David Garrick and the Mediation of Celebrity by Leslie Ritchie (review)

David Garrick and the Mediation of Celebrity is an important intervention in eighteenth-century theatre studies, celebrity studies, and cultural and literary history. By asking how Garrick managed and promoted his brand – rather than why Garrick was a celebrity – Ritchie deftly unpacks the mutually beneficial relationships among theatres, newspapers, booksellers and Garrick himself, painting a picture of a surprisingly contemporary mediascape.

Chapters One and Two, "A View of London's Mediascape" and "Proofs: Garrick's Involvement in the Medias-cape" carefully establish the eighteenth-century media environment – from the physical proximity of the theatres and the printshops to the overlapping audiences for and access to theatres, newspapers and pamphlets. Ritchie forensically unpacks the complicated overlapping spheres of influence and ownership that made up the congers (20-27), those coalitions of booksellers, printers and news organs who "worked independently of each other while also working collectively in defence of mutual interests" (20). Ritchie argues convincingly that Garrick's participation in congers and his investment in newspapers gave him unprecedented control over press cover-age of Drury Lane and his own celebrity. She outlines Garrick's proprietorship in papers including the London Packet, the Public Advertiser, and the St James's Chronicle (45) and the positive press this bought, as well as the circulation of Garrick's poetry, periodical essays, and public letters. Ritchie traces the extent of Garrick's "media reach" (59) and the "transactional links between Garrick" and the media, particularly the mutually-beneficial printing of playbills in the Daily Advertiser (65-67). The two chapters combine to demonstrate the dizzying breadth of media in the mid-eighteenth-century and the extent of Garrick's involvement at every level.

Chapters Three and Four, "Advertising and Brand Garrick" and "A Short History of Negative Publicity", analyse the remarkably consistent language used to praise and damn Garrick, from his "speaking eyes" to his short stature, which "became part of the Garrick brand, but reframed: not as limitation, but as perfection of proportion and concentration of emotionally affecting action" (118). Garrick proves that there is no such thing as bad press, and Leslie notes that he would even create negative publicity as an ""effective marketing tool" (119). Garrick was master of "infinite variety" (101) but he chose to align his brand, and that of Drury Lane, with Shakespeare, and to claim the role of "Shakespeare's best commentator" (94-100).

Chapter Five, "Prompting, Inside and Outside the Theatre", looks at the intertwining representation and reputations of David Garrick and Drury Lane, looking at the role of the prompter and Garrick's post-retirement periodical identity as "the prompter" to prepare and record audience impressions. In this, as in his advertisement of charitable giving, Garrick was keen to direct public opinion and create a favourable impression for Drury Lane while "prompting public memory, supplying the right words to keep his celebrity ever bright" (188).

Ritchie concludes by exploring the world of Garrickiana, from paintings and collectibles to extra-illustrated biographies, of which some are also explored in Chapter Three (113-116). "Garrick, Re-Collected" demonstrates how Garrick controlled the production and circulation of his image to ensure that it "could become popular, yet never downmarket cheap" (214). Garrickiana is the epitome of the overlapping mediascape Ritchie began with, as "poem, print performance and publication vigorously cross-promoted one another" (218). It is this cross-referencing, this mutual reinforcement, that has made Brand Garrick so effective.

Indeed, Ritchie argues that the "consistent application [of Brand Garrick language] in the media continues to influence scholarship" today (89). Ritchie herself is not immune to this. In an analysis of Garrick's deft manipulation of the media to build "audiences' understanding of tragic roles as laborious" (106-7) and "establish Garrick as a rare resource" (126), her focus on Garrick excludes the rest of the theatrical fraternity. For instance, the "principal Character" too fatigued to play for ten nights consecutively in 1759 could have been, as Ritchie...