BARS Blog

Susan Valladares is Associate Professor in the Department of English Studies at Durham University. Her research examines theatre and performance from the late seventeenth century until the mid-nineteenth century, with a particular focus on archival materials; representations of race and gender; and print culture. Recent publications examine the representation of Spain in periodicals; Peninsular War poetry and novels; Romantic-period wartime and post-war theatre; and Anglo-Caribbean exchanges. Her new monograph, Stock Pieces: British Repertory Theatre, 1760–1830, which we discuss below, was recently published by Liverpool University Press.

1) What is a stock piece, and how did you decide you wanted to write a book about them?

Stock pieces were the staples of the Romantic-period dramatic repertoire. The term refers to established entertainments of proven box-office value, which were revived again and again: William Shakespeare’s Hamlet is a prime example. Theatre managers then operated what is known as repertory theatre, drawing upon a select list of dramatic fare produced in alternation or rotation. Repertory theatre was not a Romantic-period phenomenon, but I argue that it acquired new significance in the years 1760 to 1830. These years witnessed an expansion of theatrical programmes, major innovations in acting and scenography, modifications to playhouse architecture, changing audience demographics, and evolving ideas about authorship that placed significant pressure on the dramatic landscape.

My first book, Staging the Peninsular War: English Theatres, 1807–1815 (Ashgate, 2015), alerted me to how both new and established plays within the repertoire could make pointed ideological interventions, taking on meanings that often exceeded and even went against the grain of their first reception. This made me suspicious of assertions that the repertoire’s most familiar components could be characterised as nostalgic or even conservative. Yes, they could; but I was confident that the impact of stock pieces far exceeded these labels. The more I read, the more I found myself convinced that stock pieces were, in fact, the most versatile entertainments available to a dramatic company and its public. And so I set out to investigate how stock piece status was acquired, its box-office significance, ideological purchase, and more extensive influence on Romantic-period culture beyond the playhouse. This called for a capacious approach that blended traditional theatre history (committed to a recovery of the ‘how’ ‘what’, when’, and ‘where’) with literary and performance studies (which allowed me to probe at and beyond the limits of the extant archive). The methodological experiment was, for me, a crucial part of the project – and one of its greatest rewards.

2) What factors contributed to establishing a play as a stock piece?

An entertainment’s claim to the stock repertoire could take any number of forms. Early box-office success was often a key indicator of future stock value. This was the case for several comic operas such as The Padlock (1768) and Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s Pizarro (1799), which was quick to earn the title of the most popular new tragedy on the Romantic stage. But initial popularity was not a reliable guarantor of stock potential: some hit plays failed to retain their commercial appeal and slipped away from visibility within a few seasons, while plays that received mixed reviews could go on to establish a secure claim to the repertoire. Nicholas Rowe’s The Fair Penitent (1703) is case in point for the latter category. The fact that once established, stock piece status could be lost and only in some instances recovered further complicates the picture. It also highlights the need to distinguish between what this book refers to as ‘active’ and ‘dormant’ stock pieces. ‘Active’ stock pieces were frequently performed, while ‘dormant’ stock pieces retained their place in the repertoire even though (and, to some extent, because) they were only infrequently revived.

Once a stock piece ‘established’ itself (with the caveat that no stock piece could ever take this for granted), an openness to new inflections and even re-interpretations proved critical. The theatres of the Romantic period were government-controlled institutions, and one of the book’s main contentions is that the period’s stock pieces shed unique light on how theatre producers and their audiences were able to use the dramatic repertoire to successfully interact with and even help reconstitute contemporary ideologies. I examine this malleability in conversation with the day-to-day, yet important considerations associated with the stock repertoire. Like any other business venture, the period’s theatres were profit driven. The value of a stock piece thus coalesced around its operational advantages. Stock pieces were cheaper to produce because they required less rehearsal time and could draw upon existing scenes and wardrobes (‘grand revivals’ excepted). Stock pieces, because readily available, could also be substituted at short notice when a new production was not ready on time, an actor was indisposed, or the intended programme had to be altered for any other reason. These components of the repertoire also provided important acting vehicles for ‘first time’ performers eager to make a name for themselves, as well as established actors seeking to consolidate star status.

3) What does looking at stock pieces, rather than first performances, let us perceive about the ways that Romantic-period theatre functioned for its producers and audiences?

‘Intertheatricality’ is a foundational concept for Stock Pieces. Privileging what Jacky Bratton describes as ‘the mesh of connections between all kinds of theatre texts, and between texts and their users’ (New Readings in Theatre History (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003), 37–38), intertheatricality resists the compulsion to search for ‘firsts’, i.e. an original performance. Stock Pieces follows suit. It does not negate the importance of the premiere, which, as noted, above, could hint at the likelihood of a new entertainment’s future claim to the stock repertoire. But it invites us to expand our horizons; to think across temporalities and geographies, explore how adaptation works, enquire into the different kinds of revisionary work undertaken, and examine how the familiar might still elicit spontaneous engagement.

Looking beyond first performance dates helps keep the financial concerns of commercial theatres in focus and draws attention to the essential interaction between actors and other members of the dramatic company. Take, for example, the role of the theatre’s musical director. The musical director was often the main composer, responsible for adapting the repertoire to the requirements of the dramatic company. Attention to the long history of the musical profile of stock pieces reveals the frequency with which songs could be restored, removed, or even written anew (to show off the talents of a new performer or underline emerging topical interest, for instance).

Through its selected case studies, Stock Pieces aims to showcase how the stock repertoire contributed to the theatrical economy and the political, social, cultural, and aesthetic concerns of the period 1760 to 1830. The book’s focus on stock pieces spotlights still pressing questions about the effects of theatrical censorship, the increasing commercialisation of playhouses, the dialogic relationship between stage and auditorium, and the influence of the dramatic repertoire beyond the playhouse itself.

4) How did you select the four case studies examined in the book’s chapters (Isaac Bickerstaff and Charles Didbin’s The Padlock; the Romantic afterlives of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher; the affordances of pantomime; and Jamaican performance cultures)?

The Romantic-period stock repertoire boasted far more entertainments than I could hope to address in detail. I aimed, therefore, to be representative through case studies that sought to capture different aspects of its operation. I based each case study around a key question. The first chapter, which focuses on Isaac Bickerstaff and Charles Dibdin’s The Padlock asks: how does an entertainment enter into and sustain itself within the repertoire? I chose The Padlock because its commercial performance history spans the book’s full chronology, offering readers an opportunity to accompany the development of a Romantic-period stock piece ‘in the making’.
‘Could stock piece status be undermined; and, if lost, could it be recovered?’ are the related questions that drive Chapter Two, which focuses on the Romantic afterlives of early modern playwrights Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher. These playwrights, who were once seen to not only rival but even surpass Shakespeare, found themselves relegated to the margins of Romantic-period performance histories, and I was keen to use their canon as a touchtone for the repertoire’s treatment of its pre-1660 inheritance (beyond Shakespeare).
The relationship between the old and the new takes on new purchase in Chapter Three, which seeks to better understand how stock pieces fared in comparison to other entertainments; in this case, pantomime. I was especially interested in pantomime as a genre predicated on the stock characters of Harlequin, Columbine, Pantaloon and Clown, but which, for various reasons, struggled to make individualised claims to the stock repertoire. The chapter interrogates why this was the case and seeks to better understand pantomime’s relationship to the mainpieces and afterpieces that did assert themselves as stock favourites. It takes a festive theme, focusing on Boxing Day programmes across the country. George Lillo’s The London Merchant; Or, The History of George Barnwell (1731) was then typically billed as the precursor to the new pantomime – but not without consequence!

Further reflections on the dialogic and revisionary qualities of the Romantic-period repertoire shape Chapter Four, which interrogates not only the possible limits to the malleability of stock pieces but also their portability. What happens, this chapter asks, when we take stock pieces away from their geographical origins and, more radically still, beyond the institutional context? In the Jamaican Actor Boys’ appropriations of Shakespeare and Rowe among other stock dramatists, I explore the repertoire’s mobilisation in the service of an enslaved populace. Chapter Four is not isolated in this concern: throughout the book, and most explicitly in its Conclusion, I underline how stock pieces could revive and reenact the spectral violence of the slave trade and slavery, albeit to uncertain ends.

5) What new projects are you currently working on?

My new work begins to take shape thanks to the generous award of two short-term fellowships – at the Folger Shakespeare Library and John Carter Brown Library (JCB). Last summer, I was in residence at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington D.C., during which time I photographed as much as I could of their marvellous collection of Romantic-period theatrical books and memorabilia. More recently, I’ve begun to immerse myself in the JCB’s impressive Americana collection. Events organised by both the Folger and JCB have allowed me to connect with other scholars with overlapping interests in theatre history and methodologies, and I am eager to start a research network of my own. (Let’s see what happens…!) In the meantime, I’ve just submitted a short article for peer review. Aimed at a non-specialist readership, it extends my work on early Caribbean performance cultures through reflections on how the American Revolution influenced the development of professional theatre in colonial Jamaica.