This account of Thomas Sheridan's career as theater manager has been based on biographies written by his contemporaries, on 18th-century newspapers and pamphlets, and on letters written to and by Sheridan. The author also gives us much new information about Sheridan’s relations with David Garrick. In an appendix, the author has included a Smock-Alley Calendar, giving a daily record of performances and casts. Most of the material in the Calendar has not been collected before and should be invaluable to theater historians. Originally published in 1967. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Ambitious polymath Thomas Sheridan (1719-1788) was the lynchpin of the most fascinating family in Anglo-Irish literary history. The godson (and future biographer) of Jonathan Swift, the son of Thomas Sheridan senior, a talented poet and scholar, the husband of the novelist Frances Sheridan and the father of the dramatist and politician Richard Brinsley Sheridan, this new study reconstructs this much maligned transitional Sheridan as a monumental figure in his own right. This book discusses the varied and relentless energies of Thomas Sheridan in an attempt to recover an overall purpose and agenda which unites his adventures as actor-manager of Smock Alley Theatre Dublin with his pioneering campaigns in the fields of oratory, elocution and lexicography. Infused with civic republican zeal (derived in part from close reading of Montesquieu and an admiration for native North American culture) Sheridan believed that humanity in general and Anglophones in particular suffered from a cultural and political enervation as a result of the cultivation of written language at the expense of spoken language. It is argued that 'republicanism' functioned more as a figure of political virtue than as a preferred mode of government. Enjoying particular success in Edinburgh with his public lectures, Sheridan sought to unify the peoples of Britain and Ireland by making the principles of elocution available to all, effectively de-centralising the linguistic claims of metropolitan centre. The Sheridan who emerges from this study is a phonocentric obsessive who left an abiding mark on the future of both acting and speech-making, but whose limitations are equally interesting and influential. In seeking to tame the riotous eighteenth-century stage, he anticipated (unknowingly) a far more passive 'cinematic' form of spectator entertainment (accelerated by his mentorship of the great Sarah Siddons, arguably the first player to be experienced as a 'movie star'). His dogged focus on the quality rather than the content of political debate led to his being permanently estranged from the mainstream of Irish patriotic writing while his inability to engage the economics of cultural production produces a tragic-comic figure whose disasters are as deserving of scrutiny as his successes. His genuine successes meanwhile include dignifying the profession of theatre player in a way that only Garrick could rival, helping to democratize oratory throughout the English speaking world, as well as helping to establish a continuity of specifically Irish eloquence that has subsequently become a key strand in Irish nationalist practice. Despite being a member of the British Establishment in Ireland, his patriotic pedagogy would have long-lasting, unanticipated and radical consequences. The idea of making patriotic speeches that evoke the memory of previous patriotic speeches may be Sheridan's most important and explosive contribution to his native country.

Frances Sheridan is now remembered, if at all, as the mother of the playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Yet, in her own day, she was a novelist and playwright whose work was admired by her contemporaries, David Garrick, Samuel Johnson. James Boswell, and Samuel Richardson. The appearance of all of this dramatist's long-out-of-print work reveals her to be an authoress worth studying, not only as an important influence on her son, but in her own right.

This new collection of essays on Richard Brinsley Sheridan brings the most important British playwright of the eighteenth century back to the forefront of literary and cultural studies of the era. While his pyrotechnic life as a romantic hero, playwright, Member of Parliament, and theatre manager has generated a number of recent biographies, it is Sheridan's works--not just plays but also poetry and orations--that endure. These essays reclaim the legacy of the man of letters and partisan bon vivant who burst from obscurity to become a powerful cultural force in Georgian London. This collection covers the many lives of Sheridan, taking into account both his variegated career and the competing accounts of the man, as well as his early verse, which lays the foundation for his success as a playwright. Chapters are devoted to Sheridan's theatre, and provide innovative readings of his most famous dramatic pieces: The Rivals, The Duenna, The School for Scandal, The Critic, and Pizarro. The volume also includes extensive discussion of the dramatic highs of Sheridan's long political career, thus placing the playwright-politician firmly in the world in which performance and politics were inextricably entwined. Contributors: Mita Choudhury, Jack E. DeRochi, Marianna D'Ezio, Daniel J. Ennis, Emily Friedman, Steven Gores, David Haley, Robert W. Jones, Daniel O'Quinn, Glynis Ridley, John Vance, David Francis Taylor

The first night of Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The School for Scandal, on 8 May 1777, was one of the great dates in theatrical history. From then on, Sheridan was launched into eighteenth-century society, as much at home in the salons of the Duchess of Devonshire and the Prince of Wales as in the taverns and coffee-houses around Drury Lane. Sheridan's comedies were all written by the time he was twenty-eight. For the next thirty years he was wholly involved in his twin careers as manager of the Drury Lane theatre and Member of Parliament. At a time when politics were dominated by a few aristocratic families, he rose above his poverty to become one of the greatest parliamentary figures of the age. In the theatre, he presided over one of the most brilliant periods in the history of the English stage. Drawing on a wide variety of sources, Kelly gives a comprehensive picture of Sheridan's tempestuous career and chaotic private life. For all his faults, his charm was irresistible - 'there has been nothing like it since the days of Orpheus,' wrote Byron. It is charm that illuminates her narrative, bringing Sheridan to life. 'I can imagine no better biography of this talented, dynamic, impossibly unreliable firework of a man.' Victoria Glendinning, Daily Telegraph

The Philological Quarterly's annual bibliographies of modern studies in English neoclassical literature, published originally from 1961 to 1970, are reproduced in two volumes. Readers will find the same features that distinguished earlier compilations in the series: inclusive listing of significant works published in each year (including sections on the historical and cultural background as well as literature), authoritative reviews of important works, critical comments, and a full index that is in itself an indispensable reference tool. Originally published in 1972. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The Birth of Modern Theatre: Rivalry, Riots, and Romance in the Age of Garrick is a vivid description of the eighteenth-century London theatre scene—a time when the theatre took on many of the features of our modern stage. A natural and psychologically based acting style replaced the declamatory style of an earlier age. The theatres were mainly supported by paying audiences, no longer by royal or noble patrons. The press determined the success or failure of a play or a performance. Actors were no longer shunned by polite society, some becoming celebrities in the modern sense. The dominant figure for thirty years was David Garrick, actor, theatre manager and playwright, who, off the stage, charmed London with his energy, playfulness, and social graces. No less important in defining eighteenth-century theatre were its audiences, who considered themselves full-scale participants in theatrical performances; if they did not care for a play, an actor, or ticket prices, they would loudly make their wishes known, sometimes starting a riot. This book recounts the lives—and occasionally the scandals—of the actors and theatre managers and weaves them into the larger story of the theatre in this exuberant age, setting the London stage and its leading personalities against the background of the important social, cultural, and economic changes that shaped eighteenth-century Britain. The Birth of Modern Theatre brings all of this together to describe a moment in history that sowed the seeds of today’s stage.