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Schoolchildren or citizen shareholders? : Provincial repertory audiences, letters to the editor, and public subscription
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Franks, Matthew (2017) Schoolchildren or citizen shareholders? : Provincial repertory audiences, letters to the editor, and public subscription. Theatre Survey, 58 (2). pp. 186-208. doi:10.1017/S0040557417000060 ISSN 0040-5574.
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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0040557417000060
Abstract
When the Abbey Theatre installed a nightly police cordon to silence protesting playgoers during the 1907 run of Synge's The Playboy of the Western World, spectators voiced their objections in newsprint. Under pseudonyms like “A Western Girl,” “A Commonplace Person,” “A Much Interested Foreigner,” and “A Lover of Liberty,” correspondents sent letters to the Dublin Evening Telegraph, Freeman's Journal, and Dublin Evening Mail. “Vox Populi” wrote that the arrested protesters “showed an admirable public spirit, which in any other country would be highly honoured.” “Oryza” reported a conversation overheard from the stalls in which Synge had said that the audience's hissing was “quite legitimate.” After journalist and Galway MP Stephen Gwynn penned a letter supporting the Abbey, biographer D. J. O'Donoghue responded that “the vindictiveness which has been shown night after night in expelling and prosecuting people who ahve [sic], in their excitement, called out ‘It's a libel’ or ‘shame,’ or otherwise mildly protested, is a serious menace to the freedom of an audience.” He referred to the furor as a “newspaper controversy”; others called it a “newspaper war.” In a public discussion at the Abbey after the play's run, Yeats quoted from the correspondence when defending his decision to call in the police. According to playwright William Boyle, the controversy boiled down to political representation. In a letter to the Freeman's Journal, he argued that protesters had not reacted “by staying away,” as some supporters had suggested they should, “because the ‘Abbey’ is a subsidised theatre, independent of the money taken at the door. Therefore … the public had no remedy, but the one resorted to.” Private subsidy had muffled the democratic shuffling of playgoers’ pocketbooks; forced to shut their mouths inside the theatre, playgoers opened up to the newspapers that circulated around it.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||
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Subjects: | P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN2000 Dramatic representation. The Theater | ||||||||
Divisions: | Faculty of Arts > English and Comparative Literary Studies | ||||||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Repertory theater -- Great Britain, Repertory theater -- Ireland, Newspapers -- Sections, columns, etc -- Theater -- Great Britain, Newspapers -- Sections, columns, etc -- Theater -- Ireland | ||||||||
Journal or Publication Title: | Theatre Survey | ||||||||
Publisher: | Cambridge University Press | ||||||||
ISSN: | 0040-5574 | ||||||||
Official Date: | May 2017 | ||||||||
Dates: |
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Volume: | 58 | ||||||||
Number: | 2 | ||||||||
Page Range: | pp. 186-208 | ||||||||
DOI: | 10.1017/S0040557417000060 | ||||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||||
Date of first compliant deposit: | 2 April 2018 | ||||||||
Date of first compliant Open Access: | 4 April 2018 |
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