Introduction:
Acquaintance also like The Second English Renaissance, the Victorian age,
was owing to the Queen Victory ( 1837-1901 ). This reign included many
periods.
The Queen Victory, when died his husband, Albert, became isolated and she
got obsessed for the mourning, which as it will have influence in the intention
of Victorian age. Victorian period was very marked for the adaptations of
Charles Dickens's work ( Story of Christmas ).
Context of epoch: ( S. XIX )
In the politic and social space, he emphasizes the Marxism, the
Socialism, the feminism ... Victorian age is characterized for the
bourgeoisie's ascent. The women have access to culture and begin to write
and to edit; as well as they earn some money.
The transition of Victorian age a century XX considers the period of maximum
apogee of the British theater.
In religion, God does not represent answer to the human problems.
Some priests refuse flatly to scientific advance.
In science, evolution explained the dynamics of the universe. The
Church he was opposing to the science because the people was believing in
those times that God was who he was moving the Universe. knowledge left
remote to the faith and it leant in the science.
Characteristics of the Victorian theater:
If in the period previous the stock and fictitious sentiments, in this period
existed a drama on three acts, is a new focus of spontaneity and new
ideology.
They make inventions at the theater. The actors control essays. The directors
are the responsible ones belonging to dramatic realization.
The first Victorian theater was addressed to an audience that asks for the
emotional impact, more than the intellectual, ( melodrama ).
This it was focused in theater delaying, due to the middle-class growth (
bourgeoisie ). The bourgeoisie was trying to entertain and to teach same
time.
Influences of the Victorian theater:
The Victorian England, a period becomes of apogee and expansion of
culture. Victorian current combines the Neoclassicism and the Romanticism.
She was the predecessor from Modernism, although the modern authors see
to the Victorian like pent-up beings, past fashionable, strict morally and
ignorant persons.
Important authors of Victorian period:
The pioneers of this period were Boucicault, author and actor of great
sagacity and intuition, and T. Taylor.
In theatre there was not a true resurgence even the last few decades of
century and comes given for the figure of an author like Oscar Wilde ( 1854-
1900 ).
"...hacia mediados del siglo XIX emerge en Inglaterra una forma
dramática de tendencia realista que, apoyada por la influencia de Ibsen, lleva
a un resurgimiento del teatro inglés con obras que desarrollan problemas
familiares o presentan contenidos sociales"
Oscar Wilde is born on 1854 in Dublin. He writes his first theatrical
work,"Vera" in 1882, which as he failed . In 1895 he attained the success with
"An Ideal Husband", and "The importance of being Earnest".
Another author put on the front, among others many, went Charles
Dickens . He was born on 1812 in Portsmouth. His first theatrical work
was"Misron the sultan of Indian", 1820, and his more premature work was
"The stratagems of Roweno", which as he wrote with only 16 elderly years.
VICTORIAN DRAMA 1837-1901
The Victorian Age witnessed the emergence of “show business”, that is playwriting,
staging and acting on a commercial basis, and the “star system”, great actors in rich
costumes and spectacular acting, who became the favourites of the audiences and were
paid high sums of money.
Many theatres were rebuilt or refurbished with technological innovations such as gas or
electric lighting, stage machinery, authentic props, spectacle (chariot races, for instance),
backcloths by artists of reputation (creating a three-dimensional setting), music. Here
tickets were expensive. The general effect was an illusion of reality, which the front curtain
enhanced as it opened on a “real-life scene”. Victorian drama was more visual than aural
(as it had been in Elizabethan times).
The audience was mainly the middle class, “perfectly commonplace people” and audience
demand was for entertainment and relaxation. They enjoyed the so-called “well-made
plays” (A form of French theatre developed in the 1800s. EugËne Scribe and Victorien
Sardou popularized it. The well-made play involves secrets and timely arrivals of surprise
characters and sudden twists in plot introduced by external threats.) or the classics.
It was a period of intense playwriting (the list of plays written from 1800 to 1900 runs to
1,000 pages) but playwrights did not produce “risky plays” and Shakespearean works were
bowdlerized, that is vulgar or gross scenes were cut out.
The most popular genres among the lower classes were farce and MELODRAMA.
Originally, melodrama was a play in which dialogue had a musical accompaniment. In
Victorian theatre, melodramas were usually concerned with the sufferings of the innocent
at the hands of the wicked, who were usually vanquished by the end of the play after a
series of fearsome adventures involving sensational risks. In this period there were also
the so-called domestic melodramas expressing sympathy for the socially, economically or
sexually oppressed.
In the second half of the century, drama acquired higher cultural standing and social
respectability thanks to the rising status of actors and dramatists, to a wider critical
reputation and a wider reading audience for play texts. British drama also underwent
European influences: from France (Scribe and Becque), from Germany (Hauptman and
Wedekind), from Italy (Giacosa, Verga, D’Annunzio), from Russia (Chekhov), from
Sweden (Strindberg), from Norway (Ibsen).
The greatest English playwrights in the 1890s were H.A.Jones, Sir Arthur W. Pinero (social
drama), Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw (who wrote “problem plays”, comedies
dealing with the social issues of his time, attacking evils, institutions and hypocrisy in a
witty language).
The Aesthetic Movement
The aesthetic movement developed in the universities and in the intellectual circles in the
last decades of the 19th century.
Originating in France with the theories of Teophile Gautier it reflected the sense of
frustration of the artist and their reaction against the materialism of society.
The word comes from a Greek word which means to perceive, or to feel. In fact the
Aesthetic mood stresses sensations as the main source of art. The task of the artist is first
of all to feel sensations and live "aesthetically"and then to make the reader feel these
sensations. The aesthetic message was to live one's life as a work of art, that is to say to
feel all kinds of sensations. The finest sensations were to be found in art. The founder of
the English Aesthetic Movement was Walter Pater (1839-1894) and its leading exponent
was Oscar Wilde (1854-1900). These artists were profoundly influenced by the French
"Symbolists" poets and by the ideas of Walter Pater on the criticism of art. The movement
is important because it represented a complete break with the ideas which had been
fundamental to Victorian literature; moreover several of its doctrines strongly influenced
the writers and critics of the 20th century. This movement was generally considered
decadent; it wanted to move art away from its traditional role as teacher and moral guide.
Art had its own reason and purpose, the creation of Beauty. Art for art's sake was the
motto of Aesthetic Movement which stressed sensations as the main source of art. The
"art for art's sake" theory and practice led the Aesthetic movement to a kind of "spiritual
and moral perversity". Wilde, who represents the entire English Aesthetic Movement, with
his work The Picture of Dorian Gray he meant to provoke and shock.
