Cymbeline - eTheses Repository - University of Birmingham

Mr. Editor, - Your yesterday's remarks upon
the performance of this play at Covent Garden
Theatre, seemed to bear rather too hard upon
the management. 1 have reason to know that
Cymtoeline was put in rehearsal, as one of
Shakespeare's plays, which would be most readily
produced at the beginning of the season, without
the slightest idea that any analogy could be
found between the characters /sic/ of Imogen,
and the pending trial. ~"
To this, the editor added his comment:
We cheerfully give this explanation of the
Manager's conduct, and shall only add the
expression of our hope that as he sees the
factitious use to which certain turbulent
persons wish to turn many of the sentiments
contained in the play, he will not aid their
purpose by enabling them of /sic/ the occasion
to create confusion, in exciting the basest of
the vulgar passions. riither the play should
not for the present be repeated, or the passages
of which the Radicals avail themselves ought to
be omitted.
75.
The play was nevertheless repeated, on October 24. The
Morning ..Post reported the occasion:
The tragedy of Cymbeline was repeated last
night; but the expectations of its ^reat
attractions, as well as of its again proving
a rallying point for disaffection, were alike
disappointed. The house was not filled, and
the feeble attempts of the Radicals in the
galleries, were too contemptible to be noticed
by the respectable part of the audience.
(October 25, 1820)
The writer thus decries the importance of the occasion, and
asserts s. division in the audience of impecunious radicals
(in the galleries) and presumably "loyal" middle and upoer
classes in the lov/er parts of the house (including, presumably,
the pit). But the distinctions between the
holders of rival opinions on the matter of the Queen were
not such simple class-distinctions, and there were as many
of the upper and middle classes who were revolted by the