George Colman's Polly Honeycombe and the Aspect of the Audience Response

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  • YASUDA Hiroshi
    Faculty of Human Cultural Sciences and Business Administration, Nihonbashi Gakkan University

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  • ジョージ・コールマンの『ポリー・ハニコム』と観客反応の様相
  • ジョージ コールマン ノ ポリー ハニコム ト カンキャク ハンノウ ノ ヨウソウ

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Abstract

Polly Honeycombe, written by George Colman the Elder in 1760, has been regarded as a farce which skillfully andcomically satirizes the climate of love of the sentimental novels in the 18th century England. But this farce has uniquecharacteristics which are, beyond the criticism of the climate, very dangerous. Polly, the heroine of the farce, even atthe end of the farce, never refuses the romantic love which the sentimental novels inspire in the youths' mind, and, evenafter the curtain falls, reappearing upon the stage in the Epilogue, praises the sentimental novels again, and insists thatthe women who now know her "spirit" should abandon the traditional housework for women such as "mending linen andin making pies", disregard the traditional social view which requires the women to be obedient, and even take up arms tofight in the war.This essay aims to reveal the aspect of the audience response to such feminist ideas. The essay first inspects howColman, in his farce, realized the two kinds of love, "romantic love" and "love among married people", which he had commentedon critically in The Connoisseur, and what the people thought of these kinds of love in the 18th century Englandwhich was characterized by Lawrence Stone as the period witnessing "the growth of affective individualism."This essay will show the characteristics of the two kinds of love which were the objects of ridicule and at the sametime kept the potentiality to be realized in a near future, and finally reveal the aspect of response by the audience in the18th century England who enjoyed both the satirical view against and the potentiality of these kinds of love simultaneously.

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