John Harrell as Dorimant, the Man of Mode
Jessika Williams as Margaret of Anjou (The American Shakespeare Center, Blackfriars Playhouse, 2018)
Friends and readers,
EC/ASECS 49th annual conference, held in Staunton, Virginia, October 25th to 27th, 2018, has just ended a rewarding two days of panels, papers and presentations on the theme of performance in 18th century art and life. We were next door to the Shenandoah Shakespeare company (“We do it with the lights on!”), now in its 30th year. Up the street is Mary Baldwin University (once all-women, now co-ed). On Friday night the Shenandoah troop performed George Etheridge’s The Man of Mode; or, Sir Fopling Flutter; on Saturday afternoon, Emma, as adapted from Jane Austen’s novel, by Emma Whipday; and on Saturday night, a rousing Shakespeare’s Richard III.
A scene from the current production of Richard III
Our plenary talk was by Dr Paul Menzer, on aspects of the history of performing ghosts and other problem characters and scenes in Shakespeare. He is Professor and Director at Mary Baldwin University of the MLitt/MFA Shakespeare and Performance graduate program and himself continually actively involved in the Shenandoah program as a director and writer. He and two colleagues, Profs Katherine Turner and Matt Davies also ran a panel on Fielding’s Tom Jones as a vehicle for discussing Shakespeare and 18th century performance, with special attention to Book XVI, Chapter 5 where Jones goes to see Garrick in Shakespeare’s Hamlet with Mrs Miller and Partridge.
David Tennant addressing Yorick’s skull (Gregory Doran 2008 production of Hamlet at the RSC)
On Saturday evening Maestro Robert Mayerovitch of Baldwin-Wallace College, performed a wondrous recital of two symphonies, one by Haydn and the other by Beethoven. The conference theme was performing the 18th century.
Since my paper was not on performance, but rather on Austen’s Bakhtinian use of dialogics in the tone and complex moving themes of Persuasion, I thought I’d download it separately on academia.edu before proceeding to a two blog-essay report on this entertaining conference.
Charlotte Smith, Elegiac Poems (9th edition, 1800)
Matthew Prior, Poems upon Several Occasions (1719)
The Presence of Charlotte Smith, Matthew Prior and George Crabbe in Austen’s Persuasion
George Crabbe, The Borough, and Tales (1812)
Ellen
Reveries Under the Sign of Austen, Two 