From long-haired ‘Fleshly Poets’ to intense, ‘ultra pre-Raphaelite’ artists, few stylistic movements in the history of art and literature have provoked the imagination and indignation of British playwrights as much as the Aesthetic Movement.
During an intense and short-lived period from 1877 to 1881, the London stage saw fierce competition as playwrights and theatre managers raced to capture the zeitgeist, capitalizing on the unorthodox, eccentric and highly theatrical proponents of the Aesthetic Movement. The ‘quite too utterly utter’ Apostles of this new school were satirized to such an extent that the Illustrated London News (1881) complained that the London stage was ‘thickly sown over with a crop of lilies and sunflowers’, with ‘aesthetes in every burlesque and comic opera produced’.
This edited volume brings the four key plays satirizing the Aesthetic Movement together for the first time in an easily accessible format, allowing scholars and students to discover their secrets:
The Grasshopper by John Hollingshead (Gaiety Theatre, 1877)
Where’s The Cat? by James Albery (Criterion, 1880)
The Colonel by F.C. Burnand (Prince of Wales’s Theatre, 1881)
Patience by W.S. Gilbert (Opera Comique/Savoy, 1881)
Including a brief introduction by Dr. Devon Cox, providing background and context to the dynamic, symbiotic relationship between the Aesthetic Movement and the British stage, and complete with biographical notes and an introduction to each play, Aesthetic Movement Satire: A Dramatic Anthology shines a light on this explosive flashpoint in British Theatre
- ISBN10 1350417777
- ISBN13 9781350417779
- Publish Date 25 July 2024 (first published 27 June 2024)
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 15 February 2024
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
- Imprint Methuen Drama
- Format Paperback (US Trade)
- Pages 288
- Language English