(Un)making a Monster: Melodrama, The Satirist, and the Cartoons of Samuel De Wilde

Our essay takes up the well-known satirical print, ‘The Monster Melo-Drame’, and re-attaches it to several contexts to bring forward its richness and ambiguity as an image. We begin by considering its artist (Samuel De Wilde), printer (Samuel Tipper), and publisher ( The Satirist), interpreting the print in its original publication and in dialogue with the essay that accompanied it in the January 1808 issue of the Satirist. The image, we argue, should not be read on its own but rather as the first of a trio of prints De Wilde made for that magazine. Taken together, the images show the Satirist engaging in a sustained campaign against London’s Theatres Royal, one in which melodrama is a subject but not a primary target. Part of our essay’s work is necessarily that of description: identifying figures, references, and tableaux as these prints comment on a rapidly changing theatrical scene between 1807 and 1809. Considered as a set, De Wilde’s prints constituted a fundamental part of the Satirist’s attacks on the Drury Lane Theatre management, particularly Richard Brinsley Sheridan and his son Thomas Sheridan, whom they represent as corrupt caretakers of that institution and of the national drama.

Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751 - 1816)

Portrait of the Irish playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Dumouriez dining in state at St James's

Charles Dumouriez, one of France’s most successful military commanders, turned on the revolutionary government in March 1793, but was soon forced to flee to Britain, where he would remain until his death in 1823. Gillray shows him being offered the decapitated head of the Prime Minister, William Pitt, by Charles James Fox, leader of the opposition Whigs; a crown, by Fox’s Whig colleague Richard Brinsley Sheridan; while to the extreme left the dissenting minister Joseph Priestley offers Dumouriez a bishop’s mitre. The dishes are decorated with frogs.

A Smoking Club

The smokers in this caricature of 1793 are: (from left to right) Henry Addington, 1st Viscount Sidmouth (1757-1844), speaker of the House of Commons; William Pitt (1759-1806), Tory Prime Minister; Charles James Fox (1749-1806), leader of the Whig party; Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville (1742-1811), secretary of state; Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816), dramatist and Whig orator. That the protagonists are blowing smoke into each others’ faces which is indicative of their hostility in debate. The caricature was published twelve days after France had declared war on Britain—a war that would last, with an interlude for the Treaty of Amiens, until 1815.

Introducing Thomas Harris

This chapter gives an overview of the multi-faceted life of Thomas Harris and its cultural importance. Harris was the owner and manager of Covent Garden theatre for nearly five decades, a confidant of George III, a Secret Service agent, a notable philanthropist, and a bagnio owner in the underworld of Covent Garden. As a result, this chapter introduces a number of clandestine worlds, including the Secret Service where ministers waited for the stirrings of revolution upon London’s streets. This section is driven by three considerations: why Harris has disappeared from history, the many difficulties for the researcher writing his biography, and the ways of understanding his character. In anticipating what is to come, this part also introduces the relationships, both familial and professional, that Harris nurtured — along with the characters involved in the main events of his life including Richard Brinsley Sheridan and George Rose.

Sheridan “arreglado” para la escena española: La escuela de la murmuración, de Rafael Galves Amandi (1861)

La comedia más notable de Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The School for Scandal, se estrenó en Londres en 1777 y, debido a su enorme popularidad, se editó, representó y tradujo a diferentes lenguas a lo largo del siglo XIX. Rafael Galves, consciente de las notables diferencias de carácter ideológico, cultural y estilístico entre el teatro inglés y el español, realizó una profunda adaptación de la obra al verterla al castellano en 1861. Este artículo tiene como objetivo analizar de qué forma los rasgos estructurales, temáticos y estilísticos de su versión libre de la comedia se adecuaron a la sensibilidad y el gusto de los espectadores españoles de mediados del siglo XIX.