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 A Study of Melodrama in 
 England from 1800 to 1840 
 
 A THESIS 
 
 Presented to the Faculty of Philosophy of the University 
 of Pennsylvania in partial fulfillment of the requirements 
 for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 
 
 BY 
 WILLIAM S. DYE JR. 
 
A Study of Melodrama in 
 England from 1800 to 1840 
 
 A THESIS 
 
 Presented to the Faculty of Philosophy of the University 
 of Pennsylvania in partial fulfillment of the requirements 
 for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM S. DYE JR. 
 
 STATE COLLEGE, PENNSYLVANIA 
 THE NITTANY PRINTING AND PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 
 1919 
 
'<--. 
 

 
 PREFACE 
 
 One of the manifestations of the Romantic Movement 
 in England was the rise and great popularity of melo- 
 drama. Because of the paucity of literary attainments 
 that accompanied melodrama, this type of play has been 
 uniformly neglected or else passed over with slight com- 
 ments. Although it is "true that few melodramas deserve 
 mention if style and high dramatic qualities are to be con- 
 sidered, nevertheless, inasmuch as the form has contrib- 
 uted largely to the art of the theatre, the neglect is hard 
 to explain. This investigation of the dramatic and theat- 
 rical history of England between the years 1764 and 1840 
 has been made, therefore, in an attempt to supply some 
 information about an almost unknown group of plays and 
 playwrights. 
 
 The great variety of forms that melodrama assumed 
 and the great number of methods employed in its manu- 
 facture, the many devices that were employed, consciously 
 or unconsciously, to disguise it, have rendered the discov- 
 ery of entirely satisfactory criteria for its determination, 
 difficult. That difficulty is constantly emphasized by th*e 
 great number of definitions that have been constructed to 
 designate it. If these difficulties have not been altogether 
 overcome in this study, it is because no one clear cut 
 standard of melodrama existed in the period under consid- 
 eration, as no single type of melodrama exists today. 
 
 Throughout the investigation, it was deemed wise to 
 give weight to the statements of the men whose business 
 it was to handle plays and players in the last decades of 
 the eighteenth and the first decades of the nineteenth 
 centuries. If Elliston, Colman, Jerrold, Boaden, or Mac- 
 ready looked upon a certain type of play as a melodrama, 
 surely his judgment reflects the standard of his day as the 
 declarations of Mr. Henry Arthur Jones, Mr. William 
 Archer, or Mr. Owen Davis reflect the standard of ours. 
 
 A further explanation seems necessary in this fore- 
 word. Both the spelling of the word melodrama and the 
 form which the word designated changed often in a few 
 decades. What was true in England was equally true in 
 France whence the English word was borrowed. In Eng- 
 land, after 1802, the following changes in spelling may 
 
 420201 
 
be noted: melo-drame, melo-drama, melodrama. The 
 changes in form and matter are the subject of this study. 
 In France, says Dr. Mason in his monograph, "Melodrama 
 in France from the Revolution to the Beginning of the 
 Romantic Drama, 1791-1830," "With regard to the word 
 melodrame, there were the following changes in meaning: 
 when first introduced into France from Italy the word was 
 used as a synonym for opera in general; in 1781, at Du- 
 Bois' suggestion it acquired the meaning of scene lyrique 
 and during the Revolution began to be applied to panto- 
 mime with dialogue" (p.34) ; and in his preface, he says 
 that after 1800, popular tragedy "appeared in its defini- 
 tive form under the name melodrama." 
 
 In general, the same kinds of play, with other varia- 
 tions which resulted from legal restrictions, occur in the 
 melodrama in England. The development, too, of the 
 English type, which, it should be added, was in no small 
 degree influenced by the French product, was similar to 
 that of its French cousin, as was the date of its emergence 
 into Bulwer Lytton's romantic drama. 
 
 WILLIAM S. DYE, Jr. 
 
 State College, Pennsylvania 
 November, 1919. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 On November 13, 1802, Thomas Holcroft's "melo- 
 drame," "A Tale of Mystery," was performed at Covent 
 Garden. Because this play has usually been considered 
 the first of the melodramas in England,* as it is the first 
 to be definitely so called there, it has been chosen as the 
 point of departure for this study. The statements made 
 in this connection may be accepted as true, however, only 
 in so far as the word "melo-drame" is concerned, for it is 
 hardly true, as is sometimes asserted, that this play was 
 the first of its kind in England; and it is absolutely cer- 
 tain that among English speaking peoples Holcroft's play 
 was not the first to be rightly designated for, in 1799, ap- 
 peared a play by John E. Turnbull, called "Rudolph; or, 
 the Robbers of Calabria, a melodrama in Three Acts, as 
 performed at the Boston Theatre, Boston, 1799." (Oscar 
 Wegelin, "Early American Plays, 1714-1830" a biblio- 
 graphy). Other examples of plays which had the same 
 characteristics as Holcroft's play will be mentioned later. 
 
 Inasmuch as "A Tale of Mystery" has been selected as 
 a point of departure, it may be well at the outset to make 
 some examination of its plot and form in order to point 
 out some of the differences which exist between it and 
 other forms of drama. The play, which is an alteration of 
 "Seline, ou, L'Enfant Mystere," which Holcroft had wit- 
 nessed in Paris and had brought back to London, tells of 
 two brothers, Romaldi and Francisco, and the daughter of 
 the latter. The plot is concerned with attempts made on 
 the life of Francisco and on the reputation of his daughter 
 by Romaldi in order that he may secure their money and 
 position. Pound out in his treachery, however, he is pur- 
 sued, captured, and finally forgiven, while father -and 
 daughter, their wrongs righted, are restored to each other's 
 arms. 
 
 An analysis of the melodrama discloses the following 
 
 * "A Tale of Mystery" "was remarkable, not only for its great 
 and merited success, but for the circumstances of its being the 
 first entertainment acted on the English Stage under the descrip- 
 tion of melo-drame.' (Dibdin, "Reminiscences", I: p. 337. See 
 also Genest, VII: p. 578; Thorndike, "Tragedy", p.- 334; Dunlap, 
 "American Drama", p. 314; and elsewhere. 
 
 5 
 
characteristics: 1 dumb show, with incidental music de- 
 scriptive of the action to come or of that in progress; 2 
 songs, not always happily introduced; 3 situation, and 
 not characterization, the mainspring of the interest here 
 the situation provides for the inevitable struggle between 
 right and wrong in the persons of the sons of Romaldi and 
 Bonamo, as representatives of the opinions and desires 
 of their fathers; 4 the heroine, Selina, a prize over 
 whom the conflict in the play is waged; 5 types, rather 
 than real men and women, as characters: the perse- 
 cuted father and daughter, victims of a plot; the subtle, 
 unscrupulous villain; the champion of the oppressed; 
 the true friend who, at the proper moment and there 
 is always the proper moment in melodrama makes 
 the necessary explanations; and the persons who pro- 
 vide the comic relief; 6 exaggerated appeals to the 
 emotions, the tearing of fine passion to tatters; 7 
 thrilling moments here an attempted murder, a re- 
 markable rescue and other periods of suspense and sur- 
 prise made into an improbable plot; 8 spectacular scenic 
 effects here, a thunder storm in the climactic scene; and 
 9 a happy ending. 
 
 It is to be remembered, however, that none of these 
 qualities were new to the English stage. Any one of them 
 may easily be traced back to earlier forms of the drama, 
 and often, combinations of them have been so marked in 
 certain plays that the critics of the older drama have used 
 the terms "melodrama" and "melodramatic" to set them 
 apart from the more dignified comedy and tragedy. These 
 older plays may have been called in their day tragedy, tra- 
 gi-comedy, opera, or even pantomime, but, in the minds of 
 the critics, general exaggeration and lack of high poetic 
 passion have differentiated them from the typical examples 
 of their several species. These plays, nevertheless, are 
 not really melodramas in the nineteenth century under- 
 
 tanding of the term, but since the term is often used to 
 lesignate them and other plays, it is necessary to point 
 
 ut briefly the various ways in which "melodrama" and its 
 
 erived adjective have been employed. 
 
 The use of the word in England is threefold; or per- 
 
 ips it would be more accurate to say twofold, for two of 
 
 e uses may, for the purpose o.f classification, be grouped 
 
 nder one. First, we have the original sense in which the 
 
 ::rm was used when it came into the language; and se- 
 
condly, the sense, a derived one, by which we designate two 
 other types of play: the popular play of today, and a pop- 
 ular, exaggerated type of tragedy existant before the open- 
 ing of the nineteenth century. It is not hard to conceive, 
 therefore, that under these conditions, it is possible to have 
 at least three types of play, all of them having something 
 in common, that may be called melodrama. It would be, 
 therefore, as unfair to assert that because a play of the nine 
 teenth century or of the twentieth, did not conform to the 
 type of "The Atheist's Tragedy" that the later day play is 
 not a melodrama, as it would be unreasonable to affirm 
 that because Dibdin's 'The Lady of the Lake," is unlike 
 Owen Davis's "Lighthouse by the Sea," that the one or the 
 other is not a melodrama. Each age has had its own melo- 
 drama, and it is the purpose of this paper to suggest the 
 development of this type of dramatic production from the 
 old form to the type that approximates the type in use at 
 the present time, for, between the years 1800 and 1840, 
 that development was practically completed, although the 
 roots of the form may be found farther back in English 
 dramatic history. * 
 
 Part of the difficulty that besets this subject may be 
 obviated by setting down these differences in usages and 
 by attempting to arrive at some statement of the character- 
 istics of melodrama as the term is employed in the three 
 senses mentioned above. 
 
 The use of the terms "melodrama" and "melodramatic" 
 by our contemporary critics to distinguish a certain type 
 of play existant before the words themselves came into 
 the language is fairly well determined and may be summed 
 up in a few words. An excess of bombast, terror, horror, 
 lust, and blood, not sufficiently motivated, in the minds of 
 critics, sets certain plays apart definitely from pure 
 tragedy and causes them to be called melodramas. Exam- 
 ples that are most frequently mentioned are "Tamburlaine", 
 "The Jew of Malta", "TheSpanish Tragedy", "Titus Andron- 
 icus", "Richard the Third", The Atheist's Tragedy", "Lust's 
 Dominion", "Antonio and Mellida", together with many 
 other Elizabethan and Restoration plays ordinarily named 
 tragedies. (See Baker, G. P., "Development of Shakes- 
 peare as Dramatist", p. 133; Brooke, Tucker, "The Tu- 
 
 *As the characteristics of the type became fixed, so did the 
 name that was applied to it. After 1802, the spellings of the word 
 were successively, melo-drame, melo-drama, and melodrama. 
 
 7 
 
dor Drama", p. 210; Hastings, Charles, "The Theatre; 
 Its development in France and England", p. 210; Schelling, 
 F. E., "The Elizabethan Drama", I:pp. 449, 549, 563, and 
 II :p. 182; Thorndike, A., "Tragedy", pp. 3, 4, 152, 124, 148, 
 149 in passim and elsewhere.) 
 
 In the case of present day plays there is not so much 
 uniformity of opinion. In general^ the term is taken to 
 refer to what may be called "popular tragedy", although 
 in many cases, no tragedy results from the action of the 
 play. Although the play may have tragic parts and un- 
 important characters may be killed, very often, it is a play 
 of only "near-killings", of dire distresses, of hazardous 
 situations, of thrilling rescues, of theatrical and sensa- 
 tional clap-trap, of suspense and surprise; and, at the end 
 of two, three, or four acts, the typically virtuous hero 
 is united to the typically oppressed, but equally virtu- 
 ous heroine, and the villain is driven off the stage in 
 disgrace, or is allowed to remain, either reformed and 
 repentant, or gnashing his teeth and swearing future 
 vengeance. Throughout all, there is a liberal use of me- 
 chanical and electrical effects that run the gamut from a 
 representation of a thunder shower with real rain to a 
 train wreck, a burning steamboat, or an automobile acci- 
 dent, and heroes and heroines are rescued in the "nick of 
 time" from burning buildings or pulled from the very teeth 
 of huge circular saws in real log-sawing machines, while 
 /illains are strapped to switchboards and light through 
 their bodies the great white ways of cities. This is the 
 so-called popular melodrama written by modern play- 
 wrights like Owen Davis, who, according to his own state- 
 ment, prepares such plays "largely by rule", the formula 
 jonsisting of a sensational title, and a group of types of 
 character, put together after the following method: 
 
 "ACT I. Start the trouble. 
 
 ACT II. Here things look bad. The lady having left home, 
 is quite at the mercy of the Villain. 
 
 ACT III. The lady is saved by the help of the Stage Carpen- 
 ter. (The big scenic and mechanical effects were 
 always in Act III.) 
 
 ACT IV. The lovers are united and the villains are punished". 
 
 From such extremes these plays go to another in which 
 
 ':ere is as little appeal to the logical faculties; and in 
 
 which, although there is not the same violence of situation 
 
 : nd language, not the same definite types of character, not 
 
the same play of suspense and surprise, there is the same 
 violence to probability. In this variety, emphasis is placed 
 on the happy ending regardless of character elements 
 or conditions. For this reason, reconciling plays such as 
 'The Great Divide", "The Profligate", and "Saints and Sin- 
 ners" and the like have been called by some, "melodramas" 
 in that they are illogical tragedies, the catastrophe which 
 we would naturally expect being averted by some special 
 Providence, acting for the occasion only. 
 
 As a result of these differences, we find a variety of 
 definitions among modern critics. Mr. William Archer 
 and Mr. Henry Arthur Jones characterize melodrama as 
 illogical tragedy; Mr. William Butler Yeats believes that 
 melodrama is tragedy with the passion left out; Professor 
 Brander Matthews and Mr. Clayton Hamilton believe, in 
 general, that it is a play in which situation and not char- 
 acter is the determining force, a play in which, like the 
 older romance, you remember the story and the incidents 
 rather than the characters. Professor G. P. Baker, in a 
 lecture delivered in Philadelphia in the winter of 1912-13, 
 laid stress on the feature of exaggeration that is the part 
 of most melodramas, and added, with much justice, that, 
 in presentation, almost any play in the hands of a partic- 
 ular style of actor may degenerate into melodrama. * All 
 of these opinions express partial truths. Melodrama is 
 illogical at times as, for example, Almar's dramatization of 
 "Oliver Twist", Milner's "Mazeppa" and the operatic 
 "Faust". But, on the other hand, in such a play as "The 
 Corsican Brothers", apart from the supernatural element 
 it contains, which psychic investigators will assure us is en- 
 tirely probable, the drama is perfectly logical. That melo- 
 drama may not be all situation appears in the case of a 
 play like "The Bells", which might be called a psychological 
 melodrama, and which, in the hands of such actors as the 
 late Sir Henry Irving, may be exceedingly effective, and 
 in the hands of lesser men, pure rant. 
 
 In reality, no one form of melodrama exists today, and 
 since the form varies greatly, practically no brief exposi- 
 tion nor one-line definition of present day melodrama will 
 entirely satisfy. A fair definition would include many 
 
 * S'ince this statement was written, Professor Baker's "Dram- 
 atic Technique" has appeared. In it, he stresses the lack of 
 characterization found in melodrama as that which divides it from 
 tragedy, or at least from what h-e calls the "story play". 
 
characteristics, not all of which might be found in any one 
 play. The definition might with truth state that either 
 singly or in combination, the following elements are to be 
 found in melodrama: terror, horror, illogical ending, sup- 
 ernatural elements, chance and accident as preventing the 
 working out of that seldom-found poetic justice, excep- 
 tional scenery and stage devices, appeal to the emotion 
 rather than to the intellect, a struggle invariably between 
 vice and virtue, a visual representation of everything that 
 is of importance, real melodrama, for example, would 
 show the murder of Duncan by Macbeth generally a play 
 of types that are usually exaggerated and sometimes even 
 caricatured, little or no growth of character, sudden twists 
 and turns in personality without much apparent reason, a 
 play usually with "moral" written large upon it, a play 
 full of exciting incidents, a "thriller" is the common des- 
 ignation, a play that may be said "to persuade rather than 
 convince". In addition, the method of speech is much 
 strained. The characters often use grandiloquent phrases 
 and give voice to sentiments not in keeping with their per- 
 sonalities. The musical element in the later melodrama 
 does not occupy so important a place as formerly, although 
 we still find tremuld music on the violins as the villain ap- 
 pears or in places where the situation rises to more than 
 ordinary height. The songs for the most part have dis- 
 appeared and have been reserved for opera which is largely 
 melodramatic and often very closely akin to the type under 
 discussion. 
 
 Turning now to melodrama as we find it on its intro- 
 duction into England, we discover, for the most part, little 
 more than drama plus music, and this general character- 
 istic is maintained in the minor theatres, practically to the 
 time (1843) the reign of the patent theatres came to an 
 end. But little by little this simple accompaniment of 
 drama was developed by the addition of the features al- 
 ready noted, until it became substantially the kind of play 
 that we now designate by that name. In earlier times, 
 plays at the minor houses were sometimes converted into 
 melodrama in the earlier sense of the word by the simple 
 device of adding to the action, musical accompaniment and 
 a little dumb show, and this device was even employed at 
 times as a means of appropriating dramas, regarded as the 
 sole property of the patent houses. Thus, for example, 
 Home's "Douglas" was transformed in 1819 into a melo- 
 
 10 
 
drama at the Surrey by Dibdin. "Mrs. Egerton performed 
 Young Norval in "Douglas", which tragedy, without omit- 
 ting a single line of the author, made a very splendid melo- 
 drama, with the addition of Lord Randolph's magnificent 
 banquet, a martial Scotch dance, and a glee formed from 
 the words, 
 
 "Free is the heart who for his country fights," etc., etc., 
 
 exquisitely set by Sanderson and delightfully sung, to- 
 gether with an expensive processional representation 
 of the landing of the Danes". (Dibdin, "Reminis- 
 cences" II: p. 170). Jephson's "Count of Narbonne" 
 was converted by the same hand into "The Prophecy; 
 or, Giant Spectre," in 1819, as was Mrs. Opie's tale, 
 "The Ruffian Boy". "Ivanhoe" suffered a similar 
 transformation, and in 1821, Dibdin announced a 
 "new melodrama founded on Lord Byron's recent 
 play of "Marino Faliero, Doge of Venice", (Dibdin, 
 ibid. pp. 199-200). This latter attempt was frustrated 
 by an injunction taken out by Elliston who was then man- 
 ager of the patent theatres. * 
 
 As we examine these early products of melodramatic 
 art, we notice, in addition to the characteristics already 
 mentioned, a tendency to lay greater stress on situation 
 than on character, together with a corresponding exaggera- 
 tion intended to heighten the effect. Then we find the un- 
 natural replacing the natural, and an attempt to create in- 
 terest by some departure from the normal moral, natural, 
 or national law. This characteristic seems to be the only 
 real test that can be applied for determining what is and 
 what is not melodrama. The grandiloquence of the hero 
 in the situation in which he is placed is, in most cases, un- 
 natural; the sentimental glossing over of crime is contrary 
 to human nature; the manner in which the denouement 
 is effected is generally contrary to the probabilities of the 
 case; and the acting is not in keeping with the characters. 
 In fact, melodrama depends for its success on the granting 
 
 * In much the same way, the "minors" entirely misused the 
 term "burletta", covering up by it the introduction of purely 
 legitimate performances on their stages. Dibdin gives a list of 
 plays that he marks, "Misnamed Burlettas accoring to act of 
 Parliament", (Dibdin, ibid. II: p. 343) and in the list are to be 
 found "Tom Jones", "Roderick * Random", and a number of dra- 
 matizations of Scott. 
 
 11 
 
in advance of certain conventionalities. It demands that its 
 audience shall put "possible" before "probable". It de- 
 mands that its audience grant that accidents are likely to 
 happen and that almost invariably these accidents work 
 in favor of the virtuous and to the detriment of the vile. 
 In other words, melodrama rests on an entirely different 
 basis from that upon which tragedy and comedy rest. In 
 these forms the appeal is supposed to be mental; in melo- 
 drama, the appeal is, on the whole, emotional. It is meant 
 to attract for the time only. It is designed to reach its 
 mark by hard blows rather than by subtle reasoning. It 
 employs the methods of the mob orator, and of the ordi- 
 nary type of evangelist. 
 
 Melodrama, though it falls below the level of literature 
 in most of its examples, is so prevalent that some consid- 
 eration of it is justified. It has appealed to so many peo- 
 ple that we are bound to give it a place. It deals with 
 certain problems of human kind in a way that attracts the 
 type of man who can be attracted by no other means. The 
 psychology of it all, were it possible to treat it fully, would 
 be most interesting. A study of the audiences who fre- 
 quent the theatres where melodrama is produced would be- 
 tray the bases on which melodrama is built. These aud- 
 iences show a woeful ignorance of the ways of life; a faith 
 in the special intervention of Providence to protect the in- 
 nocent and to avenge wicked deeds; and a certain crude 
 romantic temper which delights in the unusual and finds 
 solace in departure from the every-day commonplace. 
 Such an audience would sleep soundly through a play 
 where, by subtle touches, and dignified rhetoric, worthy 
 morals were taught, but it would go away profoundly im- 
 pressed by a moral taught by a "blood and thunder" ven- 
 geance. The melodrama, then, deserves no condemnation 
 if, in its crude way, it often provides that "purge" which 
 Aristotle demanded of tragedy. 
 
 -12 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 The eighteenth century witnessed the rise of two kinds 
 of plays that contained elements which later were integral 
 parts of melodrama: the sentimental play and the romantic 
 play. The former, in the tragedies of Lillo and those that 
 came after him, and the latter, in Walpole and his follow- 
 ers, had great vogue in the closing years of the century, 
 and were soon incorporated in what was known as the Ger- 
 man Romantic Movement. Both the sentimental play and 
 the romantic play preceded the German movement; both 
 of them influenced it, so that Coleridge's criticism that 
 "The so-called German drama, therefore, is English in its 
 origin , English in its materials, and English by readoption, 
 
 a lack-grace returned from transportation with such 
 
 improvements only in growth and manner as young tran- 
 sported convicts usually come home with", (Biographia 
 Literaria, II: p. 650 seq.) is literally true. ' 
 
 Just now we are primarily concerned with the romantic 
 manifestation as it snowed itself in the plays of terror, hor- 
 ror, and mystery. This chapter will consider, therefore, 
 the plays which appeared between 1764 and 1800, that were 
 either steps toward nineteenth century melodrama or melo- 
 dramas in fact. 
 
 It was in the year 1764, that Horace Walpole published ' 
 his romance, "The Castle of Otranto", and started that * 
 vogue for things mysterious in England, for Gothic castles 
 and supernatural happenings, that was soon copied by 
 Clara Reeve, by William Beckford, by Anne Radcliffe, and 
 later by Matthew Gregory Lewis and others. It is also* 
 to be remembered that, in 1768, Walpole published a melo- 
 dramatic tragedy, which he meant to be horrible, under the 
 title of "The Mysterious Mother", and that in 1781, the 
 same year as "Die Rauber", Jephson dramatized "The Cas- 
 tle of Otranto" as "The Count of Narbonne", a successful 
 melodrama, although it was called a tragedy. 
 
 "The Count of Narbonne" in everything but name is a a 
 melodrama, as the word came to be understood later. It 
 is similar in its form and method to such plays as "Adel- 
 githa", and "Bertram", and "Venoni", of the nineteenth 
 century. It concerns Raymond, Count of Narbonne, and 
 his desire to keep certain lands and estates in the family 
 by divorcing his wife and marrying Godfrey's daughter, 
 Isabel, who has been betrothed to his own son. In a fit of 
 jealousy, because he thinks that Isabel does not requite 
 
 13 
 
his passion, he rushs into the sanctuary of St. Nicholas and, 
 mistaking his daughter Adelaide for Isabel, stabs her. 
 Discovering his error, he kills himself in remorse. Ex- 
 cept for the songs and the definite musical directions, this 
 is a very melodrama, from its improbability and horror to 
 its inflated speeches and its lust and bloodshed. Inasmuch 
 as songs soon became a negligible quantity in melodrama, 
 and because we are led to believe that musical accompani- 
 ment was not wanting in the interest of intensifying situa- 
 tions even at this date, we may put this play down as one 
 , of the earliest examples of what we call nineteenth century 
 'jpielodrama. (See preface to "The Lord of the Manor" by 
 General John Burgoyne, regarding the use of music in 
 plays, (1781)). 
 
 Burgoyne, in the preface mentioned, went to some 
 length to show how music had been used for the purpose of 
 emphasizing situations in scenes on the stage. He also 
 explained the manner in which the term opera was, at that 
 time, being used in France, and even adapted several of 
 these operas to the English stage. At this time, the terms 
 opera and melodrama were almost synonomous in France, 
 (See preface) and so, we are not stretching the term too 
 far if we apply to these plays the name that rightfully be- 
 longs to them, especially when the several elements of 
 which they are composed agree so thoroughly with the 
 form we have come to associate with the name 'melodrama.' 
 
 In 1786, Burgoyne adapted Sedaine's "Richard Coeur 
 de Lion", an opera, giving it the same title. On the title 
 page of the English edition the play is called "an historical 
 romance", but by Kelly, it is said to be an opera, (Kelly, 
 "Memoirs", I: p. 290.) and Genest merely says the "piece 
 is musical". The play, which tells of the rescue of Rich- 
 ard, has musical accompaniment for the action, deals with 
 the most improbable conditions, is exceedingly romantic, 
 and exhibits types for characters. The elements of horror 
 and terror later looked upon as almost necessary for the 
 melodrama are missing, but, without doubt, this is- an ex- 
 ample of the plays that in the French acceptation of the 
 term fulfilled the requirements of the word "melodrama". ' 
 
 Another French piece, "Gallic Gratitude; or, the 
 Frenchman in India", adapted by J. S. Dodd, in 1779, is, 
 in its principal situation, very melodramatic and strikingly 
 similar to "The Widow of Malabar", of 1790, also a French 
 play. Both of them are concerned with the rescue by a 
 
 14 
 
French officer, of a widow condemned to die, according to 
 the Eastern custom, on account of the death of her hus- 
 band. 
 
 These melodramatic productions from the continent 
 would seem to bear out the contention made by some 
 that the earliest examples came into England from Europe, 
 were it not for the fact that the elder Colman, as early as 
 1761, in "Reflections on the Old Dramatic Writers, Ad- 
 dressed to Garrick", said, 'The old plays are many of them 
 a kind of heterogeneous composition, few of them being 
 strictly Tragedy, Comedy, or even Tragi-Comedy, but ra- 
 ther an undigested jumble of every species thrown togeth- 
 er", which, "the playbills, I have observed cautiously style 
 **** plays." (Quoted by Genest, IV: p. 121.) So that 
 the "jumble" afterwards so strongly condemned and ap- 
 plied to what we now term melodrama, was no new thing 
 as early as 1761, some years before these melodramatic pro- 
 ductions began to come over from the continent under the 
 designation of opera, melo-drame, or musical pieces. 
 
 It remained for the son of the writer of the words just 
 quoted to feel the earliest shafts of Genest at the "jumble 
 of Tragedy, Comedy, and Opera", (Genest, IV: p. 569.) for 
 in these words "The Battle of Hexham", (published, 1800 
 as a Musical Drama) was characterized when it was 
 brought out at the Haymarket on August 11, 1789. Col- 
 man calls it his "first attempt at that mixed kind of dra- 
 ma", ("Memoirs" of the Colman Family, II: p. 202.) and 
 the "mixed kind of drama" was only another name given 
 at this time for melodrama, which word, as we have seen, 
 had not yet come into use in England.* The play verges 
 on tragedy, but is really melodrama. It tells the story 
 of Adeline in search of her husband. He turns out to be 
 not only a leader of a band of robbers, but also the res- 
 cuer of Queen Margaret after the battle of Hexham. The 
 play copies the old chronicle play in subject matter, but 
 adds a great deal of music and songs. With truthfulness, 
 we are informed that although "the language is unnat- 
 
 * Professor Thorndike, in his scholarly volume, entitled 
 "Tragedy" p. 334, seems to distinguish melodrama from the type 
 of play written by Colman, the younger, because the former con- 
 tained more dumb play than the latter. Dumb play, even in ex- 
 cess, howeVer, is scarcely the distinguishing feature of melodrama. 
 It rather seems that Colman's plays are melodramas, in the nine- 
 teenth century sense, in everything but name the name is lacking 
 because it had not yet come into the language. 
 
 15 
 
ural....the success. .. ..of the Battle of Hexham. .. .en- 
 couraged Colman and others to persist in this despicable 
 species of the Drama, in defiance of nature and common 
 sense". (Genest, as above referred to.) 
 
 The season of 1791, at the Haymarket, brought out 
 "The Kentish Barons", by Francis North, called an opera; 
 another "jumble" by Colman, the younger, called "The 
 Surrender of Calais", and designated simply "a play"; and 
 two other pieces equally as melodramatic as these, en- 
 titled "Lorenzo" by Robert Merry, and "Earl Goodwin" by 
 Anne Yearsley. 
 
 The year 1791 saw the production of Mrs. Hannah Cow- 
 ley's play, "A Day in Turkey; or, the Russian Slaves", 
 which, although of little intrinsic importance as a play, 
 is exceedingly important on account of the things that were 
 said about it, for these remarks furnish us with a fairly 
 good standard for judging not only what preceded but 
 also what followed in melodrama. Mrs. Cowley called 
 the play "a Comedy, interspersed with songs", and Boaden 
 remarks that it "should clearly have been an opera". (Boa- 
 den, "Life of Kemble", II: p. 54.) The editor of Mrs. 
 Cowley's works calls it the author's only excursion into 
 the realms of mixed drama, and a remark in the "Journal 
 de Theatre", for December 31, 1791, when, as Dr. Mason 
 remarks, the word "melodrama" was just beginning to be 
 used in the popular sense in France, binds together in 
 the same group, the "jumble of Tragedy, Comedy, and Op- 
 era", which Genest complained of, the opera, the "mixed 
 drama", and the "melodrama". "Cette piece est de Mad- 
 ame Crowley. Ce n'est point une comedie, ce n'est un 
 opera; c'est ce que nous appelons un melo-drame". (Quo- 
 ted from Mason, "Melodrama in France", p. 35.) 
 
 In the next season, Thomas Morton brought out his 
 historical play, "Columbus", a melodramatic production 
 in which the Columbus story was mixed up with the Cora 
 and Alonzo story which forms the basis of Kotzebue's 
 "Virgin of the Sun". 
 
 In the year 1793, came a number of melodramatic 
 plays. In January, Mrs. Inchbald's "Everyone Has His 
 Fault" was put on at Covent Garden and was called a tra- 
 gicomedy. In it, false sentiment and improbability 
 made popular by the interest then beginning in the Ger- 
 man drama, were carried to the utmost. In February, 
 James Boaden's musical romance, "Osmyn and Daraza" 
 
 16 
 
was produced and in August came Colman's "mixed dra- 
 ma", "The Mountaineers", borrowed partly from "Don 
 Quixote". In the introduction to "The Mountaineers" 
 (published by John Douglas, New York, no date) is the 
 statement that "This drama is among the first of those 
 hybrid productions of the stage, which, combining tragedy 
 and comedy, with operatic embellishments, still retain their 
 hold upon modern audiences, with undiminished attrac- 
 tion". (Later on in the same introduction is the sentence, 
 "Kean, also, acquired some degree of celebrity in Octavian, 
 one of the characters, but it was too melodramatic in its 
 style".) The play has the "near-tragedy", the comedy, the 
 song of melodrama; it has the rant, the exaggeration, the 
 suspense, and the surprise; it has the happy ending, with 
 but little reason for it; it has grand choruses at the ends 
 of the acts, types of characters, attempts at scenic splen- 
 dor, and yet it is called simply "a play". 
 
 There were also in this year, "Children in the Wood", 
 by Thomas Morton from the old nursery tale, and "Prodi- 
 gal", by Francis G. Waldron, both of them melodramatic. 
 The latter play was based on Aaron Hill's "Fatal Extrava- 
 gance", but, following the demand for happy endings, Wal- 
 dron altered the ending of the play and weakened it ac- 
 cordingly. 
 
 "Lodoiska" was translated from the French by John 
 Phillip Kemble and produced in 1794. This play also is, 
 strictly speaking, a melodrama. Genest calls the play a 
 "musical romance"; the 1794 edition of the play is mark- 
 ed an "opera"; and the edition published in the collection 
 of plays of 1811 entitled "The London Stage", is desig- 
 nated a "melodramatic opera". Here, then, is another ex- 
 ample of the inability that was being experienced to name 
 this hybrid species. 
 
 In this play are improbability, bombast, striking situa- 
 tions, thrills, types of .character, and music. Here are the 
 worthy young lover, the proud father, the designing tyrant, 
 the persecuted maiden, the faithful servant who provides 
 the comic relief, the brave friend who succeeds in con- 
 founding the villain, etc. Notice the following stage di- 
 rections, as showing the scenic effects, the music, the pan- 
 tomimic action for the entire scene: 
 
 "(Shouts, drums, trumpets, and cannon, as the engagement 
 commences between the Polanders and the Tartars, horse and 
 foot; the Tartars, having storm-ed the castle, which they fire in 
 various places, the battlements and towers fall in the midst of 
 
 17 
 
loud explosions. Lupauski and Lodoiska are discovered in a blaz- 
 ing tower; Florenski rushes through the flames and rescues 
 them. During the action Lovinski and Kera Khan meet hand to 
 hand and after a desperate conflict, the Baron is killed. The Tar- 
 tars are victorious; Lupauski unites the hands of Florenski and 
 Lodoiska. Loud shouts of victory and the curtain falls.)*" 
 
 Of such stuff melodramas are made. 
 
 "The Sicilian Romance", by Mrs. Radcliffe was drama- 
 tized by Henry Siddons in 1794, as was the ballad of "Auld 
 Robin Gray", written shortly before that time by Lady Ann 
 Banard. Arnold, who wrote the latter play, made it end 
 happily by having Jamie return, rich and faithful, before 
 Jeanie's marriage to old Robin. James Boaden adapted 
 Mrs. Radcliffe's "The Romance of the Forest", into "Foun- 
 tainville Forest", a melodrama in which the ghost was made 
 to appear behind a "blueish-grey gauze, so as to remove 
 the too corporeal effect of a "live-actor", and convert the 
 moving substance into a gliding essence". (Boaden, Life 
 of Kemble" II: p. 117.). 
 
 The next few years saw a number of productions, but 
 since they add nothing new, we may pass them rapidly by 
 with a mere mention. Some of them were Cobb's "Cher- 
 okee", an opera on an American theme; Miles Peter An- 
 drews' "Mysteries of the Castle", suggested by "Udolpho"; 
 Boaden 's "The Secret Tribunal"; Morton's "Zorinski"; 
 and others. 
 
 It was at this time that the German element increased 
 in volume in England and though its bandits, terrors and 
 horrors had been anticipated by Walpole and his followers, 
 "the lackgrace returned home from transportation" with 
 its improvements completely overwhelmed the native pro- 
 ductions. (See Beers' "A History of English Romanti- 
 cism in the Eighteenth Century", p. 401.) 
 
 Among these plays, some of the most popular were M; 
 G. Lewis' "The Castle Spectre", (1797), that ran for sixty 
 nights the first season; and three plays founded on Eng- 
 lish romances, namely, "The Iron Chest", by Colman, 
 founded on William Godwin's "Caleb Williams"; Boaden's 
 "Italian Monk", and his "Aurelio and Miranda", founded 
 respectively on Mrs. Radcliffe's Inquisition story of the 
 same name and on M. G. Lewis' "The Romance of the 
 Monk". All of these writers took the English terror and 
 mystery stories and exaggerated their characteristics after 
 the German fashion. 
 
 Immediately, these plays were satirized by Canning 
 and his friends in "The Rovers", (1798) but without ef- 
 
 18 
 
I 
 
 feet, for tlie plays continued to be popular. In 1799, came an 
 alteration with comic characters and some songs, of Schil- 
 ler's "Die Rauber", by Joseph G. Holman, under the title 
 of "The Red Cross Knights", and in 1800 was produced 
 Charles Kemble's "The Point of Honour", taken from "Le 
 Deserteur", cf Mercier who, it is reported took the play 
 originally from the German. (Memoirs of the Colman Fam- 
 ily", II: p. 285.) 
 
 At the same time that these products were being pre- 
 sented, many more examples of pantomime and opera, as 
 well as of melodrama, were being brought out at the large 
 houses becauss the theatres, says Colman, (ibid. II, p. 413.) 
 being too large "for the perfect convenience of vision, and 
 for an easy modulation of speech; too large to 'hold the 
 mirror up to nature', so as to give a full and just reflection 
 of her delicate features and proportions;. . . .theatrical pro- 
 prietors seem to be of this opinion, by going of late more 
 into spectacle, melodrama, and opera which may be better 
 seen and heard at a distance, than those representations 
 which have been quaintly termed the Legitimate Drama". 
 
 Colman, himself, to keep up with the demands of the 
 time, brought out three spectacular pieces of a melodram- 
 atic sort. The first was "Blue Beard", (1796) with its 
 thrills, its fustian, and its beautiful scenery and pageants; 
 the second was "Feudal Times; or, The Banquet Gallery"; 
 (1799) and the third, "The Forty Thieves", (1799). In 
 the first production of "Blue Beard", horses and elephants 
 of pasteboard were used, (Kelley, "Reminiscences" II: pp. 
 146 seq.) and in "Feudal Times", a mine was sprung at 
 the end of the play as in the last act of "Lodoiska". This 
 latter effect persisted throughout the nineteenth century 
 and always was successful as a scenic display. 
 
 In 1800, Colman brought out at his theatre, the Hay- 
 market, another pantomimical drama, called "Obi; or, 
 Three-fingered Jack, the Maimed Hero", (also revived at 
 Drury Lane in 1818). Boaden's remarks are delightful 
 about this piece. He says: 
 
 "On the second of July, the pantomimical drama of Obi, or 
 Three-fingered Jack, the Maimed Hero, Proh pudor! by that ele- 
 gant actor, Charles Kemble, was performed before a most crowded, 
 brilliant, and judicious audience. The additions thus made to the 
 vulgar tongue w^re of great value. We became acquainted with 
 the Obi woman, with Tuckey, and Jenkannoo, Juashee and 
 Quashee's wife; and the region of Foote and the Colman's was 
 shifted into that of Sadler's Wells, or Astley's, or the Circus." 
 Boaden, "Life of Kemble" II: p. 269. Cf. also Colman, 11:284. 
 
 19 
 
From matters such as these we now turn to the plays 
 of Augustus von Kotzetue, a literary adventurer, as well 
 as a master of stagecraft and theatric effect. In 1799, no 
 less than seventy editions or versions of his many works 
 were published in England alone. Among the many trans- 
 lators of his plays were Benjamin Thompson, whose ver- 
 sion of "The Stranger" seems to have been the first to be 
 produced; George Papendick, Robert Herren, Maria Geis- 
 weiler, Anne Plumptre, Rev. Matthew West, H. Neuman, 
 Mrs. Inchbald, Richard Cumberland, and Richard Brinsley 
 Sheridan, in England; and among others, William Dunlap 
 and Charles Smith in America. 
 
 Kotzebue's plays which are based on sentimentality and 
 a false standard of morals are essentially melodramas 
 in the sense that they are improbable and untrue to nature. 
 Many of them come into the class of what might be called 
 domestic drama. They are serious plays that, by making 
 use of an undue amount of sentimentality or, by relying on 
 some trick, change a tragic catastrophe to a happy ending. 
 Notice first of all "The Stranger". The basic idea of this 
 play is much the same as the basic idea of Hay wood's "A 
 Woman Killed with Kindness". The -situation that is 
 worked out from this fundamental problem is by no means 
 the same, however. In both cases, a woman is untrue to 
 her husband; in Heywood's play, she is made to suffer for 
 her infidelity, but in Kotzebue's play, she is made a hero- 
 ine, her crime is glossed over, and she is completely re- 
 conciled to her husband, just as she is about to part from 
 him, by the appearance of the "long-motherless" children. 
 
 "The Noble Lie", a continuation of "The Stranger", is 
 also a domestic melodrama, as are Mrs. Inchbald's transla- 
 tions, produced as "Family Distress", and "The Wise Man 
 of the East". Each of these plays, to use Boaden's words, 
 "put a prize on immorality". (Boaden, II: p. 249.) 
 
 Kotzebue's romantic plays were also, popular in England. 
 On May 24, 1799, Sheridan's adaptation of Kotzebue's 
 "Pizarro", was brought out at Drury Lane. Edition after 
 edition of it was printed in the next few years, and down 
 to the third quarter of the next century, ."Pizarro" with 
 Rolla and Cora, with its inflated rhetoric and spectacular 
 effect, with its illogicality and sentimentality, drew large 
 audiences when it was produced. Similarly, were produc- 
 ed his other American romantic melodramas, under the 
 titles of "The Spaniards in Peru", and "The Virgin of the 
 
 20 
 
Sun", as well as his fourteenth century romance, "Joanna 
 of Montfaucon". 
 
 These plays bring the record of melodrama down to the 
 production of "A Tale of Mystery". Many melodramatic 
 productions have been passed over in the survey, but 
 enough has been said to suggest that the elements that 
 compose melodrama have been existant in England from 
 very early times; that before the earliest examples of 
 "German drama" had made their appearance, what to all 
 intents was melodrama, existed in England; that, although 
 English melodrama borrowed somewhat from the French 
 drama and opera, nevertheless, the type in England in 
 some form or other at least, was coexistan-t in both coun- 
 tries. 
 
 21 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 The early part of the nineteenth century can scarcely 
 be called a period of the literary drama. Although many 
 of the writers usually associated with the Romantic Reviv- 
 al essayed the writing of dramas, and, although, in the 
 majority of cases, these dramas were given a hearing, prac- 
 tically none of them were theatrically successful. Cole- 
 ridge, Southey, Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, Lamb, and 
 Maturin , all tried to write dramas; and, with the excep- 
 tion of the last, none were successful, although, from a 
 literary point of view, "Remorse", "Wat Tyler", "The Bord- 
 erers", "Manfred", "The Cenci", and "John Woodvil" com- 
 mand varying degrees of interest. The dramatic pro- 
 duction of the age was really in the hands of unliterary 
 men, using that term in the narrower sense. It was in 
 the hands of men of the theatre, and principally those men 
 of the theatre who, although they were keen observers of 
 the public and its wants, and who, as managers and play- 
 wrights in all ages have done, gave to the public what it 
 desired, were as a rule comparatively unimportant as work- 
 ers. Many plays were written, but more were translated 
 from other languages or adapted from novels, tales, poems, 
 and the like. Of those that were produced, a large per- 
 centage were melodramas and spectacular dramas. Con- 
 sequently, a survey of the drama of this period is rather 
 a record of theatrical forms and successes than of the liter- 
 ary drama. Few of the plays demand consideration from 
 the standpoint of style, although many of them 'deserve 
 commendation because of the way in which theatrical ef- 
 fects have been handled or plots worked out. 
 
 Several things conspired to produce these results: the 
 desire for novelties; the predominance of theatrical mana- 
 gers and actors as playwrights; the growth of minor thea- 
 tres; the influence of the productions of the minor thea- 
 tres on the policy of the larger theatres; and the increas- 
 ing tendency to dramatize novels and other literary suc- 
 cesses. These conditions will be considered in the course 
 of this chapter. 
 
 All the melodramas and melodramatic productions of 
 the period cannot profitably be considered. The object is 
 to suggest the great number of these plays, to call atten- 
 tion to the transitory character of most of them, and to 
 ascertain what changes in form, method ,and manner took 
 
 22 
 
place. In attempting to do this, the subject has been con- 
 sidered chronologically with notice and comment on the 
 more important productions. 
 
 The first melodrama so named in England, "A Tale 
 of Mystery", has already been considered. The author of 
 the play, Thomas Holcroft (1745-1809) was a busy writer 
 for the stage from 1778 until his death. During these 
 years, he wrote no less than twenty-five plays, one-fourth 
 of which were melodramas, although at least as many more 
 have melodramatic qualities. Most of these plays came 
 before 1802, and have already been noticed. The only 
 other one after this date that deserves even a word is 'The 
 Lady of the Rock", (1805), a combination of improbabili- 
 ties and spectacle in what proved to be but a poor melo- 
 drama. One of the interesting scenes in the acted play 
 is said to have been a realistic storm at sea, during which 
 a fisherman brings Lady Maclean, the heroine, from an 
 exposed rock where she has been placed to die. 
 
 On January 15, 1802, eleven months before "A Tale of 
 Mystery" was presented, Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775- 
 1818) brought out "Alfonso, King of Castile", at Covent 
 Garden. The play belongs distinctly to the School of Ter- 
 ror. The extravagant mediaevalism of the stories of this 
 school was early seized upon by the writers of melodrama 
 and soon became, to all intents, in the minds of many, the 
 sign of melodrama. 
 
 "Alfonso, King of Castile", was called by its author a 
 tragedy, and tragedy it is, but its methods are so extrava- 
 gant, so mediaeval, so terrifying, that it may be looked 
 upon as an example of that regular line of English popular 
 tragedy afterwards to be called "melodrama", Speaking 
 of this play, Boaden says, "His (Lewis') fancy teemed with 
 monsters treason, frenzy, lust, poison, stabbing, shooting, 
 parricide, suicide; the dungeon, the battle, and that MINE 
 of dramatic wealth, a blow up, with the usual garb of lan- 
 guage for such members, extravagant and bombastic rants, 
 and such a prodigy as Alfonso stalked portentiously be- 
 fore a gaping crowd". (Boaden, "Memoirs of the Life of 
 John Philip Kemble" Vol II: p. 310). If we were to add 
 to these the element of descriptive music and a few songs, 
 we should have a melodrama in the exact sense in which 
 the early ninetenth cntury used the word, for all the other 
 things are elements of melodrama. Only the music is 
 lacking in the printed version, and we cannot be sure that 
 
 23 
 
the incidental music was not used in it, as it has been 
 shown that music was regularly used in dramatic perform- 
 ances for about two centuries before this time to height- 
 en the effect. 
 
 Lewis, three years later, however, wrote "Rugantino", 
 a melodrama dealing with a real hero whose desire to cir- 
 cumvent the evil designs of the enemies of his country, 
 led him to disguise himself as an outlaw, and to maintain 
 that disguise, until he had tracked down the traitors and 
 brought them to justice. The ability of Lewis to create 
 situations and to strike terror to the hearts of his audience 
 is displayed here as elsewhere in his work. The dia- 
 logue is well written in the extravagant fashion of melo- 
 drama; but, if we grant the possibility of the existence of 
 such people as are here depicted and it is but asking that 
 we grant another convention to the drama then the lan- 
 guage and the situations are not entirely to be condemned. 
 The hero, in this play, is not merely a type, as is the case 
 in so many melodramas; he shows character; he shows 
 development and power. 
 
 This same story which comes into English through Lew- 
 is' novel "The Bravo of Venice" (1804) taken from a Ger- 
 man story of 1794, was also produced in England by Ellis- 
 ton as "The Venetian Outlaw", and by James Powell as 
 "The Venetian Outlaw, his Country's Friend"; and, in 
 America, by William Dunlap as "Abaellino, the Great Ban- 
 dit". These, however, are not so striking as is Lewis' 
 dramatization. 
 
 On July 31, 1802, James Boaden (1762-1839) added to 
 his dramatic writings by adapting for the English stage, a 
 play by M. Caigniez, called "Le Jugement de Salomon", a 
 melodrama of but little worth. In the English version it 
 was called "The Voice of Nature". The scene of the play 
 is laid in Sicily, and the plot is founded on the theme of 
 the decision of the wise king of the 'Jews in the case of the 
 two women and their children. (See I Kings: iii: 16-18.) 
 
 Some of the plays of the day, whose authors had not 
 yet presumed enough to call their work "melodrama", were 
 presented as "music dramas". One of these came out at 
 Drury Lane late in 1803. It was a translation, by James 
 Cobb (1756-1818) from Pixerercourt's "La Femme a deux 
 Maris" (1803) in title and matter. The play is really a 
 successful melodrama in all its elements, and is worthy of 
 notice principally for the ingenious way in which the au- 
 
 24 
 
thor gets rid of the villain, Fritz. The heroine, now the 
 wife of Count Belflor, as a girl, had been deluded by her 
 father into marrying a worthless character, Isador Fritz, 
 mainly because the father had fallen into the power of 
 Fritz. Soon after the marriage, Fritz disappeared, and 
 caused letters to be conveyed to his wife announcing his 
 death. This was done in the hope that she would marry 
 again. Then, he urged, a threat of exposure would force 
 her to give him money. The scheme worked well, and at 
 the end of the first act, Fritz appears with a confederate. 
 Three acts of suspense and surprise follow, and, in act five 
 the countess is finally rid of Fritz through the instrumen- 
 tality o a stage Irishman, Armagh, who overhears a plot 
 between the two villains to get the Count out of the way. 
 Fritz was to quarrel with the Count, and after the quarrel 
 was to pass a certain spot knowing full well that the Count 
 would follow him. The confederate, from ambush, was 
 to shoot the second man. Armagh now hurried past the 
 spot. Soon afterwards, Fritz, his quarrel with the Count 
 over, hurried past; a shot was heard; and the Count and 
 the others enter to find Fritz the victim of his own plot. 
 
 In this same year, two other writers of melodrama ap- 
 pear, William Dimond* and Frederic Reynolds.** Dim- 
 ond produced at Drury Lane on February 19, 1803, an his- 
 torical play, "The Hero of the North", the scene of which 
 is laid in Sweden. The play has plenty of action, is inter- 
 spersed with songs, but is not nearly so striking as are 
 some of his later plays. Reynolds, on the other hand, 
 added an element to his play of this year, "The Caravan", 
 that has been used with success since his time. A large 
 trained dog was introduced into the play, and through him 
 the rescue, so essential to most melodramas, was effected. 
 The child of the hero, thrown from a rock into the sea, was 
 
 *Of the life of William Dimond practically nothing seems 
 to be known, beyond the fact that he flourished in the first two 
 decades of the nineteenth century. 
 
 **Frederic Reynolds wrote nearly a hundred plays,^many of 
 which were printed, and about twenty of which had a temporary 
 popularity. He began by translating "Werter" from Goethe's 
 "Die Leiden des jungen Werthers" in the early eighties of the 
 eighteenth century. Certain of his expressions became so pro- 
 nounced in his plays that Byron took a fling at him in his 
 "English Bards and Scotch "Reviewers": 
 
 While Reynolds vents his "dammes!" "poohs!" and "zounds!" 
 And common-place and common sense confounds". 
 
 25 
 
saved from drowning by the dog belonging to the driver 
 of a caravan. Contemporary accounts of the play tell us 
 that the dog acted well. Later, not only dogs, but mon- 
 keys, birds, and other animals were used to bring about 
 denouements or to effect rescues at critical points in melo- 
 dramas, and horses, trained to do wonderful feats, were 
 transplanted from the circus to the stage of the regular 
 theatres, as members of the dramatis personae. To Rey- 
 nolds, therefore, belongs much of the credit for this inno- 
 vation in melodrama, which led to a long list of animal 
 plays among which were "Timour the Tartar" (1811) ; 
 "The Dog Gelert" (1813) ; "The Maid and the Magpie? 
 (1815); "The Cataract of the Ganges" (1823); Jocko, 
 the Brazilian Monkey" (1825) ; "The Dumb Savoyard and 
 his Monkey" (1829); and Mazeppa" (1833). 
 
 By the year 1803, Thomas John Dibdin (1771-1841) had 
 come prominently before the theatre-going public as a writ- 
 er of plays. Principally, a writer of songs he is said to 
 have written more than a thousand he was also a writer 
 of two score plays and in his position of proprietor of the 
 Surrey Theatre, an adapter of many more. He is indeed 
 a most interesting character in the theatrical history of 
 this period. A manager of skill, he commands attention 
 on account of his ability to find out what sort of play the 
 people wanted and to supply that demand, even though he 
 deserves no credit for producing original literary dramas. 
 He made it his business to hunt for novelties: as soon as 
 a new romance appeared that he thought might strike the 
 popular fancy, he dramatised it; as soon as a new play was 
 produced, that looked as though it might pay, he either 
 adopted or adapted it, whether it happened to be English, 
 French, or German. It was, for example, during his pro- 
 prietorship at the Surrey, that the novels of Sir Walter 
 Scott caught the public approvel, arid almost as quickly 
 as the separate stories issued from the press, they were 
 made into plays and put on at the Surrey. What was true 
 of Scott was equally true of others. Even the old drama 
 was not sacred in his hands. .Time and again, in his 
 "Memoirs", he records how he took old plays and revamped 
 them in order to make them fit the needs of the minor 
 theatres. Many of his works were not printed; and, as a 
 result, we must depend for much of our information about 
 them on the comments of his Contemporaries or on his 
 own assertions. 
 
 26 
 
In 1801, he adapted the ballad of "Alonzo, the Brave, 
 and Fair Imogene" for the stage from Lewis' "The Monk", 
 in what he called a "Pantomime Romance", entitled "Alon- 
 zo and Imogene; or, the Bridal Spectre". Thus early in 
 the new century, he began to use the works of the school 
 of terror. The next year, he wrote an opera, "Cabinet", 
 and a ballad pantomime, "Brazen Mask" and in 1803, he 
 brought out his "The English Fleet in 1342", a play on the 
 subject of Jane de Montford. All of these plays, we are 
 told, were full of "clap-trap", all of them, if we may judge 
 from the plots and the criticisms made of them, were melo- 
 dramas, and yet all were successful, if thirty or forty per- 
 formances in a season may be taken as a criterion of suc- 
 cess. 
 
 At Covent Garden, on Easter Monday, 1804, Dibdin's 
 remarkably successful romantic "melo-drame", "Valentine 
 and Orson", was produced. The play is one of a class of 
 melodramas, afterwards so numerous, that, for the pur- 
 pose of designation, may be called "foundling plays". * In 
 this particular play, Valentine is sent out to fight and 
 bring back prisoner one whom he simply knows as a wild 
 man r but who is afterwards declared by the oracle' to b.e 
 his brother; in it also, a princess enters the lists, is over- 
 thrown, but rescued from death by the strong armed and 
 valiant Valentine; and champions of renown and giants 
 of power fall before the wild brother. The play is not 
 only extravagant in action and speech; it is filled also with 
 most spectacular scenes. It is a melodrama that 'lives up 
 to the type described by Douglas Jerrold in his evidence, 
 before the Committee of the House of Commons on Dra- 
 matic Literature: a piece addressed to the eye rather than 
 to the ear, a play that contains "what are called a great 
 many telling situations", a play in which the conflict is 
 physical rather than mental. (See "Report from the Select 
 Committee on Dramatic Literature: with The Minutes of 
 Evidence. Ordered by the House of Commons to be 
 
 * A 'foundling, play is to be interpreted as any play in which, 
 for. the purpose of plot, and in order to secure the necessary 
 suspense, the identity of one of the principal characters is not 
 disclosed at the opening of the play. In each case, the character 
 in question, either does not know the secret of his birth, or else 
 he is a "long lost brother" whose death is supposed to have been 
 brought about by some foul means, or who, for other reasons, has 
 disappeared. In "Valentine and Orson", the wild man at the open- 
 ing of the play, proves to be Valentine's brother. 
 
 27 
 
printed, 2 August, 1832", p. 158; questions 2843 and 2844.) 
 Similar in motive to Dibdin's play was the next pro- 
 duction of William Dimond, but the unfolding of the plot 
 did not depend on mediaeval times, on knights and giants. 
 "The Hunter of the Alps", a one act play, was brought out 
 in the summer of 1804, at the Haymarket, and showed Di- 
 mond with an increase of theatrical power, although it be- 
 trayed no advance in literary skill. Again we have the 
 long lost brother appearing at just the right moment to 
 save his brother and his brother's family from starvation. 
 Felix, thought to be dead, happens to return to the region 
 where his brother Rosalvi known as "The Hunter of the 
 Alps" is living in desperate circumstances. Maddened, al- 
 most, by the knowledge that his children are starving, Ros- 
 alvi, meets Felix, lost from his companions, in the wood 
 and attempts to rob him. Unaccustomed to such prac- 
 tices, Rosalvi breaks down just as Felix is about to "stand 
 and deliver", and, in a fit of remorse for having yielded to 
 the temptation to rob, he tells Felix of his circumstances. 
 Felix then forces his purse on Rosalvi. Thinking only of 
 his family, Rosalvi rushes off to procure provisions, leav- 
 ing Felix hopelessly lost in the wood. He is wandering 
 around when Rosalvi's two children come upon him and 
 lead him to their hut. Rosalvi, suspected by the villagers 
 who are hunting for Felix, of having killed ^nd robbed 
 the lost man, now rushes into the hut. pursued by the 
 searchers. But everything is explained, and Rosalvi says, 
 "Two years since, misfortune drove us to this wilderness, 
 and I am here as Vincent, the poor Hunter of the Alps; but 
 Turin gave me birth, and the name of my family is Ros- 
 alvi". To this Felix, in true melodramatic style, cries, 
 "What? Rosalvi? Good heavens! I am almost choking! 
 Give me breath! Speak is your name Ferdinand Rosalvi?" 
 and then it comes about that these two are brothers, and 
 everything ends happily. The plot is well constructed. 
 As literature, the play has practically no value, but as an 
 example of stagecraft, it is exceedingly well done. 
 
 Not because of any great merit in the writing of melo- 
 dramas, but rather because of the position he secured as 
 a novelist and a wit, the two melodramas of Theodore Ed- 
 ward Hook (1788-1841) deserve mention. In November 
 of 1806, he had produced at the Drury Lane Theatre, "Tek- 
 eli; or, the Siege of Montgatz", a melodrama in three acts. 
 It has really nothing to commend it; it deserves mention 
 
 28 
 
merely because its battle scene, used increasingly in melo- 
 drama, at the end was a great spectacular display* Two 
 other plays were written by Hook; "The Fortress" (1807) 
 and "The Siege of St. Quintin" (1808). 
 
 In 1807, Lewis brought out two productions, different 
 in general form, but both melodramas. The first of these 
 was "The Wood Daemon; or, the Clock has Struck", a ro- 
 mantic melodrama in two acts, which was later enlarged 
 to three acts and presented at the Lyceum in 1811 as "The 
 Knight and the Wood Daemon; or, the Clock strikes One!" 
 It was printed as "One O'Clock; or, the Knight and the 
 Wood Daemon". It differs in no way from the other 
 melodramas of the period. 
 
 "Adelgitha; or, the Fruits of a Single Error", the sec- 
 ond of these plays, is more worthy of notice. With its 
 "old bombastic tyrant", as Macready calls Guiscard, (Mac- 
 ready "Diaries" p. 130) it held the stage well down toward 
 the end of the century. Like "Alfonso" it is not so much 
 a melodrama in the music and drama sense, although it is 
 full of all the other elements of melodrama. It parades 
 as a five act, blank verse tragedy, and displays some at- 
 tempts at characterization, not the too usual elements of 
 melodrama. The play is a combination of foundling and 
 problem play. Foundling, in that Lothair does not know 
 his parentage until the end; problem, in that the play pro- 
 pounds the eternal question, "can a woman live down a 
 false step?" Lewis, himself, in a note at the end of the 
 play, tells us that he wrote the play to show "the difficulty 
 of avoiding the evil consequences of a first false step". 
 That he was logical in the conduct of his plot cannot be 
 denied. Although there is plenty suspense and many sur- 
 prises that serve to put off the tragedy, Lewis does not 
 avoid it: Adelgitha has sinned and she pays the penalty 
 by suicide at the end of the play. 
 
 No musical accompaniment is provided, but bombast, 
 
 * Battle scenes in English dramas were no new thing. From 
 the time when 
 
 "with three rusty swords, 
 
 And help of some few foot-and-half-foot words" 
 the old dramatist fought "over York and Lancaster's long jars" 
 down to the time of which we are writing, battle scenes were a 
 regular thing on the English stage. The noteworthy thing here 
 is that melodramas, during the first thirty years of the nineteenth 
 century employed them in increasing number as a means of spec- 
 tacular effect. 
 
 29 
 
horror, lust, murder, all are here. The usual types of 
 character recur villain, virtuous hero, persecuted heroine, 
 in this instance trying to make amends for a sin, all are 
 to be found. The ranting that is characteristic of the play 
 and that stamps it a melodrama is well illustrated in the 
 scene in which Michael tries to kill Guiscard. After re- 
 fusing to assist him further, Guiscard says to Michael, 
 
 "Stretch to the utmost 
 
 Thy power to vex Apulia and its lord; 
 
 With barks, like locust-clouds, o'erspread the ocean; 
 
 Rob all thy realms of men, and at one effort 
 
 Pour thy whole population on our coasts; 
 
 Still shalt thou see thy squadrons like ripe corn 
 
 Beneath the reaper's scythe, laid low, encountering 
 
 The patriot subjects of a patriot prince, 
 
 Who loves his people, whom his people love. 
 
 Sulk as thou may'st behind thy brazen bulwarks 
 
 Of hired Varangiand and degenerate Greeks, 
 
 I'll find thee, doubt not; hew my desperate passage 
 
 Through swords and shields; nor shall my arm rest know 
 
 Till on thy casque my trusty sword has cleft 
 
 Byzantium's crown in twain. 
 
 MICHAEL, I'll hear no more (Drawing a dagger) 
 
 Vain boaster, die! 
 
 (Attempts to stab Guiscard, who wrests the dagger from 
 
 him) 
 GUIS. Ha! (A pause, after which he returns the dagger.) 
 
 Take thy steel again, 
 And use it to a nobler deed. (Michael stamps in rage.)" 
 
 This extract also illustrates the type of Lewis' blank verse, 
 that has but little to commend it beyond its bombast and 
 its wild sentiments. It is, to all intents, merely prose 
 masquerading as verse. In addition to all these things, 
 the play employs Gothic chambers, and subterranean pas- 
 sages and caverns, the setting, not only of the romances 
 of terror, but of many melodramas, as well. 
 
 The fondness of writers of melodrama for the foundling 
 play is evidenced by the fact that almost every writer of 
 this type of play, in this period, at some time or other in 
 his career, constructed a play on this motive, and often 
 more than one. An interesting example came in 1807, 
 when in "The Blind Boy", a blind character, a foundling, 
 was substituted for the dumb character found in such 
 plays as "A Tale of Mystery". In both cases we have a 
 descendant of the continental play in that an attempt is 
 made to secure sympathy for the principal character not 
 through any real merit of his own, but because, in these 
 instances, of a physical defect. 'The Blind Boy", called 
 
 30 
 
by Dibdin, "a serious melodrama" (Dibdin, "Reminiscen- 
 ces" I: p. 416) and ascribed by Genest to Captain Hewet- 
 son, was produced on December 1, 1807, at Covent Garden. 
 The play is laid in Poland, is well constructed, and as a 
 theatrical exhibition, commendable. It has the musical 
 accompaniments, the processions, the songs, so well known 
 to melodrama. In addition, it is merely a drama of situa- 
 tion, and a tissue of improbabilities, with the necessary 
 amount of bombast. The blind boy, thought to be a peas- 
 ant, suddenly turns out to be the son of King Stanislaus. 
 Because, as an infant, he had been blind, another had been 
 substituted for him in the cradle. His substitute was 
 Rudolph, now high in power, and through his actions for 
 he knew whence he derived his power Edmond, the real 
 son of the king, is kept away from the court and in ignor- 
 ance of his position. We,have a scene in which an attempt 
 is made to drown Edmond, and the suspense and horror 
 of the attempt on his life as he is led along to the sea, 
 show the possibilities of melodrama. Here, as elsewhere 
 in the play, the language is not great nor finely wrought, 
 but it is well enough done for a play that aims to secure its 
 effects through action rather than through words. 
 
 This play shows, too, a device common to melodrama, 
 in that the denouement is brought about by a very ordi- 
 nary person. The peasant, Oberto, on a great and solemn 
 occasion, stands out before the court, and denounces Rud- 
 olph, the usurper, great and powerful though he is, as an 
 imposter in favor of Edmond, a blind boy and seemingly 
 only a peasant. Then, practically no proof being asked, 
 Oberto is believed and Rudolph, powerful prince, is torn 
 from his place and Edmond is restored to his father. 'Un- 
 fortunately, although we may desire much to read men's 
 hearts in their faces, and judge their words by what we 
 have read, this seldom happens except in melodrama. So 
 common are these elements in melodrama that it has seem- 
 ed well to make special mention of them. 
 
 Again, the play suggests another device prevalent in 
 all melodrama. Here lightning and thunder no new 
 thing of course in plays are used in the scene where the 
 murder of Edmond is attempted, and it is by means of the 
 vivid flashes that the rescue is effected. I should say that 
 fully three fourths of the melodramas use thunder and 
 lightning in one or more of the critical scenes of the play. 
 Perhaps, this use in scenes where blood is let, or where 
 
 31 
 
murder is attempted, accounts for the designation we often 
 give to plays of the type under consideration: "blood 
 and thunder melodrama". 
 
 The year 1808 was productive of nothing new or orig- 
 inal, with the possible exception of a French burlesque 
 melodrama which, Dibdin tells us, "was a very sensible 
 and whimsical satire on the great rage (then at its height) 
 for melodramas, and I brought, it out under the titles of 
 'BONIFACIO AND BRIDGETINA, OR THE KNIGHTS 
 OF THE HERMITAGE, OR THE WINDMILL TURRET, 
 OR THE SPECTRE OF THE NORTH-EAST GALLERY' 
 with a prelude explanatory of what was to follow". (Dib- 
 din, as above, Vol. I: pp. 415-416). This, apparently, was 
 not printed, for no copy is obtainable. In spite of its impos- 
 ing title, however, and the good opinion Dibdin seems to 
 have had of it, the play was not successful and was with- 
 drawn. 
 
 All the other dramas of this year, were either trans- 
 'ated from the French or adapted from other plays or 
 from tales.* 
 
 The year 1809, although only two or three plays of im- 
 portance were produced, is more noteworthy, from the 
 standpoint of melodrama in the early nineteenth century 
 :han is the preceeding year. 
 
 Dimond, in "The Foundling of the Forest", brought 
 ^ut in the Haymarket in July, reached rather a high plane 
 "f melodrama. Later it was said that he had taken the 
 ilay from the French. Genest's remark is interesting: 
 it would have been a good piece", he says, (Vol. VIII: pp. 
 ^50) "if it had not been degraded from a place in legiti- 
 mate drama by the introduction of 6 (sic) or 7 (sic) songs, 
 vithout any good reason". Equally interesting is D. G's. 
 George Daniels) statement in the preface to Lacy's act- 
 ing edition of the play: "The materials of this drama, if 
 
 *"Th3 Forest of Hermanstadt; or, Princess and No Princess" 
 
 translated from the French by Thomas Dibdin; 
 "The Exile", a melodramatic opera, by Frederic Reynolds, 
 
 and founded on Madame Cottin's story "Elizabeth"; 
 "Venoni; or, the Novice of St. Mark's", translated from "Les 
 
 Victimes Cloistrees", by M. G. Lewis; 
 "The Wanderer; or, the Rights of Hospitality," altered from 
 
 Kotzebue by Charles Kemble; and 
 "Point of Honor", altered from the French play, "Le Desert- 
 
 eur", by Charles Kemble. 
 
 32 
 
not of the newest fashion, are wrought up with skill, and 
 produce a powerful effect in representation. They are 
 romantic without being impossible. We detest the cant 
 of probability! If we go to the play, we desire not to see 
 the dull old story of this working-day world grumbled 
 over again ; but to have our curiosity excited, our sympa- 
 thy awakened, our eyes and ears feasted with stirring inci- 
 dents and ravishing sounds". Both of these statements 
 bear out the remark often made in these pages that im- 
 probability is one of the tenets as music was looked upon 
 as one of the requirements, in this period of melodrama. 
 
 The play tells a story of the Count de Valmont, who, 
 on returning from the wars, found his castle burnt and, as 
 he supposed, his wife and infant son dead in the ruins. 
 Distracted, he wanders away; and, in the wood, hearing a 
 low moan, his attention is attracted to an infant child 
 whom he adopts and treats as a son. Florian, as the boy 
 is known, grows to manhood and becomes a soldier. He 
 sues for the hand of Valmont's niece; and, now, the villain 
 who has deprived Valmont of his wife and child seeks to 
 prevent the marriage of the neice, Geraldine, to Florian. 
 Attempts are made on Florian's life but they are not suc- 
 cessful; and he makes his way to a hut in the forest where 
 lives with Monica, an old peasant, a woman supposed to 
 be wild. When this wild woman sees Florian, she shrieks 
 and rushes off and out of the house, but, later, when Ber- 
 trand and Sanguine, the two bravos enter at the window in 
 search of Florian and are about to kill him, the mysterious 
 woman appears and the bravos are frightened off as if by 
 a spectre. Later Eugenia, for the mad woman is no other 
 than Valmont's wife, makes her way to the castle, and 
 after several more narrow escapes from death at the hand 
 of Longueville, is united to her husband and to Florian 
 who proves to be their son. 
 
 In the same year as "The Foundling of the Forest", 
 came another play that aids us admirably in our effort to 
 differentiate the types of plays that were, at this time, 
 called melodramas. Dibdin's "The Lady of the Lake", 
 which he calls a "Melodramatic Romance in Two acts from 
 Sir Walter Scott", was acted at the Surrey, in 1809. (Dib- 
 din, I: p. 435). Here a pure romance which contains 
 scarcely any of the elements that are usually found in 
 melodrama, is, by the simple addition of music, pantomime, 
 and stage settings, made into a melodrama. The exact 
 
 33 
 
words of the poem are kept, but much music and dumb 
 show is inserted. In fact, the play is more like pantomine 
 with some speaking parts than it is like anything else. 
 For example, notice the following: 
 
 ACT I. 
 
 "Scene I. Romantic view on Loch Katrine horns and dis- 
 tant hunting cries heard Hunters seen passing on the rilg-es 
 of the mountain above the lake Music the broad red sun is 
 seen to go down behind the brows of the hills a solitary horn 
 sounds. 
 
 A voice without. Hillio! Hillio! 
 
 (The horn sounds nearer, and the voice is heard louder.) 
 Enter Fitzjames, R., quite weary, and leans against the rock. 
 
 Fit. So, crossing yonder rugged dell, 
 My gallant horse exhausted fell; 
 I little thought when first thy rein 
 I slack'd upon the Banks of Seine, 
 That Highland eagle e'er should feed 
 On thy fleet limbs, my matchless steed. 
 Woe worth the chase, woe worth the day, 
 That cost thy life, my gallant Gray! 
 
 MUSIC. He looks around, and sounds his horn it is echoed 
 he listens all is quiet. 
 
 'Twas echo mock'd the war and chase 
 Give little choice of resting place; 
 But foes may in these wilds abound, 
 Such as are better miss'd than found. 
 To meet with Highland plund'rers here, 
 Were worse than loss of steed or deer. 
 Well, fall the worst that may betide, ' 
 E'en now this faulchion has been tried. 
 
 Sounds his horn agjain soft Music he listens, looks, and 
 sees a lady in the Highland costume navigating a little skiff, L. 
 at the same time the white-robed figure of an ancient bard 
 (ALLAN BANE) appears on the mountain, L., with a cross in his 
 hand he points Fitzjames out to the lady, who gracefully beckons 
 him to enter the boat he is too much employed with gazing on 
 her, to look at the bard, who disappears, L, the lady rouses him 
 from his astonishment by beckoning again he steps into the boat, 
 which she is going to push off he gently takes the boat-hook 
 from her she points out the way he pushes off the boat, L., and 
 the scene closes." 
 
 Scene IV of the first act is similar in that we have only 
 eighteen lines spoken in the entire scene, the rest of the 
 time being taken up with a grand procession and chorus. 
 
 The play, containing only two acts, provides for fifteen 
 scenes, eight of which differ entirely from the others. 
 
 34 
 
All of these characteristics were elements, by means of 
 which, in the making of the plays for the minor theatres, 
 the law regulating dramatic performances might be evad- 
 ed. 
 
 This year, and the mention of the minor theatres, calls 
 up the name of William Elliston, (1774-1831) who, at this 
 time, began his work as manager of the Royal Circus (Sur- 
 rey Theatre). It was through him and his ability, that, 
 for years, the small theatres, by producing regular plays as 
 melodramas and burlettas, avoided the law until they be- 
 came so strong that the large theatres were compelled, 
 first, to adopt their methods, and, finally, to succumb to 
 the inroads made upon them by surrendering their monop- 
 oly. Elliston, on the last day of October, 1809, at the 
 Surrey, produced "Macbeth" as a "Grand Ballet of Music 
 and Action" (Genest, IX: p. 337), and also brought out 
 Dibdin's "melodramatic burletta, in two acts, of the Har- 
 per's Son and the Duke's Daughter". (Dibdin, Vol. I: p. 
 435). 
 
 In "The Free Knights; or, the Edict of Charlemagne", 
 by Frederic Reynolds, produced in February, 1810, at Co- 
 vent Garden, (Genest, VIII: p. 180), the element of ter- 
 ror, in a Gothic setting, is given full rein. Reynolds called 
 the play " a drama in three acts interspersed with songs". 
 It is a melodrama. The story deals with a secret tribunal, 
 whose members are sworn to absolute obedience. The 
 tribunal parades as a means of righting the wrongs-of men 
 and women, but is, in reality, merely an instrument in the 
 hands of the Prince Palatine to enable him to keep the 
 position that actually belongs to another. It contains the 
 heroine persecuted because she stands in the Prince's way; 
 the valiant young hero falling into the toils of the villain; 
 and the father of the heroine, on account of false accusa- 
 tion, compelled to go into hiding, but finally summoning up 
 courage to overthrow the villain. The play is built up 
 on the foundling motive, in that Agnes, the heroine, is 
 ignorant of her position in life until the end of the play, 
 the only one who seems to know her real place in life be- 
 ing the Prince Palatine who is persecuting her. The play 
 is full of inflated writing and of romantic but improbable 
 situations. The language is, for the most part, such as 
 never man spoke, with its long, involved sentences, its 
 grandiloquent diction, and its stilted style. 
 
 Other melodramas that were presented during the years 
 
 35 
 
1810 and 1811 were written by Dimond, Grossette, and 
 lasac Pocock (1782-1835). Dimond took his play "The 
 Hero of the North", (See above p. 25) and transformed it 
 into an out and out melodrama that he called "Gustavus 
 Vasa", by providing for the actual presentation on the 
 stage -of actions that, in the earlier play, has merely been 
 narrated by one or the other of the characters. He like- 
 wise brought out, in the summer of 1810, "The Doubtful 
 Son; or, Secrets of a Palace", said to have been a serious 
 and good piece in five acts. A new version of "The 
 Monk" entitled "Raymond and Agnes", was made, in the 
 same year, by Henry William Grossette, a mediocre writer 
 for the stage, who, in 1811, also made a stage version of 
 "Marmion". Pocock's contribution during this summer 
 was called "Twenty Years Ago, a Melodramatic Entertain- 
 ment". It was afterwards brought out by the Drury Lane 
 Theatre Company in 1811 at the Lyceum, the theatre in 
 which it had first been produced. 
 
 In 1816, Richard Lalor Shiel (1791-1851) came before 
 the public in a blank verse tragedy, "Adelaide; or, the 
 Emigrants". This play, from its theme of seduction to its 
 glorification of villainy in Lunenberg, who after his duel 
 with Adelaide's brother, runs on his sword and dies with 
 sentimental phrases on his lips, contains all the elements 
 of melodrama. His second play, "The Apostate", al- 
 though it was more successful than "Adelaide", is scarcely 
 better as a drama, and if anything much more melodra- 
 matic. - 
 
 The plot of "The Apostate" concerns Hemeya, a Moor, 
 who, for the love of Florinda, becomes a Christian. Pes- 
 cara, the governor of Granada, wishes to possess Florinda, 
 and he invokes the aid of the. Inq.uisition to secure the 
 death of Hemeya and the other Moors in the city. After 
 a series of scenes that fairly reek with horror and bombast, 
 the play ends with the death of the three principal charac- 
 ters. Each scene has its climax, and every character roars 
 down the other. The music and songs only are missing. 
 It pretended to be a blank verse tragedy, but it succeeded 
 only in becoming a series of rhetorical extravagances in 
 verse form. Doran aptly characterizes it as "furious". 
 He continues, "There was the bombast of Lee, but none of 
 his brilliancy; the hideousness of his images without any- 
 thing of their grand picturesqueness". (Doran, "Annals 
 
 36 
 
of the English Stage" etc. Vol. 11:372.) Two exam- 
 ples of this rant and fury will serve. In speaking of the 
 King, Malec says, 
 
 "his gloomy throne 
 
 Is palled with black, and stained with martyr's blood, 
 While superstition, with a torch of hell, 
 Stands its fierce guardian." Act III, Sc. 1. 
 
 Florinda, at the end of the same act, on being asked by 
 Hemeya if she will follow him, exclaims, 
 
 "Throughout the world! 
 
 I'll fasten to thy fate, I'll perish with thee. 
 
 I stand upon the brink of destiny, * 
 
 And see the deep descent that gapes beneath: 
 Oh! since I cannot save thee from the gulf, 
 From the steep verge I'll leap with thee along 
 Cling to thy heart, and grasp thee with my ruin! 
 
 (Throws herself into his arms he bears her off.)" 
 
 These plays were written by Shiel for Miss O'Neill, and, 
 in spite of their limitations,^kept the stage until the end of 
 the century. His other pfays, written for the same ac- 
 tress, although exceedingly melodramatic can hardly be 
 said to be melodramas. "Evadne; or, the Statue", called 
 simply a "play" is the best of all of Shiel's work, although 
 it is filled with the most inflated speech and sprinkled with 
 the most strained figures. 
 
 Another Irishman, Maturin (1782-1824), more literary 
 in his work, also essayed to write for the stage, and, in 
 1816, his "Bertram; or, the Castle of St. Aldobrand" ap- 
 peared at Drury Lane a week after Shiel's "Apostate" had 
 appeared at Covent Garden. "Bertram" was not Matur- 
 in's first work for the stage, for he had written "The Fatal 
 Revenge" in 1807, but it was not successful. It was "Ber- 
 tram" that brought him into prominence. So great was 
 that prominence that, within a year, seven editions of the 
 play had been published, and in the waning days of the 
 season of 1815-16, the play enjoyed a run of twenty-two 
 performances. (Genest, VII: pp. 532-535.) 
 
 In this play, the school of terror reaches its climax. 
 Horror is heaped on horror; pompous and inflated lan- 
 guage permeates every scene; and the whole play abounds 
 in blood and terror. Almost every speech of the half- 
 crazed Count Bertram is designed to thrill or to cause a 
 shudder. In fact, the whole thing goes so far, that an- 
 other step and that a small one would bring the play 
 into the realm of the burlesque. Hazlitt, who is mild in 
 his statement, has said of it, "It is a sentimental drama, it 
 
 37 
 
is a romantic drama, but it is not a tragedy, in the best 
 sense of the word". (Hazlitt, "Complete Works" ed. by W. 
 E. Henley, Vol. VIII: p. 305.) 
 
 It is this play that Coleridge so scathingly attacked in 
 his "Critique on Bertram". (Coleridge, "Biographia Liter- 
 aria", pp. 652, seq.) In this article are attacked the im- 
 probability, especially of the shipwreck; the morals; the 
 "super-tragic starts" etc. It is in this critique that we 
 find Coleridge's interesting remarks about the German 
 drama, of which this play is usually thought to be an ex- 
 ample. 
 
 The play was successful as far as -stage presentation 
 was concerned. As much cannot be said of his later plays, 
 "Manuel" (1817), and "Fredolfo" (1817)., both of which 
 were of the same general type as "Bertram". 
 
 Other plays of the year J816, none of which rise above 
 mediocrity, and none of which show elements of originality 
 in stage-craft or scenic effects, were Thompson's "Ober- 
 on's Oath; or, the Paladin and the Princess;" Dimond's 
 "Broken Sword;" Bell's "Watchword; or, the Quinto 
 Gate;" Morton's "lave;" and Dibdin's plays, "The Sicil- 
 ian: an operatic melodrama", "The Silver Swan", and "Pit- 
 cairn's Island". 
 
 In 1818, Scott's "Rob Roy" was converted into "an op- 
 eratic play in three acts", entitled, "Rob Roy Macgregor; 
 or, Auld Lang Syne", by Isaac Pocock, and the heroine, 
 Diana Vernon, was transformed into a singing girl. But 
 in this absurdity, Macready gained a success. George 
 Soane, (1790-1860) whom we now meet for the first time, 
 dramatized the same novel of Scott^ changing the plot in 
 many places, but showing little of the power that he later 
 gained in his dramatic work. 
 
 Didbin produced at the Surrey, this year, two drama- 
 tizations: one, "The Reprobate," from Mrs. Opie's tale of 
 that title; the other, "The Lily of St. Leonards; or, the 
 Heart of Midlothian", which, he tells us, "was acted above 
 one hundred and seventy nights in the space of nine 
 months". (Dibdin, II: p. 156). Another version of this 
 novel of Scott made by Terry, and called "Heart of Mid- 
 Lothian; a melodramatic Romance", was acted at Covent 
 Garden.* The dialect of the original was suppressed for 
 
 [* Dimond took the Terry and the Didbin versions and com- 
 bined them and brought out "Heart of Mid-Lothian; or, the Lily 
 of S't. Leonards" at Bath on the third of December, 1819.] 
 
 38 
 
the most part, but Scott's words were otherwise fairly well 
 kept. The play which ends with the pardon and restora- 
 tion of Jeanie Deans is a melodrama in the sense that the 
 intense situations of the book are made use of, that it ends 
 happily, that spectacular processions are employed, and 
 that musical accompaniments and songs are introduced. 
 A somewhat similar method was employed and similar re- 
 sults were obtained in John William Calcraft's adaptation 
 of "The Bride of Lammermoor", acted first at Edinburgh. 
 This play, however, is rather a romantic tragedy with melo- 
 dramatic methods than an out and out melodrama. 
 
 George Soane, mentioned above in connection with dra- 
 matization of Scott, began to write melodramas in 1817, 
 when he produced 'The Inn Keeper's Daughter," founded 
 on Southey's poem, "Mary, the Maid of the Inn". This is 
 another drama constructed on circumstantial evidence, with 
 much thunder and lightning, and many thrills of the penny 
 dreadful sort. The end involves a sensational rescue of 
 the hero by the heroine. The play, with its rather puerile 
 dialogue, liberally sprinkled with hackneyed speeches, is not 
 very different from the popular melodrama of today. 
 Soane, in his preface to the play, gives us some interesting 
 information which, though not new in matters of theatrical 
 presentation, nevertheless, recalls the difficulty involved 
 in judging plays wholly by the printed copy. "This print- 
 ed copy", he says, "will be found to differ in very many in- 
 stances, from the acting text a difference which partly 
 arose from necessity. To unite the two texts was impos- 
 sible, and to print from the prompt-book during the run 
 of the piece was no less impracticable. Judicious, there- 
 fore, as the alterations have been, I was forced to retain 
 the original". (Preface to play, in Vol. 25, "English Dra- 
 ma".) Such remarks lend weight to contemporary criti- 
 cisms of the plays when we find our own judgment of the 
 printed text in opposition to the critics' designation of the 
 play. What the printed text may show to be a tragedy or 
 a comedy, may have been in the acting, melodrama. 
 
 In 1319, Soane's contributions were two in number: 
 "The Dwarf of Naples, a Tragi-comedy in five acts", in 
 blank verse, at Drury Lane, March 13; and "Self-Sacri- 
 fice; or, the Maid of the Cottage, a melodrama in two acts", 
 in prose, at the English Opera House, on July 19. The 
 former is a romantic play, written for Edmund Kean, full 
 or inflated speeches and thrilling situations. It attempts 
 
 39 
 
to imitate the Elizabethan drama, but with little success, 
 although, at times, the blank verse rises above the plane 
 of mediocrity. In the sense in which music is necessary 
 for melodrama, this is no melodrama, although its theme 
 and method are melodramatic. One is tempted to justify the 
 feeling that it is melodrama by referring it to the stand- 
 ards set by Charles Kemble, who , in his evidence before 
 the Committee of the House of Commons, (Report, p. 44, 
 question 603) said, "with respect to melo-drama, they do 
 not depend for success on splendor. On the contrary, I 
 should say the most successful melo-dramas have been 
 those which depended on strong excitement in the story 
 or incidents of the piece".* A different type of play, 
 however, is "Self-Sacrifice". Here, Soan.e has produced a 
 good mixture of the circumstantial evidence play, the rob- 
 ber play, and the foundling play, and placed them all in 
 a sensational, over-drawn atmosphere. Here are horror, 
 murder, and surprise a-plenty. Here are scenes of vio- 
 lence and spectacular power: an escape from a vault; a 
 storm at sea with a shipwreck; a fight on a bridge which 
 gives way and precipitates the villain into the water; a 
 further period of suspense in which he almost captures 
 the heroine, and then the felling of a tree by the hero, 
 and the rescue of the heroine. The play is filled with hair- 
 breadth escapes, that, without doubt, thrilled the popular 
 audience. 
 
 Henry M. Milner, a prolific writer of plays, produced, late 
 in 1818, one of the first of his plays, "Barmecide; or, the 
 Fatal Offering". Genest remarks, "Milner has brought 
 about a happy catastrophe the incidents of the last act 
 are not very probable, but in a professed Romance this 
 is no unpardonable fault the author allows that his piece 
 is that sort of Drama, in which the effect depends more 
 upon situation and happy execution of what is technically 
 called 'stage business' than the merit of the writer". 
 (Genest, VIII :p. 575-6.) In these remarks have been 
 stated, with great insight, the elements of what was being 
 looked upon more and more as illegitimate drama. This 
 sort of play in the minds of actors, managers, and dra- 
 matisis, who appeared before the Committee of the House 
 
 *Peter Francis Laporte, Manager of French plays at the 
 Tottenham Street Theatre and the Opera, '(ibid. p. 128, question 
 2268) pointed out that "There is a very narrow line between a 
 tragedy and a melodrama." 
 
 40 
 
of Commons, in 1832, was almost synonomous with "melo- 
 drama" for, in several instances, on being asked about il- 
 legitimate drama, melodrama was described. (See testi- 
 mony of W. T. Moncrieff, "Report", p. 178, question 3156; 
 of Douglas Jerrold, ibid., p. 158, question 2843; and 
 others.) 
 
 There is less doubt of the character of Milner's "The 
 Jew of Lubeck; or, the Heart of a Father; a serious Drama 
 in Two Acts", of which the author says in the preface, 
 "Several motives operated in combination toward the pro- 
 duction of this trifle. The first was a desire to produce 
 an entertainment, which, without aspiring to the dignity 
 of tragedy, might yet partake of tragic pathos; and which 
 would engraft the license of melo-drama upon a tale 
 simple and natural , and arising out of an universal prin- 
 ciple of animal creation the fondness of a parent for its 
 offspring." (Preface to "The Jew of Lubeck", in Vol 27, 
 "English Drama".) The license of melodrama is a good 
 phrase, describing, as it does, the exaggeration permissable 
 in this form of play. This is almost the first remark of 
 the period that suggests that some definition of melo- 
 drama was in progress. 
 
 The play details the story of an Austrian nobleman 
 who, because of a conspiracy against him has been forced 
 to fly from home and is now living in Lubeck disguised 
 as a Jew. His murder is attempted by those who con- 
 spired against him, after they had been forced to leave 
 Austria, not because they know him, but because he is 
 rich. Suddenly, his daughter, whom he thought lost, ap- 
 pears on the scene, from where, nobody knows, and no 
 explanations are offered. She overhears the plot, and pre- 
 vents its execution. She now makes her way to the Prince 
 Ferdinand, secures pardon for her brother, who is in 
 danger of execution, rushes in with it just as he is to be 
 shot and all ends happily. No reasons are given for sud- 
 den twists and turns; there is no characterization what- 
 ever, yet this play seems to have "got over the foot-lights" 
 through situations well worked up. 
 
 In it, too, the musical element is not so prominent. 
 There are but few songs and the printed edition makes 
 no provision for incidental music, although I am convinced 
 that the prompt book, were it obtainable, would show mus- 
 ical cues. 
 
In considering the group of melodramas just dis- 
 cussed, it is possible to discover certain definite types of 
 the species. First, there is that type brought in from 
 abroad, of which "A Tale of Mystery" is an example; 
 secondly, that of the school of terror, exemplified in most 
 of the plays of "Monk" Lewis, and in such plays as 
 "Bertram" and the tragedies, so-called, of Shiel; thirdly, 
 there is the musical play, in which almost anything of a 
 more or less romantic nature is treated to incidental music 
 and songs, so as to enable the minor theatres to evade 
 the law, and is called either melo-drama or misnamed 
 burletta; such plays may have been original or were 
 merely dramatizations of novels or adaptations of old plays. 
 In many instances, the designation of plays of this last 
 group, was merely a means of evading the law. A fourth 
 group consists of plays that are really domestic in type 
 although the passion or sentiments involved are so much 
 exaggerated that they fall into the realm of melodrama. 
 In these the even tenor of the plot is warped by surprises 
 and situations that catch at the throat of the spectator, 
 and the ending is held in suspense by the reported dangers 
 that threaten hero or heroine. 
 
 The twenties were marked in part by the great number 
 of dramatizations of Scott and other novelists. The year 
 1820, alone, produced no less than five from Scott, and in 
 the following years, the novels were dramatized as they left 
 the press. That they were held to be melodramas is at- 
 tested by Hazlitt, who, writing, in March 1820, of the 
 dramatization of "The Antiquary", says, it "is not, we 
 think, equal to the former popular melo-dramas taken 
 from the same prolific source." (Hazlitt, Works", Vol. 
 VIII :p., 413.) 
 
 The year 1820 also saw "Belisarius" translated from 
 the French by Dibdin and called a "serious melo-drama", 
 (Dibdin, Vol. II: p. 188) while C. E. Walker produced a 
 rather interesting melodrama which he called "The War- 
 lock of the Glen", a Scotch play based, like "A Tale of 
 Mystery", on an attempted fratricide. (See Thackeray's 
 amusing description of the play in an article written for 
 "Punch" on October 18, 1845, and published as "A Brigh- 
 ton Night Entertainment" in the volume entitled "Travels 
 in London", p. 202, pub. by Macmillan.) 
 
 Perhaps the most noteworthy production of the early 
 
 42 
 
twenties was William T. Moncrieff's * "Cataract of the 
 Ganges; or, the Rajah's Daughter, a grand romantic 
 drama in two acts". Here is a spectacular melodrama 
 raised to the nth. power. Twelve changes of scene are 
 provided and two grand processions, besides singing and 
 dancing. In addition, there are other spectacular feat- 
 ures: signal fires are lighted; battles are fought; and 
 finally a remarkable escape is made when "Zamme mounts 
 the courser of Iran, and while he keeps the foe at bay, 
 dashes safely up the Cataract, amidst a volley of musketry 
 from the enemy on the heights". (Act II, Sc. vi.) Mon- 
 crieff in this instance has displayed that power of stage- 
 craft for which he is well known. The language, how- 
 ever, is strained and rhetorical, and the characters are 
 but types. 
 
 It is of interest to notice that Moncrieff takes occa- 
 sion, in this play, to blow the loud trumpet for England. 
 Jam Saheb is talking to Mordaunt, the Englishman, about 
 'female infanticide' which has just been established by 
 the Rajah's edict: 
 
 "To thee and to thy country be the palm from thee 
 it springs. Generous Britons greatest of mortal con- 
 querors, your battle is on Virtue's side your aim is 
 charity your victory peace. You spread your sway o'er 
 your opponents' hearts, and carry the Christian spirit of 
 your race through every clime to civilize and bless! Long, 
 long may you extend your sway, which conquers but to 
 bestow and combats but to save!" 
 
 This apostrophe is a fair example of Moncrieff's 
 style. His characters all talk in balanced and antithetical 
 sentences, the style of the orator rather than of the writer 
 of plays. 
 
 This play ran for fifty nights during the first season 
 and kept the boards until the seventies, Button Cook, for 
 example recording a production at the Drury Lane Theatre 
 in March, 1873. (Dutton Cook, "Nights at the Play," 
 Vol. I:p. 260). 
 
 That perversion of fact is part and parcel of many 
 melodramas was illustrated this same year, 1823, when 
 
 * William T. Moncrieff (1794-1857) began to write for the 
 
 stage in 1815, and continued until his death. Many of the 170 
 
 dramatic pieces that he wrote were melodramas, the first one be- 
 ing a translation of "La Vampire", in 1819. 
 
 43 
 
Edward Fitzball (1792-1873), sometimes referred to as 
 Mr. Ball, brought out his "Joan of Arc; or, The Maid 
 of Orleans, a melodrama in three acts", at Sadler's Wells 
 in August. Here we have a prose play copied after the 
 method of the chronicle play. It teems with soldiers, bat- 
 tles, and processions. Incidental music and exaggeration 
 are to be found in the play, but neither of these elements 
 is so prevalent as in other melodramas. Beyond the res- 
 cue of Joan from the stake at the end of the play, the 
 historical sequence of events is well preserved and faith- 
 fully recorded. The play, except for the ending, had it 
 been in five acts, might have passed, at the patent 
 theatres, during these lean years, as a tragedy. It ap- 
 parently was called melodrama either because of the per- 
 version at the end or in order to evade the law regarding 
 minor theatres. If the first is true, it lends some evidence 
 to support the claim of those who call melodrama illogi- 
 cal tragedy; if the second, one is sure that melodrama, 
 in this early century sense, may have been anything that 
 contained enough of the elements of music to evade the law 
 regarding regular performances. Weight is added to the 
 second of these conclusions when we read that Dibdin had 
 altered Joanna Baillie's tragedy, "Constantine Paleaolo- 
 gus," "and produced it as a melo-drame, with the title of 
 'Constantine and Valeria,' " with music by Sanderson" 
 (Dibdin, II: p. 136), and "put 'Fatal Curiosity' into form 
 suitable to a minor theatre, with the new name of The 
 Murdered Guest,'" (ibid. p. 152) while "Fazio" was made 
 into a melodramatic romance in three acts "for the Olym- 
 pic" and "Douglas" into a melodrama. 
 
 The year 1826 witnessed the production of the first 
 play by John Baldwin Buckstone, (1802-1879). This play, 
 "Luke the Labourer", he called "a domestic drama". The 
 designation is interesting in that it points out a new road 
 that melodrama was to follow. There had been melodra- 
 mas imported from the continent that dealt with the com- 
 mon folk in their domestic relations, and many of the 
 plays, that were original in England, -had told stories of 
 the lower classes abroad, but most of the melodramas up 
 to this time, had been concerned with the heroic and the 
 romantic; few, if any, dealt with English lower class life. 
 Although T. P. Cooke, ah actor, before the Committee of 
 the House of Commons, in discussing this play, called it 
 a domestic piece, (Report: p. 148, question 2650) and in- 
 
ferred that it differed from "The Pilot", which he called 
 a melodrama, the only difference between them as far 
 as form is concerned is that one had to do with the land, 
 and the other with the sea. 
 
 "Luke the Labourer", which came out at the Adelphi, 
 concerns the rescue of Farmer Wakefield from the ven- 
 geance of Luke, by his long lost son. Philip, the son, had 
 been stolen by the gypsies when he was a mere child and 
 had later gone to sea'. He returns in the course of the 
 first act of the play just in time to prevent his sister's 
 being carried off and his father's being killed. The sit- 
 uations are most thrilling, and the rescues truly marvel- 
 ous. Clara is saved from Luke by the timely appearance 
 'of Philip in the midst of a raging storm in which thunder 
 and lightning play prominent parts; arid Farmer Wake- 
 field is rescued by Philip and the very gypsies who had 
 stolen him when a child and who now just happen to be 
 in the neighborhood and are willing, by this act, to make 
 amends for the wrong they had committed some twenty 
 years before. 
 
 Such a play leads naturally to a long list of plays 
 by Buckstone, Jerrold, Pocock, Milner, and others, that 
 go under the general name of domestic drama. One of 
 the most horrible examples of the species is H. M. Mil- 
 ner's "The Gambler's Fate; or, Thirty Years of a Game- 
 ster's Life", in which the gambler who deceives his bride 
 on her wedding day by selling her jewels to game with, 
 goes from one stage of degredation to another, until we 
 find him and his old familiar murdering his own son, who, 
 as a stranger, has come to save him and his mother, from 
 penury. 
 
 In 1827, at Sadler's Wells, in a rather obscure way, be- 
 gan a type of melodrama that had scarcely died out today. 
 Under the designations of domestic dramas and romantic 
 melodramas, Irish plays, usually very sentimental in their 
 nature, appeared on the boards. "Suil Dhuv, the Coiner", 
 by Dibdin, is the first of a long list that includes produc- 
 tions by Lever, and Lover, and Boucicault and continues 
 to the present in such plays as "The Kerry Gow" and 
 "The Shaugraun" and the wearisome plays of Andrew 
 Mack and other "singing Irish comedians". 
 
 "Suil Dhuv" is a combination of robber and foundling 
 play, in which, after two acts of seduction, blood, and 
 robbery ,everybody is saved and reunited as Suil Dhuv, 
 
 45 
 
villain and robber as he is, makes a sensational escape by 
 leaping into the lake as the soldiers sent to take him fire 
 a parting volley after him. 
 
 Other Irish pla} s that may be mentioned as immed- 
 iately following this play of Dibdin's, are "Thierna-na- 
 Oge; or the Prince of the Lakes", called "a melodramatic 
 Fairy Tale", that appeared at Drury Lane, in 1829, (not 
 printed) ; and two others, dealing with Irish robbers, that 
 came out at the Surrey. The first, "Black Hugh, the Outlaw," 
 "a domestic drama", by W. Rogers, dealt with the adven- 
 tures of Hugh Macarthy and his band of Whiteboys; and 
 the second, "Bampfylde Moore Carew; or, the Gypsy of 
 the Glen", published anonymously, was a story of .seduc- 
 tion that depended for its unfolding on a band of rob- 
 bers. Many others followed, the authors of which, among 
 others, were W.-R. Floyd, J. A. Amherst, and James Pil- 
 grim. 
 
 J. R. Planche, (1796-1880) known to the stage prin- 
 cipally for his farces, in 1820 published an adaptation of 
 the French melodrama, "La Vampire", and later brought 
 out at Drury Lane, "The Child of the Wreck", a melo- 
 drama, in which a dumb boy, a foundling, adopted by a 
 fine lady, is made the victim of circumstantial evidence 
 in connection with a robbery. The play is a return to all 
 the elements of the type of melodrama found in "A Tale 
 of Mystery". It does not, however, attempt to appeal 
 through scenic accessories as did the older plays. 
 
 Planche's "Charles XII", called " a historical drama", 
 is likewise a melodrama as is his "The Brigand", brought 
 out the following season, (1829). In the latter, Allez- 
 andro Massaroni, a bandit, whose perfect poise and pol- 
 ished manners, enabled him to make his way into the 
 palace of the man who is hounding him and who after- 
 wards proves to be his father, at a time when the latter 
 is holding a grand reception, points the way to the Raf- 
 fles type of polished, gentlemanly burglars of our own 
 day. 
 
 An interesting feature of "The Brigand" is the pro- 
 vision that Planche makes for the tableaux at the end of 
 several scenes in his play. He directs that the curtain 
 shall descend on reproductions of several pictures in the 
 "Eastlake's Series" of prints of Italian brigands. It is 
 probable that the inspiration for the play came from this 
 series in much the same manner as we are led to believe 
 
that the inspiration for Douglas Jerrold's "Rent-Day" 
 came from Sir David Wilkie's pictures of the "Rent-Day" 
 and "Distraining for Rent". (See editorial introduction 
 to French's acting edition of "Rent-Day" in No. xxviii of 
 French's Standard Drama.) 
 
 The mention of "Rent-Day" leads naturally to the 
 work of Douglas Jerrold, (1803-1857) whose "Black-Eyed 
 Susan; or, All in the Downs", adapted from the old ballad 
 of the same title, made Elliston's fortune again, at the 
 Surrey, after his ejectment from Drury Lane, for it had 
 no less than 400 performances in the year it was first pro- 
 duced, (1829). The play came out definitely as a "Melo- 
 Drama" (Genest, IX: p. 515), and was later published as 
 "a nautical Drama". "Black-Eyed Susan" tells the story of 
 a young sailor, William, and his wife, Susan. William has 
 been at sea for a year, and during that time, Susan has 
 lived with Dame Hatley in a cottage belonging to her 
 (Susan's) uncle. The play opens with a scene in which 
 Dame Hatley is being distrained for rent at the order of 
 the uncle. About this time, William's ship comes to port, 
 and William, as he comes off the ship, is just in time to 
 save his wife from an attack by several ruffians. He 
 brings her to an inn where she is insulted by the now in- 
 toxicated Captain Crosstree, commander of William's ves- 
 sel. The scene that results follows: 
 
 "(Music. CROSSTREE seizes SUSAN; she breaks away from him, 
 and runs off, U. E. L.; he follows and drags her back, L., and, 
 as he throws her round to R. H., she shrieks.) Enter WIL- 
 LIAM, with drawn cutlass, SAILORS and GIRLS, U. E. L. 
 
 WILLIAM. Susan! and attacked by buccaneers! Die! (Strikes 
 CROSSTREE with cutlass; throws him around to L. H.; he 
 is caught by SEAWEED. SUSAN rushes up to WILLIAM, 
 and falls at his feet). 
 
 OMNES. The Captain! 
 
 '(SAILORS, PLOUGHSHARE, RUSTICS. Male and female form 
 a group). 
 
 For this assault on his captain, William is court mar- 
 tialled and sentenced to be hanged at the yard-arm. The 
 third scene of the second act is a good example of the way 
 in which these nautical melodramas were brought to a 
 conclusion: 
 
 "SCENE : The forcastle qf the ship. Discovered, the PARSON 
 MASTER-AT-ARMS, with a drawn sword under his arm. WIL- 
 LIAM, without his neckcloth. MARINES, OFFICER OF MARINES, 
 ADMIRAL, CAPTAIN, LIEUTS., and MIDSHIPMEN. A SAILOR 
 
 47 
 
standing at one of the Forecastle guns, with the lockstring in his 
 hand. A platform extends from the cat-head to the fore rigging. 
 Slow Music. 
 
 MASTER-AT-ARMS. Prisoner, are you prepared? 
 
 WILLIAM. Bless you! Bless yo.u all 
 
 (Mounts the platform, when CAPT. CROS'SEREE rushes on 
 
 from the gangway, 3 E. L. ADMIRAL crossing into R. corner.) 
 
 CROSSTREE. Hold! Hold! 
 
 ADMIRAL. Captain Crosstree retire, sir, retire. 
 
 CROSS. Never! If the prisoner be executed, he is a murdered 
 man. I alone am the culprit 'twas I who would have dis- 
 honored him. 
 
 ADM. This cannot plead here he struck a superior officer. 
 
 CROSS. No. 
 
 ALL. No. 
 
 CROSS. He saved my life ; I had written for his discharge villany 
 has kept back the document 'tis here, dated back. When 
 William struck me, he was not the King's sailor I was not 
 his officer. 
 
 ADM. (taking the paper Music) He is free 
 
 (The SEAMEN give three cheers. WILLIAM leaps from the 
 
 platform SUSAN is brought on by CAPTAIN CROSSTREE 3 
 
 E. L. H.)" 
 
 This scene with all its lack of probability, all its un- 
 naturalness, played rapidly, as it should be played, could 
 not fail to strike a responsive chord in the hearts of a 
 popular audience. This scene- is typical of most of the 
 play, and there is little wonder, therefore, that it was so 
 successful and that it continued to draw until well down 
 toward the end of the century. True, its dialogue is un- 
 convincing; there is plenty of theatrical clap-trap; much 
 pulling at the heart strings, and a final happy ending; 
 but it proved singularly attractive for many years. 
 
 The situation of distraining for rent that Jerrold had 
 used in the opening scenes of "Black-Eyed Susan" became 
 the main situation in his next important play, "The Rent- 
 Day", which appeared three years later. This, he called 
 simply "a domestic drama", and domestic it is as was 
 "Luke the Laborer". The first act gives promise of a good 
 comedy of manners, but the play soon descends to out 
 and out melodrama. It is the precursor of what has been 
 called the melodrama of one big scene that type of melo- 
 drama in which, although there are a number of minor 
 climaxes, each one of which has its separate thrill, the 
 emphasis is placed on one scene to which all the others 
 lead. In this play, there is an attempt at murder, the victim 
 
 AQ 
 
being saved by Rachel, who overhears the plotting while 
 she is hiding from the pursuit of one of the robbers. 
 Found later in the victim's chamber, whither she had gone 
 to warn him, she is accused of infidelity to her husband 
 who casts her off, only to be compelled to beg her for- 
 giveness w^hen Grantley, absentee landlord and intended 
 victim of fhe plot, explains Rachel's presence in his room. 
 The main scene, however, immediately precedes the ex- 
 panation. In it the catastrophe is averted by an acci- 
 dent. As Martin, the householder, struggles with Bull- 
 frog, the agent, for the possession of an arm chair that 
 belonged to the former's grandfather, the back of the 
 chair breaks off and a shower of golden guineas, notes, 
 and papers falls to the floor. One of the papers is the will 
 of the old man, and it bequeathes the money to his two 
 grandsons. The rent is then paid. The reason for the 
 harshness of Crumba, the steward, is made known, and 
 after all the explanations are made, the steward and the 
 two robbers, former 'pals' of his, are pardoned, and all 
 ends happily. 
 
 This play shows a considerable increase in power over 
 Jerrold's "Black-Eyed Susan". The dialogue is better, 
 the characterization is stronger, and the plot is worked 
 out more satisfactorily, but there is still a striving for 
 effects, dependence on theatrical tricks and emotional 
 sentimentality that prevents us from calling the play 
 really successful. Besides all this, the play strongly sug- 
 gests propaganda. It seems, judging from the nature of 
 Jerrold, that this play is an early tract against absentee 
 landlords and the evil practice of distraining for rent, 
 abuses that were not changed till years afterwards. 
 
 The year 1828, also saw the production of Buckstone's 
 "Presumptive Evidence; or, Murder Will Out", a "domestic 
 drama", based as the title indicates on circumstantial 
 evidence. The victim of the evidence is saved, however, 
 by the confession of the actual murderer at the very end 
 of the play. In the same year, Milner's version of M. 
 Auber's "La Muette de Portici" was acted under the title 
 of "Masaniello; or the Dumb Girl of Portici", a melo- 
 drama based on the theme of seduction and revenge. It 
 has much that is spectacular, including an eruption of 
 Vesuvius, as well as many sentimental passages and a 
 great deal of dumb play. 
 
 Little that was new in the matter of melodrama appear- 
 
 49 
 
ed in the thirties. The forms of this type of play had, 
 by this time, been fairly well defined. Romantic melo- 
 dramas, historical melodramas, domestic melodramas, and 
 nautical melodramas had followed each other during the 
 first thirty years of the nineteenth century, and, although 
 there seemed to be a preponderence of the last two kinds 
 in the next ten years, there were still representatives of 
 the former two classes being produced and proving at- 
 tractive. Consequently, it seems necessary only to men- 
 tion those examples, of melodrama in these years that, 
 by reason of their success or their situations, added some- 
 thing to the old type 
 
 In 1830, Pocock produced "The Robber's Wife", an ex- 
 citing melodrama in two acts based on the idea of the re- 
 appearance of a man thought dead. He finds his daughter 
 married to his worst enemy, a robber and a counterfeiter. 
 The end of the play is most exciting. The stage is dark, 
 and the only light during the scene is from a dark lan- 
 tern. A murder and a robbery is planned, both of which 
 are averted by Rose who has recognized in the intended 
 victim her father and is willing to cross her husband's 
 purposes in order to save her parent. The play is a do- 
 mestic drama, in which Pocock's stagecraft is exhibited 
 in its best form for the play is well constructed and the 
 situations which close each scene lead naturally to the 
 'big scene' with which the play ends. 
 
 Fitzball, the same year, turned his attention again 
 to an historical theme, and on May first, "Hofer, the Tell 
 of Tyrol", called variously "an historical drama", "a Grand 
 Historical Opera", and "a melodrama" appeared. It fol- 
 lows closely the story o the revolt of the Tyrolese in 
 1810, and in true melodramatic fashion, provides narrow 
 escapes from death, horrors, battles and burning houses, 
 and ends with the death, in most heroic style, of Andreas 
 Hofer, the hero of the play. 
 
 In 1833, Fitzball achieved a wonderful success with 
 his melodrama, "Jonathan Bradford; or, the Murder at 
 the Wayside Inn". This play, we are told, ran 400 nights, 
 and was often revived afterwards. The plot concerns a 
 murder by an Irish highwayman Macraisy. Jonathan 
 Bradford, the inn-keeper, outside of whose inn the murder 
 der takes place, on hearing a scuffle, comes out to learn 
 the cause and finds only Hayes lying mortally wounded 
 with a knife beside him. In order to protect himself, 
 
 50 
 
Macraisy, who is concealed, reports the dying words of 
 Hayes as Bradford stands over him holding the bloody 
 knife he has picked up: "A light ah! my purse that 
 knife in his hands! my assassin, then he pardon- 
 Bradford is arrested, and after making his escape, is re- 
 taken and about to be executed when Macraisy, pale and 
 bleeding, comes in, confesses the deed, and then dies. 
 There are parts of the play in which Fitzball attempted 
 blank verse; but there it nothing of poetic power in it, 
 for it would read at least as well, written in prose. 
 
 Milner's "Mazeppa; or, the Wild Horse of Tartary", 
 based on Byron's poem, was performed, for the first time, 
 at Astley's Amphitheatre, in 1833. This was a return to 
 the type of play called by some the 'hippodrama'. In 
 "Mazeppa", the most spectacular part of the play is per- 
 formed by a wild horse to whose back Mazeppa is tied. 
 Through four scenes of the play the horse, gallops with 
 his human burden, and, in the midst of a terrific thunder 
 storm, falls exhausted, and Mazeppa is rescued. He 
 proves to be the son of the Khan of the Tartars, succeeds 
 in frustrating those who would murder his father, leads 
 an army against the Poles, and rescues the daughter of 
 the Castellan. The play is filled with spectacular scenes, 
 gorgeous processions, and thrilling situations. Fifteen 
 scenes in three acts are the record of the changes for 
 this play. One of them is a panorama scene, the earliest 
 example in this type of play that I have discovered. At 
 the opening of Act II, the directions provide for a "Mov- 
 ing Panorama of the Course of the Dneiper River, run- 
 ning from L. U. E. to R. U. E. on the flat is seen its 
 banks, with a tract of wild country tremendous storm of 
 thunder and lightning, hail and rain." A little later, the 
 direction is "the panorama begins to move." Apparently, 
 from what follows, for Mazeppa, tied to the horse, is on 
 the stage throughout the entire scene, a treadmill ar- 
 rangement must have been provided for the scene. It 
 reminds one of the device used so effectively in our day in 
 "Ben Hur". 
 
 About this same time, Bulwer Lytton's story of 
 "Eugene Aram" was adapted for the stage by Moncrieff. 
 In the play, Moncrieff used the same methods as those 
 who, before him, had appropriated Scott, Cooper, and other 
 novelists to their purposes. He employed the actual words 
 of the novel and selected only those parts in which the 
 
 51 
 
emphasis was placed on the exciting or the horrible. 
 Music and songs were added and the Surrey Theatre was 
 the scene of the initial performance. 
 
 In 1835, Fitzball wrote a melodrama which he called 
 "The Note Forger." Brasstoun, the hero of the play, has 
 become a counterfeiter through association with Cress- 
 field, but rebels when Cressfield wants to marry his 
 daughter. Cressfield, in revenge, turns state evidence 
 and brings officers to Brasstoun's house where the coun- 
 terfeiting paraphernalia was kept. They manage to get 
 into the room, however, just after all the incriminating 
 evidence is destroyed. This scene where the officers arrive 
 at Brasstoun's home is typical of melodrama. There is 
 knocking at the door and loud demands that it be opened, 
 while the old man, with feverish haste, breaks the plates 
 used in making the notes; then comes the forcing of the 
 door, and, as it sways, the question comes almost to your 
 lips, "Will the door hold until the evidence is destroyed?" 
 With the crash of the door as it falls 'from the broken 
 hinges, the old man, all the plates gone, turns to confront 
 and confound Cressfield as he stands there by the side of 
 the officer in command. The play ends with a sword 
 combat between Brasstoun and Cressfield in which both 
 of the combatants are killed. The play, though improb- 
 able, shows Fitzball to be a craftsman of ability, a play- 
 wright who knew thoroughly all the tricks of the stage 
 and when to use them to most advantage. 
 
 History was invoked by George Almar, a minor dra- 
 matist of the period, in "The Battle of Sedgemoor; or, 
 the Days of Kirk and Monmouth", (1837), for the purpose 
 of producing a melodrama in which seduction and treach- 
 ery are made the mainsprings of a play replete with bom- 
 bast, music, songs, and dancing, topped off with a real 
 battle scene. The dialogue is well written, the play reads 
 well, and bears every indication of a good melodrama. 
 
 Almar's next venture that deserves mention is his 
 adaptation, for the Winter Garden, of "Oliver Twist," 
 into what he called "a serio-comic burletta in four acts". 
 Burletta it is not, no matter how far we may stretch the 
 term; but melodrama it is, as is Fitzball's "The Pilot" 
 previously noticed, which its author called "a nautical 
 burletta". Plays from the novels of Charles Dickens are 
 not ordinarily melodramas, but "Oliver Twist" makes use 
 of every one of the elements we find in the most melo- 
 
dramatic melodramas. I can recall vividly the terror that 
 this play struck into my heart when I saw it a number 
 of years ago. The scenes in which Nancy is murdered 
 and Fagin and Sikes lose their lives are still very real to 
 me as I write these lines. No play definitely called melo- 
 drama has ever made a more decided impression than this 
 terrifying play. Even to this day, in the stock houses, 
 "Oliver Twist," is still a regular number in the repertory. 
 And yet, in 1838, Macready told Forster and Dickens, "of 
 the utter impracticability of "Oliver Twist" for any dra- 
 matic purpose." (Macready, "Diaries," p. 462). 
 
 When we speak of the year 1838, in the drama, we 
 think of Bulwer Lytton's "The Lady of Lyons," the first 
 of his three famous plays. This play and "Richelieu," 
 which came the next year are without a doubt melodra- 
 matic, and if 'illogical tragedy' were the only touchstone 
 of melodrama, there would be no hesitation in calling them 
 melodramas. They are, also, sensational, bombastic, im* 
 probable anl filled with false sentiment. The "Lady of 
 Lyons" resembles a sentimental, romantic comedy, and 
 "Richelieu" approximates a chronicle play. Bulwer, him- 
 self, must have had some doubts about the exact 
 category in which to place them, for he called 
 both of them by the entirely colorless designation, 
 'play', although when he came to writ'e a real com- 
 edy like "Money", he had no hesitation in calling it a 
 'comedy'. No less a person than Alfred Bunn, three years 
 before that time manager of the patent theatres, writ- 
 ing on August 30, 1838, says, "Saw Charles Kean perform 
 CLAUDE MELNOTTE in Sir E. Bulwer's drama of THE 
 LADY OF LYONS. A more red-hot, Port St. Martin, 
 Surrey, Coburg or what-you-will melodrama was never 
 seen. It contains amidst some good situations unskill- 
 fully worked up, and amongst some admirable ideas bom- 
 bastically expressed, as much sheer nonsense as was ever 
 palmed on reader or spectator." (Bunn, "The Stage; 
 Both Before and Behind the Curtain", etc., Vol. II: pp. 
 139-140.) Perhaps, Bunn's criticism was due in no small 
 measure to the manner in which it was acted by Kean, 
 who was disposed to exaggerate in his acting; nevertheless, 
 his remark gives us a competent contemporary opinion of 
 the nature of the play, and, if there was no other reason in 
 the play itself, furnishes us with grounds for including 
 it in the list of melodramas. 
 
 53 
 
"Richelieu", which depends for its action on a letter that 
 passes through many hands before reaching its destina- 
 tion, ought to have been a tragedy, but is not. There are 
 plots and counterplots galore in the play, and Richelieu 
 is near death several times, but finally just as we are 
 lead to believe that all his power is gone, the King, now 
 at a loss to know how to act in an emergency when con- 
 spiracy is rampant, reinstates Richelieu, and as his power 
 returns, his bodily strength comes back to him, and the 
 play ends with the Cardinal as supreme as he was at the 
 opening of the play. The whole play depends for its suc- 
 cess on thrills, bombast, suspense, surprise, and improb- 
 able but very interesting situations. And through it all 
 stalks Richelieu, but only a shadow, as compared to the 
 great Cardinal of the mid-seventeenth century. 
 
 These plays bring us to the end of our period. No 
 new idea in melodrama appeared after this. Starting 
 with "A Tale of Mystery," melodrama had had added to 
 it, from time to time, romantic plots, plots of terror and 
 mystery, domestic and nautical plots. The music, which, 
 at the beginning, had been an essential part of melodrama, 
 in many cases, by the end of the thirties, had become a 
 negligible quantity in the plays of the species. It had 
 drawn its plots from all sources; it had used novels and 
 tales and old dramas as well as history and current events. 
 It had employed horses, dogs, monkeys, and birds in the 
 working out of its plots. It had stopped at no improb- 
 ability, but had depended on rapidity of action and the 
 stage carpenters' ability to bridge over these parts that 
 seemed untrue to nature. It had made use of a few 
 situations over and over again: robbers, foundlings, un- 
 natural brothers, long lost relatives, and victims of cir- 
 cumstantial evidence, either singly or in combination, 
 were the motive power of nine tenths of these plays. In 
 the hands of a new group of playwrights, whose work 
 began about the year 1840, the old situations and types of 
 character continued to be used, and the species, in all 
 its forms, has not ceased to attract down to the present 
 time. It is true, that the spoken melodrama has given 
 place largely to the picture melodrama, in our day, but, 
 for the ordinary class of people who attended the popu- 
 lar priced theatres in other days, the 'movie' melodrama 
 has as strong an appeal as did the old 'blood and thunder' 
 play of the nineteenth century. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
BIOGRAPHY 
 
 Collections of Plays. 
 
 The Amateur Theatre, a Collection of Plays, 13 vols. Edited and 
 Published by T. H. Lacy, London., N. D. 
 
 The British Theatre: a Collection of the Most Approved Tragedies, 
 Comedies, Operas, and Farces, 2 vols. London, 1828. 
 
 The British Theatre, or, a Collection of Plays, etc. Mrs. Inchbald, 
 25 vols. London, 1808. 
 
 The British Theatre, 31 vols. London, 1791-1796. 
 
 The English Drama, 27 vols. London, 1818. 
 
 French's Acting Edition of plays, various dates, Samuel French, 
 New York. 
 
 Lacy's Acting Edition of Plays, Lacy, London, various dates. 
 
 The Modern British Drama, 5 vols. London, 1811. 
 
 The Modern Theatre, Mrs. Inchbald, 10 vols., London, 1811. 
 
 The New English Drama, with Prefatory Remarks, etc., W. Ox- 
 berry, London., N. D. 
 
 Plays, a collection, 4 vols. various dates. 
 
 General Works. 
 
 Archer, William, English Dramatists of To-day, Boston, 1882. 
 
 Archer, William, About the Theatre, London, 1886. 
 
 Biographia Dramatica, Baker, Reed, and Jones, London, 1812. 
 
 Baker, H. B., History of the London Stage and its Famous Play- 
 ers (1576-1903), London, 1904. 
 
 Beers, Henry A., A History of English Romanticism in the Eigh- 
 teenth Century, New York, 1899. 
 
 Boulton, W. B., The Amusements of Old London, 2 vols. London, 
 1901. 
 
 Brooke, C. F. Tucker, The Tudor Drama, Boston, 1911. 
 
 Cook, Dutton, Nights at the Play, A view of the English Stage, 
 2 vols. London, 1888. < 
 
 Doran, Dr. (John), Annals of the English Stage from Thomas 
 Betterton to Edmund Kean, 2 vols. New York, 1865. 
 
 Elton, Oliver, A Survey of English Literature, 1780-1830, 2 vols. 
 London, 1912. 
 
 Filon, Augustin, The English Stage, London and New York, 1897. 
 
 Fitzgerald, Percy (Hethering), A New History of the English 
 , Stage from the Restoration to the Liberty of the Theatres, 
 2 vols. London, 1882. 
 
 Frost, Thomas, Circus Life and Circus Celebrities, London, 1881. 
 
 Genest, John, Some Account of the English Stage from the Restora- 
 tion in 1660 to 1830, 10 vols. Bath, 1832. 
 
 Hamilton, Clayton, The Theory of the Theatre, New York, 1910. 
 
 Hastings, Charles, The Theatre, Its Development in France and 
 England, etc. London, 1901. 
 
Hazlitt, William, A View of the English Stage, London, 1906. 
 
 Hogarth, George, Memoirs of the Musical Drama. London, 1836. 
 
 Mason, James Frederick, The Melodrama in France from the Revo- 
 lution to the Beginning of the Romantic Drama, 1791-1830, 
 Baltimore, 1912. 
 
 Matthews, J. Brander, Development of Drama, New York, 1908. 
 French Dramatists of the Nineteenth Century, New York, 
 1910. A Study of the Drama, New York, 1910. 
 
 Nettleton, George Henry, English Drama of the Restoration and 
 the Eighteenth Century, New York, 1914. 
 
 Nicholson, Watson, The Struggle for a Free Stage in London, 
 New York, 1906. 
 
 Oliver, D. E., The English Stage, its Origin and Modern Develop- 
 ments, London, 1912. 
 
 Price, W. T., The Technique of the Drama, New York, 1892. 
 
 Schelling, F. E., Elizabethan Drama, 1558-1642, 2 vols Boston and 
 New York, 1908. English Drama, London and New York, 
 1914. English Literature During the Lifetime of Shakes- 
 peare, New York, 1910. 
 
 Symons, Arthur, The Romantic Movement in English Literature. 
 
 Talfourd, T. Noon, Critical and Miscellaneous Writings, Boston, 
 1857. 
 
 Thorndike, Ashley H., Tragedy, Boston, 1908. 
 
 Walker, Hugh, The Literature of the Victorian Era, Cambridge, 
 1910. 
 
 Ward, Adolphus W., A History of English Dramatic Literature to 
 the Death of Queen Anne, 3 vols. revised, London, 1890. 
 
 Memoirs, Reminiscences, etc. 
 
 Bulwer, The Life of Edward, First Lord of Lytton, by his Grand- 
 son, the Earl of Lytton, 2 vols. London, 1913. 
 
 Bunn, Alfred, The Stage, Both Before and Behind the Curtain, 2 
 vols. Philadelphia, 1840. 
 
 Burney, Francis, The Diary and Letters of, ed. by Sarah Chaun- 
 cey Woolsey, 3 vols. Boston, 1890. 
 
 Gibber, An Apology for the Life of Mr. Colley Cobber. New Ed. with 
 notes by R. W. Lowe, 2 vols. London, 1889. 
 
 Colman: Memoirs of the Colman Family, including their Corres- 
 pondence, etc., by Richard Brinsley Peake, 2 vols. London, 1841. 
 
 Dibdin: The Reminiscences of Thomas Dibdin of the Theatres 
 Royal, 2 vols. London, 1827. 
 
 Elliston: Memoirs of Robert William Elliston, Comedian, by 
 George Raymond, 2 vols. London, 1846. 
 
 Garrick: Memoirs of David Garrick, Esq. etc., by Thomas Da vies, 
 4th. ed., London, 1784. 
 
 Kemble: Reminiscences of the Life of John Philip Kemble, in- 
 cluding a History of the Stage from the Time of Garrick to 
 the Present Period, James Boaden, 2 vols. London, 1826. 
 
 Kelly: Reminiscences of Michael Kelly of the King's Theatre, 
 etc., 2 vols. London, 1826. 
 
 Macready's Reminiscences and Selections from his Diaries, and 
 Letters, ed. by Sir Frederick Pollock, New York, 1875. 
 
 Siddons: Memoirs of Mrs. S'iddons, etc., by James Boaden, 2 vols. 
 London, 1827. 
 
 Southey: Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, ed. by 
 John Wood Warter, 4 vols. London, 1856. 
 
Miscellaneous. 
 
 A Forgotten Creditor of the English Stage, by Jos. E. Gillet, 19th. 
 
 Cent. 71: 783. 
 
 The Melodrama, Harry James Smith, Atlantic Monthly, 99: 320. 
 Parliamentary Papers, vol. 140, Index to Minutes of Evidence of 
 
 the Select Committee of the House of Commons on Dramatic 
 
 Literature, 1832. 
 Report from the Select Committee of Dramatic Literature with 
 
 the Minutes of Evidence, Ordered by The House of Commons 
 
 to be printed, 2 August, 1832. 
 In addition, a number of the Magazines and the Papers of the 
 
 period have been examined. 
 
 A Partial List of Melodramas written between 1800 and 1840. 
 
 This list is arranged chronologically, the plays written by a 
 
 particular playwright being grouped under his name. 
 
 1800 Boaden, J., The Voice of Nature; Geisweiler, Marie, Crime 
 from Ambition. 
 
 1801 Lewis, M. G., Adelmorn, the Outlaw. 
 
 1802 Dibdin, T., II Bondocani, or The Caliph Robber; Holcroft, T., 
 A Tale of Mystery; Lewis, M. G., Alfonso, King of Castile; 
 Reynolds, F., The Exile. 
 
 1803 Boaden, The Maid of Bristol; Cobb, J., Wife of Two Hus- 
 bands; Dimond, W., The Hero of the North; Gunning, Miss, 
 Wife of Two Husbands; Lewis, M. G., The Harper's Daugh- 
 ter from his The Minister, taken from Schiller's Kabale und 
 Liebe; Reynolds, The Caravan; or, The Driver and his Dog. 
 
 1804 Anonymous, The Siege of Gibraltar; Baylis, J., Lodoiska 
 and The Mysteries of Udolpho; Dibdin, Guilty or Not Guilty, 
 and Valentine and Orson ; Dimond, The Hunter of the Alps. 
 
 1805 Elliston, W., The Venetian Outlaw; Farley, J., Aggression; 
 Holcroft, The Lady of the Rock; Lewis, Rugantino; Powell, 
 J., The Venetian Outlaw, His Country's Friend; Skeffingham, 
 Lt., Sleeping Beauty. (The plays by Elliston, Lewis, and 
 Powell during this year were all adapted from Lewis' The 
 Bravo of Venice that he had taken from the German.) 
 
 1806 Dimond, Adrian and Orilla; or, A Mother's Vengeance; 
 Holland, W. A., Augustus and Gulielmus; Hook, Theodore, 
 Tekeli; or, The Siege of Montgatz. 
 
 1807 Hook, The Fortress; Kenney, Jas., The Blind Boy, and El- 
 la Rosenberg; Lewis, Adelgitha; or, The Fruits of a Single 
 Error, and Wood Daemon. 
 
 1808 Dibdin, Forest of Herrnanstadt ; Hook, Siege of St. Quentin; 
 Kemble, C., The Wanderer; or, The Rights of Hospitality; 
 Lewis, Venoni; or, The Novice of St. Marks,(from the French); 
 Moser, Jos., Nourmahal, Empress of Hindostan. 
 
 1809 Dibdin, The Harper's Son and Duke's Daughter, (See also 
 1803); Dimond, The Foundling of the Forest; Kemble, The 
 Point of Honour; Eyre, The Vintagers. 
 
 1810 Arnold, S. J., Plots!; Dibdin, The Lady of the Lake; Di- 
 mond, Doubtful Son; or, Secrets of a Palace; and Gustavus 
 Va^a; Grosette, H. M., Raymond and Agnes; Kemp, Jos., 
 Siege of Isca; Reynolds, Free Knights; or, The Edict of Char- 
 lemagne. 
 
1811 Dibdin, America, and Blood Will Have Blood; DimoVid, The 
 Peasant Boy, and Royal Oak; Eyre, E. J., The Lady of the 
 Lake; Grossette, Twenty Years Ago; Kean, The Cottage 
 Foundling; Kemble, Kamchatka; or, The Slave's Tribute; 
 Lewis, Knight and Wood Daemon; or, The Clock Strikes 
 One, One O'Clock; or, The Knight and the Wood Daemon, 
 both altered from The Wood Daemon(1807), Timour the Tar- 
 tar; Morton, T., The Knight of Snowdown, from The Lady 
 of the Lake; Pocock, I., Harry Le Roy,(Burletta) and Twenty 
 Years Ago. 
 
 1812 Arnold, Devil's Bridge; Cross, False Friend; or, The Assas- 
 sin of the Rocks; Reynolds, The Virgin of the Sun; Sher- 
 idan, T., The Russian. 
 
 1813 Anonymous, Aladdin; or, the. Wonderful Lamp; Dog Gelert, 
 and Illusion; or, The Trances of Noutjahad; Pocock, For 
 England, Ho! and The Miller and His Men. 
 
 1814 Anonymous, Black Princess; Arnold, Woodman's Hut; or, 
 tire Burning Forest; Dimond, Orphan of the Castle; or, the 
 Black Banner; Harris, H., Forest of Bondy; or, the Dog of 
 Montargis. 
 
 1815 Arnold, Charles the Bold; or, the Siege of Nantz; and The 
 Maid and the Magpie; or, Which is the Thief?; Dibdin, Mag- 
 pie; or, the Maid of Palaiseau; Pocock, John Du Bart; or, 
 the Voyage to Poland, and Zembuca; or, the Net-maker and 
 his Wife. 
 
 1816 Bell, Watchword; or, the Quinto Gate; Dibdin, Pitcairn's 
 Island, The Sicilian, and The Silver Swan; Dimond, Broken 
 Sword; Maturin, C. R., Bertram; or, the Castle of St. Aldo- 
 brand; Morton, T., The Slave; Terry, D., Guy Mannering; or, 
 the Gypsy's Prophecy; Thompson, Oberon's Oath; or, the 
 Paladin and the Princess. 
 
 1817 Anonymous, Fazio; or, the Italian Wife; Dibdin, Constan- 
 tine and Valeria, The Invisible Witness; or, the Chapel in the 
 Wood, Khouli Khan, The Murdered Guest (Fatal Curiosity), 
 and Zapolya; Dimond, The Conquest of Taranto; or, St. 
 Clara's Eve; Hamilton, Elphi Bey; or, the Arab's Faith; 
 Pocock, Ravens; or, the Force of Conscience and Robinson 
 Crusoe; or, the' Bold Buccaneer; Sheil, R., The Apostate; 
 Smith, O., Lolonois; or, the Buccaniers of 1660; Soane, G., 
 Falls of Clyde and The Innkeeper's Daughter; Tobin, Fisher- 
 man's Hut. 
 
 1818 Anonymous, Mountain Chief and The Turret Clock; Dib- 
 din, The Reprobate; Dimond, Bride of Abydos; Kemble, S. 
 and H., Flodden Field; Milner, H. M., Barmecide; or, the Fatal 
 Offering; Pocock, Rob Roy Macgregor; or, Auld Lang Syne; 
 Raymond, The Castle of Paluzzi; or, The Extorted Oath; Rey- 
 nolds, Illustrious Traveller; or, the Forges of Kanzel; Soane, 
 Rob Roy, the Gregarach; Walker, Sigesmar, the Switzer. 
 
 1819 Abbott, Wm., Swedish Patriotism; or, the Signal Fire; Cal- 
 craft, J. W., Bride of Lammermoor; Dibdin, Bride of Lam- 
 mermoor, Douglas, Heart of Midlothian, Lily of St. Leonard's; 
 or, the Heart of Mid-Lothian, The Prophecy; or, the Giant 
 Spectre; and Zuma; or, the Tree of Health; Dimond, Heart 
 of Mid-Lothian; or, the Lily of St. Leonard's; Milner, The 
 Jew of Lubeck; or, the Heart of a Father; Phillips, R., Hero- 
 ine; or, a Daughter's Courage; Soane, The Dwarf of Naples, 
 
 4 
 

 and Self -Sacrifice; or, the Maid of the Cottage; Terry, D., 
 The Lily of St. Leonard's; or, the Heart of Mid-Lothian. 
 
 1820 Anonymous, Ivanhoe; or, the Knight Templar; Dibdin, 
 Belisarius, Ivanhoe; or, the Jew's Daughter, and The Ruffian 
 Boy; Farley, J., Battle of Bothwell; Moncrieff, W. T., Ivan- 
 hoe; or, the Jewess; Mortor>, T., Henri Quatre; or, Paris in 
 the Olden Time; O'Keeffe, (altered) Iroquois; or, the Cana- 
 dian Basket Maker; Planche, J. R., The Vampire; or, the 
 Bride of the Isles; Soane, The Hebrew; Terry, Antiquary; 
 Walker, C. E., The Warlock of the Glen. 
 
 1821 Dibdin, Fate of Calais, Kenilworth, and Sir Arthur; Fitz- 
 ball, Father and Son; or, the Rock of La Charbonniere. 
 
 1822 Dibdin, Montrose, and The Pirate; Dimond, Tale of Other 
 Times; or, Which is the Bride; Elliston(?), Two Galley Slaves; 
 Fitzball, The Fortunes of Nigel; or, James I and his Times, 
 and Joan of Arc; or, the Maid of Orleans; Pocock, Montrose; 
 or, the Children of the Mist. 
 
 1823 Anonymous, Augusta; or, the Blind Girl; Dibdin, The Chi- 
 nese Sorcerer; Ebsworth, Rosalie; Fitzball, Peveril of the 
 Peak; or, the Days of King Charles II; Jerrold, D., The Witch 
 of Derncleugh (Guy Mannering) ; Moncrieff, The Cataract 
 of the Ganges; or, {he Rajah's Daughter; PlancKe, Cortez; or, 
 the Conquest of Mexico; Terry, Nigel; or, the Crown Jewels. 
 
 1824 Anonymous, The Castellan's Oath, and Presumption; or, 
 the Fate of Frankenstein; Fitzball, Der Freischutz; Milner, 
 Man and Monster; or, the Fate of Frankenstein; Soane, Der 
 Freischutz. 
 
 1825 Anonymous, Faustus, and Jocko, the Brazilian Monkey; 
 Dibdin, Emmiline of Hungary, and Peacock's Feather; or, the 
 Grand Caravan; Fitzball, The Pilot; Milner, Masaniello; or, 
 the Dumb Girl of Portici; Planche, The Caliph and the Cade; 
 Soane, Masaniello, the Fisherman of Naples. 
 
 1826 Anonymous, Knights of the Cross; or, the Hermit's Prop- 
 hecy; Buckstone, J. B., Luke the Laborer; Fitzball, Floating 
 Beacon; or, the Norwegian Wreckers; Planche, Oberon; or, 
 the Elf King's Oath; Pocock, Peveril of the Peak, and Wood- 
 stock. 
 
 1827 Anonymous, The Goldsmith; Haines, J. T., The Idiot Wit- 
 ness; or, A Tale of Blood; Macfarren, Bby of Santillane; or, 
 Gil Bias and the Robbers; Milner, The Gambler's Fate; or, 
 Thirty Years of a Gambler's L fe. 
 
 1828 Farrell, J., The Dumb Girl of Genoa; or, the Bandit Mer- 
 chant; Jerrold, Ambrose Gwinett, (pub.) and Fifteen Years 
 of a Drunkard's Life; Peake, R. B., The Bottle Imp; Planche, 
 Charles, the XII; Reynolds, Edward, the Black Prince; Thomp- 
 son, C. P., Dumb Savoyard and His Monkey. 
 
 1829 Anonymous, Thierna-na-oge; or, the Prince of the Lakes; 
 Buckstone, Bear Hunters; or, the Fatal Ravine, and Presump- 
 tive Evidence; or, Murder will Out; Fitzball, Devil's Elixir; 
 or, the Shadowless Man; Jerrold, Black-eyed S'usan; or, 'All 
 in the Downs', and The Tower of Lochlain; Lacy, Maid of 
 Judah; or, the Knights Templars: Planche, The Brigand. 
 
 1830 Anonymous, Ninnetta; or, the Maid of Palaiseau (See, Maid 
 and Magpie); Jerrold, Devil's Ducat; or, the Gift of Mammon, 
 and the Mutiny at Nore; Pocock, The Robber's Wife; Ray- 
 mond, Robert the Devil. 
 
1831 Milner, Mazeppa; or, the Wild Horse of Tartary. 
 
 1832 Bernard, S., Indian Girl; Fitzball, Hofer, the Tell of the 
 Tyrol; Jerrold, The Rent-Day; Moncrieff, Eugene Aram; 
 or, Saint Robert's Cave; Webster, B. J., Paul Clifford, The 
 Highwayman. 
 
 1833 Fitzball, Jonathan Bradford; or, the Murder at the Way- 
 side Inn, and King of the Mist; Knowles, S., The Wife; A 
 Tale of Mantua; Pocock, The Ferry and the Mill; Serle, T. J., 
 The Yeoman's Daughter. 
 
 1834 Almar, G., Oliver Twist; Buckstone, Agnes de Vere; or, 
 the Wife's Revenge; Pocock, King Arthur and the Knights 
 of the Round Table, a Christmas Equestrian Spectacle. 
 
 1835 Fitzball, The Note-Forger; Jerrold, The Hazard of the Die; 
 Oxenford, J., The Dice of Death. 
 
 1836 
 
 1837 Almar, The Battle of S'edgemoor; or, the Days of Kirk 
 and Monmouth: Dibdin, Suil Dhuv, the Coiner; Pocock, Al- 
 fred the Great; or, the Enchanted Standard. 
 
 1838 Lover, S., Rory O'More; Lytton, Bulwer, The Lady of 
 Lyons; Rayner, B. F., The Dumb Boy of Manchester. 
 
 1839 Lytton, Richelieu; or, the Conspiracy; Stirling, E., Jane 
 Lomax; or, a Mother's Crime; Talfourd, T. N., The Massacre 
 of Glencoe. (This is probably only another title for his Glen- 
 coe; or, the Fate of the Macdonalds, published the next year.) 
 
 Additional Plays. 
 
 No date appears on the following plays nor has it been pos- 
 sible for the writer to ascertain the dates elsewhere. 
 Anonymous, Bamfylde More Carew; or, the Gypsy of the Glen; 
 
 The Cornish Miners. 
 
 Dibdin, Abyssinia; or, British Travellers; Azim; Chapel in the 
 "Wood; The Duke and the Devil; The Enchanted Girdle; or, 
 Winki, the Witch, and the Ladies of Samarcand; Fatal Island; 
 Ferdinand, Count Fathom; Hermit of Mount Pausilippo; The 
 Italian Wife; Kedeth; or, the Hag of Poland; Knights of the 
 Lion; Knights of Rhodes; Llewellyn; Love, Hatred, and Re- 
 venge; Lucretia, the Abbot of San Martino; President and 
 Peasant's Daughter; Queen of Golconda; The Red Man and 
 the Savage; S'canderberg. 
 Fitzball, Carl Milhan. 
 
 Morton, John and Thomas, Writing on the Wall. 
 Morton, Thomas, Judith of Geneva. 
 Moser, J., The Barber of Pera. 
 Rannie, J., The Cottage on the Cliffs. 
 Rogers, W., Black Hugh, the Outlaw. 
 
 6 
 
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