Description
David Garrick was an assiduous reader and collector of older English, and to some extent French plays and we can see him looking backwards, searching out and buying extant play collections offered for sale. Some of these plays he remodeled and imitated for his company. Looking forward, beyond him, we can see that his work was in turn admired, read, and subsequently translated and imitated. Garrick the reader became Garrick the read. He forms, therefore, a bridge in the movement and development of comedy in the eighteenth century. Alan Swanson brings his considerable knowledge of theater and linguistic talent to bear on tracing a genealogy of four adaptations, or imitations of a single play over a span of 120 years. He examines not only how the play has been transformed, but why, and in doing so provides insight into evolving cultural change and public tastes.
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