"Thoughts that flash like lightning": Thomas Holcroft, radical theater, and the production of meaning in 1790s London

Journal of British Studies

Volumn 40, Issue 3, 2001, Pages 324-356

  Karr, David ^a  

^a VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84949115011     PISSN: 00219371     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/386246     Document Type: Article

References (189)

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14. Marc Baer, Theatre and Disorder in Late Georgian London (Oxford, 1992), chap. 4.
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16. See Theodore Grieder, "Annotated Checklist of the British Drama, 1789-99," Restoration and Eighteenth Century Theatre Research 4 (1965): 21-47
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54. The Figure of Theater: Shaftesbury, Defoe, Adam Smith, and George Eliot (New York, 1986), pp. 171-74
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57. Denis Diderot, Le fils naturel, act 1, scene 4, in Oeuvres Completes, ed. J. Assezat, (Paris, 1875), p. 26.
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60. The Life of Thomas Holcroft, Written by Himself, Continued ⋯ by William Hazlitt, ed. Elbridge Colby, (New York, 1968), 1:256-73. Beaumarchais's piece was written in 1778, suppressed for six years, and then allowed to be performed in 1784.
61. Life of Thomas Holcroft, 1:272-74.
62. The Historical and Critical Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Voltaire (1786)
63. The Life of Baron Frederic Trenck (1788)
64. The Secret History of the Court of Berlin (1789).
65. See Gregory Maertz, "The Transmission of German Literature and Dissenting Voices in British Culture: Thomas Holcroft and the Godwin Circle," in 1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early-Modem Era, ed. Kevin L. Cope and Laura Morrow, (New York, 1997), pp. 271-300
66. Elbridge Colby, A Bibliography of Thomas Holcroft (New York, 1922), pp. 11-12.
67. See Conolly, Censorship of English Drama, pp. 13-17, and for the 1790s, chap. 4.
68. The Parliamentary Register; or History of the Proceedings and Debates of the House of Commons, vol. 43 (London, 1796), pp. 548, 550.
69. Cox, "Ideology and Genre," pp. 580-87
70. see also Grieder, "Annotated Checklist" pp. 21-47.
71. Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, vol. 8, bk. 6
72. Political and Philosophical Writings of William Godwin, ed. Mark Philp (London, 1993), 3:452.
73. Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man, ed. Gregory Claeys, (Indianapolis, 1992), p. 31.
74. see James T. Boulton, The Language of Politics in the Age of Wilkes and Burke (London, 1963), pp. 144-47.
75. Paine, Rights of Man, p. 31.
76. Mary Wollstonecroft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men, ed. Sylvana Tomaselli (Cambridge, 1995), p. 6.
77. Charles Pigott, A Political Dictionary: Explaining the True Meaning of Words (London, 1795), p. 111.
78. See also A Political Dictionary for Guinea-less Pigs (London, [1795]).
79. See also Nicholas Rogers, "Pigott's Private Eye: Radicalism and Sexual Scandal in Eighteenth-Century England," Journal of the Canadian Historical Association 4 (1993): 247-63.
80. See Russell, Theatres of War, pp. 23-24, 85-86
81. British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 20 (1997): 1-16.
82. See also Tom Furniss, Edmund Burke's Aesthetic Ideology: Language, Gender and Political Economy in Revolution (Cambridge, 1993), p. 257
83. Don Herzog, Poisoning the Minds of the Lower Orders (Princeton, N.J., 1998), chap. 4.
84. Olivia Smith, The Politics of Language, 1789-1815 (Oxford, 1984), pp. 21, 43, 50
85. Russell, Theatres of War, pp. 23-25
86. James Epstein, Radical Expression: Political Language, Ritual and Symbol in England, 1790-1850 (New York and Oxford, 1994), chap. 3
87. Philip Harling, "Leight Hunt's Examiner and the Language of Patriotism," English Historical Review 111 (1996): 1159-81
88. John M. Turner, "Burke, Paine, and the Nature of Language," Yearbook of English Studies 19 (1989): 51
89. John Barrell, "Imagining the King's Death: The Arrest of Richard Brothers," History Workshop Journal 37 (1994): 1-2.
90. Monthly Review 10 (February 1793): 208-9.
91. See "The Art of Acting," Theatrical Recorder 1 (February 1805): 134.
92. See Hans Arsleff, The Study of Language in England, 1780-1860 (Princeton, N.J., 1967), pp. 17-20
93. Stephen K. Land, From Sign to Propositions: The Concept of Form in Eighteenth-Century Semantic Theory (London, 1974), pp. 87-92.
94. John C. O'Neale, The Authority of Experience: Sensationist Theory in the French Enlightenment (University Park, Pa., 1996), pp. 83-90.
95. Monthly Review 10 (February 1793): 210; 10 (April 1793): 367.
96. Turner, "Nature of Language," pp. 31-53.
97. Monthly Review 10 (March 1793): 297.
98. see Barbara Maria Stafford, Body Criticism: Imaging the Unseen in Enlightenment Art and Medicine (Cambridge, Mass., 1991), pp. 47-49.
99. See Joseph Roach's The Player's Passion: Studies in the Science of Acting (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1985), chap. 2
100. Fischer-Lichte, The Shadow, pp. 31-34, 39.
101. Jay Fliegelman's Declaring Independence: Jefferson, Natural Language, and the Culture of Performance (Stanford, Calif., 1993) explores relationships between gestural transparency and republican virtue during the American Revolutionary period.
102. John Hill, The Actor: Or a Treatise on the Art of Playing (London, 1755).
103. See also G. S. Rousseau, "John Hill: Universal Genius Manque: Remarks on His Life and Times, with a Checklist of His Works," in J. A. Leo Lemay and G. S. Rousseau, The Renaissance Man in the Eighteenth Century (Los Angeles, 1978), pp. 49-95.
104. David Hume, "Of the Passions," Treatise on Human Nature (1739), pp. 440-41
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107. See also Richard C. Allen, David Hartley on Human Nature (Albany, N.Y., 1999), pp. 182-85
108. Roach, Player's Passion, p. 107.
109. see Barker-Benfield, Culture of Sensibility, chap. 1.
110. See Allen, David Hartley, pp. 192, 376-88
111. Roach, Player's Passion, p. 25.
112. Roach, Player's Passion, p. 25.
113. Life of Thomas Holcroft, 1:xiv.
114. Thomas Holcroft, "The Art of Acting," Theatrical Recorder 1 (January 1805): 64.
115. Thomas Holcroft, "The Art of Acting," Theatrical Recorder 1 (February 1805): 136.
116. see A Cultural History of Gesture, ed. Jan Bremmer and Herman Roodenburg (New York, 1991)
117. Dene Barnett, "The Performance Practice of Acting: The Eighteenth Century. II. The Hands," Theatre Research International 3 (1977): 1-19
118. James R. Knowlson, "The Idea of Gesture as a Universal Language in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries," Journal of the History of Ideas 26 (1965): 495-508.
119. Gilbert Austin, Chironomia: Or A Treatise on Rhetorical Delivery (London, 1806), pi. 2.
120. Roach, Player's Passion, esp. p. 76
121. Fliegelman, Declaring Independence, pp. 106-7.
122. Hill, The Actor, p. 232.
123. Theatrical Recorder 2 (July 1805): 44.
124. See William Fox, On Jacobinism (London, 1794), pp. 1-2
125. A Political Dictionary, p. 172
126. Stafford, Body Criticism, p. 1.
127. Johann Caspar Lavater, Physionomische Fragmente, zur Befbrderung der Menschenkenntniss und Menschenliebe (Leipzig, 1775-78).
128. John Graham, "Lavater's Physiognomy in England," Journal of the History of Ideas 22 (1962): 561-72.
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131. See, e.g., William Sotheby, Poems: Consisting of a Tour through Parts of North and South Wales, ⋯ and an Epistle to a Friend on Physiognomy (London, 1790)
132. George Woodward, Eccentric Excursions: or, Literary and Pictorial Sketches of Countenance, Character and Country ⋯. (London, 1798)
133. Johann Musus, Physiognomical Travels, Preceded by a Physiognomical Journal (London, 1800)
134. The Ladies Physiognomical Mirror, or Lovers Portraits (London, 1798).
135. Michael Shortland, "The Power of a Thousand Eyes: Johann Caspar Lavater's Science of Physiognomical Perception," Criticism 28 (1986): 379-408
136. Johann Caspar Lavater, Essays on Physiognomy; For the Promotion of the Knowledge and Love of Mankind; Written in the German Language by J. C. Lavater, and Translated into English by Thomas Holcroft (1789; reprint, London, 1804), p. 15.
137. Lavater, Essays on Physiognomy, pp. 79-80.
138. See her "The Physiognomical Portraits of Johann Caspar Lavater," Art Bulletin 75 (1993): 152-53.
139. Analytical Review (December 1789), pp. 459-62, (April 1790), pp. 426-31, 471-72.
140. See Holcroft's letter in response to the Analytical Review (January 1790), pp. 110-12.
141. Edmund Morris's False Colours (a farce that ridiculed physiognomies) in Monthly Review 11 (August 1793): 410.
142. See The London Stage, 1660-1800: Part 5, 1776-1800, ed. Charles Beecher Hogan (Carbondale, 111., 1969), 3:1681, 1751.
143. Claeys, "Rights of Labor," pp. 256-57.
144. Thomas Holcroft, The Road to Ruin (London, 1792), act 1, scene 1.
145. Holcroft, "The Art of Acting," p. 66
146. William Godwin, "Essay V: Of Trades and Professions," The Enquirer, Part II, in Political and Philosophical Writings of William Godwin, ed. Mark Philp, vol. 5, Educational and Literary Writings, ed. Pamela Clemit (London, 1993): p. 174.
147. Thomas Holcroft, Letter to the Right Honorable William Windham, On the Intemperance and Dangerous Tendency of His Pubic Conduct, 2d ed. (London, 1795), p. 47.
148. Life of Thomas Holcroft, 2:228, 243, 249.
149. Claeys, "Rights of Labor," pp. 277-9.
150. See Worlds Apart: The Market and the Theater in Anglo-American Thought, 1550-1750 (Cambridge, 1986).
151. Holcroft, Road to Ruin, 2:2.
152. Holcroft, Monthly Review 15 (September 1794): 107-8.
153. See Revolutionary Feminism: The Mind and Career of Mary Wollstonecraft (New York, 1992), p. 196.
154. Extracts from the Diary of a Lover of Literature (Ipswich, 1810), p. 19.
155. Greg Dening, Performances (Chicago, 1996), p. 111.
156. Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, Maxims et réflexions sur le comédie (Paris, 1694), pp. 178-79
157. Barish, Antitheatrical Prejudice, p. 202.
158. Agnew, Worlds Apart, pp. 106, 109-11
159. Barish, Antitheatrical Prejudice, p. 334
160. Mary Knapp, Prologues and Epilogues of the Eighteenth Century (New Haven, Conn., 1961), pp. 23-29, 108
161. "Percy's Prologue: From Gender Play to Gender Panic in Eighteenth-Century England," Past and Present, no. 159 (1998): 113-60.
162. Dening, Performances, pp. 111-12
163. Peter Stallybrass and Allon White, The Politics and Poetics of Trangression (London, 1986), pp. 80-99.
164. Holcroft, Road to Ruin, p. ii.
165. Bennett, Theatre Audiences, pp. 113-14.
166. See The London Stage, 1660-1800: Part 5, 3:1443.
167. Albert Goodwin, The Friends of Liberty: The English Democratic Movement in the Age of the French Revolution (Cambridge, 1979), pp. 193-94, 198, 216.
168. St. James Chronicle (4 February 1794)
169. see also St. James Chronicle (8 October 1794).
170. See Life of Holcroft, 2:46-49
171. See also Goodwin, Friends of Liberty, pp. 216-17, 239-67, and chap. 9.
172. The Deserted Daughter (London, 1795), act 2, scene 1.
173. See " 'Those Simple Signs': The Performance of Emotion in Elizabeth Inchbald's A Simple Story" Eighteenth-Century Fiction 11 (1999): 317-38.
174. Monthly Review 15 (September 1794): 107-8.
175. Lavater, Essays on Physiognomy, p. 80.
176. see the St. James Chronicle (8 October 1794)
177. See The Poverty of Theory (1978; reprint, London, 1995), pp. 243-45
178. The Romantics: England in a Revolutionary Age (New York, 1997), pp. 87-89.
179. see Mark Philp, Godwin's Political Justice, (Ithaca, N.Y., 1986), pp. 228-30
180. "Thompson, Godwin, and the French Revolution," History Workshop Journal 39 (1995): 89-101.
181. Philp, Godwin's Political Justice, pp. 169-73, 214-20, 229.
182. Parliamentary History, 31:1027.
183. See The Times (26 January 1800)
184. See John Barrell, Imagining the King's Death, chap. 16.
185. See Worrall, Radical Culture, pp. 17-34
186. Jon Klancher, The Making of English Reading Audiences, 1790-1832 (Madison, Wise, 1987), pp. 113-19
187. Epstein, "Ritual Practice"
188. Barrell, " 'An Entire Change of Performances?' " pp. 11-50.
189. Philp, Godwin's Political Justice, p. 173.