Schoolchildren or citizen shareholders? : Provincial repertory audiences, letters to the editor, and public subscription
| Autor: | Matthew Franks |
|---|---|
| Jazyk: | angličtina |
| Rok vydání: | 2017 |
| Předmět: |
History
Visual Arts and Performing Arts media_common.quotation_subject Media studies Shame 030206 dentistry 06 humanities and the arts Democracy Representation (politics) Newspaper Silence 03 medical and health sciences Politics 0302 clinical medicine 060402 drama & theater Western world PN2000 Conversation 0604 arts media_common |
| ISSN: | 0040-5574 |
| Popis: | When the Abbey Theatre installed a nightly police cordon to silence protesting playgoers during the 1907 run of Synge'sThe 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 theDublin Evening Telegraph, Freeman's Journal, andDublin 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 theFreeman'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. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
| Externí odkaz: |
|