Scott's Staging of the Nation

Abstract

IN 1826 WALTER SCOTT WAS IN PARIS, ESCAPING THE AFTERMATH OF THE collapse of Ballantyne's printing house. There he made a visit to the theater to watch Rossini's version of Ivanhoe.(1) Given that Scott's novel had been published in English only in 1819, it is a striking reminder of how rapidly, across Europe, Scott's poetic and prose narratives were turned into dramatic performances. In Scotland itself adaptations of Guy Mannering (1815) and Rob Roy (1817) had already been touting the country before they were staged in February 1819 at the Edinburgh Theatre Royal,(2) and by 1830 adaptations of Scott's works were to form the mainstay of the national drama that dominated theater seasons in Scotland throughout the nineteenth century. Indeed, their popularity did not begin to wane until after the centenary year of 1872 (Bell 143 ff.). The ease with which Scott's narratives were translated into stage performances--and later into films--is symptomatic of that inherent theatricality which later critics, in the era of dominant realism, were to regard as their fundamental flaw. For Scott, however, the development of the art of the novel was, if Peter Garside's reconstruction of the genealogy of Waverley is accepted,(3) closely tied to his involvement in the theater. Garside dates the writing of the early chapters of Waverley to 1810, the year in which Scott became one of the trustees of the Theatre Royal and encouraged as the main Scottish element of its first year's productions Joanna Baillie's The Family Legend, a tale of a fifteenth-century blood feud on the island of Mull. The theatrical Highlands which Scott was helping to design--he took an active interest in the accuracy of the Highland costumes--and which he was actively promoting--he wrote to all the chiefs of the Highland clans, inviting them to attend the first night to make it a great Scottish occasion (Sutherland 156)--were to shape not only the content but the style of Scott's first novel. The extravagant stage construction of Scott adaptations later in the century, which would include elements such as a real waterfall in their elaborate stage paintings (Bell 169), are simply the repatriation to the stage of the theatrical scene-setting--Here, one of those lovely forms which decorate the landscapes of Poussin, Waverley found Flora(4)--through which Waverley first encounters the Highlands. Scott's narrative continually constructs individual scenes as theatrical spaces: The hall, in which the feast was prepared, occupied the first storey of Ian nan Chaistel's original erection, and a huge oaken table extended through its whole length.... At the head of the table was the Chief himself, with Edward, and two or three Highland visitors of neighbouring clans; ... then the officers of the Chief's household, according to their order; and, lowest of all, the tenants who actually cultivated the ground. Even beyond this long perspective, Edward might see upon the green, to which a huge pair of opened, a multitude of Highlanders of a yet inferior description, who, nevertheless, were considered as guests, and had their share of the countenance of the entertainer, and of the cheer of the day. In the distance, and fluctuating round this extreme verge of the banquet, was a changeful group of women, ragged boys and girls, beggars, young and old ... all of whom took some interest, more or less immediate, in the main action of the piece. (Waverley 162-63, ch. 20) Waverley views the banquet as though in the perspective of a theater with its folding doors opening on to the scene beyond; the marginal characters of this scene, in the background, in turn become an audience to the events of Fergus' feast. This translation of history into theater is, of course, precisely what Scott wants us to note: when Waverley encounters Flora and her servant, like inhabitants of another region, propped, as it were, in mid air on the rustic bridge at the height of at least one hundred and fifty feet (Waverley 175, ch. …

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