Abstract

This essay examines three performances of Joseph Addison’s Cato (1713), each of which allegorizes George iii at different points in his life, in order to explore the relation of forgetting to the repertoire. I look at a famous 1812 portrait of John Philip Kemble in the role of Cato, painted by Thomas Lawrence, in order theorize a notion of “half-history,” and then turn to an earlier production of Addison’s play at the Prince of Wales’s residence at Leicester House in 1747. The future George iii , then age eleven, performed in this play as Cato’s son Portius, and I argue that the prologues and epilogues constitute a political future in opposition to George ii ’s rule that resonates with the Prince of Wales’s political predicament. The essay next considers the famous performance of Cato at Valley Forge. Following the reading of these two private theatricals, I argue that Kemble’s revival of the play in the winter of 1811 reorients the allegory yet again in order to explore the complex politics of George iii ’s madness and the Regency Bill of 1811. Kemble’s intervention in the play was “half-historical” in precisely the way presented in Lawrence’s painting.

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