New Lines: Mary Ann Yates, The Orphan of China, and the New She-tragedy
This essay demonstrates a significant break in eighteenth-century tragedy from tales of fallen women begging (the audience) for forgiveness and redemption to a different kind of she-tragedy, in which the heroine is neither fallen nor sexually desired, but rather transcends nation and politics with t...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Aphra Behn Society
2018-11-01
|
| Series: | ABO : Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts 1640-1830 |
| Online Access: | https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/abo/vol8/iss2/1/ |
| Summary: | This essay demonstrates a significant break in eighteenth-century tragedy from tales of fallen women begging (the audience) for forgiveness and redemption to a different kind of she-tragedy, in which the heroine is neither fallen nor sexually desired, but rather transcends nation and politics with the “natural” moral force of maternal love. I argue that this shift was made possible/legible by Susannah Cibber’s ill-health, which forced Arthur Murphy to reconceive The Orphan of China’s heroine and allowed a rival actress, Mary Ann Yates, to step into this new role and to establish a tragic ‘line’ defined in opposition to that of her predecessor. The essay demonstrates this shift by tracing The Orphan of China’s convoluted path to the stage and by reading Murphy’s tragedy in dialogue with earlier translations of The Orphan of China and Douglas, the play Covent Garden mounted in opposition to The Orphan of China. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 2157-7129 2157-7129 |