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Bratton, Jacky. 'Introduction to Whackham and Windham; or, the Wrangling Lawyers.' British Women Playwrights around 1800. 15 January 2000. 3 pars. <http://www.etang.umontreal.ca/bwp1800/essays/bratton_whackham_intro.html>
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Copyright © Contributor, 1999-2008. This essay
is protected under the copyright laws of the United States and
the Universal Copyright Convention. Publication (print or electronic)
or commercial use of any of the copyrighted materials without direct
authorization from the copyright holder is strictly prohibited.
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| 1. |
The Sans Pareil, later to become the Adelphi, a theatre built by John Scott next
door to his water-colour-preparer's shop in the Strand, in
London's nascent West End, was refitted and its interior enlarged
before the 1814-15 season. It now seated 800 in the pit, and
had a stage 40 feet wide by 50-60 feet deep. Its inspiration
and indeed raison d'etre, its manager and leading performer
and writer, was Scott's daughter, always known simply as 'Miss
Scott'. In the 1814 season her best-known comedy Whackham (or Whackam, or Whackem—spellings vary, but the pronunciation is clear) and Windham; or, the Wrangling Lawyers was first produced. Bills stress that it is an original piece, not derived from
the French. Reviewers approved the play, both for its writing
and the opportunities it gave for the specialist performers
in the company to entertain in their own ways. The Theatrical Inquisitor opined that the comedy "does infinite credit to the literary talents, and scenic skill, of its fair writer,
Miss Scott, and we augur that had it been acted at either of
the winter theatres, it would have placed her in the first
class of our modern dramatic authors" (128). The diarist Henry Crabb Robinson saw it on 20 February 1815 and approved
of Meredith's broad comic acting as Thomas the servant and
Andrew Campbell's imitations, which within the play are of
a Jewish old clothes salesman/clandestine gold dealer and an
'artist', and extended beyond the dramatic frame to impersonations
of leading actors—Kemble, Cook, Johnstone, Elliston, Farley, Emery, Munden and Kean. This rich
intertheatrical mix also surfaces in the text with references
to the setting of the play/theatre in the Strand, and the comic
dramatisation of the Scott family circle, which is pointed
out on the bills.
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| 2. |
The text given here is only the accidentally-surviving shadow of the theatrical
event: it is taken from the copy made for the purposes of obtaining
a licence for performance from the censor's office under the
Lord Chamberlain. As such it does no more than sketchily represent
the play as performed. This is of course true of all play texts,
but it is especially and acutely the case with works like this,
whose life was intimately embedded in the situation of their
writing and performance, and whose appearance in manuscript was
no more than a gesture towards legal requirements. This text
was never intended as even a blueprint for the real thing; its
purpose was only to reassure the authorities that nothing seditious
was intended. What actually happened at the Sans Pareil, with
the collaborating cast of performers and the regular, knowing,
participatory audience who approved of the play, can only be
grasped by regarding the ensuing text as a set of clues, whose life is to be found or recreated on the
stage. |
| 3. |
The transcription expands speech ascriptions to a full name and places them on
a separate line. Otherwise it is intended to be free of intervention.
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Jacky Bratton, Royal Holloway
University of London
Jacky Bratton is Professor of Theatre and Cultural History at Royal Holloway,
University of London. Her current projects are a CD-Rom about
the performance history of King Lear, with Dr Christie Carson,
and a revisionist historiography of the nineteenth-century
British stage (both for Cambridge University Press).
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Works Cited
[Anon.]. Theatrical Inquisitor (February 1814) 128. |
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