'The London Merchant' and Eighteenth-Century British Law
1994; University of Iowa; Volume: 73; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0031-7977
Autores Tópico(s)Multicultural Socio-Legal Studies
ResumoThere is nothing which so generally strikes imagination, and engages affections of mankind, as right of property; or that sole and despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises over external things of world, in total exclusion of right of any individual in universe. As we know from George Lillo's own remarks, his play The London Merchant (1731) originally ended in a gallows scene. The directions for his initial scene 11 read: The Place of Execution. The Gallows and Ladders at farther End of Stage. A Crowd of Spectators. Blunt and Lucy. However, Advice of some friends, Lillo writes, this scene was left out of first performance and, though playwright himself later inserted it in fifth edition of play distinguish this Edition from incorrect, pyrated ones, gallows scene was often excluded from subsequent performances.(1) From beginning, then, gallows was a sign under erasure in The London Merchant, a telos that was never fully admitted. In critical history of play, too, this grim ending has been largely disregarded. The London Merchant has been variously read as a sentimental or bourgeois drama, as a Puritan sermon, as a proto-feminist tract, and as a socio-economic argument; but little attention has been paid to rope that awaits hero at end of play.(2) In this essay, I will argue for necessity of bringing back gallows into this text as a means of understanding both play's agenda and its contemporary popularity with Britain's men of property. When it first appeared in 1731, The London Merchant was greatly applauded by crowded audiences which included most of eminent Merchants of City of London'(3) a function, I believe, of play's apparent ability to address legitimation crisis created by increase in executions at Tyburn at that time. Six times every year during eighteenth century, a supposedly equitable and civilized British society publicly hanged a significant number of its poorest citizens at Tyburn simply for crime of stealing,(4) and this itself created an ethical and social problem. But during 1720s, in response to a perceived crime wave, London courts sentenced felons to death at an uncharacteristically high rate(5) and, as Bernard Mandeville reports in his Enquiry into Causes of Frequent Executions at Tyburn (1725), scene at Tyburn had become extremely volatile. There were scuffles at foot of gallows when members of mob attempted to prevent a hanging: violent Efforts of sturdy and resolute of Mob on one Side, and potent Endeavours of rugged Goalers, and others, to beat them off, on other: terrible Blows that are struck, Heads that are broke, Pieces of swingeing Sticks, and Blood, that fly about, Men that are knock'd down and trampled upon, are beyond Imagination. . . .(24)(6) And conflict with authorities continued even after execution when crowd refused to give up body of hanged person for dissection: The Tragedy being ended, next Entertainment is a Squabble between Surgeons and Mob, about dead Bodies of Malefactors that are not to be hanged in Chains. They have suffer'd Law, (cries Rabble,) and shall have no put upon them: We know what you are, and will not leave them before we see them buried. If others are numerous, and resolute enough to persist in their Enterprize, a Fray ensues. . . .(26) It is clear from this account which however unsympathetically records voice of London poor that this conflict grew out of popular conviction that current system of punishment was unjust. In minds of Rabble, the Law was not distinguished from other Barbarities such as dissection, a crisis in legitimation which Mandeville also implicitly acknowledges when he puts ideological interpretation at center of his plan for reforming Tyburn and making hangings more of a deterrent. …
Referência(s)