Mimicry, Property, and the Reproduction of Celebrity in Eighteenth-Century England

As copyright protection became increasingly linked to authorship in the public consciousness over the course of the eighteenth century, artists, musicians, and performers began to wonder what other sorts of creative labor might be rewarded with legal protection against unauthorized reproductions. This essay takes up that question in relation to the theatre. Focusing on the relationship between the century's two most famous mimics, Samuel Foote and Tate Wilkinson, I argue that in what has often been called "the age of the actor," performance and celebrity were valued by many theatrical professionals as forms of intellectual property. Mimicry, in turn, became one of the most threatening modes of piracy. Wilkinson reproduced (and profited from) the older mimic's performance style and celebrity body, and his layered mimicry challenged Foote's sole control over his image and undermined the notion that celebrity might be "ownable" as property.