Table Of Content

Playing Sick Few life occurrences shaped individual and collective identities within Victorian-era society as critically as witnessing or suffering from illness. The prevalence of illness narratives within late nineteenth-century popular culture was made manifest on the period’s British and American stages, where theatri- cal embodiments of illness were indisputable staples of actors’ repertoires. Playing Sick: Performances of Illness in the Age of Victorian Medicine reconstructs how actors embodied three of the era’s most provocative illnesses: tuberculosis, drug addiction, and mental illness. In placing performances of illness within wider medicocultural contexts, Meredith Conti analyzes how such depictions confirmed or resisted salient constructions of diseases and the diseased. Conti’s case studies, which range from Eleonora Duse’s portrayal of the consumptive courtesan Marguerite Gautier to Henry Irving’s performance of senile demen- tia in King Lear, help to illuminate the interdependence of medical science and theatre in constructing nineteenth-century illness narratives. Through recon- structing these performances, Conti isolates from the period’s acting practices a lexicon of embodied illness: a flexible set of physical and vocal techniques that performers employed to theatricalize the sick body. In an age when medical science encouraged a gradual decentering of the patient from their own diag- nosis and treatment, late nineteenth-century performances of illness symboli- cally restored the sick to positions of visibility and consequence. Meredith Conti is Assistant Professor of Theatre at the University at Buffalo, SUNY, USA. A historian of nineteenth-century theatre and performance, Conti’s work has appeared in the Journal of American Drama and Theatre, the Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Studies of Musical Theatre, and Victorian Medicine and Popular Culture (2015). Routledge Advances in Theatre and Performance Studies Performance and Phenomenology Traditions and Transformations Edited by Maaike Bleeker, Jon Foley Sherman, and Eirini Nedelkopoulou Historical Affects and the Early Modern Theater Edited by Ronda Arab, Michelle M. Dowd, and Adam Zucker Food and Theatre on the World Stage Edited by Dorothy Chansky and Ann Folino White Global Insights on Theatre Censorship Edited by Catherine O’Leary, Diego Santos Sánchez & Michael Thompson Mainstream AIDS Theatre, the Media, and Gay Civil Rights Making the Radical Palatable Jacob Juntunen Rewriting Narratives in Egyptian Theatre Translation, Performance, Politics Edited by Sirkku Aaltonen and Areeg Ibrahim Theatre, Exhibition, and Curation Displayed and Performed Georgina Guy Playing Sick Performances of Illness in the Age of Victorian Medicine Meredith Conti Movements of Interweaving Dance and Corporeality in Times of Travel and Migration Gabriele Brandstetter, Gerko Egert and Holger Hartung For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Advances-in-Theatre--Performance-Studies/book-series/RATPS Playing Sick Performances of Illness in the Age of Victorian Medicine Meredith Conti First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Meredith A. Conti The right of Meredith A. Conti to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-1-138-70311-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-20333-1 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India For Milo and Vivian Contents List of figures ix Abbreviations x Acknowledgments xi Introduction 1 PART I Performing consumption 23 1 Rosy cheeks and red handkerchiefs: Performing Camille’s consumption before, during, and after the contagionist turn 25 2 Foreign invasions: The transatlantic consumptives of Sarah Bernhardt and Eleonora Duse 63 PART II Performing drug addiction 87 3 Early dramaturgies of drug addiction in stage adaptations of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Sherlock Holmes 89 4 Master, martyr, monster: The addict archetypes of William Hooker Gillette and Richard Mansfield 116 PART III Performing mental illness 141 5 The madwoman in the theatre: Normalizing the disordered female mind in Ellen Terry’s Lyceum repertoire 143 viii Contents 6 Neurotic princes and enfeebled kings: Stigmatizing male mental illness in Henry Irving’s mad roles 175 Conclusion 207 Index 213 Figures 1.1 Communicable diseases spread by household and street dust 34 1.2 TCS 2 (Modjeska, Helena as Camille) 42 2.1 “Sarah dies all over the place” 68 2.2 TCS 2 Bernhardt, Sarah as Marguerite Gautier in ‘La dame aux camé lias’ 69 2.3 Eleonora Duse, 1893 76 3.1 “Smoking Opium” 94 4.1 “William Gillette as Sherlock Holmes as produced at the Garrick Theatre, New York” 117 4.2 “Richard Mansfield as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” 117 5.1 Leç on clinique à la Salpê triè re, Pierre-André Brouillet, 1887 153 5.2 Miss Ellen Terry as “Ophelia” 159 5.3 Miss Ellen Terry as “Ophelia” 160 5.4 Lady Macbeth, “Here’s the smell of blood still” 164 6.1 Photograph of Henry Irving as Mathias in The Bells, Lyceum Theatre, 1871 181 6.2 Scene from “King Lear” at the Lyceum Theatre 193 6.3 “Rather Mixed. Mr. Irving as Ophe-Lear” 196