Joanna Baillie by Alice Meynell

Name: Joanna Baillie
Author: Alice Meynell

Alice Meynell’s “Joanna Baillie” reconsiders Baillie’s reputation, arguing that literary memory has unfairly reduced her to the solemn author of tragedies while neglecting the livelier comedies that accompanied her dramatic scheme. Meynell begins with Baillie’s ambitious project, the _Plays on the Passions_, in which each work dramatizes a ruling human emotion such as hatred, remorse, jealousy, fear, or love. Baillie, Meynell notes, theorized her method at length: she did not mean to flatten a character into a single passion, but to show that passion struggling with and bending the other impulses within a human being. Meynell respects the intelligence and seriousness of this design, while also finding Baillie’s explanatory prefaces less charming than her dramatic practice. The essay grants Baillie’s tragedies real merit. Their construction is sound, their endings dignified, and their verse, though only second-rate eighteenth-century blank verse, often carries inherited dramatic strength. Meynell treats with some irony the old praise that called Baillie’s work “masculine,” and she quotes the extraordinary admiration of Walter Scott, who considered Baillie the greatest genius of her country. Yet Meynell’s central correction is that Baillie’s comic gift has been undervalued. Her chief example is _The Trial_, the comedy paired with the tragedy _Basil_. The play concerns two young women, Agnes and Mariane, who exchange identities so that the wealthy Agnes may test whether a suitor loves her for herself rather than her fortune. Meynell delights in the girls’ spirited conspiracy: they are mischievous yet decorous, audacious within Georgian propriety, alert to vanity, fortune-hunting, and male foolishness. Agnes, though less beautiful than Mariane, has the sharper wit and engineers the plot with charm and precision. Meynell praises the comedy’s buoyancy, social animation, and elegant playfulness. Its heroines hide, plot, mimic their admirers, expose fops, and maneuver their uncle into helping the deception. Their language is lively, their manners period-perfect, and their romantic testing has more freshness than Baillie’s later reputation would suggest. Meynell imagines that a modern stage might still find theatrical pleasure in such scenes, especially in Agnes’s witty exchanges and teasing physical comedy. The essay also glances at another comedy, one associated with hatred, where Baillie turns spite and rivalry into comic political farce. This strengthens Meynell’s larger point: Baillie was not merely grave, theoretical, and “undeviating,” as admirers of her tragic seriousness implied. She possessed humor, movement, and dramatic play. Meynell’s final judgment is corrective and affectionate. Baillie’s tragedies deserve respect, but her comedies reveal a freer and more delightful talent. The author remembered as a stern anatomist of passion was also a witty dramatist of social comedy, and her literary afterlife has suffered because that lighter half of her achievement was forgotten.

By Alice Meynell · First published 1922 · Genre: Literary Criticism, Literary Essay, Drama Criticism · 1,649 words

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Would Joanna Baillie's _Plays on the Passions_ have been so shunned by later generations and then so forgotten, if the writers of Literary Histories had remembered to mention the ‘Comedies on the Passions' as well as the ‘Tragedies'? For every tragedy Joanna Baillie, whose plan of dramatic labours was drawn up with a singular completeness, wrote also a comedy; and one at least of these sprightlier plays is so buoyant, so busy, so apt in speech, and so pleasant, within the limits of eighteenth-century wit, that a modern manager might surely do worse than try his luck with it.

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Joanna Baillie is listed on Textopian as an essay by Alice Meynell, dated 1922 CE.

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Work type: Essay
Author: Alice Meynell
Date: 1922 CE
Language: English
Genres: Literary Criticism, Literary Essay, Drama Criticism, Theatre Studies, Author Study
Length: 1,649 words
Structure: 1 section, 11 paragraphs
Reading fit: Fairly Difficult (10th-12th Grade)

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Genres

Literary Criticism — The work primarily evaluates Joanna Baillie's plays, dramatic theory, style, reputation, and reception, making critical judgment its central purpose.
Literary Essay — The prose is a compact, reflective essay in which Alice Meynell advances a personal critical argument rather than narrating a plot.
Drama Criticism — The discussion focuses specifically on Baillie's tragedies and comedies, their construction, theatrical possibilities, characters, dialogue, and dramatic conventions.
Theatre Studies — The essay considers stageworthiness, comic timing, roles for actors, dramatic structure, and how Baillie's works might function in performance.