Algemene kennis

Pseudoniemen en naamsvarianten: Inchbald, Elizabeth Simpson
Simpson, Elizabeth (birth name)
Geboortedatum: 1753-10-15
Overlijdensdatum: 1821-08-01
Geslacht: female
Nationaliteit: England
UK
Geboorteplaats: Stanningfield, Suffolk, England, UK
Plaats van overlijden: Kensington, London, England, UK
Woonplaatsen: Suffolk, England, UK
London, England, UK
Liverpool, England, UK
Canterbury, Kent, England, UK
Dublin, Ireland
Opleiding: self-educated
Beroepen: novelist
playwright
actor
translator
editor
drama critic
Organisaties: Theatre Royal, Covent Garden
Korte biografie: Elizabeth Inchbald, née Simpson, was born to a farming family in Stanningfield, Suffolk, England. She was educated at home and then ran away to London at age 18 to become an actor. She had a strong stammer that impeded her stage performances, but was greatly admired for her beauty and personality. In 1772, she married Joseph Inchbald, a fellow actor twice her age, in part for protection from the sexual advances of male theater personnel. Together they played the provincial theaters for four years. After her husband's death, Elizabeth continued to act for several years in Dublin, London, and elsewhere. She appeared in classical roles and new plays such as Hannah Cowley’s The Belle’s Stratagem, and subsequently began writing her own works. She became one of the first women in Great Britain to achieve fame as a playwright. She published about 20 plays,
including Lovers’ Vows (1798), which was featured by Jane Austen in her novel Mansfield Park. Elizabeth also wrote two novels, A Simple Story (1791) and Nature and Art (1796) that are still widely read today.
She also worked as a translator, and became one of the first prominent British female drama critics.

Leden

Besprekingen

Lovers' Vows door Elizabeth Inchbald

This 1798 adaptation by Elizabeth Inchbald of the German play Das Kind der Liebe by August von Kotzebue was a surprisingly quick and easy read. The play, about an unwed mother and her illegitimate son, is in some aspects a typical melodrama but the morality advocated isn't of the Victorian variety.

I downloaded this from Project Gutenberg because I am rereading Mansfield Park and this is the play that Tom Bertram and the others decide to put on. Jane Austin's contemporary readers would have been familiar with the play but the scene in which Maria and Julia argue about who will play Agatha was a bit unclear to me. So glad I decided to take the time to read this!… (meer)

Gemarkeerd

leslie.98 | 6 andere besprekingen | Jun 27, 2023 |

A Simple Story (Oxford World's Classics) door Elizabeth Inchbald

I hadn't heard of Elizabeth Inchbald before- though had encountered one of her plays - 'Lovers' Vows' - mentioned in Jane Austen's 'Mansfield Park' , where it was deemed too risque for the young people's amateur theatricals.
Written shortly before Jane Austen's works (this was published in 1791), Inchbald has all the elegant turn of phrase of her later rival, but I didn't find any of the characters in the least credible. The whole felt more like a rather stagey, OTT ploay, where people faint, raise their eyes to heaven and behave in a generally unrealistic fashion.
[Spoiler alert] The story starts with wealthy Catholic priest, Mr Dorriforth, made guardian of the (Protestant) daughter of a late friend- Miss Milner. I found his ward a little too arch and duplicitous to engage with: her assumed romantic inclinations for a young nobleman later prove to have been subterfuge to cover her feelings for her guardian.
Yet even when Dorriforth happily comes into a title (the Vatican freeing him from his vows, so as to marry and further the Catholic cause) and the love can eventually be spoken, Miss Milner's general intractibility grates on the reader....
In the second part, we find a very different scenario. Years have passed, Miss Milner (now Lady Elmwood) has deceived her husband who has cast off both her and their daughter. He now lives an embittered and rather insane existence with his nephew and an elderly Catholic priest chum. Lady Matilda's name may not be spoken by anyone on pain of banishment...
It's perfectly readable and has an elegance and fluidity to the writing, but Jane Austen it is not!… (meer)

Gemarkeerd

starbox | 2 andere besprekingen | Oct 21, 2019 |

Lover's Vows (Dodo Press) door Elizabeth Inchbald

Like almost everyone else in the world, I only read this play because it figures strongly in the plot of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park. The play is a bit silly and moralistic for readers more than two centuries removed from its origination. I think, however, it might work today if produced as a kind of farce. In my mind, I'm trying to cast my favorite local thespians in the various parts. Alas, one of the best of them, Hugh Metzler, has passed on.

Still, it does treat, as does Mansfield Park, the very real problems that exist when one's wealth and position lead them to bend moral laws to their own venal pursuits. Once again, we see a facet of the absolute evil inherited wealth regularly sponsors.… (meer)

Gemarkeerd

lgpiper | 6 andere besprekingen | Jun 21, 2019 |

Lover's Vows door August von Kotzebue

This play is really known today only through being reenacted by the main characters in Jane Austen's Mansfield Park in a very humorous section midway through that novel. It's a very readable play with drama and humour, with themes of redemption and forgiveness (I wonder if it is ever performed today?). Not quite what I expected from the description in Mansfield Park but a god read.

Gemarkeerd

john257hopper | 6 andere besprekingen | Jul 16, 2017 |

Bekijk meer besprekingen