Project MUSE®: Theatre Notebook - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/612
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Theatre Notebook.daily12026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 67 (2013) through current issueLatest Articles: Theatre NotebookTWOProject MUSE®Theatre Notebook2051-83580040-5523Latest articles in Theatre Notebook. Feed provided by Project MUSE®“Blackguardism” and “Surrey Fooleries”? David Osbaldiston’s Management of Covent Garden, 1835–37
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/950322
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In February 1828, David Osbaldiston was en route to the Brunswick Theatre in Wellclose Square, Whitechapel. Shortly before reaching his destination, the actor was met with tragic news. Just three days after its opening night, the Brunswick’s ceiling had collapsed leaving over thirty people dead or badly injured. So began a dramatic career in the capital spanning three decades and five other theatres. Especially effective in action-centred roles such as William Tell and Rob Roy, Osbaldiston could also write. His final effort, Catherine of Russia; or, The Child of the Storm, was seen by Henry Mayhew at a crowded Old Vic in November 1850. Never known to undersell himself, Osbaldiston played Peter the Great (Mayhew:
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/612/image/coversmall“Blackguardism” and “Surrey Fooleries”? David Osbaldiston’s Management of Covent Garden, 1835–372025-01-27text/htmlen-US“Blackguardism” and “Surrey Fooleries”? David Osbaldiston’s Management of Covent Garden, 1835–372025-01-272025TWOProject MUSE®918832026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002025-01-27An Unknown Painting of Macklin as Shylock?
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/950323
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Some years ago I acquired an eighteenth-century painting by Edward Alcock. It depicts Act 3 Scene 1 in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice in which Tubal updates Shylock on his daughter’s elopement with a chest of jewels, and the loss of Antonio’s ships at sea. Since Alcock is already known for a painting reputed (erroneously, in some current opinion) to be of the Irish actor Charles Macklin (1699–1797) and his daughter Maria (c. 1733–1781), portrayed as Shylock and Portia, I was curious to know if my acquisition might be an overlooked depiction of the actor at one of the most renowned moments in his performance.Charles Macklin’s reinterpretation of Shylock is among the enduring legends of English theatre history.
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/612/image/coversmallAn Unknown Painting of Macklin as Shylock?2025-01-27text/htmlen-USAn Unknown Painting of Macklin as Shylock?2025-01-272025TWOProject MUSE®484242026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002025-01-27Performing Masculinity: The Toy Theatre Playbooks of Hodgson & Company, London, 1822–1824
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/950324
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This article examines the Juvenile Dramas (playbooks for toy theatres) produced by a prolific juvenile publisher, Hodgson & Company, from 1822 to 1824. These 54 Juvenile Dramas are rarely straightforward abridgments of the published playbooks of contemporary stage performances.1 The changes in the text often enhance the character of the hero, making him the epitome of martial masculinity. This could be explained as the publisher catering to the schoolboy users of toy theatres.2 However, analysis of the choice of plays for the Juvenile Dramas, and of the additions to their texts, reveals a further, and unsuspected, political agenda. Many of the heroes and their supporters uphold distinctly Whig political ideas and
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/612/image/coversmallPerforming Masculinity: The Toy Theatre Playbooks of Hodgson & Company, London, 1822–18242025-01-27text/htmlen-USPerforming Masculinity: The Toy Theatre Playbooks of Hodgson & Company, London, 1822–18242025-01-272025TWOProject MUSE®1281462026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002025-01-27The Hazardous World of Victorian Enter -tainment: Perils of the Victorian Stage by Alan & Brenda Stockwell, and: The Hazardous World of Victorian Entertainment: Jeopardy within the Victorian Theatre by Alan & Brenda Stockwell (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/950325
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For those looking for Christmas stocking fillers for the more ghoulish of Victorian theatre enthusiasts, these two volumes offer a plethora of sudden death, maimed bodies, broken bones and fractured skulls, whether caused by falls from great heights, trap doors left inadvertently open, faulty machinery, fire or attacks by wild animals. The Victorian theatre and other entertainment venues were pla gued by health and safety deficiencies and inadequate regulation, as the evidence in these two volumes implies. Both volumes offer a series of short entries prefixed with titles such as “Gun Accident” – of which there were far too many – “Female Hamlet falls through stage trap”, “Fatal Accident to Trapeze Artist” or “Fatal
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/612/image/coversmallThe Hazardous World of Victorian Enter -tainment: Perils of the Victorian Stage by Alan & Brenda Stockwell, and: The Hazardous World of Victorian Entertainment: Jeopardy within the Victorian Theatre by Alan & Brenda Stockwell (review)2025-01-27text/htmlen-USThe Hazardous World of Victorian Enter -tainment: Perils of the Victorian Stage by Alan & Brenda Stockwell, and: The Hazardous World of Victorian Entertainment: Jeopardy within the Victorian Theatre by Alan & Brenda Stockwell (review)2025-01-272025TWOProject MUSE®43422026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002025-01-27Romantic Comedy by Trevor R. Griffiths (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/950326
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“The simple formulation that boy meets girl”, observes Trevor R. Griffiths, “can generate an infinite number of complications that make it extraordinarily difficult to pin down a definition of Romantic Comedy” (p. 2). If the challenges of an academic attempting to write a genre survey mirror those of a romantic-comedy protagonist attempting to find a suitable sex partner, I’m pleased to report that in both cases, the outcome is a happy one. Griffiths’s contribution to Methuen’s Forms of Drama series opens with an introduction giving substantial space to the Greek and Roman playwrights Menander, Plautus, and Terence before moving onto three main chapters covering English romantic comedy: Shakespeare, 1660–1895, and
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/612/image/coversmallRomantic Comedy by Trevor R. Griffiths (review)2025-01-27text/htmlen-USRomantic Comedy by Trevor R. Griffiths (review)2025-01-272025TWOProject MUSE®60702026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002025-01-27Obituaries
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/950327
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David Mayer was a theatre historian and professor of drama; the eldest son of the proprietor of a clothing store where Al Capone shopped, he was also known for narrowly avoiding a fight with Frank Sinatra, and for having been placed on a U.S. terrorism blacklist in a grotesque case of mistaken identity. He met such imbroglios with humour, which, according to his daughter Liese, he chose over decorum.A graduate of Yale, a PhD from Northwestern University, and a job at Lawrence College, took David and the family on a Guggenheim Fellowship to London, and later to a permanent post in 1972 at the University of Manchester.David’s interests spanned film and theatre, particularly the cross-currents of influ -ences between
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/612/image/coversmallObituaries2025-01-27text/htmlen-USObituaries2025-01-272025TWOProject MUSE®46442026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002025-01-27