Introduction to New Brooms! (1776) and The Manager in Distress (1780): Two Preludes by George Colman the Elder
[In the following essay, Frazier argues that New Brooms! (written to assure London audiences that the English theater would survive David Garrick's retirement) and The Manager in Distress represent the highest qualities of the prelude.]
In 1776 David Garrick, retiring from a legendary career on the English stage, devised management of the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane to Richard Brinsley Sheridan and his co-managers. For the English stage this was perhaps the most significant event since the enactment of the Licensing Act in 1737. The loss of “little Roscius” from the stage was felt even at the time as the end of an era. Garrick had been preeminent as an actor, but was also famous as a manager, the manager, in fact, who championed the legitimate drama of Shakespeare against incursions by pantomime, dance, acrobatics, puppet shows, and other “mindless entertainments.” Garrick, Sheridan, and others connected with the stage recognized not only the opportunity to exploit the event but also the need to assure theater patrons that Garrick's retirement did not portend the demise of good acting and serious drama. Garrick distinguished himself in the traditional farewell epilogue after his final performance in June 1776; but that marked only his career's end, betokened only the death of an era, not a new beginning. To provide assurance that a great new era was indeed beginning, Sheridan, admitting that “whatever was said of the late manager, or of his successors, would come with a better grace from a third person than from the parties concerned,” commissioned George Colman the Elder to pen an occasional prelude for the opening of Drury Lane theater in September 1776.1
New Brooms! was Colman's theatrical device for introducing the promising young Sheridan in the lingering, already sentimentalized shadow of the great Garrick. The lines that Phelim, an aspiring Irish actor in the play, reads from Shakespeare's Richard the Second—
As in a theatre the eyes of min,
After a well-grac'd actor leaves the stage,
Are idly bint on him that inters next. …
have been duly cited as a “neat compliment” to Garrick;2 but an equally significant part of the passage is the last line, which completes an image of the problem of the prelude—how to make Sheridan and the other new managers look less Lilliputian, and how to do this without in any way diminishing the memory or reputation of Colman's friend of long standing, Garrick. The degree of success with which Colman pulls off this exercise in theatrical diplomacy is not just a measure of his dramatic sense and stage savvy, but is also an index of his understanding of theatrical affairs, the personalities involved, the anxieties of the audience, the significance of the occasion, and the complexity of the situation.
Colman's strategy is simple but effective. The bulk of the prelude focuses on various elements of the populace responding to this revolution in the theater. The first scene parades a medley of theater patrons entering Drury Lane for the first show of the new season, the first season without Garrick. The first few groups of patrons, oblivious of this momentous change in the theater, constitute a light burlesque of the philistines for whom vacant spectacle is the theater's main drawing card.3 Concern for the state of the theater without “Roscius” is first voiced by a sailor with his wench in tow. He talks in predictable nautical metaphors about “the launch of Old Drury!”: “The vessel has been careened and refitted, and a stout crew on board, I hear—but they have lost their old gallant commander—Davy for Ever! Davy for ever!”4 According to a theatrical correspondent to the Morning Post and Daily Advertiser, these “compliments paid to Garrick were uncommonly applauded.”5 Colman wisely attaches the reception of the new managers to Garrick's popularity by having the sailor wish “the new Jacks a fair wind, however—give them sea-room enough.”
The maritime metaphor is adopted by two other patrons entering the theater, Phelim and Catcall. This is an entertaining pair, Phelim a literal-minded Irishman hoping to become an actor, and Catcall a critic and “puffer” mourning the loss of Garrick and, of course, the ensuing death of the English stage. There is abundant wit in the dialogue, Phelim failing to comprehend Catcall's metaphors and Catcall humoring Phelim in his naive plan to succeed Garrick on the stage. But, beneath its comic surface, this dialogue addresses the central question of the prelude: what will the stage be like with Roscius gone? Colman cleverly uses this anxiety by creating in the prelude the very Dunciad theatrical world everyone fears, which becomes a dramatic foil against which Sheridan can shine. A reign of Dullness threatens as Garrick is succeeded in the theater by a swarm of hacks and dunces: stepping into Garrick's buskins is an inexperienced Irishman boasting that he can “rade you a spache, extimpore, as well as if [he] had studied it”; a French dancing master is hired to choreograph dance, pantomime, and spectacle, which will now dominate the stage; songs are composed by Sir Dulcimer Dunder, a deaf old songwriter; an author refuses to write anything but musical pieces, since “Plays and little Roscius left the stage together.” Catcall can only conclude, “I thought what the stage would come to.—Good night to poor Shakespeare!” His theatrical sacrilege proves to be the catalyst for the hero's setpiece on what is proper on the English stage; Sprightly restores dance, music, scenery, and pantomime to their proper role as mere adornment for the “dramatick pieces,” the “old sterling drama, the staple commodity of the theatre.” Sprightly's emotional speech, echoing the “fair wind” sentiment of the sailor, ends with an assurance that the good old theater is not dead:
Nay, gentlemen, Comedy is no prude, and I am no cynick in theatricals, I promise you—A clear stage, and fair play for all parties! that's all that is required—These too I can venture to assure you are the sentiments of the new managers. …
This serves in turn as an introduction to a prologue written by Garrick himself, in which, comparing the theater to a stage coach, he promises that “the old stage will run for ever!”6
New Brooms! transcends its sub-genre—the occasional prelude, a species of afterpiece—while succeeding ingeniously in its immediate task. Even with some light satirical shots at Garrick for so completely dominating the stage as actor and for his declining figure in old age, New Brooms! lavishes Garrick with praise and adoring attention. But it is not fulsome praise, either, for what Colman dramatizes is the range of feelings of the London theater patrons for the retired Garrick, as well as their anxiety at the state of the theater without him, that anxiety itself a compliment, of course.
Since preludes are limited by nature to one act, they are also limited in dramatic and literary potential. It is unreasonable to expect a full or probing delineation of character in such a short piece, so it is to Colman's advantage that the characters are the typical “human furniture” of the familiar farces and burlesques.7 The theater patrons who open New Brooms!, the Furrows and the Drippings, seem especially trite; but, as we realize by the end of the play, Colman is taking more than the usual, easy satirical potshot at these lovers of spectacle and mindless entertainment. The occasion of the prelude is also the topic of the action—theater without Garrick; the fact that the Furrows and the Drippings are oblivious to this theatrical revolution adds depth to the satire. Their lack of concern is one extreme reaction. At the other extreme, Catcall and Crotchet are convinced that serious drama and nature departed the stage with Garrick. Catcall is simply despairing, while Crotchet, a scribbler making the best of a bad situation, is turning his attention from comedy to music and dance: “Musical pieces, to be sure—Operas, Sir—our only dependence now.—We have nothing for [the stage] now but wind, wire, rosin and catgut. This is the thing—this is the thing—[thrumming on the harpsichord].” Phelim responds to Garrick's retirement in yet another way. He plans to exploit the situation to his own advantage, but he is ignorant and insensitive and fails to recognize Garrick's genius. The moderate, ideal response is the period of the prelude; Sprightly respects Garrick's genius, but recognizes that the stage survives through the will of the audience. Colman deals with the whole range of responses of the theater populace to the biggest theatrical event in four decades.
Garrick's career as manager of Drury Lane had opened propitiously with Sam Johnson's famous occasional prologue, in which the audience was assured that
The stage but echoes back the publick voice.
The drama's laws the drama's patrons give,
For we that live to please, must please to live.(8)
It is fitting that Garrick's retirement should not be relegated to a prologue, but be celebrated by a dramatic piece written expressly for the occasion. The prelude not only captures the ethos of adoration and esteem for the actor/manager, but also suggests the enduring contribution Garrick made to the theater.
At the time of its presentation in 1776, New Brooms! was an early specimen of a relatively new form of dramatic entertainment—the prelude. Though usually relegated to that mixed bag called afterpieces, which takes in interludes, farces, ballad operas, burlettas, and other entertainments, the prelude is not to be differentiated from other afterpieces merely by the fact that it was presented before the mainpiece; it is also distinguished by its occasional subject, by its typical situation (usually a problem in theater management), and by its dramatis personae, which is always drawn from the theater world. Allardyce Nicoll identifies the occasional nature of preludes when he observes that they “were usually designed for the opening of a new theatre or for the opening of a season, and generally took the form of satirical and sometimes burlesque interludes.”9 Like rehearsal burlesque but unlike other afterpieces, the prelude exhibits a self-consciousness of the stage; it makes the business of the theater its action and enlists managers, authors, actors, critics, and even the audience as its characters. The prelude distinguishes itself from rehearsal burlesque by being shorter, by incorporating airs or other special entertainment, by replacing the typical rehearsal plot with a farcical situation concerning management of the theater, and by celebrating the theatrical world rather than satirizing it.10 Rehearsal burlesque usually makes a buffoon out of some popular playwright, whereas the prelude is designed primarily to inaugurate a new season or new actor, and to deal with the state of the theater as its usual topic.11 For the sheer fun of it, some satire is usually directed at humor characters, like Sir Dulcimer Dunder in New Brooms!, but rival authors are generally left alone. It is the struggle of serious drama against the inroads of pantomime, dancing, acrobatics, and puppet shows that is dramatized in these “trivial pieces,” as contemporaries often styled them. Indeed, in New Brooms!, as Garrick retires, mindless entertainment threatens to monopolize the stage, a situation which is both a tribute to Garrick as the champion of the “sterling old drama” and a record of the enormous popularity of these entertainments.
Colman's most successful prelude, The Manager in Distress, is at once the epitome of preludes and the most successful prelude before 1795. This archetypal prelude opened the 1780 summer season of the Haymarket, then owned and managed by Colman. The occasion is the opening of the theater that season, and the situation is, in the words of George Colman the Younger, “the detention of most of the summer manager's corps dramatique at the winter theatres.”12 A humor character familiar to theater-goers, Mr. Bustleton informs the manager and his friend Mr. Easy of a plot by the winter theaters to withhold actors from the Haymarket. The manager then receives a letter of resignation from the actor Parsons,13 followed by a farewell visit from four actresses quitting the stage to go into Publick Speaking. The circumstances seem to bear out Bustleton's story about the defection of all the actors, so the manager instructs the prompter to dismiss the audience with handsome apologies. The prompter, who has gone out onto the stage to handle this delicate situation, is interrupted by members of the audience who wish to address the problem of the theater sans performers. Actors planted among the audience voice philosophies about the value and usefulness of the stage, until it is discovered that Mr. Palmer, Mr. Bannister, Mr. Baddeley, and the rest of the actors and actresses are in the Green Room awaiting the call. This of course terminates the debate and leads to an introduction of the play to follow, Colman's bizarre but very successful comedy, The Suicide.
The Manager in Distress is not as artistic a piece as the well-designed, comprehensive New Brooms!, but it has several features to recommend it to our perusal. First, it is typical of preludes in virtually all aspects of situation, character, and subject. Secondly, it revives the “device of driving characters in a drama beyond the boundaries of the stage”; Colman the Younger credits the prelude's success to this device.14 The audience enjoyed having the actors “personating auditors,” conversing with the Prompter and with each other from the pit and boxes. This afforded the opportunity to satirize the debating societies then popular,15 to introduce the Irishman, a popular satirical butt in this era, and to discuss the nature of the theater. Like farces, preludes rely upon situation for much of their comic effect, but The Manager in Distress eclipses most other preludes by sustaining its witty dialogue and by ingeniously exploiting the dramatic situation. Capitalizing fully on the situation, Colman even mocks himself in Bustleton's description of the manager's theater activity: “I say you know, Mr. Dapperwit [the manager], because you are a writer of Plays, and Farces, and Preludes, and Prologues, and Epilogues, and so forth: and the human mind is, or ought to be, your proper study.” As the most popular prelude of the period, it is both an accurate index of as well as a discussion of popular taste.
In previous seasons, several preludes had braved the capricious London audience. An early predecessor, Edward Phillips's ballad opera, the Stage-Mutineers, is based on the defection of Theophilus Cibber and other performers from the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane. It enjoyed twelve performances at Covent Garden in 1733, and, though a ballad opera in form, it approximates the prelude in situation, topic, character, and use of song. In his popular satirical ballad opera Don Quixote in England (1734), Henry Fielding anticipated the prelude by replacing the customary prologue with an “Introduction” in which the author and the manager wrangle about the lack of a prologue for the play. In this short scene they animadvert upon the taste and behavior of the audience and analyze the nature of prologues. Another precursor to the prelude, Henry Woodward's A Lick at the Town (1751) is a farce described as a “kind of dispute among Actors”; typical of the prelude only in its situation and characters, this satire suffered a cool reception at its only performance.16 Colman's popular Occasional Prelude is a simple contrivance to open the 1772 theatrical season with the introduction of a talented young actress, Miss Barsanti, to the stage. In David Garrick's Theatrical Candidates (1775) the allegorical figures Tragedy, Comedy, and Harlequin compete for total domination of the English stage. The early preludes and their precursors established the form for what was to become a popular feature on the theatrical bill.
The immense popularity of preludes seems to have been ignited by Colman's Occasional Prelude (1772), which saw more than twenty-four performances, became a stock benefit piece for Miss Barsanti and for Bannister Junior, and was called for “By particular desire.”17 In the late 1770s and the 1780s, the London theater audience was palled by over-exposure to these “dramatic trifles.”18 Many were patent failures, lucky to see a second performance and luckier yet to see print. Clearly George Colman the Elder was the most successful author of these specialty pieces. He was already established as one of the era's leading comic authors with The Jealous Wife (1761), Polly Honeycombe (1760), The Clandestine Marriage (1766, written in collaboration with Garrick), and numerous other comedies, farces, interludes, a comic opera, a burlesque, and translations, some of them to his credit. Of his other preludes, The Election of the Managers (1784) ran for ten performances, and The Manager in Distress entertained audiences sixty times between 1779 and 1791 and was revived at Covent Garden in 1820. Emulating his father in the obscure honor of most prominent writer of preludes was George Colman the Younger, whose New Hay at the Old Market (1795) was performed thirty-two times. New Hay was later reduced to its first scene and styled Sylvester Daggerwood, which was performed fifty times in five years.
Like other entertainments, the prelude no doubt originated in the ongoing competition for larger audiences. This management consideration had been compromising the integrity of the theater since 1695, when, as Robert D. Hume explains, Betterton's company “resorted to the expedient of interpolating singers, dancers, vaulting acts, and the like between acts of plays.”19 Many theater-goers were attracted more by the interludes, farces, pantomimes, and other entertainments than by the serious mainpieces, a situation dramatized by Colman in New Brooms! The audience—appeal of these pieces probably explains why many were written by the managers themselves. Garrick and Colman were the two most prolific and successful writers of preludes, usually contributing the pieces to the theaters they were then managing. Others were, no doubt, often commissioned by theater managers. Because of their occasional nature, preludes are liable to be condemned as mere hackwork. In Sheridan's Comedies, Mark S. Auburn estimates the literary quality of Colman's Occasional Prelude and New Brooms! and Garrick's A Peep behind the Curtain and The Meeting of the Company:
None of these four pieces has any independent literary merit; they are distinctly occasional, topical pieces which treat with irreverence that which the audiences enjoy, and which titillate mildly with real and imagined theatrical gossip. They are the practical stuff of the professional theater, fillers of gaps when more worthy entertainment is lacking; so it is not surprising that professional men of the theater devised them.20
However, the professional authorship and occasional nature of these preludes detracts neither from their historical value in dramatizing management philosophies about serious drama and popular taste, nor from whatever intrinsic literary value the pieces may have. And some of the preludes, considered within the natural limitations of the genre, have surprising merit.
A significant historical aspect of the theater preserved for us in these pieces is the long and difficult struggle of the managers of the royal patent theaters to satisfy the demands of different elements of the audience. While many complained of the mindless spectacle at Covent Garden under the management of John Rich, others flocked to the theater to enjoy the raree shows, pantomimes, processions, puppet shows, and acrobatics. The preludes dramatize this by allegorizing the rivalry in pieces such as Garrick's popular Theatrical Candidates and by satirizing the audiences, authors, and managers who prefer these vacant stage shows over serious drama. Also recorded in this dramatic mode is the plight of the theater manager who must mediate between quarreling actors and ambitious authors. It is the prelude that has dramatized for us the business of theater management and London stage life, the business itself made the subject of the art. The complexity of the struggle gives the lie to the simplistic, ungrateful caustics who plagued the London editorial columns with rants upon the theater and who offered naive formulae for artistic as well as financial success. And the dramatization brought home in a way more forceful than ever the main point of most prologues since they were first written—that the audience dictates theatrical fare. New Brooms!, in its assurance that the English stage will survive and be guided by the will of the people, epitomizes preludes in general; in its witty dialogue and impressive range of familiar but fresh characters, it is one of the most entertaining short pieces of the era; in its design, superbly calculated to celebrate the contribution of the era's undisputed monarch of the stage while welcoming rather than resenting his successors, New Brooms! is a tour de force in strategy and diplomacy. Despite its obscurity since its one season of performance, New Brooms! stands as a significant contribution to the theater. In the combination of New Brooms! and The Manager in Distress we have the measure of literary merit and popular appeal achieved in this dramatic mini-form, the occasional prelude.
Notes
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See the Advertisement to New Brooms! The image of the title works in two ways: it credits Garrick for cleaning up the stage after it had collected dust for fifteen years under the circus influence of John Rich; the image also suggests that Sheridan will continue the cleansing where Garrick left off. The cleansing image was not new, of course. Aaron Hill pointed out the need for stage brooms in 1734 (The Prompter: A Theatrical Paper [1734-1736], ed. W. W. Appleton and Kalman A. Burnim [New York: Benjamin Blom, 1966], pp. 13-14.)
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John Genest, Some Account of the English Stage from the Restoration in 1660 to 1830 (1832; rpt. New York: Burt Franklin, n.d.), V, 545; hereafter cited as Account followed by volume and page number. The passage also honors Garrick for his favorite and most famous role, Richard III. The compliment is voiced by jealous Phelim, who intentionally selects a passage from Richard II, since, as he tells Catcall, “we have been boddered so long with Richard the Third, you know.”
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The popularity of pantomine is described by G. W. Stone, Jr., The London Stage, 1747-1776 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1962), 4, I, lxv; hereafter cited by editor, the abbreviation “LS” followed by part, volume, and page number. Cecil Price discusses the remarkable sophistication of spectacle and its influence on the English stage in “The Attraction of Spectacle,” Theatre in the Age of Garrick (Totowa, New Jersey: Rowman and Littlefield, 1973), pp. 61-83.
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Since England was then at war with the colonies, Colman obviously intended to capitalize on the patriotic appeal of having the compliment to Garrick voiced by a sailor, otherwise an unusual choice for a theater critic. But he also may have intended the sailor to echo one of Garrick's most popular roles, that of a sailor entering Drury Lane for a show. The role of the sailor in this prologue, which Garrick wrote himself, is described by John Hainsworth (“David Garrick, Poet of the Theatre: A Critical Survey,” Studies in the Eighteenth Century, II, ed. R. F. Brissenden [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973], p. 371): “Garrick staggers on stage as a drunken British sailor who says he has promised to take his girlfriend to a show before going back to beat the French.” The popularity of the sailor role is suggested in an account reported by Genest (Account, IV, 411): “Murphy says ‘a French war having broken out, Mallet prepared a Masque called Britannia—Garrick spoke the prologue as a drunken sailor—it was delivered with the greatest humour, and from the nature of the subject was so popular, that it was called for many nights after the Masque itself was laid aside; and Garrick tho' he did not act in the play, was obliged to be in readiness to answer the public demand.’” Though Genest then notes that “this account seems not to be correct,” his reference is not to the popularity of Garrick's part, but to the fact that the prologue was acted with Britannia on subsequent dates (see Account, IV, 451, 485). Colman probably witnessed Garrick's performance at least once. According to Eugene R. Page (George Colman the Elder: Essayist, Dramatist, and Theatrical Manager, 1732-1794 [New York: Columbia University Press, 1935]), Colman moved from Oxford to Lincoln's Inn in May 1755 (p. 39), and indulged himself in frequent playgoing, despite the Earl of Bath's stern warnings against such frivolities (p. 23). Given the popularity of Garrick's role, the similarities between the sailors in Garrick's prologue and in New Brooms!, and the likelihood of Colman's having witnessed Garrick in the role, it seems probable that Colman intended a complimentary echo here.
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Morning Post and Daily Advertiser, 23 September 1776, p. 2.
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Garrick's prologue functions as an epilogue to New Brooms!, a prologue to the mainpiece, and a prologue to Drury Lane's new season and new era.
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The phrase is from Price's discussion of the typical personae of several afterpieces, in Theatre, p. 167.
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Poems, ed. E. L. McAdam, Jr., with George Milne (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964), p. 89.
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A History of English Drama, 1660-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955,) III, 210-211.
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The prelude, as a genre, employs satire, but, unlike rehearsal burlesque, does not set out to devastate some satiric target. Satire is not its primary business.
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Nicoll, III, 211. Some preludes were written about patriotic and other topics rather than about problems in the theater. For example, the following preludes are listed by G. W. Stone, Jr., LS, 4, I, and Nicoll, III, Appendix B: George Downing, The Volunteers; or, Taylors to Arms! (1779); Frederick Pilon, Illumination; or, the Glaziers Conspiracy (1779); Richard Wilson, Seventeen Hundred and Eighty One; or, the Cartel at Philadelphia (1780); Anon., England's Glory; or, the British Tars at Spithead (1795).
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Richard Brinsley Peake, Memoirs of the Colman Family (New York: Benjamin Blom, 1972), II, 48.
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Parsons did apparently resign this year. He played the 1779-1780 season at Drury Lane, but not the summer season at the Haymarket. See the acting lists, Charles Beecher Hogan, LS, 5, I, 276, 281.
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Peake, II, 49.
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Peake, II, 49.
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G. W. Stone, Jr., LS, 4, I, 242. Genest, Account, IV, 326.
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G. W. Stone, Jr., LS, 4, III, 962.
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Charles Beecher Hogan records at least fourteen new preludes performed at the major London theaters between 1776 and 1781, LS, 5, I.
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The Development of English Drama in the Late Seventeenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), p. 22.
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Sheridan's Comedies: Their Contexts and Achievements (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1977), pp. 152-153
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