Preambolo: prima del Settecento
• Teatro della Restaurazione (1660-1705)
• I generi: heroic tragedy e comedy of
manners
• Glorious Revolution (1688)
Il movimento per la riforma del teatro:
sentimentalismo e sentimental comedy
• Jeremy Collier, A Short View of the
Immorality and Profaneness of the English
Stage (1698)
• Colley Cibber, Love’s Last Shift (1696): prima
“sentimental comedy”.
• Joseph Steele: scopo della commedia non è
suscitare il riso ma “una generosa
compassione” (epilogo a The Lying Lover);
The Conscious Lovers (1722).
Tragedia neoclassica e patetica
• Joseph Addison, The Spectator; Cato
(1713)
• Nicholas Rowe: “she-tragedy”; The Fair
Penitent, 1703: “sorrows like your own”
• George Lillo: “domestic tragedy”; The
London Merchant (1731)
La satira politica e il mock-heroic:
John Gay e Henry Fielding
• Scriblerus Club
• Parodia: John Gay, The What D’Ye Call
It (1715), “a tragi-comi-pastoral-farce”
John Gay,
The Beggar’s Opera (1728):
• “Newgate pastoral”
• Dialogo Beggar/Player (“Introduction”):
“I hope I may be forgiven that I have
not made my opera throughout
unnatural, like those in vogue”.
• “ballad opera”
John Gay, The Beggar’s Opera
• Jonathan Wild (rogue literature)
• Daniel Defoe, “The True and Genuine
Account of the Life and Actions of the
Late Jonathan Wild”, 1725
• Henry Fielding, “The History of the Life
of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the
Great”, 1743
John Gay, The Beggar’s Opera
• Satira politica
• Peachum (“impeach ‘em”) e Lockit
(“lock it”): “'Tis for our mutual interest,
'tis for the interest of the world, we
should agree” (atto II, sc. X)
• Sir Robert Walpole (primo ministro
whig, 1721-42)
John Gay, The Beggar’s Opera
• Critica sociale: l’etica borghese del
profitto
• Peachum a Lockit, II.10: “Business is at
an end if once we act dishonourably”
John Gay, The Beggar’s Opera
• Satira del matrimonio borghese (Polly e
MacHeath)
• Mrs Peachum: “The comfortable estate
of widowhood is the only hope that
keeps up a wife's spirits”
• Polly (1729)
La carriera teatrale di
Henry Fielding
• Little Theatre (Haymarket) – teatri “illegittimi”
vs. Covent Garden e Drury Lane
• The Historical Register for the Year 1736 +
Eurydice Hissed (1737)
• Theatre Licensing Act, 1737 (censura
preventiva del Lord Chamberlain + duopolio
Drury Lane/Covent Garden)
La seconda metà del secolo
• “laughing” vs. “sentimental” comedy
• Oliver Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer
(1773)
• Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The School
for Scandal (1777)
• Il nuovo Drury Lane (1794, Henry
Holland)
La scena spettacolare
ottocentesca
• 1. Il contesto:
• ampliamento degli spazi
• ricerca di effetti spettacolari
(innovazioni tecniche)
• frammentazione dello spettacolo
(generi minori)
• Teatro romantico: Byron, Werner
(1830)
• Teatro vittoriano > eclettismo
• melodrama
2. La seconda metà del
secolo
• il ritorno della borghesia a teatro: Bancroft +
Robertson al Prince of Wales
• T.W. Robertson e gli ‘issue plays’: Society
(1865), Caste (1867), Home (1869), Progress
(1869), Birth (1870), War (1871)
• Reform Act (1867)
T.W. Robertson, Caste
• “Caste is a good thing if it’s not carried
too far. It shuts the door on the
pretentious and the vulgar; but it
should open the door very wide for
exceptional merit. Let brains break
through its barriers, and what brains
can break through love may leap over”
(III atto)
Il “Society drama”
• Scribe + Sardou: pièce bien faite >
well-made play (Jones + Pinero)
• fallen women plays
• > A.W. Pinero, The Second Mrs
Tanqueray (1893)
• (Henrik Ibsen 1828-1906)
G. B. Shaw e il “social
drama”
• Fabian Society
• The Quintessence of Ibsenism (1891)
G. B. Shaw e il “social
drama”
•
•
•
•
Plays Unpleasant:
•
•
•
•
Plays Pleasant:
Widower's Houses (1892)
Mrs Warren’s Profession (1893)
The Philanderer (1893)
Arms and the Man (1894)
Candida (1894)
You Never Can Tell (1895)
Mrs Warren’s Profession
• “prostitution is caused, not by female
depravity and male licentiousness, but
by simply underpaying, undervaluing,
and overworking women so shamefully
that the poorest of them are forced to
resort to prostitution to keep body and
soul together” (Mrs Warren's
Profession, Prefazione)
Mrs Warren’s Profession
• “The only way for a woman to provide for
herself decently is for her to be good to some
man that can afford to be good to her. (…)
Ask any lady in London society that has
daughters; and she'll tell you the same,
except that I tell you straight and she'll tell
you crooked”
• (Kitty Warren alla figlia Vivie, Mrs Warren's
Profession, Atto II)