“A Performance for the Service of a Table”: New Light on Eighteenth-Century Dining

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 181-190
Author(s):  
Tessa Murdoch
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
A Performance

British, but also French: Paul Mascarene’s Translation of Molière’s Le Misanthrope in Colonial Nova Scotia

2021 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-150
Author(s):  
Micah True
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Nova Scotia ◽  
English Translation ◽  
Religious Values ◽  
Cultural Norms ◽  
Military Officer ◽  
Made In ◽  
A Performance

This article examines a little-studied manuscript translation of Molière’s Le Misanthrope, made in eighteenth-century British Nova Scotia by a military officer named Paul Mascarene, for what it can tell us about the complicated assimilation of Huguenots in the global refuge. It argues that the undated manuscript shows the surprising extent to which Mascarene, a Huguenot who fled France in childhood, remained culturally French even as he was a perfectly assimilated Briton, and that he can be seen as a cultural ambassador between his homelands new and old. The manuscript here is closely scrutinized in relation both to Molière’s original 1666 play and a published English translation that is approximately contemporaneous to Mascarene’s own effort. Comparison of the three versions of the play show that Mascarene was a skilled and thoughtful translator, committed to accurately rendering Molière’s words while also making changes that reflected his personal religious values. This article also considers the assertion that Mascarene’s translation served as the basis of a performance in Annapolis Royal in 1743 or 1744 and shows that close scrutiny of the manuscript does not support this conclusion. Instead, Mascarene’s translation of Molière’s Le Misanthrope may best be understood as a sign of how Huguenots like him may have maintained and even sought to share with others aspects of their former identities even as they sought to conform to the cultural norms of their new homelands. Cet article étudie une traduction manuscrite du Misanthrope de Molière, réalisée dans la Nouvelle-Écosse britannique au dix-huitième siècle par un officier militaire nommé Paul Mascarene, pour ce qu’elle peut nous dire sur l’assimilation compliquée des Huguenots dans le refuge mondial. Il soutient que le manuscrit montre à quel point Mascarene, un Huguenot qui a quitté la France à l’âge de onze ans et qui est réputé parfaitement assimilé à la culture britannique, est resté culturellement français. Le manuscrit est ici examiné par rapport à la pièce originale de 1666 de Molière et à une traduction en anglais publiée qui est à peu près contemporaine de celle de Mascarene. La comparaison des trois versions de la pièce montre que Mascarene était un traducteur habile et réfléchi, déterminé à traduire fidèlement les paroles de Molière tout en apportant des changements qui reflètent ses valeurs personnelles et religieuses. Cet article examine aussi l’affirmation fréquente selon laquelle la traduction de Mascarene a servi de base à une représentation à Annapolis Royal en 1743 ou 1744, et montre qu’un examen attentif du manuscrit ne corrobore pas cette conclusion. Au lieu de cela, le manuscrit peut être mieux compris comme un aperçu de la façon dont les Huguenots comme Mascarene auraient pu maintenir et même chercher à partager avec d’autres certains aspects de leurs anciennes identités tout en cherchant à se conformer aux normes culturelles de leurs nouvelles patries.

Puppet Theater in Eighteenth-Century Mexico

2011 ◽  
Vol 67 (3) ◽  
pp. 315-329
Author(s):  
Yolanda Jurado Rojas
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Mexico City ◽  
Indigenous Health ◽  
Government Assistance ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Puppet Theater ◽  
Theater Performances ◽  
Private Homes ◽  
A Performance

Puppet theater was considered a marginal form of entertainment during Mexico's colonial era. People saw puppet plays on temporary stages outside of churches, at various fairs, and in private homes. The puppet groups were officially overshadowed by the theater performances, especially those at the Coliseum of Comedias, one of the financial channels for the Hospital Real de Naturales. Leasing the coliseum provided one of the major sources of income for this royal charity for indigenous health care. In order to maintain the Coliseum's profitability and the benefits derived from it, colonial authorities prohibited most theater groups from performing outside of the Coliseum. The lease owner often called for government assistance against puppet troupes, in particular when they threatened attendance at the theater. This resulted in the so-called “League Comedy” (Comedia de la legua), which was a performance given at least five leagues outside of the central theater district of Mexico City, Puebla, and Guadalajara.

CONFUSION IN THE SERVICE OF DISCOVERY

Tempo ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 69 (272) ◽  
pp. 12-23
Author(s):  
Michael Hooper
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Musical Performance ◽  
Positive Aspect ◽  
Research Results ◽  
French Enlightenment ◽  
State Of Mind ◽  
Practice Based Research ◽  
Enlightenment Project ◽  
A Performance

AbstractWhile some research results from consistent processes, careful methodologies and detailed planning, much practice-based research resists these strategies, privileging knowledge that remains complex and unstable. This knowledge frequently sits outside sequences of analysis, such as testing or deduction. Yet there is nothing new about the kind of knowledge that resists clarity. In The Progressive Poetics of Confusion in the French Enlightenment, John O'Neal argues for complexity and confusion as essential parts of an Enlightenment project in writing from the eighteenth century, and claims that authors pursued these strategies ‘because they preferred in certain ways to see confusion, not order, as representative of a dynamic new state of mind and society awaiting discovery’. Alongside O'Neal's work, this article considers Gemma Fiumara's The Other Side of Language: A Philosophy of Listening, in which confusion is also central. The article explores these ideas in connection with a performance of Michael Finnissy's Confusion in the Service of Discovery. It argues for confusion as a positive aspect of research from beginning to end, rather than as a circumscribed phase that precedes outcomes. The inclusion of a musical performance demonstrates (performs) the different theoretical languages that the prose describes.

Acting Spaces and Carpenters' Tools: from the Fortune to the Theatre Royal, Bristol

2009 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 148-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Howell-Meri
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Doctoral Thesis ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Ad Quadratum ◽  
The Common ◽  
Play Production ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
Building Methods ◽  
A Performance

Against the received wisdom, Mark Howell-Meri argues here for a continuing tradition between Elizabethan and Restoration (or ‘long eighteenth-century’) playhouses. He bases his argument in part on measurements which suggest the common use of traditional building methods and relationships between measurements and spaces based on ad-quadratum geometry, as shared by theatre builders across the centuries; but also on his own experience as a performance-practitioner specializing in an historiographical approach to making sense of eighteenth-century plays for today's audiences in surviving (or reconstructed) eighteenth-century spaces. He was the first director to restore a three-sided stage front to the Georgian Theatre (now Theatre Royal) in Richmond, Yorkshire, in 1987 with his hit production of Garrick's Miss in her Teens (1747), and other research productions have included Robert Dodsley's The King and the Miller of Mansfield (1737), Colman the Younger's Inkle and Yarico (1787), Inchbald's The Midnight Hour (1787), again at the Georgian Theatre in Richmond, and Lillo's The London Merchant (1731). He is now completing his doctoral thesis, ‘Theatre and Liberty: Eighteenth-Century Play Production on the Three-Sided Stage’.

scholarly journals MUSICAL EXPRESSION: LESSONS FROM THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY?

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-72
Author(s):  
BETTINA VARWIG
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Musical Expression ◽  
Central Case ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
A Performance

ABSTRACTThis article outlines a number of potential contributions that a consideration of early eighteenth-century conceptions of musical expressivity might make to certain present-day philosophical and psychological accounts of musical emotions and their expression. Taking as its central case study a performance by Christian Gerhaher in Peter Sellars's 2014 staging of J. S. Bach's St John Passion, the article calls for closer attention to both the historical specifics of music's expressive capacities and the corporeal dimension of performance (past and present). It argues that a more sustained engagement with these domains can productively complicate some fundamental assumptions that underpin current approaches to musical expression.

THE SHAKESPEARE CONNECTION: BEETHOVEN'S STRING QUARTET OP. 18 NO. 1 AND THE VIENNA HAUSTHEATER

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 151-170
Author(s):  
JOS VAN DER ZANDEN
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
String Quartet ◽  
Cultural Practice ◽  
Limited Attention ◽  
Romeo And Juliet ◽  
French Version ◽  
A Performance

ABSTRACTThe ‘Amenda anecdote’ from 1856 associates the second movement of Beethoven's String Quartet Op. 18 No. 1 (Adagio affettuoso ed appassionato) with the vault scene of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Sketchbook jottings by Beethoven from 1799, in French, confirm that such a link really existed. The question of what incited him to represent in his music elements of Shakepeare has not been settled to any satisfaction. It seems unlikely that Beethoven read a French version of the play. Nor can a public theatrical or operatic staging have been the stimulus, for the original vault scene was not allowed to be performed by the authorities. This study approaches the Shakespeare connection from the perspective of a cultural practice that has received limited attention in the literature, that of Viennese Haustheater. A performance of the vault scene in this context, it is argued, informed Beethoven's quartet movement. The most crucial piece of evidence are the memoirs of Caroline Pichler, which mention a tableau given at her parents’ house at the end of eighteenth century. One of the claims of the study is that Beethoven's Shakespeare connection was a one-time digression from normal practice, and that it is thus hazardous to draw this particular event into a wider hermeneutic debate.

A Prologue and an Epilogue for Nicholas Rowe's Tamerlane by Richard Steele

PMLA ◽  
1932 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 772-776
Author(s):  
Rae Blanchard
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Direct Evidence ◽  
British Museum ◽  
Circumstantial Evidence ◽  
Richard Steele ◽  
Scanty Information ◽  
Made In ◽  
A Performance

Among the P. A. Taylor papers in the British Museum, there is a small manuscript verse-book which contains poems written or collected by William Taylor “of South Weald.” In this book are a prologue and an epilogue for Tamerlane, ascribed to Sir Richard Steele. No comment is made in the manuscript as to the circumstances under which they were written; but it is clear that they were meant for a performance of Rowe's play by schoolboys. These poems are not to be found in the printed works of Steele. There is no allusion to them in his letters, and they are not mentioned in the Steele tradition as recorded by John Nichols, his eighteenth-century editor, or by G. A. Aitken, his biographer. But even in the absence of any direct evidence of their authenticity, we can be reasonably sure not only that they are from Steele's pen but that they were written, probably in the early 1720's, for use at Dr. Newcome's School in Clapton, Hackney. Circumstantial evidence leading to this conclusion is to be found in the contents of the verse-book and of other manuscripts among the Taylor papers; in the somewhat scanty information we have of William Taylor's interests and friends; and also, of course, in Steele's pursuits.

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