Frederic Reynolds
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Frederic Reynolds (November 1, 1764 – April 16, 1841) was a British playwright and theatrical producer in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
He was educated at Westminster School and entered the Middle Temple to study law; but he left the law for drama and show business. He was highly prolific as a playwright, authoring over 100 comedies and tragedies during his long career. His evocatively-titled comedy The Dramatist, or Stop Him Who Can! was acted at Covent Garden in May 1789; his adaptation of August von Kotzebue's play The Virgin of the Sun, with music by Sir Henry Bishop, was on stage in early 1812.
He is now best remembered by theatre historians for his Shakespearean adaptations staged at Covent Garden.[1] In the period from 1816 to 1828 he staged "operatic" or "operatized" productions based on the plays of William Shakespeare, with texts adapted by himself, and usually with music composed by Bishop. (The term "opera" is used here in a loose sense, just as it is for many of Bishop's works.) "Reynolds...laced his adaptations with a cornucopia of crowd-pleasing ploys: low comedy, disguise, spectacular entrances, musical numbers, pageants and flying...," plus "...processions, tableaux, and highly spectacular act endings...."[2]
As was common with Shakespearean adaptations of the era, Reynolds mixed and matched bits and pieces of different literary works and different musical compositions. His version of The Comedy of Errors incorporated the songs "Come, thou monarch of the vine" from Antony and Cleopatra, II,vii,113-18 and "When icicles hang by the wall" from Love's Labor's Lost, V,ii,912-29; Bishop's music was supplemented with Mozart and Arne. Reynolds placed the masque from The Tempest into Twelfth Night.
[edit] The Shakespearean "Operas"
- A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1816
- The Comedy of Errors, 1819
- Twelfth Night, 1820
- The Two Gentlemen of Verona, 1821
- The Tempest, 1821
- As You Like It, 1824
- The Merry Wives of Windsor, 1824
- The Taming of the Shrew, 1828
[edit] References
- ^ F. E. Halliday, A Shakespeare Companion 1564-1964, Baltimore, Penguin, 1964; p. 410.
- ^ Trevor R. Griffiths, ed., A Midsummer Night's Dream, Cambridge University Press, 1996; p. 18
