The World as It Goes by William D Brewer

The World as It Goes by William D Brewer

During the Romantic period, Hannah Cowley (1743–1809) achieved fame both as a playwright and a poet, composing popular comedies and, as Anna Matilda, amorous Della Cruscan verse. But despite a recent surge of scholarly interest in her works, her controversial comedy The World as It Goes; or A Party at Montpelier (performed 1781) has never been published. During its premiere, audience members loudly objected to the play’s bawdy content, and it closed after a single performance. The comedy’s catastrophic failure provides insights into the theatrical tastes, anxieties and mores of late eighteenth-century audiences and influenced the manner in which Cowley handled controversial issues in her subsequent plays. This edition of The World as It Goes is based on the Larpent licensing holograph manuscript held by the Huntington Library (LA 548). The transcription of the play is supplemented with an introduction providing cultural, theatrical, historical and biographical contexts; contemporaneous reviews; and a note on the text.

“Brewer offers an excellent edition of a previously unpublished play by a playwright whose works helped shape Georgian EnglandBrewer’s insightful introduction highlights the importance of ‘failed’ plays for what they tell us about the machinations of the self-serving theater world and the challenges it posed for women playwrights especially.” —Tanya Caldwell, Professor of English, Georgia State University, US

“Brewer has thrown a spotlight on a little-known comedy by Hannah Cowley, one of the most successful writers for the eighteenth-century stage. Complete with an informative introduction detailing reactions to a play damned for o ending theatergoer sensibilities, this distinctive edition proposes that we can learn as much from a playwright’s theatrical failures as we can from their triumphs.” —Terry F. Robinson, Associate Professor and Associate Chair of English and Drama, University of Toronto, Canada

As editor of The Works of Mary Robinson (8 vols, 2009-2010), William Brewer sharpened his skills in preparing Georgian texts for a contemporary academic market. The example of Robinson’s Nobody (1794) revealed how a stage failure could provide valuable insight into the literary taboos of the period. A similar case occurs in Hannah Cowley’s The World as It Goes (1781), a play that followed one year after the resounding success of The Belle's Stratagem (1780). Brewer identified, as correlative to the play-within-a play, the chameleonic performance, in which the actor plays the role of a character who plays the role. Referring to “Cowley’s Universal Masquerade,” Brewer describes the audience’s vehemently rejecting the sexual role-playing in The World as It Goes and its revision, Second Thoughts Are Best. Especially valuable are Brewer’s detailed introduction and his inclusion of reviews of the performances of both versions. —Frederick Burwick, Research Professor, Department of English, University of California, Los Angeles

It is not often one gets the opportunity to see a work of a celebrated eighteenth-century author published for the first time, but William D. Brewer has provided scholars and readers of eighteenth-century drama with just that. Hannah Cowley’s The World As It Goes was omitted from the posthumous and anonymously-edited Works of Mrs. Cowley (1813) and the only surviving copy is the Larpent licensing manuscript housed in the Huntington Library. [...] With its informative introduction, text of the original play, and full reviews of both The World As It Goes and its rewrite Second Thoughts Are Best, Brewer’s volume is a welcome addition to late-eighteenth-century dramatic scholarship — Melinda C. Finberg, University of Southern California, USA.  Women's Writing, 29th April 2022.

William D. Brewer is professor of English at Appalachian State University, USA, and the author of Staging Romantic Chameleons and Imposters (2015).