british literature romantic period

2 4 I T H E R O M A N T I C P E R I O D

the Romantic poets who were their friends-paid by the page and writing to a deadline, for a start-their works thus parallel the poetsi in also turning toward th_e subjective. one conseq,r"n"e of the essayiJts, cultivation of inti- macy and preference for the- impressionistic over the systematic is that. when we track the history of prose to the lg20s, we see itl"rra ,p t" ; ;i;;;very different from the one it occupies at the starr of the Romairti" fdri"a.Participants in the Revolution

"ontrou".ry of the 1790s had claimed to

speak for all England. By the close of the period the achievement of the fqryilhl essay was to have brought the medium of prose within ihe

"atego.yof "the literary"-but by distancing it from public life.

Drama whether the- plays composed during the Romantic period can quarify as lit- erature has been, by.contrast, more of a puzzle. England th.ougho,rt this period had a vibrant theatrical culture. Theater criticism, practiceiwith flair by Hazlitt and Lamb, emerged as a new prose genre; actors like sarah sid- dons and Edmund Kean numbered the poet.

"-ong their admirers and

found their way into Romantic poetry; Mary Robinsor, #u, known as an actor before she was known

"r "n ",rthor. But there w€re many restrictions limiting

what could- be staged in England and many calls for reform. As places where crowds gathered, theaters were always cloiely watched by suspicious govern- ment officials. The English had habitually extolred their theater as a site of social mixing-a mirror to the political orier in that it supplied all the classes in the nation (those who, depending on how their tickets *".. p.i""d, fr"- quented the box, the pit, or the, gallery) with another sort of rep'resentative assembly- But during this era disorder seemed the ruler riots b'roke out at covent Garden in lz92 and 1g09. The link between drama and disorder was one reason that new dramas had to meet the approval ofa censor before they could be performed, a rule in place since 1737. Another restriction was that orrly the Theaters Royal (in London, Drury Lane and covent Garden) had the legal right to produce "legitimate" (spoken word) drama, leaving the other stages limited to entertainments-pantomimes and melodramas riainly-in which dialogue^was by regulation

"l-"ys combined with music. Ar,

"*rrirrg,,entertainment focused on legitimate drama would not have been so differeit. The stages and auditoriumi of the two theaters royal were huge spaces, which encouraged their managers to favor grandiose spectacles o.,'*or" p."- cisely, m-ultimedia experiences, involving m-usicians, dirrcers, and artists who designed_ scenery, besides players and playwrights.

This theatrical culture's demotion of words might explain why the poets of the era, however stage-struck, found drama uncongenial.,Nonetheless, almost all tried their hands. at the form, tempted by the"knowtedge that tt

"plays of certain of their (now less "rt""-"d;

contemporari".lH"rr.r"h cowley and charles Maturin, for example-had met with immense acclaim. some of-the poets'plays were composed to be read rather than performed:ucloset

dramas," such as Byron's Manfred., percy Shelley,ra 'ero*"tk"u,

unbound., and most of Joanna Baillie s plays on tke passions,plrmitted exper- imentation with topic and form. others were written

"*pr"rrly for the stage,

but their authors were hampered by their inexperience and tendency, exacer- bated by the censorship that errcouraged them to seek safe subject matter in the past' to imitate the style of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama. There were exceptions to this discouraging record. coleridge's tragedy Remorse, for

instance, was a minor hit ble dramatist among the 1 tragedy The Cenci (182( daughter and is murdere< cal rather than artistic ol tlre Examiner of Plays; incest, Shelley predicted I

\ovels at the start of the as far as critics and son 6ensslnsd-not quite resl ferver skills than other lit gree claimed by poetry an undue proportion of read escapist stories of romant nise attracted (so some o rr-ho were women. (By the men.) Because of its popu bs about the expansion ol ture: hence late-eighteentl described them as massl instead stamped out auto sively, however, starting a historical novels and the declared a renaissance-i had its historians, who d, manner established its p forms. It was having a ca Scott compiled and introi tlre novel began to endang

There had in fact been r akhough reviewers did not ofthe eighteenth centurv s natter-in particular, nev tor_v. Rather than, as one r of their own,t' some novels Tlre writers now known as cal theories and represent Willinms, or, Things as Th stonecraft, father of Marv @nstitute an epoch in the i. shall ever be exactly thr lmce and entrapment in v ftrs at the hands of the r disturbing cat-and-mouse 1 lrter as the conclusion to things, represents Shelleyi cnts.) Loyalists attacked thr mrels their ammunition, r unal presence.