Dramatic Adaptation, Authorship and Cultural Identity in the Eighteenth Century. The Case of Samuel Foote

Literary adaptation flourished in eighteenth-century England in relation to drama. At the beginning of the century, Shakespearean and French rewritings were central to the critical debate on theatre and adapters boasted full authorial credentials, acquiring a dignified status. This condition dramatically changed in the second half of the century when the neoclassical concept of art as imitation was replaced by the development of the notion of creation as something original and unique. This paper aims at exploring the way authorship was affected by this reconfiguration through an analysis of the adapter and, in particular, through the analysis of Samuel Foote’s The Liar (1762).