<i>The Plays of Charles Dickens</i> edited by Joanna Hofer-Robinson and Pete Orford

Charles Dickens looms large as one of the major novelists of the Victorian Era, yet many enthusiastic readers of his novels may be unaware of his plays. His dramatic works have generated little scholarly attention over the years, and they have not been gathered into one critical edition until now with the publication of Edinburgh University Press’s The Plays of Charles Dickens, edited by Joanna Hofer-Robinson and Pete Orford. This volume fills a crucial gap in Dickens scholarship and contributes to a deeper understanding of his growth as a writer over the course of his career. The collection begins with a comprehensive introductory essay explaining the histories of each play, discussing how most of them were produced with some form of collaboration, and exploring the relationship of Dickens’s plays to his novels. The second part of the volume consists of the texts of Dickens’s seven dramatic works. The editors include ample footnotes to document variations in the different versions of the texts (mainly between the copies of the plays sent to the Lord Chamberlain for approval and those used by the actors to memorize their lines) and also endnotes explaining cultural references and details of the original performances (both footnotes and endnotes demonstrate impressive scholarship by the editors). The volume concludes with six brief appendices, including an early, fragmentary parody by Dickens of Othello, prologues written by Dickens, a prologue written for a play performed by Dickens’s amateur troupe, and an alternate ending to a play that was also performed by Dickens and his friends. This volume demonstrates how Dickens’s plays follow the same arc as his novels, beginning with his early comedic years when he jovially poked fun at human foibles and progressing to his later period when his view of humanity had significantly darkened.Hofer-Robinson and Orford’s introductory essay argues that Dickens’s work as a playwright was an important component of his creative life. They note that theater “fed his imagination” and point out the many theatrical allusions, characters, and scenarios that “litter his prose” (xi). Citing how recent critical attention to Dickens’s journalism has “redefined the way we think of him as a writer” (xi), they argue that “it is past time to recognise that his fascination with theatre is equally important” (xii). Observing that most of Dickens’s plays were written early in his career, both as a means to capitalize on his newfound fame and as a way to participate in an artistic medium that had long enthralled him, the editors explain how even though several connections exist between his plays and novels from this time period, labeling any of these texts as “Dickensian” is fraught with problems due to the collaborative nature of scripts at this time (xvii). The editors explain how actors often made changes in the script to reflect their interpretation of their characters, and they argue that even “minor changes to punctuation can have a major impact on the delivery of a scene” (xviii). Other changes to the script, such as the insertion of songs, were another way that other contributors could shape the play (xxiv). In fact, Dickens became so annoyed with changes to the script of The Village Coquettes (1836) that he expressed a desire for his name not to be associated with it (xii). After writing four plays in two years, the editors note, Dickens paused for thirteen years before writing his next, preferring instead to focus his creative efforts on his novels (xxxi). When he did resume writing playscripts, it was for the private performances staged by his amateur troupe. The editors note that rather than writing farces for popular audiences, the older, more esteemed, more socially conscious writer had a different “persona” to maintain and that this spurred a significant change in his playwriting (xxxii). Dickens found that he was no longer able to write an original farce of his own considering the pressure he felt to maintain his reputation, so he instead collaborated with his friend and Punch editor Mark Lemon to produce the comedy Mr. Nightingale’s Diary in 1851 (xxxii). The next two plays Dickens wrote, The Frozen Deep and No Thoroughfare, were significantly more mature than his earlier comedies and looked at the darker side of human nature. Again, Dickens worked collaboratively to write these plays, working both times with Wilkie Collins. Ultimately, however, the editors argue that the plays in this volume are “best understood and appreciated when we put questions of authorship to one side” and instead appreciate the “genres of Victorian popular theatre” and the “broader collaborative processes of producing live theatre” (xli). Doing so, they suggest, will help readers to gain a deeper “understanding of the skill with which Dickens adapted himself to playwriting” and thus will provide a better understanding of his entire artistic output (xli).The four early plays, written between 1836 and 1838, are wonderful examples of both popular English theater and Dickens’s early writing. They are lighthearted and witty, though at times they rely on predictable plot points (mistaken identity, misunderstanding ambiguous statements) and stock characters devoid of the idiosyncrasies for which Dickens is so well-known. However, even in these lighthearted comedies, some of Dickens’s most enduring themes and motifs emerge, such as marriage as a financial arrangement, love triangles, and characters trying to read each other’s motivations. The first play, The Strange Gentleman (1836), is an adaptation of “The Great Winglebury Duel” from Sketches by Boz (1836), and it is a funny story with all the humorous characters and situations one might expect from one of the sketches. The Village Coquettes (1836) followed later in the year, and although charming in some places, in many ways it is a predictable, surface-level story and bears little resemblance to the vibrancy of Dickens’s other early work—perhaps his claim that there is little of his authorship present in the work bears some truth. Is She His Wife? (1837) may be the best of these early plays as it is cleverly constructed and tells the story of two couples and a bachelor, all either misunderstanding one another or feigning affection for someone else to make their spouse jealous. The final early play, The Lamplighter, was written in 1838 but never performed, due to William Macready’s rejection of the script. The rejection was perhaps warranted as the play lacks the wit and complexity of, for instance, Is She His Wife? As mentioned above, after this early spate of plays, Dickens took a long hiatus as a playwright.In his return to playwriting in 1851, Dickens collaborated with Mark Lemon, heavily editing and revising a script that Lemon had already written, Mr. Nightingale’s Diary. Like the earlier plays, this is also a comedy, and it is reasonably witty and entertaining, although its greatest appeal must have been in seeing Dickens perform the character of Gabblewig, who wears many disguises as he pretends to be various people throughout the play. Dickens went on to write his first drama, The Frozen Deep (1857), with Wilkie Collins. As Hofer-Robinson and Orford suggest, this play anticipates many of the darker, more complex, and morally ambiguous protagonists of Dickens’s later novels, such as Sydney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities (1859) or Pip in Great Expectations (1860–61). Dickens himself acted the role of Richard Wardour, the angry and melancholy main character of The Frozen Deep, who, like Sydney Carton, sacrifices himself so the woman who rejected him could marry the man she loves. Dickens’s final play, No Thoroughfare (1867), was also a collaboration with Wilkie Collins. It contains much sadness and takes a conflicted view of human nature. Although it ultimately has a happy ending, there is much death and sadness, and happiness is achieved only at the cost of great strife and suffering. As in his novels, readers may trace Dicken’s darkening view of human nature over the course of his plays. Yet, in addition to his gloomier views at the end of his career, readers of his novels and plays may also see the ways he was able to craft ever more complex plots and characters.In all, this collection contributes to a more complete view of Dickens as a writer, and any Dickensian scholar will find this volume indispensable. This work should also appeal to scholars of Victorian drama and popular entertainment. In addition to this collection of Dickens’s plays, Edinburgh University Press this year also released The Verse of Charles Dickens, giving an even stronger picture of Dickens as a writer accomplished in multiple genres. Viewing Dickens as a novelist, a journalist, a playwright, and a poet highlights his many skills as a writer: his ability to connect with his audience, his capacity to adapt to different genres, his knack for bringing characters to life, and his willingness to grow as an artist, to name just a few. As this volume demonstrates, Dickens’s plays are not merely a footnote in his celebrated writing career, but are a key component of his artistic output.