Oroonoko

Southerne, Thomas

doi:10.1093/oseo/instance.00024761

Cited by 17 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…First staged in 1696, it was revived sporadically through 1830s. 20 It is the story of an African prince sentenced to slavery for his clandestine marriage to the King's love interest, Imoinda. Oroonoko and Imoinda, now pregnant with his child and also condemned to slavery, are sent to Surinam.…”

Section: Melinda Lawsonmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…You do not know the heavy grievances, the toils, the labors, weary drudgeries that they impose; burdens more fi t for beasts to bear, than thinking men. 21 Oroonoko resists Aboan's entreaty until he realizes his unborn child will be raised a slave. He agrees to lead the rebellion, which fails, but not before he has killed both the Governor and the captain of the slave ship.…”

Section: Melinda Lawsonmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Imagining Slavery: Representations of the Peculiar Institution on the Northern Stage, 1776–1860

Lawson¹

2011

cwe

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, Massa, you can't deny but I worky worky-I dress a victuals, and run a errands, and wash a house, and make a beds, and scrub a shoes, and wait a table. Take that!-[says Diego, striking Mungo]-now will you listen to me? Mungo is instructed to stand outside in the cold guarding a door to make certain Lenora does not sneak out. He laments his treatment to the audience, expressing both anger and awareness of his exploitation as a worker: Dear Heart, what a terrible life I am led! A dog has a better, that's sheltered and fed. Night and day 'tis the same, My pain is dere gain. Me wish to de Lord me was dead. Whatever's to be done, Poor black must run: Mungo here, Mungo dere, Mungo everywhere. Diego departs the castle, and Mungo, defying orders, admits a young man who is Diego's competitor for Lenora's aff ections into the castle. Celebrating his master's absence, he sings: We dance and we sing, 'till we make a house ring, And, tied to the rafters, old Massa may swing. 13

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Section: Melinda Lawsonmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Melinda Lawsonmentioning

confidence: 99%

Imagining Slavery: Representations of the Peculiar Institution on the Northern Stage, 1776–1860

Lawson¹

2011

cwe

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“…62 Oroonoko, "son and heir to the great King of Angola," was tricked into slavery by an amoral British slave trader who "did design to carry him to England, to have show'd him there," but instead sold him in the Americas. 63 He was purchased by a benevolent planter named Blandford, who resented the captain's "unheard-of villainy." 64 However, unlike Sessarakoo, no honourable RAC officials interceded to rescue Oroonoko.…”

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confidence: 99%

The Royal Slave: Nobility, Diplomacy and the “African Prince” in Britain, 1748–1752

Hanley¹

2015

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William Ansah Sessarakoo, the son of a powerful Fante slave trader on the Gold Coast, was tricked and sold into slavery in Barbados by a British ship’s captain during the 1740s. He was emancipated and brought to Britain in 1748, where he enjoyed a brief period of national celebrity before returning to the Gold Coast in 1750. This paper examines the specific political and cultural circumstances surrounding his remarkable journey, through the lens of the media generated about him during his time in Britain. It demonstrates that the most extensive contemporaneous account of Sessarakoo’s story,The Royal African, was in reality an attempt to generate popular support for a moribund Royal African Company and incorporate slave trading into narratives of national identity, based on notions of economic responsibility and honour. Adhering to conventions typified in Thomas Southerne’s stage adaptation ofOroonoko, further popular representations of Sessarakoo emphasised his aristocratic status and putatively inherited ‘noble’ characteristics. In doing so, they emphasised perceived differences between him and the majority of African peoples, who were deemed suitable for enslavement. The paper closes with an examination of some of the effects of Sessarakoo’s visit on Euro-African trade and diplomacy on the Gold Coast.

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“…Thomas Southerne's 1696 tragedy adds the comic subplot about the Welldon sisters' search for rich husbands, which ties the corruption of the American slave system to widespread associations of the marriage market to the increasingly commercial culture of the metropole. 20 Southerne's version of the story further emphasises the baseness of colonial slave masters, which heightens the contrast to the noble and royal Oroonoko.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Staging Slaves: Restoration Characterisations

Krise

2008

J Eighteenth Century Stud

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Oroonoko

Cited by 17 publications

References 0 publications

Imagining Slavery: Representations of the Peculiar Institution on the Northern Stage, 1776–1860

Imagining Slavery: Representations of the Peculiar Institution on the Northern Stage, 1776–1860

The Royal Slave: Nobility, Diplomacy and the “African Prince” in Britain, 1748–1752

Staging Slaves: Restoration Characterisations

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