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David Copperfield
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| Often, the playwrights seized upon a single character
in one of Dickens's novels and built a play around it. In DAVID
COPPERFIELD, the orphaned Em'ly was a favorite. The Victorians
reveled in this good-girl-gone-bad theme; but only because,
in the end, Lost Em'ly was not only found, but also categorically
redeemed. |
Dickens always referred to David Copperfield
as his “favorite child” and it reflects more of the novelist
and his life than any other of his books. Because it is a first-person
narrative, playwrights have sometimes found it difficult to grapple
with; yet within ten years of its publication, at least twenty-five
productions had appeared in New York and London. Many of the dramatizations
singled out Little Emily, the orphaned niece of Daniel Peggoty, as
the central character. As a play, David Copperfield has already
entered the 21st century.
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