Nicholas Nickleby is sometimes criticised for its over-the-top melodramatics, but this overlooks the fact that it’s all quite deliberate. Dickens’s joke is that after Nicholas re-enters the ‘real’ world, following his stay in Portsmouth, the plot and Nicholas himself have both been theatrically infected.
The novel, before Nicholas emerges from Crummles’s company, differs little from other early Dickens. In the final third of the book, however, it’s all transformed into theatre.
‘The action includes such stock playacting situations as the comic man eavesdropping on a secret conference, the helpless innocent recaptured by his oppressors, and, twice over, the brave young man interceding when he overhears the virtuous maiden's name impugned.’ [From Dickens and Popular Entertainment]
‘Its plot [and] set pieces amounts to a checklist of every cliché of nineteenth century melodrama. There’s a poignant deathbed scene, a duel, a lost legacy, a father-and-son reunion.’ [From The Friendly Dickens]
And where do all of these theatrical scenes occur? In the final third of the book.
‘“The plug of life is dry, sir, and but the mud is left.”
This speech—the style of which Newman attributed to Mr Lillyvick’s recent association with theatrical characters—not being quite explanatory . . .’
Nicholas’s own language, too, having been steeped in the vocabulary of melodrama (which he writes as well as acts), becomes, in moments of passion, absurdly theatrical e.g. tucked in between Arthur Gride’s comments, these are Nicholas’s three consecutive speeches: ‘“Wretch!” cried Nicholas . . . “Villain!” said Nicholas, choking with his rage . . . “You hound!” said Nicholas.’ Earlier in the book, Nicholas also displays a slightly artificial, ‘heroic’ manner—which is why Mr Crummles instantly recognises him as a ‘natural’ for the stage.
The various characters’ soliloquies are entirely theatrical in nature and cry out to be spoken on stage, and Dickens deliberately repeats the word ‘soliloquy’ to emphasize this fact. In his other 13 novels, ‘soliloquy’ is used on only 12 occasions; in Nicholas Nickleby it occurs no less than eight times—all in the last third of the book, apart from one. And the single early ‘soliloquy’ is never spoken: Nicholas coughs ‘fearing he might otherwise overhear some soliloquy intended to have no listeners’.
On two occasions we are told that Ralph ‘gnashed his teeth’—an action strongly associated with melodrama. An interpolated tale in Pickwick apart, the only other character in all of Dickens who ‘gnashed his teeth’ is Dora’s dog Jip! Dickens also says that Ralph ‘literally gnashed his teeth’, making the double point that this is an uncommon action and that it’s not just a figure of speech.
‘Mr Squeers would, very likely, have carried on the farce of being offended a little longer, if Mrs Sliderskew . . .’
Farcical scenes are almost entirely confined to the latter part of the book: Newman arranges a secret tryst between Nicholas and his loved one, but he’s got the wrong girl (mistaken identity is the staple of farce); a madman hurls vegetables tributes at Mrs Nickleby over the fence; the madman gets stuck climbing down Mrs Nickleby’s chimney and his legs dangle in the fireplace; ‘Newman had caught up . . . an old pair of bellows, which were just undergoing a flourish in the air, preparatory to a descent upon the head of Mr Squeers, when Frank, with an earnest gesture, stayed his arm’; ‘Newman raised the bellows again. Once more, Frank, by a rapid motion of his arm checked him in his purpose’—all this is wonderful visual comedy, a gift for any dramatist.
Perhaps the two most memorable words from the Crummles portion of the book are ‘phenomenon’ [infant phenomenon] and ‘bespeak’ [the Great Bespeak for Miss Snevellici], which immediately call to mind theatrics. So before the farcical scene of Nicholas’s mistaken introduction to Bobster: ‘Nicholas . . . with a countenance bespeaking anything rather than’; ‘and even Newman Noggs had trimmed himself up . . . his coat presenting the phenomenon of two consecutive buttons’.
And the most pointed reference is ‘“It’s the fowl,” replied Peg, holding up a plate containing a little, a very little one. Quite a phenomenon of a fowl. So very small and skinny.’
From The Old Curiosity Shop: ‘But that being in a theatrical mood, he merely achieved that performance which is designated in melodramas “laughing like a fiend,”—for it seems that your fiends always laugh in syllables, and always in three syllables, never more or less.’
‘. . . Gride, whom jealousy of Nicholas and a sense of his own triumph had converted into a perfect fiend. “You, the disappointed lover? Oh dear! He! he! he!”’
‘Involves a serious Catastrophe’ is the caption to the chapter in which Lord Frederick Verisopht is killed in a duel. ‘Catastrophe’ in the theatre means the climactic event of the plot, especially of a tragedy.
‘The Crisis of the Project and its Result’ heads the chapter in which Nicholas confronts Ralph in Mr Bray’s house and Mr Bray dies of a stroke. A ‘crisis’ is a key moment of dramatic tension in a play—a decisive point in the plot on which the outcome of the remaining actions depends.
‘In Which One Scene Of This History Is Closed’.
‘Being for the benefit of Mr Vincent Crummles, and positively his last Appearance on this Stage’. Ironically, while everything else has become theatrically tainted, of Mr Crummles himself, Nicholas ‘could not but mark the difference between their present separation and their parting at Portsmouth. Not a jot of his theatrical manner remained’.
