New Readings in Theatre History by Jacky Bratton (review)

Reviews JACKY BRAlTON. New Readings in Theatre History. Theatre and Performance Series. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. xi + 238, illus· trated. £40.00 (Hb); £ 16.99 (Pb). Reviewed by lim Davis. University o/ Warwick Jacky Bratton's indispensable and often provocative study, which provides new and alternative readings of nineteenth·century English theatre, encourages not only a re-interpretation of the theatrical past but also an interrogation of the way in which British theatre history came to be written and recorded in the first place. The book is divided into two sections. The first provides an overview of current issues in theatre historiography and a background to the remainder of the study, a series of closely argued case studies. The first section focuses particularly on London theatre prior to and after the passing of the first Reform Bill and the Report of the Select Committee on Dramatic Literature in 1832. Bratton initially demonstrates how we can reassess nineteenthcentury performance culture through reading playbills for more than factual detail. Not only do playbills from the 1830S reveal the struggle between legitimate drama and spectacle at the patent theatres, they also provoke us to dispute established readings of the decline of the drama and to question the negative critical representation of spectacle. They confirm the complexity of London theatre in the 1830S, the inter-theatricality of offerings at different theatres, and the emergence of new theatres in the City and the suburbs, as demographics changed. Bratton believes that our current historiography of the theatre derives from the early nineteenth century but suggests that theatre was undermined by a growing respect for the autonomy of the artist and by Bulwer Lytton and a group of radical authors. Reform of the stage may have been part of the radiMode ,." Drama, 47:1 (Spring 2004) 149 150 REVIEWS cal agenda, but Bratton convincingly demonstrates that this agenda was elitist in its assumptions. She charts the growth of an implicit assumption that the drama was in a state of decline and needed to be reclaimed for and by the middle classes as a means of voicing the attitudes of the radical intelligentsia. Bratton's analysis of the 1832 Select Committee on Dramatic Literature shows how loaded its agenda was: in particular, its deployment of theatre history and of theatre historians like John Payne Collier as key witnesses strongly emphasized the literary, rather than the theatrical, antecedents of the drama, while its questioning pushed those interrogated towards answers assuming the decline and decay of the drama and of public taste. The case studies, which are the focus of the second half of the book, commence with a discussion of anecdote and storytelling, with a particular emphasis on mimicry. Bratton analyses Ann Mathews' memoir of her husband, the actor Charles Mathews, and later abridgements of the memoirs by Frederick Yates, examining how such mediations and interventions become part of the hegemonic process through which theatre history is transmitted. Particularly interesting is the way Bratton traces the use of solo performance by Mathews and others to facilitate autobiographical comment on the external and stage worlds. For actors, this autobiographical process often involves anecdote and impersonation; this was true of Mathews, whose perfonnance of mUltiple identities on and off the stage was perhaps "an attempt to deal with insecurities of the individual role and group identity" (104). Yet, even if Mathews used performance and autobiography to construct rather than reveal his own identity, his imitations of old actors may have contributed, through transmission of the past, to a collective theatrical memory and history. Mathews also brings into sharp focus the binary opposition often imposed between the feeling actor and the mimic. While some might seek to discredit mimicry, it is a form of transmission. The performances of Mathews (or Fanny Kelly, who also figures in this section) may have a value for historians, just as their anecdotes and those of their fellow actors provide implicit, as opposed to authenticated , meaning. Bratton also considers the division between art and entertainment, between high and low culture, and demonstrates how the reformers of the I 830S used the notion of inferior, popular performance to contrast it with the more enlightened mission of...