Theatric Revolution: Drama, Censorship, and Romantic Period Subcultures 1773–1832 (review)

David Worrall’s Theatric Revolution offers “snapshot[s]” (354) of the various theatrical subcultures that emerged during the Romantic period. Focusing on dramatists, itinerant actors, set designers, popular lecturers, government spies, printers, and adherents to millenarian religious sects, Worrall maps social and political networks, predominantly within London’s artisan communities, but he also portrays their political struggles against local magistrates and the powerful institutionalized monopolies held by the patent theatres north of the Thames. This book is not a conventional historical narrative nor is it a literary study of Romantic drama, but rather a chronological series of “microhistories” (133) that depict the liminal forms of theatricality that pervaded Georgian culture.

Worrall describes his critical methodology as an act of “reconstructive anthropology” (17); in this, he follows Daniel O’Quinn and his recent book, Staging Governance: Theatrical Imperialism in London, 1770–1800 (2005), in hearkening back to New Historicism’s interest in cultural anthropology. Worrall, however, does not specify what he means by this, except insofar as it is his attempt to recover and reconstruct the social networks of Georgian subcultures. He eschews theoretical paradigms, but also attempts to move “beyond close reading” in order to “recover how different subcultures interacted with the theatre, both politically and in the networks of belief among those who worked in the dramatic and allied trades” (146). Worrall’s endeavor to negotiate between Scylla and Charybdis reveals his methodological intentions though also the limitations of this cultural history.

The conceptual cornerstone of Theatric Revolution is the body of criticism concerned with social networks and sociability, such as Jürgen Habermas’s The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1989), Romantic Sociability: Social Networks and Literary Culture in Britain, 1770–1840 (2002, edited by Gillian Russell and Clara Tuite), and other works that emphasize the significance of specific communities like the Cockney School or the definitive importance of conversations and correspondence among individuals within the period. Because Worrall does not expound upon this context, a reader unfamiliar with this criticism may find it difficult to discern the purpose and relevance of Theatric Revolution. The strength of Worrall’s book rests primarily in his research and his use of primary sources. The sheer number of references to unfamiliar memoirs, unconventional sermons, handbills, and elusive pantomime productions opens a new world of uncharted material for students and scholars.

Comprised of ten chapters plus an introduction and a conclusion, Theatric Revolution opens with a multi-chapter discussion of the measures taken by the government to regulate the production of drama in metropolitan areas throughout the United Kingdom, but especially London. In these chapters, Worrall examines the government’s institution of cultural monopolies through the grant of patents to Theatres Royal (chapter 1), provides a case study of the suppression of the Royalty Theatre (chapter 2), and critiques the Examiner of Plays, John Larpent, especially the unofficial but very real role played by his wife, Anna, in censoring spoken word or “legitimate” drama produced in patent theatres (chapter 3). In chapter 4, Worrall turns his attention to Philip de Loutherbourg, the famous French scene designer who worked for Garrick at Drury Lane during the 1770s and ’80s. Throughout this chapter, Worrall links de Loutherbourg to London’s radicalized millenarian community through a network of personal friendships and associated trades. Although suggestive, even Worrall admits, “de Loutherbourg’s personal politics cannot be readily deduced” (135), except by affiliation.

Worrall’s ideas coalesce more fully in chapter 5 with his discussion of Thomas Dibdin’s Two Farmers (1800). Scheduled for performance at Covent Garden, Dibdin’s farce was “withdrawn” from production at the last moment. Its focus on a hoarding farmer, Locust, and his laborer, a former slave named Caesar, highlights labor tensions as well as the pressing issue of the slave trade. Written during a period of harvest failures and alleged grain shortages, Dibdin’s drama also reflected on recent London riots and the cooperative efforts of Spitalfields weavers...