Abstracts
Abstract
This essay explores how the theater supplied a visual and sonic language for understanding the far-flung reaches of the world and spectatorship more generally. While beginning with Charles Darwin aboard the HMS Beagle, its primary focus is the aftermath of Captain Cook’s first and second voyages in the 1770s and 1780s, especially the roles played by the Royal Academy of Science, the Royal Academy of Art, and London’s Theatre Royals in creating the visual and sonic vocabularies by which British subjects came to imagine the islands and peoples of the South Pacific. Theater’s intense topicality requires taking full stock of the cultural bodies and institutions with which it interacts, and nowhere are such collaborations more visible than in early spectacles that introduced the islands of the South Pacific to the British public. Surveying Harlequin Robinson Crusoe (1781) and Omai; or, A Voyage around the World (1785), the essay explores the roles played by Joseph Banks, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg, Thomas Linley, and others in shaping how London—and eventually provincial—audiences understood the meaning and import of Cook’s voyages of exploration and colonization.
Appendices
Bibliography
- Agnew, Vanessa. “Listening to Others: Eighteenth-Century Encounters in Polynesia and Their Reception in German Musical Thought.” Eighteenth-Century Studies, vol. 41, 2008, pp. 165–88.
- “An Account of the Pantomime of ROBINSON CRUOE, or HARLEQUIN FRIDAY.” The London Chronicle, no. 3770, 27–30 January 1781, p. 7.
- A Short Account of the New Pantomime Called Omai, or, A Trip round the World; Performed at the Theatre-Royal in Covent-Garden. With the Recitatitves, Airs, Duetts, Trios and Chorusses, and a Description of the Procession. The Pantomime, and the Whole of the Scenery, designed and invented by Mr. Loutherbourg. The Words written by Mr. O’Keeffe; and the Musick composed by Mr. Shields. London: T. Cadell, 1785.
- Burney, Fanny. The Early Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney, Volume II: 1774–1777. Edited by Lars E. Troide, McGill UP, 1990.
- Cook, James. Journals. 3 vols, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1961.
- Epistle from Oberea, Queen of Otaheite, to Joseph Banks, Esq., Translated by T. Q. Z. Esq., Professor of the Otaheite language in Dublin, and of all the Languages of the undiscovered Islands in the South Sea; and enriched with Historical and Explanatory Notes. London: J. Almon, 1774.
- The London Stage 1660-1800: Part V: 1776-1800. Edited by Charles Beecher Hogan, 3 vols, Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP, 1968.
- Darwin, Charles. Journal and Remarks, 1832-1836. Narrative of the Surveying Voyages of His Majesty’s Ships Adventure and Beagle, between the years 1826 and 1836. 3 vols, London: Colburn, 1839.
- Eliott, John and Richard Pickersgill. Captain Cook’s Second Voyage: The Journals of Lieutenants Elliott and Pickersgill. Edited by Christine Holmes, Dover, NH: Caliban, 1984.
- Fulford, Tim, Debbie Lee, and Peter J. Kitson. Literature, Science and Exploration in the Romantic Era. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004.
- Ledyard, John. Collected Writings. Edited by James Zug, Washington, D.C.: National Geographic, 2005.
- McVeagh, John. “Robinson Crusoe’s Stage Debut: The Sheridan Pantomime of 1781.” Journal of Popular Culture, vol. 24, no. 2, 1990, pp. 137–52.
- O’Quinn, Daniel. Staging Governance: Theatrical Imperialism in London, 1770-1800. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2005.