“Sardoodledom” on the English Stage: T. W. Robertson and the Assimilation of Well-Made Play into the English Theatre

Anna Prośniak

doi:10.18778/2083-2931.10.25

Authors

Anna Prośniak University of Lodz https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6533-427X

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-2931.10.25

Keywords:

Thomas William Robertson, well-made play, Eugène Scribe, pièce bien faite, Shaw

Abstract

The article discusses a vital figure in the development of modern English theatre, Thomas William Robertson, in the context of his borrowings, inspirations, translations and adaptations of the French dramatic formula pièce bien faite (well-made play). The paper gives the definition and enumerates features of the formula created with great success by the French dramatist Eugène Scribe. Presenting the figure of Thomas William Robertson, the father of theatre management and realism in Victorian theatre, the focus is placed on his adaptations of French plays and his incorporation of the formula of the well-made play and its conventional dramatic devices into his original, and most successful, plays, Society and Caste. The paper also examines the critical response to the well-made play in England and dramatists who use its formula, especially from the point of view of George Bernard Shaw, who famously called the French plays of Scribe and Victorien Sardou—“Sardoodledom.”

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

Anna Prośniak, University of Lodz

Anna Prośniak is a PhD student in the Department of English Drama, Theatre and Film at the University of Lodz, Poland. Her academic interests revolve around Victorian visual arts, drama, and the beginnings of popular culture. Her current research projects, which stand in relation to her doctoral dissertation, focus on antiquity in Victorian popular drama in the form of “toga plays.”

References

Cardwell, Douglas. “The Well-Made Play of Eugène Scribe.” The French Review 56.6 (1983): 876–84. Pdf.

Darbyshire, Alfred. “Robertsonian and Modern Drama.” The Art of the Victorian Stage. London: Sherratt and Hughes, 1907. 129–64. Pdf.

Donohue, Joseph. “Actor and Acting”. The Cambridge Companion to Victorian and Edwardian Theatre. Ed. Kerry Powell. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004. 17–35. Pdf. https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL052179157X.002 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL052179157X.002

Epplett, Shannon. “The Waterloo Summer of the Prince of Wales’s Theatre: New Writing, Old Friends, and Early Realism in the Victorian Theatre.” Theatre History Studies Volume 36. Ed. Sara Freman. Alabama: The U of Alabama P, 2017. 149–82. Print. https://doi.org/10.1353/ths.2017.0007 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/ths.2017.0007

Gillespie, Patti P. “Plays: Well-Constructed and Well-Made”. Quarterly Journal of Speech 58.3 (1972): 313–21. Pdf. https://doi.org/10.1080/00335637209383128 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00335637209383128

Hudston, Sara. “Society.” Victorian Theatricals. From Menageries to Melodrama. London: Methuen, 2000. 224–79. Print. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781408164099 DOI: https://doi.org/10.5040/9781408164099

Jenkins, Anthony. “Domestic and Commonplace”. The Making of Victorian Drama. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1991. 63–93. Pdf. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511554186.003 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511554186.003

Mazer, Cary M. “Ibsen and the Well-Made Play.” Approaches to Teaching Ibsen’s “A Doll House.” Ed. Yvonne Shafer. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1985. 69–75. Pdf.

Meisel, Martin. Shaw and the Nineteenth-Century Theater. New York: Limelight Editions, 1984. Print.

Pemberton, T. Edgar. The Life and Writings of T. W. Robertson. London: Bentley, 1893. Pdf.

Robertson, Thomas William. “Society” and “Caste” by T. W. Robertson. Ed. T. Edgar Pemberton. London: D. C. Heath, 1905. Pdf.

Rowell, George. The Victorian Theatre 1972–1914: A Survey. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1978. Print.

Savin, Maynard. Thomas William Robertson. His Plays and Stagecraft. Rhode Island: Brown UP, 1950. Pdf.

Shaw, George B. Our Theatres in the Nineties,Volume 1. London: Constable, 1948. Pdf.

Shaw, George B. Preface. Three Plays by Brieux. By Eugène Brieux. Ed. George B. Shaw. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1913. vii–liv. Pdf.

Shaw, George B. “Robertson Redivivus.” Dramatic Opinions and Essays. New York: Brentano’s, 1922. 228–32. Pdf.

Stanton, Stephen S. “Scribe’s Bertrand Et Raton: A Well-Made Play.” The Tulane Drama 2.1 (1957): 58–70. Print. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511554186.003 DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/1124796

Stanton, Stephen S. “Shaw’s Debt to Scribe.” PMLA 76.5 (1961): 575–85. Pdf. https://doi.org/10.2307/460551 DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/460551

Taylor, John Russell. The Rise and Fall of the Well-Made Play. New York: Hill and Wang, 1967. Print.

Templeton, Joan. Shaw’s Ibsen: A Re-Appraisal. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54044-7 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54044-7

“Well-made play.” The Reader’s Encyclopedia of World Drama. Ed. John Gassner and Edward Quinn. New York: Crowell, 1969. 912–13. Print.