The World as It Goes

“Brewer offers an excellent edition of a previously unpublished play by a playwright whose works helped shape Georgian England. Brewer’s insightful introduction highlights the importance of ‘failed’ plays for what they tell us about the machinations of the self-serving theater world and the challenges it posed for women playwrights especially.” —Tanya Caldwell, Professor of English, Georgia State University, US

“Brewer has thrown a spotlight on a little-known comedy by Hannah Cowley, one of the most successful writers for the eighteenth-century stage. Complete with an informative introduction detailing reactions to a play damned for o ending theatergoer sensibilities, this distinctive edition proposes that we can learn as much from a playwright’s theatrical failures as we can from their triumphs.” —Terry F. Robinson, Associate Professor and Associate Chair of English and Drama, University of Toronto, Canada

As editor of The Works of Mary Robinson (8 vols, 2009-2010), William Brewer sharpened his skills in preparing Georgian texts for a contemporary academic market. The example of Robinson’s Nobody (1794) revealed how a stage failure could provide valuable insight into the literary taboos of the period. A similar case occurs in Hannah Cowley’s The World as It Goes (1781), a play that followed one year after the resounding success of The Belle's Stratagem (1780). Brewer identified, as correlative to the play-within-a play, the chameleonic performance, in which the actor plays the role of a character who plays the role. Referring to “Cowley’s Universal Masquerade,” Brewer describes the audience’s vehemently rejecting the sexual role-playing in The World as It Goes and its revision, Second Thoughts Are Best. Especially valuable are Brewer’s detailed introduction and his inclusion of reviews of the performances of both versions. —Frederick Burwick, Research Professor, Department of English, University of California, Los Angeles

It is not often one gets the opportunity to see a work of a celebrated eighteenth-century author published for the first time, but William D. Brewer has provided scholars and readers of eighteenth-century drama with just that. Hannah Cowley’s The World As It Goes was omitted from the posthumous and anonymously-edited Works of Mrs. Cowley (1813) and the only surviving copy is the Larpent licensing manuscript housed in the Huntington Library. [...] With its informative introduction, text of the original play, and full reviews of both The World As It Goes and its rewrite Second Thoughts Are Best, Brewer’s volume is a welcome addition to late-eighteenth-century dramatic scholarship — Melinda C. Finberg, University of Southern California, USA.  Women's Writing, 29th April 2022.