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Intimacy and Celebrity in Eighteenth-Century Literary Culture pp 83–107Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Garrick, Dying

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Abstract

This chapter considers the relationship between celebrity and mortality. Since the publication of Joseph Roach’s work on public intimacy and the “it-effect” of “abnormally interesting people”, numerous critics have explored how “It” has “to do with sex”. But few have followed Roach’s hints at the fact that “It”, like the Freudian id, also has something to do with death. Using a variety of examples from the life of David Garrick, the chapter argues that, through the performance of death onstage and offstage, in his own scenes and in those made by others, this actor used intimations of his own mortality to establish a powerful social status, a peculiar kind of public intimacy which both guaranteed his living celebrity and helped establish posthumous glory.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Jean-Georges Noverre, Letters on Dancing and Ballets, trans. Cyril W. Beaumont (London: Beaumont, 1930), 83–84.

  2. 2.

    Ibid., 83–84; for the original French, see: Jean-Georges Noverre, Lettres Sur La Danse et Les Ballets (Paris: Delaroche, 1760), 215–17.

  3. 3.

    My translation. The original French is as follows: “Pourquoi ne puis-je causer avec vous une demie heure, et vous voir dans les morceaux terribles de cette admirable tragédie? … Mon âme s’efforce en composant de prendre vos vigoureuse attitudes, et d’entrer dans la profondeur énergique de votre génie”. David Garrick, The Private Correspondence of David Garrick with the Most Celebrated Persons of His Time Now First Published from the Originals, and Illustrated with Notes, and a New Biographical Memoir of Garrick, ed. James Boaden, vol. 2 (London: Colburn and Bentley, 1831), 608–9.

  4. 4.

    My translation. The original German is as follows: “Jetzt hatte jeder Winkel Deutschlands seinen Garrik”. Johann Friedrich Schink, Dramaturgische Fragmente, vol. 1 (Graz: Widmanstättenschen Schriften, 1781), 154.

  5. 5.

    Joseph Roach, It (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007), 36; see: Ernst Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957).

  6. 6.

    Roach, It, 36.

  7. 7.

    Ibid.

  8. 8.

    Joseph Roach, “Public Intimacy: The Prior History of ‘It’,” in Theatre and Celebrity in Britain, 1660–2000, ed. Mary Luckhurst and Jane Moody (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 15–30 (24).

  9. 9.

    Roach, It, 37.

  10. 10.

    Ibid., 1.

  11. 11.

    Ibid., 44; for further discussion of the erotic side of this equation, see: Elaine M. McGirr’s chapter in this collection.

  12. 12.

    Ibid.

  13. 13.

    Ibid., 226–27.

  14. 14.

    Ibid., 227.

  15. 15.

    William Shakespeare, Bell’s Edition of Shakespeare’s Plays, ed. Francis Gentleman, vol. 1 (London: Cornmarket, 1969), 69n.

  16. 16.

    Ibid.

  17. 17.

    For more on the use of the tragic carpet, including promptbook evidence that it was placed onstage at the start of act five, see: Kalman A. Burnim, David Garrick, Director (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh, 1961), 124–25.

  18. 18.

    Michael Dobson, The Making of the National Poet: Shakespeare, Adaptation and Authorship, 1660–1769 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 37–38.

  19. 19.

    Shakespeare, Bell’s Edition of Shakespeare’s Plays, 1969, 1: 69n.

  20. 20.

    William Davenant, Davenant’s Macbeth from the Yale Manuscript, ed. Christopher Spencer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961), 70.

  21. 21.

    David Garrick, The Plays of David Garrick, Volume 3: Garrick’s Adaptations of Shakespeare, 1744–1756, ed. Harry William Pedicord and Fredrick Louis Bergman (Carbondale: SIU Press, 1981), 72.

  22. 22.

    Vanessa Cunningham, Shakespeare and Garrick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 58–59.

  23. 23.

    Thomas Otway, The History and Fall of Caius Marius, a Tragedy, as It Is Acted at the Duke’s Theatre (London: Flesher, 1680), 63.

  24. 24.

    William Shakespeare, Bell’s Edition of Shakespeare’s Plays, ed. Francis Gentleman, vol. 2 (London: Cornmarket, 1969), 150.

  25. 25.

    For an account of Garrick’s authorial involvement in plays, see: Peter Holland, “David Garrick: ‘3dly, as an Author’,” Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 25, no. 1 (1996): 39–62.

  26. 26.

    John Brown, Athelstan: A Tragedy, as It Is Acted at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane (Dublin: Ewing, Faulkner, Exshaw and James, 1756), 69.

  27. 27.

    This summary was based on data about Garrick’s roles found in: David Garrick, The Poetical Works of David Garrick, Esq. Now First Collected into Two Volumes with Explanatory Notes (London: Kearsley, 1785), xlvi–xlvii.

  28. 28.

    Garrick appeared twice as Richard III in his farewell season of 1775–1776, once by royal command. See: Ian McIntyre, Garrick, 2nd ed. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2000), 562–63.

  29. 29.

    Marvin A. Carlson, The Haunted Stage: The Theatre as Memory Machine (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003), 7.

  30. 30.

    For a detailed explanation of each of these kinds of ghosting, using Garrick’s mentor, Charles Macklin, as an example, see: Carlson, 85, 92.

  31. 31.

    Thomas Davies, Memoirs of the Life of David Garrick, vol. 2 (London: Davies, 1779), 117–18.

  32. 32.

    Margaret L. Mare and William H. Quarrell, trans., Lichtenberg’s Visits to England as Described in His Letters and Diaries (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1938), 10.

  33. 33.

    Helfrich Peter Sturz, Schriften von Helfrich Peter Sturz (Leipzig: Weidmann, 1786), 11–12.

  34. 34.

    John Alexander Kelly, German Visitors to English Theaters in the Eighteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1936), 40; The original German is as follows: “Ich sah ihn einst nach vollendeter Rolle Richards, wie den sterbenden Germanicus auf Poußins Bilde hinterrücks auf einer Ruhebank gelehnt, mit zeichender Brust, bleich, mit Schweißtropfen bedeckt, und mit herabgesunkener, behender Hand, ohne Sprache.” Sturz, Schriften von Helfrich Peter Sturz, 15.

  35. 35.

    David Garrick, The Letters of David Garrick, ed. David M. Little and George M. Kahrl, vol. 1 (London: Oxford University Press, 1963), 837–38.

  36. 36.

    My translation. The original German is as follows: “sie verlangen den Mann [Garrick] kennen zu lernen”. Sturz, Schriften von Helfrich Peter Sturz, 9.

  37. 37.

    Roach, “Public Intimacy: The Prior History of ‘It’,” 16.

  38. 38.

    Ibid.

  39. 39.

    Ibid.

  40. 40.

    Charles Gildon, The Life of Mr. Thomas Betterton, the Late Eminent Tragedian (London: Gosling, 1710), 63.

  41. 41.

    Jean-François Marmontel, “Déclamation Théâtrale,” in Encyclopédie Ou Dictionnaire Raisonné Des Sciences, Des Arts et Des Métiers, Par Une Société de Gens de Lettres, ed. Robert Morrissey (Chicago: ARTFL Encyclopédie Project, 2013), http://encyclopedie.uchicago.edu/.

  42. 42.

    Felicity Nussbaum, “Actresses and the Economics of Celebrity, 1700–1800,” in Theatre and Celebrity in Britain, 148–68 (150).

  43. 43.

    Ibid., 151.

  44. 44.

    Antoine Lilti, Figures publiques: L’invention de la célébrité (Paris: Fayard, 2014), 12–15; An English translation of Lilti’s work has recently been completed: Antoine Lilti, The Invention of Celebrity: 1750–1850, trans. Lynn Jeffress (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2017).

  45. 45.

    Davies, Memoirs of the Life of David Garrick, 2: 347–48.

  46. 46.

    Arthur Murphy, The Life of David Garrick, Esq, vol. 2 (London: Wright, 1801), 149.

  47. 47.

    Ibid., 2: 149–50.

  48. 48.

    Ibid., 2: 334–35.

  49. 49.

    Ibid., 2: 335.

  50. 50.

    Ibid., 2: 201.

  51. 51.

    Public Advertiser, 26 January 1779.

  52. 52.

    Joseph Roach, “Celebrity Culture and the Problem of Biography,” Shakespeare Quarterly 65, no. 4 (2014): 474.

  53. 53.

    Ibid.

  54. 54.

    David Garrick, Westminster Abbey, www.westminster-abbey.org/our-history/people/david-garrick, accessed 18 February 2016.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Newcastle, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

    James Harriman-Smith

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  1. Department of English, King’s College London, London, United Kingdom

    Emrys D. Jones

  2. Independent Scholar, Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom

    Victoria Joule

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Harriman-Smith, J. (2018). Garrick, Dying. In: Jones, E., Joule, V. (eds) Intimacy and Celebrity in Eighteenth-Century Literary Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76902-8_5

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