The Maid of the Mill

The Maid of the Mill is a comic opera by Isaac Bickerstaffe (1733-1808)[1]

The original text

The comic opera was a musical stage adaptation of Samuel Richardson's novel Pamela (1940) and . This was also a major success, and like its predecessor it went on to be played throughout the English-speaking world for more than a century following its first production."

Written and first performed in 1765 as The Maide of the Mill, with music by Samuel Arnold and others, it would go on to see numerous performances throughout the English-speaking world for more than a century. The text was first published in 1765 for J. Newbery.

Translations and adaptations

Performance history in South Africa

1862: Performed as The Maid of the Mill by Clara Tellett and her company in the Theatre Royal, Cape Town, on 2 August, with Love in Humble Life (Scribé/Payne) and A Perfect Cure (Sapte). (F.C.L. Bosman, 1980, p. 131 - seemingly unaware of the existence of this text - suggests it may have been a version of either The Miller's Maid by Saville or a comic opera he cites as The Maid and The Mail by Bickerstaffe.)

Sources

Facsimile version of J. Bell's 1797 edition of the opera, Google E-book[2]

http://projects.chass.utoronto.ca/prescrip/18thcComedy/plays/03_bick_maidmill.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Bickerstaffe

D.C. Boonzaier, 1923. "My playgoing days – 30 years in the history of the Cape Town stage", in SA Review, 9 March and 24 August 1932. (Reprinted in Bosman 1980: pp. 374-439.)

F.C.L. Bosman. 1980. Drama en Toneel in Suid-Afrika, Deel II, 1856-1912. Pretoria: J.L. van Schaik: pp.131,

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