The writer of this tragedy, at the end of his labour, received a severe
disappointment. "Gustavus
Vasa" had been accepted by the managers of Drury Lane, in 1739, with high expectation of
its success, and had even arrived at the last rehearsal, when an order came from the
Lord Chamberlain's office, to prohibit its performance.2
The reader will possibly observe some passages in the work, which will account for
this mandate; yet the author felt himself
aggrieved, and his friends considered him so deeply wronged, that the play was
printed, and the sum of one thousand pounds immediately raised by its sale.3
Under these circumstances it is not probable, that the influence of authority was
a
misfortune to the dramatist; on the contrary, his production was rendered popular
by
having excited opposition from the hand of power; and every reader was highly pleased
with it as a literary performance; whereas, had those very persons seen it in action,
upon the stage, no doubt but it would have proved a languid, if not a dull
exhibition.
[Page 4]In evidence of this opinion, not one of the sentiments which were formerly dreaded
by
government, can apply to the present times; yet the play is seldom acted; and the
reason is, because it is deficient both of interest and incident for representation.
Its greatest merit, then, it seems, has been, in the giving a kind of seditious
description of the blessing of liberty, which warmed the bosoms of all those, who
fancied they did not enjoy it. But liberty, like meaner blessings, palls in the
possession, and now, though an English audience still think themselves bound to
applaud those sentences which boast of freedom, long use has made its charms so
familiar, that no ceremonious courtesy to so old an acquaintance, will make a play
attractive which has not other requisites.
This play should, properly, be called historical, for its foundation is the following
page of history:— Gustavus
I. King of Sweden, known by the name of Gustavus Vasa, was born in 1490.
He was the son of Eric Vasa, Duke of Gripsholm, and descended from the ancient
kings of Sweden. Christiern II.
King of Denmark, having got Gustavus into his hands, in the war in which he reduced Sweden, kept him
several years prisoner at Copenhagen. He at length made his escape, and having
prevailed on the Dalecarlians to throw off the Danish yoke, he put himself at
their head. MOD. UNIV. HIST.4
At this crisis the tragedy commences, and continues throughout an event of much
interest, in the pe-[Page 5]rusal, though not conducted with dramatic force or
skill.
Mr. Brooke, the author, being a native of
Ireland, while he resided at his paternal estate, in the county of Cavan, wrote some
dramas for the Dublin stage; but the same spirit of persecution, as he has termed
it,
pursued him in Hibernia: and an opera, entitled "Jack the Giant
Queller," after being performed one night with success, was forbidden by
the Lord Lieutenant, ever to be acted again.5
The love of liberty in Mr. Brooke,
naturally increased the more he felt its loss, and, from a mere admirer, he became
an
enthusiast in the cause.—During the rebellion in 1745, he took an active part
in politics, and wrote the "Farmer's Letters" in imitation of
"The Drapier's" of Dean
Swift, which gave high offence to the government of Ireland,
whilst his friends declared, they only breathed the zeal of a true patriot.6 Such are
the discordant sentiments of various readers!
Such also are the discordant sensations of certain writers with certain readers, that
this author, in his public statement of facts, relative to the Lord Chamberlain's
forbidding the performance of "Gustavus Vasa," on account of its disloyal tendency, thus
asserts—"I was so far from a view of merit with the disaffected, that I looked
on this performance as the highest compliment I could pay to the present
establishment."7
But partial judgment, in the case of literature, can-
b 3[Page 6]not be better exemplified than in
the following lines, extracted from a poem addressed to the author of Gustavus Vasa, by Paul Whitehead. Shakspeare's no
more—lost was the poet's name,Till thou, my friend, my genius, sprung to fame.Lur'd by his laurels' never-fading bloom,You boldly snatch'd the trophy from his tomb.8 space between stanzas
1. "Remarks." Gustavus Vasa; or, the Deliverer of his Country;
A Tragedy, In Five Acts; By Henry Brooke, Esq. As Performed at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden. Printed
Under the Authority of the Managers From the Prompt Book. With Remarks
by Mrs.
Inchbald. Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme,
Paternoster Row, pp. 3-6. The
British Theatre; or, A Collection of Plays, Which Are Acted At the
Theatres Royal, Drury Lane,
Covent Garden, and
Haymarket. Printed Under
the Authority of the Managers from the Prompt Books. With Biographical
and Critical Remarks, by Mrs.
Inchbald. In Twenty-Five Volumes. Vol. VII. Isabella. Oroonoko. Distressed Mother. Zara. Gustavus
Vasa. London: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, and
Orme, Paternoster Row. 1808. The first performance of this play was staged
at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane
on March 17th, 1739. Bernadette D. Woodburn, Laura
DeWitt, and Mary A. Waters edited this essay for The Criticism Archive. Back
2. Prior to 1737, the
position of Lord Chamberlain entailed staffing the intimate attendants of the
Sovereign and overseeing entertainment and ceremonies for the court, a role that
permitted somewhat informal but often decided authority over theatrical
productions. However, with the passing of Sir Robert Walpole's Licensing Act of 1737, the Lord Chamberlain's
official duties came to include the censorship of theatrical performances, whether
by modification or outright veto. Gustavus Vasa
was the first play banned under the act, as the then-Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole, believed the
play's villain too closely resembled himself. Back
3. The
Licensing Act of 1737 had no power over the written word, and over a thousand
copies of Gustavus Vasa
were sold following its prohibition. Back
4. Eric
Vasa was killed as a heretic in the Stockholm Bloodbath along with other
Swedish nobles working against the Kalmar Union in Scandinavia. Their deaths
were politically motivated and played an important role in prompting the
Swedish War of Liberation. The inhabitants of the old province of Dalecarlia
in central Sweden were known for their patriotism and bravery. Inchbald references the parts of
the 33rd (1761) and 34th
(1762) volumes of The Modern Part of An Universal History that deal
with the country of Sweden and the life of Gustavus as head of the
Swedish country. This exact quote cannot be found within these volumes, but
Inchbald may have been
quoting from memory. The 1490 date given for Gustavus's date of birth
is taken from Vasa's
Swedish biographer Erik Jöransson Tegel, but is not universally accepted by
historians. No date is given in The Modern Part of An Universal History.
Back
5. County Cavan, named after the town
of Cavan and based in the historic Gaelic territory of East Breffny, is part of
the Northern and Western region of Ireland. The son of a well-off clergyman, Brooke was born and raised at Rantavan
House in County Cavan. Hibernia was one of the titles by which Ireland was known
to ancient Roman and Greek writers. The dramatis personæ of Brooke's 1749 operatic satire Jack the Giant-Queller consisted of
the giants of Wealth, Violence, Wrong, and Power, and "the family of the Goods,"
which included the Princess Justice. The government of Ireland prohibited this
play after its first performance due to its political allusions. Back
6. The Jacobite Rising of 1745 was the most nearly successful of
Prince Charles Edward
Stuart's attempts to reclaim the British throne for his father, James Francis Edward Stuart,
after the Stuart throne had been lost by King James II during the
Glorious Revolution of 1688. Brooke
published Farmer's Letters to the Protestants of
Ireland in 1745. The letters were written from the perspective
of a protestant Irish farmer attempting to galvanize his fellow protestants to
make preparations against the Jacobite uprising. Jonathan Swift's Drapier's Letters were a series of
pamphlets written between 1724 and 1725 to rouse public attention against the
English government's scheme to supply Ireland with inferior, privately-minted
copper coinage. Back
7. From "A Prefactory Dedication to the Subscribers" in Brooke's Gustavus
Vasa, The Deliverer of his Country (1739, p.
V). Back
8. "To Mr. Brooke, on the Refusal of a
Licence to his Play of Gustavus
Vasa." Lines 25-28, found in The Poems and Miscellaneous Compositions Of Paul
Whitehead (1777). Back