Author

Mary Russell Mitford (1787-1855)

Mitford was born in Hampshire. Her mother was a wealthy heiress and her father a dissolute gambler who ran through his wife’s considerable dowry of £28,000 in short order. They moved to London in 1797, the same year in which the young Mary won £20,000 in the lottery. She attended school in Chelsea and proved particularly interested in French and Latin.

Her literary career began with the publication of Poems in 1810. She added some longer narrative poems that were commercially successful such as Watlington Hill (1812) and Narrative Poems on the Female Character in the Various Relations of Human Life (1813). Coleridge, an admirer, encouraged her to try writing for the stage.

Her father’s continuing poor financial management meant that Mitford felt obliged to support the family.  Coleridge’s encouragement was seconded by her friend Thomas Noon Talfourd. Her first two efforts Fiesco (1821) and Foscari (1823) were rejected by William Macready of Covent Garden. But Macready then played the title role in her Julian (1823) from which she earned £200. Although Charles the First was refused a licence for Covent Garden, it was performed at the Royal Victoria Theatre in 1834 as this theatre was perceived to be outside the Lord Chamberlain’s jurisdiction. Rienzi (1828), admired by Maria Edgeworth, Joanna Baillie, and Felicia Hemans, was staged at Drury Lane and had 34 performances in its first season, netting Mitford £400. There were other dramatic efforts but they came to little or nothing. Her Dramatic Works (1854) collected all of this work in two volumes.

Mitford had literary success outside of the theatre. The first volume of Our Village: Sketches of Rural Character and Scenery appeared in 1824 to warm critical appreciation. Although some readers were perturbed at the idea of a woman engaging with ‘low life’, most applauded her efforts. Subsequent volumes were published in 1826, 1828, 1830, and 1832.  Other descriptive works on town life and American life followed and they earned her further admiration. In 1852 her Recollections of  Literary Life appeared; it comprised a selection of literary extracts from favourite writers with commentary and sketches of her home life.  Throughout her writing career, Mitford remained devoted to caring for her father and much of her writing was done after midnight.

She maintained a busy literary correspondence with many writers including Harriet Martineau, John Ruskin, and Elizabeth Barrett. In 1852 she was left partially paralyzed after a fall from her pony-chaise that exacerbated her general ill-health from years of over work. She died in 1855.

Plot

Act I

Cromwell arrives at Whitehall and meets some of his closest advisors and they discuss the ongoing conflict. Over the course of the conversation, Cromwell, under guise of divine intervention, convinces them that the king must be tried and he takes tyrannical steps to ensure there will be no opposition in the Commons or army, including preventing those sympathetic to Charles from entering parliament. The king is at Carisbrooke Castle, taking solace in Shakespeare and in converse with his servant, Herbert, when the High Commissioners arrive (f.424r). Salisbury, Say, and Sir Harry Vane have come to seek his response to the proposals from the Commons. He has agreed to them all save for two: he will not sacrifice seven loyal cavaliers nor will he give up his faith despite the remonstrances of his captors. They are interrupted by Harrison who brings the arrest warrant for the ‘sometime king’ on the charge of treason on behalf of the Commons. The king greets this with shock and then scorn for so outrageous an action.

Act II (f.431r)

 The scene sees Fairfax and other parliamentarians gathered; he makes his excuses about the trial and leaves. Cromwell enters with news of the King’s arrival and imminent trial. When told of Fairfax’s departure, he claims to have seen the Queen outside his chambers. Cromwell exults fanatically about the impending trial. The second scene finds the Queen and Lady Fairfax attempting to gain access to see the king through an obdurate sentinel (f.435r). Cromwell enters and allows the Queen to pass, taking the opportunity of warning Lady Fairfax not to be associated with such a papist. When she rebuffs him he tells her he saw the queen laugh at her which raises her ire. Cromwell insists that he does not seek a bloody end to the trial and she follows him off to hear more.

The king and queen are reunited in an emotional scene before Cromwell enters (f.439r). The Queen attempts to win him over by asking him to name his desired office but he spurns her and they argue. Cromwell asks Charles to renounce his crown one more time. On being told he would not do this, Cromwell announces that the trial will be tomorrow at noon.

Act III (f.449r)

Bradshaw presides over Charles’s trial in Westminster Hall with Cromwell and others present. Despite Bradshaw’s impassioned opening speech, Charles refuses to recognize the court or its authority over him. Cromwell gives evidence against him, citing the battle of Naseby. Charles appeals to his people and asks to speak to the Commons but this is denied. The judges all find him guilty and, despite a tearful intervention from the Queen who attempts to take the blame for him, they pass the sentence of death. The scene ends with Charles foretelling tyranny before he is escorted to prison.

Act IV (f.464r)
Ireton comes to Cromwell’s house to tell him that not everyone will sign the death warrant. Cromwell restrains Ireton who suggests using force. A servant enters to tell him that Harrison would like to see him.

In the painted chamber, Harrison, Bradshaw, and Marten and trying to convince the other judges, Tichburne and Downes, to sign the warrant (f. 466r). Cromwell enters and through force of persuasion and veiled threats convinces the recalcitrant to add their names to the document. The third scene takes place in the king’s apartment where the king is comforting his children before Cromwell enters who announces the execution is to take place tomorrow (f.474r). The king asks Cromwell to keep his children and wife safe to which he agrees. Cromwell, moved by the domestic scene, claims that he would have saved the king had he abdicated. Charles remains defiant.

Act V (f.480r)

The king awakens Herbert in his bedchamber on the morning of his execution; his mood is calmly resolute. He sends Herbert to fetch the Bishop when the Queen enters. She tries to get him to flee disguised as her but he declines. She exits determined to seek Fairfax’s aid; Charles turns to his prayers. At the Banqueting Hall at Whitehall, Cromwell gives directions around the scaffold; Harrison, Ireton, and Hacker are present  (f.487r). Cromwell is a little worried that Fairfax will try and make an intervention. He duly arrives and he is troubled by the legality of what is about to happen. Cromwell suggests he go with Harrison to seek the presence of the Lord in the hope of divine guidance. When he leaves, Cromwell hastens to get everything ready. The king enters and is led to the scaffold as Cromwell goes to find Fairfax before the Queen does. In the third scene Cromwell meets the Queen who pleads for her husband’s life but he is unmoved, asking a scornful Lady Fairfax to take her away (f.497r). Ireton, Fairfax, and Harrison enter with the news that the King is dead; Cromwell rejoices and takes responsibility for the event.

Performance, publication and reception

The play was submitted to the Examiner on 27 September 1825 by Charles Kemble, Covent Garden. It was refused a licence.

In 1834 the Royal Victoria Theatre staged the play on 2 July 1834, it being purportedly beyond the jurisdiction of the Lord Chamberlain. Somewhat unusually, the performance was preceded by the publication of the play which contained a substantive preface by the author.

The Observer newspaper proved a committed supporter, offering generous praise of both the published version and the performance:

Miss Mitford’s tragedy of Charles the First was got up on Wednesday night produced at this theatre, after having been refused at the Royalties, as if it had been contaminated by the regicide guilt. After all, there was nothing in it to disturb the mind of the Lord Chamberlain or his Deputy. In dramatizing the incident of the death of Charles the First, our fair authoress has followed Hume implicitly. […] The subject was one abounding in dramatic materials of the most impressive kind, but it demanded a great pen to do it full justice. […] Miss Mitford has seized on this high theme with great boldness and almost equal success. (The Observer,7 July 1834)

Its review of the published play was equally effusive. ‘Miss Mitford […] has succeeded in producing a tragedy which cannot fail to be admired in the reading, and which, when well performed, must always command the applause of the audience’. The writer was particularly impressed by the character of Cromwell, described as ‘in one sense, the hero of the piece […] drawn with great judgement and effect’. The journalist draws attention to the historical research that he believes Mitford must have done: ‘The religious cant phrases Miss M. puts in the Protector’s mouth, and by which he happily justifies every crime he commits or contemplates, are remarkably happy, and show that she must have studied, with great attention, the history of Cromwell’s times. (The Observer,13 July 1834)

The reviewer in The Times (3 July 1834), before going on to praise the growing presence of intellectual women writing for the theatre, was puzzled that the play had been controversial in its past:

Why those who preside over the destinies of dramatic authors—we mean the licensers—should have opposed its representation at Drury-lane or Covent-garden, we certainly are at a loss to conceive. There is nothing in the play to offend the most strenuous supporter of the monarchical principle. Historical facts, with which every schoolboy is acquainted, are placed in a vivid light before the audience; but, from first to last, our best sympathies and our kindliest feelings are awakened in favour of a Prince whose personal virtues in a great measure redeemed his political faults.

This substantial and thoughtful review also provides some reflections on the difficulties of dramatizing historical events as well as the quality of Mitford’s writing. The writer was less impressed by the actor [James] Cathcart, who played Cromwell, but was pleased with the portrayal of Charles and his wife Henrietta.

Not every review was so supportive. The Examiner (6 July 1834) argued that ‘[Mitford’s] chief fault is, that she has chosen such a subject; could she expect to develope a long series of political events upon the stage?  or to excite the interest of an audience during five acts, every event, but one, and that one a gross falsification [the queen’s interruption of the trial], being foreknown?’ In the end, the writer concluded that ‘neither the piece nor the performance ever rises much above mediocrity’.

Commentary

The depiction of Charles I on the stage was controversial right from the very inception of the Stage Licensing Act. Just before the introduction of the legislation in 1737, William Havard’s King Charles I was played in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. It was a considerable success, that is, until the public discovered it was an actor (and an Irish one to boot) who had had the temerity to pen the drama: ‘The moment Havard put on the sword and tie-wig, the genteel dress of the times, and professed himself to be the writer of Charles the First, the audiences were thinned, and the play was supposed to be inferior to what its real merit had a right to claim’ (Memoirs of Garrick, II: 205). Lord Chesterfield, who spoke vehemently against the introduction of stage censorship, offered it up as an example of a play that should, in fact, be prohibited from performance due to its sensitive subject-matter. Colman copied the relevant passage from the Biographica Dramatica into Mitford’s manuscript giving Chesterfield’s opinion on Havard’s tragedy: ‘the catastrophe was too recent, too melancholy, & of too solemn a nature to be heard of anywhere but a pulpit’ (f.480v).

Concerns about the play’s suitability for representation continued and there were few representations of it in London over the course of the century. Tate Wilkinson claimed that a performance in Hull in 1777 or 1778 resulted in the death of a young lady who collapsed just after a performance concluded: 'some urged that the melancholy of the tragedy had affected her senses: the enemies of the theatre were certain it was Divine judgement, as a punishment for her being in so profane a place as the devil's house' (Wilkinson, II, 7–8).

Nevertheless, Mitford expressed her puzzlement as to why her play should be muzzled when Havard’s play had been licenced so many years ago and played around the country. She is careful to point out that Colman did not object to the ‘details or the execution of the piece’ but simply to the ‘title and subject’. That was an end to it, as far as she was concerned, until the ‘spirited Managers’ of the Victoria requested it. Mitford was quick, nonetheless, to ensure her acquiescence to the principle of censorship is clear:

I beg most earnestly and sincerely to disavow having been influenced by any thing like a spirit of defiance towards the Licencer or his office. To the present Lord Chamberlain the whole theatrical world, and I myself more particularly, owe nothing but respect and gratitude. (Preface, Charles the First)

She was equally kind—ostensibly, at least: the language is occasionally biting—to George Colman, the man who had initially prohibited the play: ‘That Mr. Colman’s scruples arose from no ill-will to the writer, but were the off-spring of an honest timidity, an over-zealous fear, I do not for a moment question. A Licenser must needs be something of an alarmist in virtue of his office’. She argued, however, that if one was to prohibit her play they would equally need to suppress David Hume’s account in the History of England as the theatre was no longer as influential as it once was, thanks to the dominance of that ‘democratic engine the Press’. Moreover, she added, the widespread benevolence felt towards the present monarch, William IV, would surely ensure that any potential misguided revolutionary tendencies produced by the play would dissipate immediately.

The Larpent manuscript contains very few emendations as the overall play was too dangerous, in Colman’s eyes, to warrant any need for detailed intervention: there was no need to go to the bother of cancelling individual passages when the general tendency was so inappropriate for representation. Nonetheless, there are two instances of minor cuts worth examining. The first occurs on (f.461) just after the king has been sentenced and he addresses the court. It is a defiant speech, full of righteous anger and disclaiming any fear of the unlawful execution to come. After the lines ‘See I can smile / As thinking on the axe I draw the bright / keen edge across my hand’, there are six lines of blank verse obliterated by pen so that they are rendered indecipherable (nor do they appear in the printed version). We can only speculate, of course, but it is possible, considering what we know of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century reverential treatment of the execution, that these lines were cut in advance of submission to Colman because they were deemed too visceral (and therefore the theatre didn’t even want him to be able to read what they originally were). Some credence is lent to this theory by a subsequent intervention, albeit in pencil. The dialogue in this passage is bracketed in pencil and marked ‘This perhaps better omitted’. The lengthy cut is the king and Herbert’s discussion of the latter’s disturbing dream where he saw the king asleep in ‘calm & holy pensiveness’ but he concludes:

A thick & palpable darkness fell around,
A blindness, & dull groans & piercing shrieks
A moment echoed; then they ceased , & light
Burst forth & musick, - light such as the flood
Of day-spring at the dawning, rosy sparkling,
An insupportable brightness! And i’ th’ midst
Over the couch a milk white dove, which soared
Right upward, cleaving, with its train of light
The Heavens like a star. The couch remained
Vacant. (ff.481-482)

It is unclear who is making the suggestion that this passage be cut but evidently, there was anxiety over whether this scene might be too upsetting for an 1820s audience. Moreover, given Colman’s well-known antipathy for biblical allusion on stage, there may have been concerns over the nods to the Flood. It is notable, however, that the passage appears in full in the published version in 1834.

What the Larpent manuscript also retains is correspondence between Colman, Montrose, Kemble and Mitford, giving us some important background to the decision (note that the correspondence from John MacDonald to Colman on (ff.405-407), fascinating though it be, is unrelated to Mitford’s play).

 The first letter is a copy of letter from Kemble (in his own hand) to the Lord Chamberlain, the Duke of Montrose, 29 September 1825.

My Lord,
- -           -                       -           -           -           -
As a point of duty, I forward the enclosed Form of License; but it will surprise me if your Grace should think proper to sign it. It refers to a Play the very title of which, - Charles the First (of England), - brings, instantly, to mind the violent commotions, & [illeg] catastrophe of that unhappy Monarch’s reign; - &, in following closely the historical facts previous to his Death, the Dramatic Personae (as far as Cromwell & his adherents are concerned) exhibit the fanatical manners, & utter all the puritanical cant, peculiar to their times: - consequently, the Piece abounds (blasphemously, I think,) with Scriptural allusions, & quotations, & the name of the Almighty is introduced, & invoked, over / & over again, by the hypocrites, & regicides.
If it be in keeping thus to delineate the morals & religion of the Cromwell party, the political part of their dialogue is, by the same rule, democratical; more insulting to Charles, in particular, & to Monarchy, in general.
I subjoin an outline of the Play, giving its progressive conduct, Act by Act.
I think there can be but one impartial opinion upon the nature of this Drama.
At all events, I certainly cannot represent to the Lord Chamberlain that “it does not contain anything immoral, or otherwise improper for the Stage”.
Shall I forward the manuscript for your Grace’s benefit. (ff.408rv)

It seems that Montrose did decide to look at the manuscript himself as Colman wrote to Kemble with a licence for another play on 10 October and let Kemble know that the play was referred to his superior.

Sir,
In forwarding this day a License for “Lilla” to your messenger, I take  the opportunity of informing you that I have been honoured with instructions to transmit the Play entitled “Charles the First” to the Lord Chamberlain, who is now in Scotland, & who will, after a perusal of the Manuscript, form his own judgment upon the propriety of licencing the representation of a Drama so peculiar in it’s title, & incidents.
Whatever, therefore, may be the ultimate decision, the License for acting the aforementioned Piece is, at all events, suspended. (f.409r)

Montrose, who came from a staunchly Royalist family as Stephens has pointed out, sent down his reply to Colman from his base in Buchanan, Scotland. Dated on 15 October, it was curt and to the point:

Sir,
I return the Play called Charles the First, & cannot think that it is fit for representation on the Stage; more I think it not necessary to say. (f.410)

The next letter is a draft from Colman to Kemble dated 15 October, informing the manager of the Lord Chamberlain’s decision. Readers should view the manuscript for this letter in particular as there are lots of excisions, interlineations, and rewriting which suggest a concern to inject the denial with the appropriate degree of stridency:

Sir, I have to inform you that the Lord Chamberlain objects against your proposed representation of an Historical Tragedy entitled C the First which you, lately, transmitted to me.
I have less regret in communicating this intelligence as I think you must have anticipated it; &, when there could have been little hope of permission, there can be little disappointment in refusal. (f.411r)

There is an additional note from Montrose to Colman, again from Buchanan on 20 October, which again refers to the play and reveals that Colman sent up a copy of the Kemble letter to Montrose in an act of virtue-signalling:

Sir
I return the Licenses signed. King Charles is certainly not proper for representation in my opinion, & if the Legislation will place the responsibility in such men as myself, I disdain to avoid the responsibility. / Your letter to the Manager is very proper. (f.412rv)

The final letter is a poignant missive from Mitford herself to Colman dated 18 December 1825, revealing that the act of censorship went beyond Charles I and discouraged an aspiring female playwright further ambition in the realm of historical tragedy.

Sir
I trouble you only to thank you for your kind attention to my request, & the implied warning. I shall not now meddle with Henry the Second – especially as I believe that I perceive the reason which induces you to think the subject a bad one.
Should any circumstances bring me to town I shall be most happy to avail myself of your offered kindness by a personal interview – (f.413r)

The Select Committee Report on Dramatic Literature (1832) provides us with some further insight on the rationale for the refusal. A question to John Payne Collier asks him to account for why Mitford’s play was refused ‘on account of the liberties it had taken with the character’ of Charles when Shakespeare had done the same with Henry VIII. Collier replied:

I think the cases are not parallel: the reason why the licence for Charles the 1st was refused, I suppose (not knowing anything decisively of the fact) was, because there was something in the state of the times, a disposition to think lightly of the authority of Kings, or some public feeling of that kind, which rendered it then objectionable. (30)

Another witness to the committee took a different view. George Bolwell Davidge (1793-1842), noted as a harlequin by Dickens, was more caustic in appraising the decision. He testified that the licence was only refused because she was not a well-known author. If she had been better known to the public ‘with all her excellence’, Colman ‘would scarcely have dared to refuse to licence the play’. Colman was, of course, a significant witness to the Committee and his evidence touched on Mitford’s tragedy:

There was a play of Charles the First you refused to licence?—Yes.
Why did you refuse to licence that?—Because it amounted to every thing but cutting off the King’s head upon stage.
So does Julius Caesar?—Yes, but not in that way. If you took the trouble of reading the two plays, you would see the difference. There is a discretionary power in the Lord Chamberlain.
Is it all a matter of discretion and caprice?—It is the discretion of the Lord Chamberlain.
Or a caprice?—You call it so. (66)

It is not an entirely convincing defence on Colman’s part.

Further reading

Thomas Davies, Memoirs of the Life of David Garrick, 2 vols (London: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1808).
[available on HathiTrust.org]

Mary Russell Mitford, Charles the First, An Historical Tragedy in Five Acts (London: John Duncombe, 1834).
[available on archive.org, Googlebooks]

Katherine Newey, ‘Women and history on the Romantic stage: More, Yearsley, Burney, and Mitford’ in Women in British Romantic Theatre: Drama, Performance, and Society, 1790–1840, ed. Catherine Burroughs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

John Russell Stephens, The Censorship of English Drama 1824–1901 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), pp. 41-42, 48..

Tate Wilkinson, The wandering patentee, or, A history of the Yorkshire theatres from 1770 to the present time, 4 vols. (1795)
[available on Googlebooks]

Report from the Select Committee on Dramatic Literature with the Minutes of Evidence (London: House of Commons, 1832).
[available on archive.org]