Music and Theatre in Handel's World: The Family Papers of James Harris, 1732-1780

Music and Theatre in Handel's World: The Family Papers of James Harris, 1732-1780. Donald Burrows and Rosemary Dunhill, eds. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. 1212pp. $195, £120.This is not a book that I can recommend every theatre historian read cover to cover, but it is one every theatre historian must be aware of, and generously sample, to learn of untold wealth of new information it holds about drama and music in England and continent in eighteenth century. This volume compiles all references (actually, extended extracts) dealing with music and theatre from private correspondence, diaries, and papers of a literate, gentry family as they write each other, over course of some 50 years, giving vivid, candid, unselfconscious accounts of their attendance at plays or concerts, or their back-scenes involvement in musical or theatrical events.The main correspondents are members of family of James Hermes Harris (1709-1780)-avid opera, concert, and theatre goer, harpsichordist; organizer of music festivals at Salisbury; MP for Salisbury; and secretary and comptroller to Queen Charlotte. As a philosopher, Harris is known for his Three Treatises (1744) and his most famous work Hermes, or a Philosophical Inquiry concerning Universal Grammar (1751). Other letter writers include Charles Burney, Richard Owen Cambridge, Sarah Fielding, David Garrick, John Hoadly, Charles Jennens, James Miller, Duke and Duchess of Queensbury, John Robartes (later Earl of Radnor), Earl of Shaftesbury, and Joseph Warton.The volume's title, it must be pointed out, is misleading, for more than two-thirds of material covers theatre and music after Handel's death in 1759. Up through 1759, main attraction for Harris family and Earl of Shaftesbury was their friend George Frederick Handel. The letters have already proven a treasure trove for music historians. They provide intimate details of their friendships with their Orpheus, Homer of Music, or blind old prophet, casual meetings in street or park, hearing Handel play at private musical gatherings, his playing through new oratorios for Shaftesbury, ups and downs of his health, cabals against him by London society, his visit to Salisbury, or seeing him at his oratorio productions.After Handel's death, Garrick strides to center stage, and from letters we have a full account of his entire London career from members of his audience who saw him on stage. We hear of praise for his acting (exceedingly pleas'd; the spirit & activity of Garrick [. . .] was astonishing), enjoyment at repeatedly seeing his major roles; disappointment when he leaves off his great parts and takes up comic roles (making such a fool of himself to act Archer); disappointment when he first retires; excitement at his return to stage (every body is wild to see Garrick) when forced to resume acting in response to competition with Covent Garden; and finally, his death and funeral (sixty five coaches, mob intense, but did not spoil procession, quiet and decent from Adelphi to George Street Westminister). We also learn of behind-scenes aspects of choosing and producing plays at Drury Lane when Garrick agrees to mount a pastoral afterpiece by Harris (performed as Spring, published as Daphne and Amaryllis). Harris also tells of seeing Garrick's portrait when it was in Reynolds's studio.The topics covered by letters shift according to interests and locations of correspondents. From London, correspondents send their eye-witness accounts and gossip of London's music and theatre world, and their own reactions to plays and afterpieces (new and old), playwrights, operas, oratorios, actors, singers, and musicians. …