Staging Memory and Materiality in Eighteenth-Century Theatrical Biography

Amanda Weldy Boyd

Description

An introduction to theatrical biography as an immensely popular genre in eighteenth-century England.

"Staging Memory and Materiality in Eighteenth-Century Theatrical Biography” examines theatrical biography as a nascent genre in eighteenth-century England. This study suggests a visible—but not impermeable—teleology from Thomas Davies to James Boaden in the development of theatrical biography as a professional enterprise. Chapter One explores Davies, the first significant biographer to throw off the shadows of anonymity and weld his own image to his subject, David Garrick. The second chapter traces three biographies of Charles Macklin written by biographers dueling amongst themselves for the right to tell Macklin’s story in the post-Davies competitive market. Finally, the third chapter tells the story of the serial biographer James Boaden’s attempts to build a professional reputation for himself as a biographer and prominent participatory character in the multiple “Lives” he tells, including those of John Philip Kemble, Sarah Siddons, Dorothy Jordan, and Elizabeth Inchbald. In each instance of producing a theatrical biography, the author is confronted not only with his duty to represent the actor, but the need to do so in an original, compelling manner that sets his account apart from other contenders and guarantees the permanency of his account as a treasured artifact of the stage rather than a disposable commodity.

The willful encouragement of viewing literary materiality as an antidote to ephemeral stage-business leads in turn to the absorption of prior biographical works and letters by authors, and reverberates in their readers’ quests to augment their copies of theatrical biographies through adding playbills, marginal notes, etchings, paintings, newspaper clippings, and even funerary souvenirs that not only testified to their interest in the stage, but secured their existence as well by evidence of participation. Thus, the author at once guaranteed the thespian’s legacy would live on while hitching his own likelihood of being remembered to the actor. The audience followed suit by adding their own personal touches, forming a palimpsest of participants. Drawing heavily on primary sources, then-contemporary reviews, and archival material in the form of extra-illustrated or “scrapbooked” editions of the biographies, this book is invested in the ways that the increasing emphasis on materiality was designed to consolidate, but often challenged, the biographer’s authority.

The book provides an introduction to theatrical biography as an immensely popular genre in the eighteenth century that deserves more scholarly attention. Currently, theatrical biography is usually overlooked or encountered solely in excerpts offered to advance individual research goals; the texts are perceived as repositories of facts or the odd opinion, more akin to a reference work than anything innately artistic. This study’s contribution is to read these biographies in context, exploring their participation in a developing poetics of a new artistic subgenre, from the content of the works and the concerns of its authors to the responses that these biographies elicited from their readers.

Acknowledgments; Introduction: Competition and Legitimacy; Chapter One: “Davies’ Name…In Fame’s Brightest Page Shall on Garrick Attend”: From Anonymous to Personalized Participation in the Life of David Garrick; Chapter Two: His Work, My Words: Three Posthumous Lives of Charles Macklin, Comedian; Chapter Three: Epistolary Resurrections: James Boaden and the Rise of the Professional Thespian Biographer; Epilogue: The Limits of Materially Bound Permanence; Notes; References; Index

Sujets

• HISTORY
• Arts
• Modern history
• 18th century
• Obermodern-Zutzendorf

Informations

• Publié par: Anthem Press
• Date de parution: 15 décembre 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783086689
• Langue: English

Extrait

Staging Memory and Materiality in Eighteenth-Century Theatrical Biography
Anthem Studies in Theatre and Performance
Anthem Studies in Theatre and Performance takes a broad, global approach to cultural analysis to examine and critique a wide range of performative acts from the most traditional forms of theatre studies (music, theatre and dance) to more popular, less structured forms of cultural performance. The twenty-first century in particular has seen theatre and performance studies become a major perspective for examining, understanding and critiquing contemporary culture and its historical roots. In addition to traditional theatre studies, then, the series takes as its subject international folk performances, minstrel and music hall shows, vaudeville, burlesque, ballroom dance, rock concerts, professional wrestling, football and soccer matches, snake charming, American snake-handling religions, shamanism, street protests, Nascar or Formula 1 races, tractor pulls, fortune telling, circuses, techno-mobbing, the gestures of painting and writing, and even the performance that denies itself, that pretends that it is not play(ing). Performance is thus a vital manifestation of culture that is enacted, a form to be experienced, recorded, analysed and theorized. It is among the most useful and dynamic foci for the global study of culture.
Series Editor
S. E. Gontarski – Florida State University, USA
Editorial Board
Alan Ackerman – University of Toronto, Canada
Herbert Blau – University of Washington, USA
Enoch Brater – University of Michigan, USA
Annamaria Cascetta – Università Cattolica, Milan, Italy
Robson Corrêa de Camargo – Universidade Federal de Goiás, Brazil
Stephen A. Di Benedetto – University of Miami, USA
Christopher Innes – York University, Canada
Anna McMullan – University of Reading, UK
Martin Puchner – Harvard University, USA
Kris Salata – Florida State University, USA
W. B. Worthen – Barnard College, Columbia University, USA
Staging Memory and Materiality in Eighteenth-Century Theatrical Biography
Amanda Weldy Boyd
Anthem Press
An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company
www.anthempress.com

This edition first published in UK and USA 2018
by ANTHEM PRESS
75–76 Blackfriars Road, London SE1 8HA, UK
or PO Box 9779, London SW19 7ZG, UK
and
244 Madison Ave #116, New York, NY 10016, USA
© Amanda Weldy Boyd 2018

The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN-13: 978-1-78308-666-5 (Hbk)
ISBN-10: 1-78308-666-1 (Hbk)

This title is also available as an e-book.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments

Introduction: Competition and Legitimacy

Colley Cibber’s Complaint as Generic Demand
Theatrical Biography as a Legitimate Concern
Overview of Chapters
Postscript: Forestalling Objections about the Decidedly Masculine Face of the Biographer
1. “Davies’s Name […] in Fame’s Brightest Page Shall on Garrick Attend”: From Anonymous to Personalized Participation in the Memoirs of the Life of David Garrick

Johnson and Davies
The Earlier Biographies of Garrick
The Main Attraction: Davies’s Memoirs of the Life of David Garrick (1780)
Editorial and Readerly Interventions
Davies as an Enduring Figure of Theatrical Biography
2. His Work, My Words: Anxiety and Competition in the Posthumous Lives of Charles Macklin, Comedian

Establishing Expectations: The Biographer as Artist
Rising to the Biographical Occasion
First Fruits: Congreve’s Authentic Memoirs of the Late Mr. Charles Macklin (1798)
Lines of Competition Embellished: Kirkman’s Memoirs of the Life of Charles Macklin (1799)
An Impressionistic Memoir: Cooke’s “New Species” of Biography (1804)
Macklin, Interrupted: Multiple Threats of Displacement
Extending the Memoirs of Charles Macklin : J. J. Cossart and the Act of Annotating
3. Epistolary Resurrections: James Boaden and the Rise of the Professional Thespian Biographer

James Boaden as “Goodman Delver”
Professional Approaches: Privileging Aural/Textual and Documented Sources
Letters and Collected Personal Archives
Time’s Effects: Boaden between Davies and Campbell
James and John Boaden, Father and Son, Clash over Sister Arts
Epilogue: The Limits of Materially Bound Permanence

Notes
References
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The most difficult part of a book-length undertaking is narrowing down the field of people to whom I am indebted. When you think about the amount of effort on the part of so many people, you realize that every book is a miracle of sorts! I am grateful, then, to have the opportunity to thank many of these miracle-makers who have helped in the fruition of this project.
First, and most immediately, I wish to thank my mentor, Emily Anderson, who guided me through grad school and then into “the real world” and made it look easy. I hope that you see your continued mentorship reflected in this text, and that I have done justice to the hours of discussion about this project that we have shared. I so fondly remember you imitating Colley Cibber’s cry of “A harse, a harse, my kingdom for a harse!” during one of our meetings with such immeasurable zest! May my words and delivery in the upcoming pages be similarly inspired by the exuberance of the eighteenth century and of its present-day fans.
I wish to thank Joseph Dane for his clear-eyed insight, wisecracks, and wisdom, as well as Leo Braudy, Heather James, and Thomas Habinek, all of whom have provided helpful encouragement and criticism. My research skills have greatly benefitted from conversations with Bruce Smith, Rebecca Lemon, Anthony Kemp, and David Roman. I additionally thank the English Department at the University of Southern California (USC), which has funded research projects at the Folger and at the Houghton, as well as numerous conference presentations. I’d like to thank Peter Mancall and the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute for supporting me through a summer fellowship during which I first worked on theatrical biographies of Charles Macklin.
I am appreciative of the assistance of many librarians and library staff who helped me secure materials for this project: USC’s Special Collections, the Houghton Library, the Huntington, and the Folger Library each provided inspiring workplaces in which to interact with the past. My particular appreciation goes to Melanie Leung, the Folger Image Request Coordinator, for her assistance in navigating the use of images for the collage that comprises the cover of this book.
My gratitude goes to Craig Svonkin and his annual Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association (PAMLA) conferences, through which I have gotten key feedback on aspects of the present work. I also celebrate with this project the celebrity/performance studies group at the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS), rather newly formed as an official caucus, for offering a network of scholars whose questions always lead to more questions, as it should be.
It was through a paper given at ASECS that I met Mark Pollard, then a commissioning editor for Pickering and Chatto, who, by showing early and sustained interest in my research on Macklin, led me to consider how my ideas might resonate with a larger audience, and whose enthusiasm for my project led him to find my manuscript a home at his next job with Anthem Press.
I am grateful to Tej P. S. Sood for offering me this opportunity, as well as Katy Miller, Abi Pandey, and the rest of the editorial staff at Anthem for having faith in my project, for designing clear expectations, and for making this adventure in publication so pleasant. I wish also to salute the three anonymous colleagues who provided encouraging and detailed reviews on an early chapter draft, and the three additional anonymous reviewers who commented upon a later full draft: I hope I have done justice to your insights. Additionally, this manuscript has benefitted heartily from the efforts of Annalisa Zox-Weaver and Isabel Stein, delightfully detailed copy editors. I am confident that any errors herein remaining are my own, for which I apologize to the reader, all six reviewers, and to Annalisa and Isabel.
I wish to thank Steven Edgington and Cora Alley at my present institution, Hope International University, for encouraging me as I worked on this project, and to my colleagues at Hope for providing a friendly environment for teaching and thinking. My gratitude goes to Robin Hartman and Katy Lines of the Darling Library for their generous assistance and support.
Among earlier influences that deserve my heartfelt gratitude is Helen Deutsch of UCLA, whose seminar on Alexander Pope illuminated the eighteenth century and introduced me to the joys of archival research. Karen Cunningham was also instrumental in teaching me how to craft a sustained argument and encouraging me to work within m