Daniel O’Quinn, “Jane Austen and Performance: Theater, Memory, and Enculturation”

In this essay, Daniel O’Quinn examines what Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park reveals about the theatrical culture of her moment. Beginning with a reading of the characters’ aborted attempt to perform playwright Elizabeth Inchbald’s translation of Lovers’ Vows, he goes on to interpret Henry Crawford’s references to King Henry VIII in the context of a 1788 performance in the play by famed actor Sarah Siddons, whose application of her “‘sincere’” acting style transformed the way Henry VIII was commonly understood by English audiences. Through the lens of these references, he discusses the relationship of theater to gender, to cultural memory, and to the reproduction of social relations.

Daniel O’Quinn, “Jane Austen and Performance: Theater, Memory, and Enculturation”