Performing Dark Arts: A Cultural History of Conjuring

282 Pages·2007·3.836 MB·English

by  Michael Mangan

Performing Dark Arts: m
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A Cultural History of Conjuring n
By Michael Mangan g
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n P E R F O R M I N G
Magic and conjuring inhabit the boundaries and the
borderlands of performance. The conjuror’s act of P
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demonstrating the apparently impossible, the uncanny, rfo { D A R K }
the marvellous, or the grotesque challenges the rm
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spectator’s sense of reality. n
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Michael Mangan holds the {
It brings him or her up against their own assumptions
Chair in Drama at Exeter
about how the world works; at its most extreme, it asks University. His main research D
the spectator to re-evaluate his or her sense of the limits interests lie in theatre and A R T S
society – more specifically,
of the human. Performing Dark Arts is an exploration of the A
he has published in the
paradox of the conjuror, the actor who pretends to be a
subjects of theatre and gender,
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magician. It aims to illuminate the history of conjuring by Shakespeare and Renaissance
examining it in the context of performance studies, and to theatre, the cultural history
of popular performance, K
throw light on aspects of performance studies by testing
and contemporary British
them against the art of conjuring. The book examines not
theatre. He has also worked A
only the performances of individual magicians from Dedi as a playwright, a director, a
A C U L T U R A L H I S T O R Y
to David Blaine, but also the broader cultural contexts literary manager, a dramaturg R
in which their performances were received, and the and an actor. o f C O N J U R I N G
meanings which they have attracted. T
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‘This is an erudite book which wears its scholarship lightly and is a
pleasure to read. Complex theoretical frameworks are introduced in ways }
that will make them accessible to the general reader, and the book’s
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argument opens up new implications and applications for the study of magic
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as performance...’ – Roberta Mock, Department of Theatre and o U
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Performance, University of Plymouth C T
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ISBN 978-1-84150-149-9
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intellect PO Box 862 Bristol BS99 1DE UK / www.intellectbooks.com 9 781841 501499 B y M I C H A E L M A N G A N
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Performing Dark Arts
A Cultural History of Conjuring
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Performing Dark Arts
A Cultural History of Conjuring
Michael Mangan

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First Published in the UK in 2007 by
Intellect Books,PO Box 862,Bristol BS99 1DE,UK
First Published in the USA in 2007 by
Intellect Books,The University of Chicago Press,1427
E.60th Street,Chicago,IL 60637,USA
Copyright ©2007 Intellect
All rights reserved.No part of this publication may be reproduced,stored in a
retrieval system,or transmitted,in any form or by any means,electronic,
mechanical,photocopying,recording,or otherwise,without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-84150-149-9 / Electronic ISBN 9781841509853 / ISSN 1753-3058
Series:Theatre and Consciousness
Series editor:Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe
Already published in the series:
Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe,Theatre and Consciousness:Explanatory Scope and Future
Potential(2005)
Cover Design:Gabriel Solomons
Copy Editor:Holly Spradling
Typesetting:Planman Technologies
Printed and bound by HSW Print,UK.
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Contents
Preface and acknowledgements vii
Introduction:magic and performance ix
Chapter One
Binaries:early attitudes to conjuring 1
Chapter Two
‘The evil Spirit has a hand in the Tricks of these Jugglers’:
conjuring and Christian orthodoxy 19
Chapter Three
‘Fire and faggot to burn the witch’? Conjuring between
belief and unbelief in early modern England 31
Chapter Four
On the margins:criminals and fraudsters 62
Chapter Five
On the boundaries of the human 76
Chapter Six
Acting and not-acting:Robert-Houdin 97
Chapter Seven
Before your very eyes:life,death and liveness 116
Chapter Eight
Narrative ambiguity and contested meanings:
interpreting Harry Houd ini 140
Chapter Nine
Mediums and the media 162
Chapter Ten
Magic,media and postmodernism 172
Endnotes 196
Bibliography 233
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Preface and acknowledgements
This project started in the Department of Theatre, Film and Television at the
University of Wales, Aberystwyth, with a suggestion from my editor, Daniel
Meyer-Dinkgräfe. It ended at the University of Exeter, not only with this book but
also with the accompanying play The Inner Child’s Compendium of Magic
(available on DVD from the Arts Documentation Unit, Exeter EX4 6JA UK). On
the way it passed through De Montfort University, Leicester. In all of these places,
and elsewhere, I have received invaluable help from friends and colleagues. Some
have lent me books, videos and other magical material. Others have pointed me in
directions that I would not otherwise have travelled in. Still others have offered
thoughts, criticism, suggestions, feedback and many other kinds of professional
and personal support.
I had ventured into the field of magic history a few years before, and a section
of Chapter Three appeared, in a much earlier version, in Performance Research
1: 3 (1996). This has now been significantly changed and updated. A section of
Chapter Eight was first given as a keynote paper at the conference What A
Man’s Gotta Do? Masculinities On Stage, UNE @ Shafston, Brisbane (April
2004). That original paper is to be included in a forthcoming volume of the
same name, based on the conference proceedings and edited by Adrian
Kiernander. I have received valuable advice and encouragement from the editors
of both these publications. Sections of the book have also been delivered at
research seminars and public talks in Exeter and Bristol.
Of the individuals who have helped me in various ways, I am particularly
grateful to Roland Clare for being in at the start; to Zara and Rachael for their
unfailing support; to Sarah Dadswell for the Magic Circle deck of cards and for
her insightful thoughts on Indian conjurors; to Gabriella Giannachi, Lesley
Wade, Tess Buckland, Jon Primrose, Mike Wilson for pointing out to me and/or

lending me books and other resources; to David Ian Rabey for suggestions about
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell; to Derren Brown for an impromptu
interview in a school corridor; to John and Patrick Mangan for the trip to the site
of Houdini’s plane flight at Digger’s Rest; to Roberta Mock for her insightful
criticisms; and to Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe for his careful and encouraging
editorial work.
I am grateful, too, to various groups of people who have made the experience
of working on the history of magic easier, richer and more pleasurable: to those
members of the production teams with whom I worked on the BBC’s six-part
History of Magic series, who astounded and inspired me with their command
of a complex field of research; to the original cast of The Inner Child’s
Compendium of Magic: Jane Milling, Chris McCullough, Bella Merlin, James
McLaughlin, Steve Cockett, Lucy Mitchell and Lizzie Pennington, and, in
particular, Sarah Goldingay, who designed and produced the show and was a
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PERFORMING DARK ARTS
continual source of stimulating ideas. Thanks, too, to the Drama Research
Committee of Exeter University and the Theatre, Film and Television Studies
Department at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, both of whom contributed
to the research costs; to the staff and curators of the various libraries and
collections which I have consulted – in particular those at the British Library,
Cambridge University Library, the National Library of Wales, Exeter
University Library, the Harry Price Collection and the Bill Douglas Collection.
I owe a special debt to José Antonio Gonzalez, aka Marko, the Panamanian
magician whom I have never met but whose online archive, The Learned
Pig Project, is an essential resource for all those interested in the history and
practice of magic.

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Introduction: magic and performance
The first thing a student of magic learns is that there are books aboutmagic and
books of magic… Magicians, as we know from Jonathan Strange’s maxim, will
quarrel about any thing, and many years and much learning has been applied to
the vexed question of whether such and such a volume qualifies as a book of
magic. But most laymen find they are served well enough by this simple rule:
books written before magic ended in England are books of magic, books written
later are books about magic. The principle, from which the layman’s rule of
thumb derives, is that a book of magic should be written by a practising
magician, rather than a theoretical magician or a historian of magic.
Susannah Clarke, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell1
Any good trick is accomplished by our imagination. Any great trick involves our
own beliefs about the meaning of life.
Burger and Neale2
‘Sometimes such are called conjurers…’
Most words change their meanings over time, but some are particularly slippery
and hard to pin down. This is not always a bad thing. On the contrary, it may be
that these are the words that point us towards areas where something important
is happening on a cultural level. Words which have the most complex, or even
contradictory nuances and connotations, are, perhaps, most likely to be those
words which refer to things that a culture deems important.3 The words with
which this study is centrally concerned – ‘conjuror’, ‘magic’ and ‘magician’ –
belong to this group. We use them today in everyday speech to refer to a
performer of illusions on the stage or on the street, but in other contexts they

mean a practitioner of darker arts. Broadly speaking, before the eighteenth
century the terms ‘magician’ and ‘conjuror’ (like the words ‘wizard’ and
‘warlock’ and their female counterpart ‘witch’) were reserved for those who
practised, or were seen to practise, the black arts, while terms such as ‘juggling’
and ‘legerdemain’ referred to the entertainer. As one early writer on magic,
conjuring, juggling and witchcraft put it: ‘Sometimes such are called conjurers…
Sometimes jugglers are called witches. Sometimes also they are called
sorcerers’.4 In current use, both ‘conjuror’ (or ‘conjurer’) and ‘magician’ are
used to refer to one who performs tricks and sleights in order to entertain.
American usage tends to prefer ‘magician’; British English tends towards
‘conjuror’ – but both are acceptable.5 The degree of semantic complexity, and
even confusion, which we find in these terms is significant, not least because it
reminds us that the conjuror constantly confronts us with questions of our own
beliefs about the world.
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