Theatre and Celebrity in Britain,

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1 Theatre and Celebrity in Britain,

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3 Theatre and Celebrity in Britain, Edited by Mary Luckhurst and Jane Moody

4 Introduction, editorial matter and selection Mary Luckhurst and Jane Moody 2005 All chapters their respective authors 2005 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act First published in 2005 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y Companies and representatives throughout the world. PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN ISBN (ebook) DOI / This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Theatre and celebrity in Britain, / edited by Mary Luckhurst and Jane Moody. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. Contents: Introduction : the languages of theatrical celebrity / Mary Luckhurst and Jane Moody Public intimacy : the prior history of it / Joseph Roach Wilde : the remarkable rocket / Peter Raby The many masks of Clemence Dane / Maggie B. Gale Stolen identities : mimicry and the invention of Samuel Foote / Jane Moody The celebrity of Edmund Kean : an institutional story / Jacky Bratton Infamy and dying young : Sarah Kane, / Mary Luckhurst Celebrity and rivalry David [Garrick] and Goliath [Quin] / Peter Thomson Actresses and the economics of celebrity, / Felicity Nussbaum Private lives and public spaces : reputation, celebrity, and the late Victorian actress / Sos Eltis Siddons, celebrity, and regality : portraiture and the body of the aging actress / Shearer West Some of you might have seen him : Laurence Olivier s celebrity / Peter Holland 1. Actors Great Britain Biography. 2. Fame. I. Luckhurst, Mary. II. Moody, Jane, 1967 PN2597.T dc

5 Contents List of Figures Acknowledgements Notes on the Contributors vii ix x 1 Introduction: The Singularity of Theatrical Celebrity 1 Mary Luckhurst and Jane Moody Part I Public Intimacy 2 Public Intimacy: The Prior History of It 15 Joseph Roach 3 Wilde: The Remarkable Rocket 31 Peter Raby 4 The Many Masks of Clemence Dane 48 Maggie B. Gale Part II Notoriety 5 Stolen Identities: Character, Mimicry and the Invention of Samuel Foote 65 Jane Moody 6 The Celebrity of Edmund Kean: An Institutional Story 90 Jacky Bratton 7 Infamy and Dying Young: Sarah Kane, Mary Luckhurst Part III Markets 8 Celebrity and Rivalry: David [Garrick] and Goliath [Quin] 127 Peter Thomson 9 Actresses and the Economics of Celebrity, Felicity Nussbaum 10 Private Lives and Public Spaces: Reputation, Celebrity and the Late Victorian Actress 169 Sos Eltis v

6 vi Contents Part IV Nation 11 Siddons, Celebrity and Regality: Portraiture and the Body of the Ageing Actress 191 Shearer West 12 Some of you may have seen him : Laurence Olivier s Celebrity 214 Peter Holland Select Bibliography 233 Index 238

7 List of Figures 3.1 Bernard Partridge, The Decadent Guys, Punch, 10 November Bernard Partridge, Fancy Portrait: Quite Too-Too Puffickly Precious!! Punch, 5 March Photograph of Clemence Dane. Courtesy of the Mander and Mitchenson Theatre Collection Samuel Foote by William Greatbach, after Joshua Reynolds. By kind permission of the Victoria Art Gallery, Bath and North East Somerset Council Mr. Foote as Mrs. Cole in The Minor (1777). Engraving published by T. Lowndes and Partners. Courtesy of the Victorian and Albert Picture Library William Hogarth, Portrait of Quin (c. 1739), Tate Gallery, London Joshua Reynolds, Garrick between Tragedy and Comedy (1761), courtesy of the Garrick Club, London China statue of Peg Woffington. By courtesy of the Trustees, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge The Rival Queens of Covent Garden and Drury Lane Theatres, at a Gymnastic Rehearsal (BM 6126). By kind permission of the Trustees of the British Museum Lillie Langtry as Rosalind in Shakespeare s As You Like It. St. James s Theatre, London (1890), photographed by Lafayette Studios of Dublin. Photograph courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Picture Library Ellen Terry as Nance Oldfield in Cicely Hamilton s A Pageant of Great Women. Photograph by Lena Connell, published by the Suffrage Shop (1910), courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Picture Library Thomas Lawrence, Mrs. Siddons (1804). Copyright Tate London Henry Perronet Briggs, Sarah Siddons and Fanny Kemble (1830), courtesy of the Boston Athenaeum Joshua Reynolds, Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse (1784). Courtesy of the Henry E. Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, California. 202 vii

8 viii List of Figures 11.4 Thomas Lawrence, Queen Charlotte (1789) by kind permission of the National Gallery, London L. Gahagan, Engraving of Her Most Gracious Majesty Queen Charlotte (c. 1817), courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London. 207

9 Acknowledgements This book has its origins in a conference held at the University of York in 2002 supported by the Department of English and Related Literature and the Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies. We would like to thank everyone who participated in this very lively day for their enthusiasm and interest. Special thanks go to the speakers, to the students who helped us on the day ( John Biggin, Liz Brace, James Disley, Sarah Lowes and Nancy Walker), to colleagues who chaired individual sessions (Kate Newey, Kerry Powell and Richard Rowland) and to David Mayer and Viv Gardner for mounting a wonderful exhibition of theatrical photographs. Our contributors have responded to queries and suggestions with great patience throughout the process of preparing this volume for publication: we are most grateful for their inspiration and good humour. For encouragement and help at various stages we should like to thank a number of colleagues and friends: Jessica Chaney, Michael Cordner, Tracy Davis, Joe Donohue, Peter Holland, Joel Kaplan, John Kerrigan and John Stokes. The Department of English and Related Literature has provided financial support for the completion of this project through the Leavis Fund, and we are delighted to record our gratitude for such invaluable assistance. At Palgrave Macmillan, Emily Rosser took an energetic interest in this project from the beginning and we appreciate her encouragement and support. Thanks are also due to Paula Kennedy and Helen Craine who have seen the volume through the press. In addition we would like to record our thanks to Palgrave Macmillan s readers for their advice. Finally, a special word of thanks to our editorial assistant, Vike Plock, who has collated the typescript and prepared the index with meticulous care and attention: it has been an enormous pleasure for us to work with her. ix

10 Notes on the Contributors Jacky Bratton is Professor of Theatre and Cultural History at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her book New Readings in Theatre History was published by Cambridge University Press in Her recent publications include King Lear Text and Archive, a CD-Rom, and various essays (in Theatre Survey and in books edited by Catherine Burroughs, Tracy Davis and Ellen Donkin) about the writer/actor/manager Jane Scott. In 2002 she collaborated with Gilli Bush-Bailey on a practice as research project to revive Scott s melodramas in performance. Sos Eltis is a Fellow and Tutor in English at Brasenose College, Oxford. She is the author of Revising Wilde: Society and Subversion in the Plays of Oscar Wilde (1996), and of various articles on Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker s Dracula and nineteenth-century theatre. She is currently working on treatments of the fallen woman on stage from 1850 to the present day. Maggie B. Gale is Professor of Drama at the University of Manchester. She has published widely on mid-twentieth-century British theatre and on gender, theatre and historiography. Her publications include West End Women: Women and the London Stage (1995); British Theatre between the Wars (2000) with Clive Barker; and Women, Theatre and Performance: New Histories, New Historiographies (2000) with Viv Gardner. Peter Holland is the McMeel Family Professor in Shakespeare Studies in the Department of Film, Television, and Theatre at the University of Notre Dame. His publications include The Ornament of Action: Text and Performance in Restoration Comedy (1979); English Shakespeares: Shakespeare on the English Stage in the 1990s (1997); and Theorizing Practice: Redefining Theatre History (2003). He is the editor of Shakespeare Survey and general editor, with Stanley Wells, of Oxford Shakespeare Topics. Mary Luckhurst is Senior Lecturer and co-director of the Drama initiative at the University of York. She is the author of Dramaturgy: A Revolution in Theatre (2005), and co-author of The Drama Handbook (2002). She is currently editing two companions for Blackwell: The Companion to Modern British and Irish Drama and the Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Drama. She is also a director and playwright and most recently directed Caryl Churchill s Far Away at the York Theatre Royal. Jane Moody is Professor in the Department of English and Related Literature at the University of York She is the author of Illegitimate Theatre in London, (2000) and a number of essays in journals and edited collections on the history of British theatre. She is co-editing the Cambridge Companion to British Theatre, with Daniel O Quinn and completing a monograph on literary and theatrical censorship in Britain. x

11 Notes on the Contributors xi Felicity Nussbaum is Professor in the Department of English at the University of California at Los Angeles. She is the author of numerous works including The Autobiographical Subject: Gender and Ideology in Eighteenth- Century England (1989); Torrid Zones: Maternity, Sexuality and Empire in Eighteenth-Century English Narratives (1995) and The Limits of the Human: Fictions of Anomaly, Race and Gender in the Long Eighteenth Century (2003). Peter Raby is a Fellow of Homerton College, Cambridge. He is the author of Fair Ophelia: A Life of Harriet Smithson Berlioz (1982), as well as biographies of Samuel Butler (1990) and Alfred Russel Wallace (2001) and a study of Oscar Wilde (1988). He has edited the Cambridge Companions to Wilde and Pinter, and edited a collection of Wilde s plays for the World s Classics Series. Joseph Roach is the Charles C. and Dorathea S. Dilley Professor of Theatre and English at Yale University. His books and articles include Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance (1996), which won the James Russell Lowell Prize from the Modern Language Association and the Calloway Prize from New York University; The Player s Passion: Studies in the Science of Acting (1993), which won the Barnard Hewitt Award in Theatre History, and essays in Theatre Journal; Theatre Survey; The Drama Review; Theatre History Studies; Discourse; Theater; Text and Performance Quarterly and others. Peter Thomson is Emeritus Professor of Drama at the University of Exeter. He is the author of books on Shakespeare and Brecht, and a volume of essays entitled On Actors and Acting (2000). He is an elected Research Associate of the New Dictionary of National Biography and General Editor of the three-volume Cambridge History of British Theatre (2004). Shearer West is Professor of Art History at the University of Birmingham. She is the author of The Image of the Actor: Verbal and Visual Representation in the Age of Garrick and Kemble (1991); Fin de Siècle, The Visual Arts in Germany (1993); and Portraiture (2003); as well as editor of Italian Culture in Northern Europe in the Eighteenth Century (1998); The Victorians and Race (1996); and, with Marsha Meskimmon, Visions of the Neue Frau : Women and the Visual Arts in Weimar Germany (1995). She is also the author of many articles and essays on the relationships between art and theatre in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.