Ambrose Gwinett or, a Sea-Side Story: A Melo-Drama, in Three Acts

Jerrold, Douglas William, 1803-1857Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.0
Word count
92K words
Chapters
10

Tags

English Originals Dramatic Literature Stage PerformanceFamily SecretEmotional ConflictIdentity MysteryThree-Act PlayMelodramaSeaside TalePopular Theater19th CenturyBritish Drama

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Ambrose Gwinett; or, a sea-side story: a melo-drama, in three acts by JerroldAuthor: Jerrold, Douglas William, 1803-1857,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Mar 4, 2014

Editor's review

This three-act melodrama by the 19th-century British playwright Douglas William Jerrold unfolds its dramatic conflict against a seaside backdrop, offering a primary text for understanding the popular stage of the Victorian era. Its plot relies on strong theatricality and moral contrasts, with characters clearly divided into good and evil and dialogue marked by the exaggeration and sentimentality typical of the period's stage. For this reason it serves not only as literary reading but as practical material for studying the melodrama genre, stagecraft, and audience tastes. The Project Gutenberg electronic edition is easy to search and cite, making it suitable for comparative reading or excerpted performance. Readers may find it best approached as a stage script rather than a novel, noting stage directions, entrances and exits, and the placement of musical interludes to gain a more immediate sense of how 19th-century theatre operated. Readers interested in theatre history, English literature, or translation studies can finish the whole play in a relatively short time and gain a concrete, vivid sample of the genre.

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Reading tips

  1. Read the dramatis personae and scene descriptions first, then go through the play act by act, treating stage directions and dialogue separately.
  2. Take notes on exaggerated lines and good-versus-evil contrasts as material for analyzing melodramatic conventions.
  3. Choose one act and read it aloud with partners in different roles to feel the rhythm of the dialogue and its theatrical effect.
  4. After finishing, consult histories of 19th-century theatre to sort out the play's genre features and period tastes.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
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FAQ

Is this a novel or a play? It is the stage script of a three-act melodrama, including a character list, scene descriptions, and dialogue rather than a narrative novel. It should be read as a script, with attention to stage directions and entrances and exits, not with the expectation of sustained psychological description.
How difficult is the English, and what background is needed? The text consists of 19th-century English stage dialogue, with sentence patterns and vocabulary characteristic of the period; some expressions are distant from modern English. It suits readers with university-level English reading ability who are willing to look up a few archaic words; beginners may use an annotated edition or a parallel translation.
How is the electronic edition best used? The Project Gutenberg electronic edition is convenient for full-text searching, copying quotations, and printing act by act, making it suitable for scholarly citation, classroom excerpts, and performance preparation. For research, it is advisable to record the edition and download source so that it can be cited properly in papers.

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About the author

Jerrold, Douglas William, 1803-1857 Author · British · 1803–1857

Douglas William Jerrold (1803–1857) was a British playwright and humorist. A longtime contributor and one of the principal writers for Punch magazine, he was known for a witty, lively style that found humor and satire in everyday subjects. His works include Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures and the play Ambrose Gwinett, or, A Sea-side Story: A Melo-drama, in Three Acts; the former uses family life as its starting point with plain, vivid language, while the latter displays his talent for drama. Public information about his life and career is limited, but his surviving works show a gift for depicting social manners and character with a light touch, earning him a place in nineteenth-century British humorous literature and drama.