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“Thoughts that Flash like Lightning”: Thomas Holcroft, Radical Theater, and the Production of Meaning in 1790s London

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

David Karr
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Extract

During the 1790s, political speech in London's public spaces and commercial sites of leisure came under intense governmental surveillance. Fearing revolutionary infection from across the channel in France, the Pitt ministry sent spies into popular organizations such as the London Corresponding Society and turned more attention to other sites as well, including coffeehouses, taverns, debating-club rooms, and the street. Recently, historians too have explored the ways in which radicals manipulated the ludic vocabularies of urban sociability to critique the regime, protest persecution, and argue for reform. In this article I address a site that figured prominently as a place for radical speech in the 1790s: the Theatre Royal at Covent Garden. Although it was a site whose content was strictly regulated by the state through the office of the Examiner of Plays, the royal theater was, like other eighteenth-century theaters, a place where performances multiplied: viewers watched the play, but in the well-lit and noisy pit, boxes, and galleries, they watched other viewers intently. All were engaged in a complex process of performance, reception, and counterperformance. Indeed, as scholars have shown, theater audiences in late Georgian London were highly skilled at appropriating a theatrical grammar by which to demand their perceived rights as English subjects. Such strategies revealed the potency of theatrical representation in a society where, as Gillian Russell notes, “performance, display and spectatorship were essential components of the social mechanism.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 40 , Issue 3 , July 2001 , pp. 324 - 356
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 2001

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References

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13 At this time, Sheridan's company was performing out of the King's Theatre at Haymarket, while his regular theater at Drury Lane was being rebuilt. See “Agreement between Wm. Taylor Esq. And R.B. Sheridan, for the Drury Lane Company … rebuilt,” 12 August 1791, PRO, LC 74. For the lord chamberlain's warning, see “Letter to Richard Brinsley Sheridan,” 30 March 1792, PRO, LC 74.

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17 While Backscheider mentions Holcroft, she denies any connection between his political activism and his drama. See Spectacular Politics, p. 174, and esp. p. 278, n. 2.

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22 For important discussions of the relationship of 1790s radicalism to its broader cultural field, see Eley's, Geoffrey “Nations, Publics and Political Cultures: Placing Habermas in the Nineteenth Century,” in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. Calhoun, Craig C. (Cambridge, Mass., 1992), pp. 325–31Google Scholar; and, for the development of radicalism in print culture, Gilmartin, , Print Politics, pp. 1–10Google Scholar.

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36 The Life of Thomas Holcroft, Written by Himself, Continued … by William Hazlitt, ed. Colby, Elbridge, (New York, 1968), 1:256–73Google Scholar. Beaumarchais's piece was written in 1778, suppressed for six years, and then allowed to be performed in 1784.

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38 Besides helping Holcroft pirate Figaro, Bonneville acted as a literary wind vane in Paris after Holcroft returned to London, and sent him notices of marketable and “curious” works. It was a productive relationship: Holcroft cranked out bookshelves of translations in the 1780s, including The Historical and Critical Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Voltaire (1786), The Life of Baron Frederic Trenck (1788), and The Secret History of the Court of Berlin (1789). See Maertz, Gregory, “The Transmission of German Literature and Dissenting Voices in British Culture: Thomas Holcroft and the Godwin Circle,” in 1650–1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early-Modem Era, ed. Cope, Kevin L. and Morrow, Laura, (New York, 1997), pp. 271–300Google Scholar; Colby, Elbridge, A Bibliography of Thomas Holcroft (New York, 1922), pp. 11–12Google Scholar.

39 The Licensing Act clarified the role of the royal theaters at Covent Garden and at Drury Lane by reinforcing their monopoly on the production of plays. It stipulated that a copy of any play to be produced must be given to the lord chamberlain at least fourteen days in advance of first night. If the lord chamberlain found any parts of the play objectionable and wished to prohibit their performance, he would communicate these objections to the playhouse manager, who would lose £50—and worse, his license—if he allowed the play to go forward uncorrected. To further streamline the process, in 1738, the offices of Examiner and Deputy Examiner were created to handle the actual inflow of plays. See Conolly, , Censorship of English Drama, pp. 13–17, and for the 1790sGoogle Scholar, chap. 4.

40 Ibid., pp. 102–3.

41 The Parliamentary Register; or History of the Proceedings and Debates of the House of Commons, vol. 43 (London, 1796), pp. 548, 550Google Scholar.

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59 Hill, John, The Actor: Or a Treatise on the Art of Playing (London, 1755)Google Scholar. See also Rousseau, G. S., “John Hill: Universal Genius Manqué: Remarks on His Life and Times, with a Checklist of His Works,” in Lemay, J. A. Leo and Rousseau, G. S., The Renaissance Man in the Eighteenth Century (Los Angeles, 1978), pp. 49–95Google Scholar.

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66 Ibid.

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78 See Fox, William, On Jacobinism (London, 1794), pp. 1–2Google Scholar; or consider Pigott's arresting definition of “Throne” in A Political Dictionary, p. 172Google Scholar: “A sumptuous, richly furnished and elevated seat …. A man, fantastically drest out in ermine, velvet, gold and silver spangles, squirrel and rabbit skins. Thus tricked out, like the wooden god of Otaheite … it is no wonder that men should be so deluded, as to think him more than mortal, when it requires so little of imagination to metamorphose him at once into an object of worship. Under this impression, when they approach the throne, they are struck with awe and dismay, and address this bundle of fine clothes with bended knee and humble voice, as if they were attempting to appease an irritated Deity …. And yet if you ask one of these despicable wretches, after having gone through this pantomimic scene, whether he is a lunatic? ‘No,’ he will tell you, ‘I'm a loyal man.’ Pitiful, sorry wretch!”

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83 Graham offers a useful summary of the publishing history of the Essays during the 1790s in “Lavater's Physiognomy in England.” See also his “Lavater's Physiognomy in England: A Checklist,” Papers of the American Bibliographic Society 55 (1961): 297–308CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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87 Ibid., pp. 79–80.

88 Joan Stemmler notes the different orientation that Holcroft brought to the Essays but makes little of it, since her chief goal is to recapture a “pure” Lavater. See her “The Physiognomical Portraits of Johann Caspar Lavater,” Art Bulletin 75 (1993): 152–53Google Scholar. My interest, as I hope is clear, is more concerned with what was “done” to Lavater's ideas once they achieved a certain level of cultural circulation.

89 Analytical Review (December 1789), pp. 459–62, (April 1790)Google ScholarPubMed, pp. 426–31, 471–72.

90 See Holcroft's letter in response to the Analytical Review (January 1790), pp. 110–12Google Scholar. See also his critique of Edmund Morris's False Colours (a farce that ridiculed physiognomies) in Monthly Review 11 (August 1793): 410Google Scholar.

91 It was performed an additional five times in the 1795/6 season. See The London Stage, 1660–1800: Part 5, 1776–1800, ed. Hogan, Charles Beecher (Carbondale, Ill., 1969), 3:1681, 1751Google Scholar.

92 Claeys, , “Rights of Labor,” pp. 256–57Google Scholar.

93 Holcroft, Thomas, The Road to Ruin (London, 1792)Google Scholar, act 1, scene 1.

94 Ibid., act 3, scene 2.

95 Ibid.,

96 Holcroft, , “The Art of Acting,” p. 66Google Scholar

97 Godwin, William, “Essay V: Of Trades and Professions,” The Enquirer, Part II, in Political and Philosophical Writings of William Godwin, ed. Philp, Mark, vol. 5Google Scholar, Educational and Literary Writings, ed. Clemit, Pamela (London, 1993): p. 174Google Scholar.

98 Ibid.

99 Holcroft, Thomas, Letter to the Right Honorable William Windham, On the Intemperance and Dangerous Tendency of His Pubic Conduct, 2d ed. (London, 1795), p. 47Google Scholar.

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101 Claeys, , “Rights of Labor,” pp. 277–9Google Scholar.

102 Jean-Christophe Agnew argues convincingly that the expansion of market culture was profoundly marked by concerns over personal theatricality and authenticity. See Worlds Apart: The Market and the Theater in Anglo-American Thought, 1550–1750 (Cambridge, 1986)Google Scholar.

103 Holcroft, , Road to Ruin, 2:2Google Scholar.

104 Ibid., 2:1.

105 Holcroft, , Monthly Review 15 (September 1794): 107–8Google Scholar. Gary Kelly suggests that an unsigned letter from January 1796, proposing marriage to Wollstonecraft, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792), may be from Holcroft. See Revolutionary Feminism: The Mind and Career of Mary Wollstonecraft (New York, 1992), p. 196Google Scholar. Of course, Wollstonecraft later married Godwin.

106 As the conservative writer Thomas Green wrote in his diary upon seeing The Deserted Daughter, “Dec. 17, 1796 … H[olcoft] is very busy at his purpose: his aim, to those who are conversant with the tenets of his sect, is sufficiently manifest; but he manages and conceals it with a discretion not very consistent, surely, with his principles” Extracts from the Diary of a Lover of Literature (Ipswich, 1810), p. 19Google Scholar.

107 Dening, Greg, Performances (Chicago, 1996), p. 111Google Scholar.

108 Bossuet, Jacques-Bénigne, Maxims et réflexions sur le comédie (Paris, 1694), pp. 178–79Google Scholar, quoted in Barish, , Antitheatrical Prejudice, p. 202Google Scholar.

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110 Dening, , Performances, pp. 111–12Google Scholar; Stallybrass, Peter and White, Allon, The Politics and Poetics of Trangression (London, 1986), pp. 80–99Google Scholar.

111 Holcroft, , Road to Ruin, p. iiGoogle Scholar.

112 Ibid.

113 Bennett, , Theatre Audiences, pp. 113–14Google Scholar.

114 See The London Stage, 1660–1800: Part 5, 3:1443Google Scholar.

115 Goodwin, Albert, The Friends of Liberty: The English Democratic Movement in the Age of the French Revolution (Cambridge, 1979), pp. 193–94, 198, 216Google Scholar.

116 St. James Chronicle (4 February 1794); see also St. James Chronicle (8 October 1794).

117 Minute-book of the Society for Constitutional Information (SCI), PRO TS 11/962/3508; PRO TS 11/951.

118 SCI Minute-book, PRO TS 11/ 962/3508.

119 “Warrant for Detaining Thomas Holcroft,” 7 October 1794, PRO, Privy Council 1/22/37. See Life of Holcroft, 2:46–49Google Scholar, for Holcroft's surrender to the magistrate at the Clerkenwell Sessions House. See also Goodwin, , Friends of Liberty, pp. 216–17, 239–67Google Scholar, and chap. 9.

120 The Deserted Daughter (London, 1795)Google ScholarPubMed, act 2, scene 1.

121 Ibid.

122 Ibid., 3:9.

123 Ibid.

124 Nora Nachumi suggest that the science of gesture offered female novelists space in which to describe male and female sensibility as essentially equivalent and thereby sidestep a logocentric theory of communication that had privileged male sensibility. See “‘Those Simple Signs’: The Performance of Emotion in Elizabeth Inchbald's A Simple Story” Eighteenth-Century Fiction 11 (1999): 317–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

125 Monthly Review 15 (September 1794): 107–8Google Scholar.

126 Lavater, , Essays on Physiognomy, p. 80Google Scholar.

127 This was an early accusation. For example, see the St. James Chronicle (8 October 1794) on Holcroft's self-surrender to the court. More recently, it has been a stance taken by Thompson, E. P.. See The Poverty of Theory (1978; reprint, London, 1995), pp. 243–45Google Scholar, and less polemically, The Romantics: England in a Revolutionary Age (New York, 1997), pp. 87–89Google Scholar. But see Philp, Mark, Godwin's Political Justice, (Ithaca, N.Y., 1986), pp. 228–30Google Scholar, and his “Thompson, Godwin, and the French Revolution,” History Workshop Journal 39 (1995): 89–101Google Scholar.

128 Philp, , Godwin's Political Justice, pp. 169–73, 214–20, 229Google Scholar.

129 For the “acquitted felons” remark, see Secretary at War William Windham's speech in Parliament on 30 December 1794, Parliamentary History, 31:1027Google Scholar.

130 See The Times (26 January 1800); for its impact on Holcroft's life abroad, see his letter to Godwin, 17 February 1802, Bodleian Library (Bodl.), Oxford, MS Dep. c. 511.

131 Holcroft to Godwin, 29 April 1800, Bodl., MS Dep. c. 511; Holcroft to Godwin, 13 May 1800, Bodl., MS Dep. c. 511.

132 The Seditious Meetings Bill (1795) made owners and lessors of rooms used for meetings liable to heavy fines if they had not obtained the explicit permission of two magistrates to use the rooms for such purposes. The Treasonable Practices Bill (1795) adjusted and expanded the definition of treason to be more applicable to what Attorney General Sir John Scott called modern, “French” treason. See John Barrell, Imagining the King's Death, chap. 16.

133 See Worrall, , Radical Culture, pp. 17–34Google Scholar; Klancher, Jon, The Making of English Reading Audiences, 1790–1832 (Madison, Wise, 1987), pp. 113–19Google Scholar; Epstein, “Ritual Practice”; Barrell, “‘An Entire Change of Performances?’” pp. 11–50.

134 Philp, , Godwin's Political Justice, p. 173Google Scholar.