Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-ttngx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-30T20:49:21.834Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

WHEN DITCHERS AND JACK TARS COLLIDE: BENEFIT THEATRICALS AT THE CALCUTTA LYRIC THEATRE IN THE WAKE OF THE INDIAN MUTINY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 June 2014

Mary Isbell
Mary Isbell*
Affiliation:
Yale University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The collision I explore in this essay is not a physical one, though it does emerge from a performance event that brought Ditchers (European residents in Calcutta) and Jack Tars (sailors in the Royal Navy) to the Calcutta Lyric Theatre on February 25, 1858. The collision actually manifests in print, as conflicting reviews of this event. Announced in the silk playbill pictured in Figure 19, the sailor amateurs of HMS Chesapeake offered a benefit theatrical to raise money for the Indian Relief Fund, a charity offering support to “widows, orphans, or other representatives of those who perished in the mutiny” (“Indian Relief”) (Figure 19).

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 42 , Issue 3: EDITORS' TOPIC: VICTORIAN INDIA , September 2014 , pp. 407 - 423
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

WORKS CITED

Adkins, Roy, and Adkins, Leslie. Jack Tar: The Extraordinary Lives of Ordinary Seamen in Nelson's Navy. London: Abacus, 2008.Google Scholar
Austen, Jane. Mansfield Park. Ed. Johnson, Claudia. New York: Norton, 1998.Google Scholar
Bamfield, J. W. L. Mss. Journal kept by the ship's chaplain the Rev. J. W. L. Bamfield. National Maritime Museum, NWT 3.Google Scholar
Bengal Hurkaru. July 1, 3, 1857.Google Scholar
Brantlinger, Patrick. Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism, 1830–1914. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1988.Google Scholar
Burnand, Francis Cowley. The “A.D.C” Being Personal Reminiscences of the University Amateur Dramatic Club, Cambridge. 2nd ed.London: Chapman and Hall, 1880. 40.Google Scholar
“Calcutta Lyric Theatre.” Play Review. Bengal Hurkaru. Calcutta: 5 Feb. 1858: 118.Google Scholar
Calnek, Anthony. The Hasty Pudding Theatre: A History of Harvard's Hairy-Chested Heroines. Milan: Calnek, 1986.Google Scholar
Carlson, Marvin. The Haunted Stage. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2001.Google Scholar
Davis, Jim. “British Bravery, or Tars Triumphant: Images of the British Navy in Nautical Melodrama. New Theatre Quarterly 4 (1988): 122–43.Google Scholar
“Disaffection of Native Troops.” Bengal Hurkaru 1 July 1857: 4.Google Scholar
“Fair Play.” Newspaper clipping from the Englishman included in Bamfield journal, n.p.Google Scholar
Foreman, Amanda. A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War. New York: Random House, 2010.Google Scholar
Gainor, J. Ellen. “The Provincetown Players’ Experiments with Realism.” Realism and the American Dramatic Tradition. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 1996.Google Scholar
Gupta, Hemendra Nath Das Gupta. The Indian Theatre. New Delhi: Gyan, 2009.Google Scholar
Herbert, Christopher. War of No Pity: The Indian Mutiny and Victorian Trauma. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2008.Google Scholar
Holmes, Thomas Rice. A History of the Indian Mutiny and of The Disturbances which Accompanied It Among the Civil Population. London: Macmillan, 1904.Google Scholar
Husain, Syed Mahdi. Bahadur Shah Zafar And the War of 1857 in Delhi. Delhi: Aakar Books, 2006.Google Scholar
“Indian Relief Fund.” Free Press 14 Oct 1857: 500–01.Google Scholar
Isbell, Mary E. “Amateurs: Home, Shipboard, and Public Theatricals in the Nineteenth Century.” Diss. University of Connecticut, 2013. Doctoral Dissertations. Paper 30. Web. 22 Oct. 2013.Google Scholar
Jerrold, Douglas. Black-Ey'd Susan. English Plays of the Nineteenth Century: I Dramas 1800–1850. Ed. Booth, Michael R.. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1969. 151–200.Google Scholar
Llewellyn-Jones, Rosie. The Great Uprising in India, 1857–58: Untold Stories, Indian and British. Rochester: Boydell, 2007.Google Scholar
“A Looker On.” Letter to the Editor. Bengal Hurkaru 1 Dec. 1857: 238.Google Scholar
“Lyric Theatre.” Bengal Hurkaru 27 Feb. 1858: 199.Google Scholar
“The Lyric Theatre.” Newspaper clipping from the Englishman included in Bamfield journal, n.p.Google Scholar
Massey, Montague. Recollections of Calcutta for over Half a Century. Calcutta: Thacker and Spink, 1918.Google Scholar
Mathews, Charles. Used Up. New York: John Douglas, 1848.Google Scholar
McArthur, A.D. Ed. The Young Idea. London: Paul Jerrard and Son, 1867.Google Scholar
Moitra, Mohit. A History of Indian Journalism. Calcutta: Ava, 1969.Google Scholar
Muster Records for HMS Chesapeake. 1858 Jan.-June. National Archive for England, Wales, and the United Kingdom. ADM 38/2884.Google Scholar
Nair, P. Thankappan. “The Growth and Development of Old Calcutta.” Calcutta The Living City. Volume I: The Past. Ed. Chauduri, Sukanta. Calcutta: Oxford University Press, 1990. 10–23.Google Scholar
O'Quinn, Daniel. “Theatre and Empire.” The Cambridge Companion to British Theatre, 1730–1830. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007. 233–46.Google Scholar
Osborne, Sherard and McDougall, George F.. Editors. Illustrated Arctic News, Published on Board H.M.S. Resolute: in Search of the Expedition under Sir John Franklin. London: Ackermann, 1852.Google Scholar
Playbill for performance at the Calcutta Lyric Theatre by the sailor amateurs of HMS Chesapeake, included in Bamfield journal, n.p.Google Scholar
Rhodes, William Barnes. Bombastes Furioso in Burlesque Plays of the Eighteenth Century. Ed. Trussler, Simon. London: Oxford UP, 1969. 349–67.Google Scholar
Rowbotham, W.B., Ed. The Naval Brigades in the Indian Mutiny 1857–58. Navy Records Society, 1947.Google Scholar
Russell, Gillian. The Theatres of War: Performance, Politics, and Society, 1793–1815. Oxford: Clarendon, 1995.Google Scholar
Selby, Charles. Fearful Tragedy in the Seven Dials A Farcical Interlude in One Act. Ed. Pithouse, Ian. London: T. H. Lacy, n.d. Victorian Plays Project. Web. 22 Oct. 2013.Google Scholar
Shaw, Denis. “The Mrs. Siddons of Bengal.” Educational Theatre Journal 10.4 (1958): 304–10.Google Scholar
Steggles, Mary Anne. Statues of the Raj. Putney: BASCA, 2000.Google Scholar
Taylor, George. History of the Amateur Theatre. Melksham: Colin Venton, 1976.Google Scholar
Trussler, Simon, ed. Burlesque Plays of the Eighteenth Century. London: Oxford UP, 1969.Google Scholar
Wilks, Thomas Egerton. The Seven Clerks, or, The Three Thieves and the Denouncer A Romantic Drama in Two Acts. Ed. Pithouse, Ian. London: T. H. Lacy, n.d. Victorian Plays Project. Web. 22 Oct. 2013.Google Scholar