Barraud, Clement William, S.J. Saint Elizabeth of Hungary. Historical Drama in Five Acts (1892)
Barraud, Clement William, S.J. Saint Elizabeth of Hungary. Historical Drama in Five Acts (1892)

Summary/Abstract: Wildside Press’s recent reprint of two historical dramas by Clement William Barraud, S.J. (1843-?) on Saint Thomas of Canterbury and Saint Elizabeth of Hungary makes one wonder why people today would read old school dramas. Are they interested in medieval retro? Gothic revival? Catholic kitsch? If so, they should read Barraud. The play about Saint Elizabeth is worth reading, perhaps also worth performing, and it certainly raises a number of intriguing questions. Regrettably, this publication missed the opportunity to address, in a foreword or an epilogue, relevant questions about Jesuit school drama and Victorian representations of Europe’s most influential, most popular, and most touching woman saint. There seems to be a recent upsurge of interest in St Margaret and/or in nineteenth-century British historical melodrama as shown by this reprint as well as by another reprint of the same text by the British Library Historical Print Editions (2011), but with a lack of any scholarly apparatus to these editions we are still in sore need of at least an overview of existing scholarship.

• Details
• Contents