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AUGUSTAN DRAMA - Coggle Diagram
AUGUSTAN DRAMA
SENTIMENTAL COMEDY
- emphasised the individual's sentiment and emotional response
- had a moralizing, ethical nature
- were more like tragicomedies as a consequence of the increasing use of emotional elements and the permission to mix comic and tragic elements
- portrayed middle-class life
- showed virtue rewarded by domestic bliss while the wicked was punished or had to admit the guilt and ask for forgiveness
RICHARD STEELE
following the theory of comedy expressed by Horace in Ars Poetica, he believed that the task of the artist was to teach and please. He mixed comedy and sentiment but also showed his moral purpose. Comedy should instruct not only by ridiculing foolish behaviour but also by showing models of proper behaviour
Comedies:
- The Funeral
- The losing lover
- The tender husband
His greatest achievement:
- The conscious lover 1722 story of Bevil, a gentleman who is engaged to the rich Lucinda Sealand, although he loves a destitute orphan, Indiana. Lucinda, on her part, has a persistent suitor, Climberton, who is only interested in her money, and is truly loved by Bevil's best friend, Myrtle. At the end of the play, it is revealed that Indiana is Lucinda half-sister. She is Mr Sealand's lost daughter from his first marriage. Both Lucinda and Indiana are free to marry the men they love. Progressive shift in English society from marriage intended as a business deal to marriage intended as an act of love
AUGUSTAN TRAGEDY
During 18th century dramatists emphasised the importance of respecting the rules of tragedy, derived from Aristotle and Horace: respect of unities of time, place and action, the clear distinction between a beginning, a middle and an end, the importance of decorum and the need to instruct the audience.
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GEORGE LILLO
famous for domestic tragedies
- The London Mercant or the history of George Barnwell
- The fatal curiosity
JOHN GAY, THE BALLAD OPERA
Life
- born in Devonshire of a bourgeois family, no university education
- 1712 he moved to London where he worked as a secretary to the Duchess of Monmouth, gaining financial security
- he became friend with many men of letters and aristocrats, including Pope and Arbuthnot, with whom he founded The Scribleurs Club
- he died in 1732
Works
he is acknowledged as a major poet of the Augustan Age. Most important poetical works:
- The shepherd's week
- Trivia
- Poems on several occasions
- Fables, his best achievement
also remembered for his theatrical production, most notably THE BEGGAR'S OPERA, a BALLAD OPERA = a mixture of dialogue, music and songs, which parodies Italian opera and deals with petty criminals in a mock-heroic way. Source of inspiration were the executions of 2 famous highwaymen: Jack Sheppard and Johnatan Wild
plot
set in London revolves around Pencham, a fencer who protects criminals by selling the stolen goods but also betrays them to the police when a reward is offered. When his daughter Polly falls in love with Macheath, a generous highwayman, Penshaw is afraid that their marriage can place his business in the young man's hands so he informs the police and has the man arrested. Although he manages to escape, Macbeth is betrayed again by some prostitutes paid by Pencham and he is sentenced to be hanged. In the end he is saved. The play ends with a dance and a final song.
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HENRY FIELDING
Before turning to novel writing, Fielding wrote more than 20 comic plays of various sorts in the general vein of political and literary satire: from regular comedies, to Molière adaptations, from musical plays to farces and burlesques
mainly remembered for his burlesque, most notably Tom Thumb 1730 about the traditional hero in English folklore who is no bigger than his father's thumb but is given the hand of a princess in marriage. In 1731 he expanded it and rewrote it as The tragedies of tragedies, or the life and death of Tom Thumb the great to remove some humour and make satire more biting. The play can be considered a mockery of heroic tragedy in which Fielding ridiculed the absurdities of contemporary drama, by parodying lines from different plays and adding mock critical and explanatory notes to satirize the theories of Corneille and tragedies such as Cato by Addison.
- Covent Garden Tragedy a coarser burlesque about a love triangle in a brothel involving two prostitutes
more overt political satires:
- Pasquin a dramatic satire in which he suggested and ridiculed Prime Minister Walpole's political methods, especially bribery
- The Welsh Opera later expanded under the title The Grub Street Opera in which he offended the British nobles and royalty by portraying a henpecked King George II, a presumptuous Queen Caroline and an impotent, rakish Prince of Wales.
THEATRE LICENSING ACT 1737 limited the metropolitan theatres to two and brought plays, prologue and epilogues under direct legal supervision of the Lord Chamberlain. The act greatly restricted his dramatic production and he eventually turned to fiction
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