Eighteenth-Century Brechtians

Eighteenth-Century Brechtians is a collection of essays by a well-known author on comic and radical political theatre.  It looks at stage satires by John Gay, Henry Fielding, George Farquhar, Charlotte Charke, David Garrick and their contemporaries through the lens of Brecht’s theory and practice. 15 b&w illustrations.

Discussing the actor mutiny of 1733, theatre censorship, controversial plays and Fielding’s forgery of an actor’s biography, the book contends that some subversive Augustan and Georgian artists were early Brechtians. Reconstructions of lost episodes in theatre history include a recounting of Fielding’s last days as a stage satirist before his Little Haymarket theatre was closed, Charlotte Charke’s performances as Macheath and Polly Peachum in The Beggar’s Opera and the 1740 staging of Jonathan Swift’s Polite Conversation on a double bill with Shakespeare’s Merry Wives . . .

Some documents in this collection offer another perspective on theatre history by employing fiction – speculative reconstructions of Georgian theatre events for which historical facts are scarce or missing.  Brecht also employed fiction to reconsider history in short stories he wrote about Lucullus and Socrates, and a novel about Julius Caesar.  The stories and several new letters attributed to Fielding delve into theatre history and keep some of its controversy alive in new ways, historicizing fiction and theatre somewhat as Brecht did.

It offers an unconventional, new reading of theatre history, Brecht’s tradition and stage satire.

The Cast of Brechtians in Order of Appearance

List of Illustrations

Foreword by Peter Thomson

Introduction

Eighteenth-Century Brechtians

Cross-Dressing Soldiers and Anti-Militarist Rakes

Polly Peachum and the New Naiveté

Pirates and Polly: A Lost Messingkauf Dialogue

The Duchess of Queensberry Becomes Polly Peachum

Macheath Our Contemporary

Swift in Hollywood: Another Messingkauf Dialogue

Swift’s Polite Conversation with Falstaff

Henry Fielding, Brechtian Before Brecht

Fielding’s London Merchant, and Lillo’s

Literarization of Fielding’s Plays

Tom Thumb Jones, Child Actress

A World on Fire

Fielding’s Cibber Letters: Counterfeit Wit, Scurrility and Cartels

Bertolt Brecht Writes The Beggar’s Opera, Fielding Rewrites Polly

Stage Mutineers

Charlotte Charke’s Tit for Tat; or Comedy and Tragedy at War: A Lost Play Recovered?

Mrs Charke Escapes Hanging

Garrick and Swift’s School for Scandal—With a Digression on Yoko Ono

Brecht Praises Garrick’s Hamlet

A Portrait of the Artists as Beggar’s Opera Disciples—Including David Garrick, Epic Actor

Walpole in America

The Future of Eighteenth-Century Brechtiana: Polly Exonerated

Conclusion: The Future Promise of an Earlier Age

Eighteenth-Century Brechtians: A Timetable of Events

Bibliography

Index