"Staging ""The Mysterious Mother"""

Cynthia E. Roman, Jill Campbell, Jonathan Kramnick

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Hardback

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English

Yale University Press
19 March 2024

Theatre Studies; Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800; Literary studies: plays & playwrights

Series: The Lewis Walpole Series in Eighteenth-Century Culture and History

The first book-length study of Horace Walpole’s scandalous The Mysterious Mother, including critical essays, an abridged script, and a facsimile edition

Horace Walpole’s five-act tragedy The Mysterious Mother (1768), a sensational tale of incest and intrigue, was initially circulated only among the author’s friends. Walpole never permitted it to be performed during his lifetime except as a private theatrical. He described his play as a “delicious entertainment for the closet” and claimed that he “did not think it would do for the stage.” Yet the essays in this volume trace a history of private readings, amateur theatricals, and even early public performances, demonstrating that the play was read and performed more than Walpole’s protests suggest. Exploring a wide variety of topics—including the play’s crypto-Catholicism, its treatments of incest, guilt, motherhood, orphans, and scientific spectacle, and the complex relations between print and performance—the essays demonstrate the rich relevance of The Mysterious Mother to current critical discussions.

The volume includes the proceedings of a mini-conference hosted at Yale University in 2018 on the occasion of a staged reading of the play. Also included are the director’s reflections, an abridged script, a facsimile of Walpole’s own copy of the full-length play, and reproductions of the illustrations he commissioned from Lady Diana Beauclerk.

Edited by: Cynthia E. Roman, Jill Campbell, Jonathan Kramnick
Imprint: Yale University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 235mm, Width: 156mm,
ISBN: 9780300263657
ISBN 10: 0300263651
Series: The Lewis Walpole Series in Eighteenth-Century Culture and History
Pages: 376
Publication Date: 19 March 2024
Audience: Professional and scholarly , College/higher education , Undergraduate , Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Cynthia E. Roman is curator of prints, drawings, and paintings at the Lewis Walpole Library. Jill Campbell is professor of English and affiliated faculty in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Yale University. Jonathan Kramnick is the Maynard Mack Professor of English at Yale University and the director of the Lewis Walpole Library.

Reviews for "Staging ""The Mysterious Mother"""

“This handsome, erudite, and entertaining volume is in every way the perfect companion to Horace Walpole’s rarely recognized masterpiece.”—George E. Haggerty, University of California, Riverside