Representing Shakespearean Tragedy

Reiko Oya considers Shakespearean tragedy as performed in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries by David Garrick, John Philip Kemble and his sister Sarah Siddons, and Edmund Kean. With chapters focusing on King Lear, Hamlet and Macbeth, the book offers insights into the intriguing relations among the London stage luminaries.

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Reiko Oya explores theatrical expressions of Shakespearean tragedy in Georgian London and the relations between the representative players of the time - David Garrick, John Philip Kemble and his sister Sarah Siddons, and Edmund Kean - and their close circle of friends. The book begins by analysing the tragic emotion that Garrick conveyed through his performance of King Lear, and the responses to it from such critics as Samuel Johnson and Elizabeth Montagu. The second chapter examines the concept of sublimity in Kemble and Siddons' interpretations of Macbeth. The final chapter studies the disparity between the literary and the theatrical Hamlet in Kean's impersonation and William Hazlitt's response to it. With subjects ranging from Shakespearean promptbooks to paintings and the poetics of Romanticism, the book offers great insights into the exchange of ideas and inspirations among the cultural luminaries who surrounded the London stage.