Vindicated By History / Theatre

• Aristophanes is arguably the best-remembered of the ancient Greek comedy writers. 11 of his plays have survived in full, compared to 6 partially-surviving works by Menander and fragments by several others. But there is no evidence that he was extraordinarily popular in his time. Like other writers of his time, his theatrical plays competed for awards in festivals, and he often lost. But the fact that medieval copyists chose to preserve his works is a testament to his continued appeal. Out of his surviving plays:
  • The Acharnians (425 BC), The Knights (424 BC), and The Frogs (405 BC) are known to have won the first prize in contests. With the Frogs being popular enough to warrant a repeat performance, extraordinary for its time.
  • The Wasps (422 BC), Peace (421 BC), and The Birds (414 BC) took second place. A testament to Aristophanes having harsh competition in the persons of Cratinus and Eupolis. The latter two remained popular to Roman times, and Macrobius (5th century AD) even commented: "Everyone knows Eupolis". Unfortunately, the Medieval copyists chose to ignore these two authors for unknown reasons.
  • The Clouds (423 BC) came last in a contest and was poorly received by the audience. Aristophanes later revised it considerably, adding comments on the unpopularity of the earlier version. Today only the revised version survives.
  • There is no information on whether Lysistrata (411 BC), Thesmophoriazusae (411 BC), Ecclesiazusae (Assemblywomen) (c. 392 BC), and Plutus (c. 388 BC) were successful or not. For all their modern fame, these plays seem to have been obscure in antiquity, resulting in few comments by later writers.
• Euripides suffered much the same fate in drama - he only won the yearly drama competition four times in his life (compared to Aeschylus's 13 and Sophocles's 20+) yet almost 20 of his plays survived to today (Aeschylus and Sophocles have seven each) and many of his plays are considered well ahead of their time socially, especially in terms of complexity of female characters. This would make him highly resonant among feminist authors. Interestingly, he was much better received in the Sicilian colonies. Ironically in his lifetime he was seen as a misogynist due to his plays frequently having females behaving badly, Aristophanes even making jokes at his expense about this.
• This happened very quickly with Sophocles' Oedipus Rex. When it first played it won second place. Nowadays it's widely considered one of the best works of tragedy, not just in Greek drama but in all drama, while we don't even know the name of the play that beat it. Even at the time it was considered a defining piece of tragedy, with Aristotle the following century writing glowingly of it as best fitting how drama should be made.
• William Shakespeare was a popular and commercially successful playwright of Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre at the time, and certainly a man of reasonable fame; however, in his day and age, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson (who did help in promoting the Bard with the First Folio Dedication), Thomas Middleton (exceptional writers all of them) were more famous and well-regarded as the pre-eminent playwright while Edmund Spenser and Philip Sidney would be considered the pre-eminent poet.
  • Shakespeare always remained part of the English repertory (except for the period of the English Civil War when theatres were closed), but it was only in the age of The Enlightenment that scholars, chiefly Samuel Johnson, started claiming him to be the greatest English writer. It was also in this time that Shakespeare became embraced in the Continent, especially by the Germans. Curiously, Shakespeare's greatest commercial success in his lifetime was Titus Andronicus (now regarded as a weak play, though it has its cult), while The Merchant of Venice and Macbeth fared poorly when first introduced, with less than a half dozen 17th-century performances on record. Othello was also a bomb, yet today, it is second only to Hamlet as the most-performed work of Shakespeare.
  • The Tempest, one of the Bard's later plays, also suffered from public disinterest. Its re-evaluation in the 19th century, and by post-colonialist critics in the 20th Century, it is now considered among the highest echelon of Shakespeare plays. Other Shakespeare plays, formerly considered minor works, like Troilus and Cressida (which became celebrated for its anti-war themes), and Coriolanus are now considered masterpieces (by the likes of Bertolt Brecht, T. S. Eliot, and Harold Bloom).
• Christopher Marlowe, formerly regarded as Always Second Best to William Shakespeare, also saw a radical reversal in reputation in the 20th Century. Authors such as Harold Bloom argue that Marlowe influenced Shakespeare. His plays became favorite among leftist writers and were popular in repertory (Orson Welles staged Doctor Faustus, Bertolt Brecht did Edward II), while LGBT writers claimed Marlowe as a precursor. The fact that he was long rumored to be an atheist and, that the likes of Harold Bloom argue he died because of political persecution and conspiracy, lent him a great deal of "street cred" as a rebellious artist.
• Indeed, the overall Elizabethan/Jacobean Age saw a revival in reputation. John Webster's tragedies, The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi came to be staged (even leading to film adaptations) far more often, with the likes of T. S. Eliot arguing that Webster showed "the skull within the skin". The extreme violence which typified these plays and drove off critics (who saw them as shlock) came to be seen as cool in the 20th Century. Thomas Middleton's plays and comedies likewise underwent a revival as did The Revenger's Tragedy. Today, Shakespeare is seen as the most prolific and successful of a golden age rather than its sole representative.
• Moliere's most celebrated work is The Misanthrope, which played to poor sales and dismissal during its initial run in the 1660s.
• Gilbert and Sullivan's Ruddigore was initially considered a failure when put on in 1887. This verdict is somewhat harsh, since it was run directly following the smash hit The Mikado and had an entirely respectable first run of 288 performances.^note Gilbert later said of the "failure" label, "I could do with more such failures." It did actually enjoy a bit of success later on in the run, but it wasn't put in the regular Gilbert and Sullivan canon until the 1920s where it has remained ever since.
• Anton Chekhov's The Seagull is an interesting example. The premier of the play in St. Petersburg was a complete disaster with the audience almost universally booing to the point where actress Vera Komissarzhevskaya ended up losing her voice trying to project over the boos and Chekhov himself having to leave the audience to take refuge backstage, fearing for his life. The reception was so bad that the next day, Chekhov would tell newspaper writer Aleksey Suvorin that he was quitting playwriting. Years later, the initial criticism died down and people began to appreciate it with Constantin Stanislavski's direction of it going over incredibly well in 1898. Today, it's now regarded as one of Chekhov's best plays.
• Arthur Miller emerged from the smash-hit release of Death of a Salesman as one of Broadway's biggest playwrights. Shortly thereafter, McCarthyism and related 50s political turmoil wreaked havoc on Miller's career. The Crucible made the mildest of profits and A View from the Bridge completely tanked, although both are celebrated today as major pieces in Miller's profile.
• The musical Chicago originally opened on Broadway in 1975 and, while not an outright flop ^note It ran for a total of 936 performances, a little over two years, received mixed reviews and was overshadowed at the Tony Awards by the smash hit A Chorus Line. The show seemed destined to be mostly forgotten until 1996 when City Center Encores! ^note an NYC theatre company dedicated to mounting concert versions of obscure musicals mounted a stripped-down version, which proved surprisingly popular and paved the way for a Broadway revival a short time later. The revival was an immediate hit and continues to run - currently second only to The Phantom of the Opera for the longest-running show in Broadway history, and the longest running American musical ever. (Ironically, it surpassed A Chorus Line's original run in 2011.) Many critics have suggested that audiences in 1996 - weary of the then-recent O.J. Simpson trial - were more receptive to the musical’s cynical view of celebrity and the media than they were in The '70s. Indeed, one program described it as "Outrageous in the Twenties [when the original play debuted], controversial in the Seventies, and now reads like a documentary."
• Speaking of Phantom, it and Les Misérables also received mixed reviews when they opened in London and on Broadway. Needless to say, them being the longest-running musicals of each venue has eclipsed any negative press.
• Sarah Kane's first play, 'Blasted', was victim to many a negative critic for its use of violence. It wasn't until her suicide and posthumous performance of her last play '4.48 Psychosis', that many of these critics withdrew their complaints.
• Stephen Sondheim's works, while hits with the Tony Awards, tended to draw criticism from critics and audiences alike as being chilly and emotionally remote with un-hummable tunes. In time, his works have gone on to become staples in American Theatre communities of all levels.
• Nowadays it's recognized as one of the all-time great operas, but Bizet's Carmen famously opened to great indifference in 1875, with the promoter struggling even to give away tickets. Bizet died without seeing the success it would become.
• The Barber of Seville got off to a thoroughly rocky start. The libretto had been set earlier by a rival composer, Giovanni Paisiello, who took offense to Rossini composing his own version and sent a cabal of supporters to disrupt the opening night. Reportedly, they did so and then some, complete with hooting, laughter, and jeers. The performance also suffered from bad luck during staging, with one singer tripping and falling just before his big aria, being forced to sing it with a bloody nose. In addition, a wayward cat wandered onstage and refused to leave, finally being flung off by a cast member. Barber has since become Rossini's most famous and best-loved opera.
• Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring caused a scandal (complete with yelling and fisticuffs between audience members) at its 1913 premiere because of its dissonant sonic palette and the primitive rawness of its choreography, though the piece immediately entered the standard concert repertoire. Today, it is one of the most popular, important, influential and famous classical works of the 20th century.
• Duke Bluebeard's Castle, Béla Bartók's sole opera, was rejected by the Hungarian Fine Arts Commission as unstageworthy when Bartok submitted it for an award. It wasn't performed until 5 years later, but is now considered one of Bartok's most important works, and, despite its unusually small cast causing some difficulty - it only has two main characters, and three silent roles, which is a little awkward if you have a large group of performers on retainer - it receives regular performance.
• None of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's three ballets, Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker, were popular in his lifetime, but have since become some of the most famous and loved ballet music the world has ever seen.
• Opening night of the opera Madame Butterfly by Giacomo Puccini was a catastrophe. The performance was under-rehearsed, the work having been finished at the last minute, and thus was insecurely presented. The audience jeered, hissed, laughed, and yelled throughout the performance, at one point catcalling that the main female character was pregnant! To make matters worse, the audience had been given bird whistles to blow into, meant to accompany the dawn after Butterfly's sleepless night; these were instead used to general disruptive effect by the audience. Puccini hastily pulled the work after opening night and revised it extensively. It subsequently met with great success and immediately entered the operatic repertoire.

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