Victorian Melodrama

Abstract

This article offers a survey of criticism on Victorian melodrama since the rise of cultural studies in the 1960s. It will consider various approaches to melodrama, from formalist and materialist accounts to revisionist studies which investigate the historiography of Victorian popular theatre. The field of melodrama studies is now so large that it is impossible to provide a comprehensive survey within this space. As such, there are some omissions: this article focusses almost exclusively on studies which take British (primarily London) melodrama as their focus, and it only includes scholarship dealing with melodrama on the stage and in the novel. The first part of this essay summarises foundational work in the field, and the second section details how melodrama has been seen as influencing other cultural forms. The third section turns to scholarship which places melodrama within its historical context, whilst the fourth section considers revisionist accounts which question the interpretative and discursive methods used to conceptualise the Victorian theatre. To conclude, this essay will address the subject of emotion and melodrama, and suggest a possible new framework through which to view and expand upon current understandings of ‘affect’ and the melodramatic theatre.

‘Going her Own Road’: The Tortured Path to Economic Independence in Late Colonial New South Wales

“…20 Scholars of late nineteenth century court process in England and the United States as well as Australia have remarked upon the melodramatic nature of trial proceedings at a time when melodrama provided a popular platform for the general populace to explore and confirm the moral status quo. 21 English historian Victoria Bates argues that women were expected to 'perform' on the stand in a particular way if they wanted to be assured of a particular legal outcome, and so their deportment followed 'definite 'patterns', scripts, and gendered stereotypes.' 22 The two chief scholars of divorce in NSW-Hilary Golder in 1985 and Claire Sellwood in 2016-have written at length about the melodramatic nature of proceedings in the late colonial courtroom.…”