Melodrama as avant-garde: Enacting a new subjectivity

The first work to appear in English called a 'melo-drame' was written by Thomas Holcroft, a friend of William Godwin. The melo-dramepropounds radical views such as are associated with the Godwin circle. To this end it has to develop a new stage language, not only reworking the original French text on which it was based, but also breaking with contemporary modes such as gothic drama and pantomime. As staged event the melo-drame was perhaps a more forceful vehicle for Godwinian ideas than was the novel. The intention of Holcroft was to communicate to, and work upon the emotions of, as large a number of people as possible. The melo-drame is thus a work which breaks with past forms in order to communicate radical insights to a popular audience, and in so doing to advance their understanding. In this sense it is avant-garde. That recognition is, however, inhibited by a theorization of the avant-garde that bases itself almost exclusively on artistic movements of the early part of the twentieth century. In terms of the original formulation, by Utopian socialists, of a concept of the artistic avant-garde, melodrama fits. The element which potentially proves most obstructive to its categorization as avant-garde, namely its mass popularity, can be shown to be a consciously avant-garde strategy. The new theatrical language of melodrama directly engages, and provides a body for, the progressivist impulses of its audience.