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A Thousand Years of British Theatre History (Part 4a)The Eighteenth CenturyThe eighteenth century was not a time of great playwrights: in fact, it is very rarely that any play of the period is even read nowadays (with the obvious exceptions of Goldsmith and Sheridan), let alone actually produced. One could almost say that when Farquhar died in 1707, the last flickering flame of the great blaze of talent that had begun with Marlowe went out. That is not to say, however, that the period had no influence on the development of British theatre. It did, but it was in areas other than play-writing. The building of new theatres: the development of new, albeit mainly minor, forms of drama; quality of acting; the growth of political influence on the theatre: all of these were to be important features of the new century. We have already seen how Charles II had stored up trouble for theatre by his grant of Letters Patent to Davenant and Killigrew. By the very early years of the century the custom had grown up of shares in these Letters being sold, so their exact legal status was uncertain, but it was still the fact that drama could only be presented by those who held them. However it required little ingenuity to get round them and, slowly at first, but with increasing frequency towards the end of the century and into the early decades of the next, other theatres presenting shows with a mixture of drama and music were opened. This was the so-called illegitimate theatre, whilst that presented by the approved theatres was the legitimate. It says a lot for the power of tradition that, even today, what we might call "straight" drama is still known as the "legit" theatre. Arguably the most significant piece of theatre (in the widest sense) of the entire century was John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, a so-called ballad opera, which had a political as well as an artistic agenda. In fact, so successful was it in the political sense, that its sequel, Polly, was banned. Of all the writers of this genre, the most well-known today, and the most effective then, was Henry Fielding, later to turn to writing novels such as Tom Jones and Joseph Andrews, which established his place in the literary pantheon far more effectively than his operas ever could. The main subject of his attacks was Walpole who responded by persuading parliament that the freedom of the theatre was being abused and that it should be curbed. The result was the Theatre Licensing Act (1737), which gave the power of censorship over plays to the Lord Chamberlain through his appointee, the Examiner of Plays. This censorship was to remain in place until as late as 1968. There were numerous ways of avoiding censorship, innuendo rather than explicit statement being the most common, whilst some actually changed the written text in performance, for it was the text that the Examiner of Plays looked at, not the actual performance. These subterfuges aside, however, it did mean that writers were forced to avoid certain subjects, mainly political and religious controversies. It is not surprising, therefore, that those who had something to say chose to write poetry or novels, which were not subject to censorship. Plays The best of the century's plays were written after 1750, and these were of the comedy of manners style, not the sentimental comedies which were the rage from the late 1690s. Goldsmith began writing in 1768 with The Good-Natured Man, very much in the sentimental comedy tradition but with just a taste of the crtitical approach that was to come later in She Stoops to Conquer (1773), but was the reach its peak in the work of Sheridan with The Rivals (1775), The School for Scandal (1777) and The Critic (1779). As at the end of the seventeenth century, comedy was definitely king: tragedy was a disaster. Strangely enough, this was probably due to the influence of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, who exerted such an infuence that the eighteenth century writers tried to sound like them, rather than finding their own style and voice: all, that is, except George Lillo who abandoned the grand and heroic and developed what has been described as domestic tragedy. However he had little effect: his plays - even the best The London Merchant (1731) - were really rather dull. Interestingly he made a greater impact in Europe, where his abandonment of the heroic, of the flawed hero style of tragedy which had been with us since Aeschylus, did develop, leading eventually, although not directly, to the "domestic tragedies" of Ibsen (Hedda Gabler, Ghosts, and the like). As to new forms of theatre, we have already mentioned The Beggar's Opera, but another form of theatre, which is unique to Britain, also began at this time: pantomime. Of course, the original pantomimes were very unlike those of today, being firmly based on the Italian Commedia dell'Arte. The first of these was introduced at Lincoln's Inn Fields by John Lun (actually John Rich, the son of Christopher Rich who had run both the Drury Lane theatre and Lincoln's Inn) in 1717. Lun always played - and became celebrated for - Harlequin. So successful were these "Harlequinades" that they were imitated at Drury Lane and, as we know, spread over time throughout the United Kingdom. Go to the second page.
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