"Staging the Peninsular War: English...." Topic

…. Theatres 1807-1815 by Susan Valladares (review)

"Susan Valladares provides much insight into theatrical activity in London and Bristol during the 1808-1814 Peninsular War against the forces of Napoleon. The book is divided into two sections: the first focuses on theatrical activity in selected theatres in London and Bristol; the second section entitled "A Calendar of Playbills for Covent Garden, Drury Lane Theatre and Bristol Theatre Royal: 1807-1815" provides a chronological list of main-pieces, interludes, and afterpieces performed at these three theatres. The first chapter considers Richard Brinsley Sheridan's Pizarro (1799) and its changing relation to society in wartime London. Valladares starts with Pizarro 's initial reception in the 1799-1800 season, and then investigates Sheridan's decision, following the collapse of the Peace of amiens in 1803, to publish the hero of Pizarro 's speech as a broadsheet entitled "Sheridan's address to the People". Next, she discusses the subsequent revision of Pizarro in support of the Spanish and Portuguese cause in the Iberian Peninsula. This first chapter confidently illustrates theatre's capacity to act as a platform to not only challenge but also celebrate war. Chapter two entitled "Performing Shakespeare", focuses on the mediation of patriotic feeling in the staging of Shakespearean dramas within the thematic framework of history, nation, and identity. Valladares argues that the re-staging of Shakespearean plotlines not only kept the audiences up to date with wartime affairs, but also encouraged audience reflection upon the British involvement. She shows how Napoleon could be compared to Shakespearean villains such as Richard III and Macbeth while Henry V, Henry VIII and King Lear promoted hierarchy, decorum, and good government. Chapter three entitled "Spectacular Stages" focuses on the dramatic visual spectacles presented in London's minor theatres. Valladares argues that their new productions were [End Page 62] more experimental than Covent Garden and Drury Lane in their responses to topical wartime events demonstrating how the minor theatres excelled in ideological confrontation on a number of levels. For example the Portuguese royal family's emigration to Brazil was reimagined in the dramatic spectacle of John Philip Astley's The Honest Criminal; or, False Evidence at Astley's Amphitheatre which coincided with the contemporaneous "dramatic aquatic melo-dramatic spectacle" The White Witch; or The Cataract of Amazonia by Charles Dibdin the Younger at Sadler Wells. the discussion in valladares's final chapter "Playing to the Provinces" is confined to just two Bristol theatres: the Theatre Royal and the Regency. This chapter shows how the theatres benefited from the city's garrison status and also draws attention to the danger of generalizing British theatre trends based on London theatres alone. Samuel Taylor coleridge's Remorse (1813), for example, was a great success in drury lane with a twenty-night consecutive run in its premiere season. At the Bristol Theatre Royal it flopped after just two performances. As a valuable new contribution to existing scholarship on provincial theatre the calendar of playbills may well justify future digital expansion…"
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