ABSTRACT

Even with the full panoply of modern audio-visual aids, the task of accurately recreating and assessing a stage production is awesomely daunting; any attempt to recapture the details of an eighteenth-century performance is thus predoomed to all sorts of failure. In November 1795, John Philip Kemble was thirty-eight years of age and at the height of his physical powers. In spite of the ever-increasing impediment of his squabbles with Sheridan about money for productions, Kemble was determined that the new Drury Lane should retain the dominance over Covent Garden which it had exerted since the days of Garrick. The Garrick Club in London has kindly permitted an examination of the study and preparation copy, heavily marked for stage business, which relates to this production of 20 November 1795. Kemble also showed care in handling the withdrawal from the stage of the large number of characters in mass scenes, but the most interesting production notes refer to moves and stage business.