Revising Theatrical Conventions in A Simple Story : Elizabeth Inchbald's Ambiguous Performance

Sometime in the early 1780s, a beautiful young woman stopped by the home of Thomas Harris, theater manager at Covent Garden. She was an actress in his company, and she had recently given him some plays that she hoped he would produce. Harris, it seems, had hopes of his own:

When the consultation was ended, Mr. Harris, who was a handsome man, and had found so little difficulty among the theatrical sisterhood under his government, thought that he might be equally successful in an attack on Mrs. Inchbald; but, instead of regular approaches, he attempted to take the fort by storm, and Mrs. Inchbald found no recourse but in seizing him by the hair, which she pulled with such violence that she forced him to desist. She then rushed out of the house, and proceeded in haste, and under great agitation, to the green-room of the theater, where the company were then rehearsing. She entered the room with so wild an air, and with such evident emotion, that all present were alarmed. She hastily related what had happened as far as her impediment [a recurrent stutter] would permit her, and concluded with the following exclamation: "Oh! If he had wo-wo- worn a wig, I had been ru-ruined!"¹

John Taylor, a close friend of Elizabeth Inchbald, includes this story in his memoirs. Though scholars have questioned its veracity, the anecdote was widely circulated, and, legend or truth, it illustrates the singular challenges that faced actresses and hopeful female playwrights. As Taylor suggests, liaisons between theater managers and their "supporting casts" were common, expected, and accepted. The anecdote also indicates the characteristics that enabled Inchbald to overcome these obstacles and become one of the most successful playwrights, novelists, and drama critics of the late-eighteenth- century: her trademark toughness and persistence, her refusal to be controlled by a male superior, and her determination not to be silenced—despite her rather unique struggles for expression.

Inchbald occupies multiple roles in this encounter with Harris. She is at once playwright, victim, and—as indicated by her ability to deliver a comic punch line with theatrical presence—the consummate actress. Inchbald makes us want to laugh at what is obviously a frightening, distinctly un-funny experience; she performs her distress as a joke, and her stutter, which highlights her disturbance, also adds to the humor. Her speech impediment, an involuntary effect caused by and representative of "evident emotion," at once complicates the clear, discrete articulation of what her feelings may be and seems positioned voluntarily to highlight and heighten feelings of merriment surrounding this event. So what was Inchbald feeling? Fright? Rage? Relief? Amusement? Confidence? Her account makes it impossible for us to latch on to any one emotion; what it does convey is a sense that multiple feelings are being expressed simultaneously.

This feature of Taylor's anecdote is characteristic of Inchbald's treatment of emotions in her fiction: she repeatedly suggests that multiple emotions may be experienced and expressed all at once. Though this formulation may not sound so innovative to us today, it represents a very different understanding of emotions and expression from the one advocated by the eighteenth-century stage. Eighteenth-century actors and actresses relied on a semantics of gesture in which a specific pose signifies a specific emotion, so that emotions could be expressed and interpreted discretely, straightforwardly; Inchbald, as a prominent actress and playwright of the eighteenth century, is commonly assumed to have accepted and implemented these same conventions in her non-dramatic prose. For example, Nora Nachumi asserts that "[Inchbald's] knowledge of a widely recognized system of theatrical gesture manifests itself in her criticism and fiction" and concludes that Inchbald "repeatedly demonstrates that bodies express emotions more authentically and more persuasively than words alone" (318). Inchbald's first novel, A Simple Story, is considered to be...