Victorian writers and the stage : the plays of Dickens, Browning, Collins and Tennyson / Richard Pearson, Lecturer, National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland.
Introduction: legitimacy and playwriting -- Part I: Comedy and Tragedy, Before the Theatres Act of 1843 -- Farce, family and the minor theatres: Dickens as a legitimate playwright -- Text and Performance: Robert Browning and the struggle of the dramtiic author -- Part II: Collaborations at Mid-Century, 1845-1868 -- The novelist at the stage door: Dickens' and Thackerary's dialogue with the theatre -- Dramatic collaboration: Dickens' and Collins'melodramas -- Part III: Dramatic Identities, 1870-1883 -- Adapting to the state: Wilkie Collins and the double text -- Cometh the hero? Alfred Lord Tennyson as a nation's playwright.
Summary:
"This book comprises a study of the plays of Dickens, Browning, Wilkie Collins and Tennyson, alongside the fiction and periodical writings of Thackeray and others. These major Victorian writers authored several professional plays, but why has their achievement been overlooked? Victorian Writers and the Stage brings together comprehensively, for the first time, the professionally performed plays of a group of well-known authors - some of which plays enjoyed long and successful seasons, but all of which have been largely forgotten. The author examines the goal of these writers to become part of an expanding theatrical industry and the problems they encountered in risking their reputations on a literature felt by many to be vulgar and illegitimate. A wealth of new detail carefully positions the plays within the context of the changing Victorian theatre industry and the great battle between the Major and Minor theatres for the future of the modern stage"-- Provided by publisher.
Series:
Palgrave studies in nineteenth-century writing and culture
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.