We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
"The Farcical Tragedies of King Richard III": The Nineteenth-Century Burlesques.
- Authors
Caputo, Nicoletta
- Abstract
Unlike other Shakespearean tragedies, King Richard III was never turned into a comedy through the insertion of a happy ending. It did, however, undergo a transformation of dramatic genre, as the numerous Richard III burlesques and travesties produced in the nineteenth century plainly show. Eight burlesques (or nine, including a pantomime) were written for and/or performed on the London stage alone. This essay looks at three of these plays, produced at three distinct stages in the history of burlesque's rapid rise and decline: 1823, 1844, and 1868. In focusing on these productions, I demonstrate how Shakespeare burlesques, paradoxically, enhanced rather than endangered the playwright's iconic status. King Richard III is a perfect case study because of its peculiar stage history. As Richard Schoch has argued, the burlesque purported to be "an act of theatrical reform which aggressively compensated for the deficiencies of other people's productions. . . . [It] claimed to perform not Shakespeare's debasement, but the ironic restoration of his compromised authority." But this view of the burlesques' importance is incomplete. Building on Schoch's work, I illustrate how the King Richard III burlesques not only parodied deficient theatrical productions but also called into question dramatic adaptations of Shakespeare's plays. In so doing, these burlesques paradoxically relegitimized Shakespeare.
- Subjects
BURLESQUE (Theater); RICHARD III (Play : Shakespeare); STAGE adaptations; TRAGEDY (Drama); THEATER; SHAKESPEARE, William, 1564-1616
- Publication
Theatre Survey, 2021, Vol 62, Issue 1, p25
- ISSN
0040-5574
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1017/S0040557420000460