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DIONYSUS IN 1769: DESIRE AND SUBLIMATION IN THE ENGLISH THEATRE—A GOTHIC TALE
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 April 2010
Extract
As what follows is largely about the ghosting of antiquity, I begin at a broken grave.
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References
1. “You will know me in the end a god, the most gentle to mankind, and the most terrible.” Euripides, Bacchae, ed. E. R. Dodds (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960), 859–61. Author's translation.
2. Quoted in Scott, Jonathan, The Pleasures of Antiquity: British Collectors of Greece and Rome (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 174Google Scholar.
3. The sense that Hamilton's presence was not accidental is supported when we learn that Hamilton kept a cork model of the tomb, bones and all, to display to guests. The description is from the first volume about Hamilton's second collection: Hamilton, William and Tischbein, Johann Wilhelm, Collection of Engravings from Ancient Vases, Mostly of Pure Greek Workmanship, Discovered in Sepulchres in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies but Chiefly in the Neighbourhood of Naples During the Course of the Years MDCCLXXXIX and MDCCLXXXX Now in the Possession of Sir Wm. Hamilton … with Remarks on Each Vase by the Collector, 4 vols. (Naples: W. Tischbein, 1791–5)Google Scholar, 1:22–24, quotation at 22.
4. For the importance of his collection, see Wilson, David, The British Museum: A History (London: British Museum Press, 2002), 46–47Google Scholar.
5. Hamilton and Tischbein, 1:20.
6. Stock, R. D., The Flutes of Dionysus: Daemonic Enthrallment in Literature (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1989), 224Google Scholar.
7. Richardson, Jonathan, An Essay on the Theory of Painting (London, 1725), 222–3Google Scholar.
8. For a summary of the development of early eighteenth-century classical taste in England, see Scott; see also Cruickshank, Dan, A Guide to the Georgian Buildings of Britain and Ireland (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1985)Google Scholar.
9. Pain, William, The Builder's Pocket-Treasure; or, Palladio Delineated and Explained, in Such a Manner as to Render That Most Excellent Author Plain and Intelligible (London: W. Owen, 1763)Google Scholar.
10. There was no dearth of building guides designed to render the Palladian aesthetic accessible. Two such chapbooks were published in 1763: Langley, Batty, The Builder's Director, or Bench-Mate, Being a Pocket-Treasury of the Grecian, Roman, and Gothic Orders of Architecture Made Easy by Near 500 Examples … Wherein the Orders of Andrea Palladio Are Truly Laid Down (London: A. Wabley, 1763)Google Scholar; and Pain. Most applied to colonial America. For a summary of the many manuals available, see Worsley, Giles, Classical Architecture in Britain: The Heroic Age (New Haven: Yale University Press: 1995), 279Google Scholar.
11. For a fine study of one commercial application of the Greek Revival in Bath, see Watts, Carol, “‘A Rarie-shew System of Architecture’: Bath and the Cultural Scenography of Palladianism,” in Articulating British Classicism: New Approaches to Eighteenth-Century Architecture, ed. Arciszewska, Barbara and McKellar, Elizabeth (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004), 119–41Google Scholar; the upcoming quotation is at 119.
12. See, for example, Arciszewska and McKellar.
13. Winston, James, The Theatric Tourist, n.d. [ca. 1805], 31Google Scholar, ms., Theatre Collection TS 1335.211, Harvard Theatre Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.
14. Winston suggests vaguely that Thornton usually carried on his business in “a large malt-house, barn, or some such scene of action” (ibid., 9).
15. Ibid., 7.
16. Gough, James, Bristol Theatre: A Poem (Bristol: S. Farley, 1766)Google Scholar, 12n1.
17. Ricoeur, Paul, Memory, History, Forgetting, trans. Blamey, Kathleen and Pellauer, David (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 66CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
18. At the more pedestrian end of the scale, Winston's Theatric Tourist is a catalog of such haute culture fantasies played out on the provincial landscape.
19. Chetwood, William, A General History of the Stage, from Its Origin in Greece Down to the Present Time … (London: W. Owen, 1749), 3Google Scholar.
20. Cooke, William, The Elements of Dramatic Criticism, Containing an Analysis of the Stage … (London: G. Kearsly & G. Robinson, 1775), 2–3Google Scholar.
21. Hampshire Chronicle, 23 May 1785.
22. Henry Holland to Richard Sheridan, quoted in Survey of London, vol. 35: The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, and the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, ed. F. H. W. Sheppard (London: Athone Press, 1970), 49. Holland wrote the letter about the time of the first opening of the theatre, which took place on 12 March 1794.
23. I am deeply indebted to Joe Roach for calling my attention to this portrait.
24. Eggeling, Johann, Mysteria Cereris et Bacchi in vasculo ex uno onyche (Bramae: Typis Hermanni Braveri, 1682)Google Scholar.
25. See Michaelis, Adolf, Ancient Marbles in Great Britain, trans. Fennel, C. A. M. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1882), 218Google Scholar; and Scott, 134–6, illus. on 135.
26. See Fothergill, Brian, Sir William Hamilton, Envoy Extraordinary (Stroud, Gloucestershire: Nonsuch, 2005 [1969]), 51Google Scholar.
27. For Hamilton's appointment as trustee and his relationship with the British Museum, see Wilson, 46–7.
28. Quoted in Scott, 87.
29. Ibid.
30. I am thinking of the mezzotint portraits by William Say and Charles Turner, both of which were titled Members of the Dilettanti, 1777. They are reproduced in Scott, 180–1.
31. It was James Stuart and Nicholas Revett who first advanced the cause of Grecian models of architecture. They claimed that “the most admired Buildings which adorned that imperial City [Rome], were but imitations of Grecian Originals” and boasted that “if accurate Representations of these Originals were published, the World would be enabled to form not only more extensive, but juster ideas than have hitherto been obtained, concerning Architecture, and the state in which it existed during the best ages of Antiquity” (quoted in Scott, 89). Stuart and Revett secured the backing of the Dilettanti and left for Athens. It was a slow and troublesome trip, beset with travel problems and frankly lazy writers. The team left Rome in March of 1750 and did not arrive in Athens until January the following year. They measured and sketched and sketched and measured, but the first volume of Stuart and Revett, The Antiquities of Athens, Measured and Delineated …, did not see a press until 1762.
32. Pierre-François Hugues d'Hancarville, Collection of Etruscan, Greek, and Roman Antiquities from the Cabinet of the Hon. W. Hamilton …, 4 vols. (Naples: [F. Morelli], 1766–7).
33. Many of these lost vases were recovered during an archeological dive on the Colossus in 1970. The story is chronicled in Morris, Roland, HMS Colossus: The Story of the Hamilton Treasure (London: Hutchinson, 1979)Google Scholar. For the original cargo of vases, see Tillyard, E. M. W., The Hope Vases: A Catalogue and a Discussion of the Hope Collection of Greek Vases, with an Introduction on the History of the Collection and on Late Attic and South Italian Vases (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1923)Google Scholar.
34. Hamilton and Tischbein (see n. 3).
35. GR 1977,0501.1; British Museum Greco-Roman, Cat. Vases B 36.
36. Fothergill, 263.
37. George Romney is one such painter who was directly influenced. See, for example, his Satyr and Sleeping Nymph. That image can be found in Alex Kidson, George Romney, 1734–1802 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), 207.
38. Josiah Wedgwood to Thomas Bentley, 10 March 1776, in Letters of Josiah Wedgwood, 3 vols., ed. Katherine Euphemia Farrer (Manchester: E. J. Morten, 1973), 2:277.
39. Josiah Wedgwood to Thomas Bentley, 2, 20, and 24 August 1770, in Letters of Josiah Wedgwood.
40. Josiah Wedgwood to Thomas Bentley, 1769, in Letters of Josiah Wedgwood, 1:261.
41. Wedgwood to Bentley, 30 September 1769, in Letters of Josiah Wedgwood, 1:296–7.
42. Macht, Carol, Classic Wedgwood Designs (New York: M. Barrows, 1967), 47Google Scholar.
43. Bret, Antoine Moreau, The Grecian Courtezan, or the Adventures of Lycoris, Containing a Particular Description of the Manner of Celebrating the Ancient Rites of Venus, Bacchus, Cupid &c (London[?]: King's-Place, 1779)Google Scholar. Subsequent citations are given parenthetically in the text.
44. Quoted in Hölmstrom, Kirsten Gram, Monodramas, Attitudes, Tableaux Vivants: Studies on Some Trends of Theatrical Fashion, 1770–1815 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1967), 132Google Scholar. Romney's biographer, Arthur Chamberlain, noted Romney's aversion to letter and journal writing of any kind; see his George Romney (Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1971), 64. During his travels to Greece in 1755–6, Julien-David Le Roy saw a similar dance, which he as well took to be a living link to antiquity. He concluded: “The striking analogy between this ancient dance and that which I have just described convinces me that the modern Greeks still imitate the dance invented by Theseus: perhaps the handkerchief in the coryphaeus's hand represents the thread that Ariadne gave to the hero. Who knows? Perhaps the Athenians danced before the Lantern of Demosthenes in the palmy day of their Republic. It takes longer than one might suppose to destroy a custom that perpetuates itself from year to year.” Roi, Julien-David Le, The Ruins of the Most Beautiful Monuments of Greece, trans. Britt, David (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2004), 272Google Scholar.
45. Quoted in Fothergill, 134.
46. See Richard Payne Knight, William Hamilton, and Sir Banks, Joseph, An Account of the Remains of the Worship of Priapus, Lately Existing at Isernia, in the Kingdom of Naples: In Two Letters; One from Sir William Hamilton … to Sir Joseph Banks … and the Other from a Person Residing at Isernia: To Which Is Added, a Discourse on the Worship of Priapus (London: T. Spilsbury, 1786)Google Scholar, British Library Add. MS 34.048 ff. 12–14. (Subsequent citations are given parenthetically in the text.) Because of the frank display of the illustrated “big toes,” only members of the society could purchase the book. Its limited circulation, however, did not affect its popularity or its notoriety. The work caused great alarm among the clergy, who censored the work and its ex-votos and attacked it in print. See Fothergill, 135, for the clerical response.
47. Conte della Torre de Rezzonico, quoted in Kim Sloan, “Picture-Mad in Virtu-Land: Sir William Hamilton's Collections of Paintings,” in Jenkins, Ian and Sloan, Kim, Vases & Volcanoes: Sir William Hamilton and His Collection, exh. cat. (London, British Museum Press, 1996), 75–92Google Scholar, at 87–8.
48. Memoirs of Lady Hamilton; with Illustrative Anecdotes of Many of Her Most Particular Friends and Distinguished Contemporaries (New York: Daniel Fanshaw, for David Huntington, 1815), 48. Russell, Jack, Nelson and the Hamiltons (Letchworth, Hertfordshire: Anthony Blond, 1969), 10Google Scholar.
49. Memoirs of Lady Hamilton, 48. When Hamilton proposed that he introduce Emma at court, he “found it impossible for him to enable her to pass over that chaste barrier which defends the purity of British Majesty.” Obituary of Hamilton, Lady, Gentleman's Magazine 85, no. 1 (1815): 183Google Scholar.
50. Robert Potter to George Romney, 26 December 1780, quoted in Chamberlain, 97. For other scenes that Potter suggested to Romney, see Potter to Romney, 12 June 1779, 24 June 1779, 18 July 1779, and 14 August 1779, Mss. 1948/4031/40–49, National Art Library, Victoria and Albert Museum.
51. Quoted in Hölmstrom, 111.
52. Walpole to Mary Berry, 11 September 1791, in Lewis, W. S., ed., The Yale Edition of Horace Walpole's Correspondence, vol. 11 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1944), 349Google Scholar.
53. von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, Italian Journey, 1786–1788, trans. Auden, W. H. and Mayer, Elizabeth (New York: Pantheon Books, 1962), 208Google Scholar.
54. Carlo Gastone, quoted in Jenkins and Sloan, 260.
55. Memoirs of Lady Hamilton, 20.
56. George Cruickshank, “A Mansion House Treat, or Smoking Attitudes,” British Museum Prints and Drawings, 1868,0808.6913.