The Genius of Jane Austen: Her Love of Theatre and Why She Is a Hit in Hollywood. Paula Byrne

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       Private Theatricals

      The fashion for private theatricals that obsessed genteel British society from the 1770s until the first part of the nineteenth century is immortalised in Mansfield Park. The itch to act was widespread, ranging from fashionable aristocratic circles to the professional middle classes and minor gentry, from children’s and apprentices’s theatricals to military and naval amateur dramatics.1

      Makeshift theatres mushroomed all over England, from drawing rooms to domestic outbuildings. At the more extreme end of the theatrical craze, members of the gentrified classes and the aristocracy built their own scaled-down imitations of the London playhouses. The most famous was that erected in the late 1770s at Wargrave in Berkshire by the spendthrift Earl of Barrymore, at a reputed cost of £60,000. Barrymore’s elaborate private theatre was modelled on Vanbrugh’s King’s Theatre in the Haymarket. It supposedly seated seven hundred.2

      Private theatricals performed by the fashionable elite drew much public interest, and had profound implications for the public theatres.3 On one occasion in 1787 a motion in the House of Commons was deferred because too many parliamentarians were in attendance at a private performance of Arthur Murphy’s The Way to Keep Him at Richmond House.4 Such private performances often drew more attention in the newspapers than the theatres licensed for public performance.

      From an early age Jane Austen showed her own mocking awareness of what the newspapers dubbed ‘the Theatrical Ton’. In a sketch called ‘The Three Sisters’, dating from around 1792, she portrayed a greedy, self-seeking young woman who demands a purpose-built private theatre as part of her marriage settlement (MW, p. 65). In Mansfield Park, the public interest in aristocratic private theatricals is regarded ironically: ‘To be so near happiness, so near fame, so near the long paragraph in praise of the private theatricals at Ecclesford, the seat of the Right Hon. Lord Ravenshaw, in Cornwall, which would of course have immortalised the whole party for at least a twelve-month!’ (MP, p. 121). Austen carefully distinguishes between the fashionable elitist theatricals of the aristocracy, of the kind that were mercilessly lampooned by the newspapers, and those of the squirearchy.5 While Mr Yates boasts that Lord Ravenshaw’s private theatre has been built on a grand and lavish scale, in keeping with aristocratic pretensions, Edmund Bertram shows his contempt for what he considers to be the latest fad of the nobility:

      ‘Let us do nothing by halves. If we are to act, let it be in a theatre completely fitted up with pit, box and gallery, and let us have a play entire from beginning to end; so as it be a German play, no matter what, with a good tricking, shifting after-piece, and a figure dance, and a hornpipe, and a song between the acts. If we do not out do Ecclesford, we do nothing.’ (MP, p. 124)

      Edmund’s mocking comments are directed to his elder brother. But despite Tom Bertram’s efforts to professionalise his theatre, the Mansfield theatricals eventually fall back on the measure of converting a large room of the family home into a temporary theatre for their production of Lovers’ Vows. In reality, this was far more typical of the arrangements made by the professional classes and the minor gentry who had also adopted the craze for private theatricals. The private theatricals of Fanny Burney’s uncle at Barbone Lodge near Worcester, for example, took place in a room seating about twenty people. At one end of the room was a curtained off stage for the actors, while the musicians played in an outside passage.6

      In 1782, when the craze for private theatricals first reached Steventon rectory, Jane Austen was seven. The dining parlour was probably used as a makeshift theatre for the early productions.7 The first play known to have been acted by the Austen family was Matilda, a tragedy in five acts by Dr Thomas Francklin, a friend of Dr Samuel Johnson and a fashionable London preacher. The part of the tragic heroine Matilda was later popularised by Mrs Siddons on the London stage. At Steventon the tragedy was acted some time during 1782, and James Austen wrote a prologue and an epilogue for the performance.8 Edward Austen spoke the prologue and Tom Fowle, one of Mr Austen’s Steventon pupils who later became engaged to Cassandra Austen, the epilogue.9

      Francklin’s dreary play, set at the time of the Norman Conquest, dramatises a feud between two brothers. Morcar, Earl of Mercia, and his brother Edwin are both in love with Matilda, the daughter of a Norman lord. Matilda has chosen Edwin. Morcar separates the lovers, sets up plans to murder his brother, and tries (unsuccessfully) to win over and marry Matilda. The tragedy takes an unexpected twist with Morcar’s unlikely reformation: he is persuaded to repent of his crimes, reunite the lovers and become reconciled to his brother.

      Matilda was a surprising choice for the satirically-minded Austen family. Its long, rambling speeches and dramatic clichés of language and situation made it precisely the kind of historical tragedy that Sheridan burlesqued in The Critic. The tragedy had only six speaking parts, however, and was perhaps manageable in the dining room.10 Jane Austen was surely only a spectator at this very first Steventon performance, but it is probable that she disliked the play, given the disparaging comment she makes in her juvenilia about another historical drama, The Tragedy of Jane Shore, ‘a tragedy and therefore not worth reading’ (MW, p. 140). Perhaps the manager/actor James felt the same, for after Matilda no more tragedies were performed at Steventon.

      Matilda was followed two years later by a far more ambitious project. In 1784, when Jane was nine, Sheridan’s The Rivals was acted at Steventon. Once again James Austen wrote the prologue and an epilogue for the play performed in July ‘by some young Ladies & Gentlemen at Steventon’.11 Henry spoke the prologue and the actor playing Bob Acres (possibly James himself) the epilogue. James’s prologue suggests that there was an audience for this production.12 The play has a cast of twelve, and it seems that the Austens had no qualms about inviting neighbours and friends to take part in their theatricals. The Cooper cousins and the Digweed family probably made up the numbers.13 Biographers speculate that Jane Austen may have taken the minor role of Lydia Languish’s pert maid, Lucy, but perhaps it is more likely that she was a keen spectator.14

      James’s prologue is unequivocal in its praise of satirical comedy,