Pamela

Pamela is the name of a character created by the novelist Samuel Richardson, immortalized in his novel of the same name, about whom a number of literary and other works, including a number of plays, films and so on, have been written and produced. Pamela is often used as a shortened title for the works in question.

The original text
The original work to introduce the character, Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded, is a celebrated epistolary novel by Samuel Richardson (1689-1761), first published in 1740.

Translations and adaptations
There have been many stage versions of the novel, beginning with a number of Italian and French texts, many of them adaptations or re-conceptions of the original, others sequels, etc.

(On more on this, see for example: Thomas Keymer and Peter Sabor. 2005. Pamela in the Marketplace: Literary Controversy and Print Culture in Eighteenth-Century Britain and Ireland, Cambridge University Press)

Below are some of the theatre texts of importance in South African theatre.

It was adapted for the stage by Carlo Goldoni (1707–1793) as La Pamela, interestingly enough a straight comedy rather than a commedia del'arte version.

The Goldoni text was first translated into English by John Nourse as Pamela, a Comedy, performed and published in a bilingual version in 1756.

Paméla Mariée, ou Le Triomphe des Épouses ("Pamela married, of the triumph of virtue") is a three-act play French version by Benoît Pelletier-Volméranges (1756-1824) and Michel de Cubières (Michel de Cubières de Palmézeaux, 1752-1820), based on Goldoni's play. It was first performed in Paris, at the Théâtre de l'Ancien Opéra, in 1804 and published in Paris by Barba in the same year.

The French version by Pelletier-Volméranges and Cubières-Palmézaux was in its turn translated into Dutch by an anonymous author as Pamela, of De Zegepraal der Onschuld, and published in Amsterdam by Abraham Mars in 1805. This apopears to have been the first version of a "Pamela" play to be done in South Africa.

Performance history of Pamela in South Africa
1825: Performed in Dutch translation as Pamela, of De Zegepraal der Onschuld by Tot Nut en Vermaak in the Amateur Theatre on 16 April, with De Grijze Man, of De Rondborstige (Baudouin and Poujol).

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