Celebrity, Performance, Reception British Georgian Theatre as Social Assemblage

By 1800 London had as many theatre seats for sale as the city's population. This was the start of the capital's rise as a centre for performing arts. Bringing to life a period of extraordinary theatrical vitality, David Worrall re-examines the beginnings of celebrity culture amidst a monopolistic commercial theatrical marketplace. The book presents an innovative transposition of social assemblage theory into performance history. It argues that the cultural meaning of drama changes with every change in the performance location. This theoretical model is applied to a wide range of archival materials including censors' manuscripts, theatre ledger books, performance schedules, unfamiliar play texts and rare printed sources. By examining prompters' records, box office receipts and benefit night takings, the study questions the status of David Garrick, Sarah Siddons and Edmund Kean, and recovers the neglected actress, Elizabeth Younge, and her importance to Edmund Burke.

Introduction: theatre, performance and social assemblage theory; 1. Theatrical assemblages and theatrical markets; 2. Georgian performance and the assemblage model; 3. Theatrical celebrity as social assemblage: from Garrick to Kean; 4. Celebrity networks: Kean and Siddons; 5. A working theatrical assemblage: 1790s representations of naval conflict; 6. Theatrical assemblage populations: the Turkish ambassador's visits to London playhouses, 1794; 7. Historicising the theatrical assemblage: Marie Antoinette and the theatrical queens; 8. The regulatory assemblage: The Roman Actor and the politics of self-censorship; Conclusion; Appendix: actor-network theory.

David Worrall is Professor of English at Nottingham Trent University. He is the author of Theatric Revolution: Drama, Censorship and Romantic Period Subcultures, 1773–1832 (2006), The Politics of Romantic Theatricality: The Road to the Stage (2007) and Harlequin Empire: Race, Ethnicity and the Drama of the Popular Enlightenment (2007). He has held fellowships from the Leverhulme Trust, Lewis Walpole Library, Folger Shakespeare Library and Huntington Library, and the Library Company of Pennsylvania.