Theatre and Celebrity in Britain, 1660-2000 (review)

Until recently, biography was one of the most prevalent approaches to theater studies. Approaching the theater primarily through actors, and then only through starring actors, proved intractable prior to the impact of social and cultural history, feminist theory, and postmodernism. Mary Luckhurst and Jane Moody's collection re-evaluates the origins, and selected subsequent instances, of why celebrity became synonymous with actors and how "the discourses of celebrity are central to our understanding of agency, institutional politics and the economic structures of theatrical cultures" (10). Their premise is that fame—based on either notoriety or qualitative exceptionalism, and sometimes both—rather than celebrity has been the category that preoccupied historians. Celebrity, in their view, arises specifically from the interaction of "individuals and institutions, markets and media" (1). They concentrate on the eighteenth century, when fame became characteristically modern through the operation of media that, at the end of the twenty-first century, are still either intact or, if supplanted, function in similar ways. Neither the lexicon nor the strategies are stable or continuous, but it is persuasively demonstrated that celebrity significantly pre-dates cinema.

The editors favor a through-line that emphasizes British nationalist interests. Perhaps more consistently compelling, however, is the challenge Joseph Roach sets out in his chapter about "It": the aura, charm, radiance, magnetism, presence, and attraction of stars that combine with the vulnerability of their bodies. Celebrities with "It" are extraordinary individuals whose "images circulate widely in the absence of their persons" (16) and instill an impression of communion with those who see and admire them. United by such force fields, the celebrants of celebrities evince continuity not only with late-seventeenth-century modes of admiration or regard but also an earlier tradition of wonder and reverence instilled in anyone who admires the saintly or beatified.

Among the seven chapters on actors, only one focuses on the twentieth century. Felicity Nussbaum's overview of the economics of eighteenth-century actresses' celebrity notes the unprecedented opportunities for upward mobility that also made women subject to gossip and scandal. This "public intimacy" (150) put the concept of womanhood at odds with acting, and celebrity adhered to the actress and her part alike: offstage personalities, rather than privacy, resulted when the women's roles could not be regarded separately from her lives. Peter Thomson dubs Colley Cibber (a playwright and manager as well as actor) one of a new type of post-Restoration social climber who successfully bartered fame and commanded social acceptance. The public delighted in thinking of him in opposition to the kinds of roles he performed on stage. A successor at Drury Lane, the indomitable David Garrick, held a place in society through talent and charisma as well as scrupulous image-management, but Garrick won this place through a well-publicized rivalry with James Quin, his elder by two dozen years. Triumphing in a rivalry is not the only way to benefit from it, as Garrick's early career shows, provided that publicity ensues. As Jane Moody observes in her essay on Samuel Foote, the public adjudicates the authenticity of celebrities' fame, and may or may not care how the contest officially comes out. Foote mocked others' desire for fame through mimicry, even employing a butcher to portray Garrick in order to take him down a peg. Flashpoints of anxiety verify the public's recognition of the media's role in controlling "images, institutions, and performances" (84), and Foote illuminated this process through satire. Shearer West's study of Sarah Siddons tracks how this consummate tragedienne achieved celebrity and lasting fame through consistent demonstration of womanly (and later) regal sensibility which, by the same logic that Nussbaum presents, let her stage personae spill into a domestic and dynastic perception of her private self.

Edmund Kean, loathed by Sarah Siddons, catapulted to fame in 1814 when he captured the public and some critics' admiration for a series of Shakespearean roles. This regard—always contentious—shattered in 1825 when he...