by Annette Rubery | Nov 12, 2023 | Opera, Theatre History
"Little Whig" in the front garden of a law office on Bedford Row. I had read there was an important relic of John Vanbrugh’s Italian opera house in the Haymarket to be seen in Bedford Row. The first Haymarket theatre was co-managed, at least in the first...
by Annette Rubery | Oct 27, 2023 | Literature, Shakespeare, Theatre History
Shylock and Portia by Thomas Sully (1835), from Act IV, Scene 1 of The Merchant of Venice. Wikimedia Commons. Following some interesting conversations on Twitter, I thought I should try to put some thoughts down about The Merchant of Venice. I studied the play as a...
by Annette Rubery | Jan 6, 2023 | Theatre History, Woffington
Figure 1: Peg Woffington by John Lewis, oil on canvas, feigned oval 1753. National Portrait Gallery, London. On January 29th 1753 at Smock Alley playhouse in Dublin, Peg Woffington performed in drag as Lothario in Nicholas Rowe’s tragedy The Fair Penitent (Greene...
by Annette Rubery | Jan 20, 2022 | Book review, Theatre History
Dr Samuel Johnson by Joshua Reynolds, Wikimedia Commons. Celebrity was still a relatively new concept in the eighteenth century. Often seen as an ignoble version of ‘fame’ or ‘glory’, celebrity has its roots in Grub Street, where it flourished in the rich soil of...
by Annette Rubery | Dec 12, 2021 | Theatre History
David Garrick by Nathaniel Dance-Holland. © Folger Shakespeare Library. Pantomime has a long and complex history but was well underway as a form of popular entertainment in Britain by the middle of the eighteenth century. With its roots in commedia dell’arte, it...
