Home Theatricals: A Tarnished Image

by Maria Grace

Jane Austen and home theatricals

While play acting was decidedly a diversion of the wealthy, less affluent members of the gentry participated as well, including Jane Austen and her family. From 1782-1789, while living at the Steventon Rectory, Austen and her family performed modern and classic plays in the family dining parlor and barn. She would have been very familiar with the challenges of putting on such an entertainment: choosing an appropriate play which suited the space available for the performance, the actors available and their relative abilities; setting up the space, crafting the scenery, costumes and props; inviting guests and handling the publicity.

Often participants in amateur theatricals such as these learned the basics of stagecraft at boarding school. There, acting was considered a tool in training elocution and grace of movement. (Performing plays had been part of the public-school curriculum in England since the sixteenth century. (Haugen, 2014))

Scenery for the theatricals offered young people an opportunity to show off their skills in painting the backdrops—flat boards that would be brought in from the side of the stage or dropped down from above. If there was no one artistic in the party, a scene painter might be hired. Costumes and props might be especially made for the event, or repurposed from what was already on hand, depending in no small part, upon the pocketbook of the family hosting the event.

All it all, especially done on a small and modest scale, home theatricals was considered an acceptable activity for young people in search of something to alleviate their boredom. Minimal publicity, a small audience, a suitable play and senior family members en constume put the stamp of innocent diversions on family play-acting. (Vickery, 1998)

On Shaky Moral Grounds

Even so, there many possibly pitfalls for the participants, including issues that the modern observer would not readily recognize.

Jane Austen’s bother James (who along with Henry appeared to be the primary instigators of the theatricals) wrote prologues and epilogues for the plays they performed. In both professional and private theater, these additions, performed before and after the play, creating transitional spaces for the audience to shift into the world of the play and back out into the afterpiece or the real world if there was not afterpiece. (Oftentimes these also contained political and philosophic elements that could make them contentious.) Newspapers and magazines often printed these pieces, both from the public and private stage.

“On the public stage, one of the lead actresses customarily spoke the epilogue, and cultural stereotypes regarding the “loose morals” of women who acted professionally certainly colored the audience’s experience of the epilogue with sexual innuendo. … The private stages did attempt to differentiate themselves from the public stages in one notable way: their prologues and epilogues were spoken by either women or men. Uncoupling both prologue and epilogue from their conventional gendered connotations may have been one way to make them better suited for domestic entertainment, particularly with respectable women’s reputations at stake.” (Haugen, 2014) So simply utilizing the convention of the epilogue already put a home theatrical on shaky moral ground.

Home Theatricals in Novels

Maria Edgeworth

With something so fraught with ambiguity and danger, it is not surprising that Austen and other authors used the home theatrical as a literary means to expose less savory aspects of their characters and their worlds. Three 1814 novels by Jane Austen, Maria Edgeworth and Francis Burney portray theatricals as not only as threats to female virtue, conducive to dangerous entanglements, but having the potential to unleash unacceptable desires and unveil unwelcome personal and social truths. (Just a side note, all three authors had participated in family and home theatricals themselves.)

Francis Burney

All three authors use theatricals to reveal underlying truths about their characters. In Austen’s Mansfield Park, Fanny’s virtue is revealed in her opposition to the entire affair which also reveals the character weakness in Henry Crawford and Maria Bertram. Maria is later ruined by what was begun under the guise of the theatrical.

In Edgeworth’s Patronage the focus in on what a talent for acting might indicate about sincerity and integrity, especially if the actor is female. Being on stage ultimately exhibits the true character of her Georgiana, whose acting prowess reveals her to be essentially vain and insincere, someone for whom all of life is a performance.

Burney’s The Wanderer uses the private theatrical to question and disrupt the established hierarchies of class and gender. As the characters participate in the play, they, along with the readers question identities and categories that are usually clear and well understood. Although by the end of the novel all necessary proprieties have been reestablished, the theatrical provides a space for disorder and uncertainty essentially uncomfortable to the established social status quo.

The treatment of the home theatrical in these novels is different than that found in earlier work, which portrayed the events in a more positive light. This shift reflects an increased concern and discomfort with these performances.

Raising a Little Theater

In the 1790’s attitudes toward home theatricals began to change.

“In large part, this can be attributed to the profound changes taking place in the political and cultural milieu due to the French Revolution, the Reign of Terror, and its aftermath. In such a climate of fear and hostility, extravagant private theatres with lavish displays of opulence became easy targets. While, to a great extent, the press continued to follow the developments at such theatres with avid interest and publish flattering—often to the point of being sycophantic—reviews, the circulation of several pernicious polemical publications and a series of exceptionally scathing caricatures by James Gilray started to have a detrimental effect on public perception.” (Haugen, 2014)

The Pic-Nic Society, principally organized by the Countess of Buckinghamshire, began holding plays in 1802. The society, who utilized a private theatre on Tottenham Street did nothing to improve the public opinion of amateur theater. The group not only performed plays, but hosted an entire evening of entertainments: dancing, singing, card playing and a pic-nic supper—rather like a modern potluck, where all attendees contributed to the meal. With the Countess’ reputation as an inveterate faro player and compulsive gambler, her reputation for aristocratic excess tainted the Pic-Nic Society. With accusations of decadence and debauchery abounding and pointed derogatory caricatures by Gilray (Dilettanti theatricals and blowing up the pic nic society) circulating widely, the Pic-Nic Society folded under the weight of public censure.

“Raising a Little Theater”

Aristocratic excess was hardly the only concern regarding the ‘safety’ and propriety of home theatricals. In Austen’s Mansfield Park, Tom talks about ‘raising a little theater’ paralleling it to the idea of raising a little hell; for him a theatrical provided an opportunity to say and do things that were normally off limits in polite society.

“Acting, by its very nature, involves putting on different gestures, behaviors, manners, and emotions, fashioning and re-fashioning characters and identities in a process that, to the spectator, appears almost as quick and easy as changing costumes. But when this role playing takes place on a private stage, the mutability of the boundaries that defined and identified 250 categories of everyday life in the eighteenth century—gender, class, social status, rank, race, national allegiance—is laid bare, for the distinction between actor and role is blurred in such a setting where the close connections of family and friendship between actors and audience delimit any objectivity or distance.” (Haugen, 2014) The blurring of these all-important lines posed a danger to the vulnerable in society—particularly the children and young women—who needed to be protected from these disquieting and potentially ruinous effects.

Home Theatricals: A Tarnished Image

Casting off Proper Restraint

Moreover, acting often demanded the players suspend polite behavior for the sake of the play. At the end of the Georgian era, the demonstration of ‘polite behavior’ had reached almost cultish proportions. Deviating from it could spell social ruin, particularly for young unmarried ladies. Proper, polite behavior required definite emotional restraint for both men and women. One was not to display emotion openly in front of others. (The one exception for ladies: they could swoon when faced with an extremely distressing or vulgar situation.) Stage conventions of the time encouraged actresses to swoon excessively and male actors to rant and rail expressively. (Can we say overacting? But I digress.)

Moreover, audiences were expected to respond to these displays with sighs, weeping and groaning. So much emotion! What is a proper household to do?

If this were not enough, theatricals also were likely to involve active physical contact between the actors and actresses during the performance. While acceptable for the professional actress (who was not considered a proper gentlewoman by any stretch), that kind of behavior was most improper for a gentleman's daughter with a reputation and marriage prospects to consider. Doing it under the guise of a theatrical performance offered only a thin veneer of protection.

Reverend Thomas Gisbourne (1797) summed up the situation:

For some years past the custom of acting in plays in private theatres, fitted up by individuals of fortune, had occasionally prevailed…. Take the benefit of all these favourable circumstances; yet what is even then the tendency of such an amusement? To encourage vanity; to excite a thirst of applause and admiration of attainments which, if they are to be thus exhibited, it would commonly have been far better for the individual not to possess; to destroy diffidence, by the unrestrained familiarity with the persons of the other sex, which inevitably results from being joined with them in the drama; to create a general fondness for the perusal of plays, of which so many are unfit to be read; and for attending dramatic representations, of which so many are unfit to be witnessed”

Austen’s Personal Observations

On the recommendation of her sister Cassandra, Jane Austen read Gisbourne’s work in 1805. Apparently, Austen surprised herself by approving with the reverend’s writing. While there is no way to know Austen approved, it is not a far stretch to imagine that her own experiences with home theatricals might have contributed to her response.

In 1787, her cousin Eliza Hancock stayed with the Austens, and the young people performed The Wonder. Austen family tradition suggests Eliza flirted openly with both James and Henry (who were the instigators of the family theatricals.) She played the heroine of that play while Henry played the hero. The play offered many opportunities for ‘stage business’ between the two players. (Austen Only, 2010)

Some suggest Eliza Hancock was Austen’s inspiration in several pieces of Austen’s juvenilia, particularly Henry and Eliza and Lady Susan. She is also thought to be the model for Mary Crawford in Mansfield Park. Eventually Eliza and Henry married, in 1797 the two married, after her first husband was guillotined in 1794.

One cannot help but wonder if Austen was putting a bit of herself into the character of Fanny Price who saw quickly how the young lovers of the party could turn the circumstance of the theatrical to their momentary advantage—and eventual ruin.

References

Baer, Marc. Theatre and Disorder in Late Georgian London. Clarendon Press. 1992

Byrne, Paula. Jane Austen and the Theatre. Bloomsbury Academic. 2007

Collins, Irene. Jane Austen, the Parson's Daughter. London: Hambledon Press, 1998.

Fullerton, Susannah. Jane Austen and Crime. Sydney: Jane Austen Society of Australia, 2004.

Gisborne, Thomas. An Enquiry into the Duties of the Female Sex. London: Cadell and Davies, 1797.

Haugen, Janine Marie, “The Mimic Stage: Private Theatricals in Georgian Britain.” (2014). English Graduate Theses & Dissertations. 68. https://scholar.colorado.edu/engl_gradetds/68

Hudson, Chuck. “Theater in Georgian England.” The Historic Interpreter. March, 16, 2015. Accessed July, 2, 2019. https://historicinterpreter.wordpress.com/2015/03/16/theatre-in-georgian-england/

Laudermilk, Sharon H., and Teresa L. Hamlin. The Regency Companion. New York: Garland, 1989.

Selwyn, David. Jane Austen and Leisure. London: Hambledon Press, 1999.

Vickery, Amanda. The Gentleman's Daughter: Women's Lives in Georgian England. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1998.

Wakefield, J. F., “Jane Austen: Fanny Price and Private Theatricals.” Austen Only. June 6, 2010. Accessed June, 2, 2019. http://austenonly.com/2010/06/06/jane-austen-fanny-price-and-private-theatricals/

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Though Maria Grace has been writing fiction since she was ten years old, those early efforts happily reside in a file drawer and are unlikely to see the light of day again, for which many are grateful. 

After penning five file-drawer novels in high school, she took a break from writing to pursue college and earn her doctorate. After 16 years of university teaching, she returned to her first love, fiction writing.

Click here to find her books on Amazon. For more on her writing and other Random Bits of Fascination, visit her website. You can also like her on Facebook, or follow on Twitter.

The Itch for Acting

by Maria Grace

Home Theatricals—The Itch for Acting

Britain has a long theater tradition, including both public and private, professional and amateur efforts. In the 10th century, dramas appeared in church services. By the 12th century British Crusaders brought back traditions from other cultures which led to religious drama being performed outside of the church. Secular groups and guilds gradually took control over these presentations. By the end of the medieval period, secular dramas became more prevalent than religious ones, with schools and universities adding studies of these plays to their curricula.

The Renaissance period saw the establishment of large outdoor (public) theaters like Shakespeare’s Globe Theater, which could hold a thousand or more patrons. Smaller, indoor (private) theaters like the New Blackfriar’s in 1596 also flourished, having the advantage of allowing performances to take place in the winter.

Not surprisingly, the Puritan Revolution of 1642 marked a brief period of decline for the theater—all those immoral non-Puritan values, you know. But, by the 1660’s the lighthearted theater productions of the Restoration theater reflected a society recovering from years of division and unrest. The famous Drury Lane and Covent Garden theaters were officially licensed at this time.
By the early 18th century, other forms of theater developed including ballad opera, farce and pantomimes. Theaters might also host acrobatic displays, ballets, and musical performances. Huge crowds flocked to see the first ‘celebrity’ performers. (Hudson, 2015)

The rise of amateur theater

Private amateur theater also thrived during this period. One of the first recorded forerunners to the Georgian home theatrical occurred in 1623 in Sir Edward Dering’s country home, in Kent. Amateur players performed an original adaptation from a combination of Shakespeare’s Henry IV parts one and two. The 1634 premier performance of Milton’s Comus, staged at Ludlow Castle in Wales, and given in honor of John Egerton, first Earl of Bridgewater, also helped lead the way for the private theatrical craze. Three of Egerton’s children performed in the piece—and who doesn’t love to see their little darlins on stage? (Haugen, 2014)

These performances helped set the stage, as it were, for the ‘itch for acting’ to sweep through British society—including the aristocracy, the provincial gentry and the middle class. The craze extended from the late 18th to the early 19th centuries, hitting its peak between 1770 and 1810 and led to a plethora of amateur theatrical performances.

Makeshift theatre mushroomed all over England from drawing room to domestic buildings. At the more extreme end of the theatrical craze, members of the gentrified classes and the aristocracy built their own scaled down imitations of London playhouses. The most famous was that erected in the late 1770s by the spendthrift Earl of Barrymore, at a reputed cost of £60,000. Barrymore’s elaborate private theatre was modeled on Vanburgh’s Kings Theatre in the Haymarket. It supposedly seated seven hundred. (Byrne, 2007) Similarly, theatricals at Richmond House, home to the Duke of Richmond, proved extremely expensive to stage.

(Just a note to give a frame of reference here: £250 was considered a livable middle-class salary for a family of four.)

Some aficionados of this art form would go so far as to import professional actors bolster the sometimes-meager skills of the local amateur participants. Actresses might also be brought in to preserve the reputations of young ladies who might otherwise be called upon to play parts unseemly in polite society.

Great houses could accommodate substantial audiences, 150 or more were not uncommon. (Imagine hosting an audience of 150 in your living room! The mind boggles!)

But theatrical endeavors did not require lavish structures. Town houses, country estates, assembly rooms, even military encampments and ships hosted performances. Even kitchens, barns and greenhouses could be pressed into service when nothing else would suit.

Preserving the distinction of Rank

Licensing Theaters

Despite the expenses incurred to stage amateur theatricals, these performances could not charge their audiences admission. Unlicensed paid public performances were illegal according to the Licensing Act of 1737.

Enacted by Robert Walpole’s government, the Licensing Act increase the government’s control over public theaters. As a result, spoken drama could only be performed legally at The Theater Royal in Covent Garden and The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, the two theaters holding royal patents. (Moreover, “All new plays, additions to old plays, prologues, and epilogues performed by these theatres had to be submitted to the Lord Chamberlain fourteen days before the performance, and he had the power to refuse to allow the performance of any play. His decision was final and there was no possibility of an appeal.”(Haugen, 2014) But that’s a whole ‘nother discussion.)

Those in violation of the act would face a fine of £50 to each person acting for hire, gain or reward in a theatrical performance not licensed by the Lord Chamberlain. (Just a note to give a frame of reference: £50 would have been considered the equivalent of a year’s wage at a minimum wage job today.) That might not have been a lot to the wealthy peers, but for a more modest family, like say Jane Austen’s, it was a hefty amount.

Paid admission might be the biggest detail that set these endeavors apart from professional theater. In most other ways, they emulated professional (paid) theater. Frequently a mainpiece and an afterpiece and entre-act entertainments were performed. Prologues and epilogue—sometimes written by the players might frame the play. Some amateur theatricals even publicized their performances with newspaper reports (and were reviewed by the same—one shudders to think on the sort of things that might have been said) and even printed playbills. Plays performed might range from classical and Shakespearean to popular contemporary works, to amateur works written locally.

Preserving the Distinction of Rank

Marc Baer (1992) suggests many of the upper class might have preferred the relative isolation of the home theatrical setting. Several factors could have contributed to that preference.  Audiences’ behavior in the era could range from noisy and rude to outright dangerous.

“Theatre patrons consumed large quantities of alcohol and food, and people arrived and left throughout the performance.  Audiences chatted among themselves, and sometimes pelting actors with rotten fruit and vegetables if dissatisfied with the performances.  At other times, audiences demanded that popular tunes or popular scenes be played repeatedly.  James Boswell, the 18th century diarist, described mooing like a cow during one particularly bad play, to the great amusement of his companions.  Rioting at theatres was also not uncommon…rioting destroyed the Drury Lane theatre in London on six occasions during the century.

In general, audiences were a mix of rich and poor: boxes placed along the stage seated ‘persons of quality,’ while ) working-class men and women squeezed into hot and dirty galleries.  Down below in front of the stage, young men would drink together, eat nuts, and mingle with prostitutes in the notorious pit. (Hudson, 2015)

Moreover, with the rise of the merchant class, the theater was becoming increasingly plebian. How better to preserve the distinction of rank than by attending a private, rather than a public, event?
“The rise of the private theatrical allowed aristocratic participants to choose plays that appealed to them, subverting this growing tendency toward commercialization by reclaiming the theatre from the marketplace and using sociability as the currency instead of money.” (Haugen, 2014) It also permitted them to be showcased themselves.

Changes in the nature of seating and lighting in theaters meant that high status persons would not be as visible as they once were: moving from on-stage seating to seats in expensive boxes; and foot lights and sidelights in the theater itself to better illuminate the stage and focus attention on the actor instead of the audience. A private theater offered the aristocracy a much better venue in which to see and, perhaps more importantly, be seen while preserving the distinction of rank by keeping out the lesser classes.

References

Baer, Marc. Theatre and Disorder in Late Georgian London. Clarendon Press. 1992
Byrne, Paula.  Jane Austen and the Theatre. Bloomsbury Academic. 2007
Collins, Irene. Jane Austen, the Parson's Daughter. London: Hambledon Press, 1998.
Fullerton, Susannah. Jane Austen and Crime. Sydney: Jane Austen Society of Australia, 2004.
Gisborne, Thomas. An Enquiry into the Duties of the Female Sex. London: Cadell and Davies, 1797.
Haugen, Janine Marie, “The Mimic Stage: Private Theatricals in Georgian Britain.” (2014). English Graduate Theses & Dissertations. 68. https://scholar.colorado.edu/engl_gradetds/68
Hudson, Chuck. “Theater in Georgian England.” The Historic Interpreter. March, 16, 2015.   Accessed July, 2, 2019. https://historicinterpreter.wordpress.com/2015/03/16/theatre-in-georgian-england/
Laudermilk, Sharon H., and Teresa L. Hamlin. The Regency Companion. New York: Garland, 1989.
Selwyn, David. Jane Austen and Leisure. London: Hambledon Press, 1999.
Vickery, Amanda. The Gentleman's Daughter: Women's Lives in Georgian England. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1998.
Wakefield, J. F., “Jane Austen: Fanny Price and Private Theatricals.” Austen Only. June 6, 2010.   Accessed June, 2, 2019. http://austenonly.com/2010/06/06/jane-austen-fanny-price-and-private-theatricals/

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Though Maria Grace has been writing fiction since she was ten years old, those early efforts happily reside in a file drawer and are unlikely to see the light of day again, for which many are grateful. 

After penning five file-drawer novels in high school, she took a break from writing to pursue college and earn her doctorate. After 16 years of university teaching, she returned to her first love, fiction writing.

Click here to find her books on Amazon. For more on her writing and other Random Bits of Fascination, visit her website. You can also like her on Facebook, or follow on Twitter.

Ye Art of Acting, by Lady A~, Authoress of 'The Bath Novels of Lady A~'.

So much of what we write about on this blog is devoted to things past, pulled back into the present, in order that we can shine a spotlight on those in distant humanity who have entranced us in history. In my little ramble today, I thought I might introduce you to one of my very novel friends, and his lively troupe, who presently delivers history (and the historical)--but in the flesh. This charming creature is one of those rare beings who cannot only paint the past for us, but can perfectly perform it. What sets this singular person and his talented players apart is their intricate knowledge and interpretation of rare Georgian theater; plays and pieces that were last performed in their, then, contemporary period of the 1700's.

Mr. Macaroni and his fine troupe of traveling players

'Mr. Macaroni' is every bit of the Georgian noodle; in fact so suave is he, he might 'as well be speaking Italian'! Doubling daringly as both thespian and impresario of The Great Mogul's Company of Comedians aka 'Humphrey Clinker and the Travelling Libertines', Mr. M. and his troupe bring to life, amongst others, the pricelessly pertinent works of Henry Fielding and Laurence Sterne. By employing a method of comedic delivery that has not been seen since the golden age of Garrick, Macaroni and friends will transport one straight back to the carousing, drinking, singing, swearing and fighting of glorious Georgian theatrics. If you may be guessing at the relevance for such theater in a tawdry, modern world, besides the obvious exquisite art of these performances, only but reflect upon some of the themes of their work: war in deserts, 'corrupt politicians, celebrities courting fame'. The great mogul and his company will bring new meaning to 'what goes around comes around', and with a period panache rarely seen in the neo-realistic arenas that offer us far less colorful stereotypes.

Be-wigged Wags!

Here's what makes this group an historic must-see both in this ramble, and if you are really privileged, in high performance upon the oaken boards in the business that Macaroni calls the STAGE. When this iconic group of strolling players first came together they literally moved about like a traveling troupe Jane Austen might have witnessed at the Chawton Fair. All the scenery, props, period costuming, including wigs and period instruments, were ferried with the cast/crew to the unusual places in which they earlier performed, e.g. in newly reunified Germany in the 1990's.

Ensembles of High Performance

Taking a rare present-day peek into what such an undertaking might comprise in terms of period detail and authenticity, here are some Great Mogul 'Vignette-views'. The cast dons proper theatrical 'slap' (makeup) from the days of yore, complete with handmade wigs, fashioned by a remarkable fellow-player, and appositely named, wig-maker Keith Wigham. Seemingly born to the role, Mr. Wigham crafts these 'do's of art' with 'hair, gauze, glue and chicken wire' and as painstakingly (some wry wag remarked) as "watching paint dry". Additionally, the very accomplished choreographer, one 'Mistress Shaw', is an expert designer in the art of costuming. She procures the 'magnificent frock coats, shirts, breeches, skirts, stomachers, and aprons' that might once have flashed across the creaky boards of a pucker Georgian stage. And if this isn't fascinatingly authentic enough to hasten you to catch your glimpse-treat of the Mogul and his Company, this treasure of a troupe comes equipped with two very accomplished musicians, who are 'schooled in the art of the classical and the baroque, and are expert in playing and composing in that style'. Recently the Company toured with an actual 'full-size harpsichord', which, undoubtedly, added a sublime measure of 'musical beauty and veracity' to their performances.

'Slap', Wiggery & ye Baroque!

The troupe is very unique too, in that its members all share a well-founded interest in 18th-century culture, in fact, they make a 'kind of art of it'. They concentrate upon the Satires with distinct Hogarthian flavor, embodied in such performances as Fielding's Historical Register for the Year 1736 and Gay's The Beggar's Opera. Certainly not any 'olde' thing you can catch at the Multiplex or a Playhouse near you, and truly nothing you could stream to your instant queue on TV. If I had to draw an evocative historical-witness analogy, such fare is as rare as having the Romanovs to dinner. Not only are the performances a singular sight to be seen, in every exquisite brushstroke of authenticity, but the venues in which they are staged, quite literally 'set the stage'.

Wags, Wenches, Wine & Song

Two of these that deserve especial mention are Fairfax House in York, and Seaton Delaval Hall in Northumberland, the latter designed by the aptly diverse playwright and architect, John Vanbrugh. In Fairfax House the Company performed a memorable piece in the 'splendid and sumptuous withdrawing room', and in Seaton Delaval Hall's be-cobwebbed Coach House, they rendered a technically subdued exhibition of their art, in order to accommodate an upstaging colony of bats, sensitive to 'ranting and wailing'! Definitely not anything comparable to the Multiplex! Macaroni also shared a spectral anecdote with me about the Hall being haunted by a disaffected servant-girl circa mid-18th c. Apparently the 'White Lady', as she is fondly known, fell in love with one of Captain Francis Blake Delaval's sons, who was packed off to war and never to return. Naturally the poor thing succumbed to her mortal love-wound, died, and is now said to sit at window gazing out to sea, in the hope she might yet spy her long-lost warrior-love. A sure bonus to the Georgian theatrics of a knave-noodle and his wags, who have, as surely, distracted the pining specter on every performing occasion with the likes of (Georgian) '(Gruesome) Ailments and Remedies' and 'The Age of Beauty, not Hygiene'. No doubt Mrs. Slurp's mighty 'mouse-brows' must have been frightful enough to alarm even this enduring ghost!

Living 'Georgian Lives'

And not unlike the breathtaking, English historic houses in which some of the troupe's period work is put on polished display, The Great Mogul's Company of Comedians deserves that special preservation assigned to treasures of heritage. In such a way, then, the Company has forged past cooperative links with the British Council, formed a present partnership with Northumbria University's English Department, and is generating new scripts (for example, its 'Vignettes') for organizations such as the National Trust. Most importantly, however, if you are lucky enough to be one of England's fine denizens, living in vicinity of this spectacular group of strolling players, it is your welcome support that will help guarantee that Mr. Sterne's sentimental journey will never end. Well, at least in every sumptuous withdrawing room or be-cobwebbed Coach House to be had--with upstaging bats--in the kingdom!


If I've peaked your interest in Mr. Macaroni's 'living history', then do amble to my extended tete-a-tete with him on Ye bath Corner Blogge to discover the Knave under the Wig! Ladies, the divine & charming Mr. M. can also be noodled with upon his thespian blog or at his lively post in the 'Twittershire', where he oft toozles with our bluestocking dowager, Mrs. Skyelark. Also find Mr. M's artful company details upon our freshly debuting A-Lyste!


Discover what drama the notorious Noodle and his Libertines shall be creating next!

All Great Mogul's Images courtesy H.C. Productions

Lady A~ is the authoress of The Bath Novels of Lady A~, a companion set of seven original Regaustenian novels to Jane Austen's perfect six. Discover this collection's first 'Bath Beauty', Merits and Mercenaries.

 
Purchase & Possess Merits and Mercenaries