Women, Nationalism, and the Romantic Stage
Theatre and Politics in Britain, 1780–1800

This 2001 book examines how Romantic women performers and playwrights used theatrical conventions to intervene in politics.

Betsy Bolton (Author)

9780521771160, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 19 April 2001

290 pages, 20 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm, 0.6 kg

"Women, Nationalism, and the Romantic Stage is to be admired for the originality of its contents and the value of its method..well written and clearly organized...While it offers illuminating readings and careful scholarship to be apreciated for their own ends, it is also a book that invites further thinking about larger issues, including definitions of nationalism and the nature of women's political and literary authority within Romanticism." The Wordsworth Circle

In the 1780s and 90s, theatre critics described the stage as a state in political tumult, while politicians invoked theatre as a model for politics both good and bad. In this 2001 study, Betsy Bolton examines the ways Romantic women performers and playwrights used theatrical conventions to intervene in politics. Reading the public performances of Emma Hamilton and Mary Robinson through the conventions of dramatic romance, Bolton suggests that the romance of national identity developed by writers such as Southey and Wordsworth took shape in complex opposition to these unruly women. Setting the conventions of farce against those of sentiment, playwrights such as Hannah Cowley and Elizabeth Inchbald questioned imperial relations while criticizing contemporary gender relations. This well-illustrated study draws on canonical poetry and personal memoirs, popular drama and parliamentary debates, political caricatures and theatrical reviews to extend current understandings of Romantic theatre, the public sphere, and Romantic gender relations.

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Prologue: the female dramatist and the man of the people
Part I. Staging the Nation: 1. The politics of Romantic theatre
Part II. Romancing the State: Public Men and Public Women: 2. Varieties of Romance Nationalism
3. Patriotic romance: Emma Hamilton and Horation Nelson
4. (Dis)embodied romance: 'Perdita' Robinson and William Wordsworth
Part III. Mixed Drama, Imperial Farce: 5. Mimicry, politics and playwrighting
6. The balance of power: Hannah Cowley's Day in Turkey
7. The farce of subjection: Elizabeth Inchbald
Epilogue: what is she?
Notes
Select bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: plays & playwrights [DSG], Literary studies: poetry & poets [DSC], Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800 [DSBD], Theatre studies [AN]