British heroism and the structure of melodrama

Bratton, Jacky

doi:10.7765/9781526123619.00006

Cited by 4 publications

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“…His comic scenes exemplify the ways in which imperial melodramas could offer, in Bratton's words, 'affirmative, oppositional, and subversive ideas'. 48 The play segregates its most oppositional idea into comic scenes played by the play's two low comedy characters, David Michaelmas, Leyrac's servant, and Plato, with Plato playing funny man to Michaelmas's straight man.…”

Section: The Political Ambivalences Of Low Comedymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…10 This more substantial fare is a reworking of the conventions of what Jacky Bratton terms 'the imperial melodrama', a tale which exhibits 'a complex theatrical structure [in which] heroic stereotypes are posited and confronted, and affirmative, oppositional, and subversive ideas about nationality are voiced'. 11 Black and White revises the heroism of prior antislavery melodramas and articulates oppositional ideas using comedy in ways that audiences would have found familiar.…”

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confidence: 99%

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‘Damn all White Men and Down with Labor’: Race and Genre in Wilkie Collins & Charles Fechter's Black and White

Gooch¹

2022

Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film

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This essay examines Wilkie Collins’s theatrical collaborations with actor-stage manager Charles Albert Fechter from 1867 to 1869, paying particular attention to the ways in which Fechter and Collins focused on questions of race and empire. By historicising their 1869 play Black and White in light of the Morant Bay uprising and its discursive appearances in Britain, the essay argues that Collins and Fechter aimed to reinvent the race melodrama using the model of the imperial melodrama. The failure of this ambivalent play, which presents a critique of racial domination for its all-but-white protagonist alongside racist minstrelsy comedy, affected Collins’s subsequent presentation of racialised characters in his work.

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Section: The Political Ambivalences Of Low Comedymentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Damn all White Men and Down with Labor’: Race and Genre in Wilkie Collins & Charles Fechter's Black and White

Gooch¹

2022

Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film

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“…71 Conversely, as Bratton longsince explored with reference to the stock Jack Tar, theatrical types were not stable or singular categories, and did not signify only one set of characteristics. 72 Therefore, at the same time that it is possible to historically and geographically contextualise Nan, her generic qualities also allow her to be moved into different plays and spaces. A playbill from 1 April 1859 advertises the 'Production for the first time in Lynn of the great Surrey drama' at the Theatre Royal, King's Lynn, for instance.…”

Section: Adapting It Is Never Too Late To Mendmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adaptable Near and Far: C. H. Hazlewood’s Double Adaptations

Hofer-Robinson¹

2020

Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film

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Stage personnel faced complex and conflicting demands in the nineteenth century to curate and cater to appetites for theatre with perceived local relevance and increasingly mobile and diverse audiences. This article argues that the formulaic melodramas written for less reputable London theatres allowed for just such local identification as well as for coming and going, as playwrights produced dramas which simultaneously traded on their knowledge of managerial preferences and theatrical companies while retaining an inclusive ambiguity in their scripts by avoiding specific political affiliation and curating moments of metatheatrical humour that appealed to audiences’ general knowledge of stage conventions, rather than specific local contexts or affiliations. Focusing on two very different dramatisations of Charles Reade’s novel It Is Never Too Late to Mend, both written by C. H. Hazlewood, this article analyses how the playwright addressed the tastes and capabilities of a network of professionals with whom he was personally connected, while maintaining an essential ambiguity that made these dramas portable across an international dramatic circuit.

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“… Disher 1937, 73. 17 For a discussion of heroism in 19th-century theatre and ideology, seeBratton 1991b, 18-61. 18 Disher 1937, 92.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Coup 1901, 163. 11 Bratton 1991aBratton 1991b, 25, Cooke's Royal Circus was licensed to stage The grand equestrian spectacle of the war in Zululand.12 Coup 1901, 164, 165-66, also 167. 6 War arts about elephantine military empires…”

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confidence: 99%

Fighting nature: Travelling menageries, animal acts and war shows

Tait¹

2016

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This book about 19th-century menageries and animal acts emerged out of research into trained elephant and big cat acts in the 20th century, and I continue to be very grateful for the support of friends and colleagues who made it possible for these histories of animal performance to be published. I am in your debt. I want to sincerely thank Annie McGuigan for all those countless big and small ways in which she encourages and thoughtfully supports my work, and for her invaluable comments on the early draft. Thank you to Dr Rosemary Farrell for her research assistance on this project, and to others who assisted with earlier archival research projects on circus, and a big thank you as always to Dr Diane Carlyle. Fighting nature has been directly supported by La Trobe University's (LTU) English and Theatre and Drama DPR research funding, and indirectly by LTU Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences study leave awarded in 2011. Thanks to my LTU colleagues and special thanks to Professor Sue Thomas, Dr Kim Baston, and my collaborators on the Circus Oz living archive project. As well, I would like to acknowledge the animal studies reading group in Melbourne until recently convened by Dr Siobhan O'Sullivan, because it provides ongoing and invaluable discussion of the socio-political frameworks surrounding non-human animals. Thanks to Dr Melissa Boyde and Dr Fiona Probyn-Rapsey for seeing the potential of this work for their series and thanks to

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British heroism and the structure of melodrama

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

‘Damn all White Men and Down with Labor’: Race and Genre in Wilkie Collins & Charles Fechter's Black and White

‘Damn all White Men and Down with Labor’: Race and Genre in Wilkie Collins & Charles Fechter's Black and White

Adaptable Near and Far: C. H. Hazlewood’s Double Adaptations

Fighting nature: Travelling menageries, animal acts and war shows

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