#david garrick

[decepti-geek]

absolutely wild experience has been reading that 'Garak masquerades as renowned 18thc actor David Garrick' time travel fic ages ago, then recently picking up a book about Garrick and discovering just how many similarities he really does share with the lizardy fuck

[portrait-paintings]

David Garrick

Artist: Robert Edge Pine (English, 1730-1788)

Date: c. 1775

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: National Portrait Gallery, London, United Kingdom

David Garrick

David Garrick (19 February 1716 – 20 January 1779) was an English actor who wrote, produced and influenced nearly all aspects of European theatrical practice throughout the 18th century, and was a pupil and friend of Samuel Johnson. He appeared in several amateur theatricals, and with his appearance in the title role of Shakespeare's Richard III, audiences and managers began to take notice.

Impressed by his portrayals of Richard III and several other roles, Charles Fleetwood engaged Garrick for a season at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in the West End. He remained with the Drury Lane company for the next five years and purchased a share of the theatre with James Lacy. This purchase inaugurated 29 years of Garrick's management of the Drury Lane, during which time it rose to prominence as one of the leading theatres in Europe. At his death, three years after he retired from Drury Lane and the stage, he was given a lavish public funeral at Westminster Abbey where he was buried in Poets' Corner.

[john-laurens]

The Christmas Tale pleased Jamy & all the Boys & Girls beyond measure. The New Scenes & Decorations claimed the Admiration of the most Judicious grown Children in the House, they are extremely Superb & in quite a new Taste, the expence of Scenes, &ca. for this article cost 1,500 Guineas. At least the Town Say So.

Henry Laurens to John Laurens, January 17, 1774

Jamy is Jemmy/James, Henry's son and John's younger brother.

A footnote provides additional context (The Papers of Henry Laurens, vol. 9, pp. 229-230):

David Garrick's company had produced Garrick's "The Christmas Tale" at Drury Lane Theater. Opening on Dec. 27, it had played Dec. 28, 29, 30, Jan. 1, 4, 6, 8, 11, 14, 17. On opening night the afterpiece was "Miss in Her Teens." The editor of Part 4 of The London Stage has commented: "For Mainpiece New Scenes, Dresses, Music, Machinery, and Decorations (playbill). This piece was written by Mr. G. which he wrote in a hurry & on purpose to Shew Some fine Scenes which were design'd by Mons. DeLoutherberg particularly a Burning Palace &c. which was extremely fine & Novel. Mr. Weston Play'd very well, The Music by Mr. Dibdin. the worst he ever Compos'd. The Piece was very well receiv'd..." "The Christmas Tale," "the extravaganza displaying DeLoutherbourg's scenes," was one of the four new mainpieces put on during the 1773-1774 season by Garrick. The London Stage, 1660-1800, Part 4: 1747-1776, ed. George Winchester Stone, Jr. (Carbondale, Ill., 1962), pp. 1742, 1773-1778. HL was in Bath Jan. 1-9. He may have taken James on Jan. 14 as he says in his letter that he returned "this evening" and in the letter to John Knight on Jan. 24 that he got home after the theater. If it was the 14th, the afterpiece was "The Citizen."

This print by Charles Phillips held by the British Museum depicts a scene from "The Christmas Tale":

[pedroam-bang]

Sherlock Holmes (2009)

[artemlegere]

David Garrick and George Anne Bellamy in "Romeo and Juliet", Act V, Scene III

Artist: Benjamin Wilson (British, 1721–1788)

Date: 1753

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, United States

Description

In Romeo and Juliet, Act 5, Scene 3, Romeo and Paris fight and die, and Juliet kills herself. The scene ends with the Montagues and Capulets agreeing to end their feud.

[amphibious-thing]

It's really important to me that you know that there were poor 18th century people who cared about what clothing they wore and that includes GNC men. Class is a spectrum not all poor people were so poor that they could only afford to wear whatever rags were available to them. But I also need you to know that gender nonconformity is more than just the clothes. Not all poor men wore rags but a man could be GNC while wearing rags. Just as a man could be GNC while wearing the most boring of black suits. Gender nonconformity is also about speech patterns, mannerisms and interests. This was just as true in the 18th century as it is today.

David Garrick was an 18th century English actor famous for playing fops. In his poem The Fribbleriad David Garrick represents his critics as effeminate men who were offended by his portrayal of them. They complain:

May we no more such misery know! Since Garrick made OUR SEX a shew; And gave us up to such rude laughter, That few, ’twas said, could hold their water: For He, that player, so mock’d our motions, Our dress, amusements, fancies, notions, So lisp’d our words, and minc’d our steps,

By "OUR SEX" Garrick is referring to the sex of effeminate men who were considered part of the "third sex". We see that he mocked not only effeminate men's "dress" and "amusements" but also the way they "lisp’d" and "minc’d".

[shakespearenews]

Tickets Are for Remembering

Playbills, programs, tickets: such physical documents are no longer part of seeing a show on Broadway. Does it matter?

The ephemera among the vast holdings of the Harvard Theater Collection reside there because of individual stewardship, as personal projects were subsumed into institutional collections. A playhouse patron lovingly pasted her tickets into an album over a lifetime, scribbling a note about how mournfully Mr. Garrick addressed Yorick’s skull at Drury Lane, or about how dazzling Ethel Barrymore appeared in a new play one night on the Great White Way. An audience member attending Charles Dickens’s semidramatic staged reading of Oliver Twist read along in his souvenir booklet, underlining and annotating passages as if to preserve Dickens’s voice in its pages. These objects not only had a use value; they were used, handled, operated. They transcended their momentary purpose to become mementos, imbued with the sights and sounds that they accompanied and invested with the warmth of human experience.

[eatingbreadandhoney]

David Garrick and his wife by his Temple to Shakespeare, Hampton by Johan Zoffany, circa 1762