SOURCE: “Trying Sheridan's Pizarro,” in Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Vol. 38, Nos. 3-4, Fall-Winter, 1996, pp. 359-78.

In the following essay, Carlson analyzes the dynamics of language, colonial oppression, and filial responsibility in Sheridan's adapted play Pizarro.

The most popular play of the 1790s in London and the second most popular play of the entire eighteenth century is Richard Brinsley Sheridan's Pizarro, adapted from the German of August von Kotzebue. Featuring an all-star cast of John Kemble, Sarah Siddons, and Dorothy Jordan, Sheridan's Pizarro dramatizes Peruvian struggles for independence against Spain as announced by Kotzebue's title, Die Spanier in Peru oder Rollas Tod. Virtually forgotten now, the play was so popular then that to be “pizarroed out of my memory and recollection, in every company I enter” was apparently a comprehensible phrase and experience in London society during the early summer of 1799 (Simpson 90). The play ran continuously from...