The Clandestine Marriage - Softcover

Garrick, David; Colman The Elder, George

Softcover

ISBN 10: 155111027X ISBN 13: 9781551110271

Publisher: Broadview Press, 1995

Synopsis

David Garrick, the leading actor of his time, was also one of its most accomplished dramatists, and The Clandestine Marriage is perhaps his finest play. Its story centres on the household of a wealthy merchant, Mr. Sterling, whose main concern is that his two daughters marry men of wealth. Fanny has defied her apprentice; her sister Betsey is engaged to be married to Sir John Melvil. But Melvil and his friend Lord Ogleby both fall in love with Fanny. It is up to Lovewell to persuade both men that marriage to Fanny is out of the question―without revealing to them that he has already married her.

The action of the play and also its setting (a landscape garden designed after the fashion of the time to provide artificial wildness and ‘commanding’ views) give ample scope for Garrick and Coleman to satirize the mercantile mind―yet the play’s comic spirit holds appeal to those on all points of the political compass. First produced in 1766, The Clandestine Marriage was revived to great acclaim in 1995 in a London production starring Nigel Hawthorne.

Full-length plays of the late eighteenth century were usually performed together with short plays (or ‘afterpieces’) to form a full evening of entertainment. In accordance with that tradition this edition is completed by two of the most interesting examples of the genre: Charles Burney’s The Cunning-Man (which in fact was several times performed alongside The Clandestine Marriage during the 1766-67 season) and The Rehearsal; or Bayes in Petticoats by Catherine Clive (who played Mrs. Heidelberg in the original production of The Clandestine Marriage).

About this title

From the Publisher:

The Broadview Literary Texts series is an effort to represent the ever-changing canon of literature in English by bringing together texts long regarded as classics with valuable, though lesser-known literature.

About the Author:

Noel Chevalier who holds a doctorate from Queen’s University, now teaches English at Luther College, University of Regina. He is a specialist in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century drama and fiction.

About this edition

• Publisher: Broadview Press
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 155111027X
• ISBN 13: 9781551110271
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 242
• Editor: Chevalier Noel