Writing in The Freewoman in 1912, Rebecca West--herself a supporter of women's suffrage--denounced with characteristic acerbity the increasing popularity of "degradations of the drama written by propagandists," complaining that "the public taste has already been so perverted that dislocated Suffrage speeches... stand the chance of wide popularity." (1) Despite her dismissive tone, West's description of suffrage plays as "dislocated Suffrage speeches" is worth taking seriously, and it is this generic overlap between political oratory and theatre that is the subject of this paper. Many plays written in support of the British women's suffrage movement capitalize on similarities between the stage and the public speaking platform to encourage women to raise their voices in a public forum. While the suffrage movement inspired a variety of theatrical activities in Britain, ranging from processions and public demonstrations to dramatic works performed in mainstream West End theatres, the plays that concern me here are dramatic works written in overt support of women's suffrage and performed by activist theatre groups such as the Actresses' Franchise League and the Pioneer Players. Many of these dramatic works break down the distinction between play and suffrage speech, creating a distinctive form of political drama. In staging women's struggle to find a public voice, these plays demonstrate the importance of audience in the successful public expression of a feminist point of view, in keeping with recent feminist theories of voice that have stressed the role of the listener in feminist writing. The propagandist plays I examine here invoke two very different audiences, both of which play a role in encouraging feminist protagonists to speak publicly: on the one hand, an oppositional audience, often hostile or condescending, provokes the feminist speaker to engage in debate; on the other, a more sympathetic audience encourages the speaker to keep going and to see her quest as worthwhile. While supportive audiences tend to be presented in an idealized or fantastic manner, their convergence with the actual audience at these suffrage-era productions encourages political action by breaking down the distinction between stage and public platform, challenging actual audience members to join the suffrage cause and to act on what they hear. The generic convergence of suffrage oratory and drama is enabled by suffrage playwrights' and performers' unapologetic use of theatre for propagandist purposes. Feminist critics interested in British suffrage drama have long recognized and defended the propagandistic aspects of these plays, though in so doing they have tended to focus more on the plays' female roles and political content than on genre and staging. Suffrage plays, though well received by suffrage supporters, were often dismissed by theatre reviewers as propaganda rather than art, as Katharine Cockin has noted. (2) Suffrage playwrights and performers, however, defended their use of theatre for propaganda purposes. Edith Craig, the founder and director of the feminist theatre group the Pioneer Players, for example, openly admitted in an interview that "our plays take the place of tracts," (3) while Cicely Hamilton announced proudly in The Vote that suffragists "had started a new system of propaganda by means of plays, that was so successful that everybody was trying to steal the plays or imitate them in some way" (4) Expanding on Ellen Ecker Dolgin's observation that in suffrage drama there exists a "dialogic and yet dichotomous relationship between stage and public platform," I argue that suffrage playwrights deliberately exploited the connection between drama and political tract or speech to create a new, hybrid genre to authorize their political message. (5) Several critics have noted this connection, but its generic implications have not been fully explored. Carolyn Tilghman and Claire Hirshfield have both recognized these plays as new forms of protest drama that use the stage as a public platform, but they also emphasize the authors' appropriation of conventional genres and formulae such as melodrama or the fallen woman play. …

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“忧郁的激情增强了她的声音”：作为英国妇女选举权戏剧公共平台的舞台

1912 年，丽贝卡·韦斯特（Rebecca West）在《自由女人》（The Freewoman）中撰文，以特有的尖刻谴责“宣传者写的戏剧的堕落”日益流行，抱怨“公众的品味已经如此变态，以至于脱臼选举权演讲……有可能广受欢迎。” (1) 尽管她的语气不屑一顾，但韦斯特将选举权戏描述为“错位的选举权演讲”值得认真对待，而政治演说和戏剧之间的这种一般性重叠正是本文的主题。许多支持英国妇女选举权运动的戏剧都利用舞台和公共演讲平台之间的相似之处，鼓励妇女在公共论坛上发声。虽然选举权运动激发了英国的各种戏剧活动，从游行和公开示威到在西区主流剧院上演的戏剧作品，但我在这里关心的戏剧是公开支持妇女选举权的戏剧作品，并由激进主义剧院表演女演员的特许经营联盟和先锋球员等团体。许多这些戏剧作品打破了戏剧和选举言论之间的区别，创造了一种独特的政治戏剧形式。在上演女性寻求公众声音的斗争时，这些戏剧展示了观众在成功公开表达女权主义观点中的重要性，与最近强调倾听者在女权主义写作中的作用的女权主义声音理论相一致。我在这里考察的宣传者戏剧涉及两种截然不同的观众，这两种观众都在鼓励女权主义主角公开发言方面发挥作用：一方面，反对的观众，通常充满敌意或居高临下，挑起女权主义演讲者进行辩论；另一方面，更有同情心的听众会鼓励演讲者继续前进，并认为她的探索是值得的。虽然支持的观众往往以理想化或奇妙的方式呈现，但他们在这些选举时代的作品中与实际观众的融合通过打破舞台和公共平台之间的区别来鼓励政治行动，挑战实际观众加入选举事业和根据他们所听到的采取行动。选举权的剧作家促成了选举权演说和戏剧的一般融合 以及表演者出于宣传目的毫无歉意地使用剧院。对英国选举权戏剧感兴趣的女权主义评论家早就认识到并捍卫这些戏剧的宣传方面，尽管这样做他们往往更关注戏剧的女性角色和政治内容，而不是类型和舞台。正如凯瑟琳·科金 (Katharine Cockin) 所指出的那样，选举权戏剧虽然受到选举权支持者的欢迎，但经常被戏剧评论家认为是宣传而非艺术。(2) 然而，选举剧作家和表演者为他们将戏剧用于宣传目的辩护。例如，女权主义剧团先锋剧团的创始人兼导演伊迪丝·克雷格（Edith Craig）在接受采访时公开承认“我们的戏剧取代了小册子”，(3) 虽然西西莉·汉密尔顿在投票中自豪地宣布，女权主义者“已经通过戏剧开始了一种新的宣传系统，它非常成功，以至于每个人都试图窃取戏剧或以某种方式模仿它们”(4) 扩展Ellen Ecker Dolgin 的观察认为，在选举戏剧中存在“舞台和公共平台之间的对话但又是二分的关系”，我认为选举剧作家故意利用戏剧与政治领域或演讲之间的联系来创造一种新的、混合的类型来授权他们的政治信息。(5) 一些评论家注意到了这种联系，但尚未充分探讨其一般含义。Carolyn Tilghman 和 Claire Hirshfield 都认为这些戏剧是一种以舞台为公共平台的新形式的抗议戏剧，但他们也强调作者对传统类型和公式的挪用，例如情节剧或堕落的女人戏剧。…