nineteenth century, but also during the eighteenth century, French melodrama had itself drawn on English sources in drama, theatre, and literature. 4 Thus the prehistory of English melodrama is complex and multidirectional, involving exchanges among German, French, and Italian sources that were themselves, to varying degrees and in different ways, inspired by or developed in relation to English modelssuch as English ballad opera, English forms of pantomime, bourgeois sentimental drama (and sentimentalism in general), and Gothic stories and drama.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Cambridge Companion to English Melodrama

2018

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Cambridge Companion to English Melodrama

2018

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“…However exaggerated the plots and contrived the settings, within what Mathew Buckley reads as a "discourse of popular political and social expression," these dramas traded in the hardy perennials of home, family, and community, and the counterforces of disruption via personal villainy, malfunctioning authority, or just plain bad luck. 13 But whatever the dynamics in play, invariably taking center stage was the heroine.…”

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The Queen of the Vic: Eliza Vincent's Actress-Management of the Victoria Theatre, London, 1841–1856

Ridgwell

2024

Theat Surv

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Early in 1850, Charles Dickens went to the Victoria Theatre in Lambeth. One of several theatres sited close to the bridges linking the southern bank of the Thames with the north, the Vic was a prominent neighborhood institution catering to a mostly working-class audience. Launched in 1818 as the Royal Coburg Theatre, a move designed to coincide with the opening of Waterloo Bridge, its investors’ hopes of drawing a more upmarket crowd were largely disappointed. Visiting the theatre in 1820, William Hazlitt was distressed to find Junius Brutus Booth among an ill-assorted and noisy throng, and in 1831 Edmund Kean was reduced to haranguing the “unmitigated brutes” gathered before him. Pelted with orange peel and nutshells, he still drew his nightly fee of £50. Although research by Jim Davis and Victor Emeljanow has revealed an audience more varied than once assumed, upon the changing of its name in 1833, the Victoria's core clientele was more or less established, as indeed was its reputation for the bloodier aspects of popular drama. It had also experienced regular changes of management, sudden spells of closure, and periodic clashes with the authorities. Suitably enough for what follows, by 1840, the Vic was judged to have suffered “more vicissitudes” than any other theatre in London.

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“…8 Closely related to what Matthew Buckley calls the melodramas of 'economic distress', game-law melodramas such as George Dibdin Pitt's Simon Lee: or, The Murder of the Five Field Copse (1841), Edward Fitzball's The Momentous Question (1844), and Samuel Atkyns's The Poacher's Wife: A Story of the Times (1847), were all, as the latter's title suggests, expressions of present concern. 9 A prime example of Victorian theatre's inherently intermedial nature, The Momentous Question took its plot from George Crabbe's 1819 poem 'Smugglers and Poachers', while realising onstage an equally well-known painting by Sarah Setchel. In name at least Simon Lee can be traced to one of Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads, and Atkyns's The Poacher's Wife was an adaptation of a novel by Charlton Carew, a book strongly endorsed by Jerrold in the Daily News.…”

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‘Why is it Different with a Hare?’ Game-Law Melodrama on Stage and Screen in Colin Hazlewood's Waiting for the Verdict

Ridgwell¹

2022

Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film

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Much of Colin Hazlewood's prolific mid-Victorian output consisted of adaptations. A classic example of Hazlewood's adaptational practice and an excellent case study in the restlessly intermedial nature of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century popular culture was his 1859 game-law melodrama Waiting for the Verdict. One of Hazlewood's most successful plays, it was later adapted for the screen by the Edwardian filmmakers Mitchell and Kenyon. Tracing his work across different media forms, this article further confirms Hazlewood as a highly skilled adaptor, while offering some viewable evidence of the creative links between theatre and early cinema. The article also suggests that what I term game-law melodrama represented a significant sub-genre variant to the broader one of domestic drama. Game-law melodramas such as Waiting for the Verdict offered picturesque entertainment for largely urban audiences, but they also provided pertinent social comment on a major concern of the day.

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Early English Melodrama

Cited by 9 publications

References 76 publications

The Cambridge Companion to English Melodrama

The Cambridge Companion to English Melodrama

The Queen of the Vic: Eliza Vincent's Actress-Management of the Victoria Theatre, London, 1841–1856

‘Why is it Different with a Hare?’ Game-Law Melodrama on Stage and Screen in Colin Hazlewood's Waiting for the Verdict

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