"Feeling and sense beyond all seeming" : private lines, public relations and the performances of the LeFanu circle

Fitzer, Anna M.

Abstract

This article aims to give Alicia Sheridan some share of the limelight so far afforded Richard Brinsley and, more recently, their mother, Frances Sheridan. The article examines for the first time Alicia Sheridan's contribution to the enthusiasm for private theatricals which had developed in Dublin as much as it had England in the last decades of the eighteenth century, and her example presents further opportunity to reflect upon both the circumstances of and motivations behind such a movement. Secondly, in giving some thought to the performances in which Alicia Sheridan's circle engaged, the article addresses the appeal of the private theatre to the female sex for whom, as poor overburdened Thomas Sheridan could testify, a state of independence was sometimes disappointingly elusive. In conclusion, the article moves to another kind of private theatrical performance as depicted in the novel Helen Monteagle by Alicia Sheridan's niece (and namesake), the novelist, Alicia LeFanu. Here the potential of actual private theatricals for the exploration of female subjectivity is treated more knowingly in the novel; the significance of private theatre revised, as it were, in the hands of an aspiringly independent, professional woman writer whose later career was proof enough that she was utterly qualified to do something for herself.

Citation

Fitzer, A. M. (2011). "Feeling and sense beyond all seeming" : private lines, public relations and the performances of the LeFanu circle. Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film, 38(2), 26-37. https://doi.org/10.7227/nctf.38.2.5

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: 2011-11
• Deposit Date: Nov 13, 2014
• Journal: Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film
• Print ISSN: 1748-3727
• Publisher: SAGE Publications
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 38
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 26-37
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.7227/nctf.38.2.5
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/464405
• Publisher URL: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.7227/NCTF.38.2.5
• Contract Date: Nov 13, 2014