Rejected Addresses; Or, the New Theatrum Poetarum
1812
When Drury Lane Theatre burned to the ground in 1809, London lost its greatest playhouse. When it reopened three years later, the Smith brothers gave it something far more explosive than any opening night: a book of viciously clever parodies. Rejected Addresses presents itself as a collection of "rejected" poems submitted for the theater's grand reopening, but each is written in the distinctive voice of a different contemporary poet. The result is a literary masquerade where William Wordsworth muses on the pyre, Lord Byron swaggers through dramatic couplets, and Walter Scott medievalizes the whole affair. One poem even celebrates the fire itself as theatrical perfection, because what is drama without flame? The Smith brothers understood something essential about their moment: the Romantic poets had grown pompous and self-important. So they responded the only way proper English humor knows how - with affection masked as assassination. These parodies are affectionate enough to capture each poet's actual voice, savage enough to expose their pretensions. Two centuries later, the joke still lands.
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Smith, James. Rejected Addresses; Or, the New Theatrum Poetarum. Lex, lex-books.com/book/rejected-addresses-or-the-new-theatrum-poetarum-4ea28bed-0c2f-4f09-a1e1-4e767fe5d809.Smith, J. (1812). Rejected Addresses; Or, the New Theatrum Poetarum. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/rejected-addresses-or-the-new-theatrum-poetarum-4ea28bed-0c2f-4f09-a1e1-4e767fe5d809Smith, James. Rejected Addresses; Or, the New Theatrum Poetarum. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/rejected-addresses-or-the-new-theatrum-poetarum-4ea28bed-0c2f-4f09-a1e1-4e767fe5d809.
