Lady Eglantine Wallace's rather inept comedy The Ton; or, Follies of Fashion survived for three performances at Covent Garden in early April 1788 and one failed performance in Edinburgh before being consigned to theatrical oblivion. The obvious question, therefore, is why the play should warrant our current scholarly attention. The answer to that question is manifold, for I believe that the play and the controversy surrounding its limited set of performances offer an extremely valuable site for considering a range of questions poised at the intersection of theatrical and cultural history. Specifically, the damnation of the play reveals a great deal about the history of proto-feminist self-scrutiny within the aristocracy prior to the mobilization of feminist concerns and anti-aristocratic sentiment in the consolidation of the middle class.

The opening night review from the Morning Chronicle of 9 April 1788 provides a valuable point of entry for our consideration of the play in that it gives a sense not only of the play's merits, but also of it reception:

This comedy is the production of Lady Wallace, and was received with a mixture of applause and disapprobation, by one of the most fashionable and crowded audiences that ever were assembled in a theatre.

The object of the author's Satire is to lash the follies of fashionable life and expose them to ridicule; and though she has not succeeded in the production of a perfect play, she merits the warmest praise from every friend to morality, for the laudableness of her aim and the boldness of her attempt. The Ton is defective in regard to the construction and conduct of the plot; it also wants a greater variety and novelty of character, and is infinitely too long for representation. The Fable is meagre and barren of incident. Till the fourth act we scarcely meet with any business or bustle; long and tedious scenes of coloquy occupying that time, that ought to be employed in the exhibition of dramatic action.—The dialogue proves Lady Wallace to have been a discerning observer of what has passed in fashionable life, and to have judiciously fixed on those circumstances which demand the castigation and severity of comick exposition. The dialogue is, however, unequal, and although it contains some points peculiarly happy in regard to the turn both of thought and expression, it is slurred occasionally with a degree of vulgarity of diction, and grossness of allusion, that at once degrade and disgrace it, and excite disgust in the audience. (link to quote)

The Ton amounts to a compendium of aristocratic vice: gambling, adultery, gender insubordination, greed, calumny, and various forms of hypocrisy are all extensively exemplified. And these attacks on aristocratic excess are supported by bursts of anti-Irish and anti-Semitic business. But it is the practitioners of the Ton, or of fashionable life, who are her chief target for they constitute a threat to the social fabric that remains unspecified throughout the play, but which folds into contemporary attacks on aristocratic dissipation. These attacks in the press move in two different directions: one aimed at re-stabilizing and re-vivifying a decaying aristocratic order and one aimed at figuring the aristocracy as the negative example against which the emergent bourgeois will define itself. The Ton 's satire moves in the former direction.

As the review indicates and as she emphasizes in her preface to the printed edition, the objects of Lady Wallace's attack composed no small portion of her audience. It is not surprising that they would have reacted with disapproval, but what interests me is the degree to which the explicitly fashionable audience was divided by the play. Further into the same review, we find a more intriguing account of the how this 'mixture of applause and disapprobation' unfolded:

Upon the whole, the Comedy contains much claim to praise, notwithstanding its defects predominated, and gave rise to that struggle between its friends and its opposers, that had nearly doomed it to a violent and sudden death. By the generalship of the Manager, who wisely thought it better to give way than to rashly to oppose the tumult of opposition, another piece was announced for performance this evening, an thus an opportunity has been afforded the author of making those alterations, the effect of last night's exhibition may suggest to her as fit to be adopted. (link to quote)

The martial rhetoric which invades the review at this point is significant for it is clear that the conflict over the play's suitability for the stage is on the verge of spilling over into violence. Of course what is being described here is the whole panoply of tactics employed to damn a play—jeering, hissing, roaring and in the case of later performances throwing objects in the theatre. But casting the Manager as the general leading his theatrical troupe effectively casts Lady Wallace as a female soldier. This is not without significance for as Dror Wahrman has argued, toleration for the female knight both in the theatre and in society at large was very much on the wane. Prior to the latter fifteen years of the eighteenth-century, representations of female soldiers and the practice of cross-dressing on the stage are accepted facts of not only the theatre, but also a range of cultural entertainments. However, the obsolescence of this figure is just one of many cultural transitions which are contributing to the ossification of a whole range of identity categories in British life. And Lady Wallace plays a particular role in the history of this newly transgressive figure for she was renowned for having played a breeches-part in the quasi-theatrical space of the House of Commons.

Throughout March of 1788—i.e. in the weeks immediately prior to the opening of The Ton —there is regular commentary in the press regarding Lady Wallace's appearance in the gallery of the House in male attire. While it was not uncommon for women to enter the visitor's gallery of the House of Commons during this period, a woman's appearance in breeches was deemed sufficiently scandalous to warrant extensive press coverage. The following passage from The Times of 12 March 1788 is typical of the reaction not only because it uses the event as an occasion for feeble sexual innuendo, but also because it ties the event to the upcoming play:

Lady Wallace's gallery frolic has proved fatal to the repose of the married Members,—many of their wives, encouraged by her Ladyship's success, having ever since been trying to wear the breeches.

Lady Wallace, it is asserted, means to dramatize the late debate on the Declaratory Bill, and introduce some of the rising Members in her piece.

A similar satirical jibe complete with dubious puns occurs in the same paper two days later:

Lady Wallace's defence is, that though she did not appear in a petticoat, yet she wore a great one, and one great enough to protect her from every thing but scurrility .

Though Lady Wallace, like Joan d'Arc, chuses to appear in male attire, yet, on certain occasions, her Ladyship, like Joan, is no friend to coats of mail .

Her Ladyship also has been wrong in anticipating her comedy ;—she has shown the parts to the public, previous to the representation of the piece.

Both newspaper reports see her performance in Parliament as a social infraction which authorizes public scrutiny of her sexual morals. In the former notice, the rising Members joke, lame as it is, prepares the ground for the more complex joke on the upcoming play, now slyly referred to as 'the piece'. The report of 14 March 1788 turns its wit upon a series of coats: petticoats, great coats, and finally coats of mail. The latter is both a thinly veiled reference to her divorce and a fairly typical construction of Amazonian identity. But more interesting for our consideration here is the insinuation that she is prone to showing 'the parts to the public' in both her Parliamentary and her theatrical performances. The implication is that by appearing in breeches and by promoting her comedy Lady Wallace was showing and hence advertising her body and her 'piece' respectively for future consumption. This parallel between body and 'piece' gives some indication of how some parts of her audience understood the consumption of her comedy as somehow not altogether distant from the consumption of her. Underlying this entire assemblage is a widespread assumption of the proximate nature of female publicity and prostitution.

In this context, the overall project of The Ton becomes quite complex for it constitutes an imminent critique of the aristocracy by one of its most notable figures. Lady Wallace had a reputation for wit and raillery and for this reason the play was widely anticipated. But we might ask what precisely the papers were anticipating. Was it a desire to see the vices of the aristocracy skewered for public ridicule as the Morning Chronicle 's moral posturing suggests? Or was it a desire to see the spectacle of an already suspect exemplar of the class effectively attacking itself? As the selection of reviews in the Appendix indicates, there is a key ambivalence here and one often gets the sense that Lady Wallace is being given enough rope to hang herself and that that spectacle constitutes entertainment in and of itself. Something of this is betrayed in the Morning Chronicle 's rationalization of the Manager's acceptance of such a flawed play in the first place:

Whether the comedy sink or swim, we think the manager justifiable in having produced it. When a lady of fashion, supported and encouraged by a large train of persons of the first rank in life, brings a piece to the manager, his door must be opened to her; and unless her production should appear prima facie , to be altogether destitute of claims to commendation, and such as would equally disgrace her and discredit the theatre, her piece ought to be prepared for representation; at least every prudent manager would produce it and suffer the author to have a fair trial. (link to quote)

Despite the suggestion that the manager should paternally protect a lady of fashion from embarrassing herself and the theatre, there is also the basic assumption that plays brought forward by such a woman and puffed by her associates are by varying degrees flawed. The entire scene is one of gentlemanly tolerance for a hopeless situation. What interests me here is the final clause which states that it is prudent of the manager to transfer judgement to the audience and thus protect himself from the wrath of those in the first rank of life. For a manager to reject The Ton is dangerous to the theatre because of the theatre's necessary affiliation with the beau monde, but for the audience to reject The Ton leaves the theatre's relation to the aristocracy unscathed and further allows the emergent bourgeois audience the entertainment of witnessing and/or participating in the damnation of one its errant female superiors. That entertainment is shared by the young aristocratic men who are in many ways the target of Lady Wallace's attack indicates that the struggle occasioned by The Ton is complex indeed, for if the former is sparked by class resentment the latter is the manifestation of a combination of misogyny and self-loathing.

Interestingly, as one tracks the two subsequent London performances of a shortened version of The Ton in the newspapers, the theatrical event shifts from the stage proper to the expanded space of the theatre. The reviews of the second and third performances are remarkable not least of all because they warrant as much space as a conventional opening night review. The Morning Chronicle 's review of 11 April 1788 is as extensive but instead of the customary account of the narrative, it narrates the actions of the audience. After emphasizing his own solemn judgement of the play's inadequacies, the reviewer attacks the 'wanton' disapprobation of a play as follows:

Yesterday evening there were whole clusters of young men in the pit and boxes, who came obviously for the purpose of enjoying the sport of a theatrical damnation, and who instead of patiently waiting for cause for censure, hooted, encored, applauded and hissed without rhyme or reason. To these sublime geniuses, the opportunity of triumphing over an unsuccessful author may be fine fun ; but let us whisper in their ears that such a mode of condemnation is a disgrace to a civilized country; it is irrational, savage, unmanly, illiberal and indecent; what is worse, it may prove detrimental to the source of theatrical entertainment. (link to quote)

In the process of castigating the hissing young men, the reviewer insinuates that their pursuit of 'fine fun' is akin to that of the male characters of The Ton . The catalogue of adjectives used to specify their disgrace to a civilized country—irrational, savage, unmanly, illiberal and indecent—correspond to the character traits of Lord Raymond, Macpharo, Daffodil, Lord Ormond and Lord Bonton respectively. While it may not be intentional, Lady Wallace's catalogue of vice provides the criteria for judging those who damn her play.

And it is significant that this judgement of the mode of damnation has nationalist overtones for the manager's response to the audience's uprising takes on political connotations when the space turns violent:

In the course of the fourth act, the opponents of the piece became so turbulent and clamorous, that the performers could not be heard, and a stop was put to the progress of the play for some seconds. Mr. Lewis came forward to address the audience, but such was the struggle between the friends and foes of the Comedy, that it was in vain for him to attempt to speak; the act, therefore, was concluded, like a pantomime, in dumb-shew by the comedians, but the contending parties among the audience in full chorus. When the fifth act commenced, the clamour was again violent, and while Lewis was 'bowing and bowing,' in order to obtain an audience for a short address, a quart bottle was thrown from the gallery to the pit. This raised additional noise and encreased the embarrassment between the audience and the actors; at length, however, Mr. Lewis was heard, and after informing the House generally that the new tumult was occasioned by a bottle having been thrown in the Pit, and offering a reward of ten pounds for whoever would discover the person who threw it—he gained permission to say, 'that as the Comedy did not seem to meet with general approbation, the Theatre, upon that presumption, withdrew it; but as great numbers of the author's friends had not seen it, the Manager hoped the audience would have the goodness to indulge them in one more representation; at least, that they would be kind enough to let them perform the piece to its conclusion then.' This was received with loud shouts of applause, allayed with some strong indications of objection and denial. The play, however, was suffered to proceed quietly to the end—. (link to quote)

Gone is the martial manager and in his place one finds the civil servant negotiating to keep the peace. And gone too is the entertaining spectacle of the aristocracy eating itself. Instead what emerges is an escalation of audience conflict which opens the door for the genuinely terrifying act of throwing the bottle from the gallery. What the Morning Chronicle does not report is that a woman of quality in the pit is quite severely injured by the act of a 'scoundrel' who was subsequently arrested. These details are significant not only because the designation 'scoundrel' clearly situates the bottle-thrower in the lower orders, but also because the lady's somewhat unusual presence in the pit indicates the high proportion of aristocratic audience members at this performance. Nowhere is it explicitly stated but the spatial divisions of the theatre suggest that the conflict between and among both bourgeois and aristocratic audience members destabilizes the hierarchical space of the theatre to the point where the lower orders in the gallery start to get involved. In this light Lewis's appeal for calm and his re-adoption of the mantle of paternal protector of the author is aimed at reconsolidating the population of the pit and the boxes against those inhabiting the galleries.

In other words, more violent class fragmentation is being put into abeyance by a transmutation of the initial dynamics of the damnation. If this seems forced, then the Morning Chronicle 's 14 April 1788 review of the final London performance for the author's 'friends' is instructive for it explicitly re-stages the entire fracas as the action of a unified John Bull:

John Bull, when he feels himself affronted, is apt to make a temporary sacrifice of his liberality, but he always means well. On Saturday he had not forgotten that the comedy was ab initio , a dull play, and having been led, from the author's fame, to expect a lively performance, he had not forgiven his disappointment. The curtain rose, and act the first proceeded in tolerable quiet; as the acts encreased, John rumbled and grumbled; he seemed, however to have recollected himself, and re-assumed his presence of mind and his constitutional generosity before the fifth Act commenced; that act was listened to with patience, and a large plaudit crowned the conclusion, though it was made into excellent punch by a finall but distinguishable squeeze of acid. (link to quote)

What interests me here is the way the final review contains a whole range of social conflicts by figuring the audience as a singular patient critic. This gesture is not without its ambivalences for John Bull here behaves in a fashion somewhere between the disgraceful performance of the young men on the second night and ideal critical stance of solemn disapproval advocated by the opening night review. John's rumbling and grumbling become the pre-text for him to exhibit his 'constitutional generosity' to the author in question. And the sense that these metaphorical actions may be attributed to distinct social entities and reflect real ideological tensions evaporates like the play itself.

Significantly, the exculpation of Inchbald in the St. James Chronicle is not shared by other publications which seek to regulate women's public personae. For example, The New Lady's Magazine for May 1788 utilizes the damnation of The Ton to condemn Inchbald:

On the whole we are glad, for the sake of decency , that this was not well received, for indeed our present female dramatic writers (Mrs. I_____d in particular) seem in their productions fairly to set modesty at defiance—though we must, in justice, totally free the Miss Lee's from this charge. (link to quote)

What is clear from the reviews of The Ton is that a significant negotiation is underway not only among reviewers, but also among audiences regarding the relationship between a female playwright's decency and the decency of her aesthetic practice. This is significant because there is ample evidence here that there was a perceived disjunction and that the disjunction may not necessarily lead to the destruction of a woman's reputation. The word 'seem' in the above passage is an indication of a certain level of ambivalence here. In other words, what is being worked out here are the limits of acceptable satirical practice for women playwrights in an age where satire is widely understood to be one of the responsibilities of the theatre.

Perhaps the best place to examine this issue is through a reading of the following commentary on 'Lady Wallace and her Comedy' from the English Chronicle; Or, the Universal Evening Post of 10 April 1788. As the title suggests, the brief article addresses the relationship between the author and her work in a fashion that is notable for its interrogatory mode:

TO what strange deviation of the human mind, from its most obvious principles are we to ascribe the circumstance, of Ladies not only being more licentious in their writings than the men, but even those being the most remarkable for that propensity, whose characters are of an opposite complexion?

Whatever may be the cause, the fact is indisputable—or if disputed, we might produce one instance, not only in this Lady—but in several female dramatists now living—Mrs. Brooke , Mrs. Inchbald , Mrs. Cowley . Is then, like Swift's definition of a nice man, every virtuous woman possessed of a prurient imagination?

We have the authority of Pope for saying, that the disposition of the mind is not always evinced in one's writings. He celebrates Buckhurst as 'the best good man, with the worst natur'd Muse.' (link to quote)

Like other discussions of The Ton , the review indicates the degree to which women's writing for the stage is understood as a totality susceptible to general evaluation. But the invocation of Swift and Pope can be read as part of a larger strategy of derogating women's work in the theatre. At one level, the review suggests that immodest productions are not necessarily an indexical sign of moral turpitude in the author. By having Pope answer the question derived from Swift, the argument moves in another direction altogether; the disjunction is attributed to aesthetic rather than moral shortcomings. It is the Muse whose morals are in question. Aside from the rather dubious separation of morality and aesthetics, this gesture has specific implications for Lady Wallace's place in the theatre for the papers are almost unanimously of the opinion that it is Lady Wallace's fashionable connections, who supported and were the inspiration for the play, who should share in the audience's obloquy. So despite the gentlemanly disavowal of Lady Wallace's alleged licentiousness, the whole debacle of The Ton is symptomatic of the vices of not only of a fashionable woman playwright, but also of fashionable life itself. One can gain some sense of the double-edged nature of this gesture when the article turns to the play:

Lady Wallace divorced her husband for infidelity, and is, if we believe her own Comedy, unique among women of fashion. It is not so much the follies of high life, that she has pourtrayed in her Comedy of the Ton—as their vices—and those in the most depraved colours. (link to quote)

The sudden appearance of Lady Wallace's divorce in the discussion indicates a remarkable lack of distinction between her life and the lives of her characters. The fact that this runs contrary to the preceding argument suggests that we are not to 'believe her own comedy' and hence are to qualify its critique of fashionable society. In the process of rescuing her from immediate condemnation as indecent, this article and much of the ink spilled on the play make the much more patronizing insinuation that the moral and aesthetic defects of the play are unsurprising in one so poorly equipped for dealing with the rigors of not only aesthetic production, but also moral judgement. And these shortcomings are attributed as much to Lady Wallace's gender as to her class position. What is so telling here is the degree to which this type of containment strategy utterly disables the widely recognized satiric force of many of the play's scenes by connecting it either to gender insubordination or to aristocratic dissipation. One could argue that the strategy disables aristocratic self-scrutiny so that the same devices can be appropriated for the proto-feminist objectives of the emergent middle class. In this light, it should come as no surprise to see the emergence and consolidation of the indirect and subtle satirical moves that dominate Inchbald's work in the 1790's or that come into full efflorescence in Austen's novels. It is perhaps only a slight exaggeration to argue that the public shaming of Lady Wallace and her play marks a limit case whose presence can be everywhere felt in the transformations of female wit in the highly regulated cultural practices of the 1790's.

Works Cited