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Theatre-Fiction in Britain from
Henry James to Doris Lessing

This volume posits and explores an intermedial genre called theatre-­

fiction, understood in its broadest sense as referring to novels and stories
that engage in concrete and sustained ways with theatre. Though the-
atre has made star appearances in dozens of literary fictions, including
many by modern history’s most influential authors, no full-length study
has dedicated itself specifically to theatre-fiction—in fact there has not
even been a recognized name for the phenomenon. Focussing on Britain,
where most of the world’s theatre-novels have been produced, and com-
mencing in the late-nineteenth century, when theatre increasingly took
on a major role in novels, Theatre-Fiction in Britain argues for the ben-
efits of considering these works in relation to each other, to a history of
development, and to the theatre of their time. New modes of intermedial
analysis are modelled through close studies of Henry James, Somerset
Maugham, Virginia Woolf, J. B. Priestley, Ngaio Marsh, Angela Carter,
and Doris Lessing, all of whom were deeply involved in the theatre-world
as playwrights, directors, reviewers, and theorists. Drawing as much on
theatre scholarship as on literary theory, Theatre-Fiction in Britain pres-
ents theatre-fiction as one of the past century’s most vital means of ex-
ploring, reconsidering, and bringing forth theatre’s potentials.

Graham Wolfe holds a PhD in Drama from the University of Toronto

and is an Assistant Professor in English Language and Literature at
the National University of Singapore. His articles on theatre, novels,
and popular culture have appeared in journals including Performance
­Research, Mosaic, Modern Drama, Dickens Quarterly, and Journal of
Dramatic Theory and Criticism.
Routledge Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature

56 Henry James and the Media Arts of Modernity

Commercial Cosmopolitanism
June Hee Chung

57 Hermeneutic Ontology in Gadamer and Woolf

The Being of Art and the Art of Being
Adam Noland

58 Ukrainian Erotomaniac Fictions

First Postindependence Wave
Maryna Romanets

59 Black USA and Spain

Shared Memories in 20th Century Spain
Edited by Rosalía Cornejo-Parriego

60 Ezra Pound and 20th-Century Theories of Language

Faith with the Word
James Dowthwaite

61 Gombrowicz in Transnational Context

Translation, Affect, and Politics
Silvia G. Dapía

62 The British Stake in Japanese Modernity

Readings in Liberal Tradition and Native Modernism
Michael Gardiner

63 Theatre-Fiction in Britain from Henry James to Doris Lessing

Writing in the Wings
Graham Wolfe

For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com

Theatre-Fiction in Britain
from Henry James to
Doris Lessing
Writing in the Wings

Graham Wolfe
First published 2020
by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an
informa business
© 2020 Taylor & Francis
The right of Graham Wolfe to be identified as author of this
work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections
77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be
trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for
identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this title has been requested

ISBN: 978-0-367-33216-7 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-429-31853-5 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by codeMantra
For My Parents
Moragh Wolfe
and
Richard Wolfe
Contents

Acknowledgements ix

1 Introduction: Writing in the Wings 1

2 Henry James and Stage-Frightened Theatre-Fiction

in the Fin de Siècle 26

3 Somerset Maugham’s Theatre for the Lonely Reader 60

4 Virginia Woolf as Theatre-Novelist:

Upstaging the Human 78

5 Death by Actor: Ngaio Marsh and Backstage

Detective Fiction 113

6 J. B. Priestley: Theatre-Fiction, Work, and Time 133

7 Angela Carter’s Theatrical Desire 151

8 Doris Lessing and Loving Theatre, Again 175

Index 201
Acknowledgements

I am grateful for the guidance and feedback I have received from my

colleagues in the departments of Theatre Studies and English Language
and Literature at the National University of Singapore. I thank my fam-
ily in Canada for the many forms of encouragement and inspiration they
have provided, and I thank Julie Gouin, for all her patience, support,
and insight.
1 Introduction
Writing in the Wings

The young protagonist of J. W. Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprentice-

ship, introduced to English readers in 1824 by Thomas Carlyle’s trans-
lation, prefers the wings of a theatre to the best seat in the audience.
“Often would he stand in the theatre behind the scenes, to which he
had obtained the freedom of access from the manager. In such cases, it
is true, the perspective magic was away; but the far mightier sorcery of
love then first began to act” (83).
Wilhelm’s professed purpose in standing in these wings (“for hours”)
is to be closer to the beautiful actress Mariana, whose smile, bestowed
between scenes, is abundant compensation for the discomforts of his posi-
tion. The “sorcery of love” is, most literally, her capacity to glorify even the
squalid and artificial elements of theatre as experienced from this irregu-
lar vantage point: the “laths and bare spars” that support its structures;
the “paper-clippings” and “shavings of wood” that create its pastures and
forest floors; its “waterfalls of tin,” “paper roses,” and “one-sided huts of
straw” (84). But a reader may easily suspect that what Wilhelm is falling
for most deeply, as he stands amidst the comings and goings of actors and
the operations of backstage crews, is theatre itself. The real love-story of
Wilhelm Meister is the transformation of his boyhood infatuation with a
domestic puppet theatre (“Wilhelm’s favourite topic” [14]) into an ardent
devotion to theatrical art that will compel him, before long, to leave a
comfortable home and travel the land with his own acting troupe. Wil-
helm the child had always delighted in theatre, but a “far mightier sor-
cery” begins to act on the young man as he beholds it from these wings.
Something of this paradox may also pertain to the intermedial form
of Goethe’s novel, and of others that explore theatre from the indirect,
sidelong angles provided by literary fiction. To read a novel about the-
atre is, of course, to miss the full effect of the art-form obtainable from
a seat in the audience. Theatre’s illusions and attractions are dependent
on so much that exceeds pages, including bodies, voices, lights, colours,
collaborative energies, and collective responses. But other kinds of magic
may begin to operate when we adopt the irregular perspective offered by
fiction. The enduring appeal of theatre-novels and theatre-stories tes-
tifies to peculiar sorceries that may begin to act when we engage with
theatre from the oblique angles they offer.
2 Introduction
This study posits and explores an intermedial genre called theatre-­
fiction, understood in its broadest sense as referring to novels and sto-
ries that engage in concrete and sustained ways with theatre as artistic
practice and industry. Though theatre has made star appearances in
dozens of literary fictions, including many by modern history’s most
influential authors, no full-length work has dedicated itself specifically
to theatre-fiction—in fact there has not even been a recognized name
for the phenomenon. Focussing on Britain, where a large percentage of
the world’s theatre-novels and stories have been produced, Writing in
the Wings argues for the benefits of considering them in relation to one
another, to a history of development, and to the theatre of their age. It
takes for its starting point the end of the nineteenth century, a time when
theatre increasingly moves from minor parts to leading roles in fiction,
and the genre’s features, developments, and possibilities are explored
through close studies of Henry James, Somerset Maugham, Virginia
Woolf, J. B. Priestley, Ngaio Marsh, Angela Carter, and Doris Lessing.
Supporting roles are performed by the likes of George Moore, Mary
Augusta Ward, Leonard Merrick, Patrick Hamilton, and others working
outside of Britain, such as Émile Zola, Robertson Davies, and Mikhail
Bulgakov. All of these writers were deeply involved in the theatre-worlds
of their time as playwrights, directors, actors, reviewers, and theorists,
and Writing in the Wings examines their theatre-fiction as responding to
and extending their practical experiences with theatre. Working as much
with theatre scholarship as with literary theory, the book models new
modes of intermedial analysis as it investigates one of the past century’s
most surprising means of exploring, interrogating, and bringing forth
theatre’s potentials.
My project draws on and aims to contribute to a broader and de-
veloping domain of study for which I suggest the term “theatre/novel
intersections.” The significance of theatre in the lives of particular
­novelists, and its effect on their thinking and writing, has been produc-
tively probed in studies including Francesca Saggini’s Backstage in the
Novel: Frances Burney and the Theater Arts, Penny Gay’s Jane ­Austen
and the Theatre, Christopher Greenwood’s Adapting to the Stage: The-
atre and the Work of Henry James, and Stephen D. Putzel’s ­Virginia
Woolf and the Theater. Monographs such as Anne F. Widmayer’s
Theatre and the Novel, from Behn to Fielding, Alan Ackerman’s The
Portable Theater: American Literature and the Nineteenth-Century
Stage, and David Kurnick’s Empty Houses: Theatrical Failure and the
Novel remind us that theatrical and novelistic forms did not develop in
isolation, accentuating a history of fluid boundaries, creative antago-
nisms, and reciprocal exchanges. As these titles suggest, many studies of
“theatre/novel intersections” target eras prior to the twentieth century,
but Writing in the Wings also differs in its analytical emphasis. One
can write about novelists’ “transmodalization” (Saggini 7) of theatre’s
 Introduction 3
themes and character-types or about the “self-conscious use of drama-
turgical idioms and strategies in the project of literature” (Ackerman
xvi) without focussing on novels that are directly about theatre as artis-
tic practice or industry. One can examine James’s The Spoils of Poynton
as a “dramatic novel” (Greenwood 3), even though its narrative stays
out of theatres, while bypassing The Tragic Muse, which spends much
time inside them. Some of the studies mentioned above do engage with
novels that represent theatre, but none of them purports specifically to
be a study of theatre-fiction as a genre.
Such a study is likewise both indebted to and different in emphasis
from analyses of “theatricality” in novels. Joseph Litvak’s influential
Caught in the Act: Theatricality in the Nineteenth-Century English
Novel commences with a definition of theatricality—“a set of shifting,
contradictory energies”—that expressly resists confinement to theatre
as artistic practice: “Unlike ‘theater,’ which may denote a fixed place,
institution, or art-form, ‘theatricality’ resists such circumscription, ow-
ing its value as a critical term to this very open-endedness” (xii). Many
critics in the past three decades have partaken of this open-endedness—
theatricality has been used to evoke anything from disguise and mim-
icry to stylistic showiness, and it can thus be analysed in novels that
never traffic with theatre companies or opening nights. As Julia Jarcho
recently observed, scholars of James have employed the idiom apropos
of “everything from a ‘rigid economy’ of representation to a percep-
tual politics of ‘surveillance,’ from a moral concern with promiscuity
to an investigation of group psychology to an erotics of display” (28).
Writing in the Wings, sharing David Kurnick’s concern for what is lost
amidst such figurative expansiveness, seeks in its own way to respond
to his call for “theatre demetaphorized” (Empty 1). I do not propose to
banish all metaphorical theatricalities—after all, many theatre-­novels
expressly allow theatre and performance to spill over the edges of their
literal stages and infuse diverse aspects of content and form, and many
theatre-novelists (James, in particular) draw heavily on theatre met-
aphors in their writing about narrative fiction. I’d suggest, however,
that critical fascination with theatricality as broadly construed has had
the paradoxical effect of leaving novelistic engagement with theatre as
art-form and industry undertheorized. Gillian Russell makes a simi-
lar point in a chapter on Georgian-era novels, whose plentiful “visits
to the theatre and descriptions of actors and performances” have re-
ceived, as a trope, “little attention from critics, partly because of the
tendency to treat drama and theatre metaphorically in approaches to
the novel, reflecting a lack of interest in and knowledge of the theatri-
cal culture” (519). My shared ambition to resist figurative diffuseness
should help explain why I recommend the terms “theatre-fiction” and
“theatre-novel” over the variation “theatrical novel” that has some-
times been loosely employed.1
4 Introduction
With some qualifications, I speak of theatre-fiction as a genre in the
same kinds of ways that “sea fiction,” “western fiction,” or “war fiction”
can be considered genres. Novels that participate in the genre of “sea
fiction” focus typically on seafaring types, such as sailors or captains or
pirates, and they take seas and coasts and boats for dominant settings.
Theatre-novels typically focus on actors, playwrights, directors, audi-
ences, critics, and other theatre-types, and they take theatres, stages, or
other performance spaces for dominant settings. Genres, writes John
Frow, are recognized through “a set of topoi, recurrent topics of dis-
course” (83). For sea fiction these may include the operations involved
in running a ship, the challenges of storms, or the harsh realities of life
below deck; for theatre-fiction they may be the processes of mounting
a show, the challenges of interpreting a role, or the harsh realities of
life as a bit-part player. While sea fiction frequently overlaps with other
genres, like historical fiction or fantasy, theatre-fiction lends itself to nu-
merous subgenres: there are historical theatre-novels (John Arden’s Si-
lence Among the Weapons or Priya Parmar’s Exit the Actress), children’s
theatre-­novels (Noel Streatfeild’s Ballet Shoes and Curtain Up), and
even science-fiction theatre-novels (Christopher Stasheff’s We Open on
Venus). And in the same way that a genre like sea fiction develops and di-
versifies through dialogic exchange (James Fenimore Cooper’s The Pilot
is a clear response to Walter Scott’s The Pirate), so theatre-fiction reveals
a history of conversation and responsiveness. Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister
is an influence on Théophile Gautier’s Capitaine Fracasse (1863), itself
an evident precursor of Rafael Sabatini’s Scaramouche (1921), a novel
converted to a play and performed by the characters of Robertson Da-
vies’s World of Wonders (1975), a copy of which is found on a table in
Valerie Martin’s theatre-novel The Confessions of Edward Day (2005).
To think of novels and stories as participating in a genre of theatre-­
fiction is also to set up expectations about the centrality and amount
of theatre in the works under discussion. 2 This need not be an exact
science, and debating whether a book qualifies as a full-fledged theatre-­
novel or just includes some segments of theatre-fiction, may be of limited
interpretive value. But books like Maugham’s Theatre, Clemence Dane’s
Broome Stages, or Michael Blakemore’s Next Season engage so consis-
tently with theatre’s people, spaces, practices, materials, and industries
that they seem to call for designations—and modes of analysis—less ap-
plicable to books whose characters attend a show in Chapter 17 or audi-
tion for one in Chapters 9 and 10. While I am interested in the variety of
ways in which novelists evoke theatre, I focus on cases where a particu-
lar work’s engagement is sufficiently developed to become a dominant.3
This is one of several ways in which Writing in the Wings differs from
important studies of what Jeffrey Franklin and Emily Allen call “the fig-
ure of the theater” (83; 22). Allen’s Theater Figures: The Production of
the Nineteenth-Century British Novel engages often and compellingly
 Introduction 5
with novelistic representations of theatre and the theatre-world, but
while a few of the books it explores (such as George Moore’s A Mum-
mer’s Wife) are dominantly invested in theatre as practice and industry,
many others (like Walter Scott’s Redgauntlet or Elizabeth Braddon’s
The Doctor’s Wife) are patently not. As I’ll consider in the next section,
the same conditions that led many Georgian and Victorian novelists to
construct theatre and theatricality as a foil—as a “negative example”
through reference to which novel-forms could bolster their own claims
to distinction and supremacy (Allen 9)—may also have dissuaded them
from allowing their novels to tarry long in theatre’s domains or to take
actors as protagonists.
While genres are always open to and enlivened by debates about pa-
rameters, the word “theatre” may create additional definitional com-
plexes, even if, as I recommend, we “demetaphorize” and think in terms
of artistic practice(s) and industry. Seas, though varying in size, climate,
and temperament, are always large bodies of saltwater, but as director
Peter Brook famously puts it, “I can take any empty space and call it a
bare stage” (9)—theatre can theoretically take any setting. And if ocean-
ographers may squabble over whether a particular watery domain should
be classified as a sea, considerable debate has historically surrounded
the question of which art-forms, entertainments, and cultural practices
constitute “theatre.” While I maintain that “theatre-novel” loses value if
extended to books about the staginess of politics or the performativity of
fashion, I suggest that a study of the genre benefits from openness to the-
atre as a diverse category, ranging, as in the fiction to be discussed, from
performances of tragic drama to well-made plays, modern experimental
pieces, musicals, operas and operettas, music hall and variety shows,
marionette performances, countryside pageants, and hybrids that defy
traditional categories. To use the single term “theatre-fiction” to refer to
literature about these diverse forms is not to homogenize them, any more
than to use “sea fiction” is to make the Arctic Ocean look like the Med-
iterranean. It may instead be to open deeper engagement with histori-
cal specificities and debates. As we will see, theatre-novels themselves
are frequently concerned with the relations, differences, and hierarchies
among multiple theatrical forms.
But even theatre-novels that focus resolutely on a single form of theatre
will inevitably enact another set of relations and differences: between
theatrical performance and literary representation, between reading
and spectatorial experience. The pages of a novel are never simply an
“empty space” upon which theatre can be brought to life—the very term
“theatre-­novel” implies juxtapositions, collisions, interactions, and in-
tersections between media that operate, as Kurnick observes, “accord-
ing to distinct protocols of storytelling and consumption” (Empty 9).
A central premise of Writing in the Wings is that theatre-novels are never
simply about theatre in the same way that novels may be about life at
6 Introduction
sea, or war, or sex. Theatre-novelists are linked not just by theme and
topoi but by the shared formal and stylistic challenges and opportu-
nities that arise in engaging through one medium with elements and
attributes of another. In this respect my approach has parallels within
the developing field of intermediality studies, which has grown to exam-
ine dynamics of what theorists call “intermedial reference” and “inter-
medial representation.” In such instances, as Irina Rajewsky explains,
“the given media-product thematizes, evokes, or imitates elements or
structures of another, conventionally distinct medium through the use
of its own media-specific means” (53). Within intermediality studies,
significant attention has been paid to topics like the “musicalization of
fiction,” “filmic writing,” and the “ekphrasis” of visual art, leaving nov-
elistic engagement with theatre largely unexplored.
Many existing studies of particular theatre-novels reflect what could
be called a literary bias—they are often written by literature scholars
whose approaches, however valuable in their own right, take little ad-
vantage of the wealth of insights that domains of Theatre and Perfor-
mance Studies can offer. Writing in the Wings seeks to address these
limitations, exploring and modelling new ways of blending theory from
both disciplines, but it does so with keen attention to what Rajewsky
calls “intermedial gaps” (55). If intermedial representations “imply a
crossing of media borders,” they are not only limited by, but may derive
much of their provocative character from, confrontation with “medial
difference” (54). I propose thinking about these gaps and differences
through what I call the one-many dialectics of theatre’s novelistic rep-
resentation. The following categories, outlined in brief, will be progres-
sively developed in chapters to come:

• Novel-reading is (normally) a solitary activity, whereas theatregoers

observe, listen, and respond as part of a social collective, in prox-
imity to other living beings, including those who perform and can
return their gaze.
• Most novels are attributed to a single author, whereas theatre is (al-
most always) a collaborative endeavour, the work of many artists,
including scene-shifters, designers, playwrights, actors, directors,
and technicians.
• A typical novelist, as Elaine Scarry notes, works with only one
­material—“small black marks on a white page” (5)—whereas the-
atre consists of numerous components: actors’ bodies, voices, and
expressions, spatial configurations, props, sets, lights, costumes,
and so on. Many of theatre’s signifying materials are themselves
polysemic: an actor signifies a character while remaining known to
an audience as a different, working human being.
• Novel-writing has historically privileged “the representation of in-
dividual consciousness” (Ackerman and Puchner 12), whereas, in
 Introduction 7
Henry James’s terms, “no character in a play (any play not a mere
monologue) has . . . a usurping consciousness” (“Preface” 90). “En-
acted drama,” in Puchner’s words, “is the only genre that speaks
truly with different tongues” (81).

Writing in the Wings not only stresses the importance of acknowledging

these gaps and distinctions; it locates much of theatre-fiction’s theoret-
ical and historical significance in its capacity to play with them. A key
attraction of the genre may, for instance, be its affordance of private ac-
cess to elements of a public, collectively received medium, and inversely,
much of the power of a theatre-novel may derive from its infusion of
a solitary mode of reception with a sense of multitudinous spectator-
ship. This dialectical thinking can likewise shed light on the generative,
creative force of intermedial gaps. I’ll argue in my second chapter that
fin-de-siècle theatre-fiction enables us to think of resistance to theatre’s
collaborative manyness as a paradoxically creative force and as an um-
bilical link between novel-writing and theatre’s own struggles and de-
velopments. While critics since Gillian Beer have examined how literary
fiction “uses” theatre, and while Emily Allen’s study proceeds expressly
“from the point of view of the novel” (19), I suggest that we can also
think of theatre-fiction as emerging from amidst theatre, as a way in
which theatre-makers themselves engage further with that medium’s
complexities, challenges, and potentials.
Pages are never stages, and novels are never theatre. Many scholars
and lovers of theatre have stressed this irreducibility—in fact, much of
what is called Theatre Studies today has arisen from impulses to accen-
tuate all that theatre is beyond the written word. Writing in the Wings,
while highly attuned to this impulse, also returns repeatedly to a para-
dox, gestured to at the beginning of this introduction, that I refer to as
“intermedial anamorphosis.” Theatre-novels are inevitably indirect, re-
fracted perspectives on theatre, but as Jacques Lacan insists in his Semi-
nar XI (85) and as the passage from Goethe attests in its own way, there
are things that appear most vividly when beheld from irregular, oblique
vantage points. Writing in the Wings explores, as source of both theatre-­
fiction’s attraction and its powerful critical potentials, its paradoxical
ability to proffer more theatre than theatre itself. At stake here is the
form’s capacity to bring forward not simply what is out of sight to most
audiences (from business operations to backstage feuds) but also, with
a nod to Gilles Deleuze, theatre’s own virtual dimensions—­dimensions
that are real if latent in customary spectatorship and that theatre’s own
theorists have often been comparatively slow to address.4 If literary fic-
tion is a departure from and “enfeeblement” (Scarry 15) of theatre’s
physical and bodily things, nowhere does the medium’s materiality re-
ceive more rigorous treatment, nowhere are its constitutive transience and
co-presence more foregrounded, nowhere are its peculiar contingencies,
8 Introduction
chemistries, tensions, and feedback loops more vividly registered than
on (and through their tensions with) the pages of theatre-novels.
As suggested, one of the aspects distinguishing the present study
among investigations of theatre/novel intersections is its concentra-
tion on the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the space ahead
I preface my upcoming chapters with an overview of theatre-fiction’s
star-turns in the preceding century. In the process I further clarify my
approach and my decision to start where I do.

Theatre-Fiction through the Nineteenth Century

The late 1800s and early 1900s saw a remarkable proliferation of theatre-­
novels. In Britain, theatre dominates works including B. H. Buxton’s
Jennie of “The Prince’s” (1876), Nell—On Stage and Off (1879), and
From the Wings (1880); Florence Marryat’s My Sister the Actress (1881),
Facing the Footlights (1882), and Peeress and Player (1883); Edith Dre-
wry’s Only An Actress (1883); Mary Augusta Ward’s Miss Bretherton
(1884); Harriet Jay’s Through the Stage Door (1884); William Black’s
Judith Shakespeare (1885); George Moore’s A Mummer’s Wife (1885);
John Coleman’s Curley An Actor’s Story (1885) and The Rival Queens:
A Story of the Modern Stage (1887); Eva Ross Church’s An Actress’s
Love Story (1888); Henry James’s The Tragic Muse (1890); Francis
­Gribble’s Sunlight and Limelight: A Story of the Stage Life and the Real
Life (1898); Leonard Merrick’s Actor-Manager (1898) and The Position
of Peggy Harper (1911); and a range of stories, such as James’s “Nona
Vincent” (1893) and Arthur Symons’s “Esther Kahn” (1905). Other nov-
els, including Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Grey (1890), spend
considerable time in theatres. Similar profusion occurred across the chan-
nel, with Émile Zola’s Nana (1880), Edmond de Goncourt’s La Faustin
(1881), Edgar Monteil’s Cornebois (1881), Arsène Houssaye’s La comé-
dienne (1884), Jean Blaize’s Les Planches (1888), Henri Bauer’s Une co-
medienne: Scenes de la vie de théâtre (1889), Louis Vaultier’s Une étoile
(1898), Anatole France’s Histoire comique (1903), Émilie Lerou’s Sous le
masque (1907), and Gaston Leroux’s Le Fantôme de l’Opéra (1909–10).
Other important theatre-novels appearing elsewhere in these decades in-
clude Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie (1900), Louise Closser Hale’s The
Actress (1909), and Sholem Aleichem’s Wandering Stars (1909).
This proliferation marks the fin de siècle as a period when thinking
of theatre-novels and stories as a genre becomes especially meaningful,
and my second chapter begins with Henry James and his relations to this
escalating intermedial exchange. This is not to imply that theatre-fiction
had been unimportant previously, and before turning to James, I wish
to outline some of its different manifestations in the preceding century,
shedding light, in the process, on existing scholarly approaches to the-
atre/novel intersections.
 Introduction 9
Fiction in Britain had taken memorable trips to the theatre since at
least Henry Fielding’s The History of Tom Jones (1749). The eponymous
protagonist attends a London Hamlet with his friend Mr Partridge, who
affords “great mirth” to nearby spectators with his commentary on ev-
ery aspect of the production, from the inefficiency of the grave-digger
to the unimpressive acting of David Garrick (the greatest star of his
day): “I could act as well as he myself. I am sure, if I had seen a ghost,
I should have looked in the very same manner, and done just as he did”
(857). Oliver Goldsmith’s The Vicar of Wakefield (1766) incorporates
discussions with actors about Shakespearean performance as well as
a travelling production of Nicholas Rowe’s The Fair Penitent. Fanny
Burney’s Evelina (1778) develops its vision of London society through
several trips to theatres, including another of Garrick’s performances at
Drury Lane, which dazzles Evelina, and an opera in the company of her
relatives the Branghtons, who exceed Partridge in their incomprehen-
sion of performance conventions (“there isn’t one ounce of sense in the
whole opera, nothing but one continued squeaking and squalling from
beginning to end” [109]). Thomas Holcroft’s Alwyn; or The Gentleman
Comedian (1780) engages so repeatedly with acting that we might term
it a theatre-novel, and he returns to the stage in The Adventures of Hugh
Trevor (1794), which describes, in one of its chapters, a much loftier pro-
duction of Rowe’s Fair Penitent starring Sarah Siddons.
Instances of theatre-fiction continue to abound through the early-
and mid-nineteenth century, famous examples including Jane Austen’s
Mansfield Park (1815), with its memorable rendering of Tom Bertram’s
abortive attempt to organize a private production of Lovers’ Vows with
his siblings and friends. The protagonist of Charles Dickens’s Nicholas
Nickleby (1839) will spend memorable chapters as leading player and
adaptor-translator with a Portsmouth theatre company helmed by the
notoriously stagey Vincent Crummles. Pip’s attempts in Great Expecta-
tions (1861) to play the role of gentleman are counterpointed by the the-
atre he attends, including a hilariously poor rendition of Hamlet starring
his townsman Wopsle. Lucy Snowe, protagonist of Charlotte Brontë’s
Villette (1853), will have an entirely different theatre experience when
she witnesses the performance of Vashti, modelled on actress ­Rachel
Félix: “I had seen acting before, but never anything like this: never any-
thing which astonished Hope and hushed Desire; which outstripped
Impulse and paled Conception . . .” (249).
Common among many critical responses to these novelistic engage-
ments with theatre is an insistence that, if relatively brief, they are highly
important not only to particular novels. References to and depictions
of theatre can be understood as methods whereby novels established
themselves as creditable forms, working out generic identities in rela-
tion to and in contrast with theatre and drama. As Gillian Russell re-
minds us, the second half of the 1700s was a time when theatre still took
10 Introduction
precedence as “the dominant force in Georgian public culture” (151),
and the novel, a comparatively young and less prestigious form than
the drama, could advance its own claims to respectability and truthful
representation by associating itself with the more established art. Russell
reads Goldsmith’s and Holcroft’s theatre-fiction, for instance, as accen-
tuating “the value of the novel as a commentary on the contemporary
world, capable of assuming the theatre’s own prerogative to act as a
mirror of society, as well as harnessing . . . the more universal meanings
of theatre” (522).
This is not to say that Georgian theatre-fiction was always compli-
mentary towards theatre. For all Evelina’s delight with Garrick’s perfor-
mance, Burney’s heroine expresses grave reservations about the propriety
of much that she attends, including William Congreve’s Love for Love:
“though it is fraught with wit and entertainment I hope I shall never see
it represented again; for it is so extremely indelicate—to use the softest
word I can—that Miss Mirvan and I were perpetually out of counte-
nance” (89). For Holcroft’s Hugh Trevor, even the bliss of watching Sid-
dons is mitigated by the circumstances of play-going—he gets his watch
stolen amidst “the press of the croud” (233) and has to fight his way
out of the theatre when confronted with two ruffians. Even as Alwyn
appears to affirm the possibility of a “gentleman comedian,” it casts sus-
picion on the types one must traffic with, including the leading player,
Truncheon Stentor, whose efforts to bring down the more talented Al-
wyn lead to all of that noble protagonist’s trouble. Such ambivalences
about theatre and its people, even amidst fiction that broadly relishes
association with theatre and drama, bespeak not only the pervasiveness
of what Jonas Barish explored in The Antitheatrical Prejudice (1981): an
opposition to theatre taking numerous forms since Plato’s banishment of
it from his ideal Republic. These ambivalences may be considered early
instances of the novel-form’s alignment with such prejudices in order
to negotiate a burgeoning rivalry with its medial other, the intensity of
which would escalate in the century ahead. For Jeffrey Franklin, the
figuration of theatre in late-Georgian and early-Victorian novels reflects
a “historical contest that reached culmination in the first half of the
nineteenth century between two, major, competing cultural forms: the
realist novel and the popular theatre” (81), a competition fought through
various strategies of deprecating one’s opponent. Casting theatre as a site
of grubby, thieving crowds; of deceptive and unprincipled performers;
and of plays that put virtuous women out of countenance is a powerful
way for novelists to distinguish and promote their medium’s modes of
expression and reception.
What several scholars have referred to as a foiling tendency in
nineteenth-­century novelistic renderings of theatre may indeed be about
more than a bid for supremacy—it may be implicated with a broader
ideological project. A dominant critical perspective on the realist novel’s
 Introduction 11
nineteenth-century development sees its fundamental mission as increas-
ingly at ideological cross-purposes with theatre. The showiness and
publicity of theatre, the mutability and supposed immorality of its per-
formers, were contrary to values and ideals that the mid-century novel
came to align itself with and propagate: interiority, private domesticity,
authenticity, and properly gendered identity. According to this critical
master-narrative, as Emily Allen summarizes, the novel became the Vic-
torian period’s dominant form because of its role in “the construction of
middle-class identity, the naturalization of female subjectivity, and the
maintenance of the domestic sphere” (3–4). The private woman, as Mi-
chael Robinson writes, “has a singular, permanent identity. She does not
display herself and belongs to the family, not the crowd” (57). Whereas
the actress is depicted as a “parasitical and unfeeling purveyor of fake
emotions, her customary foil, the faithful wife, is portrayed as consis-
tently her warm, sincere, and modest self, wholly unable to dissemble
or feign.” The very convenience of these oppositions may have rendered
theatre extremely important to “novelistic self-definition throughout the
nineteenth century” (Allen 8), accounting for the abundant figuration of
theatre in novels. By representing theatre as “constitutively antagonistic
to the novel’s own charmed circle of middle-class domestic reading and
true sentiment (as opposed to the false sentiments of play-acting)” (Allen
105), novels put their medial rival to productive work.
Commonly cited in these respects is Mansfield Park, which appears
broadly to affirm Sir Thomas Bertram’s resistance to even private the-
atricals. The young Henry Crawford, who feels himself able to “be any
thing or every thing” (135), and who is deemed by Fanny Price to be
“considerably the best actor of all” (193), will also prove the most de-
ceptive and threatening character in the novel. Epitomizing what Bar-
ish refers to as the “familiar anti-theatrical view that the actor has no
true self of his own” (387), he serves as a vivid foil for what the novel
seems to upraise as authenticity in Fanny and Edmund Bertram. An even
better actor and, correspondingly, a more destabilizing force is Brontë’s
Vashti, whose performance Lucy Snowe will deem “a spectacle low,
horrible, immoral” (247). The threat posed by this figure consists not
only in her “demoniac” appearance (her passions write “HELL on her
straight, haughty brow”) but in her defiance of the gender identities reg-
ulating middle-class subjectivity: “I found upon her something neither
of woman nor of man” (247). Theatre’s foiling may also take the form
of memorably bad acting, as predominates in the work of Dickens, who,
for Nina Auerbach, depicts theatre “with a moralistic fastidiousness that
becomes, at times, revulsion” (6). Nicholas Nickleby and Great Expec-
tations tenaciously associate the medium and its representatives with
sham. Pip’s townsman Wopsle, whose woeful Hamlet is described in
what Auerbach calls “one of the most excoriating antitheatrical passages
in the English novel,” is “damned, doomed, and mocked” not simply
12 Introduction
for being untalented but “for being an actor at all” (8). And while such
passages are famously funny, they are also, for Auerbach,

a symptom of a typically Victorian, and perhaps particularly mas-

culine, fear. In those innocent days before talk shows and television,
the mark of a great man was sincerity. Thomas Carlyle’s blueprint
for would-be heroes boomed through the minds of all ambitious
men: “I should say sincerity, a deep, great, genuine sincerity, is the
first characteristic of all men in any way heroic.” A hero was unre-
mittingly himself. If audiences turned from man to performer, from
word to show, the commonwealth would lose itself in chaos. (8)

The persistence in the century’s second half of theatre’s novelistic foiling

is exemplified by a vivid theatre detour in George Eliot’s Middlemarch
(1871–2). The young doctor Tertius Lydgate, as revealed in a brief nar-
rative flashback, had witnessed the beautiful Madame Laure stab her
co-star husband onstage in the middle of a melodrama: “Paris rang with
the story of this death: was it a murder?” (160). Laure, “a Provencale,
with dark eyes, a Greek profile” (160), is a site of unnerving ambiguity
and mutability. Though Lydgate initially takes her part and accepts her
claims to have “slipped” (162), the woman throws him into confusion
and turmoil: “I meant to do it,” she whispers after he proposes mar-
riage, explaining that her late husband’s fondness had “wearied” her.
Lydgate’s infatuation with this woman, of which he is gratefully cured,
is framed by the narrative as a “case of impetuous folly” which “may
stand as an example of the fitful swerving of passion to which he was
prone, together with the chivalrous kindness which helped to make him
morally lovable” (159). This figuring of theatre encapsulates its trou-
bling violation of certainty and sincerity, and its association with corpo-
reality and vulgar tastes vis-à-vis middle-class authenticity. If Madame
Laure is what awaits in the theatre, one is surely wise to spend evenings
by the fireplace with a novel.
Critical approaches emphasizing such foiling operations have been
supplemented from several angles in recent decades. Allen’s own T ­ heater
Figures stresses the novel-form’s intrageneric tensions, reminding us
that there never was such thing as the Victorian novel (22)—­numerous
modes of novelistic fiction vied for supremacy, figuring theatre in ways
that elevated their own artistic ambitions or moral agendas. Follow-
ing Litvak, scholars have also frequently emphasized that foiling is a
dangerous game, since even troubling depictions of theatre can exert
perverse, transgressive attraction. Even Lucy Snowe appears divided
in her rendering of the “immoral” Vashti, and Brontë’s chapter, in its
very intensity, may run the risk of tantalizing rather than inoculating
readers. As Kurnick emphasizes, “Aversion so frequently abuts fascina-
tion” (“­Theatricality” 307), and what he calls “antagonistic models”
 Introduction 13
(Empty 6) of theatre/novel intersections may obscure the many ways
in which the forms have productively influenced one another. After all,
Holcroft and Burney wrote plays as well as novels; and even Austen,
as Penny Gay has shown, was far from straightforwardly resistant to
theatre. Dickens, who has myriad positive things to express about the
art, may indeed have distanced himself from it in his books in order to
distract from the numerous ways in which they are indebted to it, theatre
constituting, asserts Kurnick, “a more or less explicit model for his own
novelistic practice” (“Theatricality” 310). 5 Kurnick’s Empty Houses
suggests substantially different ways of conceiving novelists’ invocations
of theatre than as foils for their interiorizing and domesticating modes,
and I return to his ideas in chapters ahead. But for my present purposes,
the critical narratives outlined above may help to clarify why the bulk of
novelists engaging with theatre between the late-1700s and mid-1800s
tend to confine their literary play-going and theatre-making to a few
chapters or brief segments. The kinds of tensions charted by scholars like
Auerbach suggest the difficulties of writing books that could, through
a sustained engagement with theatre as artist practice(s) and industry,
be termed theatre-novels. The ambivalence and equivocation described
above—“in which the novel both needs theatre and needs to leave it
behind” (Kurnick, “Theatricality” 307)—may seem best dealt with by
casting theatre in comparatively minor parts, proffering it in relatively
small doses, as Dickens, Brontë, and Eliot were wont to do.6
Correlatively, mid-century novels that do deal more extensively with
theatre—and there are several of these—have their work cut out for them,
revealing the lengths to which a novelist must go in order to cast members
of the profession as protagonists. Lauren Chattman has observed that a
number of “essentially domestic novels of the Victorian period, enough
to form a respectable sub-genre, feature actress heroines” (72), citing
Geraldine Jewsbury’s The Half Sisters (1848), E. J. Burbury’s Florence
Sackville, or Self-Dependence (1851), Annie Edwards’s The Morals of
Mayfair (1858), and William Black’s In Silk Attire (1869), all of which,
if reluctant to spend long periods in rehearsals and dressing-rooms, cir-
culate around issues of acting as a profession. That none of these works
achieved substantial recognition seems to have something to do with
the difficulty of marrying theatre and novel under mid-century circum-
stances. In the words of a reviewer for The Spectator, “the great fault of
The Half Sisters, popular as well as critical, is moral. . . . The ­English
mind cannot turn . . . an actress into the heroine of a love-romance”
(qtd. in Chattman 76). We should note that this “fault” arises in spite of
the evident pains Jewsbury takes to exonerate and purify that heroine.
Bianca’s going upon the stage is framed as a financial necessity and a
selfless act, the only way to support herself and her dying mother. From
the start she seems inherently to share the middle-class feminine virtue
of resistance to assertive self-display: “Bianca was stunned, bewildered,
14 Introduction
and ashamed of her conspicuous position, and of the wonder and notice
they obtained from the crowd; but she had no sort of alternative” (30).
And though her mind will open to the “idealism of her profession” (32),
she persists in it primarily out of love for a gentleman, believing that
attaining pre-eminence will help overcome the resistance of her fiancé’s
father. As Chattman argues, Jewsbury even “marshals acting in support
of bourgeois values” (79), suggesting that the profession “functions as a
school for wives”—what Bianca learns there will enable her, having left
it, to become Lord Melton’s exemplary spouse.
This ultimate purging of theatre from the novel (recalling Goethe’s
Wilhelm Meister, whose eponymous protagonist ultimately regards
his time with theatre as a juvenile detour on the road to higher things)
seems requisite for theatre’s substantial inclusion in mid-century theatre-­
novels. In Silk Attire’s Annie Brunel follows suit as she falls in love with
a gentleman: “My natural turn for acting is going—is nearly gone”
(Black 156). Charles Reade’s Peg Woffington (1853), having taken much
enjoyment in its eponymous protagonist’s abilities as an actor, concludes
with a startlingly emphatic repudiation, as though to counterbalance
to its overinvestment in its medial rival. “At the bottom of my heart, I
always loved and honored virtue,” states Woffington, based on a his-
torical star; “Yet the tendencies of the stage so completely overcame my
good sentiments that I was for years a worthless woman. It is a situation
of uncommon and incessant temptation” (298–9). She will “fling” this
profession from her “like a poisonous weed” (296).
For all their diffidence, novels like these participated in a burgeoning
movement that would bring about remarkable changes in attitudes to-
wards the stage and, by 1879, what Henry James would describe as an
unprecedented “passing to and fro” between previously disparate realms:

Plays and actors are perpetually talked about, private theatricals are
incessant, and members of the dramatic profession are “received”
without restriction. They appear in society, and the people of so-
ciety appear on the stage; it is as if the great gate which formerly
divided the theatre from the world had been lifted off its hinges.
(Scenic 119–20)

The impetuses behind these developments were multiple and complex,

including considerable efforts within theatre’s own ranks to elevate its
offerings and its reputation. Mid-century practitioners such as Charles
Kean created “gentlemanly” melodrama and historically accurate Shake-
spearean productions, whose intellectual aspirations and appearance of
aesthetic sophistication attracted classes who, for decades, had resisted
a theatre plagued by rowdy behaviour and dominated by popular offer-
ings such as pantomime. In the 1860s and 1870s new dramatists such as
T. W. Robertson developed forms of “drawing-room comedy” that both
 Introduction 15
represented respectable classes and catered to their interests. Quieter,
more genteel styles of acting (as advanced by the Bancrofts, who pro-
duced Robertson’s plays and “became fixtures in fashionable London
society” [McArthur 136]) helped to bring acting into closer alignment
with societal manners while refiguring actors themselves “as compati-
ble with the domestic sphere” (Miller 199). Stars such as Henry Irving
(whom Victoria would knight in 1895) worked ardently and successfully
to overturn assumptions of “moral unhealthiness” (24) in either the-
atre or the acting profession. Gail Marshall even asserts that actors be-
came “a stabilising moral force akin to that of religion” (Actresses 96),
a paradox given a revealingly ironic twist in George Moore’s 1891 essay
“Mummer-Worship,” which describes the theatre-world’s escalating pu-
rification as a kind of evangelical mission:

He who has met the young actress in a Bayswater drawing-room

has heard her say, “Why shouldn’t a girl be virtuous on the stage as
well as elsewhere . . . and a great deal more so too?” And the young
lady’s aphorism finds echo in the newspapers. It would be profitless,
it would be vain, to seek for the John and Paul of the new gospel. . . .
[Its] apostles are everywhere. (121–2; first ellipsis in orig.)

Though scholars have cautioned against overestimating the extent

of these transformations, there is historical truth to the contention
of James’s Peter Sherringham in The Tragic Muse: “In London nous
mêlons les genres” (249). Benjamin McArthur cites actor Edwin Booth’s
observation during his 1881 English tour, that while “only the very dis-
tinguished” actors were invited into American society, “here I’ve met
many of subordinate positions in the best houses” (136). In cases where
actors themselves were unavailable, the issue per se could provide a vi-
brant focus for any gathering: “What is the social status of the actor? is
argued as passionately as a frontier question of European importance”
(Moore 123).
A late-century proliferation of theatre-novels can be understood as
both galvanized by and facilitating these transformations in social per-
spectives of the stage and its people, as both stoking and benefitting
from the elevated topical interest in actors and the debates surrounding
them. Increasingly exemplifying the virtues and values that Victorian
novel-forms defined themselves by propagating, actors themselves are
poised to become ideal novelistic protagonists. And novelists, far from
constitutively at cross-purposes with theatre, can become its eminent
apostles. A note “To the Reader” at the start of Bertha H. Buxton’s
­Jennie of “The Prince’s” exemplifies this union:

It has been found possible, as in the case of Jennie, that a right-

minded woman can, in spite of youth, personal attractions, and an
16 Introduction
unguarded position, hold her own bravely, even on the much-abused
stage, passing through the ordeal of admiration scathless, and pre-
serving her purity and simplicity from first to last. This Jennie has
done, as have scores of other truehearted women, to whom be all
honour and credit—and the sincere respect of the author. (N.pag)

The 1880s will see a succession of novels likewise tapping into the en-
ergy and topicality of the era’s debates about acting’s respectability. In
Florence Marryat’s My Sister the Actress, middle-class Betha Durant
overcomes her own scruples about going on stage, preserving her purity
while revealing backstage immorality as a distorted fantasy. Her fiancé
Bobby Frere is horrified by her profession only because he “has been
brought up with the conventional notion regarding the immorality of the
theatre and everything connected with it, and has no idea that the pri-
vate lives of many professional performers are much purer than those led
by the votaries of fashion” (28). Mary Augusta Ward’s Miss Bretherton
will indeed take for its protagonist an actress who “look[s] upon herself
as charged with a mission for the reform of stage morals” (85). Harriet
Jay’s Through the Stage Door takes the ambitious step of focussing on a
star of the Variety Theatre, a domain that would longer remain associ-
ated with immorality and vulgar display. Lottie Fane proves the wealthy
Colonel Sedgemore right in his assessment of her virtue and integrity,
countering the prejudices of his insidious, mercenary sister. Such unions,
by the 1880s, are no longer dependent on theatre’s ultimate purging.
Lottie, like Jennie and Betha, remains on the stage with her husband’s
eventual blessing (shifting, albeit, from Variety to Shakespeare).
We would do well, in these respects, to heed the 1885 assertions of
T. H. S. Escott (editor of the prominent Fortnightly Review) that trans-
formations in the social status of actors were due not entirely to their
exemplary morality but also and inversely to “a certain prurient prud-
ishness, a salacious inquisitiveness [within] London society. It loves to
hover over, or alight on, the borderland which separates conventional
respectability from downright dissoluteness. There is nothing which it
so dearly loves as a soupcon of naughtiness” (qtd. in Marshall, Actresses
96). Theatre-fiction, even while espousing and celebrating a dissolution
of divisions between previously disparate social domains, may well have
depended for its attraction on the theatre-world’s lingering sense of oth-
erness, mystery, and bohemianism. As Beth Palmer contends, “While
Marryat’s theatrical novels work to realign conservative attitudes to the
theatre, they also retain some of the mystique and eroticism associated
with female acting” (154). Even a book as abstemious as My Sister the
Actress doesn’t want completely to disillusion Bobby Frere, who “has
only seen the stage and the players on it from below the footlights, and
has enjoyed his dissipation, perhaps all the more from the belief that there
is a vast amount of wickedness behind them” (27–8). In this regard the
 Introduction 17
most provocative part of Jay’s Through the Stage Door may be when the
Colonel, temporarily separated from Lottie, determines to “disguise his
suffering” by plunging into “all the gaieties of the London season” (193):

His face was to be seen at theatres, balls, racecourses—everywhere

that Fashion jingled her fool’s-cap and bells. He had always had an
attraction for Bohemian society, and now he indulged it to the full.
He went a good deal “behind the scenes;” he was introduced to lu-
minaries of the drama and stars of the ballet . . . . (193–4)

Jay is careful to distance her male protagonist from actual vitiation—

readers are wrong to suppose “that he ever descended to vulgar debauch-
ery or scandalous dissipation” (194)—but she raises this prospect even
as she abjures it. If a sense of theatre’s moral reform, and a correlative
compatibility between drawing-rooms and coulisses, facilitated theatre-­
fiction’s late-century proliferation, the genre’s popularity may well
have depended upon its preservation (or intensification) of the allure of
­behind-the-scenes realms. Marshall’s notion of the actor as a “stabiliz-
ing moral force” finds its complementary inversion in a memorable pas-
sage from Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way, whose narrator recalls how
forcefully “the name of a ‘star,’ blazing outside the doors of a theatre,”
or more so, an actress “seen through the window of a brougham which
passed me in the street,” would provoke in him, “as lasting disturbance,
a futile and painful effort to form a picture of her private life” (98–9).
Theatre-novels’ capacity to feed this disturbance may be a vital element
of the genre’s attraction.
This reference to Proust raises the topic of differences between
­English and French tendencies in theatre and literature, a topic expressly
taken up by many theatre-novelists themselves including Ward, James,
and Merrick. Critic Peter Brooks reminds us that French and English
traditions “are not the same, in large part because of the greater self-­
censorship of the English novel, as of English culture in general. The
French novel in the nineteenth century is well into adultery, casual for-
nication, prostitution, homosexuality, and all varieties of sexual obses-
sion, tragic or kinky, at a time when sexual relations could barely be
alluded to in the English novel” (19). This comparison certainly holds if
we juxtapose the theatre-novels of Marryat, Jay, and Ward with works
like Zola’s Nana, which, based on courtesan-actress Blanche ­d’Antigny,
is described by Lenard Berlanstein as “the last but also the paradigmatic
novel of mid-nineteenth-century pornocracy” (142), or Henri Bauer’s
Une comedienne, which depicts not only a young actress’s first sex-
ual experience in a cheap hotel but also her subsequent abortion. Then
again, Moore’s A Mummer’s Wife—which, deeply influenced by Zola’s
naturalism, renders the graphic repercussions of middle-class Kate Ede’s
absconding with a travelling player—sold quickly in England through
18 Introduction
several editions in spite of being banned from libraries, and contributed,
as Jane Jordan suggests, to escalating debates about “the debilitating ef-
fects of literary censorship” (70). As Allen notes, bourgeois ideology was
“increasingly under attack” in the late century from numerous fronts:
“the feminist movement, the socialist movement, the visibility of ‘the
homosexual,’ the progressive drama, and even its stalwart champion,
the novel” (21). By the turn of the century some of the very associations
that had earlier rendered theatre so tricky a topic for bourgeois read-
ing would increasingly become fodder for new kinds of writers. Francis
Gribble’s Sunlight and Limelight makes clear that its actor-characters
live “in a world that was quite tolerant of unions less binding than that
of marriage” (23) and has no scruples about involving the star Angela
Clifton in a succession of adulterous affairs. The heroine of Arthur
­Symons’s “Esther Kahn” will take up a lover for the express purpose of
adding new dimensions to her acting.
A proliferation of theatre-novels and stories in the nineteenth centu-
ry’s last quarter, to the point where genre becomes increasingly mean-
ingful to speak of, thus coincides with and participates in a number of
social and literary transformations. Theatre-novels rise with the diminu-
tion of anti-theatrical prejudice in Britain, with a broadening interest in
the stage and its people, with the theatre’s enhanced suitability for the
middle-classes, but also with transformations in novel-writing per se,
correlative to a decline in the sway of bourgeois ideology. Henry James’s
The Tragic Muse, the central focus of my second chapter, could be taken
as an eminent culmination of these transformations and developments.
The author recalls in his Preface a desire to counter the lingering appre-
hensions of his friend Robert Louis Stevenson about the theatre-world’s
suitability for novels: “he was at a loss to conceive how one could find
an interest in anything so vulgar or pretend to gather fruit in so scrubby
an orchard” (91). James ironically performs this coup de théâtre through
the development of an actress-protagonist whose very force and attrac-
tion are inextricable from what had appeared, for so many preceding
novelists, anathema to bourgeois authenticity. Miriam Rooth is an “em-
broidery without a canvas” (145) and, for critics such as Michael Rob-
inson, an eminent reflection of “the modern self” as articulated by the
likes of Nietzsche and Strindberg (155). Barish, arguing that the book
progressively counters and converts a host of anti-theatrical accusations
“from minuses into pluses” (388), indeed positions The Tragic Muse as a
redemptive finale to centuries of novelistic anxiety about theatre.
But at the historical point where many studies of theatre/novel in-
tersections tend to leave off (including Barish’s, Allen’s, Litvak’s, and
Ackerman’s), a genre of theatre-novels and stories is only just beginning
to gain momentum. And if, by the fin de siècle, certain theatre-fictional
dramas appear to have reached their denouement, others have just begun
to take centre-stage. The period in which I begin is marked by additional
 Introduction 19
changes and transformations within the theatre industry itself, from the
effects of theatre’s own increasing “novelization” on both playwriting
and spectatorship, to the escalating necessity and prominence of theatre
directors, to the rise, before long, of new rivals in cinema and television.
The historical trajectories sketched above, focussing on theatre’s increas-
ing compatibility with the novel, will need to be supplemented with ad-
ditional sets of analytical questions as the genre develops.

Chapter Summaries
The real starting-point for my own analysis of James and his contem-
porary theatre-novelists is what I term a late-century shift in theatre-­
fictional dominant, from social and moralistic anxieties about theatre
and its people to creative and aesthetic apprehensions. What I have
in mind with my second chapter’s title—“Henry James and Stage-­
Frightened Theatre-­Fiction in the Fin de Siècle”—is not simply the idea
that in spite of the advances and transformations outlined above, preju-
dices against theatre’s people (on account of promiscuity, i­nauthenticity,
etc.) persisted in subtler forms through the late century, though in many
ways this is true and explored thematically through characters like The
Tragic Muse’s Peter Sherringham. My term is a nod to two influential
works that inform my approach here and in other portions of the study:
Martin’s Puchner’s Stage Fright: Modernism, Anti-­Theatricality, and
Drama, and Nicholas Ridout’s Stage Fright, Animals, and Other The-
atrical Problems. In speaking of “resistance to the theater” in the pe-
riod associated with modernism, Puchner has in mind not “the more
traditional, moralizing suspicion that actors are whores . . . nor the
other seemingly ineradicable topoi of the traditional anti-theatrical
prejudice” (5), but rather a remarkable range of thinkers, writers, and
even theatre-makers for whom aspects of theatre’s mediality, such as its
affiliation with collaborative production, human actors, and collective
reception, become sources of acute tension as well as catalysts for new
artistic forms.
Like the modes of “diegesis” that Puchner explores—from the “mod-
ernist closet drama” of Mallarmé, Stein, and Joyce to the proliferation
of increasingly detailed stage-directions in published play-texts—fin-
de-siècle theatre-fiction can be analysed as testimony both to the prev-
alence of such tensions and to their paradoxically creative force. But
James and his contemporary theatre-novelists also testify, I suggest, to
a need discerned by critics such as Kurnick and Jarcho to accentuate
the cohabitation in many late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century
figures “of antitheatrical rhetoric with deep theatrical desire” (­Kurnick,
Empty 10). Theatre-novelists are peculiar creatures not only in their aes-
thetic objections to theatre but in what may often appear the perversity
of their attachment to it. James, like other theatre-novelists including
20 Introduction
Zola, Goncourt, Moore, Merrick, France, Leroux, and Dreiser, made
considerable efforts to achieve theatrical success in spite of what ap-
pears a far greater aptitude for the challenges and conditions of novel-­
writing. And while their work may often resonate with bitterness about
the obstacles to (or outright failures of) such ambitions, even their most
stage-­frightened theatre-fiction may betray complex desire for what dis-
tinguishes theatre from novel-writing and reading. In this light, my chap-
ter considers ­theatre-novels as an intermedial “compromise-­formation,”
partially satisfying the desire for theatre while simultaneously defending
against it. Focussing on “Nona Vincent” as well as The Tragic Muse,
I locate one of James’s most provocative contributions to the genre in
his configuration of these tensions through theatre’s intersection with
sexual and romantic relationships—sites of anxiety, of vulnerable expo-
sure, of disparity between vision and corporeal actualization, but also of
alluring potential and seductive possibility.
Novelist and playwright Somerset Maugham, the focus of Chapter 3,
was even more vocal in his resistance to aspects of theatrical creation and
reception than predecessors discussed in Chapter 2. In the mid-1930s,
complaining of everything from the “preponderating” role of directors
(Summing 146) and the “garish publicity” of theatrical performance
(152) to the conservativism and ephemerality of playwriting, he declared
his permanent abandonment of that form in favour of a relationship
with his “lonely reader.” But one of the first things he does upon severing
ties with theatre is to write a novel so preoccupied with that art-form
and industry that he entitles it Theatre. Most compelling about this in-
frequently analysed theatre-novel is its engagement with what I present
as one of the genre’s most perennial motifs—upstaging. Even as it re-
lentlessly spotlights its actress-protagonist Julia Lambert, Theatre reso-
nates with anxiety about the medium’s subjugation to a star-system that
Maugham himself had catered to and helped buttress for three decades.
Drawing on Alex Woloch’s analysis of “character-space,” I explore the
book as a revealing instance of theatre-fiction’s capacity to engage both
thematically and formally with the asymmetrical distributions of theatre
industries and dramatic forms.
I begin my fourth chapter by arguing that what most compellingly
characterizes Virginia Woolf’s career-long, multi-generic engagement
with theatre and drama—and what ironically links her with some of
the mid-century’s most influential theatre practitioners—is her enduring
tension between reading drama and experiencing theatre. Her assertion
that “it is much better to read plays than to see them” (Letters 5 448)
and her attempts to envision a new hybrid form (to be “read, not acted”
[“Narrow” 224]) render her exemplary of what Puchner calls “modern-
ist anti-theatricalism” (2); but her oeuvre’s equally persistent attraction
to collective experiences also links her with what Kurnick calls “interi-
ority’s discontents” (Empty 1). The formal and stylistic complexities of
 Introduction 21
Woolf’s final book Between the Acts call for the concentration afforded
by silent, solitary reading, yet it is simultaneously more evocative of col-
lective reception than any book before it or perhaps since. To consider
the novel’s investment in theatrical co-presence is also to emphasize what
many critics of Between the Acts have underplayed—the extent to which
its engagement with theatre pushes beyond the human. The novel’s gaze
is repeatedly drawn to the countless “stage properties” participating in
Miss La Trobe’s countryside pageant, as well as the particularities of the
environment with which it interacts. I argue that Woolf’s progressive
upstaging of what had long been theatre’s essential feature—the human
being—both links her with key thrusts in modern drama and anticipates
recent movements towards “theatre ecology.”
Ngaio Marsh did so much important work as a theatre director that
she was made Dame Commander of the British Empire in 1966. But
she also killed more actors than the plague. Ten of this Crime Queen’s
detective novels between 1934 and 1982 are set amidst theatrical perfor-
mance, making her the most prolific theatre-novelist ever. If what I call
“backstage detective fiction” seems incongruous with previous chapters’
focus on writers as esteemed as James, Maugham, and Woolf, I propose
to take the subgenre seriously. Acutely conscious of the perils of collab-
oration and theatrical “accident,” Marsh reveals a profound affiliation
with Edward Gordon Craig, and my fifth chapter short-circuits the pop-
ular detective novelist with the revolutionary modernist director. This
investigation also suggests a second, more deadly culprit, appropriately
concealed by the praise Marsh heaps on him: Constantin Stanislavski.
I argue that Marsh’s work gives powerful expression to, and seeks in its
own way to resolve, intensified anxieties about real human emotion on
modern stages.
My sixth chapter focusses on another prolific theatre-novelist,
J. B. Priestley, whose The Good Companions, Jenny Villiers, Lost Em-
pires, and Birmanpool are highly celebratory of theatrical performance
in a range of forms (from Pierrot Troupes to modern drama) but also
anxious about its fate in the face of money-minded production systems
and the rising dominance of film and television. Priestley’s most provoc-
ative contribution to the genre may consist, however, in his spotlighting
of a motif that hovers in the wings of many theatre-novels: theatre’s
relation with labour. One of the genre’s peculiar features is its capacity
to accentuate the work typically concealed behind proscenium arches,
a world of prompters, scene-shifters, technicians, and dressers, not to
mention actors’ own work in preparing for and executing performances.
While many preceding theatre-novelists reveal anxiety about theatrical
art’s proximity to labour, distinctive about Priestley is his attention to
the ideological potentialities of this work. If, as Ridout argues, some-
thing of theatre’s “communist potential” can be found in its capacity to
trouble “fundamental assumptions about both work and time—about
22 Introduction
the work of time and the time of work” (6), Priestley’s sustained focus
on time and work in theatre makes his theatre-fiction a provocative site
for exploring this potential.
Few novelists have written theatre and performance into their books
as frequently as Angela Carter, and fewer have engaged on the page with
such a range of theatrical forms. Bringing her final novel Wise Children
into conversation with several of her earlier works, my seventh chap-
ter identifies two key concerns at the heart of Carter’s theatre-fiction:
the consequences of severance from collective experience in a world
where public sites of reception (from outdoor playing spaces and large
playhouses to fairgrounds and circus tents) are increasingly usurped
by intensely private, solipsistic modes of entertainment, and the fate
of imagination and desire in a realm where the separations, seductive
curtaining, and invisible offstage regions characteristic of proscenium
structuring are increasingly eroded. I explore how her theatre-fiction
probes and contests solipsistic diminishment, and, with reference to Jean
Baudrillard, I examine the theatre and comedy of Wise Children as re-
sponse to the pervasive obscenity of a late-century mediascape.
Doris Lessing was initially more interested in writing plays than
­literary fiction, but like many preceding theatre-novelists from James to
Carter she did not triumph on the boards, later blaming theatre’s depen-
dence on collaboration for her repudiation of it. But her 1996 theatre-­
novel Love, Again, written in her seventies, is a vivid testimony to the
wonders and powers of collaborative creation. My eighth chapter exam-
ines the book as a complex engagement with what Laura Cull refers to
as “transcendent” and “immanent” modes of theatrical creation (25),
and it draws on Alenka Zupančič’s theoretical analysis of love, desire,
and their structural correspondences with tragedy and comedy in order
to reassess the place of this novel within Lessing’s complex oeuvre. If the
former member of the British Communist Party has often be charged
with a pessimistic repudiation of utopian visions and a resistance to
prospects of radical change, to consider Love, Again’s intersecting of
theatre and love is to reveal each as sites of potential miracles. It is also
to accentuate the radical shifts in novelistic engagement with theatre
charted over the course of this study. Theatre’s collaborative nature, its
ephemerality, its contingency—problems that earlier theatre-novels had
emerged in response to—are engaged by Lessing’s fiction as sources of
theatre’s very salvation.

Notes
1 See, for instance, Chattman (72), Palmer (154), and Marshall, “­Shakespeare”
(105).
2 The idea that a text “participates” in a genre (rather than “belonging” to
one) is drawn from Derrida (230). The distinction helps to emphasize that
genres are never absolutely fixed or stable categories existing independent
 Introduction 23
of the varied texts to which their names may be applied. In a similar vein,
Frow suggests that texts use or indeed “perform the genres by which they are
shaped” (25).
3 I take the concept of a literary “dominant” from Brian McHale (6), who
attributes it initially to the Russian Formalist Jury Tynyanov.
4 See, for instance, Deleuze’s discussion of the “reality of the virtual” in
­Chapter 4 of Difference and Repetition.
5 See also my analysis of Dickens in “Theatrical Extraneity: John Irving’s A
Prayer for Owen Meany and Dickensian Theatre-Fiction.”
6 I recognize that some scholars may balk at my suggestion that theatre per-
forms “minor parts” in these novelists’ work. Franklin, for instance, ranks
Eliot’s Daniel Deronda (1876) “among the most patently theatrical Victo-
rian novels” (81). I don’t deny that the spectre of the star Alcharisi (Daniel’s
estranged mother) hovers over the novel, and I acknowledge the importance
of Mirah’s history as a child actor, Gwendolyn’s blighted hopes for entering
the profession, and the plentiful parallels Eliot creates with Shakespearean
plots. But only a handful of this lengthy book’s seventy chapters represent or
discuss theatre as artistic practice or industry, and only the sixth, twentieth,
and twenty-third engage with it in sustained ways. Franklin’s assertion that
“theatricality is ever-present on the surface of Daniel Deronda” (81) is de-
pendent on metaphorization: “Theatricality is play with identity” (80), and
Gwendolyn is deemed theatrical on the basis of things including her “per-
formance as the aristocratic gambler” (81). I’d suggest that Eliot’s book’s
resistance to becoming a fuller-fledged theatre-novel may be as important as
its “novelization of the theatrical” (Franklin 83).

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2 Henry James and Stage-
Frightened Theatre-Fiction
in the Fin de Siècle

Henry James’s Preface to The Tragic Muse, written eighteen years after
the novel’s initial publication in 1890, explains his interest in exploring
one of literature’s “half-dozen great primary motives”: “the conflict be-
tween art and ‘the world’” (79). The novel develops this conflict through
two interwoven plots, one focussed on English gentleman Nick Dormer
who must choose between his love for painting and a lofty position in
society, including a seat in Parliament, a fortune he stands to inherit,
and his fiancé Julia Dallow. A second plot concerns the development of
young actress Miriam Rooth who, having trained in Paris and met with
early success on London stages, faces a choice between pursuing her art
or becoming an Ambassador’s wife. This plot, which comes to domi-
nate the narrative, varies what I have identified in my introduction as a
cardinal question of nineteenth-century theatre-novels from Geraldine
Jewsbury’s The Half Sisters and William Black’s In Silk Attire to Harriet
Jay’s Through the Stage Door—whether a union between respectable
society and the stage is possible.
James’s theatre-novel also vividly departs from recent predecessors,
perhaps most conspicuously in its actress-protagonist. Whereas the her-
oines of B. H. Buxton’s Jennie of “The Prince’s” and Florence Marryat’s
My Sister the Actress epitomize from their first performances the grace
and deportment of true English ladies, Miriam’s early representation of
Juliet at a private gathering is a shocking scene of “high fierce sound, of
many cries and contortions” (99), an “explosive” display (100) that Julia
Dallow pronounces “dreadfully vulgar” (105). Daughter of a deceased
Jewish stockbroker of German ancestry, Miriam self-identifies as a “great
vagabond” (412), and far from sharing the repugnance of Mary Augusta
Ward’s Isabel Bretherton for the scabrous characters of French theatre, she
is only too happy to play “bad women” (113). But her most notable dif-
ference from preceding actress-protagonists is her apparent confirmation
of the long-standing anti-theatrical prejudice that actors have no true or
stable self. What strikes Peter Sherringham (Nick’s cousin, the would-be
Ambassador) is what he calls her “absence of intervals” (145). Miriam
has the “histrionic nature . . . in such perfection that she [is] always act-
ing; that her existence [is] a series of parts assumed for the moment, each
 Henry James 27
changed for the next” (130). Sherringham initially sees something “really
appalling” in this prospect of a woman “whose only being was to ‘make
believe’” (130). But for critics such as Jonas Barish, not only does The
Tragic Muse refuse to equate the absence of a “single indivisible self”
with “any moral defect”; it appears increasingly to rejoice in Miriam’s
“kaleidoscopic quality” (388). Her infinite variety suggests “intensity and
concentration, a heightened responsiveness to those she is with, and . . . a
power to live to the fullest in the present moment.” As Victoria Coulson
observes, even Peter Sherringham comes to recognize the actress’s lack of
“intrinsic content” as “the source of a dazzling power” (70).
Sherringham’s own relationship with the stage marks another conspic-
uous difference from many earlier theatre-novels in Britain. While gen-
tlemen actress-lovers in Jewsbury, Black, Buxton, Marryat, and Jay are
not generally interested in theatre beyond an entertainment or a place to
behold their love-object, Sherringham is introduced as a passionate sup-
porter, deeply invested in the art-form’s history and possibilities. From
his first encounter with Miriam at her unpromising audition with retired
actress Madame Carré, he offers to do all he can to assist the girl in her
development, taking a box at the Comédie-Française where (chaperoned
by her mother) she can gain with him her first exposure to the great
French dramas. Like Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister, with whom he compares
himself (333), Sherringham indeed makes it hard to tell if he is most in
love with the young actress or with theatre itself. In these respects The
Tragic Muse turns on its head the dominant question of much Victorian
theatre-fiction: it asks not only whether the actress will prove worthy of
a gentleman’s courtship, as Jewsbury’s Bianca and Jay’s Lottie Fane had
done, but whether a gentleman dilettante will prove worthy of the art he
professes to exalt, willing to sacrifice “the world” on its behalf.
Though James himself never professed romantic attachment to an ac-
tress, his situation at the time of writing The Tragic Muse bears analogies
with the infatuation of Sherringham, whose long admiration of theatre
had, prior to falling for Miriam, operated from a certain distance. James
too had been deeply invested with the medium as a spectator. The au-
tobiographical A Small Boy and Others conveys his boyhood passion
for the stage, and his copious essays on theatre amidst his decades of
novel-writing, first in America and then in England (where he predomi-
nantly resided after 1874) range from reviews of Henry Irving’s Macbeth
to analyses of Henrik Ibsen. Sherringham’s ecstatic response to Miri-
am’s performance (walking the streets “with the four acts of the play
glowing again before him in the smokeless London night” [325]) recalls
James’s description of his own response to Benoît-Constant Coquelin’s
performance in Lomon’s Jean Dacier: “When this spectator came out
he was too excited to go home, to go to bed, to do anything but live the
piece over. . . . [H]e patrolled the streets till night was far gone” (Scenic
209–10). At the time of writing The Tragic Muse, however, James is
28 Henry James
faced with the prospect of a more intimate relationship with theatre. The
novel’s intersecting of burgeoning love and artistic beginnings evokes his
own unsullied hopes for what he had come to regard as his ideal form:
the well-made play. For the next five years he would devote himself al-
most exclusively to playwriting.
If in this respect The Tragic Muse appears a kind of novelistic foreplay
with theatre, it also exemplifies a certain perversity. If James is so pas-
sionate about theatre and eager to enter its realms, why is he still writing
a novel, and such a lengthy one? It would be hard to find a theatre-novel
that coincides so directly with evasion of theatre—the longer James con-
tinues to work on The Tragic Muse the longer he resists committing
himself fully to his professed love. Practical explanations for this delay
arise, including financial and contractual obligations, but as Leon Edel
asserts, James’s plentiful excuses for his “innumerable postponements”
often ring hollow, betraying cold feet: “For a man ‘impatient’ to get at
play-writing, he was procrastinating to an extraordinary degree” (41).
This chapter considers James in relation to what I have called, in my
introduction, “stage-frightened theatre-fiction.” Evoking the work of
theorists such as Martin Puchner and Nicholas Ridout, this term ges-
tures to a paradoxical combination of attraction and resistance to the-
atre as artistic medium, practice, and site of reception. I posit that the
fin de siècle reflects a shift in theatre-fictional dominant, from social and
moralistic to aesthetic concerns with theatre and its people. In particu-
lar, what is both attractive and deeply troubling about theatre for James
is its manyness. If he is open to an actress-protagonist who has not one
character but “a hundred!” (Tragic 146), his theatre-fiction resonates
with and responds to different kinds of anxiety about theatre’s reliance
on collective reception (as opposed to private novel-reading) and collab-
orative production (in contrast with individual novel-writing). Far from
making James anomalous, these tensions and concerns are what link
him most intimately with a range of theatre-novelists from Émile Zola
to Leonard Merrick, and I explore their catalytic and paradoxically cre-
ative role in the genre’s late- and turn-of-the-century proliferation.
To take this approach is not to suggest that we shift away from the
love-plots that figure so prominently in many theatre-novels. Both The
Tragic Muse and James’s story “Nona Vincent” compellingly intersect
theatre’s relationships with romantic and sexual relationships, model-
ling what I’ll return to throughout this study as one of the genre’s most
provocative ways of engaging with the complexities, antagonisms, and
seductive potentials of theatre’s encounters. To consider theatre-novels
as a kind of intermedial “compromise-formation”—partially satisfying
the desire for theatre while simultaneously defending against it—is to
explore their congress with the medium as site of anxiety, of vulnerable
exposure, of disparity between vision and corporeal actualization, but
also of alluring possibility. In this respect, the final section of my chapter
 Henry James 29
suggests additional possibilities for thinking about theatre-­novels and
manyness, drawing on what Alex Woloch calls “character-space” (14) to
gesture to the genre’s democratizing potentials.

The Omnium Gatherum

The first discussion of theatre in The Tragic Muse arises in its fourth
chapter, when James’s philosophical flâneur Gabriel Nash, lunching
with Nick Dormer and his family, anatomizes the “essentially brutal”
modern audience,

the omnium gatherum of the population of a big commercial city,

at the hour of the day when their taste is at its lowest, flocking out
of hideous hotels and restaurants, gorged with food, stultified with
buying and selling and with all the other sordid preoccupations of
the age, squeezed together in a sweltering mass, disappointed in
their seats, timing the author, timing the actor, wishing to get their
money back on the spot—all before eleven o’clock. Fancy putting
the exquisite before such a tribunal as that! (50)

Under these conditions even the sublime works of past ages are increas-
ingly unactable, remounted “only to be mutilated and trivialised,” short-
ened and simplified to enable spectators “to catch the suburban trains,
which stop at 11.30” (50). But modern dramatists, tasked with repre-
senting a world “infinitely more reflective and complicated” (51) than
Shakespeare’s or Racine’s, stand no chance. They are hopelessly ham-
pered by the demands and limitations of this gorged mob: “What can
you do with a character, with an idea, with a feeling, between dinner
and the suburban trains?” (51). Nash contrasts this mode of writing with
the one in which he has his own existence: “What crudity compared
with what the novelist does!” (51).
James raises such objections in order to open them for debate. Sher-
ringham accuses Nash of merely parroting fashionable complaints (“The
raffinés despise the theatre” [51]), arguing that a great actor like Ma-
dame Carré can bring a character to more vivid life than most novelists.
And if Nash’s grandiloquence appears to get the better of his disputant,
he later contradicts himself, becoming one of Miriam’s biggest support-
ers. But resistance to public audiences is by no means purged from the
book. Even Sherringham is hardly complimentary in his evocations of
the “artless, stupid, delightful public” (404). His very passion for the-
atre’s possibilities makes him all the more frustrated with audiences’
support of “rubbish”: “the fault was the want of life in the critical sense
of the public, which was ignobly docile, opening its mouth for its dose,
like the pupils of Dotheboys Hall; not insisting on something different,
on a fresh preparation” (329).
30 Henry James
Similar debates arise in James’s 1889 dialogue “After the Play,” writ-
ten in the midst of The Tragic Muse. Dorriforth, who frequently dom-
inates this fictional post-show discussion of André Antoine’s Théâtre
Libre (which visited London that year), deplores “the constitution of the
contemporary multitude” and its effect on playwriting: “It’s in a tremen-
dous hurry, squeezed together, with a sort of generalized gape, and the
last thing it expects of you is that you will spin things fine” (232). The-
atre, “inevitably accommodating itself,” must soon relinquish character
per se, which depends on fineness; it will reduce itself to “little illustra-
tions of costume stuck about—dressed manikins” (233). Such opinions
both do and don’t represent the views of their author, whose own essays
and letters on theatre reflect considerable oscillation on similar topics.
An 1875 review of a Tennyson play presents the temporal constrictions
of writing for the stage as a provocative challenge rather than a mere lim-
itation, “a problem in ingenuity” calling upon “an artist’s rarest gifts”
(Theory 98). In 1886 he appears to change his mind: “I think, I confess,
less highly of the drama, as a form, a vehicle, than I did—compared with
the novel which can do and say so much more” (qtd. in Edel 44). His
proclamation in 1889 of the well-made play as his ideal form would seem
decisively to counter Nash’s and Dorriforth’s pessimism, but within a
few years of completing The Tragic Muse he appears to be quoting those
characters, lamenting “the hard meagreness inherent in the theatrical
form, committed to think after all so much more of the clock than of the
subject” (Theatricals xii). As a working playwright James will indeed
often represent the craft’s concision in terms of violence rather than in-
genuity: “I have likewise ‘cut’ my second act as effectually and bloodily
as the most barbarous dramatic butcher could desire” (qtd. in Edel 257).
Such tensions resonate in The Tragic Muse on formal as well as thematic
levels. Nash’s assertion of the crudity of playwriting’s enforced econ-
omy vis-à-vis novelistic liberty is turned upside-down in James’s Preface,
which recalls his desire to elevate novel-writing itself by subjecting it to
the restraint and brevity demanded by the conditions of theatre. Contra
unwieldy nineteenth-century “baggy monsters” like Tolstoy’s War and
Peace (84), he extols “the successfully foreshortened thing” (87) and the
challenge of representing one’s subject “under strong compression” (94).
He indeed casts The Tragic Muse as his first focussed attempt to impose
“scenic conditions” on the novel-form—“conditions which are as near
an approach to the dramatic as the novel may permit itself” (90).1 But as
James also confesses, The Tragic Muse was only a partial realization of
these principles; the book did not submit to foreshortening, verging in-
stead, with its digressiveness and extensive inner monologue, on a baggy
monster. Gabriel Nash’s assertions of novel-writing’s superior scope are
in key ways supported by his very existence—this loquacious peripheral
character would need to be considerably pruned if not altogether excised
for a stage version. 2
 Henry James 31
James’s theatre-stories of the early 1890s bring additional tension and
nuance to these debates about writing for audiences. On the one hand,
the playwright Allan Wayworth in “Nona Vincent” recalls the optimis-
tic James in extolling the “scenic idea”: “the dramatic form had a purity
which made some others look ingloriously rough. . . . There was a fearful
amount of concession in it, but what you kept had a rare intensity” (5).
From its opening line, however, the story foregrounds the gratification
Wayworth takes in sharing his writing with a private, intimate audience
of one: “‘I wondered whether you wouldn’t read it to me,’ said Mrs.
Alsager, as they lingered a little near the fire before he took leave” (1).
In “her warm, golden drawing-room” (1), his confidant, with her “quiet
grace” (3), represents to Wayworth “an ideal public”—“she took an in-
terest really minute and asked questions delightfully apt.” This mode of
reception could not be more different from the tumultuous crowd before
which Wayworth himself is thrust at the curtain-call of his play’s even-
tual opening night. Though applauding, the “vaguely peopled” house
(24), perceived through the “glare of the footlights,” fills him with ter-
ror, the ambiguity of its response contrasting so vividly with the certi-
tude he had experienced with Alsager. If, as Coulson writes, James is
evidently eager at this point for “what he imagines will be the exhila-
rating exposure of the stage” (89), he will also experience that stage, in
Ackerman’s terms, as a “disconcertingly public venue” (194), a site of
unnerving vulnerability. His 1893 story “The Private Life” complexly
configures these anxieties through novelist Clare Vawdrey, who faces
“atrocious difficulty” (66) in completing a play for the famous actress
Blanche Adney. Vawdrey turns out to be not a single author but two
twin brothers, one sociable and attracted to public attention (though
not a literary genius), the other confining himself to his private study,
generating literature “at his table in the dark” (75). The Tragic Muse’s
conflict between art and “the world” is given another turn of the screw:
theatre’s tangible affiliation with the manyness and social exposure of
public worlds both attracts and horrifies a literary genius.
“Forget not that you write for the stupid,” raged an increasingly
frustrated genius amidst his early-1890s playwriting venture—“that
your maximum of refinement must meet the minimum of intelligence
of the audience—the intelligence, in other words, of the biggest ass it
may conceivably contain” (qtd. in Edel 52). James’s defensive charac-
terization, a few years later, of his notoriously unsuccessful play Guy
Domville as “over the heads of the usual vulgar theatre-going London
public,” many of whom energetically booed at the curtain-call, seems
testimony to his not having conceded to his own assessment of audi-
ences (Letters 508).
But if these resistances and disjunctions make James seem, to use
Miriam Rooth’s terms, like a grasshopper attempting to “mate with
a fish” (450)—a talented novelist misjudging his suitability for the
32 Henry James
theatre-world—they also link him with numerous other fin-de-siècle
t­ heatre-novelists. The challenges posed by public reception become a
preeminent motif as the genre proliferates at this time. Ward’s Miss
­Bretherton (which James had discussed with its author prior to writing
The Tragic Muse) seems driven to prove the omnium gatherum’s deleteri-
ous effects. Its actress-protagonist is at risk of being ruined artistically by
an undiscriminating public who support her “on considerations wholly
outside those of dramatic art” (96) including sheer beauty. Salvation de-
pends on a small coterie of educated spectators like Eustace Kendall who
can intervene against mindless public response. So different a novelist as
George Moore concurs on this point: “the public has almost ceased to
discriminate between bad and good acting, and will readily grant its suf-
frage and applause to anyone who has been abundantly advertised, and
can enforce his or her claim either by beauty or rank” (Impressions 165).
Moore illustrates this in fiction through A Mummer’s Wife’s Kate Ede,
whose “delicious modernity of . . . figure and dress” nearly compels her
spectators “to precipitate themselves from the galleries” (229). Leonard
Merrick’s The Actor-Manager is even more broadly critical of the ca-
pacities and habits of a London public that “seeks before all things to be
amused” (266). Playwright Royce Olliphant, attempting to elevate the
standard of dramatic fare with more intellectual work, decries every-
thing from the “irritating frequency” of coughing and shuffling in the pit
to the fashionable audience’s inevitable tardiness (259). Even Merrick’s
W. B. Forsyth, “the most accomplished of living dramatists,” will find
his play rejected in The Position of Peggy Harper by a public “who were
not in the least concerned with the truth of its psychology,” caring only
for the prettiness of its undiscerning young star (255).
While these writers frequently raise French audiences as foils for
­British limitations, French theatre-novelists reveal their own affinity with
­Gabriel Nash’s attack. Edmond de Goncourt, before writing La Faustin,
vocally lamented playwrights’ subjugation to the “mass of idiots from
which an audience is created, all those judges whom we whole-heartedly
despise and whose judgements and applause we are yet weak enough to
seek” (qtd. in Billy 150). Émile Zola, whose Le naturalisme au théâtre
appeared near the time of his novel Nana, lambastes “la théorie de la
souveraineté du public” (“the theory of the public’s sovereignty”), con-
trasting audience response with the more discerning nature of individual
readership: “Le spectateur pris isolément est parfois un homme intelli-
gent; mais . . . rien n’est moins littéraire qu’une foule” (“The spectator
taken in isolation is sometimes an intelligent person; but . . . nothing is
less literary than a crowd”; my trans.; 56). Nana, which James reviewed
in 1880, could be said to demonstrate these contentions in its first chap-
ter. An initially diverse audience is gradually homogenized, relinquish-
ing any critical capacity in the face of an attractive performer’s charm
and sexual force.
 Henry James 33
In these respects the eponymous star of history’s most famous theatre-­
novel—Leroux’s The Phantom of Opera—is not so different and alone
as he believes himself to be. In Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical version,
Erik, the supposed phantom who haunts the Palais Garnier, demands
the staging of Don Juan Triumphant, the opera he has written and com-
posed. In his ghostly way he even assists with rehearsals and makes a
surprise appearance in the title role. But Leroux’s Erik insists that his
masterpiece must never be performed: “When it is finished, I will get
into the coffin there with it and never wake again” (137). A public that so
delights in worldly appearances and extols established yet unintelligent
and mechanical performers like the diva Carlotta can hardly be trusted
to appreciate the work into which Erik has poured heart and soul for
decades. He would rather drop a chandelier on their heads than share
with them a line of his Don Juan.
This peculiar combination of attraction to theatrical forms (Erik lit-
erally lives in a theatre) and resistance to their affiliation with public
reception was by no means uncommon as the century neared its end and
the era associated with modernism commenced. As Puchner has shown,
similarly complex ambivalences would drive the likes of Stephane
­Mallarmé and Gertrude Stein to take up what he calls “modernist closet
drama” (13), a form enabling writers to “feed off the theatre and keep
it close at hand” (2) while evading its dependence on collective recep-
tion. Puchner casts such “diegetic” tendencies as a vivid symptom of
artistic cultures that privileged both individual genius and modes of
reception “shielded from the distractions of public spaces” (102). The
cotemporaneous proliferation of theatre-novels, though not confined to
conspicuously “modernist” writers, might be considered in comparable
lights. Theatre-novels are, to be sure, very different diegetic engage-
ments with theatre; we could say that James, Zola, Goncourt, Moore,
­Merrick, France, and Leroux (all of whom made ardent if often abortive
efforts at playwriting) desired theatre too much to revert to closets. In
the words of James’s Dorriforth, “The theatre consists of two things,
que diable—of the stage and the drama, and I don’t see how you can
have it unless you have both, or how you can have either unless you have
the other” (“After” 237). Theatre-fiction, in this light, offers an eminent
“compromise-­formation,” enabling intimate relationships with theatre
without the sacrifices of writing for the clock or for “the stupid.” Au-
thors may wrestle with anxieties about public reception and manyness
and may do so without abandoning literariness in order to cater to a
sweltering mass—the form can be read with concentration and atten-
tion to thematic nuances and stylistic subtleties in the quiet of a study.
Audiences may indeed be transmuted from obstacle to opportunity, be-
coming interesting literary subjects, sources of formal challenges and
perspectival experimentation, the specificities of which can be appreci-
ated through private reading.
34 Henry James
Inattentive and undiscriminating audiences were not, of course, a new
phenomenon. They had long been a challenge for playwrights, and since
at least the mid-1700s, novelists had enjoyed transmuting their biggest
asses into memorable characters. Fanny Burney’s Evelina despairs of the
detrimental effect on her theatregoing of the likes of Mr Lovel, who
loudly confesses (mid-show):

I seldom listen to the players: one has so much to do, in looking

about and finding out one’s acquaintance, that, really, one has no
time to mind the stage . . . [A] play requires so much attention, —
it is scarce possible to keep awake if one listens;—for, indeed, by
the time it is evening, one has been so fatigued with dining, —or
wine, —or the house, —or studying, —that it is—it is perfectly an
impossibility. (Evelina 92)

What most substantially distinguishes fin-de-siècle theatre-novelists in

this respect is not simply the acerbity or preponderance of their critiques
but their seeming pickiness. Moore’s complaints about distracting noises
from a coat-check during an Ibsen play (Impressions 162), or Anatole
France’s letter of apology to Hamlet on behalf of the Comédie-Française’s
“heedless” spectators, who had “coughed a little, as they ate iced fruits
in their boxes” (2), seem laughably petty vis-à-vis Dickens’s description
of Sadler’s Wells theatre in 1851: a “bear-garden, resounding with foul
language, oaths, catcalls, shrieks, yells, blasphemy, ­obscenity—a truly
diabolical clamour” (25).
Put differently, fin-de-siècle theatre-novelists’ resistance to the con-
ditions of public reception does not set them straightforwardly at odds
with the theatre of their day but paradoxically aligns them with pow-
erful thrusts within it. What many scholars have described as theatre’s
late-century “novelization” pertains not only to a proliferation of plays
reflecting novelistic preoccupations with interiority and psychological
complexity (a famous British example is Arthur Pinero’s The Second
Mrs. Tanqueray [1893], praised by William Archer for its similarity to
the culminating chapters “of a singularly powerful and original novel”
[132]). Such drama both benefitted from and helped foster modes of
reception more closely resembling the isolated, reflective conditions of
novel-reading. As Ackerman puts it, “the realist attitude might be para-
phrased by saying that going to the theater ought to be more like reading
a book” (10). While theatrical experience at the time of Burney’s Lovel
had thrived on audiences’ visibility to themselves, David Wiles charts the
development of a “new aesthetic code” aimed at “reducing a convivial
audience to silence” (152), afforded (or enforced) by private boxes, dark-
ened proscenium houses, and the abolition of pits. What Wiles refers to
as an increasingly isolated “Cartesian” spectator, akin to an invisible
ego that “does not submit to any embodied immersion in space—space
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 agriculture their sole resource, 138.
Volney describes the American habits of diet, i. 44.
Voltaire, i. 161.

Wagner, Jacob, i. 236.

Ware, Henry, i. 311.
Warren, Dr. J. C., his description of Boston customs in 1800, i.
91.
Washington city in 1800, i. 30.
Washington, President, opinion of American farming-lands, i. 35;
his support of a national bank, 65;
on emancipation in Pennsylvania and its effects, 135;
establishes the precedent of addressing Congress in a
speech, 247;
his personal authority, 262, 320.
Water communication in 1800, i. 8.
Waterhouse, Dr., i. 93.
Webster, Noah, i. 62, 105.
Weld, Rev. Abijah, of Attleborough, i. 21.
Weld, Isaac, Jr., an English traveller, describes condition of inns
in America, i. 46, 52;
describes Princeton, 129;
quoted, 136;
at Wilmington, 182.
West, Benjamin, i. 127.
West Indian trade, English policy toward, ii. 318;
value of, to England, 331, 413, 415.
West Point Military Academy established, i. 301.
Whitney, Eli, i. 181.
Whittemore, Asa, i. 182.
Whitworth, Lord, British minister at Paris, Napoleon’s
announcement to, ii. 19.
Wilkinson, James, Brigadier-General and governor of the
Louisiana Territory, ii. 220;
portrayed by Turreau, 406;
his relations with Burr, 408.
William and Mary, college of, i. 136.
Wilson, Alexander, describes New England in 1808, i. 19;
on North Carolina, 36, 57, 124.
Wilson, Judge, i. 127.
Wistar, Dr. Caspar, i. 127.
Wordsworth, i. 94;
his lines on America, 169, 172.
Wythe, George, i. 133.

X. Y. Z. affair, i. 355, 358, 359.

Yale College, i. 106.

Yazoo Act, i. 304.
Yazoo Compromise, ii. 210;
Madison’s measure, 211;
vote upon, 217.
(See Georgia.)
Yrujo, Don Carlos Martinez, Spanish minister, his intimate
relations with Jefferson, i. 425;
writes to Morales with respect to the right of deposit, 427;
announces the restoration of the right of deposit, ii. 3;
protests against the sale of Louisiana, 92, 252 et seq.;
his anger, 258, 389;
obtains from American lawyers an opinion, 259;
attacks Madison, 260;
his affair with Jackson, 265;
visits Jefferson at Monticello, 266;
publishes his counter statement as to his affair with Jackson,
268;
relations of, with White House, 362;
indiscretion, 368;
at the White House, 369;
concerts reprisals with Merry, 373.
END OF VOL. II.
 FOOTNOTES:
[1] Cabinet Memoranda of Mr. Jefferson, April 8, 1803;
Jefferson MSS.
[2] Madison to Livingston and Monroe, April 18 and 20, 1803;
State Papers, ii. 555.
[3] Livingston to Madison, Nov. 11, 1802; State Papers, ii. 526.
[4] State Papers, ii. 556.
[5] Yrujo to Madison, Notes of April 19 and 20, 1803; MSS.
State Department Archives.
[6] Bonaparte to Decrès, 6 Fructidor, An x. (Aug. 24, 1802);
Correspondance, viii. 4.
[7] Instructions secrètes pour le Capitaine-Général de la
Louisiane, approuvées par le Premier Consul le 5 Frimaire, An xi.
(Nov. 26, 1802); Archives de la Marine, MSS.
[8] Livingston to Madison, Feb. 18, 1803; State Papers, ii. 533.
[9] Talleyrand to Bernadotte, 24 Nivôse, An xi. (Jan. 14, 1803);
Archives des Aff. Étr., MSS.
[10] Correspondance, viii. 145; Bonaparte to Decrès, 28
Frimaire, An xi. (Dec. 19, 1802).
[11] Correspondance, viii. 146; Bonaparte to Victor, 25
Frimaire, An xi. (Dec. 16, 1802).
[12] Livingston to Madison, Dec. 20, 1802; State Papers, ii.
528.
[13] Rochambeau to Decrès, 16 Frimaire, An xi. (Dec. 7,
1802); Archives de la Marine, MSS.
[14] Correspondance, viii. 201; Bonaparte to Decrès, 16
Pluviôse, An xi. (Feb. 5, 1803).
[15] Lucien Bonaparte et ses Mémoires, Th. Jung, ii. 165, n.;
Lanfrey’s Napoleon, ii. 495.
[16] Livingston to Madison, Feb. 18, 1803; State Papers, ii.
533.
 [17] Beurnonville to Talleyrand, 15 Ventôse, An xi. (March 6,
1803); Archives des Aff. Étr., MSS.
[18] Cevallos to Beurnonville, March 10, 1803; Archives des
Aff. Étr., MSS.
[19] Livingston to Madison, March 12, 1803; State Papers, ii.
547.
[20] Amiot to Decrès, 19 Germinal, An xi. (April 9, 1803);
Archives de la Marine, MSS.
[21] Claims Convention, Aug. 11, 1802; State Papers, ii. 476.
[22] Madison to Pinckney, May 11, 1802; State Papers, ii. 517.
[23] Cevallos to Pinckney, May 4, 1803; State Papers, ii. 557.
[24] Rufus King to Madison, April 2, 1803; State Papers, ii.
551.
[25] History of Louisiana, Barbé Marbois, p. 277.
[26] History of Louisiana, Barbé Marbois, p. 263.
[27] Marbois’s Louisiana, p. 274.
[28] Livingston to Madison, April 11, 1803; State Papers, ii.
552.
[29] Livingston to Talleyrand, Jan. 10, 1803; Livingston to
Bonaparte, Feb. 27, 1803; State Papers, ii. 531, 539.
[30] Memoir of James Monroe, 1828; Colonel Mercer’s
Journal, p. 55.
[31] Livingston to Madison, April 13, 1803; State Papers, ii.
552.
[32] Livingston to Madison, April 13, 1803; State Papers, ii.
552, 544.
[33] Livingston to Madison, April 17, 1803; State Papers, ii.
554.
[34] Lucien Bonaparte et ses Mémoires, Th. Jung, ii. 121–192.
[35] Correspondence, viii. 289.
[36] Monroe’s Memoranda, Monroe MSS., State Department
Archives.
[37] Livingston to Madison, May 3, 1804; MSS. State
Department Archives.
 [38] Monroe’s Memoranda, Monroe MSS., State Department
Archives.
[39] Draft of Convention in Monroe’s writing, Monroe MSS.,
State Department Archives.
[40] State Papers, ii. 507–509.
[41] Marbois, Louisiana, pp. 283, 286.
[42] Livingston to Madison, April 13, 1803; State Papers, ii.
552.
[43] Monroe to Madison, April 19, 1803; State Department
Archives.
[44] Madison to Livingston and Monroe, March 2, 1803; State
Papers, ii. 540.
[45] Livingston to Madison, May 3, 1804; View of the Claims,
etc., by a Citizen of Baltimore, p. 75.
[46] View of the Claims, etc., by a Citizen of Baltimore. 1829.
[47] Livingston to Madison, Nov. 15, 1803; State Papers, ii.
573. Diary of John Quincy Adams, v. 433. Memoir of James
Monroe, 1828.
[48] Marbois’s Louisiana, pp. 311, 312.
[49] Marbois’s Louisiana, p. 276.
[50] Talleyrand to Decrès, 4 Prairial, An xi. (May 24, 1803);
Archives des Aff. Étr., MSS.
[51] D’Azara to Talleyrand, June 6, 1803; Archives des Aff.
Étr., MSS.
[52] Beurnonville to Talleyrand, 24 Prairial, An xi. (June 13,
1803); Archives des Aff. Étr., MSS.
[53] Talleyrand to Beurnonville, 3 Messidor, An xi. (June 22,
1803); Archives des Aff. Étr., MSS.
[54] Madison to Livingston and Monroe, March 2, 1803; State
Papers, ii. 543.
[55] Jefferson to Monroe, Jan. 13, 1803; Works, iv. 455.
[56] Livingston to Madison, April 11, 1803; State Papers, ii.
552.
[57] Ibid., July 30, 1802; State Papers, ii. 519.
 [58] Ibid., May 12, 1803; State Papers, ii. 557.
[59] Ibid., May 20, 1803; State Papers, ii. 561.
[60] Livingston and Monroe to Madison, June 7, 1803; State
Papers, ii. 563–565.
[61] Livingston to Madison, May 20, 1803; Nov. 15, 1803;
State Papers, ii. 561, 573.
[62] Jefferson to Thomas Cooper, Nov. 29, 1802; Works, iv.
452.
[63] Report of the Secretary of the Treasury, Dec. 16, 1802.
Annals of Congress, 1802–1803, 1276.
[64] Lincoln to Jefferson, Jan. 10, 1803; Jefferson MSS.
[65] Gallatin to Jefferson, Jan. 13, 1803; Gallatin’s Works, i.
112.
[66] Jefferson to Governor McKean, Feb. 19, 1803; Jefferson
MSS.
[67] Jefferson to Colonel Hawkins, Feb. 18, 1803; Works, iv.
565.
[68] Jefferson to Levi Lincoln, June 8, 1803; Jefferson MSS.
[69] Amendment to the Constitution; Jefferson MSS.
[70] Gallatin to Jefferson, July 9, 1803; Works, i. 127.
[71] Robert Smith to Jefferson, July 9, 1803; Jefferson MSS.
[72] Jefferson to Breckenridge, Aug. 12, 1803; Works, iv. 498.
[73] Jefferson to Paine, Aug. 18, 1803; Jefferson MSS.
[74] Jefferson to Madison, Aug. 18, 1803; to R. Smith, Aug.
23; Jefferson MSS.
[75] Jefferson to Madison, Aug. 25; to Lincoln, Aug. 30, 1803;
Works, iv. 501–505; to Gallatin, Aug. 23, 1803; Gallatin’s Works, i.
144.
[76] W. C. Nicholas to Jefferson, Sept. 3, 1803; Jefferson
MSS.
[77] Jefferson to W. C. Nicholas, Sept. 7, 1803; Works, iv. 505.
[78] Yrujo to Madison, Sept. 4, Sept. 27, Oct. 12, 1803; State
Papers, ii. 569, 570.
 [79] Morris to H. W. Livingston, Nov. 25, 1803. Writings of
Gouverneur Morris, iii. 185.
[80] Documents relating to New England Federalism, pp. 156,
157; Diary of J. Q. Adams, i. 267.
[81] Examination of the Decision of the Supreme Court in the
case of Dred Scott. By Thomas H. Benton, p. 55.
[82] Annals of Congress, 1803–1804, p. 514.
[83] Act of October 31, 1803. Annals of Congress, 1803–1804.
App. p. 1245.
[84] Diary of J. Q. Adams (Jan. 10, 1804), i. 287.
[85] American Insurance Company and Others v. Canter
(January Term, 1828), 1 Peters’s Reports, 511–546.
[86] Jefferson to Gallatin, Dec. 13, 1803; Works, iv. 518.
[87] Pichon to Talleyrand, 16 Fructidor, An xii. (Sept. 3, 1804);
Archives des Aff. Étr., MSS.
[88] Dec. 8, 1803; Annals of Congress, 1803–1804, p. 751.
[89] Remarks on the Message, Gallatin’s Writings, i. 156;
Gallatin to Jefferson, Oct. 6, 1803; ibid., i. 162.
[90] Jefferson to R. Smith, Oct. 10, 1803; Jefferson MSS.
[91] Speech of John Randolph, March 22, 1804; Annals of
Congress, 1803–1804, p. 1221.
[92] Message of Feb. 3, 1803; Annals of Congress, 1802–
1803, p. 460.
[93] Jefferson to General Knox, March 27, 1801; Works, iv.
386.
[94] Cranch’s Reports, i. 153.
[95] Annals of Congress, 1804–1805, pp. 673–676.
[96] Jefferson to Nicholson, May 13, 1803; Works, iv. 486.
[97] Macon to Nicholson, Aug. 6, 1803; Nicholson MSS.
[98] Jan. 5, 1804; Annals of Congress, 1803–1804, p. 805.
[99] Diary of J. Q. Adams, i. 299.
[100] Ibid., i. 301–302. Pickering to George Cabot, Jan. 29,
1804; Pickering to Theodore Lyman, Feb. 11, 1804; New England
Federalism, pp. 340, 344.
 [101] New England Federalism, pp. 106, 146, 342, 352;
Plumer’s Life of Plumer, pp. 284–311.
[102] Pickering to George Cabot, Jan. 29, 1804; Lodge’s
Cabot, p. 337.
[103] Roger Griswold to Oliver Wolcott, March 11, 1804;
Hamilton’s History of the Republic, vii. 781; New England
Federalism, p. 354.
[104] Cabot to Pickering, March 7, 1804; New England
Federalism, p. 353.
[105] Cabot to Pickering, Feb. 14, 1804; Lodge’s Cabot, p.
341.
[106] Tapping Reeve to Uriah Tracy, Feb. 7, 1804; Lodge’s
Cabot, p. 442.
[107] Theodore Lyman to Pickering, Feb. 29, 1804; Lodge’s
Cabot, p. 446.
[108] An Examination of the various Charges against Aaron
Burr, by Aristides. December, 1803.
[109] De Witt Clinton to Jefferson, Nov. 26, 1803; Jefferson
MSS.
[110] Jefferson to De Witt Clinton, Dec. 2, 1803; Jefferson
MSS.
[111] Jefferson to Governor Clinton, Dec. 31, 1803; Works, iv.
520.
[112] The Anas, Jan. 26, 1804; Works, ix. 204.
[113] Hamilton’s Works, vii. 851.
[114] Pickering to Rufus King, March 4, 1804; Lodge’s Cabot,
p. 447.
[115] Rufus King to Pickering, March 9, 1804; Lodge’s Cabot,
p. 450.
[116] Roger Griswold to Oliver Wolcott, March 11, 1804;
Hamilton’s History, vii. 781; New England Federalism, p. 354.
[117] George Cabot to Rufus King, March 17, 1804; Lodge’s
Cabot, p. 345.
[118] Hamilton’s History, vii. 787.
[119] New England Federalism, p. 148.
 [120] Life of Plumer, p. 299.
[121] Hamilton’s History, vii. 806.
[122] Hamilton’s History, vii. pp. 816–819.
[123] Hamilton to Sedgwick, July 10, 1804; Works, vi. 567.
[124] Jefferson to Granger, March 9, 1814; Works, vi. 329.
[125] Jefferson to Granger, April 16, 1804; Works, iv. 542.
[126] Gallatin to Badollet, Oct. 25, 1805; Adams’s Gallatin, p.
331.
[127] Dallas to Gallatin, Oct. 16, 1804; Adams’s Gallatin, p.
326.
[128] Jefferson to Dr. Logan, May 11, 1805; Works, iv. 575.
[129] A. J. Dallas to Gallatin, Jan. 16, 1805; Adams’s Gallatin,
p. 327.
[130] Jefferson to Dr. Logan, May 11, 1805; Works, iv. 575.
[131] Dallas to Gallatin, April 4, 1805; April 21, 1811; Adams’s
Gallatin, pp. 333, 439.
[132] Jefferson to Volney, Feb. 8, 1805; Works, iv. 573.
[133] Jefferson to J. F. Mercer, Oct. 9, 1804; Works, iv. 563.
[134] Diary of J. Q. Adams (Jan. 11, 1805), i. 331.
[135] See vol. i. p. 305.
[136] Diary of J. Q. Adams (Feb. 1, 1805), i. 343.
[137] Jefferson to General Smith, May 4, 1806; Works, v. 13.
[138] Life of Plumer, p. 330.
[139] Diary of J. Q. Adams (Nov. 29, 30, 1804), i. 318.
[140] Boston Centinel, Jan. 9, 1805.
[141] Diary of J. Q. Adams (Dec. 21, 1804), i. 322.
[142] Ibid. (Dec. 24, 1804), i. 324, 325.
[143] Diary of J. Q. Adams (Feb. 27, 1805), i. 359.
[144] Ibid., i. 361, 362.
[145] Diary of J. Q. Adams (March 1, 1805), i. 364.
[146] Randolph to Nicholson, April 30, 1805; Adams’s
Randolph, p. 157.
 [147] Diary of J. Q. Adams (March 2, 1805), i. 367.
[148] Jefferson to Thomas Ritchie, Dec. 25, 1820; Works, vii.
192.
[149] Livingston to Madison, Nov. 15, 1803; State Papers, ii.
573, 574.
[150] Jefferson to Breckenridge, Aug. 12, 1803; Works, iv.
498.
[151] Madison to Pinckney, July 29, 1803; State Papers, ii.
614.
[152] Madison to Monroe, July 29, 1803; State Papers, ii. 626.
[153] Jefferson to Madison, Aug. 25, 1803; Works, iv. 501.
[154] Pinckney to Madison, Aug. 15, 1802; State Papers, ii.
482.
[155] Madison to Monroe, July 29, 1803; State Papers, ii. 626.
[156] Yrujo to Madison, Sept. 4 and 27, 1803; State Papers, ii.
569.
[157] Yrujo to Cevallos, Aug. 3, 1803; MSS. Spanish Archives.
[158] Yrujo to Cevallos, Sept. 12, 1803; MSS. Spanish
Archives.
[159] Yrujo to Cevallos, Nov. 5, 1803; MSS. Spanish Archives.
[160] Jefferson to Dupont, Nov. 1, 1803; Works, iv. 508.
[161] Annals of Congress, 1803–1804, p. 415.
[162] Annals of Congress, 1803–1804, p. 440.
[163] Jefferson to William Dunbar, March 13, 1804; Works, iv.
537.
[164] Madison to Livingston, Jan. 31, 1804; State Papers, ii.
574.
[165] Madison to Livingston, March 31, 1804; State Papers, ii.
575.
[166] Journal of Executive Sessions, Jan. 9, 1804.
[167] Madison to Pinckney, Jan. 31, 1804; State Papers, ii.
614.
[168] Madison to Pinckney, Feb. 6, 1804; State Papers, ii. 615.
 [169] Yrujo to Madison, March 7, 1804; MSS. State
Department Archives.
[170] Gallatin to Jefferson, October, 1804; Gallatin’s Works, i.
211.
[171] Madison to Livingston, March 31, 1804; State Papers, ii.
575.
[172] Proclamation of May 30, 1804; State Papers, ii. 583.
[173] Message of Nov. 8, 1804. Annals of Congress, 1804–
1805, p. 11.
[174] Pichon to Talleyrand, 18 Brumaire, An xiii. (Nov. 9,
1804); Archives des Aff. Étr., MSS.
[175] Madison to Jefferson, Oct. 2, 1804; Jefferson MSS.
[176] Note du Premier Consul, 2 Floréal, An xi. (April 22,
1803); Correspondance, viii. 288.
[177] Turreau to Talleyrand, 23 Floréal, An xiii. (May 13, 1805);
Archives des Aff. Étr., MSS.
[178] Turreau to Talleyrand, 6 Pluviôse, An xii. (Jan. 27, 1805);
Archives des Aff. Étr., MSS.
[179] Madison to Monroe, July 29, 1803; State Papers, ii. 626.
Madison to Pinckney, July 29, 1803; State Papers, ii. 614.
[180] Madison to Pinckney, Oct. 12, 1803; State Papers, ii.
570.
[181] Madison to Jefferson, April 9, 1804; Jefferson MSS.
[182] Pinckney to Madison, Aug. 2, 1803; State Papers, ii.
597.
[183] Cevallos to Pinckney, Aug. 23, 1803; State Papers, ii.
604.
[184] Beurnonville to Talleyrand, 18 Nivôse, An xii. (Jan. 9,
1804); Archives des Aff. Étr., MSS.
[185] Talleyrand to D’Hervas, 12 Nivôse, An xii. (Jan. 3, 1804);
Archives des Aff. Étr., MSS.
[186] Beurnonville to Talleyrand, 21 Nivôse, An xii. (Jan. 12,
1804); Archives des Aff. Étr., MSS.
[187] Cevallos to Pinckney, Feb. 10, 1804; State Papers, ii.
583.
 [188] Yrujo to Madison, May 15, 1804; State Papers, ii. 583.
[189] Pinckney to Cevallos, June 1, 1804; State Papers, ii.
618.
[190] Beurnonville to Talleyrand, 18 Prairial, An xii. (June 7,
1804); Archives des Aff. Étr., MSS.
[191] Cevallos to Pinckney, July 2, 1804; State Papers, ii. 619.
[192] Pinckney to Cevallos, July 5, 1804; State Papers, ii. 620.
[193] Cevallos to Pinckney, July 8, 1804; State Papers, ii. 620.
[194] Pinckney to Cevallos, July 14, 1804; State Papers, ii.
621.
[195] Pinckney to Madison, July 20, 1804; MSS. State
Department Archives.
[196] Pinckney to Madison, July 20, 1804; MSS. State
Department Archives.
[197] Vandeul to Talleyrand, 7 Thermidor, An xii. (July 26,
1804); Archives des Aff. Étr., MSS.
[198] Vandeul to Talleyrand, 18 Thermidor, An xii. (Aug. 6,
1804); Archives des Aff. Étr., MSS.
[199] Yrujo to Madison, Oct. 13, 1804; State Papers, ii. 624.
[200] Madison to Yrujo, Oct. 15, 1804; State Papers, ii. 625.
[201] Madison to Monroe, Oct. 26, 1804; State Papers, ii. 631.
[202] Madison to Monroe, Nov. 9, 1804; Works, ii. 208.
[203] Madison to Monroe, Nov. 9, 1804; Works, ii. 208.
[204] Monroe to Madison, July 20, 1803; MSS. State
Department Archives.
[205] Monroe’s Memoranda, Monroe MSS., State Department
Archives.
[206] Skipwith to Madison, Feb. 21, 1804; State Department
Archives.
[207] Gouverneur Morris to Livingston, Nov. 28, 1803;
Sparks’s Morris, iii. 188.
[208] Vandeul to Talleyrand, July 26 and Aug. 6, 1804;
Archives des Aff. Étr., MSS.
 [209] Gravina to Talleyrand, July 24, 1804; Archives des Aff.
Étr., MSS. Cevallos to Monroe and Pinckney, 16 Feb. 1805; State
Papers, ii. 643.
[210] Talleyrand to Turreau (No. 99), 20 Thermidor, An xii.
(Aug. 8, 1804); Archives des Aff. Étr., MSS.
[211] Talleyrand to Turreau (No. 101), 27 Thermidor, An xii.
(Aug. 15, 1804); Archives des Aff. Étr., MSS.
[212] Instructions secrètes pour le Capitaine-Général de la
Louisiane, approuvées par le Premier Consul le 5 Frimaire, An xi.
(Nov. 26, 1802), Archives de la Marine, MSS.
[213] Madison to Livingston, March 31, 1804; State Papers, ii.
575.
[214] Cf. Memoir upon the Negotiations between Spain and
the United States of America. By Don Luis de Onis, Madrid, 1820,
Washington, 1821; pp. 146, 147.
[215] Talleyrand to Gravina, 12 Fructidor, An xii. (Aug. 30,
1804); Archives des Aff. Étr., MSS.
[216] Jefferson to Madison, July 5, 1804; Works, iv. 550.
[217] Madison to Monroe, April 15, 1804; State Papers, ii. 627.
Madison to Monroe and Pinckney, July 8, 1804; State Papers, ii.
630.
[218] Monroe to Talleyrand, Nov. 8, 1804; State Papers, ii.
634.
[219] Monroe to Madison, Dec. 16, 1804; MSS. State
Department Archives.
[220] Armstrong to Madison, Dec. 24, 1804; MSS. State
Department Archives.
[221] Diary at Aranjuez, April 22, 1805; MSS. State
Department Archives.
[222] Monroe to Madison, Dec. 16, 1804; MSS. State
Department Archives.
[223] Armstrong to Madison, Dec. 24, 1804; MSS. State
Department Archives.
[224] Rapport à l’Empereur, 28 Brumaire, An xii. (Nov. 19,
1804); Archives des Aff. Étr., MSS.
 [225] Talleyrand to Armstrong, Dec. 21, 1804; State Papers, ii.
635.
[226] 28 George III. c. 6.
[227] Additional Instructions of Nov. 6, 1793; State Papers, i.
430.
[228] Reeves’s Law of Shipping and Navigation, part ii. chap.
iii.
[229] Appendix to 4 Robinson, 6.
[230] Advocate-General’s Report, March 16, 1801; State
Papers, ii. 491.
[231] See vol. i. p. 214.
[232] Thoughts on Commerce and Colonies, by Charles
Bosanquet.
[233] Thornton to Grenville, March 7, 1801; MSS. British
Archives.
[234] Act of Jan. 21, 1801, Statutes at Large of Virginia, New
Series, ii. 302.
[235] Thornton to Grenville, June 1, 1802; MSS. British
Archives.
[236] Trial of Isaac Williams, Hartford, 1799; Wharton’s State
Trials, 653. Shanks v. Dupont, 3 Peters, 242.
[237] 6 Anne, c. 20.
[238] Rufus King to Madison, April 12, 1801; State Papers, ii.
490.
[239] Liston to Grenville (private), May 7, 1800; MSS British
Archives.
[240] Thornton to Grenville, March 7, 1801; MSS. British
Archives.
[241] Thornton to Hawkesbury, Oct. 25 and Nov. 26, 1802:
MSS. British Archives.
[242] Thornton to Hawkesbury, July 3, 1802; MSS. British
Archives.
[243] Thornton to Hawkesbury, Dec. 31, 1802; MSS. British
Archives.
 [244] Thornton to Hawkesbury, Jan. 3, 1803; MSS. British
Archives.
[245] Thornton to Hawkesbury, Jan. 31, 1803; MSS. British
Archives.
[246] See p. 2.
[247] Thornton to Hawkesbury, May 30, 1803; MSS. British
Archives.
[248] Pichon to Talleyrand, 8 Pluviôse, An xi. (Jan. 28, 1803);
Archives des Aff. Étr., MSS.
[249] Pichon to Talleyrand, 14 Prairial, An xii. (June 3, 1803);
Archives des Aff. Étr., MSS.
[250] Pichon to Talleyrand, 18 Messidor, An xii. (July 7, 1803);
Archives des Aff. Étr., MSS.
[251] Jefferson to Mazzei, July 18, 1804; Works, iv. 552.
[252] Pichon to Talleyrand, 1 Ventôse, An xi. (Feb. 20, 1803);
Archives des Aff. Étr., MSS.
[253] Pichon to Talleyrand, 18 Messidor, An xii. (July 7, 1803);
Archives des Aff. Étr., MSS.
[254] Jefferson to Earl of Buchan, July 10, 1803; Works, iv.
493.
[255] Jefferson to General Gates, July 11, 1803; Works, iv.
494.
[256] State Papers, ii. 382.
[257] State Papers, ii. 584.
[258] Gallatin to Jefferson, Aug. 18, 1803; Gallatin’s Works, i.
140.
[259] King to Madison, April 10, 1802; MSS. State Department
Archives.
[260] Merry to Hammond, Dec. 7, 1803; MSS. British
Archives.
[261] Thornton to Hawkesbury, Dec. 9, 1801; MSS. British
Archives.
[262] Life of William Plumer, p. 245.
[263] Jefferson’s Works, ix. 454.
 [264] Life of William Plumer, p. 242.
[265] Life of Joseph Story, pp. 151, 158.
[266] Pichon to Talleyrand, 15 Pluviôse, An xii. (Feb. 5, 1804);
Archives des Aff. Étr., MSS.
[267] Merry to Hawkesbury, Dec. 6, 1803; MSS. British
Archives.
[268] Yrujo to Cevallos, Feb. 7, 1804; MSS. Spanish Archives.
[269] Merry to Hammond, Dec. 7, 1803; MSS. British
Archives.
[270] Madison to Monroe, 19 Jan., 1804. Madison MSS., State
Department Archives. Merry to Hawkesbury, 30 Jan., 1801. MSS.
British Archives.
[271] Pichon to Talleyrand, 15 Pluviôse, An xii. (Feb. 5, 1804);
Archives des Aff. Étr., MSS.
[272] Merry to Hawkesbury, Dec. 31, 1803; MSS. British
Archives.
[273] Pichon to Talleyrand, 27 Pluviôse, An xii. (Feb. 13,
1804); Archives des Aff. Étr., MSS.
[274] Jefferson to Monroe, Jan. 8, 1804; Monroe MSS., State
Department Archives. Cf. Madison to Monroe, 16 Feb. 1804.
Madison’s Works, ii. 195–199.
[275] Pichon to Talleyrand, 30 Pluviôse, An xii. (Feb. 16,
1804); Archives des Aff. Étr., MSS.
[276] Diary of J. Q. Adams (Jan. 7, 1804), i. 284.
[277] Ibid.
[278] Merry to Hawkesbury, Dec. 6, 1803; MSS. British
Archives.
[279] Merry to Hawkesbury, Dec. 6, 1803; MSS. British
Archives.
[280] Diary of J. Q. Adams (Oct. 31, 1803), i. 269.
[281] Merry to Hawkesbury, Dec. 6, 1803; MSS. British
Archives.
[282] Merry to Hawkesbury, Dec. 31, 1803; MSS. British
Archives.
 [283] Merry to Hawkesbury, Jan. 20, 1804; Jan. 30, 1804;
MSS. British Archives.
[284] Thornton to Hammond, Jan. 29, 1804; MSS. British
Archives.
[285] Merry to Hawkesbury, Jan. 30, 1804; MSS. British
Archives.
[286] Merry to Hawkesbury, March 1, 1804; MSS. British
Archives.
[287] Merry to Harrowby, July 18, 1804; MSS. British Archives.
[288] Madison to Jefferson, Aug. 28, 1804; Jefferson MSS.
[289] Merry to Hawkesbury, June 2, 1804; MSS. British
Archives.
[290] Merry to Harrowby, Aug. 6, 1804; MSS. British Archives.
[291] Merry to Harrowby, March 4, 1805; MSS. British
Archives.
[292] Merry to Harrowby, March 29, 1805; MSS. British
Archives.
[293] Remonstrance of the People of Louisiana, Dec. 31,
1804; Annals of Congress, 1804–1805, Appendix, p. 1597.
[294] Report of Committee, Jan. 25, 1805; Annals of
Congress, 1804–1805, p. 1014.
[295] Diary of J. Q. Adams (Feb. 1, 1805), i. 342.
[296] Merry to Harrowby, (No. 14), March 29, 1805; MSS.
British Archives.
[297] Merry to Harrowby, (No. 15), most secret, March 29,
1805.
[298] Pichon to Talleyrand, 16 Fructidor, An xii. (Sept. 3,
1804); Archives des Aff. Étr., MSS.
[299] Life of Plumer, p. 326.
[300] Diary of J. Q. Adams (Nov. 23, 1804), i. 316.
[301] Turreau to Talleyrand, 27 Janvier, 1805; Archives des
Aff. Étr., MSS.
[302] Turreau to Talleyrand, 9 Mars, 1805; Archives des Aff.
Étr., MSS.
 [303] Affidavit of Peter Derbigny, Aug. 27, 1807. Clark’s Proofs
against Wilkinson; Note 18. App. p. 38.
[304] Adams’s Randolph, p. 157.
[305] Strictures, etc., on the Navigation and Colonial System
of Great Britain. London, 1804.
[306] Claims of the British West Indian Colonists. By G. W.
Jordan. London, 1804.
[307] Lowe’s Enquiry, 4th edition, 1808.
[308] Anti-Jacobin Review, August, 1807, p. 368; Introduction
to Reports, etc., on Navigation, p. 22; Atcheson’s American
Encroachments, London, 1808, p. lxxvii; Baring’s Inquiry, London,
1808, p. 73.
[309] Monroe to Madison, June 3, 1804; State Papers, iii. 92.
[310] Monroe to Madison, Aug. 7, 1804; State Papers, iii. 94.
[311] Monroe to Madison, June 3, 1804; State Papers, iii. 92.
[312] Monroe to Madison, Sept. 8, 1804; MSS. State
Department Archives.
[313] Harrowby to Merry, Nov. 7, 1804; MSS. British Archives.
[314] Life of General William Eaton, Brookfield, 1813, p. 262.
[315] Life of Eaton, p. 328.

Transcriber’s Notes:

1. Obvious printers’, punctuation and spelling errors have been corrected

silently.

2. Where hyphenation is in doubt, it has been retained as in the original.

3. Some hyphenated and non-hyphenated versions of the same words have

been retained as in the original.
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