Works
The Honey Moon was given at Drury Lane on 31 January 1805, with Elliston and Bannister in the leading rôles, and proved a decided success. It remained a favourite on the English stage for twenty years. Hazlitt thought the plot owed much to the Taming of the Shrew; John Genest detected reminiscences of Massinger and other Elizabethans. Tobin excelled at light comedies and stage lyrics. After his early death, his rejected pieces were sought after by managers.
Tobin's works, all posthumously published, were:
- ‘The Honey Moon: a comedy’ (five acts, mainly verse), London, 1805; New York, 1807; frequently reprinted, translated by Charles Nodier as ‘La Lune de Miel’ in ‘Chefs d'œuvre des Théâtres Étrangers,’ 1822.
- ‘The Curfew: a play’ (in five acts, prose and verse), London, 1807; 7th edit. 1807. It was produced at Drury Lane on 19 February 1807, and would have run longer than twenty nights but for Sheridan's anxiety to avoid the obligation of a benefit for Tobin's relatives.
- ‘The School for Authors: a comedy’ (in three acts, prose), London, 1808. Based on ‘The Connoisseur,’ one of Marmontel's tales; the part of Diaper, the sensitive author, afforded a triumph to Munden when he created the rôle at Covent Garden on 5 Dec. 1808.
- ‘The Faro Table; or the Guardians: a comedy,’ London, 1816. This was given at Drury Lane on 5 November 1816, or nearly twenty years after it had been written, when the manners it satirises were already passing away; it was not a success.
Several of Tobin's unpublished dramas were published in one volume in 1820; among them ‘The Gypsy of Madrid,’ after the ‘Gitanilla’ of De Solis, ‘The Indians,’ and two light operas, ‘Yours or Mine’ and ‘The Fisherman.’ Among other pieces by him, apparently no longer extant, are mentioned ‘The Reconciliation,’ ‘The Undertaker,’ and ‘Attraction.’
Read more about this topic: John Tobin (dramatist)
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“Your hooves have stamped at the black margin of the wood,
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My works are all stamped down into the sultry mud.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)