Douglas (play)

{{Short description|Blank verse tragedy by John Home}} {{Use dmy dates|date=March 2018}} {{Use British English|date=March 2018}} {{Italic title}} [[File:Henry Erskine Johnston Mitchell.jpg|thumb|Portrait of Henry Erskine Johnston (1777–1830?), Scottish actor, in the title role of ''Douglas'']] '''''Douglas''''' is a blank verse tragedy by John Home. It was first performed in 1756 in Edinburgh.

The play was a big success in both Scotland and England for decades, attracting many notable actors of the period, such as Edmund Kean, who made his debut in it.<ref>{{cite web |date= |title=Edmund Kean |url=http://www.arthurlloyd.co.uk/Kean.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120719030515/http://www.arthurlloyd.co.uk/Kean.htm |archive-date=2012-07-19 |accessdate=2012-08-13 |publisher=Arthur Lloyd.co.uk}}</ref> Peg Woffington played Lady Randolph, a part which found a later exponent in Sarah Siddons.

The opening lines of the second act are probably the best known: {{poemquote|My name is Norval; on the Grampian Hills My father feeds his flocks; a frugal swain, Whose constant cares were to increase his store. And keep his only son, myself, at home. |(''Douglas'', II, i)}}

==Plot== Lady Randolph opens the play mourning for her brother. Shortly thereafter, she discloses to her maid that she was married to the son of her father's enemy. She was not able to acknowledge the marriage or the son that she bore. She sent her maid away with her son to the maid's sister's house. They were lost in a storm and never heard from again.

Young Norval, the hero, is left outside shortly after birth to die of exposure. However, the baby is saved by a shepherd — Old Norval <ref name=Oxford>Drabble, Margaret (ed.) ''The Oxford Companion to English Literature'' (fifth edition) 1985)</ref> — and thus gains his name. He is in fact the son of Lady Randolph (daughter of Sir Malcolm<ref name=Oxford/>), by Douglas, and he is briefly reunited with her.

Sir Malcolm exposes the child, but Young Norval is given a commission in the army.<ref name=Oxford/>

When he saves the life of Lord Randolph, the lord becomes indebted to him, and Young Norval gains the envy of Glenalvon who is the lord's heir.

As was common in Romanticism, many of the main characters die, except for Lord Randolph. Lady Randolph takes her life, after hearing of the death of Young Norval who has been killed by Lord Randolph, who was deceived by Glenalvon. In turn, Young Norval had killed Glenalvon, because Glenalvon had been spreading lies about him.

==Theme and response== [[File:David Garrick by Thomas Gainsborough.jpg|right|thumb|200px|London-based actor and director, David Garrick, who initially rejected the play. A 1770 Portrait of Garrick by Thomas Gainsborough.]]

The theme was suggested to him by hearing a lady sing the ballad of "Gil Morrice" or "Child Maurice" (FJ Child, ''Popular Ballads'', ii. 263). The ballad supplied him with the outline of a simple and striking plot. It was Home's second verse drama, after ''Agis''.<ref name=Keay>Keay, J. & Keay, J. (1994). ''Collins Encyclopaedia of Scotland''. London. HarperCollins.</ref>

After five years, he completed his play and took it to London for David Garrick's opinion. It was rejected, like ''Agis'',<ref name=Keay/> but on his return to Edinburgh, his friends resolved that it should be produced there. It was performed on 14 December 1756 with overwhelming success, in spite of the opposition of the presbytery,<ref name=Keay/> who summoned Alexander Carlyle to answer for having attended its representation. Home wisely resigned his charge in 1757, after a visit to London, where ''Douglas'' was brought out at Covent Garden on 14 March.

David Hume summed up his admiration for ''Douglas'' by saying that his friend possessed "the true theatric genius of Shakespeare and Otway, refined from the unhappy barbarism of the one and licentiousness of the other." Gray, writing to Horace Walpole (August 1757), said that the author "seemed to have retrieved the true language of the stage, which has been lost for these hundred years," but Samuel Johnson held aloof from the general enthusiasm, and averred that there were not ten good lines in the whole play.<ref>Boswell, ''Life'', ed. Croker, 1348, p. 300</ref>

''Douglas'' elicited the famous Edinburgh audience exclamation "Whaur's yer Wullie Shakespeare noo?," a remark meant to imply the superiority of the Scottish Home's superiority to the famous English playwright. The play was the subject of a number of pamphlets both supportive and antagonistic. It also arguably influenced James MacPherson's Ossian cycle.<ref name=Keay/><ref>{{Cite web |last=Crawford |first=Robert |date=2 Aug 2007 |title=Whaur's yer Wullie noo? |url=http://www.heraldscotland.com/whaur-s-yer-wullie-noo-1.840394 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110520172609/http://www.heraldscotland.com/whaur-s-yer-wullie-noo-1.840394 |archive-date=May 20, 2011 |website=Herald Scotland}}</ref>

Because Home was hounded by the church authorities for ''Douglas'', he resigned from the Ministry in 1758,<ref name=Keay/> and became a layman. It may have been this persecution which drove Home to write for the London stage, in addition to ''Douglas''' success there, and stopped him from founding the new Scottish national theatre that some had hoped he would.<ref name=Keay/>

==Literary references== [[File:Reynolds, Sir Joshua - Mrs Siddons as the Tragic Muse - Google Art Project.jpg|right|thumb|Sarah Siddons, one of the most noted performers of Lady Randolph in ''Douglas'']] Jane Austen's ''Mansfield Park'' (1814) and George Eliot's ''The Mill on the Floss'' (1860) both allude to the line "My name is Norval".<ref>Price, Leah, ''The Anthology and the Rise of the Novel: From Richardson to George Eliot'' (2003), Cambridge University Press, pp 79, 80</ref>

Young George Osborne recites it, eliciting tears from his aunt, in Thackeray's ''Vanity Fair'' (1847–48), p. 504.

Harry Walmers in Charles Dickens' ''The Boots at the Holly Tree Inn'' also refers to it: {{Quote|Consequently, though he made quite a companion of the fine bright boy, and was delighted to see him so fond of reading his fairy-books, and was never tired of hearing him say my name is Norval, or hearing him sing his songs about Young May Moons is beaming love, and When he as adores thee has left but the name, and that; still he kept the command over the child, and the child was a child, and it's to be wished more of 'em was}} There is also another reference to Norval in ''Nicholas Nickleby'', when Wackford Squeers, while in custody, refers to his son as "a young Norval", supposedly the darling of the town.

Rev. George B. Cheever, American divine and abolitionist, references it in his 1857 broadside ''God Against Slavery''. He recalls the recital by himself, when a boy, of the famous opening of the second act. Cheever then compares old Norval, who only sought to increase his flock and selfishly kept Douglas at home to do it, with those modern merchants who try to keep down anti-slavery agitation because it is bad for business (Cheever was well known in his time, and was listed by Edgar Allan Poe as one of the "Literati of New York City" in his famous 1846 series of articles of that name.)

Andrew Carnegie's autobiography describes reciting the part of Glenalvon as a youth. Part of the attraction was the opportunity to say "hell" without it being a swear word.

Hugh MacDiarmid, the twentieth century pioneer of the Scottish Renaissance, included the following lines in ''A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle'' (1922):

{{poemquote|My name is Norval. On the Grampian hills It is forgotten, and deserves to be<ref>MacDiarmid, Hugh ''A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle'', ed. K. Buthlay (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1987), l.2192-5</ref>}}

Also referenced in George B. Shaw's play ''You Never Can Tell'' by the twins, Philip and Dolly.

== Adaptations == [[File:William Henry West Betty by John Opie.jpg|thumb|''Master Betty as Young Norval'' by John Opie, 1804]] In 1790, Lady Crespigny gave ''Douglas'' a happy ending in which Lady Randolph and Douglas live when it was played at her private theatre.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Plumptre |first=James |url=https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=PdgkAAAAMAAJ&pg=GBS.PA254 |title=The gamester, by E. Moore. The tragedy of Jane Shore, by N. Rowe. The London merchant, by G. Lillo. Douglas, by J. Home. The tragedy of the Lady Jane Gray, by N. Rowe |date=1812 |publisher=F. Hodson |language=en}}</ref>

==Later productions== The play was produced at the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow under the direction of Robert David MacDonald in March 1989, with Angela Chadfield in the role of Lady Randolph.<ref>[http://archive.list.co.uk.s3-website.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/the-list/1989-03-10/26/index.html review of ''Douglas'' by Nigel Billen], ''The List'', Issue 89, March 1989, p. 24</ref>

==References== {{Wikiquote|John Home}} {{1911|wstitle=Home, John|volume=13|page=626}} * Ousby (ed) ''Cambridge Companion to Literature in English'' (1993) * Drabble, Margaret (ed.) ''The Oxford Companion to English Literature'' (fifth edition) 1985)

==External links== * [https://web.archive.org/web/20071012091347/http://www.nls.uk/broadsides/broadside.cfm/id/16332 Broadside ballad entitled 'Norval on the Grampian Hills']

{{DEFAULTSORT:Douglas (Play)}} Category:1756 plays Category:Censorship in Christianity Category:Christianity-related mass media and entertainment controversies Category:History of Christianity in Scotland Category:History of Edinburgh Category:Plays set in Scotland Category:1756 in Scotland Category:Culture in Edinburgh Category:Scottish tragedy plays Category:Plays by John Home