Burns and the Theatre

Abstract

With the overestimated exception of the Rev John Home’s Douglas (1756) - received with hysterical rapture at its premier, acclaimed by David Hume, admired by Sarah Siddons who played the role of Lady Randolph when she returned to the stage in 1819 - Scottish drama in the eighteenth century was virtually non-existent. To the extremists of the Scottish kirk, the stage was an alien territory, the actor a rival to the preacher. John Knox himself had gone to plays (in St Andrews he watched a drama anticipating the execution of Mary Queen of Scots) but, after his death, the Church of Scotland associated drama with the work of the devil.