Abstract
Although Garrick had already retired from the stage, he was evidently persuaded by Cumberland to interest himself in The Battle of Hastings. Universal mender-of-plays as he was, he corrected, revised, and amended until Cumberland mustered courage to present the play to Sheridan, then the newly made manager of Drury Lane Theatre. It is said that the leader of sentimental comedy was introduced to Sheridan by a letter from Garrick. Soon we learn of Cumberland’s begging the new manager to stage his tragedy.
Stanley Thomas Williams, Richard Cumberland: His Life and Dramatic Works (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press; London: Oxford University Press, 1917) pp. 137–50. Editor’s title.
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Notes
W. H. Ireland’s Vortigern was a historical tragedy appearing at Drury Lane in 1799. It was an imposition, professing to be an original tragedy of Shakespeare found in an old trunk.
John Watkins, Memoirs of the Public and Private Life of R. B. Sheridan, with a Particular Account of His Family and Connexions (London: Henry Colburn, 1817) I, 239.
[William Earle], Sheridan and His Times, by an Octogenarian, who Stood by His Knee in Youth and Sat at His Table in Manhood (London: J. F. Hope, 1859) I, 95.
James Boaden, Memoirs of the Life of John Philip Kemble (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green, 1825) I, 36. Kelly describes Parsons as Sir Fretful.
Scott, ‘Prefatory Memoir to Cumberland’, in The Novels of Swift, Bage and Cumberland. Walter Sichel in his Sheridan, from New and Original Material (London: Constable, 1909) thinks Sir Fretful an exact portrait of Cumberland. He notes the erasure in the first draft of the scene, showing that Cumberland was originally treated even more severely.
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© 1989 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Williams, S.T. (1989). Sheridan and Cumberland. In: Mikhail, E.H. (eds) Sheridan. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20441-0_18
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