Comparative Drama

In 1763, James Boswell recorded in his journal a visit to the theatre to see David Garrick act King Lear. He described his efforts to get into “a proper frame” of mind in order to “shed abundance of tears” (qtd 1). This is one of three epigraphs that Jean Marsden uses to open her fascinating and important study of emotion in the eighteenth-century British theatre, and it neatly encapsulates both the pervasiveness of sentiment at this time and the potential for such emotional expression to be somewhat calculated, calling into question its authenticity. While the eighteenth century has been readily accepted as an age of feeling, Marsden questions why studies of sensibility have focused almost exclusively on the novel (one notable exception is Paul Goring’s 2000 monograph The Rhetoric of Sensibility in Eighteenth-Century Culture which, although not cited here, does deal with the stage as well). Given that theatre is an art form particularly adept at evoking emotion because of its liveness, its use of embodiment, and the communal nature of the audience experience (particularly in the eighteenth century, when the illuminated auditorium allowed spectators to observe each other and facilitated the spread of emotions amongst playgoers), Marsden’s attempt to shift the focus of studies of sensibility from fiction to drama is a welcome one. The book explores the triangular relationship between playwright, actor, and audience, all of whom played a role in creating feeling in the theatre. Marsden analyses the interplay between play scripts, their embodiment by performers, and spectators’ responses to argue for eighteenth-century sentimental drama not as worthy of revival today but as a record of lived experience in the period.

Words abound for eighteenth-century emotion, including feeling, affect, pathos, sentiment, sensibility, and so on. Attempting to explicate all of these terms and to differentiate between them is a tricky business. Marsden distinguishes between sentimentality (as described by Lynn Festa as a device used to shape emotional response) and sensibility (the human capacity to feel) but in general sticks with “sympathy”. The opening chapter explores this concept as developed, often specifically in relation to the stage, by Scottish Enlightenment thinkers such as Henry Home, Lord Kames, David Hume, James Beattie, and, of course, Adam Smith, who theorised sympathy as an emotional and moral state. The book then examines how the late eighteenth-century theatre put the theory of sympathy into practice. Chapter 2 focuses on the supremely emotional performances of Sarah Siddons, whose acting was so powerful that it risked destabilizing the spectator. Here the darker side of sensibility is revealed, as critics expressed anxiety that such intense feeling must be properly directed to bring about personal and [End Page 353] communal moral reform. The next three chapters analyse how specific plays were performed in order to encourage such reform in relation to issues such as patriotism, slavery, colonialism, and anti-Semitism.

Accounts of Siddons’ famous performances as Isabella (in Thomas Southerne’s 1694 play The Fatal Marriage, adapted by Garrick in 1757 and renamed after the central character) demonstrate the pathos that she could create in roles that emphasised wifely and maternal duty. But female characters in sentimental drama took on political as well as domestic significance in works such as Arthur Murphy’s The Grecian Daughter (1772), in which Siddons also acted. Here Euphrasia places filial piety above her ties to her husband and her child, saving her father, Evander, from starvation by breastfeeding him in a famous episode of Roman charity (that takes place offstage). But she also rescues the nation by killing the tyrant who has usurped her father’s throne at the end of the play, a moment that was considered the highpoint of the drama. Murphy “links filial piety to proper governance” (91) by emphasising that men, not women, should imitate Euphrasia’s actions and makes filial piety “a patriotic rather than domestic act” (92).

In the...