Romantic Plays and Players

ENGL 2791

Seminar 6: THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

Essential reading

From Marilyn Butler, Burke, Paine, Godwin and the French Revolution
Controversy (1984; 1989):
Richard Price, A Discourse on the Love of Our Country – pp. 23-32
Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France – pp. 33-49
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men – pp. 72-74
Hannah More, Village Politics: Addresses to all the Mechanics,
Journeymen, and Day Labourers, in Great Britain – pp. 179-184

(These texts have been digitized and are available for online viewing via
this module’s Reading List. Once you reach the Talis page, just search for
‘Butler’ and all four extracts will be called up for viewing.)

AND

*Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Pizarro (1799).

See Cecil Price (ed.), Sheridan’s Plays (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975).
Also available online, Haithi Trust (1799 edition)
<https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100864256>

Optional Assignment
(If you choose to complete this, you will receive oral feedback for the work
submitted.)

Please write a commentary in response to Rolla’s speech in Act 2 scene 2

beginning: ‘Yet never was the hour of peril near…’

(A scan of the relevant passage has been added to this folder  Seminar 6)

Your commentary should be between 750 and 1,000 words (max.) in length.

Please present the commentary in a scholarly fashion.

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You should focus on the passage in question (i.e. provide a close reading).

You are also welcome – and indeed invited – to expand your analysis by
showcasing knowledge of the play at large (e.g. noting thematic overlaps,
development of characterization, other scholarly interpretations etc) and to
introduce contextual detailing as relevant.

Submission: noon on the day of our next seminar.

Further Reading

*Michael Gamer, Romanticism and the Gothic: Genre, Reception, and Canon
Formation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)

Diane Long Hoeveler, Gothic Riffs: Secularizing the Uncanny in the European
Imaginary, 1780–1820 (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2010)

Loren Kruger, The National Stage: Theatre and Cultural Legitimation in

England, France, and America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992)

Frank O’Gorman, Voters, Patrons, and Parties; The Unreformed Electoral

System of Hanoverian England, 1734–1832 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989)

----. The Long Eighteenth Century: British Political and Social History,
1688–1832 (London: Arnold, 1997)

*Daniel O’Quinn, Staging Governance: Theatrical Imperialism in London,

1770–1800 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005)

*Gillian Russell, The Theatres of War: Performance, Politics, and Society,

1793–1815 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995)

*David Francis Taylor, Theatres of Opposition: Empire, Revolution, and

Richard Sheridan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012)

*Susan Valladares, Staging the Peninsular War: English Theatres 1807–1815

(London: Routledge, 2015)

James Watt, Contesting the Gothic: Fiction, Genre, and Cultural Conflict,
1764–1832 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)

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* David Worrall, The Politics of Romantic Theatricality, 1787–1832: The Road
to the Stage (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)
Notes:
 an adaptation of August von Kotzebue’s Die Spanier in Peru first performed in 1799
 Set during the Spanish Conquest of Peru, Pizarro dramatizes English fears of invasion by
Revolutionary France, but it is also surprisingly and critically engaged with Britain’s colonial
exploits abroad.
 the first use of music alongside action, the first collapsing set, the first production to inspire such
celebratory ephemera as cartoons, portraits, postcards, even porcelain collector plates.
 Pizarro marks the end of eighteenth-century drama and the birth of a new theatrical culture.
 the speech of the Peruvian commander Rolla, in which he rallies his
compatriots to resist the Spanish invaders. This speech casts into an
otherwise faithful translation of Kotzebue images from Sheridan's most
popular political speech ever--his famous Begums speech delivered
during the impeachment trial of Warren Hastings for "high crimes and
misdemeanors" conducted during his tenure as Governor General of
Bengal. (3) Responsible at its first hearing for bringing Hastings to trial,
Sheridan's Begums speech is partially responsible for bringing the "oppressions of
millions of unfortunate persons in India" to the attention of the English public.
 Pizarro’s war against Ataliba, the Peruvian king of Quito
 The first act takes place at the Spanish camp, where Pizarro, whose army has been
driven back by the native forces led by Rolla and the Spanish defector Alonzo,
prepares a retaliatory assault.

Notes on act 2 scene 2 Rolla speech:

- We and the, the othering of the Spanish – vultures and lambs: pird of pray vs
sacrificial biblical image of the land
- by a strange frenzy driven, fight for power, for plunder, and extended rule – we, for
our country, our altars, and our homes
- Allegorical reading – the French = Spaniards (fear of an invasion of the French
revolution in the UK
- Kemble known for being conservative and patriotic, had played Rolla? Check this elsa
- Strange frenzy driven, fight for power, for plunder and extended rule -Robespierre,
the French revolution is not faced by anyone man
- Burke older no longer represents oppositional politics
- Price on the right to choose – informed decisions
- Irony – Villiage people, hypocrisy – reading of the rights of man
- That speak is not in the original German play, it was already used in part by Sheridan
in the impeachment of Warren Hastings
- Colonial narrative gets interlinked
- Building a sort of comparison between hastings and the spanish
or hastings and the French ‘high crimes’, hastings tho kind of
represents ideas of absolute power/ conquest and disregarding

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 the rights of the colonized – attacking their way of going about
it rather than the actual act
- Rolla is more heroic than the king – the peoples collective power resembled through
him – ‘the throne we honour is the people’s choice’
- Sheridan gets away with the speech without saying how England are the colonial
power
- Sheridan gets away with this commentary by labelling it a Spanish play about peru –
when it can really be read as aBOUT THE FRENCH REV OR ABOUT BRITISH COLONIAL
RULE
- Difficulties staging Pizarro: Cora/alonzos son is taken by the spanish and Rolla goes
and saves the kid but gets mortally wounded on a collapsing bridge and dies in Coras
arms – detah of the hero effective and affective
- Gothic Frankenstein – louis xvi as a ‘father figure’
The tree of liberty…. With the devil tempting 1798 print
- Everyman depicted as greedy, implying they don’t want reform
- Burke – oak tree, biblical narrative
- The devil – Charles james fox – close friend of Sheridan – tree of opposition is
corrupt

Phases of the revolution:

1.From1789to1792–periodofconstitutionalmonarchy 1791 – Declaration of the Rights of

Man
Major legislative reforms introduced
Assembly sees a struggle for power between the Girondists (headed by Brissot) and Jacobins
(headed by Robespierre, Marat and Danton).

2.FromAugust1792(overthrowofLouisXVI)tothe establishment of the Directory on 26

October 1795
Jacobin Convention
Known as ‘Reign of Terror’ (extreme measures in place to resist counter-revolution)
French Revolution: 3 key phases

3. From the Overthrow of the Jacobin faction (Thermidor coup of 27 July 1794) to
Napoleon’s coup of November 1799.
Directory (from October 1795)- attempts to re- establish values of the 1789-92 period
But Directory fallsàmilitary coup headed by Napoleon Bonaparte (November 1799).
(This is generally seen to mark the end of the ‘French Revolution’)

- Pizarro inspired by napoleon – Egyptian and Syrian campaigns are extremely brutal
and bloody
Pizarro premieres on 24 May 1799
• Ladies of the first fashion, in full dress, were fainting; some lost a shoe, others a hat; the
stair-
case windows were broken; the door-keepers could not resist the torrent, and many went in
without paying; the outside of the doors were surrounded by hundreds who dared not

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enter, and many went away who had places rather than encounter the crowd (Morning
Post, 25 May 1799).

Social order disrupted frenzied

Augustus von Kotzebue (1761-1819) original playwright – the stranger a character who
commits adultery apologizes and gets away with it - less conservative than British theatre –
can be very popular but can also be very divisive

Sheridan – Pizarro (1799) nearly 20 years after his last work for theatre
1780 sheridan is elected to parliament – tragedy

Pizarro as a history play – how does it speak to the past present and future

True Briton 30 May 1799

Thought he struggle is between Spaniards and Peruvians the author has been impelled by a
true sense of the important contest in which we engaged

How did the commercial theatres respond to the French Revolution?

• StormingoftheBastille–14July1789.
• Patent theatres – summer closure.
• But minor (illegitimate) theatres remained open.
• AdvertisementsforspectaclesrepresentingtheFalloftheBastillee.g. Paris in an Uproar; or,
The Destruction of the Batsille at Astley’s Royal Amphitheatre (3 Aug 1789) – and The
Triumph of Liberty; or the Destruction of the Bastille (2 days later, 5 Aug) at Royal Circus,
featuring more than 100 performers.
• Astley then revised his entertainment. Introduced a large scale model of the city of Paris,
extending from the Pont Royale to Notre Dame. (Model praised for its accuracy, and placed
within the circus ring, so that audience members could examine it prior to performance.)

Royal Command Performance of Pizarro

• King had not attended DL for 4 years (following a contentious representation of Otway’s
Venice Preserved)
• Sheridan escorts the royal family to their boxes.
True Briton, 6 June 1799
‘the rapturous bursts of loyalty and patriotism that
arose on the delivery of those passages which expressed an attachment to a beloved
Monarch’
‘proof that our excellent Monarch reigns in the hearts of his People’

Isaac Cruikshank, The Return from Pizarro (5 June 1799)

Anon, Pizarro a New Play, or the Drury Lane Masquerade (11 June 1799)

William Holland, Returning from Pizarro!! (June 1799)

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 Lloyd’s Evening Post, 5–7 June 1799
• His Majesty appeared peculiarly gratified with the noble and animated address of Rolla to
the
Peruvians, in support of their just rights as an independent and happy people, against the
lawless encroachments and savage ambition of foreign Invaders.

Warren Hastings Trial – some key dates

• WarrenHastings,theformergovernor-generalofIndia
• Hastingswasaccusedof‘highcrimesand misdemeanours’ while acting in this role.
• 7Feb1787:Sheridandeliveredalongspeechagainst Hastings, which not only won him great
acclaim but secured his central role in the impeachment proceedings that followed.
• Hastingswasformallyimpeachedon10May1787.
• TheprosecutionbeforetheHouseofLordsbeganin February 1788 and concluded in 1795,
when Hastings was acquitted by a large majority.

Sheridan’s speech at the Warren

Hastings Trial
This was British justice! this was British humanity! Mr. Hastings ensures to the allies of the
company, in the strongest terms, their prosperity and protection; the former he secures by
sending an army to plunder them of their wealth and to desolate their soil! His protection is
fraught with a similar security, like that of a vulture to a lamb; grappling in its vitals! thirsting
for its blood! scaring off each petty kite that hovers round; and then, with an insulting
perversion of terms, calling sacrifice protection!
(The speeches of the Right Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan, with a sketch of his life, ed by A
Constitutional Friend. 3 vols. London: 1842. I, 413.)

Interrogate allegorical castings...

• Pitt (Prime Minister) as Rolla?
• George III as Ataliba?
• Napoleon as Pizarro?
• Britons as Peruvians?
• What, then, of the Alonzo (Spanish = French) and Cora (Peruvian = English) union?
• On the friendship/erotic attachments bringing together Rolla, Alonzo and Cora see Virgin
of the Sun (a ‘prequel’).

William Holland, Rolla’s Address the Peruvian Army (1799)

James Gillray, Pizarro Contemplating Over the Product of his New Peruvian Mine (4 June
1799
à Destabilizing Pizarro’s patriotic claims?

James Gillray, Pizzarro (1 Oct. 1799)

James Gillray, Pizzarro (1 Oct. 1799) - detail

This season true my Principles I’ve sold To fool the world & pocket George’s gold
Prolific mine! – anglo-peruvian food Provok’d my taste – and Candidate I stood – While
Kemble my support with LOYAL face

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Declares THE PEOPLE’S CHOICE with stage- trick grace

Rolla’s speech, 2.2

• ROL. Be our plain answer this: The throne WE honour is the PEOPLE’S CHOICE – the laws
we reverence are our brave Fathers’ legacy – the faith we follow teaches us to live in bonds
of charity with all mankind, and die with hope of bliss beyond the grave. Tell your invaders
this, and tell them too, we seek no change; and, least of all, such change as they would bring
us.
[Trumpets sound. (2.2, DW, 2: 669)

Heroic resistance – against whom?

Julie Carlson, ‘Trying Sheridan’s Pizarro’, p. 362:
Rolla’s speech ‘answers to five alarms of invasion. Besides those sounding between Peru
and Spain, India and England, and England and France, Rolla’s speech also raises alarms over
the literary invasion of England by Germany in the 1790s and the perpetually immanent
invasion of Ireland by England in the same years’
Internal, as well as external threats...?

Sheridan’sAddresstothePeople.
OurKing!ourCountry!
AndourGod!
M y brave Associates—Partners ofmy Toil, my Feelings, and my Fame!—can W ords add
Vigour to the VIRTUOUS ENERGIES which inspireyour Hearts?----------No—YOU have judged
as I have, the Foulnes s of the crafty Plea by w hich these bold INVADERS would delude you
—Your generous Spirit has compared, as mine has, the Motives which, in a
Warlikethis,cananimatetheirMinds,andours.—They, by a ftrange Frenzy driven, fight for
Power, for Plunder, and extended Rule—WE, for our Country, our Altars, and o u r H o m e
s . — T h e y f o l l o w a n it tr- -rfrsa ae eceae eae eaeyhvh h hoybodnPw w wA D V E N T U
RER,whomthey
Monarch whom we love—-a God whom we adore.—W hen- e’er they move in anger,
Desolation trackstheirProgress!— W here’er they pause in A m ity, Affliction mourn s their F
r i e n d s h i p ! — T h e y b o a st , t h e y c o m e b u t t o i m p r o v e o u r State, enlarge our
Thoughts, and free us from the Yoke of Error!—Yes—they will give enlightened Freedom to
our
M i n d s , w h o a r e t h e m s e l v e s t h e S l a v e s o f P a ssi o n , A v a r i c e , ! and Pride.
—They offer us their Protection—Yes, such Pro- tection as Vultures give to Lam bs—
covering and devouring them !—They call on us to barter all of Good we have inhe- r i t e d a
n d p r o v e d , f o r t h e d e sp e r a t e C h a n c e o f S o m e t h i n g better which they
promise.—Be our plain Answer this: The Throne we honour is the People’s choice—the Laws
we reverence are our brave Fathers’ Legacy— the Faith we fol-
lowteachesustoliveinBondsofCharitywithallMan-
kind,anddiewithHopeofBlissbeyondtheGrave. Tell your Invaders this; and tell them too, we
seek no Change; and, least of all, such Change as they would bring us.
R.B.SHERIDAN. London: Printed for J. ASPERNE, Successor to M r. Sew ell, at the
Bible, Crown, and Contsitution, No. 32, Cornhill, by T. M aiden. [Price 1d. or 9d. per Dozen.]

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Context: taking up again of arms after a brief respite from the war against revolutionary
France (this was known as the Peace of Amiens, which lasted between March 1802 and May
1803).

Sheridan’s Address
• Available in London and Dublin.
• Dublin version: a double-displacement of Rolla’s set speech?àThose opposed to Anglo-
Irish Union (1801) invited to imagine the English as the invading Spanish armies?
• England – victim or perpretator?

Monthly Mirror (January 1801) ‘Defence of the Stage’

• In a theatre, a moral sentiment, well written and delivered, forces its way to the bosoms
of an
audience, which, elsewhere, would never be heard.

‘Pizarroed’
• I shall make no objection to Pizarro at Drury Lane, or in the booksellers’ shops; but I do not
like to meet him at the corner of every street, to see him lurking among the dishes of the
table, disputing or causing disputes among the quidnuncs of the coffee-house, and following
us not only to the doors, but half up the aisles of the churches.
(Spirit of the Public Journals for 1799, III. 315).

Elaine Hadley, Melodramatic Tactics (1995), p.37

• ...theatres had become the primary public location where all kinds of people could be
legally heard and where they could be “dramatized” as contentious voices in public debate.
In a theater, if not in a parliamentary election, these people could “vote” their pleasure.

FURTHER READING
• TheDramaticWorksofRichardBrinsleySheridan,editedbyCecilPrice.2 vols (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1973)
• Julie Carlson, ‘Trying Sheridan’s Pizarro’, Texas Studies in Literature and Language 38 (3/4),
(fall/winter 1996); 359–78
• Jack De Rochi and Daniel Ennis, eds. Richard Brinsley Sheridan: The Impresario in Political
and Cultural Context (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2013) – See Ch. 10 esp.
• GillianRussell,TheatresofWar:Performance,PoliticsandSociety,1793-1815 (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1995)
• SaraSuleri,TheRhetoricofEnglishIndia(Chicago:UniversityofChicago Press, 1992) – Chap. 3.
• DavidFrancisTaylor,TheatresofOpposition:Empire,Revolutionand Richard Brinsley Sheridan
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012)
• Susan Valladares, Staging the Peninsular War: English Theatres 1807–1815
(Ashgate/Routledge, 2015)

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