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Page 57 Shakespeare to give readers a sense of historical context that also offers comforting familiarity. Margaret Evans Porter’s Toast of the Town (1993), Joan Wolf’s His Lordship’s Mistress (1982), and Carla Kelly’s Miss Billings Treads the Boards (1993) take up the actual life in the Regency theater. Porter’s novel refers frequently to Twelfth Night in the story of Flora Campion, a professional actress who finds talent insufficient to distinguish her from her less respectable colleagues. Playing Olivia opposite a flirtatious actress who flaunts herself as Viola, Flora, too, attracts an ardent nobleman. His pursuit of her illuminates the perils of a thoroughly researched Regency theater world, part of the knowledge that many romance readers claim to gain from their reading (Radway 1984:26–45). Both Joan Wolf’s His Lordship’s Mistress (1982) and Carla Kelly’s Miss Billings Treads the Boards (1993) feature nonprofessional actresses. Wolf’s heroine Jessica coolly plans her career to acquire a protector in order to save her family’s one remaining property. She performs Shakespeare to considerable acclaim, but retires after a triumph as Lady Macbeth. Kelly’s Kate Billings accidentally encounters a touring company undergoing financial problems and plays the widow in Taming to help them. All three novels take the theater seriously as historical context and use Shakespeare as the “familiar other,” collapsing while invoking historical difference. His texts primarily constitute setting; none of the three novels actually incorporates Shakespearean plots.4 Some actress-novels use Shakespeare as more than context. Christina Dodd’s The Greatest Lover in England (1994), Deanna James’s Acts of Passion (1992b), and Mary Balogh’s Christmas Belle (1994) not only use Shakespearean language, but also offer revised Shakespearean narratives. These novels underscore the affinities between Shakespearean drama and romance conventions through active revision and extension of Shakespearean plots, reworking cultural context for their readers. In The Greatest Lover in England, Rosencrantz, a girl disguised as a boy-actress, not only knows “Uncle Will” Shakespeare, but also performs Ophelia in the first performance of Hamlet, a role that reflects her own history as a young girl doubly orphaned, losing her father to plague and her foster-father to Queen Elizabeth’s displeasure. Rosencrantz’s performance coincides with her reunion with both her foster-father and her lover. When the foster-father appears onstage over her “corpse,” his presence transforms the tragedy into comic union: |
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