The Secret

The Secret is a comedy in five acts by Edward Morris (1768-1815)[1].

Also found as The Secret!

The original text

Written and first performed at the Drury Lane theatre in 1799. Published in London by Cadell and Davies, 1799.

Performance history in South Africa

1854: Performed by the City Amateur Theatrical Society on Wednesday, 26th July in the Dutch Company's Bree Street Theatre (corner of Dorp Street), Cape Town. It followed Hamlet (Act 3) and A Race for a Dinner (Rodwell), and was itself followed by Ion (Talfourd). Musical accompaniment by Mr Holt's musical corps.

1854: Performed again by the City Amateur Theatrical Society a month later, on Monday 21 August, preceded by The Mendicant (G. à Beckett) and The First Floor (Cobb)

1858: There is a remote possibility that this was the text performed as The Secret of the Hole in the Wall (no author given) at the Harrington Street Theatre, Cape Town, by the Cape Town Dramatic Club on 9 July, 1858, with Plot and Passion, or The Female Gambler (Taylor and Lang). However, given that it was played as an afterpiece and Bosman (1980: p.144) calls it a "klugspel" ("a farce") suggests that the text used was far more likely to have been a version of Edward Poole's shorter text The Hole in the Wall.

Sources

David Erskine Baker, Isaac Reed, Stephen Jones: Biographia Dramatica; or A Companion to the Playhouse. (Volume III – M-Z) London: Longman et al, 1812.[2]

Facsimile version of the original text (third edition, 1799) (Google eBook)[3]

http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1790-1820/member/morris-edward-1768-1815

F.C.L. Bosman. 1928. Drama en Toneel in Suid-Afrika, Deel I: 1652-1855. Pretoria: J.H. de Bussy. [4]: pp. 426-427

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