Here is the Scottish Poetry Library's advertisement for an upcoming event you may be interested in attending if you are in Edinburgh on December 2, 2022.
James Hogg’s “The Royal Jubilee: A Scottish Mask”
A rehearsed reading, with songs
Friday 2 December, 7 p.m., Scottish Poetry Library, Canongate, Edinburgh. Tickets £5.
There are fairies, and brownies, and shades Amazonian,
Of harper, and sharper, and old Cameronian:—
Some small as pigmies,—some tall as a steeple,—
The spirits are all gone as mad as the people.
—James Hogg, “The Royal Jubilee”
On 14 August 1822, as George IV arrived on his ‘jaunt’ to Edinburgh, James Hogg published a new play: “The Royal Jubilee: A Scottish Mask”. The Jubilee is set – like key scenes in Hogg’s best-known work The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner – on Arthur’s Seat. This live rehearsed reading with songs is – in the absence of any evidence otherwise –the first time the play has ever been performed since its publication 200 years ago.
Introduced by Valentina Bold (who edited the “Jubilee” in 1994) and Kirsteen McCue (editor of Hogg’s Songs), the reading will be by a cast including Jo Miller, Dolina MacLennan, Ajay Close, Sheena Wellington and SPL director Asif Khan.
