Chapter 9 - The Provincial Commencement of James Field Stanfield

Summary

The Dublin-born actor, James Field Stanfield (1749–1824), spent much of his career performing in northern Britain where his improving spirit had an impact both inside and outside the playhouse. His Irish Catholic identity combined with the alterity intrinsic to travelling acting life, and this appears to have heightened his sympathy for the marginalised. At theatrical benefits he promoted his abolition writing which was based on personal experience of the transatlantic slave trade. He also helped to establish the first public library in Sunderland where he was a prominent freemason; after associating with leading Scottish intellectuals, he wrote An Essay on the Study and Composition of Biography, the first long form treatise on the subject in English. McCormack’s original archival work shows how Stanfield built on his theatrical success and forged a reputation as a public reformer with a genuine spirit of Enlightenment; he was an Irishman who brought about real change in political and intellectual circles. Taken collectively, Stanfield’s remarkable contributions to a ‘Northern Enlightenment’ are an important corrective to the London-centric tendencies of much theatre and Enlightenment scholarship. McCormack’s analysis is a timely reminder in methodological terms of the importance of regional theatre history in Britain and Ireland.