“The Greek Boy” or “The Art of Greeking”

On 29 September 1840 Samuel Lover’s musical drama in two acts “The Greek Boy or the Doge’s ring and the Bride of the Adriatic” premiered at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden. Madame Vestris, actress, producer, and the lessee of the theatre personated Hylas, the title’s Greek Boy. The plot is set in Venice, possibly during the late 18^th century. Claudio, a wealthy nobleman who was presumed dead in battle against the Ottomans, returns secretly to Venice to find that a relative, Count Malveggio, has usurped his estate. In fact, Malveggio, who knew that Claudio was held captive by the Ottomans, refused to pay the ransom in hopes the captive would be executed. In Venice Claudio is sheltered by Hylas, a young Greek goldsmith, who is privy to the nobleman’s true identity. Claudio falls in love with Constanza, the daughter of Duke Vivaldi. Their liaison exposed, the enraged Vivaldi declares that he will allow the marriage solely upon condition that the ceremony be performed with the ring that the Doge casts into the sea during his symbolic ‘marriage’ to the Adriatic. Hylas, who has manufactured the original ring, prepares a counterfeit one. After the Doge casts the real ring into the Adriatic, Hylas offers to dive into the sea and, of course, “retrieves” the ring thus bringing the affair to a happy close.

“If successful this piece will doubtless be repeated during the remainder of the week” announced the Morning Herald and apparently it did meet with fair success: as musical afterpiece it was staged seventeen times (Dickens 1879. II:321) at least till the end of October.[1] The reviews were mixed: on one hand, the costumes were engaging and the scenery featuring views of Venice and gondolas were lascivious;[2] on the other hand, Lover’s songs were beautiful in terms of both music and lyrics but not in a grand operatic style and were, therefore, considered they were suited rather for the drawing room than the theatrical stage.[3] Plot-wise, most critics agree that the piece was insipid: “the plot is very trifling; not so the length” declares a reviewer in The Weekly Chronicle (5);[4] another in the English Chronicle and Whitehall Evening Post feels that the dramatic incident “is not in any part worked up with the power of creating interesting situations”(3)[5] while a critic in The Atlas states that “it is a mere trifle as to plot, and apparently constructed with little other design than that of exhibiting Madame VESTRIS in an engaging costume, and at the same time, of giving popularity to some agreeable ballads” (8).[6] This same critic, in a deleterious vein, adds that “the Greek Boy is in imminent peril of being installed as a favourite afterpiece” (8). The critic of The Satirist concludes his review by stating that “the Greek costume sits handsomely on the figure of Vestris, and the accustomed taste and lavish cost of the management are displayed to a greater extent than the merits of the piece warrant” (6).[7]

Lucia Elizabetta Vestris née Bartolozzi (1797-1856) attracted attention for her acting and singing talents from her very first appearance at the King’s Theatre in 1815 (Pearce 1923: 13-17). Her marked physical beauty, her rich contralto voice and her versatility in acting soon made her a favourite with the audience. In 1820 she became famous for her performances in ‘breeches’ parts and particularly for her interpretations of Captain Macheath in the Beggar’s Opera and Don Giovanni in Giovanni in London, William Thomas Moncrieff’s burletta of Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Charles E. Pearce, in his biography of Madame Vestris, contends that as Don Giovanni “she took London by storm” (17). Critics such as Anne Russel (1996, 2023) and Marija Reif (2018) discuss the practice of actresses personating male characters during the nineteenth century and how this afforded them the opportunity to don male costumes and therefore exhibit their body in ways otherwise prohibited both on stage and in real life. Women in tight knee breeches (hence ‘breeches’ parts) could legitimately reveal their legs. At the same time, performing men’s roles gave them a freedom of movement and gesture that underlined their physical attractions while also enhancing their sensuality. After her performance as Don Giovanni, an unnamed reviewer wrote:

What a breast – what an eye! What a foot, leg and thigh!
What wonderful things she has shown us;
Round hips, swelling sides, masculine strides –
Proclaim her an English Adonis!
[…]
Her very air and style could corrupt with a smile –
Let a virgin resist if she can;
Her ambrosial kisses seem heavenly blisses –
What a pity she is not a man. (quoted in Pearce, 54-55)

 

It seems that the adoration she inspired to the theatre-going audience was such that “a modeler made a capital speculation by selling plaster casts of la jambe de Vestris” (Pearce 59). Her great legacy to the British theatrical stage, though, was not of a frivolous character: Lucia Vestris was the first woman to become a theatrical manager who was, moreover, renowned for the excellence of her productions in terms of costumes, scenic effects, and overall execution. Furthermore, along with her collaborator dramatist James Robinson Planché who first introduced on the British stage the genre of the fairy extravaganza, Vestris set a tradition on the representation on stage of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream which lasted unchanged till the early twentieth century (Reiff 251-266).

Shakespeare’s piece premiered to great acclaim on 16 November 1840, a little over a month after the opening of The Greek Boy. In Shakespeare’s play Vestris was cast as Oberon, the fairy king; sporting armour, helmet, and breeches she charmed critics with her “dignified grace” and her singing of “full-throated ease.”[8] There’s no connection between the two plays save Vestris’s care for sumptuous productions that would attract the serious as well as the more frivolous audience and also the fact that in both plays Vestris performed a male part. Samuel Lover, a collaborator of Vestris since 1835 (Pearce 237-238),[9] must have written his musical drama with Vestris and her theatrical company in mind and aimed at highlighting Vestris’s singing and acting talents. Hylas’s sumptuous costume was perhaps also meant to set off her figure, as Oberon’s costume did a month later. A typical Greek male costume, as already described and sketched by scores of travellers to Greece since the late eighteenth century, was transformed for the stage as follows: “Green velvet Greek cap and jacket, richly embroidered with gold, full primrose coloured kilt, scarlet leggings, embroidered with gold, green slippers.”[10] From the point of view of performance, the Greek male costume with its frilled skirt exposed the legs and allowed for free movement and dancing, both of which were required by Hylas’s part. Aesthetically, the Greek male costume with its rich embroidering exuded an oriental charm with marked scenic effect; symbolically, it was also connected with the Romantic figures of the Greek Revolution, the Palikars or Klephts, who (famously or rather infamously) oscillated between warrior and bandit – the latter figure, usually of Southern European extraction, being a favourite theme of the theatrical stage.

 

Bearing these in mind, one cannot help asking why a Greek was chosen to fit the part of the goldsmith. Was it for the costume? Was eighteenth-century Venice particularly famous for its Greek goldsmiths? The denouement of the plot hangs upon the stratagem of Hylas and, perhaps rather than inquiring into historical facts, one should be looking for stereotypes and the prejudice they help create. The anonymous reviewer of the Weekly Chronicle summarizes the plot’s subject as “the cunning of a Greek boy” (5) while the playwright has a character, Silvio, exclaim: “What should a Greek know about truth?” More interestingly, two days before the play’s opening, the anonymous critic of The Age comments:

“We understand that Madame altered the title of Lover’s play, from the Doge’s Ring to that of the Greek Boy […] As the ‘Ring’ of the ‘Dodges’ is quite familiar to a ‘Greek’ youth we do not see any reason to quarrel with the change” (5).

The editor is playfully connecting the Greeks, as an ethnic group, with gangs of tricksters and, therefore, deception. The link between deception and the Greek nation and/or national character must have been well established in the press and the British readership by the 1840s: in two random articles of August 1840 and November 1842 two gentlemen proficient in card sharking are described as being “of greeking notoriety,” learned “in the art of greeking,” and being a “K.H., that means a keen hand – an order exclusively Greek.”[11]

Samuel Lover needed a ‘breeches’ character for Lucia Vestris that could combine an attractive costume, “the most subtle of wits”[12] and a bit of roguery – after all, it was a comic musical drama. A Greek male character, with its oriental appearance and its long-standing connections to deceitfulness, probably fitted the part to perfection.

 

[1] “Amusements of the Week,” The Morning Herald, 28 Sep 1840. For the duration of the show see, for example, The Atlas, 24 October 1840.
[2] “The scenery was beautiful altogether, and the appointments were rich, elegant, and expensive.” “The Drama,” The Weekly Chronicle, 4 Oct 1840: 5
[3] “Theatricals,” The Atlas, 3 Oct 1840: 8.
[4] “The Drama,” The Weekly Chronicle, 4 Oct 1840: 5.
[5] “Covent Garden Theatre,” English Chronicle and Whitehall Evening Post, 1 Oct 1840: 3.
[6] “Theatricals,” The Atlas, 3 Oct 1840: 8.
[7] “Theatres,” The Satirist, 4 Oct 1840: 6.
[8] “The Drama,” City Chronicle, 17 Nov 1840: 3 and “Covent Garden Theatre,” English Chronicle and Whitehall Evening Post, 17 Nov 1840:3 respectively.
[9] He authored the play Olympic Picnic, Vestris starring as Psyche.
[10] Costume directions from Dicks’ Standard Plays. The Greek Boy was published as no 609 in Dicks’ Standard Plays collection.
[11] ‘To Correspondents,” The Satirist, 23 Aug 1840: 4 and “Calais,” The Satirist, 6 Nov 1842: 7.
[12] “Covent Garden Theatre,” English Chronicle and Whitehall Evening Post, 1 Oct 1840: 3.

Bibliography

Dickens, Charles (ed.). 1879. The Life of Charles James Mathews. Chiefly Autobiographical with Selections from his Correspondence and Speeches. In Two Volumes. London: Macmillan and Co.

Lover, Samuel. (1840) n.d. The Greek Boy or the Doge’s ring and the Bride of the Adriatic. Dicks’ Standard Plays no 609. London: John Dicks.

Pearce, Charles E. 1923. Madame Vestris and her Times. New Yorks: Brentano’s.

Reiff, Marija. 2018. “‘More Aerial, More Graceful, More Perfect’: Madame Vestris’s Oberon, Victorian Culture, and the Feminized Fairies of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1840-1914.” Victorian Review 44.2: 251-268.

Russel, Anne. 1996. “Tragedy, Gender, Performance: Women as Tragic Heroes on the Nineteenth-Century Stage.” Comparative Drama 30.2: 135-157.

—. 2013. “‘Playing the Men:’ Ellen Tree, Fanny Kemble, and Theatrical Constructions of Gender,” Borrowers and Lenders: A Journal of Shakespeare Appropriation 8.1 DOI: https://doi.org/10.18274/YQDT2582