드러리 레인 플레이빌 연구(2): 셰리단의 전략

초록

This article focuses on three tasks to look into Sheridan’s strategy toward Drury Lane’s playbill of 29 Jan. 1781, consisting of Garrrick’s Florizel and Perdita and Sheridan’s pantomime, Robinson Crusoe and Harlequin Friday. First, to stage Whig political propaganda, Sheridan chose Florizel and Perdita as it became associated with the inappropriate love affair of Prince of Wales and the actress who played the role of Perdita, Mary Robinson. Second, Sheridan intended to satire inappropriateness of George III’s foreign affairs and the Tory policies promoting the legitimacy of the hereditary power. Thus he chose DeFoe’s novel as an Opening of the first part of his pantomime as it was a text embodying both European colonial and nationalist rhetoric, symbolic of beating Spain out of the New World. Third, to upstage George III and the Tory and their policies, Sheridan finally downstaged an uncanny resemblance between the fundamental traits of Friday/Harlequin and himself. Friday/Harlequin/Sheridan humiliated Spanish culture and religion which its contemporary audience would have recognized as the satires of the Tory. Thus after the premiere of the playbill of 1781, Sheridan began to be considered as Harlequin advocating constitutional authority and representative government, middle class values and abolition.

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