The gaiety and humour as well as the cruelty, injustice and poverty of mid 18th-century Dublin are conjured up in a drama written by John Banville to celebrate the 260th anniversary of the first performance of Messiah
The year 1742 was an extraordinary one in Dublin. The number of notable characters in the city, or passing through, was remarkable. Jonathan Swift was coming to the end of his time as Dean of St Patrick's - his mind was decaying, and he was soon to be relieved of his duties at the cathedral - where he would have been visited by his friend, Dr George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, one of the greatest philosophers of the day, and a keen proponent of the beneficial effects of drinking tar water. The actors David Garrick and his mistress Peg Woffington, the toast of the London stage, as they used to say, were playing for a season at the Smock Alley theatre.
The city must have been loud with music that year. Francesco Geminiani, the composer, who had studied with Corelli in Rome and Scarlatti in Naples, had been in Dublin for nearly 10 years, and had built a high reputation as a performer, teacher and impresario, putting on concerts at his Great Room in Spring Garden in Dame Street, where he also carried on a lively trade in pictures.
Also in town were another composer, the Englishman Thomas Arne, best remembered now for his composition Rule Britannia, and his sister, the actor and opera singer Susanna Cibber.
Most famous of all the city's visitors in 1742, however, was George Frederick Handel, whose Messiah received its first, troubled, performance at the New Musick Hall in Fishamble Street on April 13th, in a benefit concert in aid of Mercer's Hospital, the Charitable Infirmary, and the Charitable Musical Society. Among Handel's troubles was a lack of treble voices in the chorus.
He had his soloists, his orchestra of 22 players, and the men from the Christ Church choir. What he needed, and needed badly, was half a dozen boys from St Patrick's, where the choir was under the control of the irascible and increasingly demented Dean Swift, who, not incidentally, loathed music of all kinds. When Handel humbly requested the loan of the trebles, Swift, never a man to mince his words, responded with a splendidly excoriating broadside: "Whereas it hath been reported that I gave a licence to certain vicars [singers\] to assist at a club of fiddlers in Fishamble Street, I do hereby declare that I remember no such licence to have been ever signed by me; and that if ever such pretended licence should be produced, I do hereby annul and vacate the said licence; intreating my said Sub-Dean and Chapter to punish such vicars as shall ever appear there, as songsters, fiddlers, pipers, trumpeters, drummers, drum-majors, or in any sonal quality, according to the flagitious aggravations of their respective disobedience, rebellion, perfidy and ingratitude."
It was this stand-off between Handel and Swift that inspired the director of the Ark Children's Centre in Temple Bar, Eric Fraad, to conceive of a drama with music to celebrate the 260th anniversary of the first performance of Messiah. Eric, who has directed shows all over America and Europe, including operas and oratorios by Handel, and who is positively obsessive in his championing of the German maestro's music, had amassed a bundle of information about Dublin in 1742, which one morning at the beginning of this year landed with an intimidating thump on my desk.
From the start it was agreed between us that while the show was to be presented in a children's centre, it would in no way be exclusively a show for children. Life in the Age of Scandal was raucous and rackety, and if we were to present any sort of authentic glimpse of the times, frankness was the first imperative. Certainly, Dublin 1742 is colourful and funny, but it has its shadowed moments too, especially in the scenes involving poor, mad Swift. Nor are Handel's performers all harmony and sweet airs.
Consider the memoirist, Laetitia Pilkington. It was Eric's idea to use Mrs Pilkington as a frame for the narrative, and it is she who introduces us to the characters and comments upon the action, while also playing a part in the story. Mrs P., described bluntly by the Dictionary of National Biography as an "adventuress", was the daughter of a Dublin obstetrician - what kind of qualifications must that job have required, in those days? - and was descended on her mother's side from Patrick Sarsfield. She married a clergyman, who not long after the wedding discovered her in bed with another man; the lady's excuse was that she and her bedmate were only "keeping warm" while doing a little light reading. After her divorce she moved to London, where she became a writer, ran a bookshop, and spent a season in the Marshalsea prison for debtors. She returned to Ireland, where she had a great success with her three-volume Memoirs, and became a close friend - at least, she said the friendship was close - with Jonathan Swift, who teased her relentlessly and liked to give her the odd "deadly pinch", but does seem to have been genuinely fond of her.
Pilkington had been rescued from prison by the sometime actor and Poet Laureate, Colley Cibber, and, the Dublin world being then even smaller than it is now, it chanced that Cibber's daughter-in-law, the mezzo-soprano, Susanna Cibber, was one of Handel's leading soloists. Cibber was no more a paragon than Pilkington, although she had a lot to put up with. Her husband, Theophilus Cibber, a failed theatre manager, had first of all stolen her jewellery and pawned it, then encouraged her to have an affair with one of his creditors, William Sloper. By now fed up, Susanna eloped with Sloper, only to be kidnapped and imprisoned the next year by her angry husband, and had to be rescued by her brothers. Cibber promptly sued Sloper for "assaulting, ravishing, and carnally knowing" his wife. The trial was the talk of the London season; Cibber won, although he was awarded not the £5,000 damages he had demanded, but a paltry £10 instead.
A show for children, I hear you say? Susanna would have known David Garrick, whose Richard III in Drury Lane that year had brought him overnight celebrity, and his girlfriend Peg Woffington, probably the most famous actress in the British Isles. Woffington's history shows not only the hardships women of her class had to face in the 18th century, but how resourceful, brave and determined they could be. Born in Dublin in 1714, she had as a child supported her widowed mother and her sister by singing for money in the streets, and made her stage debut at the age of 10, playing Polly Peachum in a juvenile production of Gay's immensely popular Beggar's Opera. By 1740 she was the leading actress in Dublin and London, admired especially for her playing of Ophelia.
These are only a few of the characters appearing in Dublin 1742. We have attempted to give an impression of the social and cultural life of the city, its gaiety, humour and rich colourfulness, as well as its cruelty, injustice and poverty. There is something here for everyone, we hope, children and grown-ups alike. And the music is glorious. Hallelujah.
Dublin 1742 runs at The Ark, Temple Bar, Dublin, from Friday, May 31st to June 30th. Booking at: (01) 6707788
