HARDY FORUM ARCHIVE  H01013  1/30/01  "CRITICS ON THE QUEENS OF CORNWALL QUESTION"
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From: "Patrick Roper" <patrick@prassociates.co.uk>
Subject: Queen of Cornwall commentary
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 17:47:43 -0000


I would be very grateful if subcribers could recommend any critical
commentaries or analysis of TH's play 'The Tragedy of the Famous Queen
of Cornwall'.

I have, in the past few weeks, read it twice and am trying to work out
how it stands in relation to the rest of Hardy's life and work.  Many
of the books on the author either ignore it altogether or seem to
comment in a rather matter-of-fact way on when it was written and
performed, but not what Hardy might have been trying to achieve.

I suppose what puzzles me most is the kind of audience (or performers)
it was intended for.  Hardy calls it a play for mummers, but it seems
unlikely to me that the kind of mummers he describes so wonderfully in
Return of the Native would make much of it.  I also gather he started
thinking about it in the 1870s, he says he started writing it in 1916,
then put it aside and finished and published it in 1923 when he was,
of course, 83.  Why?  I won't go on as I am sure there have been many
scholarly elaborations and I ought to read those first!

Patrick Roper

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From: "Ahmad" <smahmad@mail.sy>
Subject: Re: Queen of Cornwall commentary
Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2001 18:30:51 +0200

Patrick,

There is an interesting biographical interpretation of the play in Kenneth
Phelps's book * The Wormwood Cup: Thomas Hardy in Cornwall * (Padstow,
Cornwall: Lodenek Press, 1975), 99-114.  A shorter (and more balanced)
comment is given by Professor Harold Orel in his chapter on "Hardy and the
Theatre" in * The Genius of Thomas Hardy *, ed. Margaret Drabble (London:
Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1976), 94-108.

Cheers!

Suleiman M. Ahmad
University of Damascus

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From: "Patrick Roper" <patrick@prassociates.co.uk>
Subject: RE: Queen of Cornwall commentary
Date: Thu, 1 Feb 2001 17:48:06 -0000

Status:   

Thanks for this.  I have a copy of The Wormwood Cup and, although the
author is quite interesting on some of the factual background, he
doesn't dig very deep into the creative and other mental processes
that might have underlain Hardy's 'Queen'.

I have not read Harold Orel's essay, but will certainly have a look at
this now you have suggested it.

Patrick

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