Elizabeth Boyd's Disappearing Act: Performing Literary Legacy on the Georgian Stage

How do we trace the historical processes that grant some writers visibility and, hence, legacy, while shoving others into closet? This essay offers case study of Elizabeth Boyd (1727-1745), a novelist, poet, and playwright who has received attention from scholars interested in women’s contributions to legacy William Shakespeare second quarter eighteenth century. In particular, her unperformed play, Don Sancho: Or, Students Whim, Ballad Opera Two Acts, with Minerva’s Triumph, Masque (1739) dramatizes woman writer’s reflections on politics at this formative moment history authorship British theater. While play was not performed, key scenes were later plagiarized popular afterpieces by theater managers playwrights Henry Giffard David Garrick. Boyd, along inclusive vision theatrical as domain men women different classes, disappears male playwrights’ fantasies exclusively masculine, literary greatness. The story Boyd’s erasure speaks gendered classed exclusions elisions social economic which is formed, case, power relations eighteenth-century its management.