State Secrets, or The Tailor of Tamworth

State Secrets, or The Tailor of Tamworth is a comic burletta in one act by Thomas Egerton Wilks (1812-1854)[].

Also found as State Secrets! Or The Tailor of Tamworth!

The original text

Some editions (e.g. Lacy, 1836) refer to it as a Farce in one act, while other sources refer to it as a "Comic Burletta".

First performed at the Surrey Theatre, London on 12 September 1836 and published in the same year by Samuel French. Also editions by Dicks (no 914), Duncombe (Vol XXIII), and Thomas Hailes Lacy (1850, Vol LIII). Published as State Secrets! Or The Tailor of Tamworth! by Turner & Fisher, (Fisher's edition of standard farces, 1899).

Performance history in South Africa

1860: Produced as State Secrets, or The Tailor of Tamworth by Sefton Parry on 23 February in the The Cape Town Theatre in Harrington Street , with Jane Lomax, or A Mother's Crime (Buckstone). A song by Montague Smythson and a dance by Lizzie Powell served as interlude. For Jane Lomax, Thomas Baines created "beautiful new scenery representing a Snow Storm, the first of its kind attempted here", according to the Cape Town publicity. Despite it all the evening was not well attended.

Sources

Facsimile version of the 1836 text published by Samuel French, Hathi Trust Digital Library[1]

"Thomas Egerton Wilks", The Online Books Page [2]

Allardyce Nicoll. 2009. A History of English Drama 1660-1900 (Volume 4), Cambridge University Press: p. 420[3]

F.C.L. Bosman. 1980. Drama en Toneel in Suid-Afrika, Deel II, 1856-1916. Pretoria: J.L. van Schaik: p.78.

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