Home Theatricals: A Tarnished Image
Deviating from polite behavior could spell social ruin, particularly for young unmarried ladies, making home theatricals problematic.
Casting off Proper Restraint
Acting often demanded the players suspend polite behavior for the sake of the play. At the end of the Georgian era, the demonstration of ‘polite behavior’ had reached almost cultish proportions. Deviating from it could spell social ruin, particularly for young unmarried ladies. Proper, polite behavior required definite emotional restraint for both men and women. One was not to display emotion openly in front of others. (The one exception for ladies: they could swoon when faced with an extremely distressing or vulgar situation.) Stage conventions of the time encouraged actresses to swoon excessively and male actors to rant and rail expressively. (Can we say overacting? But I digress.)
Moreover, audiences were expected to respond to these displays with sighs, weeping and groaning. So much emotion! What is a proper household to do?
If this were not enough, theatricals also were likely to involve active physical contact between the actors and actresses during the performance. While acceptable for the professional actress (who was not considered a proper gentlewoman by any stretch), that kind of behavior was most improper for a gentleman’s daughter with a reputation and marriage prospects to consider. Doing it under the guise of a theatrical performance offered only a thin veneer of protection.
Reverend Thomas Gisbourne (1797) summed up the situation:
For some years past the custom of acting in plays in private theatres, fitted up by individuals of fortune, had occasionally prevailed…. Take the benefit of all these favourable circumstances; yet what is even then the tendency of such an amusement? To encourage vanity; to excite a thirst of applause and admiration of attainments which, if they are to be thus exhibited, it would commonly have been far better for the individual not to possess; to destroy diffidence, by the unrestrained familiarity with the persons of the other sex, which inevitably results from being joined with them in the drama; to create a general fondness for the perusal of plays, of which so many are unfit to be read; and for attending dramatic representations, of which so many are unfit to be witnessed”
Austen’s Personal Observations
On the recommendation of her sister Cassandra, Jane Austen read Gisbourne’s work in 1805. Apparently, Austen surprised herself by approving with the reverend’s writing. While there is no way to know Austen approved, it is not a far stretch to imagine that her own experiences with home theatricals might have contributed to her response.
In 1787, her cousin Eliza Hancock stayed with the Austens, and the young people performed The Wonder. Austen family tradition suggests Eliza flirted openly with both James and Henry (who were the instigators of the family theatricals.) She played the heroine of that play while Henry played the hero. The play offered many opportunities for ‘stage business’ between the two players. (Austen Only, 2010)
Some suggest Eliza Hancock was Austen’s inspiration in several pieces of Austen’s juvenilia, particularly Henry and Eliza and Lady Susan. She is also thought to be the model for Mary Crawford in Mansfield Park. Eventually Eliza and Henry married, in 1797 the two married, after her first husband was guillotined in 1794.
One cannot help but wonder if Austen was putting a bit of herself into the character of Fanny Price who saw quickly how the young lovers of the party could turn the circumstance of the theatrical to their momentary advantage—and eventual ruin.
I agree with you that Austen saw herself as Fanny Price who saw it all and knew things were going to go downhill. No one else could see it as Fanny did. What did Austen see that set her concerns on edge? How did you say it? ” The play offered many opportunities for ‘stage business’ between the two players.” Indeed. That seems to say it all.