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Revolution and Romanticism
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A facsimile reprint in the Revolution & Romanticism series chosen and introduced by Jonathan Wordsworth ISBN 1 85477 072 1 200 x 127 mm 112 pages |
THOMAS HOLCROFT The Road to Ruin 1792 To his biographer Hazlitt, Holcroft was a ‘great and good man’. It was he who converted Godwin to his faith in universal benevolence, and who was among those, like Godwin, indicted for high treason in 1794. Appearing shortly before the publication of his jacobin novel Anna St Ives, The Road to Ruin is a boisterous and affecting comedy about a loving, if over-indulgent, father (a banker), a prodigal son (who has squandered the bank’s money), and a missing will. Its chief comic asset is the character of Goldfinch, a racing man with a repertoire of stock phrases. The play was hugely successful, bringing fame and fortune to its author. £25 $48 Nothing could exceed the effect produced by this play at its first appearance, nor its subsequent popularity. It not only became a universal favourite, but it deserved to be so... It had a run greater than almost any other piece was ever known to have, and there is scarcely a theatre in the kingdom, except Drury Lane, and the Haymarket, in which it has not been acted numberless times. |
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