Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-16T21:16:31.283Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

CHAPTER 3 - “In some sort seeing with my proper eyes”: Wordsworth and the spectacles of Paris

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2014

Reeve Parker
Affiliation:
Cornell University, New York
Get access

Summary

If it's plausible Wordsworth was in the audience on November 1, 1792, at the Théâtre de la République's final performance of Macbeth, is it likely he would have missed the much anticipated première performance later that month, on the evening of November 26, at the same theater, of Ducis's Othello? (Like Macbeth, the play had been originally accepted, in 1788, by the Comédie-Française.) In the title role – again – was Talma, whose meteoric career, like that of his older friend the painter David, in many ways should be read through Revolutionary spectacles. Six weeks after the mid-October Dumouriez evening at the Talmas and Marat's alarming attack in the Journal de la République, the notably anti-aristocrat, pro-republican adaptation of Othello may have served as a piece of timely Revolutionary rhetoric by Talma's acting company at the République. Given the continuing ascendancy of Robespierre's Jacobin politics, it would have manifested the republican bona fides not only of the author and the leading actor but also, perhaps, of General Dumouriez himself, as one might imagine him reflected in the military heroics of Ducis's Othello. For a young English republican much attuned to the politics of the day, publicity in mid-November surrounding the potentially controversial political aspects of French Othello may well have drawn him all the more to that République opening.

Type
Chapter
Information
Romantic Tragedies
The Dark Employments of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley
, pp. 62 - 78
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×