Spectacular Disappearances: Celebrity and Privacy, 1696-1801

294 Pages·2016·27.22 MB·English

by  Julia H. Fawcett

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Spectacular DiSappearanceS
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Spectacular
Disappearances
Celebrity and Privacy,
1696– 1801
Julia H. Fawcett
University of Michigan Press
Ann Arbor
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Copyright © 2016 by Julia H. Fawcett
All rights reserved
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form
(beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and
except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publisher.
Published in the United States of America by the
University of Michigan Press
Manufactured in the United States of America
c Printed on acid- free paper
2019 2018 2017 2016 4 3 2 1
A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978– 0- 472– 11980– 6 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN 978– 0- 472– 12180– 9 (e-book)
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Acknowledgments
I have often wondered if my interest in authors who wrote themselves in order
to obscure themselves stems from my own anxieties about the permanence
of the printed word—m y own longing (that I imagine everyone shares?) for
words that linger on the page for a moment only and then— miraculously,
mercifully— disappear before their inadequacies can be exposed. I think I will
always harbor this anxiety, but I have been blessed with mentors, colleagues,
friends, and family members who have known how to couch their criticism
in kindness and without whom I could never have summoned the courage to
keep this work up or to set these words down.
The germs for this book’s ideas began many years ago, when, as an under-
graduate at Harvard, I stumbled somewhat accidentally (to fulfill a require-
ment) into Lynn Festa’s course on “Sex and Sensibility during the Enlighten-
ment.” Thank goodness for requirements. That course is one of the reasons
I decided, years later, to study the eighteenth century. I owe a debt, too, to
Beth Lyman, my undergraduate thesis advisor and the first to introduce me
to performance theory.
I arrived at Yale believing I would study Gertrude Stein, and I often joke
that I decided to study the eighteenth century because that’s what all the cool
kids at Yale were doing. People who knew those kids know how infectious
their enthusiasm for their subject can be, and how much truth there is in
the joke. My advisors, Joe Roach and Jill Campbell, reminded me of the kind
of scholar I wanted to be. By asking generative questions, Jill helped me to
write the book I was trying to write, and everything I was struggling to say in
early drafts she has helped me to say better. Joe’s ebullient personality, sense
of humor, and limitless generosity constantly remind me why I got into this
profession in the first place. His love for the literature he reads, the perfor-
mances he watches, and the job he does (not to mention the Marlon Brando
impression with which he lightened the mood at my prospectus defense) is
infectious and has sustained me even when the obstacles seem insurmount-
able and the rewards small.
My professors Ala Alryyes, Wendy Lee, Claude Rawson, Katie Trumpener,
and Elliott Visconsi offered me advice and support in the classroom and out-
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vi | acknowledgments
side of it, on the dissertation and beyond. My fellow graduate students Dan
Gustafson, James Horowitz, Daniel Jump, Heather Klemann, Hilary Menges,
Lina Moe, Nichole Wright, and especially Andy Heisel provided a support-
ive community at and between our Eighteenth- Century Working Group ses-
sions. I had the good fortune in graduate school to feel welcome within not
one field, but two; I owe gratitude as well to the Performance Studies Working
Group and especially to Joe Cermatori, Emily Coates, Miriam Felton-D ansky,
Jason Fitzgerald, Jacob Gallagher- Ross, Chris Grobe, Dominika Laster,
Paige McGinley, Madison Moore, John Muse, Alex Ripp, and Ariel Watson.
Marc Robinson, Katie Trumpener, and Brian Walsh went above and beyond
the call of duty by reading and commenting on substantial portions of the
dissertation- in- progress. So, too, did Linda Peterson, whose scholarship on
Mary Robinson and whose cheerful support undoubtedly helped to make this
project what it is. Sadly, Linda passed away as this book was in production;
she will be greatly missed.
My original cohort at Yale could not have been more supportive: a spe-
cial thank you to Liz Appel, Sam Cross, David Currell, Mahni Ghorashi, Lau-
ra Miles, Fiona Robinson, Jesse Schotter, and Steve Tedeschi. When they
weren’t available, I found an extremely welcoming (and hilarious) adoptive
cohort in Sam Fallon, Len Gutkin, Matt Hunter, Andrew Karas, Tom Koe-
nigs, Sebastian Lecourt, Sarah Mahurin, Tessie Prakas, Natalie Prizel, Aaron
Ritzenberg, Justin Sider, and Joe Stadolnik, Thanks, too, to Erica Sayers and
Ruben Roman, who never ran out of Hershey’s kisses.
The intellectual communities that have supported this project extend far
beyond Yale. At Stanford, where I spent a year as a visiting student, John
Bender, Blakey Vermuele, and Peggy Phelan welcomed me into their class-
rooms, their colloquia, and their conversations. Nathalie Phillips, James
Wood, and especially Doug Jones and Derek Miller were generous with their
thoughts, their time, and their friendship.
These communities include, too, those that cross institutional boundaries
but are sustained by Joe Roach’s influence and by the shared strangeness of
studying performance within literature departments. I am especially grate-
ful to Emily Anderson, Misty Anderson, Paula Backscheider, Jason Shaffer,
and Stuart Sherman for their thoughtful comments on the work in progress.
Conversations with and talks by Robin Bernstein, Laura Engel, Elaine Mc-
Girr, Felicity Nussbaum, Nick Salvato, and Sharon Setzer added greatly to my
understanding of my topic in particular and literary and performance studies
in general. Joe’s dedication in using a Mellon Foundation grant to fund Inter-
disciplinary Performance Studies at Yale gave performance studies scholars
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acknowledgments | vii
in New Haven a community within and outside of our home departments.
The program also gave me a postdoctoral fellowship that allowed me to con-
tinue my research after graduating, and for that, too, I am extremely grateful.
I have been fortunate to discover a wonderful institutional home at Ry-
erson University in Toronto, and I owe a deep gratitude to my colleagues in
the English Department— especially Jason Boyd, Jennifer Burwell, Dennis
Denisoff, Wendy Francis, Irene Gammel, Morgan Holmes, Lorraine Janzen
Kooistra, Nima Naghibi, Luanne MacDonnell, Andrew O’Malley, Dale Smith,
Sophie Thomas, and Monique Tschofen— as well as beyond the English
Department— especially Ben Barry and Peggy Shannon. Colleen Derkatch
and Laura Fisher deserve special thanks for their support, their humor, their
fashion advice, and their wide- ranging knowledge of Toronto cocktail bars. In
addition, I have benefitted from my proximity, in Toronto, to several other
great universities and their faculty members’ and graduate students’ gener-
osity and time. Special thanks to Brian Corman, Simon Dickie, Alex Hernan-
dez, Tom Keymer, Laura Levin, Danny O’Quinn, Fiona Ritchie, Terry Robin-
son, David Francis Taylor, Marlis Schweitzer, and Katie Zien. Thanks, also,
to the members of the Toronto Performance Studies Working Group and the
Eighteenth- Century Working Group, both of which have provided a rich in-
tellectual community for me in Toronto.
A two- week stint at the Mellon School for Theater and Performance at
Harvard University at a critical moment allowed me better to put the issues I
address in this book into context. The members of my cohort that year were
insightful and inspiring. I owe a special thanks to Martin Puchner for found-
ing the School, to Rebecca Kastleman for making sure it ran so smoothly, and
to Andrew Sofer for his invaluable comments on my manuscript.
LeAnn Fields, my editor at Michigan, has provided a home not only for
this book but for so many like it that don’t fit neatly into categories of per-
formance studies, theater history, or literary studies. The field wouldn’t be
what it is today without her vision and support. I am grateful, as well, to
my anonymous readers, and to Christopher Dreyer, Marcia LaBrenz, and
the entire staff of the University of Michigan Press. My fabulous research
assistant, Kate Jefford, worked diligently and quickly to prepare the man-
uscript for publication; and my indexer, Daniel Gundlach, approached his
task with endless patience and admirable diligence. An essay based on parts
of Chapter 1 appeared as “The Over-E xpressive Celebrity and the Deformed
King: Recasting the Spectacle as Subject in Colley Cibber’s Richard III,” PMLA,
126.4 (October 2011): 950- 965. Parts of Chapter 3 were published as “Creat-
ing Character in ‘Chiaro Oscuro’: Sterne’s Celebrity, Cibber’s Apology, and the
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viii | acknowledgments
Life of Tristram Shandy,” The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation 53.2
(Summer 2012): 141-1 62. I appreciate the thoughtful comments and careful
attentions of both journals’ readers and editors, particularly Jean Howard,
Patricia Yaeger, and Nancy Vickers. Fellow members of the Yale Eighteenth- /
Nineteenth Century Colloquium and the Yale British Studies Colloquium as
well as of the American Society for Eighteenth- Century Studies, the Ameri-
can Society for Theater Research, American Theater in Higher Education, and
Performance Studies International commented on and influenced this work
in its early stages.
I am grateful to the archivists, curators, and staffs of the libraries where
I conducted much of the research for this project: the Beinecke Library at
Yale University, the Lewis Walpole Library at Yale University (especially Su-
san Odell Walker and Cynthia Roman), Yale University Libraries, Stanford
University Libraries, Belmont Public Libraries, the New York Public Library,
Ryerson University Libraries, and the Thomas Fisher Rare Books Library at
the University of Toronto. Thanks, also, to the staffs of the coffee shops that
allowed me to sit for long hours with laptop and library books: Blue State
and Booktraders (New Haven), Vineapple (Brooklyn), and Seven Grams and
Ezra’s Pound (Toronto).
All of these places and crossings have introduced me to countless friends
and confidantes whose influence over this work is indirect but no less import-
ant for being so. In Toronto and beyond: Tushar Arora, Jo Baron, Teresa Be-
jan, Amanda Hollingworth, Sameer Farooq, Mandy Goodwin, Jess Prince, Ali
Qadeer, Belinda Schubert, Lee Slinger, Penny Smith, Morgan Sonderegger,
Nick Stang, Heather Stewart, Erin Stropes, Anna Treusch, David Weinfeld,
Isla Whitford, Nathan Whitford, Brad Wong, my Y Ladies and my friends at
the Ramsden dog park; and especially the Cesare- Schotzko family (Nikki, Da-
vid, Leo, and Duncan), Kavitha Krishnamurthy, Ronit Rubinstein, and Larry
Switzky. In New York: Alison Cherry, Colleen Clark, Josh DeFlorio, Colleen
Egan, Mike Hines, Wally Novacich-D eFlorio, and the Novacich family. In New
Haven: Priyanka Anand, Cynthia Chang, Lucy Currell, Ben Siracusa Hillman
and Betty Luther Hillman, Jamie O’Leary, Francis Song, Nikki Strong, and
Owen Wolfram. In the Bay area: Davey Hathorn and Kathy Lee, the Ghorashi
family, and especially Jeff Lamont. And in Cambridge: Laura Perry, Tess Mul-
len, Julia Reischel, and Heather Thomason for realizing women could run a
theater company (imagine!) and the Six-H eaded Monster (Ellen Ching, Can-
dice Cho, Christine Mulvey, Lauren Sirois, and Laura Yilmaz) for pretty much
everything. Thank you.
Finally, there are a few friends missing from the lists above because they
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