Misplaced Pages

The Force of Ridicule

Article snapshot taken from[REDACTED] with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.
Play by Thomas Holcroft

The Force of Ridicule
Written byThomas Holcroft
Date premiered6 December 1796
Place premieredTheatre Royal, Drury Lane, London
Original languageEnglish
GenreComedy

The Force of Ridicule is a 1796 comedy play by the British writer Thomas Holcroft.

The original Drury Lane cast included John Palmer, William Barrymore, Richard Suett, Robert Palmer, Charles Kemble, John Bannister, Maria Theresa Kemble and Elizabeth Farren.

According to James Boaden, the play was "perdurably damned” after its opening night and never performed again. The manuscript of the play was never published and its sources were only hinted at in Biographica Dramatica, where it was mentioned that it was believed to have been derived from French. The failure of the play was seen as so great, Holcroft did not attempt any further playwriting for another two years.

References

  1. Hogan p.1920
  2. Nicoll p.271
  3. Hogan p.1920
  4. Stallbaumer, Virgil R. (1936). "Thomas Holcroft: A Satirist in the Stream of Sentimentalism". ELH. 3 (1): 31–62. doi:10.2307/2871656. ISSN 0013-8304. JSTOR 2871656.

Bibliography

  • Nicoll, Allardyce. A History of English Drama 1660–1900: Volume III. Cambridge University Press, 2009.
  • Hogan, C.B (ed.) The London Stage, 1660–1800: Volume V. Southern Illinois University Press, 1968.


Stub icon

This article on a play from the 18th century is a stub. You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it.

Categories:
The Force of Ridicule Add topic