The Ward of the Castle

Nothing is known about Miss Burke (or Mrs. Burke as she is called in The London Stage) ¹ but her The Ward of the Castle is, perhaps, the first Gothic melodrama written by a woman. Complete with subterranean passageways, incarcerated young ladies, forced marriages, narrow escapes, mistaken identities, exotic, if not spectacular, effects, and comic servants, the so-called “opera” follows in the traditions of the Gothic novel (and its various theatrical incarnations ² ) established by Walpole, Radcliffe, and Lee, as well as Pixérécourt’s Parisian melodrama with its emphasis on “violence, show, moral simplicity, emotional distress, rhetoric, and music” (Booth, Prefaces to English Nineteenth-Century Theatre 24). Miss Burke’s single dramatic effort was given three performances at Covent Garden beginning 24 October 1793 and drew generally unfavorable reviews from the press. ³ But even though only the songs and choruses were published (Nicoll 3: 378), and the play never revived, the work has more than mere curiosity value. By means of an interesting metatheatrical device in which Jacquinetta’s romance novels virtually dictate her code of behavior and parallel the action of the play, Miss Burke’s opera provides sensational escapist entertainment along with a brief, though significant, look into the reading habits of women at the end of the eighteenth century.