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The Monster in Theatre History; by Michael Chemers Format: Demy (138 ×216 mm); Style: Supp; Font: Bembo; Dir: Y:/2-Pagination/TandF/MTH_RAPS/ApplicationFiles/ 9781138210899_text.3d; Created: 25/04/2017 @ 15:02:24 THE MONSTER IN THEATRE HISTORY DISTRIBUTION Monsters are fragmentary, uncertain, frightening creatures. What happens when they enter the realm of the theatre? The Monster in Theatre History exploresFOR the cultural genealogies of monsters as they appear in the recorded history of Western theatre. From the Ancient Greeks to the most cutting-edge new media, Michael Chemers focuses on a series of ‘key’ monsters, including Frankenstein’s creature, werewolves, ghosts, and vampires, to reconsider what monsters in performance might mean to those who witness them.NOT This volume builds a clear methodology for engaging with theatrical monsters of all kinds, providing a much-needed guidebook to this fascinating hinterland. Michael Chemers is an Associate Professor of Theater Arts at UC Santa Cruz. PROOFS T&F The Monster in Theatre History; by Michael Chemers Format: Demy (138 ×216 mm); Style: Supp; Font: Bembo; Dir: Y:/2-Pagination/TandF/MTH_RAPS/ApplicationFiles/ 9781138210899_text.3d; Created: 25/04/2017 @ 15:02:24 DISTRIBUTION FOR NOT PROOFS T&F The Monster in Theatre History; by Michael Chemers Format: Demy (138 ×216 mm); Style: Supp; Font: Bembo; Dir: Y:/2-Pagination/TandF/MTH_RAPS/ApplicationFiles/ 9781138210899_text.3d; Created: 25/04/2017 @ 15:02:24 THE MONSTER IN THEATRE HISTORY This Thing of Darkness DISTRIBUTION FOR Michael Chemers NOT PROOFS T&F The Monster in Theatre History; by Michael Chemers Format: Demy (138 ×216 mm); Style: Supp; Font: Bembo; Dir: Y:/2-Pagination/TandF/MTH_RAPS/ApplicationFiles/ 9781138210899_text.3d; Created: 25/04/2017 @ 15:02:24 First published 2018 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 © 2018 Michael Chemers The right of Michael Chemers to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him 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 utilized 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 trademarksDISTRIBUTION or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Every effort has been made to contact copyright-holders. Please advise the publisher of any errors or omissions, and these will be corrected in subsequent editions. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data FOR A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data [CIP data] ISBN: 978-1-138-21089-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-138-21090-5 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-45409-2 (ebk) NOT Typeset in Bembo by Taylor & Francis Books PROOFS T&F The Monster in Theatre History; by Michael Chemers Format: Demy (138 ×216 mm); Style: Supp; Font: Bembo; Dir: Y:/2-Pagination/TandF/MTH_RAPS/ApplicationFiles/ 9781138210899_text.3d; Created: 25/04/2017 @ 15:02:24 In Memoriam: Gene Wilder (1933–2016) for bringing a loving Frankenstein full circle DISTRIBUTION FOR NOT PROOFS T&F The Monster in Theatre History; by Michael Chemers Format: Demy (138 ×216 mm); Style: Supp; Font: Bembo; Dir: Y:/2-Pagination/TandF/MTH_RAPS/ApplicationFiles/ 9781138210899_text.3d; Created: 25/04/2017 @ 15:02:24 DISTRIBUTION FOR NOT PROOFS T&F The Monster in Theatre History; by Michael Chemers Format: Demy (138 ×216 mm); Style: Supp; Font: Bembo; Dir: Y:/2-Pagination/TandF/MTH_RAPS/ApplicationFiles/ 9781138210899_text.3d; Created: 25/04/2017 @ 15:02:25 CONTENTS DISTRIBUTION List of figures ix Foreword xi Mike Carey FOR Acknowledgements xvi Introduction: the dramaturgy of empathy 1 Why study monsters? 5 The act of fear 10 NOT The monster as surrogate 13 1 Caliban’s legacy 21 How to hunt monsters: the seven theses for the stage 27 2 Prometheus the thief 43 Monstrous transgressions 45 Regarding parenting 47 The modernPROOFS Prometheus 48 3 Presumption 54 “———” 55 The prerogative of God 64 T&F The Monster in Theatre History; by Michael Chemers Format: Demy (138 ×216 mm); Style: Supp; Font: Bembo; Dir: Y:/2-Pagination/TandF/MTH_RAPS/ApplicationFiles/ 9781138210899_text.3d; Created: 25/04/2017 @ 15:02:25 viii Contents 4 The vampire trap 70 Back from the dead 71 The rise of Ruthven 73 Angels of Hell 78 Wicked souls, wise purposes 83 The love that is death 86 The haemosexual agenda 91 5 Toys are us 98 The uncanny 98 The Jew’s monster 100 The Golem on the pulpit 105 An angel come too late 114 The techno-legacy of the Golem 116 DISTRIBUTION 6 Boo 121 Phantom history 121 Who’s there? 123 The spectre of war 127 FOR Aristotle, revenant 129 The Romantic geist 134 7 Hairey Betwixt 145 The werewolf problem 146NOT Horrifying transformations 147 Lupus est homo 156 Conclusion 163 Defense against the dark art 163 Bibliography 172 Index 181 PROOFS T&F The Monster in Theatre History; by Michael Chemers Format: Demy (138 ×216 mm); Style: Supp; Font: Bembo; Dir: Y:/2-Pagination/TandF/MTH_RAPS/ApplicationFiles/ 9781138210899_text.3d; Created: 25/04/2017 @ 15:02:25 FIGURES DISTRIBUTION 1.1 Stephano, Trinculo, and Caliban dancing; detail from Johann Heinrich Ramberg’s The Tempest, II. Source: Cornell University Library.FOR 22 1.2 Charles A. Buchel’s depiction of Herbert Beerbohm Tree as Caliban, from Shakespeare’s Comedy The Tempest (London: J. Miles & Co, 1904). Courtesy of the British Library. 24 1.3 Djimon Hounsou as CalibanNOT in Julie Taymor’s Tempest (2010). © Touchstone Pictures. 25 1.4 Poster for “Der evige Jude” exhibition (1937) 34 1.5 Anti-Semitic propaganda poster produced by Nazi Germany’sPropagandaministeriumfordistributionin Russia (1943) 35 1.6 Roy Eric Peterson, caricature of Osama bin Laden (2003) 36 3.1 Nathan Whittock’s drawing of T. P. Cooke as the Demon and James William Wallack as Frankenstein in Presumption;PROOFS or, the Fate of Frankenstein, English Opera House (1823). Housed at the Harvard Theatre Collection, the Houghton Library. 59 T&F The Monster in Theatre History; by Michael Chemers Format: Demy (138 ×216 mm); Style: Supp; Font: Bembo; Dir: Y:/2-Pagination/TandF/MTH_RAPS/ApplicationFiles/ 9781138210899_text.3d; Created: 25/04/2017 @ 15:02:25 x List of figures 3.2 Front cover of the first edition of Richard Brinsley Peake’s Presumption; or, the Fate of Frankenstein. Dicks’ Standard Plays, 1823. 60 7.1 Zodiac Man. MS. Ashmole 391, part V. fol. 9r, Bodleian Library, Oxford. 157 DISTRIBUTION FOR NOT PROOFS T&F The Monster in Theatre History; by Michael Chemers Format: Demy (138 ×216 mm); Style: Supp; Font: Bembo; Dir: Y:/2-Pagination/TandF/MTH_RAPS/ApplicationFiles/ 9781138210899_text.3d; Created: 25/04/2017 @ 15:02:25 FOREWORD Mike Carey DISTRIBUTION Monsters have always been with us, but in the modern world they are an obsession. It has never been easier to make one or to become one. In that sense, as in a great many others,FOR this book feels both timely and topical. It is also, it must be said, so vast in potential scope that it curves around to embrace and engulf much of our shared culture and our social discourse. Faced with a potentially infinite frame of reference, Michael Chemers has chosen as his central focus monstersNOT in theatrical performance. “When a monster is not merely discussed or represented but performed,” he tells us in his prefatory remarks, “it enters [an] embodied realm.” Performance, seen from this point of view, is different from other creative endeavours because it summons the monster into our presence, into the physical space we occupy, and thereby makes possible an imaginative and emotional confrontation that is often lost or evaded in other narrative contexts. I found myself thinking, as Michael defined his terms of reference and set out his analytical tools, of a performance of The Tempest I saw in London ten years ago, directed by Rupert Goold. Goold’s Prospero was vividly and poignantly portrayedPROOFS by Patrick Stewart, but it was Julian Bleach’s Ariel that electrified me. Summoned by his master, he rises out of a garbage bin in which a fire has been set – and rises, and rises, and continues to rise, until he towers over Prospero and has to lean down, bending in what seem to be all the wrong places, to hear his commands. T&F The Monster in Theatre History; by Michael Chemers Format: Demy (138 ×216 mm); Style: Supp; Font: Bembo; Dir: Y:/2-Pagination/TandF/MTH_RAPS/ApplicationFiles/ 9781138210899_text.3d; Created: 25/04/2017 @ 15:02:25 xii Foreword Normally, when The Tempest is performed, Ariel is not the monster. Here he was most definitely monstrous, and as such he became the walking, talking representation of the moral compromises Prospero has made for his art, for his power. The terrible temptation that he eschews when, at the end of the play, he chooses to break his staff and drown his book. I’ve never thought of the play the same way since. That performance irrevocably changed the conceptual terrain for me. So I welcome – and feel as though I will greatly profit from – a critical investigation that leans upon the performative aspects of monster narratives. I should offer a disclaimer at this point. My own professional experience almost completely excludes performance (the “almost” in that sentence representing two radio plays and a movie screenplay).