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“The Wonders of Derbyshire: A Spectacular Eighteenth-Century Travelogue”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2010

Ralph G. Allen
Ralph G. Allen
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Speech, University of Pittsburgh.
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Extract

The career of Philip James de Loutherbourg, the Alsatian scene designer, assumes considerable importance in a history of the English theatre. More than anyone else, De Loutherbourg was responsible for freeing stage spectacle from the rigidities of the conventional wing and border system, thus preparing the way for Capon, Planché, Stanfield and the other great romantic designers of the nineteenth century.

Type
Research Article
Information
Theatre Survey , Volume 2 , May 1961 , pp. 54 - 66
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1961

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References

NOTES

1. Thomas, Russell, “Contemporary Taste in the Stage Decorations of London Theaters, 1770–1800,” Modern Philology, XLII, no. 2 (November 1944), p. 73n.Google Scholar

2. Of all the localities celebrated by the contrivers of native' travelogues, Ireland was unquestionably the favorite. Two of the most successful Irish pantomimes were: Harlequin Teague or the Giant Causeway (Haymarket, August 18, 1782) and Harlequin in Ireland; or Apollo and Daphne (Astley's, September 9, 1792). Among the English localities to be exploited were: Lancashire, in Dibdin's, The Lancashire Witches; or The Distresses of Harlequin (Royal Circus, 1783)Google Scholar; Brighton, in O'Keeffe's, JohnThe Irish Mimic (Covent Garden, April 23, 1795)Google Scholar; and Forest, Sherwood in the same author's Merry Sherwood or Harlequin Forester (Covent Garden, December 21, 1795).Google Scholar

3. Gilpin, William, Observations, Relative to Picturesque Beauty, Made in the Year 1772, on Several Parts of England; Particularly the Mountains and Lakes of Cumberland, and Westmoreland, 2nd ed., London, 1778, II, 255.Google Scholar

4. For the best brief discussion of the growing enthusiasm for “wild scenes” during the last quarter of the eighteenth century, see Sprague Allen, B., Tides in English Taste (1619–1800), Cambridge, Mass., 1937, II, 200–207.Google Scholar

5. An Account of the Wonders of Derbyshire, Introduced in the Pantomime Entertainment at the Theatre-Royal, Drury Lane, London, 1779, p. 2. I shall hereafter refer to the above pamphlet as An Account. This curious little volume is extremely rare. The only copy in this country is in the Huntington Library at San Marino, California.

6. Gilpin, II, 216.

7. An Account, p. 10.

8. St. James Chronicle, January 7–9, 1779.

9. The story of Salmandore had somewhat sinister overtones, and the critic for the London Packet (in the issue of January 8–11, 1779) doubted its suitability as the subject for a light entertainment: “[W]e imagine that it will be considered too terrible, and full of supernatural appearances by those for whom Pantomimes are principally intended.” Terror, however, was not an unknown commodity in the spectacular afterpieces of this period. In Prometheus, a Covent Garden pantomime produced two years earlier, the climax of the story was a very grim prospect indeed. It is described as follows by the Lady's Magazine: “Mercury descends, orders Prometheus to the rock to be punished, reduces Harlequin to his original clay and annihilates him.… That done, the rocks break, and open to a turbulent sea, with Prometheus chained to a rock in the center, and a vulture preying on him. A chorus and a dance of demons closes the entertainment” (“Supplement,” 1775). Nothing in The Wonders of Derbyshire even approaches the horror suggested by this description.

10. St. James Chronicle, January 7–9, 1779.

11. January 7–9, 1779.

12. January 8–11, 1779. The summary of the plot as it appears in his review is repeated almost word for word in the London Chronicle, January 9–12, 1779.

13. The Reminiscences of Henry Angelo, London, 1828, II, 327.

14. Ibid. This is, of course, the drop mistakenly cited by Lawrence, W. J., “The Pioneers of Modern English Stage Mounting: Phillipe Jacques de Loutherbourg,” Magazine of Art, XVIII (1895), 175Google Scholar, as the earliest example of a painted act curtain, not only in England, but indeed in all of Western Europe.

15. January 9–12, 1779.

16. January 7–9, 1779.

17. January 8–11, 1779.

18. See, for example, Morning Chronicle, October 28, 1779.

19. January 7–9, 1779.

20. The “official” wonders were seven in number: (1) Chatsworth House (the seat of the Duke of Devonshire); (2) Mam Tor; (3) Eden Hole; (4) Buxton Wells; (5) Tidewell; (6) Poole's Hole; and (7) Peak's Hole. A short contemporary description of these curiosities is contained in A New Display of the Beauties of England, London, 1787, I, 146–51. All seven wonders are represented in De Loutherbourg's pantomime.

21. An Account, I, viii.

22. Vol. II, 213–14.

23. January 7–9, 1779.

24. The Review quoted earlier from the London Packet tells us that “Chatsworth-House and Gardens appear in the background.”

25. January 9–12, 1779.

26. The St. James Chronicle, January 7–9, 1779, speaks of two distinct scenes: “The View of Castleton” and “The Entrance” [to the Cave].

27. Vol. I, facing 151.

28. January 7–9, 1779.

29. Vol. II, 213–14; 216.

30. The critic for the Morning Post (December 6, 1776) describes a flying car used in Act I, scene ii of Collier's Selima and Azor. He tells us that this car was drawn by “flying dragons whose eyes were rolling meteors and who spat fire on their aeriel passage.” On the opening night of Collier's play, the flying equipment broke down, stranding two actors in mid-air. The reviewer for the Westminster Magazine (December 1776) describes the mishap as follows: “They [the two actors] are conveyed home in Medea's chariot which stopped short … disdaining to convey a squatting animal when they had been fabricated to carry a Medea to the skies.” Almost certainly the reference is to Glover's version of the story which had been performed several times at Drury Lane.

31. January 7–9, 1779.

32. Vol. II, 218.

33. January 7–9, 1779.

34. An Account, II, x.

35. January 9–12, 1779.

36. January 7–9, 1779.

37. In 'he technical cant of the day, De Loutherbourg's more spectacular scenes of the Peak belonged to the “sublime” rather than the “picturesque” style. According to Edmund Burke and Uvedale Price (after Gilpin, the leading artistic theorists of this period), the “sublime” was characterized by its ability to call forth in the viewer the passions of astonishment and horror. Price listed the principal features of sublime paintings as: “obscurity, power, all general privations, as vacuity, darkness, solitude, silence; … greatness of dimension, infinity; [and] the artificial infinity arising from uniformity and succession.” A Dialogue on the Distinct Characters of the Picturesque and the Beautiful. In Answer to the Objections of Mr. Knight, Hereford, 1801, p. 11.

38. “Contemporary Taste,” p. 76.