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The Moor's Progress: A Study of Edward Young's Tragedy, The Revenge

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2009

Gerald D. Parker
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Extract

A reviewer of a production of Edward Young's tragedy, The Revenge, in 1815, wrote:

Sound morality and good manners demand that this Play should either be greatly altered, or banished from the Stage. No character of Kotzebue is either so unnatural or so dangerous as Zanga. We may pronounce him a despicable coward by the surest test of cowardice – a vindictive spirit that knows not how to pardon…. Zanga is described as brave, heroic, and noble, yet forgiveness is not in his nature. He is more contemptibly mean – more desperately wicked than Iago. He is made more an object of esteem and pity than Othello…. Why did not the author make him the victim of his own contrivances? Why did he not exemplify in the disappointment of Zanga, the sure punishment of an indiscriminate revenge? … He is a fiend that gains our respect by forcing our admiration, and he does this when the real nature of his actions qualify him rather for the gibbit than for the honourable termination of his life.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 6 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1981 , pp. 172 - 195
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 1981

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References

Notes

1. The Stage (London, 1815), I, 33.

2. Nichols, James, ed. Edward Young: The Complete Works (London, 1856), II, 244.Google Scholar All future references are to this edition.

3. See Williams, John Ambrose, Memoirs of John Philip Kemble (London, 1817), 80.Google Scholar Kemble first performed Zanga at Drury Lane, 19 January 1789, and continued with the role through to his farewell performances in 1817. His own acting version of The Revenge was published in 1811.

4. Theatrical Observer, Thursday, 22 November 1832.

5. See Avery, Emmett L., ed. The London Stage (Carbondale, Illinois, 1960), Part II (1700–29).Google Scholar See the announcement for the first edition of the play in the Daily Post, Wednesday, 3 May 1721, printed for W. Chetwood and S. Chapman. I have counted 34 editions and/or re-issues of the play between 1721 and 1828. In its first run, of six performances at Drury Lane, Zanga was acted by John Mills who had recently been successful as Bajazet in a 1716 revival of Rowe's Tamerlane.

6. Hazlitt, William, Collected Works, ed. Walker, A. R., Glover, Arnold (London, 1902), VIII, 227.Google Scholar See also Hazlitt's review of Robert Maywood in the part: (Zango's blood is on fire; it boils in his veins; it should dilate, and agitate his whole frame with the fiercest rage and revenge.' Works, XI, 397–8.

7. See Bowers, Fredson, ed. The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker (Cambridge, 1961), IV, 117.Google Scholar

8. See Summers, Montague, ed. The Works of Aphra Behn (London, 1915), II, 4.Google Scholar

9. The Guardian, I, 37, 1713.

10. See Taylor, George, ‘“The Just Delineation of the Passions”: Theories of Acting in the Age of Garrick,’ Richards, Kenneth, Thomson, Peter, eds., The Eighteenth Century English Stage (London, 1972), 51–72.Google Scholar

11. Sir Herbert Croft, who wrote the life of Young for Johnson's Lives, gives vivid testimony to Hughes' warning in his novel Love and Madness: A Story Too True (London, 1780). In this work, the Rev. James Hackman tries to explain his murdering of Martha Ray: ‘Inconsistent being! While I am ranting thus about tragedy, and blood, and murder – behold, I am as weak as a woman. My tears flow at but the idea of losing you. Yes, they do not drop only, they pour; I sob, like a child. Is this Othello, is this Zanga? We know not what we are, nor what we may become.’22

12. Biographia Dramatica (London, 1782), II, 305.

13. The effect of this ‘blow’ was parodied by Carey, Henry in Chrononhotonthologos (1733)Google Scholar, when Bombardinion exclaimed:

A blow! shall Bombardinion take a Blow?

Blush! Blush! thou Sun! Start back thou rapid Ocean!

Hills, Vales! Seas! Mountains! all commixing crumble

And into Chaos pulverize the World;

For Bombardinion has received a Blow,

And Chrononhotonthologos shall die.

In the evocation of chaos, Carey may also have had in mind Young's earlier poem, The Last Day (1713). Henry Carey, incidentally, was the father of George Saville Carey, the maternal grandfather of Edmund Kean whose performance as Zanga was one of the most noteworthy. In another context, George Anne Bellamy speaks of her quarrel with a Mr. Colcroft with reference to Zanga's blow. See Apology for the Life of George Anne Bellamy (London, 1787), II, 184. Francis Gentleman simply remarks that the blow was one ‘which to Moorish tempers, proves an offence never to be forgiven’. The Dramatic Censor (London, 1770), II, 323.

14. For a satirical treatment of James Quin's delivery of this speech, see Smollett, Tobias, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, ed. Clifford, James L. (London, 1964), 652–4.Google Scholar One of Henry Mossop's habits as an actor was his pausing for special effects. Referring to this habit, Richard Brinsley Peak wrote: ‘We have also heard that his pauses were so intolerably long, that, in the speech of Zanga, in the Revenge, to Alonzo – ‘Know, then, ‘twas – 1 …, –” the critic avowed, that, at the first word of speech he might have left the theatre, called a coach, and returned to his box, and still have been in time to have discovered that Zanga “did it”’ Memoirs of the Colman Family (London, 1841), 332.

15. In speaking of this scene, Thomas Davies remarked that ‘this admirer of original composition, is sometimes no more than a humble copier.’ Life of Garrick (London, 1780), 171.

16. The Drama, or Theatrical Pocket Magazine (London, 1821), I, 373.

17. See Dunlap, William, The Life of G. F. Cooke (London, 1815), I, 239–40Google Scholar; 206. See also, Hare, Arnold, ‘George Frederick Cooke's Early Years in the Theatre’, Theatre Notebook XXXI (1977), 12–21Google Scholar, and ‘George Frederick Cooke: the Actor and the Men’, in The Eighteenth-Century English Stage, 123–36. Dunlap records performances by Cooke as Zanga in Dublin, London, Glasgow, Edinburgh, and, during his North American tours, in Boston, New York and Providence. For accounts of his London performances as Zanga see The Theatrical Review, Monday, 4 January 1802, 262–3, and The Stage (London, 1815), II, 169–70.

18. Dunlap, , I, 164.Google Scholar Dunlap says that these comments were ‘Among some memoranda made by Mr. Cookein 1798’.

19. Hazlitt, , Works, VIII, 227.Google Scholar

20. Bullough, Geoffrey, Narrative and Dramatic Sources (London, 1957), VII, 207.Google Scholar

21. Biographia Dramatica, II, 304. A similarly extravagant view of the play was offered by the comedian Charles Lee Lewes, who remarked that the character of Zanga, ‘seems to me to be one of the greatest efforts of human genius since Shakespeare’. Memoirs of Charles Lee Lewes (London, 1805), I, 11.

22. Raysor, Thomas Middleton, Coleridge's Miscellaneous Criticism (Cambridge, Mass., 1936), 300.Google Scholar Coleridge was further involved in the history of this play by Hazlitt, who, in his review of Macready's performance as Zanga in 1820 wrote in a parody of Coleridge's style: ‘Here is our bill of fare for the month,’ Hazlitt said by way of introduction, ‘our list of memoranda – The French dancers – Farren's Deaf Lover – Macready's Zanga – Mr. Cooper's Romeo…. Who can make anything of such a beggarly account as this? Not we. Yet as poets at a pinch invoke the Muse, so we, for once, will invoke Mr. Coleridge's better genius, and thus we hear him talk….’ Works, XVIII, 370.

23. The Dramatic Mirror (London, 1808), 621.

24. London, 1804.

25. Hunt, Leigh, Critical Essays on the Performers of the London Theatres (London, 1807), 7.Google Scholar

26. Hazlitt, , Works, VIII, 227–8.Google Scholar

27. Marchand, Leslie A., ed. ‘In my hot youth’: Byron's Letters and Journals (London, 1973), 63.Google Scholar Byron, Marchand notes, may have but recently seen the play in London, where it was then being performed by Kemble. In 1809, writing from Newstead Abbey, Byron announced plans for a private performance of The Revenge, ‘as I have some young friends who will make tolerable substitutes for females….’ 170.

28. James Quin took ‘possession’ of the role at Covent Garden, 12 November 1744, much to the delight of Young. See Apology for the Life of George Anne Bellamy, II, 146. In The Rosciad, Churchill associated Quin with the role of Zanga when he wrote

His eyes, in gloomy socket taught to roll,

Proclaim'd the sullen habit of his soul….

lines which refer directly to the opening speech by Zanga. Grant, Douglas, ed. The Poetical Works of Charles Churchill (Oxford, 1956), 30–1.Google Scholar

29. One of the first reviews to associate Zanga with the ‘sublime’ was in The London Chronicle, 7 February 1747: ‘There are many elegant touches of Poetry in this Play, and Zanga often rises to the Sublime.’ The actor playing the part this evening was Henry Mossop.

30. Bailey, Margery, ‘Edward Young’, in Hilles, Frederick W., ed. The Age of Johnson (New Haven, 1949, 201–2).Google Scholar See also Wilson, G. Knight's brief comments on Young as ‘less rational, less of a daylight dramatist than Thomson.’ The Golden Labyrinth (London, 1962), 193.Google Scholar

31. Hazlitt, W. Carew, A Selection of Old English Plays (London, 1874–1876), VII, 186.Google Scholar

32. W. Carew Hazlitt asserts, in his introduction to the text, that ‘the open representation of the Devil in “Faustus” is less offensive than the introduction of him here in the garb of a Moor; but the philanthropy of our ancestors was not shocked at any representation of an African or an Israelite.’ 96.

33. Narrative and Dramatic Sources, VII, 207.

34. Ribner, Irving, ed., The Complete Plays of Christopher Marlowe (New York, 1963), xxxii.Google Scholar

35. See Rothstein, Eric, Restoration Tragedy (London, 1967), 66.Google Scholar

36. ‘The Grounds of Criticism in Tragedy’, in Kinsley, James, Parfitt, George, eds., John Dryden: Selected Criticism (Oxford, 1970), 167.Google Scholar

37. Gillespie, Gerald, ‘The Rebel in Seventeenth-Century Tragedy’, Comparative Literature XXIII (1966), 324–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38. The music for the 1695 production of this play for the re-opening of Drury Lane, with George Powell as Abdelazer, was, of course, by Purcell. Of this event, Cibber wrote: ‘Their [the patentees of Drury Lane after the succession of Betterton, Mrs. Barry and Mrs. Bracegirdle to Lincoln's Inn Fields] first Attempt was a reviv'd Play called Abelazer, or the Moor's Revenge, poorly written by Mrs. Behn. The House was very Full, but whether it was the Play or the Actors that were not approved, the next Day's Audience sunk to nothing.’ Apology for the Life of Mr. Colley Cibber (London, 1756), I, 195.

39. See Summers, Works of Aphra Behn, II, 430.

40. For an interesting account of the latter, see Vieth, David M., ‘Psychological Myth as Tragedy: Nathaniel Lee's Lucius Junius Brutus’, The Huntington Library Quarterly, XXXIX (1975), 57–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

41. Wilkes, Thomas, A General View of the Stage (London, 1759), 127–32.Google Scholar

42. Biographia Dramatica, II, 304–5.

43. Young's first dramatic figure of this sort was Memnon in Busiris (1719), who is even closer in spirit to Otway's Jaffeir. See Parker, Gerald D., ‘The Image of Rebellion in Thomas Otway's Venice Preserv'd and Edward Young's Busiris’, Studies in English Literature.Google Scholar

44. ‘The Centaur Not Pleasure’, Letter II, ‘On Pleasure’, Works, II, 443.

45. Pettit, Henry, ed. The Correspondence of Edward Young (Oxford, 1971), 180.Google Scholar See also Young's third and last tragedy, The Brothers (1724) in which his heroic villain Perseus escapes, triumphant over his victims: ‘Virtue's a shackle, while fair disguise, / To fetter fools, while we bear off the prize.’ In the Epilogue only does Young account for Perseus' ultimate downfall.

46. See Ball, Robert H., The Amazing Career of Sir Giles Overreach (Princeton, 1939)Google Scholar, for an account of another very stage-worthy, equally adaptable figure – a figure also effectively portrayed by Kean.

47. See Nicolson, Marjorie Hope, Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory (Ithaca, N.Y., 1959).Google Scholar

48. Hawkins, F. W., The Life of Edmund Kean (London, 1869), I, 302.Google Scholar This account was earlier related by Bryan W. Proctor in his Life of Edmund Kean (London, 1835), II, 129–30, but without the identification of Southey.

49. See Hill, John, the Actor (London, 1750).Google Scholar Throughout Chapter 2 of this study, Hill comments on the excellencies of Quin, particularly in his readings of Milton, and his performance in Comus in 1735. See also, The Life of Mr. James Quin (London, 1766): ‘the language of Milton, the most sublime of any in our tongue, seemed formed for the mouth of this player’. 83.

50. See The Life of Mr. James Quin, 83. Young, incidentally, expressed strong liking for Southerne's Oroonoko in his early poem The Epistle to Lansdowne (1713).

51. Clark, William Smith, in The Irish Stage in the County Towns, 1770–1800 (Oxford, 1965)Google Scholar, lists 28 productions of the play from 1753–92 in Belfast, Cork, Kilkenny, Limerick and Waterford. See also, Rosenfeld, Sybil, The Theatre in the London Fairs in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 1960).Google Scholar

52. See, for example, Female Friendship; or, The Innocent Sufferer (1770), The News-Paper Wedding; or An Advertisement for a Husband (1774), for accounts of performances of the play by travelling companies.

53. The Dramatic Censor, II, 33. For Thomas Sheridan's association with the part, see Sheldon, Esther K., Thomas Sheridan of Smock-Alley (Princeton, 1970), 456.Google Scholar Regarding Mossop, see The Theatrical Review (London, 1763), I, 277; The Theatrical Examiner (London, 1757), 36–7; Memoirs of the Colman Family (London, 1841), 332; Murphy, Arthur, Life of Garrick (London, 1801), I, 223Google Scholar; An Estimate of the Theatrical Merits of the two Tragedians of Crow-Street (Dublin, 1760), 14–15; O'Keeffe, John, Recollections of the Life of John O'Keeffe (London, 1826)Google Scholar; Victor, Benjamin, Original Letters (London, 1776), I, 158.Google Scholar

54. ‘To Mr. Holland’ (1769), Taylor, Donald S., ed. The Complete Works of Thomas Chatterton (Oxford, 1971), I, 339–40.Google Scholar

55. See Stone, George Winchester Jr., ed., The London Stage, Part 4: 1747–76 (Carbondale, Illinois, 1962).Google ScholarHighfill, Philip H. Jr., Burmin, Kalman A., Langhams, Edward A., eds., A Biographical Dictionary of Actors … in London, 1660–1800 (Carbondale, Illinois, 1973), I, 45–9Google Scholar: an engraving of Aiken as Zanga exists in the Harvard Theatre Collection. Regarding Ryder, see Anthony Pasquin (pseud, of John Williams), The Children of Thespis (London, 1788), Part III, 232: ‘I've seen him in ZANGA draw tears from their source.’

56. Hawkins, F. W., The Life of Edmund Kean, I, 299–300.Google Scholar

57. See The Theatrical Repertory (London, 1801–1802), 188–92. See also Lockhart, J. G., Memoirs of Sir Walter Scott (London, 1900) II, 262–3Google Scholar for a letter to Joanna Baillie in which Scott compares Kemble and Cooke in such roles as Cato, Brutus and Sir Giles Overreach, concluding that Kemble was surer of himself in those parts which demanded ‘systematic habits’, and dignity, whereas Cooke was superior in ‘short, abrupt, and savage utterance’. Thomas Holcroft also compares Kemble and Cooke along similar lines in The Theatrical Recorder (London, 1805), I, 136; 274.

58. Oxberry, , Dramatic Biography (London, 1825), I, 8.Google Scholar See also The Talents of Edmund Kean Delineated (London, 1817), 8; The Stage (London, 1815), II, 169–70 in which Kean, Kemble and Cooke are all compared in the role of Zanga, and the issue of heroic villainy discussed: ‘As the matter stands, therefore, we have no wish that a character should become popular which has so little to recommend it in point of any practical lesson that its representation can teach.’

59. Dunlap, , The Life of G. F. Cooke, I, 163.Google Scholar See also, The Theatrical Review, Monday, 4 January 1802, 262–3: ‘We hope … Mr. Cooke will … endeavour in his action and carriage, after he has avowed his princely birth, to render it in the last act less correspondent to Zanga the servile slave, and adapt it better to Zanga the son of Abdullah, the Moorish King.’

60. Prothero, Rowland E., Works of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals (London, 1898–1901), V, 472.Google Scholar

61. Others, besides Kemble, Cooke, Kean and Macready, included Charles Young (see Theatrical Observer, Tuesday, 29 November 1831; The Theatrical Observer (Dublin, 1821), I, Monday, 22 February; Young, Julian Charles, A Memoir of Charles Mayne Young (London, 1871))Google Scholar; Robert Campbell Maywood (see The Theatrical Inquisition, October 1817, 300).

62. A view reversed, in our century, by such scholars as R. G. Noyes who wrote of Young's ‘manifest superior structural sense and a style which indulges in few of the stereotypes, and little of the bombast and elaboration of metaphor, so common during the period’. The Neglected Muse (Providence, R.I., 1958), 135. See also Knight, G. Wilson, The Golden Labyrinth, 192–4.Google Scholar For views of Young's verse which echo those of this 1820 review, see Theatrical Observer Tuesday, 6 February 1827: ‘If these solemn asses carried each a volume of the Night Thoughts in his pocket, and the instant he felt aggrieved, began reading a chapter to compose himself, he would express his feelings as dramatically as at present.’ See also Gentleman, Francis, The Dramatic Censor, II, 333.Google Scholar

63. The New Monthly Magazine, XIV, 1 December 1820, 674–5.