Chapter Twelve addresses the circulation and reception of Shakespeare’s plays in the late eighteenth- and early-nineteenth century, showing how the non-classical elements of his drama vitally contributed to Romantic-period literature and culture. Beginning with a comparison of commemorations of the Bard’s bicentenary in various European capitals, the chapter then looks at his early reception in Germany and France. While Voltaire, Goethe, and Herder celebrated him as a natural genius, French critics realigned Shakespeare’s plays according to neoclassical rules. French audiences increasingly sought out melodrama, however, and accepted these ‘irregularities’, which also inspired Beaumarchais’s Figaro plays. The chapter demonstrates the productive convergences between Shakespearean drama and melodrama, pantomime, harlequinades and other popular theatrical forms, in particular as political satire. It then looks at how Tieck and A.W. Schlegel promoted Shakespeare as the supreme playwright and as part of the German opposition to Napoleon, leading to the banning of his plays in Vienna and elsewhere, and to many literary appropriations in Kleist, Goethe, and Schiller. The chapter concludes with a survey of some of Shakespeare’s influences on drama in Italy, Spain, and, again, France.

Review by Frederick Burwick ( University of California, Los Angeles ) of Angela Esterhammer, Print and Performance in the 1820s: Improvisation, Speculation, Identity . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Pp. x + 280. £75.00. ISBN 9781108656832.

‘Suspiria De Profundis’ appeared in four instalments in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, (March, April, June, July 1845), vol. 57, pp. 269–85, 489–502, 739–51; vol. 58, 43–55. It was subsequently published in F, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater; and Suspiria de Profundis (1851). Sections of ‘Suspiria’ were revised in SGG as part of Autobiographic Sketches (1853–4). In preparing the revisions, De Quincey used his personal copy of the second edition of F, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater; and Suspira de Profundis (1852), in which he inserted his marginal corrections. This copy (=MS B) is now in the manuscript collection of the Pierpont Morgan Library, PML 5097 (see Vol. 2, p. 1 of this edition). In preparing the text of Autobiographic Sketches for SGG, De Quincey removed pages for the sections subsequently reprinted as ‘The Affliction of Childhood’, ‘Dream-Echoes of these Infant Experiences’, and ‘Dream-Echoes Fifty Years Later’ in SGG (see Textual Notes for details of De Quincey’s alterations. ‘The Daughter of Lebanon’, originally written for ‘Suspiria’, was first published in SGG as a pendant to Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1856). For that reason, it appears in Vol. 2 of the present edition together with the 1856 version of the Confessions. Among the transcripts in this volume are numerous drafts, notes, and fragments relating to Suspiria.

British melodrama deserves the increased attention of recent years. Melodrama was, after all, the dominant genre of the nineteenth century, and nautical melodramas addressed a major enterprise of t...

British melodrama deserves the increased attention of recent years. Melodrama was, after all, the dominant genre of the nineteenth century, and nautical melodramas addressed a major enterprise of t...

First published in four instalments in Tait's, including the sections on 'Godwin' and 'Foster' in the first instalment (November 1845), pp. 724–9; 'Hazlitt' and 'Shelley' in the second instalment (December 1845), pp. 756–61; the continuation of 'Shelley' in the third instalment (January 1846), pp. 23–9; and the section on 'Keats' in the fourth instalment (April 1846), pp. 249–54; the entire review was reprinted in F, Essays on the Poets and Other Writers, 1853; the sections on 'Shelley' and 'Keats' in SGG, vol. 6, Sketches, Critical and Biographic, pp. 1–29, 269–88; the sections on 'Godwin,' 'Foster,' and 'Hazlitt,' in SGG, vol. 12, Speculations, Literary and Philosophical, pp. 280–312.

Transcripts from drafts relevant to the Suspiria de Profundis have been divided into two groups. In this first section are passages and notes that were preparatory to the version published in Blackwood's (March, April, June, July 1845); the second section contains paralipomena relating to the intended continuation of the Suspiria. and fragments.

Lord Byron’s works were the most frequently performed among those of the most famous poets of British Romanticism. Marino Faliero was the only one of his plays to be performed during his own lifetime, but many of his narrative romances were adapted for the stage and were performed with great success: The Corsair, The Bride of Abydos, Mazeppa. After his death, several of his plays made it to the stage and were frequently revived: Manfred, Werner, The Two Foscari, and Sardanapalus. The stage adaptations of Lady Carolyn Lamb’s Glenarvon and John Polidori’s The Vampire made the most of stage impersonations. This essay surveys the theatrical versions of the scandal-ridden “Byronic Hero.”