Foscari: Mitford’s Dramaturgy of the Unspoken and Unexplained

Abstract

In this chapter, I examine Mary Mitford’s anticipation of audience in her handling of the historical subject in The Foscari (Covent Garden, November 4, 1826), with a side-glance at Byron’s appropriation of the same material in The Two Foscari (published in 1821; first performed at Covent Garden, April 7, 1837). Among the Italian laborers of the East End theaters or the Italian dockworkers and stevedores of the Southbank theaters, the melodrama of Italian intrigues could be delineated in fairly broad strokes. London’s “Little Italy,” however, was populated by intellectuals who were politically active in the pamphleteering of the Risorgimento (“Rising Again”), and who demanded a degree of historical fidelity and dramatic sophistication in the productions launched at the licensed theaters.