Beschreibung
[vi], 75, [1] epilogue. 205 x 130 mm. First published the previous year. First performed in 1794, Cumberland's THE JEW is his most noteworthy play. Richard Cumberland (1732-1811), was born in the master's lodge of Trinity College, Cambridge; his maternal grandfather's residence. On his father's side he was the great-grandson and son of a bishop; on his mother's, the grandson of the classical scholar Richard Bentley, and the son a woman who inspired John Byrom to compose one of the most popular pastoral poems of the time. His family connections secured him the postion as private secretary to the Earl of Halifax, who was then the First Lord of Trade and Plantations. There follow a number of political appointments which left him abundant leisure for literary pursuits. He published upwards of a hundred books, about half of which were plays. He died in 1811 in Tunbridge Wells. His fame and influence as a dramatist is is demonstrated by his being interred at Westminster Abbey. This work, one of his more famous, is a "comedy" only in the strictly "sentimental" sense common to the time. The play is memorable for its main character, Sheva, a wealthy Jewish usurer who, by the end of the convoluted plot, has shown himself to be "the widow's friend, the orphan's father, the poor man's protector, the universal philanthropist." Such a sympathetic depiction of a Jew was rare, if not unprecedented, in the history of the English stage. "The benevolent design of the author appears to have been to rescue an injured and persecuted race of men from the general reproach which has fallen upon them, by exhibiting one of that body as uniting with the peculiarities of his sect eminent virtues." (The Analytical Review). Perhaps even more surprising was the work's success with audiences and critics alike; it re-established Cumberland's career after many years of flops. The play was hugely popular throughout Great Britain and America, and was performed to acclaim in Germany and Paris. However, slightly tarnishing Cumberland's humanitarianism was his subsequent bitterness over the lack of "gratitude" (read: emoluments) rendered him by the Jewish community for his efforts on their behalf. "They gave me nothing;" he is reported to have said, "and to tell you the truth I am glad of it; for if they had, in all probability, I should have been indicted for receiving stolen goods." Notoriously self-important and thin-skinned, Cumberland was, in 1779, immortalized by Sheridan as the character Sir Fretful Plagiary in The Critic. Cumberland tried to reverse the image of the Jew created by Shakespeare in The Merchant of Venice . . . In the person of Sheva, Cumberland brought a new kind of Jew to the English stage. Sheva, like Shylock, is a usurer, hustled and insulted by the gentlemen of the town . . . But by the end of the play the audience is made to realize that not one of the unflattering epithets applies to him . . . In spite of touches of melodrama and sentimentality, The Jew did well on stage and had an influence on the more serious drama of the period" - EJ V, 1169-70. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 001108
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