ABSTRACT
“An Evening with Jane Scott” (eds. Jacky Bratton, University of London/Royal Holloway, and Gilli Bush-Bailey, University of London/Royal Central School of Speech & Drama)
Over an astonishingly short period, Jane Scott developed a full-scale theatre company at the Adelphi, with pantomimists, dancers, and a company of actors all performing the material she wrote. This section of our anthology brings together for the first time a range of Scott’s work, all from the mid-period, 1809–12, that could have made up a full bill at the theatre on a typical evening. First, to represent her extra-dramatic writing, we include the opening address to the audience after improvements and enlargement of the house in 1809. Then, as a main piece, we include The Vizier’s Son and the Merchant’s Daughter, or the Ugly Woman of Baghdad, an Arabian Nights fantasy comic opera first staged in 1811 that gave Scott herself (as the leading lady) extraordinary opportunities to comment on sexual relationships in a way we might see as ironic and proto-feminist. The Sans Pareil bills often moved next to a dance piece, and we include Asgard the Demon Hunter (1812), a bizarre gothic spectacle for which a scenario and a few pieces of dialogue were sent to the licenser (providing us with surviving material). Finally as an afterpiece, we include the farce The Animated Effigy (1811), a cartoon-like spoof on modern manners.
