STAGING THE PAGE:

GRAPHIC CARICATURE IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND

BY

HOPE C. SASKA

A.B. WHEATON COLLEGE, 1997

A.M. BROWN UNVERSITY, 2003

A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE

REQUIREMENTS OF THE DEGREE DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

IN THE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE

AT BROWN UNIVERSITY

PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND

MAY 2009 © 2009 by Hope C. Saska

VITA

Hope Saska was born in Waterbury, Connecticut in 1974. From 1993-1997 she

attended Wheaton College, Norton, Mass. where she received an undergraduate degree in

art history. Hope began her graduate studies in the Department of History of Art and

Architecture at Brown in the fall of 1999. She received her Master of Arts degree in May

2003 with a thesis titled, “Napoleon and the Purge of Europe: Scatological Satire of

Napoleon I.” In this project Hope studied graphic satirical caricatures of Napoleon I. and explored the use of medical metaphor by satirists who attempted to ‘cure’ the body of

Napoleon by administering purgatives to caricatures of the emperor. She also argued that the images of Napoleon as a crazed and ill ruler were used to express anxiety over

George III, King of England, who was himself suffering from porphyria, a disease that caused severe disorientation and bouts of insanity.

While at Brown, Hope received financial support from the Department of History of Art and Architecture and the Graduate School in the form of travel and research grants, proctorships and teaching assistantships. She was awarded a travel grant from the

Department of Renaissance and Early Modern Studies and received research grants from the Yale Center for British Art; The Lewis Walpole Library; and The Caroline and Erwin

Swann Foundation for Caricature and Cartoon.

iv As a graduate proctor for the John Hay Library and the Center for Digital

Initiatives at Brown, Hope organized and provided content for the University’s on-line

database of Napoleonic caricatures and satires from the Ann S. K. Brown Military

Collection. Committed to working with objects in a collections setting, she also proctored at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art and at the David Winton

Bell Gallery, Brown University. Hope also participated in the first annual graduate

student symposium at Brown and organized the second annual symposium with Jessica

Barr in the Department of Comparative Literature

While working to complete her dissertation, Hope held a Samuel H. Kress

Curatorial Fellowship at the Lewis Walpole Library, where she worked to create a database to track artworks formerly in Horace Walpole’s collection at Strawberry Hill,

Twickenham. At this time she also provided research support for an exhibition devoted to Walpole at the Yale Center for British Art (2009) and at the Victoria & Albert

Museum, London (2010). Hope is currently an Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Fellow in the Department of Prints, Drawings and Photographs at the Detroit Institute of Arts.

v

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Although the process of writing a dissertation often feels solitary, the writer is never truly works alone and is indebted to her community of mentors, colleagues, family, and friends for their support and guidance. I would like to first thank my advisor, Dian

Kriz, for her attentive reading and apt criticism of this project. The conversations we have had about eighteenth-century British art have enriched every aspect of this project and have guided my development as an art historian. Evelyn Lincoln encouraged my interest in popular print culture from my very first graduate seminar paper written in her class on the work of James Gillray; her comments and criticism have greatly enhanced my work from my first project at Brown, to my last. Joseph Roach has been a generous and enthusiastic reader whose comments on this dissertation have grounded my understanding of theater and theories of acting in the eighteenth-century.

The Department of History of Art and Architecture and the Graduate School at

Brown provided material support in the form of teaching assistantships and proctorships.

The bulk of the research I conducted at Brown was enhanced by the collections and staff of the John Hay Library at Brown who made the rich collections of the university available to me and did much heavy lifting in the process. In particular I wish to thanks

Andy Moul and Peter Harrington, who conveyed multiple volumes to the study room and back again.

vi My research and writing has been generously supported by fellowships at the

Yale Center for British Art; The Lewis Walpole Library, and the Caroline and Erwin

Swann Foundation at the Library of Congress. These institutions have come to feel like homes away from home. I want to thank the entire staff of The Lewis Walpole Library, especially Maggie Powell, Director, and Cynthia Roman, Curator of Print, Drawings and

Paintings, who enthusiastically supported my research interests. Special thanks also to

Martha Kennedy at the Library of Congress, who made my research as a Swann

Curatorial Fellow a delight. And finally, a note of thanks to the Detroit Institute of Arts

and the Andrew W. Mellon foundation, which allowed me to assume an Andrew W.

Mellon Curatorial Fellowship while in the final stages of my dissertation. Nancy Sojka,

Curator of Prints, and Associate Curator, Nancy Barr, have patiently supported my work

and have on many occasions pulled me from the eighteenth century into the twenty-first.

The love of my family has made everything in my life possible. My parents,

Barbara and Gene, and sisters Maggie and Elizabeth, have provided extraordinary

encouragement and generosity. A network of friends have buoyed my morale and

provided distraction when I needed it the most. Among my friends at Brown who have

been academic role models, makers of tea, and pourers of wine, I want to especially thank

Tanya Sheehan, Jessica Barr, Lilian O’Brien, and Joseph Silva. Anne Charron and Jodi

Schmidt have remained stalwart cohorts though my graduate student years. And, last, but

not least, thanks to Keith Hinzman and to Ringo Saska, who both delight in reminding

me that sometimes the most important thing in life is the pleasure found in good company

and in good food.

vii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Vita page iv

Acknowledgements vi

List of Figures ix

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 Whose Character? 24

Chapter 2 “This Exaggerating Force”: Gesture on the Stage and Page 78

Chapter 3 The Laughing Audience and the Lecture on Heads 140

Conclusion 194

Figures 200

Bibliography 251

viii

LIST OF FIGURES

I.1 James Mc Ardell after Benjamin Wilson, Garrick as Hamlet, mezzotini, n.d., Library of Congress, Department of Prints and Photographs.

I.2 James Gillray, A Voluptuary Under the Horrors of Digestion, 1972, hand colored etching, The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.

1.1 William Hogarth, Characters & Caricaturas, 1743, engraving, reproduced in Paulson 1965, pl. 174.

1.2 William Hogarth, The Laughing Audience, 1733, engraving, reproduced in Paulson 1965, pl. 136.

1.3 William Hogarth, A Chorus of Singers, 1732, engraving, reproduced in Paulson 1965, pl. 133.

1.4 William Hogarth, Scholars at a Lecture, 1736/7, engraving, reproduced in Paulson 1965, pl. 154.

1.5 William Hogarth, The Company of Undertakers,1736/7, engraving reproduced in Paulson 1965, pl. 155.

1.6 William Hogarth after James Thornhill?, Four Heads from the Raphael Cartoons at Hampton Court, 1729, engraving, reproduced in Paulson 1965, pl. 120.

1.7 William Hogarth, Characters and Caricaturas, detail.

1.8 Pier Leone Ghezzi, Thomas Bentley, 1725-6, etching, National Portrait Gallery, London.

1.9 William Hogarth, The Bench, first state, 1758, engraving, reproduced in Paulson 1965, pl. 266.

1.10 William Hogarth, Plate I, The Analysis of Beauty, detail, 1753, reproduced in Paulson 1965, plate 211.

1.11 George Townshend, The Recruiting Serjeant or Brittannias Happy Prospect 1757, etching, reproduced in Donald, 49.

ix

1.12 William Hogarth, The Bench, fourth state, 1758, engraving, reproduced in Paulson 1965, pl. 227.

1.13 Clarles Le Brun, Le Rire : tête vue de face, pen, ink, and black chalk (?), ca. 1668- 1690, Musée du Louvre, Département des Arts Graphiques.

1.14 Charles Le Brun, La Colere, (Anger), pen and black ink, ca. 1668-1690, Musée du Louvre, Département des Arts Graphiques.

1.15 Charles Le Brun, La Tranquilité (Tranquility), pen and brown ink, ca. 1668-1690, Musée du Louvre, Département des Arts Graphiques.

1.16 Jonathan Richardson, Alexander Pope, oil on canvas, ca. 1737, National Portrait Gallery, London.

1.17 Thomas Rowlandson & G. M. Woodward, Anger, 1800, hand colored etching, The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.

1.18 Thomas Rowlandson & G. M. Woodward, Laughter, 1800, hand colored etching, The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.

1.19 Thomas Rowlandson & G. M. Woodward, Horror, 1800, hand colored etching, The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.

1.20 M. Darly, Title Page, A Book of Caricaturas, 1779, etching, The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.

1.21 M. Darly, Straightlined Carrics & Angular Carrics, 1779, etching, The Lewis Walpole Library.

1.22 M. Darly, Ogee Carrics & External Circular Carrics, 1779, etching, The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.

1.23 Francis Grose, Rules for Drawing Caricaturas, Plate I, 1788, etching, The John Hay Library, Brown University.

1.24 William Hogarth, Five Orders of Perriwigs, 1761, engraving, reproduced in Paulson 1965, pl. 230.

1.25 Francis Grose, Rules for Drawing Caricaturas, Plate II, 1788, etching, The John Hay Library, Brown University.

1.26 Thomas Rowlandson, Public Characters, 1801, hand colored etching, The Library of Congress.

x 2.1 William Hogarth, The Analysis of Beauty, Plate I, The Statuary's Yard, 1753, engraving, reproduced in Paulson 1965, pl. 210.

2.2 William Hogarth, The Analysis of Beauty, Plate II, The Country Dance, 1753, engraving, reproduced in Paulson 1965, pl.e 211.

2.3 William Hogarth, The Ogee Molding, (Fig. 119), The Analysis of Beauty, Plate II, The Country Dance, detail.

2.4 William Hogarth, engraved by S. Ravenet, Marriage A-la-Mode, Plate IV, 1745, reproduced in Paulson 1965, pl. 271.

2.5-.6 William Hogarth, The Key to the Dance, (fig.71) and The Minuet (fig. 122) Analysis of Beauty, Plate II, The Country Dance, details.

2.7 Paul Sandby, Puggs Graces, Etched from His Original Daubing, 1758, etching, The Library of Congress.

2.8-.9 William Hogarth, The Samaritan Woman (fig. 74) and Sancho Panza (fig. 75), from The Analysis of Beauty, Plate II, The Country Dance, details.

2.10 William Hogarth, The Gentle Smile and Laughter (figs. 108 & 109), from The Analysis of Beauty, Plate II, The Country Dance, 1753, details

2.11 “Annibale Scratch,” Theatrical Portraiture, No 1. Henry V, 1789, etching, Houghton Library, Harvard University.

2.12 Anonymous, The Theatrical Ranter, 1794, etching, The Lewis Walpole Library.

2.13 “Annibale Scratch,” Theatrical Portraiture, No. 3, What Nature Ought to Be, 1789, etching, Houghton Library, Harvard University.

2.14 Thomas Rowlandson, The Pigeon Hole, 1811, hand colored etching, The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.

2.15 Thomas Rowlandson, Comedy in the Country/Tragedy in London, 1807, hand colored etching, The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.

2.16 “Annibale Scratch,” Theatrical Portraiture, No. 2, A Monstrous Elegant Attitude, 1790, etching, Houghton Library, Harvard University.

2.17 M. Darly, St. James’s Macaroni, 1772, etching, The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.

2.18 M. Darly, The Lilly Macaroni, 1771, etching, The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.

xi

2.19 Annibale Scratch, Theatrical Portraiture No. 6, How to Harrow Up the Soul, etching, 1790, Houghton Library, Harvard University.

2.20 Reproach, from Henry Siddon’s Practical Illustrations of Gesture and Action 1822.

2.21 Thomas Rowlandson, Mrs. Siddons, Old Kemble, and Henderson Rehearsing in the Green Room, 1789, etching, The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.

2.22 John Bell, Kemble as Cato from Bell’s British Theatre (2nd Edition), 1793, reproduced in West, 55.

2.23 False Gesture, illustrations from Henry Siddon’s Practical Guide to Rhetorical Gesture, 1822

2.24 Anon., Dramatic Action Illustrated, 1818, hand colored etching, The Library of Congress.

2.25 “Annibale Scratch,” Theatrical Portraiture, No. 4, An Actor of QUICK Conceptions, 1790, etching, Houghton Library, Harvard.

3.1 Anonymous, The Lecture on Heads, from “The Universal Museum and Complete Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure” (Sept, 1765), engraving, reproduced in Kahan, plate 7

3.2 William Hogarth, Enthusiasm Delineated, c. 1761, engraving, reproduced in Paulson 1965, pl. 231

3.3 William Hogarth, Credulity, Superstition, and Fanaticism, 1762, engraving, reproduced in Paulson 1965, pl. 232.

3.4 Anonymous (Thomas Trotter after James Fox?), Lecture on Heads, Frontispiece, 1785, etching, reproduced in Kahan, pl. 1.

3.5 Thomas Rowlandson, after Woodward, Lecture on Heads, Frontispiece, 1808, etching, The Library of Congress.

3.6 Thomas Rowlandson, The Boxes, 1809, hand colored etching, The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.

3.7 E. Topham, The Macaroni Print Shop, 1772, etching, The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.

3.8 J. R. Smith, Miss Macaroni and her Gallant at a Print Shop, 1773, mezzotint, The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.

xii 3.9 Anon, publ. Paul Roberts, Caricature Shop, 1801, hand colored etching, The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.

3.10 Thomas Rowlandson, after Woodward, Tail Piece, ca. 1807-14, John Hay Library, Brown University.

xiii

INTRODUCTION

The generality of the world, are only capable of discovering character, when it has received its due form, and has been theatrically finished; but there are none, except such as are pressed with a genius for comedy that are capable of discerning this character as long as the particular strokes which are necessary for discerning it, remain blended and confused in an infinite variety of discourses and actions… a man that is born without a comic genius properly improved, is as incapable of distinguishing those characters, as a person without a genius for painting, is unable to discern which are the most proper objects in nature for the exercise of his profession.1

William Cooke, The Elements of Dramatic Criticism, 1775

William Cooke advises that those who wish to represent character on stage must from the first possess the talent to detect, and then to portray its nuances with clarity and

confidence. He likens the individual with a “comic genius” to a person with a “genius for

painting,” capable of discerning appropriate subjects for representation from his or her

surroundings. Whereas the “generality of the world” can only recognize character after

someone else has caused it to be “theatrically finished,” the individual with “comic

genius” is endowed with the ability to parse the “blended and confused” actions and

behaviors of a living individual in order to arrive at the essential, “particular strokes” of

character. Cooke’s assertion that great comics are those who can perceive the essentials

1 William Cooke, The Elements of Dramatic Criticism, Containing an Analysis of the Stage under the Following Heads, Tragedy, Tragi-Comedy, Comedy, Pantomime, and Farce. With a Sketch of the Education of the Greek and Roman Actors; Concluding with Some General Instructions for Succeeding in the Art of Acting (London: G. Kearsley, 1775), 155.

1 2 of character among the many unimportant gestures and peculiarities in a person, and also extract this element and represent it clearly to the rest of the world, lie at the heart of this study, which explores the complex intermedial conversation between the creation and reception of graphic caricature and satire and the performance of stage comedies.

The eighteenth-century use of the word character was so highly charged that

William Hogarth felt compelled to complain, “perhaps even the word character, as it

relates to form, may not be quite understood by everyone, tho’ it is frequently used; nor do I remember to have seen it explained any where.”2 The problem of personal character

– how to define, interpret, and project it – was a point of intense debate amongst artists, writers, and actors throughout the eighteenth century. Character could be, and was, employed to describe such disparate elements as moral qualities, facial features, or fictional figures in drama or literature. Was character located in the emotional private depths of the body, waiting to excavated for viewers by one of Cooke’s natural comic geniuses, or was it a combination of self-conscious surface display and purposefully performed public attitude? These questions form the basis of this study, which attempts to uncover how character was perceived and put to work in eighteenth-century cultural productions.

Comic art forms adopted the adage fronti nulla fides (there is no trust in appearances) from the Roman satirist Juvenal to express a distrust of physiognomic attempts to read character. Such a declaration also promoted the claims caricaturists and comic actors made to reveal the truth about their subject’s nature by demonstrating the ways in which appearances could be deceiving. Negotiating the relationship between

2 William Hogarth, The Analysis of Beauty, Ronald Paulson, ed. (1753; New Haven: Published by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art by Yale University Press, 1997), 70.

3 internal qualities and the bodily expression of character was a feat for actors and artists alike who were charged with demonstrating often complex facets of personality through facial expression, posture, gesture and, especially important for stage actors, tone of voice. Many actors became inextricably linked to the kinds of roles they presented on stage; audiences flocked to the theater to see actors who performed feats of embodiment nightly. One of the most reproduced and discussed linkages between actor and character is the case of David Garrick, whose performance of Hamlet at the moment he displayed shock at seeing his father’s ghost became a high point in his career.3 The gesture of

surprise Garrick made while staggering away from the specter was so highly praised in

reviews of the actor’s performance that the moment became a popular subject for

engravings, as illustrated here by James McArdell’s much sought after mezzotint after

Benjamin Wilson (figure 1). Isolated on the page, Garrick reels with away from the horrific sight; his arms are outstretched in a gesture of refusal, his legs are tense, already turning underneath him and ready to flee the scene. The battlements of Elsinore loom behind the actor, who is framed by the imposing façade; the stormy weather is indicated by the flags flapping on turrets and the ship’s sails in the harbor beyond. McArdell’s mezzotint captures the moody atmospheric drama of Wilson’s painting and uses deep velvety tones to describe Garrick’s costume, set off at the wrist and neck by the his white shirt underneath the coat. The stark white of the actor’s shirt calls attention to the two most important features of the painting, the face and hands. Audience members

3 To heighten the emotion of the scene, Garrick engaged Perkins, a hair-dresser and wig-maker, to craft a mechanical wig that, when activated, would create the effect of his hair literally standing on end. This astounding prop, like many Garrick used in his career, was another element that made the performance truly memorable. Joseph Roach has discussed this bit of stage craft as a serious attempt on the part of the actor to enhance the presentations of the passions on stage. See Roach, The Player’s Passion: Studies in the Science of Acting (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1993) 58-60.

4 commented on the way in which the emotion of scene seemed to radiate from Garrick’s body through the theater.4 The supreme bodily control that Garrick exerted over his

facial features – furrowed bow, curling lip and staring eyes – and his limbs testifies to the

actor’s talent. In fact, these elements of acting call the absent ghost into being. The fame

of Garrick’s performance on stage was disseminated in print, which resulted in the craze

actually to see Garrick as Hamlet, who was then expected to repeat the famous lines and

gestures that brought to life the image on paper. As I discuss in the second chapter, some

actors became so associated with their roles that an attempt to step out side these “lines of

business” prompted harsh judgment from the audience and critics in the form of hoots,

catcalls in the theater and parody in satirical caricature in the press.

Graphic satirists like James Gillray and Thomas Rowlandson achieved similar

fame for their ability to caricature prominent figures; Gillray’s George III as bumpkin

“Farmer George,” or Rowlandson’s representations of Napoleon Bonaparte as “Little

Boney,” are analogous feats of embodiment and interpretation since the artist’s autograph

drawing style is so prominent in each of these caricatures. Just as actors became

associated with the characters they portrayed on the stage, the distinctive drawing

techniques of leading graphic artists also earned them renown for their ability to

caricature the news-makers of the day.

Because comedy occupied the bottom rungs of the hierarchy of genres, graphic

satires and stage comedies were accorded a certain level of freedom in expression and

latitude for experimentation that other works like stage tragedies, portraiture, and history

painting were not. Academic doctrine dictated that only the higher genres, history

4 Ibid., 58.

5 painting and tragedy, should represent universal themes and ideas; therefore both were grounded in classical and Renaissance aesthetic principles. The themes and narratives treated in these compositions reflected the lofty goals of the higher genres – to address,

inspire and unite a public of disinterested men and encourage them to promote the public

good.5 To do so, history paintings featured idealized bodies set in lush landscapes or in

architectural settings meant to evoke the Italian countryside or the iconic sites of ancient

Rome. Although the comic genres had the mandate of correcting social ills through

rebuke, comedies were generally concerned with the follies and fashions of contemporary

life and therefore had a special relation to modern character. Moreover, the comic genres

represented the broad range of social types and classes who circulated in the public and

private spaces of eighteenth-century London. Because of their timeliness and

preoccupation with the personalities and pastimes of contemporary Londoners, graphic

caricatures and theatrical comedies were uniquely situated to address growing interest

and concern over the construction and representation of character.

By exploring the intermedial conversation between stage and page, this study

challenges traditional accounts of the history of graphic caricature in England. Even now

such accounts tend to track caricature on a trajectory that begins as an artist’s game in

late sixteenth-century Rome with Annibale Caracci, and is adopted in the seventeenth-

century by Gianlorenzo Bernini, whose spirited line drawings of Roman dignitaries

inspired the caricatures of Pier Leone Ghezzi.6 Following this narrative, the art of

5 For the development of civic humanism in eighteenth-century British painting promoted by the Royal Academy of Arts, see John Barrell, The Political Theory of Painting from Reynolds to Hazlitt: ‘The Body of the Public’ (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986).

6 Most recently this history has been rehearsed by Ameila Rauser in Caricature Unmasked: Irony, Authenticity and Individualism in Eighteenth-Century English Prints (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2008); and Diana Donald The Age of Caricature: Satirical Prints in the Reign of George III

6 caricature, strictly speaking, developed in Italy and was ultimately brought to England by

Grand Tourists who associated the playful art with their travels.7 English artists, like

Joshua Reynolds, who aspired to history painting painted caricatures while in Italy and

did little to promote the art in England lest it interfere with their artistic goals. Thomas

Patch, another famed English caricaturist working in Italy also painted caricatures (some

on very large canvases) of English milordi on the Grand Tour. From thence, this

expressive portrait format, popular amongst fashionable members of the upper classes,

reached a broader public through print publications like Arthur Pond’s engravings of

caricatures by Ghezzi, the Caracci and Leonardo (ca. 1743).8 According to standard accounts of caricature, the eighteenth-century apogee of the genre is thus achieved in the political satires of Gillray and in the social comedies of Rowlandson.

This version of the history of caricature, which tracks the transmission of the genre from Italy reveals only one side of the story of caricature in eighteenth-century

England. After all, both Gillray and Rowlandson were both cast by late eighteenth- century critics and modern scholars not as the anointed descendents of Ghezzi, but as the native sons of William Hogarth, a satirical engraver who disparaged caricature and practiced it very rarely.9 I argue that the connection formed between Hogarth and late

(London: Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art by Yale University Press, 1996). See also James Sherry, “Four Modes of Caricature: Reflections upon a Genre,” Bulletin of Research in the Humanities, 87:1 (1986-1987) 29-62, 36. The study of caricature in the 20th and 21st centuries is indebted to the work of Ernst Gombrich and Ernst Kris in Caricature (London: King Penguin Books, 1940).

7 Diana Donald reminds that the tradition of comic likeness “had deeper roots in England than has been appreciated” and in fact arrived in the mid seventeenth-century in Wencesclaus Hollar’s engravings made after Leonardo da Vinci’s grotesques in the collection of the Earl of Arundel passed onto the British print market. Donald, 11-12.

8 Pond’s work is known as: A Collection of Early Caricatures Engraved from the Works of Pietro Leone Ghezzi and Others (London [ca. 1743])

7 century caricaturists had less to do with an inherited tradition of physiognomic caricature copied from Italian models– although theses artists excelled on that count – and more to do with the compositional models and scenic cues of Hogarth’s social satires. Hogarth’s aptitude for characterization and the lively narrative structure of his engraved satires of modern life were adopted by many modern satirists, and came to distinguish graphic satires and caricatures throughout the eighteenth-century. Hogarth claimed: “my Picture was my Stage, and men and women my actors, who were by Mean[s] of certain Actions and express[ions] to Exhibit a dumb shew,” showing that for him graphic productions were akin to theatrical performance.10 By thinking of the figures in his works as actors,

Hogarth set a standard for late eighteenth-century caricature in which figures who were

meant to model particular characteristics were given to us “theatrically finished.”

Any focus on the history of caricature strictly within the history of two

dimensional works overlooks this broader context for the development of the genre in the

eighteenth century. Moreover, such a focus drowns out the variety of cultural

conversations, in which eighteenth-century artists and viewers participated. From

Hogarth forward, comedic prints in general, and graphic caricature in particular, shared

strategies of character representation with theatrical comedy. Oversized gestures,

outlandish costume and makeup, and exaggerated poses and actions constituted the

performance of comic character on the stage and also on the page. Brightly colored sets

and costumes, the dramatic use of light, quick actions, and catch phrases or exclamations

9As Mark Hallett has shown, Gillray was deeply influenced by Hogarth’s satirical compositions and often used them for models in his own works. Mark Hallett, James Gillray: The Art of Caricature, exh. cat. (London: Tate Gallery, 2001), 29-32.

10 Hogarth, William. The Analysis of Beauty with the Rejected Passages from the Manuscript Drafts and Autobiographical Notes, Joseph T. A. Burke, ed., (1753; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955), 209.

8 (graphically rendered in speech bubbles or as titles and captions) are other common features of print and stage comedy. And, finally, the stage and page gravitated toward the same subset of character types; the fashionable coquette, the self-absorbed beau, and the blustery patriarch all made regular appearances whether on stage in comedies of high- life, or in satires and caricatures that featured theatrically finished images of the Duchess of Devonshire, the Prince of Wales, or George III.

The exact nature of the relationship between caricature and portraiture remains a knotty problem. Physiognomic caricature is essentially a portrait genre, one that exaggerates for comic effect by focusing on and exaggerating the particular features of the subject. Portraiture, on the other hand, tends to minimize (without erasing) salient physical attributes so that the sitter conforms to an attractive ideal or recognizable model of admirable public behavior. In describing how academicians should approach this genre Joshua Reynolds advised portrait painters that to “raise and improve [the] subject” they must “approach a general idea” and “leave out all the minute breaks and particularities in the face,” changing “the dress from a temporary fashion to one more permanent.”11 Reynolds noted that producing precise likeness is especially trying since

“it is very difficult to ennoble the character of a countenance but at the expense of the

likeness.”12 Although caricature and portraiture may seem to operate on opposite ends

of the spectrum – the one produced to produce laughter, the other admiration or affection

– neither strives to create an exact record of the subject. Whereas most portraits are

concerned primarily with physiognomic portrayal, whether exaggerated or not, caricature

11 Joshua Reynolds, Discourses on Art, Robert Wark, ed. (1768-1790; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 72.

12 Ibid, 72.

9 is just as concerned with the exaggerated performance of the figure – not only are the facial expressions put to extremes, but so are the characteristic gestures and poses the satirist collects and deploys against his subject. Notably, during the eighteenth-century, caricature was not exclusively used to describe physiognomic representation, but also applied to a mode of representation and a way of seeing. Caricature thus doubles as a term used to describe a type of artistic performance that focuses on selective exaggeration of physical features and of bodily action.

Gillray’s caricature of the Prince of Wales, A Volputary under the Horrors of

Digestion (1792), gets to the core of what was so theatrical about eighteenth-century caricature (figure 2).13 Gillray depicts the heir to the throne sitting back in his chair in

Carlton House after indulging himself with a large meal. Prinny indolently gazes at the

viewer and picks his teeth with the tines of a carving fork. His massive stomach bulges

and his breeches strain and even pop under the pressure. His body, the site of

consumption, literally carries the weight of his excessive conduct. A shelf behind him is

loaded with pill bottles and potions intended to alleviate the ills his behavior has brought

on – a mix of venereal diseases and indigestion. And, most shockingly, an overflowing

chamber pot is placed on a close-stool immediately behind the armchair in which he sits.

Tally sheets for his gambling debt and bills litter the scene and his dice and cup spill over

onto the floor. The ‘horrors of digestion’ to which Gillray refers are not just the

13 This caricature was designed as a companion piece for Gillray’s portrait of George III and Queen Charlotte entitled Temperance Enjoying a Frugal Meal (1792). Temperance lampoons the parsimonious King and Queen and shows them dining on cabbage and boiled eggs. In A Voluptuary, Donald notes the relationship between the Prince of Wales’ pose and the pose of Lord Squanderfield in the second plate of Hogarth’s Marriage-à-la-Mode. Squanderfield’s excessive spending habits and lax morals obliged him to marry the wealthy Alderman’s daughter. Prinny was under similar pressure to reduce his spending and was eventually forced to renounce Mrs. Fitzherbert, his illegitimate wife and to marry his cousin, Princess Caroline. Donald, 100-101.

10 discomfort of a heavy meal, but the physical stain of a life of dissipation. The emphasis on the Prince’s body and on scenic details - the ‘props’ scattered around the room- combine to demonstrate Prinny’s dissolute nature.

Whereas McArdell’s mezzotint of Garrick’s embodiment of a tragic prince reaches for the gravitas and noble virtues of history paining, Gillray’s caricature of the young heir travesties the future George IV. The “peculiar strokes” Gillray selects – the elegance with which Prinny holds the steel fork to his pouted lips, the arrogance of his

half-lidded gaze, and the unabashed way in which he displays his girth – “theatrically

finish” the caricature. Gillray’s “comic genius” is thus located in his selection of these touches that reveal the corrupted virtues of the prince. Similarly, Garrick’s genius lies in his ability to select touches to make his performance of Hamlet come to life for the viewer. Yet whereas Garrick selected touches to elevate and ennoble his subject, Gillray focused on personal idiosyncrasies and bad habits to demean his subject into a laughing- stock.

Because I want to draw connections between print culture and theater studies, the scholarship critical to my study is drawn from a wide variety of sources including performance studies and literary studies. Deidre Shauna Lynch is one of the most recent and most provocative literary historians who considers the issues and formations of character in the eighteenth-century. In her study on the formation of literary character,

The Economy of Character: Novels, Market Culture and the Business of Inner Meaning

(1998) Lynch argues for an understanding of literary character within a “transmedia context.”14 By looking across media, she is able to broaden an understanding of character

14 Deidre Lynch, The Economy of Character: Novels, Market Culture and the Business of Inner Meaning (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).

11 that extends beyond the boundaries of the novel and is acquired by the reading public

“not only in the seclusion of solitary reading but also at print-shop windows, at waxwork displays, and in shops that sell china figurines.”15 With this in mind character is not

defined by one set of characteristics but is protean and easily adaptable to suit a number

of needs. According to Lynch, men and woman living in eighteenth-century London

were faced with necessity of navigating the changing marketplace. Not only was the

marketplace flooded with a variety of merchandise, including luxury items and exotic

goods brought into the city through trade routes, but with this incursion of commodities

came an influx of bodies; merchants from the British countryside and from overseas, who

brought with them a host of workers and family members. Thus the public sphere was

awash with “new fashioned” bodies “with new visages (or worse, with distended, overloaded visages) that these comments conjure are by contrast, cause for alarm.”16

Lynch’s interest in the relationship between the character in print (from graphic images to textual description) and the bodies that filled the social spaces of modern London motivates my own interest in the connections between characters located on stage and page and the ever shifting London audience for these productions.

Lisa Freeman’s excellent study, Character’s Theater: Genre and Identity on the

Eighteenth-century English Stage (2002), engages in a conversation with Lynch that moves beyond the novel and focuses on character on the eighteenth-century stage.17 In a study that both challenges and is informed by Lynch’s work, Freeman claims: “I argue

15 Lynch, 11

16 Lynch, 25

17 Lisa Freeman, Character’s Theater: Genre and Identity on the Eighteenth-century English Stage (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002).

12 not only that the stage functioned as a critical focal point in eighteenth-century cultural discourse, but that in deploying an alternative model of identity based on the concept of

character, it marked a site of resistance to the rise of the subject and to the ideological

conformity enforced through that identity formation.”18 In this statement, Freeman also

challenges Jean-Christophe Agnew’s assertion that during the eighteenth-century the

novel displaced cultural work traditionally carried out by plays and shifted “the source of

theatrical perspective from the public experience of the stage to the private experience of the novel.” 19 Like Freeman, I question those scholars who would privilege the novel as

the primary agent of eighteenth-century cultural formation. Agnew’s interest in theater is presumably to follow the spectator/consumer culture that developed around the dramatic genres, and therefore the question of dramatic character is secondary to his study. For

Freeman, dramatic character is center to the construction of modern character. Freeman points to the fact that the dramatic character does not possess a fixed identity. Instead,

theater offers the spectator “an understanding of identity not as an emanation of stable

interiority, but as the unstable product of staged contests between interpretable

surfaces.”20 For Freeman, the divide between public expressions of identity and the

interiority of the private individual is at the crux of the problem of determining how

character is interpreted.

Freeman’s study offers another model for my own work in that she engages

with a vital aspect of drama that plays out in the relationship between audience and

18 Freeman,1.

19 Jean-Christophe Agnew, Worlds Apart: The Market and the Theater in Anglo-American Thought, 1550- 1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 14.

20 Ibid., 27.

13 performance that motivates her understanding of character and identity. She demonstrates that the audience was an active participant in the performance, one that playwrights considered along with principal actors when drafting scripts. The theater audience remained fully lit during the performance and was often so vocal and active that they rivaled the performance on stage, loudly conversing throughout the performance to the extent that they sometimes drowned out the actors. In their performance actors addressed themselves to different portions of the audience depending on the type of speech they were making – crude slapstick jokes were typically delivered with a wink and a smile to the lower class men and women in the upper gallery, while high-minded speeches with oblique political reference were directed at the upper ranks seated in the front and side boxes or in the pit. Moreover, the audience could immediately and directly affect the future of the play since, “It was not uncommon for wits to form themselves into claques, cabals, and parties in order to influence the fate of plays, hissing and directing catcalls towards plays they wished to damn, and clapping up plays they wished to succeed.”21

While Freeman and scholars focus on the creation of identity through character, they do little to discuss how these signifiers are visually conveyed in the actor’s

performance. Dene Barnett’s The Art of Gesture: the Practices and Principles of 18th

Century Acting (1987)22 and Joseph Roach’s work on performance, especially The

Player’s Passion: Studies in the Science of Acting (1985),23 are indispensable works that

21 Ibid., 3

22 Dene Barnett, The Art of Gesture: the Practices and Principles of 18th Century Acting (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1987).

23 Joseph Roach, The Player’s Passion: Studies in the Science of Acting (Newark; University of Delaware Press, 1985).

14 examine the importance of gesture and techniques of bodily performance in the eighteenth century. Barnett’s work is essentially a lexicon of gesture accompanied by

photographs, engravings, and annotated scripts that indicate where the actor ought to be

located on stage as well as the particular gesture the phrase or words call for. His

compendium of gesture follows the organization of eighteenth-century manuals published

for the actor’s education, many of which were based in the rhetorical tradition. As a

result, the gestures he describes are divided into a series of categories based on the

general emotion the actor intends to display, for example, the gesture may be

“indicative,” “imitative,” “expressive,” or emphatic.24 Barnett’s purpose in this book is

therefore to deliver a working model of eighteenth-century technique to the twenty-first

century reader and demonstrates the complexities of performances in which both gesture

and speech were carefully choreographed.

In The Player’s Passion, Roach, presents “a history of the theatricalization of the

human body,” that theorizes the actor’s art of expression.25 Viewing the actor’s body and

mind together as an instrument, Roach combines scientific theories with those of theater

in order to explore the performance of emotion. In particular, Roach examines the

scientific and cultural history of the bodily origins of emotion to determine how the repetition of performance is understood. The actor’s ability is judged on his or her

consistency and ability to reproduce a pitch-perfect performance night after night. Even

the most complicated actions and the most intense emotions must be enacted “with an astonishing precision of emphasis, reactivating in time and space ornate sequences that

24 Barnett, 18.

25 Roach, 12.

15 have been absorbed into muscles or nerves.”26 Yet, although the performances may

appear nearly identical to the viewer, “every night the actor’s experience of his

performance is slightly different; as its vitality fluctuates, the delicate instrument of his

mind and body must sense the slightest realignment of forces and adjust accordingly.”27

Paradoxically, the rehearsal of gestures and emotions created the illusion of spontaneity and ‘naturalness’ in the performance.28 Roach’s representation of the actor’s performance as a mechanized and reproducible phenomenon offers an important way to understand how the actor’s art might be relatable or translatable to the repeated performance of the engraver. Not only does the actor repeat the gestures and emotions of the character portrayed in each performance, but also, the discursive field of the performance is recreated.

Extended to print culture, this relationship provides a model that shows how the representation of character can be tied to the engraver’s art. Just as actors were expected to represent the same character night after night during the run of a play, caricaturists

were expected to caricature their subjects in the same manner from etching to etching.

Not only did Garrick encounter audiences that anticipated that moment when Hamlet

starts at his father’s ghost, but he had to make it seem natural and fresh from performance

to performance. Caricaturists faced a similar dilemma in the necessity of representing

more or less the same group of celebrities in their productions and having to make them

humorous time after time. Gillray’s caricature of the Prince of Wales is partly successful

26 Ibid., 17.

27 Ibid., 17.

28 Ibid., 110.

16 because Prinny’s expansive waist line, his love of lavish clothing, and his full face were among his physical features that became standard elements of any caricature of the prince. Yet, Gillray’s characteristic etching style with long, smooth strokes that outline his figures is typical features of his engraving technique and help to identify the image as a “Gillray,” a bespoke caricature.

No account of eighteenth-century comic graphic art could be written without a debt of gratitude to Mary Dorothy George, most notably her contribution to the catalog of prints and drawings at the British Museum in volumes 5-11, titled Catalog of Political and Personal Satires Preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British

Museum (1883).29 The indispensable entries provide details about the figures, activities and historical moments in the prints, many of which would be lost without her careful accounting. In addition to the British Museum catalog, George’s expansive use of the terms caricature and satire to cover works from “Hogarth’s moralizing, Gillray’s irony,

Rowlandson’s comedy, and Newton’s burlesque” considers how the prints were enjoyed and circulated in eighteenth-century England.30 My intent is to show that the audience

for printed satire cut through a large cross section of London population. In particular,

the use of theatrical devices ranging from brilliant colors to exaggerated gestures

facilitated access to these images by members of various social classes and addressed a

London audience for graphic satire that was increasingly diverse.

29 M. Dorothy George, Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires Preserved in the Dept. of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, vols v-xi (London: The British Museum, 1883-1954).

30 M. Dorothy George, Hogarth to Cruikshank: Social Change in Graphic Satire (New York: Walker and Company, 1967), 13.

17 In her recent book, Caricature Unmasked: Irony, Authenticity and Individualism in Eighteenth-Century English Prints (2008), Amelia Rauser argues that English political caricature came into being as a distinct genre in the 1780s and is characterized by a shift away from an emblematic tradition of political satire towards physiognomic caricature.31

Rauser describes how “symbols, allegories and layers of texts” were replaced by “selves’ and aptly casts caricature as a “technology developed to represent the emergent modern self.”32 Yet, where Rauser addresses caricature as a type of portraiture that employs

exaggeration to make a “more-like likeness,” she does not engage with the bodily

performance that I find so evident in these images. 33 I believe that while it is important

to focus on the physiognomic element of caricatures, this should not come at the cost of

noticing the bodies represented. After all, most caricaturists took care to represent the

figures head to toe and to show them in the midst of action that was carefully staged.

Rauser’s study engages with Diana Donald’s The Age of Caricature: Satirical Prints in

the Reign of George III (1996). Donald’s book survey’s caricature produced in this

period and forms a link between works like George’s excellent studies and the more

targeted work of recent scholars.

Art historians have been drawn to the subject of actor portraits in the past.

Several accounts feature these works, most notably Notorious Muse: the Actress in

31 Rauser’s work was published after the chapters of this dissertation were written. I look forward to engaging more fully with her work in future studies.

32 Rauser, 20. Eirwen E.C. Nicholsen stridently disagrees with the estimation, especially made by Diana Donald in The Age of Caricature, that the late eighteenth-century saw the emblem vanquished altogether. See Nicholsen, “Emblem v. Caricature: a Tenacious Conceptual Framework,” in Emblems and Art History: Nine Essays, Alison Adams ed. (Glasgow: Glasgow Emblem Studies: 1996) 141-167. See also, Donald, 44-46.

33 Rauser,15.

18 British Art and Culture 1776-1812 (2003), edited by Robyn Asleson. Notorious Muse takes an interdisciplinary approach to the image of the actress in late Georgian London and argues that the “exhibitionism that was fundamental to their profession and enabled them to court publicity with relative impunity – a freedom denied women who ostensibly belonged to the private sphere.” 34 Yet such exhibitionism also opened both actresses and

actors to a barrage of public criticism, often in the format of caricature.35 My study is also indebted to the work of Shearer West whose The Image of the Actor: Verbal and Visual

Representation in the Age of Garrick and Kemble (1991) describes the relationship between the plastic and dramatic arts.36 While West’s primarily interest rests with oil painting, she uses engravings effectively. West terms the eighteenth century the “age of the actor” and notes the historical events that conspired to bring this about, describing the eighteenth century from 1720 to 1790 as an era of expansion in the marketplace and industry for prints beginning with Hogarth and following through to Boydell.

Conversely, this same time, marked as it was by Robert Walpole’s Stage Licensing Act

(1737), was an era of restriction in the legitimate theater thereby focusing the audience’s attention towards the two Royal Patent theaters. 37 The censorship act targeted scripts

and aimed to reform the plays before they were brought to stage. For this reason among

others, the eighteenth-century stage was characterized by revivals rather than by new

34 Robyn Asleson, ed., Notorious Muse: The Actress in British Art and Culture, 1776-1812 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 1.

35 Heather McPherson takes this up in relation to actresses in her essay “Paintings, Politics and the Stage in the Age of Caricature,” in Notorious Muse (2003), 171-194.

36 Shearer West, The Image of the Actor: Verbal and Visual Representation in the Age of Garrick and Kemble (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991).

37 For a historical account see Vincent Liesenfeld, The Licensing Act of 1737 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984). See also, Matthew Kinservik, Disciplining Satire: the Censorship of Satiric Comedy on the Eighteenth-Century London Stage (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2002).

19 performances, allowing actors to take precedence over the words they delivered (or something like that here). Clever playwrights and actors found means to work around this by offering alternative performances, one of which, The Lecture on Heads (1764) offered by George Alexander Stevens, forms the basis for the third chapter of this dissertation. West notes that the portraits are not intended to record the actor in performance, but instead tell the story of how actors were perceived and represented. To

West’s story I would add the importance of the audience and the issue of character, drawing an analogy between the actor’s and the painter’s art. Importantly, West addresses the connection between genres of theatrical performance and genres of painting noting “as in tragedy, the terms that came to be applied to the comic actor drew additional significance from their relationship with English art and art theory. The distinctions between comedy and tragedy, like those between ‘high’ and ‘vulgar’ painting were invested with associations of class and beauty that had wider implications within the context of eighteenth-century society.”38

I begin with a consideration of the conversation enacted between William

Hogarth and Henry Fielding. In this chapter I explore the relationship between character

and caricature at the middle of the eighteenth century and describe the connections and

conflation between the two. In an attempt to distance himself from the genre of

caricature, which he denigrated as a foreign mode, Hogarth sought means to strengthen

his alliance with a playwright and called the figures that populated his work characters.

Together Hogarth and Fielding sought to create room in the hierarchy of genres for a new

category, the “modern moral subject,” which attached itself to the concept of modern

38 West, 123.

20 English character. Their productions – graphic and theatric – were populated with figures drawn from all classes and even included illustrious and infamous Londoners in comedic scenes and settings. Although Hogarth sought so strenuously to set the figures in his works aside from caricature, the ultimate failure of his efforts indicate that character and caricature were seen by many as more closely aligned. In fact, Hogarth’s efforts may, as

Lynch has written, “[invent] confusion over categories specifically so as to correct it” thereby identifying himself as the true arbiter of character (her italics).39 In this tug of war over character and caricature two distinct issues become clear; the first is Hogarth’s obsessive desire to promote modern English art and to advance himself as the preeminent

English painter. To accomplish this he turns to an almost indisputably English cultural form, the theater, and builds an alliance with a famed playwright. Yet as much as

Hogarth wanted to stay the tide of continental influence on English artists and collectors, he was battling the inevitable. The second force that Hogarth faced was that regardless of

the source, by mid century caricature had become part of English visual culture. While

Hogarth’s contemporaries recognized it, he himself was reluctant to.

In the second chapter of my study I examine the analogies made by artists, actors

and critics between comic forms on the stage and those on the page. Hogarth was among

the first to draw this analogy when he claimed “bodies in motion always describe some

line or other in the air.”40 By describing action as line, Hogarth connects the fleeting

gesture to an act of inscription; the record of that gesture. Using this analogy I explore

how artists and critics working in the late eighteenth-century built on this concept both to

39 Lynch, 62.

40 Hogarth 1997, 105.

21 critique and construct performance practices. A group of caricatures published in l The

Attic Miscellany between 1789 and 1791 lampoon the leading actors of the London stage

by burlesquing their stage performances.41 In these productions, caricature offers a

counter performance that mimics the actors line by line and gesture by gesture. Tying the

extravagant actions made by the actor on stage to the artist’s use of exaggeration in the

graphic representation caricature is mobilized to offer an insightful criticism on acting

technique.

While prints and paintings of well-known actors playing well-known roles were

displayed and sold in many London venues, my primary interest is in the uses of

theatrical conventions in social and political satires and caricature. By using such

elements of public entertainment and performance these images called an audience into

being. A significant part of my study in both the second and third chapters will be

devoted to the consideration of contemporary viewing practices of a variety of

exhibitions in order to demonstrate the expectations that viewers brought to these two-

dimensional works. In the third and final chapter of this dissertation I use a case study of

The Lecture on Heads by George Alexander Stevens (1764). In this lecture, Stevens used

a variety of props that included wigs and wig blocks, painted canvases, and graphic

images to enliven his performance. Using voice, gesture and perhaps a bit of sleight of

hand, Stevens introduced his characters to the audience one by one and provided comedic

commentary on each London type drawn “from nature.” The Lecture was a resounding

success with its audience and enjoyed a considerable run. Printed copies of the Lecture

as well as graphic representations of the piece allow me to investigate the question of

41 The Attic Miscellany and Characteristic Mirror of Men and Things, Including the Correspondent's Museum. vols 1-3 (London: Bentley & Co. 1789-1792).

22 why the performance was so appealing to the audience. This chapter thus also considers the prominence of the “laughing audience’ figured in prints of theatrical performance and in prints that featured shop windows. While graphic caricatures and satires were enjoyed in the privacy of personal libraries and collections, they were public images in a way that high art reproductive prints were not. Whereas art theorists and Academicians

expounded on the benefits of quiet study of high quality prints made after paintings or

antique sculptures made famous by art history, the popular print assumes a much more

public audience.42 These images show that the audience of satire was not composed of an

ideal or standard viewer.43 The quest for a “laughing audience” is itself evidenced in popular print culture in representations of crowds of viewers gathered around a print shop

window or an open album. Like history-painting, public display and public discussion,

rather than quiet contemplation are invited by these popular prints.

By looking at the social caricatures and satires that circulated in eighteenth-

century England as theatrical objects that share techniques of display and characterization

with stage productions my study demonstrates that the London audience for graphic satire

did not always think of these images in terms of other graphic or painted images alone.

In this way I offer a correction to the tradition of reading eighteenth-century caricature as

the flip-side or underbelly of academic painting. By understanding these works in a

42 In the Principles of Painting, Roger de Piles advocates the study and collection of fine prints. According to de Piles such activity sharpens the connoisseurs eye, “represents absent or distant things,” and provides a means of comparison of master works. Roger De Piles, Roger, Principles of Painting, Chapter XXVI (London, 1743), 61.

43 While satires Royal Academy exhibitions often depict caricatured figures observing idealized bodies painted on canvas, prints which depict figures viewing caricatures – whether in shop window or in albums – typically show caricatured figures looking at other caricatured figures. This recognition amongst caricatures calls two seemingly divergent aspects of the genre to mind: First, the aristocratic and private tradition of caricature exemplified by Pier Leone Ghezzi and Leonardo Da Vinci. Second, it recalls the “Ugly Clubs,” which Diana Donald suggests may parody elite gentleman’s clubs like the Kit Kat club. Donald, 10-11.

23 transmedial and interdisciplinary context, historians of eighteenth-century British culture may begin to understand better the complexity of these immensely popular objects.

CHAPTER 1

WHOSE CHARACTER?

He who should call the Ingenious Hogarth a Burlesque Painter, would, in my Opinion, do him very little Honour: for sure it is much easier, much less the Subject of Admiration, to paint a Man with a Nose, or any other feature of a preposterous Size, or to expose him in some absurd or monstrous Attitude than to express the Affections of Men on Canvas. It hath been thought a vast Commendation of a Painter, to say his Figures seem to breathe; but surely, it is a much greater and nobler Applause, that they appear to think.

Henry Fielding, Joseph Andrews, (1742)

But perhaps even the word character, as it relates to form, may not be quite understood by every one tho’ it is so frequently used; nor do I remember to have seen it explained any where. Therefore on this account – and also as it will farther shew the use of thinking of form and motion together, it will not be improper to observe, - that notwithstanding a character, in this sense, chiefly depends on a figure being remarkable as to its form, either in some particular part, or altogether, yet surely no figure, be it ever so singular, can be perfectly conceived as a character, till we find it connected with some remarkable circumstance or cause, for such particularity or appearance…

William Hogarth, The Analysis of Beauty, (1753)

For artist William Hogarth, and Henry Fielding, the playwright turned novelist, the distinction between character and caricature had implications that overshadowed their works and directed their professional status. Their struggle to define these terms kindled a debate in the eighteenth century over the competing definitions of caricature and character as treated by visual artists, authors, and playwrights. The above quotes, taken from Fielding’s preface to his novel, Joseph Andrews, and Hogarth’s treatise on art, The

24 25 Analysis of Beauty, demonstrate their desire to distance themselves from burlesque forms

of representation associated with the grotesque.1 These gestures toward the higher genres

of art and theater occlude the simple fact that during the eighteenth century both Hogarth

and Fielding were well-known practitioners of caricature and the burlesque: Fielding

built his reputation as a playwright by producing farces, and Hogarth published caricature

engravings and incorporated unflattering likenesses of notorious Londoners in his early

print series. Most famously Hogarth’s The Harlot’s Progress (1732) features the bawd

Elizabeth (Mother) Needham, Colonel Charteris, notorious for gambling and raping young women, and Judge Gonson, who regularly raided London brothels and gaming houses.2 Yet, in the early 1740s, after Fielding left the theater in the wake of the 1737

Stage Licensing Act, and after Hogarth’s professional ambitions occasioned a shift in his

productions toward the higher genres of art, the two men banded together in an

intermedial campaign designed to disassociate their work from the low-brow implications

of burlesque and farce and to assert the moralizing qualities of comedy found in their

works.

That Hogarth and Fielding sought so strenuously to distinguish themselves from

caricature and burlesque indicates that the division between lower forms of comedy and the instructive forms they sought to tie themselves to were not so finely drawn. In this

1 All references to The Analysis of Beauty, unless otherwise noted, are from William Hogarth, The Analysis of Beauty, Ronald Paulson, ed. (1753; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997). References to Joseph Andrews are from Henry Fielding, The History and Adventures of Joseph Andrews, and of his Friend Mr. Abraham Adams. Written in Imitation of the Manner of Cervantes, Author of Don Quixote. In two Volumes, vol. 1 (London: A. Millar, 1742) iii-xvii. Literature Online .

2 For discussion of this series and the incidents, mostly news events, that shaped Hogarth’s narrative see, Ronald Paulson, Hogarth: The Modern Moral Subject, vol 1 (New Brunswick and London: Rutger’s University Press, 1991) 237-255. See especially pp. 241-247 for Charteris and Hogarth’s anti-Walpolian criticism; p. 250 for Gonson; and p.252 for Needham.

26 chapter I will investigate the divide between character and caricature and describe the

relation of these terms to comedic forms. Although I begin this chapter with the

conversation between Fielding and Hogarth, my focus will be on the works of Hogarth

and his attempts to associate the figures in his graphic production with character by

castigating caricature as a foreign (Italian), and therefore inferior and dangerous form of

visual representation antithetical to his artistic aims.

To develop their theories of character, Hogarth and Fielding mobilized concepts

of character and caricature derived from traditional dramatic usage of the terms in

England. At a time when actors were urged to study the fine arts for examples of

appropriate gesture and expression to enliven the characters they portrayed on stage,

artist and author turned the tables to suggest that the actor’s art was a viable source for the plastic arts.3 In his estimation of Hogarth’s works, the highest “Applause” Fielding can offer is to propose that Hogarth’s characters “appear to think,” indicating that, like

actors who perform characters on stage, the figures that populate Hogarth’s painted and

graphic modern moral subjects make decisions in response to the script the artist prepares

for them, and in response to the demands of the audience. Hogarth also employed

theatrical analogy to describe the figures in his works noting that character could only be

fully expressed when exhibited through a combination of form and motion.4 To this

discussion, Hogarth adds his assessment of the importance of deriving character from

observation of nature:

3 For commentary on the education of actors see: John Hill, The Actor: A Treatise on the Art of Playing, Interspersed with Theatrical Anecdotes, Critical Remarks on Plays, and Occasional Observations on Audiences. (London: Printed for R. Griffiths, [1750]). See also Alan Hughes, “Art and Eighteenth-Century Acting Style” Part II: Attitudes, Theatre Notebook, 41:2 (1987) 79-89.

4 Hogarth, 70.

27 The comedian, whose business it is to imitate the actions belonging to particular characters in nature, may also find this account in the knowledge of lines; for what ever he copies from the life, by these principles may be strengthened, altered and adjusted as his judgment shall direct, and the part the author has given him shall require (Hogarth 113).

In this passage Hogarth advises actors to first base their performances on the men and

women they encounter and observe in daily life. The second directive Hogarth gives

actors, to attain “knowledge of lines,” is not merely an exhortation to be familiar with works of art. Indeed, the “lines” Hogarth dwells on are the gestures and the outlines of

the body created by the actor in performance. In describing the actions of the comedian as lines, Hogarth correlates the gestures the actor makes on stage with the artist’s gestures

on the page. This important analogy, repeatedly made by Hogarth in Chapter XVII of the

Analysis, will form the basis of a later chapter, but it merits mention here. Since for

Hogarth, “bodies in motion always describe some line or other in the air,” the proficiency

of the artist’s or actor’s movements determines the strength of the characters they

represent: unsuccessful or over wrought gestures create ill defined characters or

burlesques of character, i.e. caricature (105).

Fielding’s analogy distinguishes Hogarth’s graphic production from caricature,

just as his own work is distinguished from burlesque, specifically because the characters

Hogarth represents are the result of observation and imitation of his immediate

surroundings, described as nature. Understanding eighteenth-century concepts of

“nature” and of the “natural” are crucial here since these terms formed the center of

debates on the relative merits of the artistic genres and structured the academic

hierarchies of art. “Nature” assumed a multiplicity of meanings depending on the context

in which it was employed. In basic understanding, it could refer to a set of combined

28 characteristics (physical or psychological), located in an individual or an object.5 One can therefore describe an individual as being either of ‘good’ or ‘bad’ nature, just as we can speak of the nature of a person, object, or even a phenomenon. “Nature” could also describe phenomena in the physical world (plants, animals, features and products of the earth), or it could refer to the part of the world that had not been interfered with by human activity. The use to which Hogarth and Fielding applied “nature” likely incorporated all these possible definitions as well as usages of the word in aesthetic theory.

In the eighteenth century, when artists, critics, and theorists spoke of “nature” in relation to representational works, they were most often invoking classical aesthetic categories that divided nature into two groups: nature as located in the unique form of an object, animal, or human, (particular nature), and its universal, idealized form (general nature). When Joshua Reynolds urged Royal Academicians and students of painting to be guided by nature he privileged the discernment of universal, general forms of nature from particular forms. In his third Discourse on Art, delivered December 14, 1770,

Reynolds remarked: “All the objects which are exhibited to our view by nature, upon close examination, will have their blemishes and defects.”6 Through close observation,

the painter trains his eye “to distinguish between the accidental deficiencies, excrescences, and deformities of things, from their general figures, [make] out an abstract idea of their forms more perfect than any original.” In so doing, the painter learns

5 Unless otherwise noted, all definitions of terms used in this dissertation are taken from The OED Online, Oxford University Press, 2006.

6 Joshua Reynolds, “Discourse III,” Discourses on Art, Robert Wark, ed. (1770; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 44.

29 to“[correct] nature by herself, her imperfect state by her more perfect” (Reynolds, 44).

The representation of nature in its most essential and universal form was the realm of the highest genres of art and literature; history painting, tragedy and heroic epic.

As Robert Wark has succinctly described, academic theory rejected that which is

“specific and individual” in order to “proceed to a “higher” more universal truth and […] approach the abstract idea embodied in a family of forms. Truth and beauty were thus identified with the general.”7 For Reynolds, any deviation from the ideal was not just common or profane, but was associated with “deformity” (45). Although Reynolds admits that the “various departments of painting without high pretensions” are not without merit, he admonishes “These, however, are by no means the views to which the student ought to be primarily directed” (51). Portraiture, landscape and still life painting occupied the murky middle ground of the hierarchy of genres. These categories maintained some flexibility within the scale since they could, and often did assume conventions of the highest and lowest genres. Yet, the bottom of the scale was reserved for genre painting, which depicted “low and vulgar characters, who express with precision the various shades of passion, as they are exhibited by vulgar minds, (such as we see in the works of Hogarth)” (51). These productions, associated in the eighteenth century with the works of Dutch genre painters like David Teniers or Adriaen van Ostade were considered a lower form because of the characters and settings depicted. Such coarse representations of members of the lower class, and the buffoonery with which they were classed, characteristically featured figures with distorted expressions or grotesque deformities. This linking of the lower classes with grotesque exaggeration was also

7 Robert Wark,”Introduction,” Discourses on Art (1997) xvii. Reynolds is here invoking a concept of nature located in Renaissance aesthetic studies and derived from the works of Plato and Aristotle.

30 connected to the practice of caricature, which similarly exaggerated peculiarity and the irregularity of an individual’s physical appearance to purely comical end. In general,

genre painting featured idealized visions of the countryside and was strangely timeless in

that these works typically depicted figures and settings located outside of contemporary

events, fashions, or social trends.

In terms of the hierarchy of dramatic forms similar precepts were in place.

Tragedies and history plays, like their counterparts in the plastic arts and literary arts,

were expected to incorporate high-minded universal truths and themes that appeal to the

individual’s best nature. Comedy, on the other hand, appealed to the particular nature of

individuals in that it depicted local customs, personal idiosyncrasies, and as such could

not be considered universal or timeless. In A General View of the Stage Thomas Wilkes

describes the difference between the two dramatic forms:

Comedy and Tragedy, each of them, properly considered, lead to the same useful end; that of instruction, by different vehicles: one addresses the affections, rouses the passions and speaks to the heart with solemn and serious lessons; its aspect is severe, its reproof tries up to the quick, and often “most horribly (to use a phrase of Shakespeare’s) shakes our disposition:” the other approaches with an easy familiarity, sits down with us, and putting on our very characters shews [sic] our follies or mistakes with such humour and ridicule, that we often acknowledge the reprimand, and are corrected: like jesters of old it laughs us into regularity.8

Like other critics of the theatric arts, Wilkes praised comedy for its capacity to correct human folly through the humorous representation of misdeeds and transgressions.9 The familiarity with which comedy addresses the audience disarms the viewers, who are

8 Thomas Wilkes, A General View of the Stage (London: J. Coote, 1759), 46-47.

9 Of course there were many writers who categorically comedy claiming that it encouraged vice. Often these critical voices were highly suspicious of any dramatic form. For a historical discussion of the distrust of theater and performance see Jonah Barish, The Anti-Theatrical Prejudice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981).

31 therefore charmed into acknowledging their shortcomings. Comedy further addresses the

public by “hold[ing] up a mirror to nature” and representing a wide cross section of the

theater-going public. As such, the power of comedy to instruct or correct surpasses that

of tragedy, which represents characters “above the common discernment” and therefore

only addresses the upper ranks of society (Wilkes 46). Wilkes further divides comedy

into the categories of “genteel” and “low” (40). Whereas “genteel” comedy “speaks the

language of polite life,” and thereby addresses the upper classes, “low” comedy “groups

the meaner characters of life; it is adapted to the populace, and diverts rather than

instructs” (41). Of the comic forms farce falls lowest since it offers no morally

redemptive qualities but is instead “founded on chimera and improbability; the events are

unnatural, the humour forced”(60). Moreover, farce is intended to entertain a certain class

of audience, “such people as are judges of neither men nor manners: it appeals entirely to

the fancy, delights with oddity and unexpected turns: it has in one thing indeed the same

effect as comedy, viz. it produces laughter; but it is not laughter founded upon reason,

excited by the check given to folly, the reproof to ignorance, or the lash to corruption”

(60). As it was for burlesque painting, laughter alone was the desired end result of farce.

Because of its association with extravagance and hybridism, farcical performance finds

its artistic corollary in the burlesque and in caricature. Mimicry, one practice of comic

acting was particularly vexing since it was used by actors of both comedy and farce.10

Performances that featured celebrated mimics like David Garrick or Samuel Foote, the

“English Aristophanes” were by and large crowd pleasers; that is, they pleased all but the victim.

10 For a discussion of mimicry in performance see L.W. Conolly, “Personal Satire on the English Eighteenth-Century Stage,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 9:4 (Summer, 1976), 599-607.

32 The public exchange between Hogarth and Fielding sought to expand the

hierarchy of genres for a “new” representational practice; what Hogarth would term an

“intermediate species of subjects for painting between the sublime and the grotesque,”11

analogous to what Fielding described in Joseph Andrews as a “comic Romance” or

“comic Epic-Poem in Prose” that incorporated “a much larger Circle of incidents,” and

“introduce[d] a greater Variety of Characters” than comedy as described by classical precepts, which focused on the lower orders of society (Fielding, v). The representation of characters from a variety of ranks of society was precisely what enabled both Hogarth and Fielding to refer to consider their works to be modern inventions. Underscoring the power of comedy to instruct by exposing human foibles in a manner that demonstrated how ridiculous contemporary manners and fashions could be, both artist and author sought to unsettle the traditional hierarchy of literary and artistic genres. Hogarth directly attacked the assumptions of history painting and aligned himself with theater critics when he wrote: “Subject[s] of most consequence are those that most entertain and Improve the mind are of public utility… if this be true comedy in painting stands first as it is most capable of all these perfection the latter has been disputed with the sublime as it is called.”12 In this, Hogarth not only challenged the tradition of academic genres, he

challenged traditional assumptions about the aristocratic audience for art and welcomed

instead a heterogeneous set of viewers that would mirror the array of characters he represented in his productions on canvas and paper.

11 William Hogarth, The Autobiographical Notes, in The Analysis of Beauty with the Rejected Passages from the Manuscript Drafts and Autobiographical Notes, Joseph Burke, ed. (1753; Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1955) 201-236, 212.

12 Ibid., 215.

33 To strengthen the case for a new genre of modern and moral comedy, Fielding drew an analogy between his work and that of Hogarth - the “Comic History Painter”- to demonstrate that the rules of the genre are translatable into other formats and are replicable by writer and painter alike. The resulting comic romance is a form of the ridiculous, which, according to Fielding is located in the discovery of affectation, the assumption of “false Characters, in order to purchase Applause,” and in hypocrisy, which

“sets us on an Endeavor to avoid Censure by concealing our Vices under an Appearance of their Opposite Virtues” (Fielding, xiii). The foundation of this new genre is located in the characters whose unconscious, natural actions reveal their true natures, despite any artful attempts at concealment with contrived or controlled gestures. Because these vices of affectation and hypocrisy are equally practiced by all ranks of society, the comic history emerges around the diversity of characters represented. However, in

“introducing Persons of inferior rank, and consequently of inferior manners” Fielding breaks with tradition and, instead of representing ideal figures and actions or buffoons from burlesque actions and figures, he claims that he draws his inspiration from the observation of nature (vi).

Shortly after Joseph Andrews was published, Hogarth responded with an engraving known as Characters and Caricaturas (1743) (figure 1.1). Inscribed at the bottom of the sheet, is the following direction: “For a Farther Explanation of the

Difference Betwixt Character & Caricatura See ye Preface to Jos. Andrews.” Designed to display the variety and range of characters available to the artist or author, Hogarth contrasts character and caricature at the bottom of the sheet in the lower register of the image. His visual argument in Characters and Caricaturas explores the practices of

34 character and caricature using a series of juxtapositions, a technique Hogarth and other

graphic satirists frequently employed. In the upper portion of the sheet, a baroque

florescence of male heads emerges from a flat, cross-hatched background. These prolific

profiles seem to multiply as they teem across the page like a school of fish, without any

apparent organizing principle in play. In this way they recall the anonymous

metropolitan crowds of public streets and market places. In the bottom center of the

image Hogarth includes two portraits: one of himself, and one of Henry Fielding that face

each other and grin, perhaps even laugh at each other. Their toothy smiles suggest

complicity between the two authors who share the private joke contained in the sheet.

For dyed-in-the-wool Englishmen like Hogarth and Fielding, the claim that the

characters that populated their plays, novels, and paintings, are derived from the English

crowd is tantamount to a claim that character itself is an English quality. Unidealized and pared down to simple profiles, the countenances displayed in this sheet are a testament to

the diversity of English character. Diana Donald has explored the “cheerful, rational

view” of ugliness celebrated in England throughout the eighteenth century and describes

the foundation of ‘Ugly Clubs’ whose members were admitted because of irregular

features that, as Addison put it in the Spectator, “follow Nature, and where she has

thought fit, as it were, to mock herself, we can so do too and be merry upon the

occasion”13 The notion of the Ugly Club was popularized in a series of letters published

in The Spectator and authored by Richard Steele. In these letters The Spectator

13 For a discussion of the “Ugly Clubs” that celebrated unique physiognomies and for the quotation of Addison see Diana Donald, The Age of Caricature: Satirical Prints in the Reign of George III. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 10. For further analysis of the link between national character and the variety of English countenance see Deidre Lynch, The Economy of Character: Novels, Market Culture and the Business of Inner Meaning (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1998), 60.

35 corresponded with members of the Oxford Ugly Club who embraced their physical short

comings and flouted conventions of fashion and beauty in the charter of their club, the

“Act of Deformity.”14 While readers of The Spectator in 1711 laughed at the notion of

this club whose members had the “honesty and fortitude” to “dare to be ugly,” the

viewers of a one-act play produced in 1798 that was based on these issues of The

Spectator encountered members of an Ugly Club who equated their unattractive appearance with the rights and privileges of English citizens. In fact, the last verse of this

“Dramatic Caricature in One Act” calls on “Sons of Deformity” to toast the club that “[it

may] flourish ugly, united and free!”15 Although the letters in the Spectator tout the

virtues of accepting unattractive appearance, the dramatic version flaunts ugliness as a

mark of English fortitude. The concluding lines of the play take on a particularly

ominous tone as the characters profess: “Repeated shouts of loud mirth the world shall

apprize, / that men may be happy without feet, nose, or eyes.”16 The celebration of

physical disfigurement beyond routine ugliness has a militaristic edge that honors

ugliness as the price of liberty. At a time when maimed soldiers and sailors were

returning from the wars against Napoleon in Egypt, and when an invasion by the French

was feared, such implications must have been widely recognized.

The comedian and mimic, Samuel Foote similarly tied the concept of English

liberty granted by the English constitution to the physical constitution of the English

when he quipped: “In France, one coxcomb is the representation of the whole kingdom.

14 Richard Steele, Spectator. No. 17 (1711), accessed 5/5/2008 at http://meta.montclair.edu/spectator/text/march1711/no17.html

15 Edmund Spencer the Younger, The Ugly Club: A Dramatic Caricature in One Act. Performed on the 6th of June, 1798 at the Theatre-Royal, Drury Lane (London: G. Cawthorn,1798), 40.

16 Ibid., 40.

36 In England, scarce any two are alike”17 For Foote, a predilection for comedy was also

part of the English constitution. Of his native country he crowed: “no nation had more

comedies, no comedies more diversified humorous characters… This may indeed, in great measure, be owing to the nature of our Constitution, and the complection [sic] of

our inhabitants.”18

Strikingly, the heads in Character and Caricaturas share an organic structure that

is linked to a series of engravings by Hogarth now know as “Four Groups of Heads.” A

Laughing Audience, A Chorus of Singers (1732), Scholars at a Lecture (1736/7), and The

Company of Undertakers (1736/7), all depict groups of half- and full-length figures

standing in a large mass, seemingly stacked one behind the other (figures 1.2-1.5).

Unlike the busts in Character and Caricaturas, the figures in the “Four Groups of

Heads” are engaged in an activity; singing, listening to a self-absorbed speaker, or

examining the urine sample of a doomed patient. The over-all effect of these figures

shown in exaggerated poses is undeniably comic, yet Hogarth takes great care to show

each character completely absorbed by their activity. The incongruity between the titles

of the engravings and the image itself heightens the comic effect: the scholars look

alternatively bored or sleepy, the choristers hardly seem to be singing in unison, much

less capable of producing any harmony, and the undertakers are really quacks and poor

physicians. In the case of Characters and Caricaturas, we see that by removing the

context under which the heads of his Characters meet, Hogarth removes any obvious

17 Samuel Foote, The Roman and English Comedy Consider’d and Compar’d. With Remarks on The Suspicious Husband. And an Examen into the Merit of the Present Comic Actors. (London: T. Waller, 1747),12.

18 Ibid., 12.

37 comic scenario from the print and instead leaves the viewer with a collection of

countenances, some of which are undeniably humorous, or at the very least, good

humored.

Below the plethora of heads in Characters and Caricaturas Hogarth has drawn a

frieze, the left side of which contains a group of male heads excerpted from Raphael’s

Hampton Court Cartoons. Hogarth probably first encountered these drawings by the

Renaissance artist during his apprenticeship to James Thornhill, history painter to George

I, and eventually Hogarth’s father-in-law. Thornhill, who painted the interior dome of

St. Peter’s cathedral in London (1716-21), the most important commission for a British

artist working in the early eighteenth century, studied the cartoons with the intent of

illustrating an artist’s manual of expression and gesture. Hogarth likely participated in

this project by engraving four heads from the cartoons (figure 1.6).19 Thornhill’s copies after Raphael thus carried multiple meanings for Hogarth. Records of the works of one of the most celebrated Renaissance artists, Raphael’s cartoons were located in the royal

art collection, and as such were English patrimony. By celebrating such important works

that put the collection of English kings on a par with continental collections Hogarth

implies that artists need not look beyond national boundaries to conduct their studies and

to seek resources for their works. In Characters and Caricatures Raphael’s heads appear

at the lower left and are intended to illustrate the ideal of character painting (figure 1.7).

These heads appear again in Hogarth’s history painting projects. In fact two of the

“Characters” appear in his painting Paul Before Felix (1748), and as David Bindman has

shown, Hogarth also used the Raphael Cartoons to inspire figures in his history painting,

19 For a discussion of Hogarth’s and Thornhill’s use of the Raphael Cartoons at Hampton Court, see David Bindman, Hogarth (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), 98-101.

38 The Pool of Bethesda (1735-7).

On the right side of the frieze under the swarm of Characters, Hogarth has

delineated a series of four caricatures taken from the works of Italian artists that were disseminated in England through engravings made by Arthur Pond (figure 1.7). In this

group of four caricatures the works of Leonardo Da Vinci, the Caracci and Pier Leone

Ghezzi provide a quick review of the history of caricature in Italy. A fifth head, more

like a bit of graffiti than the product of the artist’s pen, testifies to the disintegration of the practice. The most contemporary caricature in the group, that of Thomas Bentley, at the far left, was drawn by Ghezzi while the young antiquarian was on the Grand Tour (figure

1.8). For many young grand tourists, a stop at Ghezzi’s studio to have their likenesses rendered in caricature was an important cultural experience that evidenced their interaction with an elite social group of artists, critics and connoisseurs.20 Commissioning

a caricature portrait when in Italy became so popular among Grand Tourists that even

Joshua Reynolds painted caricatures of British visitors in Rome. Perhaps the most

famous British caricaturist working abroad was Thomas Patch, a painter and

physiognomist located in Florence, who caricatured English milordi on canvas, often in

large-scale, although not terribly complex, compositions. Connecting the contemporary

practice of caricature to elite cultural experiences and to foreign modes of representation

enabled Hogarth to make a distinction between the aristocratic practice of caricature and

his own artistic practice of drawing character that he aligned with the English tradition of

20 Louise Lippincott, Selling Art in Georgian London: the Rise of Arthur Pond (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 24. Lippincott describes Ghezzi as an important contact for young English artists abroad. She writes: “member of the Accademia di San Luca, Ghezzi held the office of Pittore di Camera to the Pope. He was responsible for the maintenance and care of the papal collections as well as administration of the mosaic and tapestry factories, and he was the ‘decorator in charge’ of festivals and monumental constructions. Apart from his official duties, Ghezzi also acted as a line and gem engraver, antiquarian, restorer, agent-collector, caricaturist, and portrait and decorative painter,” 23-24.

39 representation derived from, but not limited to, the study of old master drawings.

The progression of caricature, from Leonardo forward, however, is not mirrored

on the left side of the frieze. While Raphael’s figures have been ‘Englished’ by the hand

of Thornhill in a process that Hogarth might like us to consider direct translation, the

Italian caricaturists are here charged with transforming the English grand tourist into a

European grotesque that replaces English character with exaggerated foreign manner and representation. As a result of these affectations, the English character (in every sense of the word) has been de-naturalized, caricatured and transformed into a foreign construction founded on artifice.

In Hogarth’s view, the rigid adherence to the traditional academic process of art making that emphasized copying masterpieces and quoting from famous works of art contributed to the disintegration of European art in general. After all, his history of caricature demonstrates the disintegration of the art from Leonardo’s grotesques through to contemporary production as each artist attempts to adopt greater shorthand. Moreover,

Hogarth felt that the privileged place European artists and Old Masters occupied in the

British art market stymied the production and growth of the fine arts in England.

Throughout the eighteenth century it was de rigeur for English artists to travel to Rome in order to gain the best commissions from English patrons. Rather than solely criticize

English artists who bowed to this pressure, Hogarth locates the blame amongst the aristocracy and claimed that those who made the Grand Tour were so perverted by foreign influences and the weight of connoisseurship that “their thoughts have been entirely and continually employ’d and incumber’d with considering and retaining the various manners in which pictures are painted, the histories, names, and characters of the

40 masters, together with many other little circumstances belonging to the mechanical part

of the art” (Hogarth, 19). The rote learning of art history, such as it was in the eighteenth

century, girdled the natural instincts of the viewer so that “little or no time has been given

for perfecting the ideas they ought to have in their minds, of the objects themselves in

nature” to such an extreme that appreciation for shady imitations replaces the ability to

appreciate nature (18-19). The eye of the art aficionado was thus distorted by the

deviations from nature encouraged by the system of connoisseurship that emphasized

style, manner and technique, the “mechanical part of art” over the “idea” of the “object in

nature.” The connoisseur’s eye, like the eye of the academically trained artist,

experiences nature not through observation, but through imitation. Hogarth disparages

the connoisseur and the artist taught from copies and imitations within the academic

system. Since the British Royal Academy of Arts had yet to be established, and since

most private art collections in the early eighteenth century featured the works of

continental masters, Hogarth’s xenophobia shines throughout his criticisms of the

connoisseur and the academically trained artist. Rather, the ideal eye for art appreciation that he posits is located in the uninitiated and uncorrupted (read: natural) English audience; staunch citizens, not affected aristocrats.

Fielding’s preface published in 1742 praises the native talents of Hogarth and

connects painter and author through a burgeoning artistic genre: the comic history. As

Ronald Paulson explains, “By calling Hogarth’s productions ‘comic history paintings,’

and his own a ‘comic epic in prose,’ Fielding is trying, as Hogarth had done since Boys

Peeping at Nature, to secure a place in the classical (and contemporary) hierarchy of

41 genres higher than satire, the grotesque, or the comic.”21 Hogarth and Fielding may have

been trying to build a case for the elevation of their work, yet, their intermedial view of

cultural and artistic hierarchies suggest something far more complicated was in play. By

playing drama, literature and the plastic arts off of one another the hierarchy Hogarth and

Fielding attempt to create is far more flexible than one located within academic tradition.

Characters and Caricaturas was originally designed as the subscription ticket for

Marriage-a-la-Mode, a series of six engravings that chronicle the ill-fated arranged marriage between an alderman’s daughter and the dissolute son of the Earl of Squander.

As a subscription ticket, the sheet represents a financial transaction between the subscriber and Hogarth, and is in this way a stand-in for currency and for the completed print series. The ticket is also Hogarth’s preface to the series: it is his opening salvo in which he demonstrates his ability to produce a great variety of figures that are neither likenesses of individuals nor caricatures, but can be imagined as a cast of actors waiting to be mobilized in dramatic roles. Indeed, the mask-like, expressionless countenances in

these one hundred profiles suggest the blank faces of mannequins or puppets. In this

light, the ticket also bears comparison to a theater ticket, a comparison worth some

consideration since the very title of the print series was derived from a popular play by

John Dryden. 22 The specificity with which Hogarth delineates the features of his characters, and the profile poses in which they are represented recall the conventions of portraiture, or even a crowded page of an artist’s sketch book. In this engraving Hogarth

21 Ronald Paulson, Hogarth, vol II. (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1991), 195.

22 Mark Hallett, Hogarth, (London: Phaidon Press Ltd., 2000), 175. Hallet has extensively analyzed the relationship between Marriage-a-la-Mode and other cultural productions, especially theater, in the sixth chapter of his study, 165-196.

42 demonstrates his virtuosity at representing character, but despite this show these heads

waiting in the wings do not appear again in the print series.

Even before this subscription ticket was printed, Hogarth was concerned with defining the relationship between character, caricature, and the figures in Marriag- a-la-

Mode. An advertisement for the completed print series that ran in the London press in the spring of 1743 indicates Hogarth’s concern with the status of the print in relation to other engraved series. The announcement heralded his intent “to publish by Subscription,

Six Prints from Copper-Plates, engrav’d by the best Masters in Paris, after his own

Paintings (the Heads for the better Preservation of the Characters and Expressions to be

done by the Author)…” (my italics).23 Since some of the most highly skilled

reproductive engravers worked in Paris, Hogarth is signaling the luxury, high-art status of

these works to his savvy patrons. Yet, in reserving the heads for his own burin he makes

an interesting claim to authorial control over the figures. One wonders what would

happen to Earl, the Alderman, or their children if Hogarth didn’t assume control: is their

English character at stake, or, worse, were it not for Hogarth’s expert touch would they

become caricatures? Certainly the title of the series and the mannered behavior of the

newly weds was heavily influenced by foreign taste and fashion: witness the Italian,

French and Dutch paintings that decorate the interiors of their houses. Is then Hogarth

suggesting that the English character of these figures will prevail over foreign influence?

Or, do his actions simply demonstrate his business acumen? By reserving the heads for

himself, Hogarth preserves the originality of these images and the artist’s touch in a way

that is reminiscent of traditional studio portrait-making practice where secondary

23 Quoted by Ronald Paulson, Hogarth’s Graphic Works, vol. 1 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1965), 268.

43 elements like drapery, hands and landscape were painted by apprentices while the heads and faces of sitters were reserved for the master. Such a practice was rather uncharacteristic for reproductive engravings since few painters actually touched up the worked copper plates. Although known for his paintings, Hogarth’s widest renown was for his print productions and, as a marketing strategy, owning a “Hogarth” must have meant (to many of his consumers) owning a print worked by the artist.

Hogarth’s advertisement for Marriage-a-la-Mode paraphrases a claim Fielding makes in Joseph Andrews wherein he promises that work will not make any outright reference to any living person, but Hogarth slyly adds that since his characters are taken from nature - that is from observation of his friends, associates and acquaintances - viewers may infer resemblances. While such a disclaimer ostensibly indicates that there is no resemblance to known individuals, it reverses on itself and invites the viewer to draw comparisons between their acquaintance, themselves, and the characters in

Marriage-a-la-Mode or in Fielding’s Joseph Andrews. It would seem that knowingly engaging the services of a caricaturist, like Ghezzi or Patch, was socially acceptable, whereas having one’s countenance caricatured unbidden in a print by Hogarth, or any other engraver for that matter, was a social calamity. The public exposure of appearing in one of Hogarth’s prints, likely in unflattering terms, has its corollary in the mimical performances of stage actors wherein notable and notorious public figures were regularly parodied.

In addition to elevating his satirical paintings above the lower comic genres like caricatures and grotesques, Hogarth had other pecuniary and personal reasons for his visual polemic in Characters and Caricatures, many of which tie into his ambitions as a

44 printmaker and entrepreneur. When Hogarth issued this print the artist Arthur Pond had

recently released a series of caricatures engraved after the works of Pier Leone Ghezzi,

the Caracci, and Leonardo Da Vinci. Pond’s publication of this series of caricatures

began in about 1736 and finished in 1742, was designed to capitalize on the caricature fad

among Grand Tourists. As Louise Lippincott describes it, the series was modeled on a

“Crozat/Caylus/Mariette publication, the Têtes de Caractéres after originals thought to be

by Leonardo Da Vinci, which Mariette had urged Pond to promote in England as early as

1730.”24 While Hogarth’s pugnacious temperament, – punningly referred to by the artist

in a self-portrait with a pug dog– was the foundation of many professional and personal

rivalries over the course of his career, the rivalry between Hogarth and Pond had at this

time reached a fever-pitch. Lippincott’s characterization of Hogarth’s opposition to Pond

reveals that the acrimonious ‘turf war’ was solidly grounded in concerns over the market for print series in England. Hogarth attempted to differentiate his productions from those

of Pond and take a larger share for the market by castigating Pond as a caricaturist and

promoting himself as a painter of English character. As Lippincott describes, Hogarth

had a worthy commercial adversary in Pond since, “in terms of format, decorative appeal, quality, relevance to contemporary interests, and sales methods, the Roman Antiquities

and Hogarth’s 1745 publication Marriage-a-la-Mode (which used the anti-Pond

Characters and Caricaturas as its subscription ticket) were about equal.”25 In fact,

Lippincott convincingly characterizes the first plates from Hogarth’s Analysis as the

artist’s polemic against the success of Pond’s Roman Antiquities, which featured Roman

24 Lippincott, 132-133.

25 Ibid., 44.

45 monuments and statuary in evocative compositions designed to recall the pleasures of the

Grand Tourists.26 As Lippincott describes it, the rivalry between the two artists likely

arose more from their similarities than their differences. One dramatic difference set the

two apart; namely, their view of the place of foreign art in England and its role in

promoting art and artists England.27 While Pond maintained and developed his ties to the

international exchange of art and ideas, Hogarth sought native artistic productions,

namely theater, with which to ally his own work.

Fifteen years after Hogarth introduced Characters and Caricaturas he revisited

the distinction he hoped to make between the two terms. At the end of his career Hogarth published The Bench (1758; figure 1.9), a satire on judges and on judgment. This small sheet, roughly the size of Characters and Caricaturas, was published to stand on its own and is perhaps Hogarth’s last public address in writing. Like Character and

Caricaturas, The Bench invites the viewer to make comparisons and draw conclusions based on the evaluation of visual elements, often in a progression of like features.

Whereas Characters and Caricaturas is a crowded image that teems with disembodied profiles of characters, the judges seated on The Bench are weighty figures, heavy in their draperies and ponderous in their duty to the law. Perhaps the most notable difference between the two images is in the relationship of the image to the text. While Hogarth directed the viewers of Characters and Caricaturas to Henry Fielding “For a farther

Explanation [of the difference] between Character & Caricatura,” the text in The Bench

26 Ibid., 44. Lippincott specifically points to the chaos of Hogarth’s Statuary Yard, which derives its composition from Pond’s print Roman Antiquities III. She further notes the incorporation of Pond’s engravings after Ghezzi, like The Bearleader, in the illustrative borders of Hogarth’s plate.

27 Ibid., 162.

46 threatens to overwhelm the image, replacing the baroque florescence of heads in

Characters with flowing script. The sheet is similarly structured to Characters and

Caricaturas in that it is divided into two registers; image on top, and text on bottom. The

upper portion of the sheet depicts four seated judges; below them, a dense block of text that once undertakes to clarify the distinction between character and caricature:

There are hardly any two things essentially more different than Character and Caricatura, nevertheless, they are usually confounded and mistaken for each other on which account this Explanation is attempted. It has ever been allow’d that, when a Character is strongly marked in the living Face, it may ever be consider’d as an Index of the mind to express which with any degree of justness in painting Requires the utmost Efforts of a great Master. Not that which has of late Years, gotten the name of Caricatura, is, or ought to be totally divested of every Stroke that hath a tendancy to good Drawing: it may be said to be a Species of Lines that are produc’d rather by the hand of chance than of Skill; for the early scrawlings of a Child which do but rarely hint an Idea of an Human Face, will always be found to be like some Person or other, and will often form such a Comical Resemblance as in all probability the most eminent Caricaturers of these times will not be able to equal with Design, because their Ideas of Objects are so much more perfect than Childrens, that they will unavoidably introduce some kind of Drawing: for all the humourous Effects of the fashionable manner of Caricaturing chiefly depend on the surprise we are under at finding ourselves caught with any sort of Similitude in objects absolutely remote in their kind.

In part, Hogarth’s complaint that the terms character and caricature are “too

frequently confounded and mistaken for one another,” and that they have been

inadequately defined is a case of the artist protesting too much. Surely, any slippages

between the two terms benefited Hogarth’s reputation as an artist working in the satirical

mode. As Deidre Lynch has noted, Hogarth’s obsession with drawing a distinction

between these terms “invents confusion over categories specifically so as to correct them,

and through that fine-tuning alter the position in the hierarchy that might be assigned to

47 Hogarth’s own ‘uncommon way of painting,’- his ‘true comedy.’”28 In claiming that he is the sole arbiter of the distinction between the two modes of representation, Hogarth asserts his status as a professional artist in contradistinction to amateur production, and attempts to carve out a niche for his modern moral subjects. Of course Hogarth himself was not above using caricature to censure his opponents, nor did he altogether shy from censuring well-known public figures in his satirical print productions. This moral high- ground he attempts to build for himself is compromised by prints that include satirical attacks and unflattering caricatural portraits: for example, The Bruiser (1763), which targets Charles Churchill, or those of Simon, Lord Lovat (1746) and John Wilkes, Esq.

(1763). Hogarth seems to have found it difficult (perhaps increasingly so) to abstain from including personal attacks in his prints, as we shall see even The Bench contains more than one barb against a contemporary Londoner.

Relatively small in scale (about 8 ½ x 8 ¼ inches), The Bench is composed of two engraved plates. The top portion of the sheet depicts four hefty judges of the Court of

Common Pleas, the court that settled cases between members of the public. Swathed in bulky layers, the lumpy bodies of the judges are consumed by their robes and weighty, wooly wigs, a parody of antique drapery and the antithesis of the heroic male figure celebrated in history painting. These trappings of office seem to have a soporific effect on the bearers: their bodies’ slump and droop into one another so that they meld together to form The Bench. Bored by the proceedings before them, the two judges on the right collapse into each other and are evidently sound asleep. The remaining two judges are also far from alert; rather than attentively listen to the argument, they bend over sheets of

28 Deidre Lynch, The Economy of Character: Novels, Market Culture and the Business of Inner Meaning (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 62.

48 paper on which they inscribe notes. As Paulson has pointed out, Hogarth has cropped the

Royal coat of arms on the back wall of the court room in half so that it reads “Mal Y

Pense” and “Semper Eadem” to form a caption for the judges who “Think Evil” and are

“always the same.”29

The judge seated immediately below the altered arms has been identified as Sir

John Willes, a figure well known in eighteenth-century London for his lax personal

morals and for his harsh judgments against the petitioners at court.30 Hogarth’s inclusion

of this minor political celebrity recalls Harlot’s Progress and other modern moral

subjects wherein known figures mingled with fictional characters. In fact, Sir John

himself shares the bench with a figure derived from the first plate of the Analysis of

Beauty, also know as The Statuary’s Yard (figure 1.10). A description of this judge in the

in the Analysis claims the figure illustrates the “sagacity to the countenance” given to the

wearer of the full-bottom wig from the chapter in the Analysis, entitled “On Quantity.”31

Although the judge is intended to represent gravitas, his modern dress and wig, like the

manners of the dancing master who admires a sculpture of the Apollo Belvedere, travesty

the noble lines and graceful postures of the antique sculptures in the garden. This judge is therefore transformed to illustrate the ridiculous excesses of “quantity” and is surrounded by examples of “improper, or incompatible excesses” that “always excite laughter” when they meet (Hogarth 37). For example, the open book just below his seat

29 Paulson, Hogarth vol III (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1991), 237.

30 Ibid., 237.

31 Hogarth, 37. On the previous page Hogarth describes the way the judge’s robes add gravity to the wearer. “The robes of state are always made large and full, because they give a grandeur of appearance, suitable to the offices of greatest distinction. The judge’s robes have an awful dignity given to them by the quantity of their contents, when the train is held up, there is a noble waving line descending from the shoulders of the judge to the hand of his train-bearer.”

49 depicts: a dancing master dressed as Jupiter (no. 20), the “fat face of a grown man” with an infant’s body (no. 17), and “a child with a man’s wig and cap on” (no.18) (37). By linking and likening Sir John to the travestied judge from plate I of The Analysis, Hogarth satirizes the excesses of Sir John and those of judgment itself demonstrating that, when not asleep on the job, judgment is fickle and ignorant.

The judges on the bench are thus like critics and judges of art who place self interest and the prevailing fashions before the timeless tenets of good judgment and good taste. The first state of this print reveals that it was originally dedicated to George

Townshend, the amateur caricaturist whose pencil amused and offended many of his peers. This satiric dedication was burnished out in later publications of the sheet, but the attack on amateur artists who participated in the art of caricature by publishing their own works (and competed with other graphic artists) still stands. Townshend’s caricatures are by and large simple outline sketches of figures mostly in profile that, while unsophisticated, cannily capture the prominent features and characteristic gestures of their subjects. 32 His 1757 caricature satire entitled The Recruiting Serjeant or Brittannias

[sic] Happy Prospect, depicts Henry Fox leading a group of notoriously corrupt politicians to a temple that houses a statue of the Duke of Cumberland, Townshend’s particular political enemy (figure 1.11). 33 The profiles and bodies of the caricatured politicians are described by a hard outline that gives them the look of cut-out figures imposed on the page. Townshend’s strength as a caricaturist lies in this familiarity with

32 For commentary on George Townshend, see Herbert M. Atherton, “George Townshend, Caricaturist,” Eighteenth-Century Studies, 4:4 (Summer 1971) 437-446.

33 Diana Donald discusses this print in the context of the emblematic tradition that underlies the history of graphic satire and credits Darly, the publisher with the “somewhat perfunctory setting” of the scene. Donald, 49.

50 his subjects. With the exception of Fox, transformed here into his animal counterpart,

Townshend has taken care to retain the characteristic elements of their features while caricaturing them. Nonetheless, Townshend’s figures are wooden and their poses contrived as they march across an open landscape towards a temple enshrining the Duke of Cumberland. Hogarth’s harsh judgment of Townshend is two fold: first he criticizes

Townshend’s involvement in political caricature; second, Hogarth castigates his caricatures as frivolous images that fail to capture and reveal the dimensions and depth of the characters of his subjects. Yet, in Townshend’s attempt to demonstrate his figures in action, and provide language for them, he takes a page from Hogarth’s book and provides a circumstance for his satirical/caricatural criticism. Hogarth, always protective where his own interests were concerned, was especially annoyed with Townshend’s productions that blurred the lines between amateur and professional art making.

Hogarth’s skill in representing character lies in his ability to connect resemblance to personality or tendency. For Hogarth, true character can only be revealed when form is linked to action. He writes thus:

Yet surely no figure, be it ever so singular, can be perfectly conceived as a character, till we find it connected with some remarkable circumstance or cause, for such particularity of appearance; for instance a fat bloated person doth not call to mind the character of a Silenus, till we have joined the idea of voluptuousness with it; so likewise strength to support, and clumsiness of figure, are united, as well in the character of an Atlas as in a porter...” (70).

The character that Hogarth seeks to represent in this satire is therefore written in the countenances and postures of the judge: it is expressed through the (in)action of their bodies, and by the caption above their heads.

When William Hogarth published The Bench, it was the text inscribed below the

51 image, and not the image itself, that occasioned the greatest notice by his contemporaries.

A series of letters printed in the London periodical press in the months that followed the publication of the satire contest Hogarth’s observation that character and caricature are

“usually confounded and mistaken for each other” and quibble over the artistic origins of the practice of caricature and the etymology of the terms. In focusing on the text in

Hogarth’s satire, rather than on the image, the commentary fails to connect his adamant, yet occasionally perplexing, prose efforts to the images that demonstrate his argument.

Overall, the critical response to this engraving indicates the failure of the sheet and points to a series of flaws at the center of Hogarth’s argument. In fact, Hogarth later issued a state of the satire wherein the plate was altered to include a row of grotesque heads along the top portion of the image (figure 1.12). A later addition to the print, and a response to the criticism he received, they underscore Hogarth’s complaint that caricature and character are “usually confounded and mistaken for one another” and point to the veracity of his comment – it would seem that the barristers intended to represent character were actually interpreted as caricatures – hence the need for the somewhat petulant graphic distinction. Yet, this slippage between categories raises the important problem that forms the basis of this chapter: Just what are the boundaries between character and caricature? Were they, as Hogarth and his supporters suggest, two distinct categories, or was the boundary between the two more permeable? Critical response to this sheet, points to the unique ability of print satire to successfully enter into such a debate and catalyze the conversation.

Shortly after The Bench was published the Monthly Review, a fashionable London

52 journal focused on literary criticism, printed a letter signed simply “B.”34 In his public address B calls the editor’s attention to Hogarth’s latest production citing the inscription at the bottom of the sheet as reason for his (and potentially the Review’s) interest. After a brief description of the image, and a thorough transcription of Hogarth’s inscription, B outlines his disagreement with Hogarth’s definition of terms: “I have conversed a good deal with Painters, with Connoisseurs, and with people entirely ignorant of Painting; and yet never remember to have heard them misapplied before: nor, indeed, do I recollect any three terms of art, in the meaning of which mankind are more generally agreed.” B’s assumption that the terms are well known to a public constituted of professionals, connoisseurs and the unschooled is perhaps optimistic. However, in pointing out that there is no confusion between the terms he raises a question of Hogarth we might also have asked of Characters and Caricaturas and of The Bench: what is all the fuss about?

For B, all three terms can be defined rather simply: “Character, therefore, is true

Resemblance; Caricatura is exaggerated ridiculous Resemblance; and Outré is

Exaggeration with, or without Resemblance. Character has nothing in it of Caricatura, or Outré. Caricatura comprehends Character and Outré. Outré, is mere Exaggeration, without any regard to either of the other two.” The core of the debate remains the same as it was 15 years earlier and centers on the relationship between representation, likeness, nature and exaggeration.

Oddly, B passes no judgment on the practice of caricature; he does not claim that it maligns the subject, nor does he link it implicitly to the satirical ends to which Hogarth

34 Monthly Review, Sept. 1758, vol 19. Ronald Paulson identifies “Mr. B,” as Thomas Bardwell. The correspondence, between Bardwell and Hogarth, or at least Hogarth’s part is now in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Paulson 1993, vol 3, 238.

53 employs it in The Bench. Instead, he addresses caricature as a legitimate form practiced

by good and bad artists alike. In particular, he argues that caricature is not necessarily

devoid of good drawing and notes; “There are many instances of Caricaturas well

drawn.” In this observation B, describes caricatures made by accomplished artists and invokes the tradition of caricature as a creative practice that allowed artists to play with composition and physiognomy. His commentary further recalls the promotion of caricature in England by artists like Pond who offered prints by Italian caricaturists to clients as a polite amusement.

To provide readers with a concrete example of character and caricature B asks them to recall the acting styles of David Garrick and Henry Woodward since “the first is

always Character and the other Caricatura. If we refer the idea of these two Actors to

Drawing, or Painting, we can never mistake the meaning of these words.” In eighteenth-

century theater criticism, Garrick’s acting style was frequently associated with naturalism

or realism. Critics, like Charles Churchill, author of the comic poem The Rosciad,

praised Garrick’s attitudes: ‘Each start, is Nature; and each pause is Thought.”35 In aligning Garrick with nature and a realistic or naturalistic style of acting, the author suggests that deviations from this perceived naturalism bring the actor into the realm of caricature. Woodward, on the other hand, was an actor best known for his athletic performances in pantomime and roles in physical comedy. His animated performances were targeted by theater critics who linked his acting style with overblown gestures and

35 Quoted by Shearer West. The Image of the Actor: Verbal and Visual Representation in the Age of Garrick and Kemble (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991), 63.

54 forceful declamation.36 Such overacting was thought to pander to the tastes of the lower

ranks of society who regularly and vociferously attended theatrical performances,

especially those of comedy and farce. While Churchill praised the talents of Garrick, he criticized Woodward’s “grimaces” and gestures performed so as to be seen from every corner of the auditorium and by all members of the audience. By instructing readers to call to mind stage performances and acting styles, B aligns the representation of caricature and of character with action and with acting.

While Hogarth and B focus on the definition of character, caricature and outré as they relate to representational practice, a second anonymous correspondent to the

Monthly Review contributed a disquisition on the origins of the terms.37 Hogarth, he

charges, is guilty of arbitrarily assigning meaning to the terms and of implying that they

are etymologically related. This correspondent complains of Hogarth’s print: “he has

thought it necessary nicely to distinguish their difference [character, caricature, and the

outré], and exactly fix the ideas he chuses they should convey: and for this he might have

very good reasons.” Playfully noting, “I should likewise observe, that he differs from the

common opinion on each of these heads,” the correspondent echoes B’s commonsensical

observation that ‘every one knows’ a character or a caricature when they see it. Whereas

B’s discussion of character draws from the tradition of the stage and from portraiture, our

anonymous author gestures to the precepts of character described in French academic

theory and as applied to history painting. Of character he describes:

There are characters of the passions and dispositions of the human mind; which

36 Richard Allan Cave, Henry Woodward, biographical entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Boigraphy Online,

37 Monthly Review, vol 19, 1758, 605-607.

55 are by painters and sculptors, and even virtuosi, frequently seen on the human face, and exterior form; and which convey pretty certain ideas of what passes within –Of these a collection has been published in France, called Caracteres des Passions, &c. par Mons. Le Brun.

Charles Le Brun’s work, Conference sur l’Expression Generale et Particuliere, was

among the most widely read and followed treatises on art from its publication in France

in the late seventeenth century.38 Translated into English in the early eighteenth century,

the book was so widely known that Hogarth could off-handedly refer to it as a “common

drawing-book” in his own treatise on art, The Analysis of Beauty (Hogarth 97). Although

Hogarth’s comment may seem dismissive of the work, it is best interpreted as an

acknowledgement of Le Brun’s impact on visual culture. For Hogarth, the Conference

sur l’Expression was tremendously important and influential for the representation of figures in his own paintings and engravings; most notably in his representation of the actor David Garrick as Richard III, derived from Le Brun’s description of “Fright”39

Other traces of the engraved illustrations are found in Hogarth’s illustrated borders of the plates for the Analysis and even in his own laughing countenance depicted in Characters and Caricaturas.

A practical hand-book for artists training in the French academy, Le Brun’s illustrated treatise provided a systematic grammar of expression for the judicious artist.

38 The Conference on which Le Brun’s essay is based was delivered to the Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in 1678. Le Brun’s lecture was not published until 1698, 8 years after his death. According to McKenzie, the published text was based on Le Brun’s lecture notes and a ‘recasting’ of the lecture by officials at the French academy. Charles Le Brun, A Method to Learn to Design the Passions, Introduction by Alan T. McKenzie (William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California, Los Angeles, 1980), v. For through analysis of Lebrun’s treatise on the passions see Jennifer Montagu, The Expression of the Passions: the Origin and Influence of Charles Le Brun's "Conférence sur l'expression générale et particulière." (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994).

39 McKenzie, viii. For further discussion of Le Brun’s influence on Hogarth’s works see Frederick Antal, “Hogarth and his Borrowings,” Art Bulletin, 29 (1947), 43, n. 25.

56 The illustrations for Conférence sur l’Expression Générale et Particulière, engraved by

Etienne Picard, a follower of Le Brun, are a combination of spare line engraving and

more fully fleshed-out heads. These plates, like that of “Laughter” (figure 1.13), are

accompanied by a block of text that describes the motions of the face as it composes itself

into the particular expression of each emotion and includes commentary on the coloring

of the skin as the muscles contract and blood fills the capillaries and veins. Laughter is

“expressed by the Eye-brows rising over the middle of the Eyes and falling towards the

nose; the Eyes almost shut; the Mouth appearing somewhat open and shewing the

Teeth;… the Face will be red; the Nostrils open; and the Eyes may seem wet or in the

Action of shedding Tears…”40 Anger (figure 1.14), the opposite emotion or passion, is

represented by a series of three engravings of heads, each in a different angle, but all

following the description: “When Anger seizes the Soul, it is expressed by red and Fiery

eyes, the pupil wild and flashing; the Eyebrows alike, either lifted up or depress’d.”41

Strikingly, the description of Anger gives an account of the physical effects of the emotion on the body as it progresses in intensity “The Teeth will seem to gnash, and the

Mouth foam; the Face appear pale in one place and inflamed in another, but swelled all over;… In time, the Person thus affected will seem rather to pant than breath, the Heart being oppressed by the abundance of blood flowing to its relief.” Such a concretely physical account of the emotion reveals the import of this text for actors, who were also

encouraged to look to Le Brun for inspiration when portraying characters on the stage.

Le Brun’s engravings set a vocabulary of emotion for the early modern artist that

was derived from the works of classical theorists; most prominently Aristotle and

40 Le Brun, 43, fig. 7

41 Ibid., 45, figs. 30-32.

57 Quinitilian. According to Aristotelian theory, facial expression, gesture and the timber of

voice were all outward expressions of the passions produced in the soul. By mastering

representation of these external manifestations of the passions in the imitative arts –

painting, sculpture, and, theater – the successful artist could “by a sort of contagion…

evoke a corresponding emotional response from the beholder or hearer.”42 At the source

of facial and physical expressions the passions were associated with the universal

qualities of men, not with the idiosyncratic gestures of individuals. As President of the

British Royal Academy of Art Joshua Reynolds quipped in his sixth Discourse, “An

History-Painter paints a man in general; a Portrait-Painter, a particular man, and

consequently a defective model.”43 Were a history painter to slip and provide for his

Roman senator or Greek hero the individualized expression of an eighteenth-century model, his painting would fail to address the highest universal nature of the viewer and the result might indeed turn the scene into a caricature of the heroic figure. Within the strictures that governed the use of expression by history painters, the application of these rules was slightly more flexible than many academic theorists let on. Even Reynolds, whose major source of income was portraiture of the fashionable set in London, frequently turned to the idiom of history painting when rendering his sitters. Thus his

“defective model[s]” were glossed by the language of myth and allegory and transformed

into muses and heroes, all the while maintaining a faithful enough resemblance to their

eighteenth-century appearance.

42 Brewster Rogerson, “The Art of Painting the Passions,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 14:1 (January 1953) 68-94, 72.

43 Reynolds, 70 (1774).

58 In general, art historical discussions of Le Brun’s Characters have been organized

around the impact the publications of his theories and illustrative engravings have had on

figural representation. Less frequently considered is the typographic relationship

between the Caracteres des Passions and eighteenth-century usages of the term

character. Following the early applications of the word, Le Brun’s “characters” are

formed by lines inscribed on the face through the movement of muscles that are stirred

into action by the soul. Antiquarians could also take note that the Greek word for

character describes an “instrument for marking or graving, impress, stamp, distinctive

mark, distinctive nature… to make sharp, cut furrows in, engrave.”44 Not only does

“character” refer to an engraver’s tool, it describes the marks made by the burin – the

strokes that compose letters of the alphabetical and numeric characters. In this light

character is simultaneously the tool used to make an impression, and the impression

itself. If correctly interpreted and committed to memory, the characters inscribed on the

face by the passions, like letters of the alphabet, are made legible when they are

engraved, printed, or inscribed on a flat surface and transferred/translated.

Hogarth responded to this understanding of character as a series of graphic marks

when he praised Le Brun’s work for the clarity of the line that describes the passions:

“And altho’ these are but imperfect copies, they will answer our purpose in this place

better than any other thing I can refer you to; because the passions are ranged in

succession, and distinctly marked with lines only, the shadow being omitted” (Hogarth

97). More explicitly, Hogarth borrowed directly from Le Brun to described how repeated facial expressions inscribe the face lines that convey character: “It is by the natural and

44 OED Online, Oxford University Press, 2006.

59 unaffected movements of the muscles, caused by the passions of the mind, that every man’s character would in some measure be written on his face… were it not for certain accidents which tho’ not always prevent it” (96). Hogarth goes on to claim that an individual might “re-write” his countenance by repeatedly smiling to hide a sullen disposition. No where is this more reprehensible than in the case of the hypocrite who,

“may so manage his muscles, by teaching them to contradict his heart, that little of his mind can be gather’d from his countenance, so that the character of an hypocrite is entirely out of the power of pencil, without some adjoining circumstance to discover him, as smiling and stabbing at the same time, or the like” (96). Faced with the possibility of such deception, the actions of an individual are the true telltale of character. Although

Hogarth is comfortable mobilizing graphic implications of ‘character,’ he is not entirely willing to accept that character is unambiguously displayed on the face. Strikingly, both

Hogarth and LeBrun put an emphasis on action in their descriptions: for Le Brun it is both the gnashing teeth and flowing blood that indicate “anger” and for Hogarth it is gesture and bodily action that reveals character. Thus for both artists, it is the act of inscription as much as what is inscribed that ultimately indicates the passions or character.

For literary scholar Lynch, the eighteenth-century “economy of character” was largely enabled by the printing press, which made character available to the reading and viewing public in a variety of formats that included novels, newspapers, journals, written character sketches, as well as portrait prints and broadsides. Lynch writes; “The issue critics most often engaged in treating the protocols of mimesis were issues of discursive economy. They asked the judicious reader to count, to think about how many strokes or

60 traits of character it would take for a character’s defining difference to become clear, and

to take warning from the instances in which a superfluity of strokes pushed representation

beyond the bounds of nature and into the domain of the grotesque.”45 Examining

Hogarth’s Characters and Caricaturas, Lynch finds evidence of a graphic artist obsessed with controlling his burin so that excessive marks or out-of-bounds lines do not interfere to turn his characters into caricatures. Lynch describes Hogarth’s characters as economical and observes that; “it is obvious that Hogarth set out, in delineating these hundred characters to keep to a minimum the different kinds of strokes he would have to display.”46 The economy of Hogarth’s line results in characters that are not terribly

expressive in the end. In fact, the characters (except his own profile and that of Fielding)

show no outward evidence of the extreme facial characters inscribed by the passions, and

in this way they are essentially character-less. Given that Hogarth believed that character

is exhibited through a combination of form and motion, the faces that populate this print

become all the more puzzling. The expression of their character depends on the life-

breath of the artist or the playwright who sets the figures into motion by providing script

and situation.

Returning to the Montly Review letter written by B, we find another instance wherein character is described as a quality that must be expressed through the motions of

the body. For B, the “unanimated countenance, which has nothing characteristic”

requires the touch of a great master to represent it. This face without character is

illustrated as “Tranquility” by Picard (figure 1.15) and is essentially non-reactive; the

eyebrows are placid, the mouth is closed and the pupils stare straight ahead. Thus, the

45 Lynch, 9

46 Ibid, 64

61 tranquil soul is an expression of the absence of passion, that is to say, it expresses nothing but its own tranquility. Hogarth similarly noted in his Analysis, “It is strange that nature hath afforded us so many lines and shapes to indicate the deficiencies and blemishes of the mind, whilst there are none at all that point out the perfections of it beyond the appearance of common sense and placidity.” For Hogarth the dilemma of representing the variety of good behavior is solved by bodily movement since “deportment, words, and actions, must speak the good, the wise, the witty, the humane, the generous, the merciful and the brave.” Equally mistrustful are “gravity and solemn looks,” which may appear to convey wisdom, but “the mind much occupied with trifles will occasion as grave and sagacious an aspect, as if it was charged with matters of the utmost moment”

(99). Noting that the passions of the soul may have less than lofty motives, for Hogarth bodily action is essential to transmit of character. To this end, Hogarth analogizes the gestures an actor makes in space to the gestures an artist’s hand makes on the page so that the strokes performed on the page and on the stage are constituent parts of character.

In the final chapter of the Analysis of Beauty, Hogarth ties typographic connotations of character to his understanding of character as represented on stage and on the page through performance. He begins by claiming “Action,” – the movement of the physical body - “is a sort of language which perhaps one time or another may be taught by a kind of grammar-rules” (104). The grammar of movement can be read in the strokes made by the actor’s (individual’s) gestures since, “It is known that bodies in motion always describe some line or other in the air” (105). This inscription of lines in space, or characteristic gesturing, is for Hogarth analogous to handwriting: graceful movements of the pen create graceful and, most importantly, legible letters on the page. The legibility

62 of character is of paramount import for Hogarth, who advises actors on stage to imagine

their performance is delivered before a “foreigner” who is “a thorough master of all the

effects of action.” Curiously Hogarth’s ideal spectator for his performance, the “Dumb

Shew,” is not necessarily an English speaker, but is an individual conversant in the

gesture as a universal language inscribed on the air by gesture.

For the anonymous correspondent to the Monthly Review character is also conveyed through a series of “distinguishing strokes, traits, touches, denoting specifically, the appearance of figure, or turn of sentiment, which is to be exhibited on the stage or the canvas.” 47 In learning to discern this language of strokes, the viewer of painting and theatrical performance likewise learns to mentally compose a catalog of

types and personalities that he or she may encounter in modern London.48

For artists who specialized in portraiture, a reputation for conveying a sitter’s

character was essential for success. Jonathan Richardson, author of An Essay on the

Theory of Painting (1715), a text that profoundly influenced Hogarth’s Analysis, was also

one of the most successful portrait painters of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth

century.49 Richardson championed the values of English portraiture and proudly

promoted the genre as a native art form. Loaded with advice for professional artists,

Richardson’s Essay also makes an appeal to the vanity of the admirer and patron of art as

worldly individuals. In a common-sense manner later adopted by Hogarth, Richardson

begins, “that the Face, and Air, as well as our Actions, indicate the Mind, is indisputable.

47 Monthly Review, vol. 19, 1758, pp. 605-607.

48 Lynch describes this acquisition process in her introduction to The Economy of Character, 1-20.

49 Jonathan Richardson, An Essay on the Theory of Painting (London: Printed for A. C. and sold by A. Bettesworth, 1725).

63 ‘Tis seen by everybody in the Extreams [sic] on both sides.”50 This pronouncement is

followed by an example with comic possibilities:

let two Men, the one a Wise Man, and the other a Fool, be seen together Dress’d, or Disguis’d as you please, One will not be mistaken for the other, but distinguish’d with the first Glance of the Eye; and if these Characters are stamp’d upon the Face, so as to be read by everyone when in the utmost Extreams [sic], they are so Proportionably when more, or less, removed from them, and Legible accordingly, and in proportion to the skill of the Reader.51

The juxtaposition of opposites was a comedic formula outlined by Francis Hutcheson in his Reflections Upon Laughter (1750), and paraphrased by Hogarth who noted that

“incompatible excesses always excite laughter.”52 The comedic potential in Richardson’s

scenario lies in the revelation of difference between the Fool and the Wise Man, who give

themselves away by degrees. Of course, the skilled reader will be able to successfully

navigate between the two and avoid being duped.

When Jonathan Richardson introduced the subject of portraiture in his Essay on

the Theory of Painting he began:

Considering what sort of Resemblances Portraits ought to have, Opinions are divided; Some are for flattery, others for Exact Likeness. If the Former be receiv’d, Care must be taken that it be really Flattery, and not too Apparently so. Many Painters have taken a fancy to make Caricaturaes of People’s faces, that is Exaggerating the Defects, and Concealing the Beauties, however preserving the Resemblance; the Reverse of that is done in the Present Case, but the Character must be seen throughout, or it ceases to be a Compliment; ‘Tis a picture of Somebody else, or of Nobody, and only tells the Person how different He, or She is from what the Painter conceives to be Beauty. 53

50 Richardson, 94

51 Ibid, 94

52 Francis Hutcheson, Reflection Upon Laughter and Remarks Upon the Fable of the Bees (Glasgow: Daniel Baxter, 1750)

53 Richardson, 79.

64

By ironing out wrinkles and creases in the face, straightening noses, and removing all

manner of blemishes, the overly-flattering portrait ran the risk of effacing the character of the subject. This impulse on the part of the artist to curry favor with the sitter by glossing over his or her less becoming features could have the insulting effect of calling attention to his or her deficiencies, much in the same way that caricature calls physical imperfections into focus through exaggeration. In a sense, the idealized portrait could transform the sitter into a caricature of his or her improved self on canvas so that the

‘real’ features of the individual appear to parody the portrait and indicate to the sitter

“how different He, or She is from what the Painter conceives to be Beauty.” Indeed,

Richardson counseled portraitists to avoid exaggeration in any form and “Instead of

making Caricaturaes of People’s Faces (a Foolish Custom of Burlesquing them, too

much used) Painters should take a Face, and make an Antique Medal, or Bas-Relief of it,

by Divesting it of its Modern Disguises, and giving it the Dress of those Times, and

suitable to the Character intended.”54 The ideal representation of character is a timeless

distillation of portraiture wherein contemporary fashion and nation are removed.

Richardson’s portrait of Alexander Pope (1688-1744) as poet laureate demonstrates these ideals and evidences the ease with which portraiture could adapt the precepts of history painting for its own purposes (figure 1.16). 55 The features of Pope’s face are emphasized

by Richardson, who has posed Pope’s fully-lit face in front of a dark background so that

54 Richardson, 209.

55 David Solkin discusses this phenomenon whereby portraiture adopted conventions of history painting in his analysis of John Closterman’s double portrait of The 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury and the Hon. Maurice Ashley-Cooper, c.1700. Solkin, Painting for Money: The Visual Arts in the Public Sphere in Eighteenth- Century England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 3-13.

65 the slope of his forehead, the set of his jaw, and the hollows of his cheek are all modeled

on canvas in emulation of profiles found on antique coins and medals. Wigless and

covered by somber drapery, Richardson depicts the features that stand to identify Pope’s individuality, yet the portrait is not a record of Pope as an eighteenth-century poet, but instead it links Pope to classical and renaissance poets by the format of representation.

Caricature, the exaggeration of likeness, locates peculiarities in facial features and situates the subject firmly in a contemporary context by focusing physical characteristics that are specific to an individual and exaggerating these individual traits rather than pointing to the general and abstract idealized qualities of the face. To borrow Lynch’s language, the ‘strokes’ that describe a caricatured figure bow and flex in an exaggerated manner so that the caricature is defined by its relationship to the original, whether an individual or a portrait, in terms of excess and deficiency. Lynch has noted that the reader of the eighteenth-century novel was asked to “count” the number of “strokes or traits of character it would take for a character’s defining difference to become clear.”56

An excess of strokes results in an overcharged description that turns an individual into a

caricature. Burdening the character with too many traits results in confusion and

illegibility so that the reader becomes lost in the minutia of description and emerges

without a sense of the character they encountered. Yet, this surplus of strokes can also

result in hyper-legibility, a situation where all is exposed and the reader is left with

nothing to tease out. The successful caricature operates in this ideal of exposure but

subverts it so that by claiming to reveal all, it acts as a disguise or mask that conceals

selected elements of character while others are exaggerated. This function is visible in

56 Lynch, 9.

66 the inherent physical distortion of caricature wherein a nose may be made

disproportionately large to the detriment of a noble chin or an attractive brow.

Just as portraits strive to be legible to the viewer and recall the sitter’s presence, caricatures also assume familiarity between viewer and subject. So too do they assume the viewer’s familiarity with cultural signals for character and type. Brewster Rogerson has suggested this relationship between character and caricature in his description of the illustrative engravings to Le Brun’s work. For Rogerson, the immediacy and directness of line used to illustrate the heads in Le Brun’s passions bordered on caricature precisely because of these elements. To illustrate the passions clearly Le Brun used a thick engraved line without nuance or delicacy. This disciplined line “illustrated with such minuteness as to compel the applause of his fellow painters” could be perverted by

“cynical spirits” who saw caricature in Le Brun “exaggerated tracing of alterations in the human face.”57

Indeed, in a series of caricatures the graphic artist Thomas Rowlandson explored

exactly the connection Rogerson makes between the illustration of the passions and caricature. Illustrating the passions Rowlandson replaces the (assumed) lofty sentiments addressed by history painting with comical and common-place motives for “Anger,”

“Laughter” and “Horror.” (figures 1.17-1.19) In these instances, Anger is illustrated by an old woman chastising a buxom young maid; Laughter is occasioned by a disappointed-looking cat forced to wear a dress and mob cap; and Horror is excited by a field mouse used to taunt a matronly woman. By connecting action to the passion or emotion represented Rowlandson exploits Le Brun’s engravings for comic effect.

57 Rogerson, 75.

67 Rowlandson, however, wasn’t the first engraver to connect the passions to caricatures and

grotesques, satirists like John Collier (Tim Bobbins) in his engraved series, The Human

Passions Delineated (1773), successfully demonstrated the comic possibility of imagining the passions moving hearts and souls of the lower orders.58 The rural poor

who express the higher passions of anger, love, and admiration are shown to be grotesque

buffoons. On the one hand, this representation of the noble passions in the lower orders

demonstrates the incompatibility of higher passions in low-born subjects. Yet,

Rowlandson makes the secondary point that these emotions, whatever their cause, are

universally experienced.

The clowning, squalling peasants in Bobbins’ and Rowlandson’s series are stand-

ins for character types. Their grotesque appearance aligns them with the outré, “mere

exaggeration,” as Hogarth and B. describe it. As the practice of caricature developed in

the hands of the eighteenth-century graphic satirist it increasingly borrowed the visual

language of type and grotesque to explore the limits of permissible exaggeration.59 For

Hogarth, the excessive nature of the grotesque found in images like in Leonardo’s sketch of the old woman, or the Caracci’s drawings of peasants, was precisely the element that threatened character. The seemingly random application of the outré line and the physical tumescence, pitting and gouging that it traced in grotesque representation could annihilate character. Followers in Hogarth’s wake had to learn to navigate these dangerous straits at a time when graphic caricature itself was still a recent import from

58 See Diana Donald and Brian Maidment, Human Passions Delineated: an Exploration of the Work of Tim Bobbin (Oxford: Hanborough Parrot, 1990).

59 For a discussion of the relationship between the grotesque and caricature see Ronald Paulson, “The Grotesque, Gillray and Political Caricature,” in Representations of Revolution (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1983), 168-211. See especially pp. 181-183 for a brief historical sketch of the role of exaggeration in both caricature and grotesque.

68 the studios of Italy.

Over the course of his career, and despite his protestations, Hogarth’s name

became associated with a wide variety of engravings that featured satire or caricatures. It

seems that even his final attempts to situate his performances on the side of character, for

example, The Bench, were overshadowed by performances like his late caricatures of

Wilkes and Churchill. Certainly by the late eighteenth century Hogarth’s attempts to

distance his works from the label of caricature had been completely dismissed and his

legacy was invoked in praise of tremendously skilled printmakers like James Gillray and

Thomas Rowlandson, true satirists with a wicked aptitude for caricature. In the twenty years or so that elapsed between Hogarth’s death in 1764, and Gillray’s rise to maturity and popularity in the 1780’s, Hogarth’s legacy as a satirical-caricatural artist was cemented by a handful of texts, all treatises on the art of caricature.

In 1762 the printsellers and publishers Matthew and Mary Darly published A

Book of Caricaturas, which promised engravings on “59 Copper Plates, with ye

Principles of Designing in that Droll and Pleasing Manner” (figure 1.20). This abundantly illustrated small-scale book begins with a brief text that provides instructions for drawing caricatures. Revising Fielding’s definition of caricatura, Darly inverts the negative judgment of the art, which “exhibits Monsters, not Men,” and places it in a positive light, highlighting the fashionable element of caricature and its role as a polite amusement. Darly describes:

Caricatura is the burlesque of Character, or an exaggeration of nature, especially of those forms and features which have a striking peculiarity in them. It is a species of drawing destitute of those delicacies which embellish the imitations of fine nature. It adds no beauty to the objects it represents, but exhibits a comical similitude, and in a kind of mimickry [sic] holds out its defects and blemishes in full view. The Italians above other nations have been Caricaturers. Of late years

69 the poetical contests and squabbles in Britain have given rise to many of these Pasquinades, some indeed have been famous and meer [sic] catch-penny performances, but several others were the amusement and productions of men of rank and figure, many specimens of these are shown from page 19 to page 24.

The organization of the book with text separated from the illustrative images recalls The

Bench, in which the text that discusses the differences between character, caricature, and the outré, bears little direct commentary on the image. In this way Mary Darly’s Book of

Caricaturas can be understood as a response to Hogarth or even a public rejection of his negative assessment of caricature. By demonstrating that caricature is beholden to a set of organizational rules, Darly attempts to allay fears that the exaggeration inherent to caricature will consume and deform the subject into a grotesque and un-recognizable figure.

Mary Darly’s focus on the aristocratic and foreign origins of the genre indicates her hopes that the guide will attract a polite audience of men and women who will practice caricature as a form of entertainment for artist and sitter. Malicious elements and violent exaggeration are overlooked so that the practice of caricature is portrayed as social and congenial rather than critical or satirical. This polite aspect of the practice is signaled in the title page cartouche, which is composed of grotesque profiles that merge with and form out of foliate forms. The controlled decorative purpose to which these grotesque masks are put is mirrored in the plates wherein the organization of the instructional drawings similarly assumes a decorative pattern that suggests the geometric, decorative regularity of wall paper or printed fabric.

In the instructional plates that follow Darly’s rules, the swarm of disembodied heads in Characters and Caricaturas is tamed and arranged into a rational placement of

70 profiles in orderly rows. Structured to invite comparison, the profiles are grouped

according to facial types in order to best demonstrate the variations within each species of

profile. Such organization also allows the artist to compare his or her subject to all the

options delineated in the manual. Darly begins with the directive:

Observe what sort of line the Phiz or Carrick you would describe is formed upon: whether it be strait lined, angular, or ogeed, as in pages 5, 6, or 7, or circumscribed externally or internally by a circle as in pages 8 & 9. Take notice in what manner the parts are formed upon the conceived line or how they deviate from it where they project, and where they sink with a kind of declivity, and how they are situated with respect to each other. There is an amazing diversity in the forms of different Objects, that which is most peculiar in each, is the distinguishing mark to be caricatured, whether it appears in the air and outline of the whole face, or in the Size or Shape of any particular feature.

Emphasis on direct observation forced the artist to classify the profile according to a limited series of shapes and types identified by Darly and reproduced in the book. This system ensured that the caricature will be produced according to a style of drawing that ultimately constrains any liberties the artist might be inclined to take with his or her subject. In this way the guide focuses the artist’s creativity and directs what may be considered a kind of caricatural gaze. Because of this emphasis on system, judgments on the characters of the subjects are ignored in favor of the implicit assumption that the artist and subject are from the same social group, much like the subjects of Ghezzi and Patch.

Ironically, it would seem that the insistence on the pedigree of caricature lead

Mary Darly to Hogarth’s Characters and Caricaturas for her illustrations. Hogarth had

been so consistently established as a caricaturist in print culture that, despite his best

efforts to demonstrate character over caricature, when Mary Darly sought models for her

caricatures she turned to the profiles in his print and managed to obliquely include them

in her caricature manual. The plates 5-8 in A Book of Caricatures demonstrate several

71 options for the delineation of profile: “Straightlined,” “Angular,” “Ogee, and “External

circular” (figures 1.21 & 1.22). A correspondence for each type of profile can be

identified in Hogarth’s work, indicating that his profiles are themselves all variations on a

theme. In fact Darly’s “Ogee” carrick is obviously (and anachronistically) based on

Hogarth’s “line of beauty” and proves (as did Paul Sandby in his satirical attack on

Hogarth) that the serpentine line does not automatically bestow grace on the object it

describes.60

The bulk of the manual is packed with examples of caricatures reproduced from

Mary Darly’s own plates and from her etchings of the grotesques and caricatures of other

artists. Examples from Leonardo, the Caracci, and others confirm her allegiance with a

tradition. So too are illustrations from Hogarth’s nemesis George Townshend included in

her work. Mary Darly, and her husband Matthew ran a very successful print shop where

they sold works of amateur artists like Townshend, and frequently ran advertisements

offering their service publishing and biting plates etched or engraved by amateurs.61 As business owners protecting their trade, the Darlys must have felt compelled to defend the engravings that had been their bread-and-butter, much in the same way that Hogarth’s

Characters and Caricaturas exemplifies his attempt to separate himself from the productions of Arthur Pond.

60 Paul Sandby issued several satires attacking Hogarth’s Analysis shortly after the publication of the work. See in particular his print satires The Author Run Mad, (1753), and Pug’s Graces Etched from his Original Daubing, (1758). Both prints, as well as other satirical images against Hogarth, are reproduced and discussed in the catalog for the exhibition Hogarth and His Times. David Bindman, Hogarth and His Times (Berkeley & Los Angeles: The University of California Press, 1997), nos. 104 & 106.

61 For a discussion of the Darly’s trade see: Shearer West, “The Darly Macaroni Prints and the Politics of ‘Private Man,’” Eighteenth Century Life, 25:2 (Spring, 2001), 170-182.

72 The illustrations in Darlys’ work, combined with the precedent set by Hogarth,

formed the basis for the antiquarian Francis Grose’s Rules for Drawing Caricatures

(1791).62 Like Mary Darly, Grose organized his examples of caricatures into a series of

neatly drawn plates. The first illustrative plate focuses on the profiles and orders them

with 8 possible lines (figure 1.23). That the obsessive structure of the profiles recalls

Hogarth’s predilection for visual order, especially found in engravings like The Five

Orders of Periwigs (figure 1.24), may come as no surprise in Grose’s homage. A second

look at the plate may also remind the viewer copy books that had regularly spaced

horizontal lines to use when practicing penmanship. If we regard the lines Grose uses to indicate the profiles as a sort of short hand, then the system for drawing caricatures can be also be seen as a system for drawing characters: reminiscent of both characters of an alphabet and the characters (lines) used in the illustrations to Le Brun’s work. The amateur caricaturist, armed with Darly or Grose eyed the profile of his or her subject to determine the line that must be traced on the page in order to transform the subject into a caricature. The second plate to the Rules is similarly ordered; three horizontal rows contain a succession of noses, mouths and chins (figure 1.25). Each feature is alarmingly amputated from the face to better display the variety of form and size available to the caricaturist. The engraver has taken care to minimize the number of strokes used so that the curves of the chins, curls of the lips, and bends in the nose assume a distinctly calligraphic quality as the line varies to describe facial elements.

Grose’s works, his Rules, and Essay on Comic Painting, were typically printed together and (at least occasionally) bound as an afterpiece to a 1791 edition of Hogarth’s

62 Francis Grose, Rules for Drawing Caricaturas: with an Essay on Comic Painting, bound with William Hogarth’s The Analysis of Beauty, (London: Samuel Bagster, 1791 [?]).

73 Analysis of Beauty. The combination of Hogarth’s aesthetic treatise with Grose’s

theories of caricature and comic painting might have made Hogarth cringe from the

Beyond, yet Grose is quite serious in his efforts to align himself with the author and his

praise of Hogarth is genuine. Where Darly imparts a system for drawing caricature as an

amusement, Grose takes a fuller view of the genre and contextualizes it in terms of comic

painting and satire. He writes:

In order to do justice to the art in question, it should be considered, that it is one of the elements of satirical painting, which, like poetry of the same denomination, may be most efficaciously employed in the cause of virtue and decorum, by holding up many offenders to both who are not amenable to any other tribunal; and who, though they contemptuously defy all serious reproof, tremble at the thoughts of seeing their vices or follies attacked by the keen shafts of ridicule.63

For Grose the chief social value of caricature is the corrective element associated with

stage comedy that both Fielding and Hogarth proscribed. Grose does not describe caricature as an independent art, but categorizes it as a constituent part of satirical

painting. While caricature exposes the subject to ridicule, just how it interacts with

“satirical painting,” Grose neglects to mention. It would seem that caricature provides the element of comedy: the visual excesses that make the victim of the lampoon an object of ridicule. The social stature of the subject is a vital element of Grose’s estimation of the art. In his Rules, Grose employs the definitions of character and ‘caricatura’ in their traditional, aristocratic sense: character is derived from features that create identity, singling the owner out with distinction. ‘Caricatura,’ the charged image, is created by exaggeration of character. Successful caricature incites laughter: when it has gone too far, it renders the subject outré, grotesque, and results in ‘horror.’ For Grose, “Ugliness, according to our local idea, may be divided into genteel and vulgar. The difference

63 Grose, 4.

74 between these kinds of ugliness seems to be, that the former is positive or redundant, the latter wanting or negative… The one seems to pass through the limits of beauty, the other never to have arrived at them…” (7). This distinction between ‘two kinds of ugliness’

allows Grose to flatter his readers into believing that their imperfect or exaggerated

features signals the nobility of their character. Caricature employed in this manner is

amusing and suitable entertainment for polite practitioners of either sex. Vulgar ugliness,

on the other hand, marks a lack in character and indicates a ‘meaness,’ or a deficiency

that singles the subject out “by holding up to public notice many offenders against both

[virtue and decorum], who are not amenable to any other tribunal; and who, though they

contemptuously defy all serious reproof, tremble at the thoughts of seeing their vices or

follies attacked by the keen shafts of ridicule”(4). As such, caricature can be called into

service to publicly chastise the subject, or to distinguish the subject as a genteel public

figure.

In a strange twist of language excess becomes a desirable quality that is aligned

with the wealth of the upper classes. Deficiency, or ‘meaness’ belongs to the working

poor and peasant classes whose economic and social status is defined by a lack of

manners, moral quality and character. Perhaps by these standards the poor are always on

the verge of the worst kind of exaggeration – the grotesque - while the wealthy may be

caricatured in good taste and as means to bring the excesses back in to the line of

propriety.

Just as the line between character and caricature was constantly explored by

graphic artists on the page, the status of this line was pushed, pulled and stretched with

every performance of the actor on the stage. This chapter has considered the nature of

75 the graphic line that separates character from caricature and suggests ways in which the

line is shared by the two modes of representation. For Hogarth caricature was a dubious

mode of representation with little moral imperative. Stage comedy, on the other hand,

provided Hogarth a model and a precedent for demonstrating the follies of contemporary culture through ridiculous characters and humorous situations. Hogarth too employed elements of caricature in his representation of character to demonstrate moral corruption and in so doing blurred the line between the modes. As I will discuss in a later portion of

this study, actors on stage similarly lampooned or critiqued contemporary figures with

exaggeration impersonation and mimicry so that the characters they represented on stage

became caricature in performance. It is in this vein that figures like Charteris, Needham

and Gonson in Marriage a la Mode, and Willis in The Bench should be understood.

Authors and printsellers like the Darlys and Grose may be responsible for

solidifying public perception of Hogarth as a caricaturist, but graphic caricaturists in the

last quarter of the eighteenth century recognized and developed the performance aspect of

Hogarth’s satire in their own works. Trained as engravers and artists in the Royal

Academy of Arts, satirists like James Gillray, Thomas Rowlandson, and George

Cruikshank were the equivalent of cultural magpies appropriating the language of the

academy and mixing it with the a variety of sources drawn from the rich visual culture of

eighteenth-century London.

I want to conclude this chapter with Thomas Rowlandson’s graphic homage to

Hogarth because it demonstrates the extent to which Characters and Caricaturas

resonated with caricaturists. Rowlandson’s etching, Public Characters (1801), borrows

both composition and theme from Hogarth but provides a new interpretation for a nearly

76 60-year-old engraving (figure 1.26). While Hogarth may have been dismayed to see his

work against caricature mobilized by a caricaturist, Rowlandson’s appropriation of the image indicates the import of Hogarth’s productions. Offering an array of renowned

Public Characters Rowlandson replaces the anonymous masculine crowd in Hogarth’s

print with a horde of prominent Londoners, a mix of politicians, performers, and society

hostesses. The bodiless profiles in Characters and Caricaturas are now fleshed out with

easily identifiable, famous faces and are delineated so that their fashionable clothing and

costumes - both military and theatrical – helps to identify them. Centered in the sheet

where Hogarth placed his profile and that of Fielding, Rowlandson places Charles James

Fox (left) and William Pitt (right) whose political face off had both cultural and social

repercussions. Other notable heads include those of Sarah Siddons, who faces away from

the crowd at the lower right, and her brother, John Philip Kemble, who appears in the top

left under a tower of plumes. The military men, politicians, ladies, actors and ‘cits’ are

held together by a trompe l’oeil grid of red ribbon that makes the image into a memo

board. The flimsiness of the ribbon, which tacks down a group of active figures, suggests

the fleeting quality of fame for these public figures whose path might easily move off

page.

Despite the obvious differences between Hogarth’s and Rowlandson’s images, the

importance of the crowd as a symbol of eighteenth-century life is prominently figured in

both prints. Although many heads in this sheet face each other, they fall short of making

eye contact, their gazes glancing off foreheads and cheeks much in the same way that

Hogarth’s figures are jumbled together but fail to relate to one another. The pairing of

Lady Archer and George Hanger at top center is one example wherein Hanger, the 4th

77 Baron Coleraine, appears to be examining the Archer’s headdress. Rowlandson’s homage to Hogarth captures the chaos of eighteenth-century London life and suggests the fickle nature of the popular prints concerned with capturing the most enthralling celebrities of the day.

Whereas the characters in Hogarth’s print are entirely anonymous, the crowd supplied in Rowlandson’s work is composed of celebrities of one type or another. The next chapter in this study considers the scrutiny under which celebrities were placed. For

‘public characters’ like Siddons and Kemble such scrutiny was part of the price of professional success.

CHAPTER TWO

‘THIS EXAGGERATING FORCE’:

GESTURE ON THE STAGE AND PAGE

The central role of gesture, bodily action and voice in theater and in graphic satire was a preoccupation of William Hogarth, who explored the complexity of the dialog between the two formats in his paintings, engravings and theoretical writings. For

Hogarth, theater and engravings were intrinsically linked; both forms focused on the body and the content of his modern moral subjects embraced that of the comic stage production. Hogarth’s concerns were shared by his counterparts in theater; Henry

Fielding for one aligned himself with Hogarth in the quest to establish a new genre of representation centered in the “modern moral subject.” Other theater critics like John

Hill, whose The Actor: A Treatise on the Art of Acting published in 1750, - just three years before Hogarth’s Analysis of Beauty – also focused on the common use of bodily action in theater and painting. Hill, who fretted over the use of exaggerated gestures on stage cautioned actors to moderate their action lest they burlesque the characters they represented. According to Hill, painters and actors had the “privilege of enlarging and heightening objects within the limits of discretion, but they are not to exaggerate them in such a manner that one cannot know them.”1 The “exaggerating force” was thus

1 John Hill, The Actor: A Treatise on the Art of Playing, Interspersed with Theatrical Anecdotes, Critical Remarks, and Occasional Observations on Audiences (London: R. Griffiths, 1750), 238-239. 78 79 something to be handled carefully, lest it careen out of control and “exhibit monsters.”

This chapter takes this mid-century conversation as starting point from which to

examine the analogy made between the actor’s art and the engraver’s art. In particular, I

focus on the ways in which the comic actor’s use of gesture on stage and the caricaturists’

excessive pen strokes on the page were understood to be linked. The use of gesture and

action that characterizes Hogarth’s works was absorbed and implemented by satirists and

caricaturists at the end of the eighteenth century who were drawn to the ways in which

gesture and action, when combined, heightened the comedy of their graphic works.

Artists like James Gillray, Thomas Rowlandson, and Isaac Cruikshank, to name three of

the most influential satirists at the end of the century, are well-known inheritors of this

tradition. Yet, a veritable army of graphic satirists working in late-century London were

also influenced by the connections that artists, like Hogarth, and theater critics, like Hill,

made between the two art forms. One group of satirical caricatures, made by an a

caricaturist who used the pseudonym “Annibale Scratch” and a satirist who signed his

writings “Theatricus Automaton,” demonstrates the complex mechanism by which the

language and process of graphic caricature aligned with theater.

Between 1789 and 1791Annibale Scratch and Theatricus Automaton published a

series of satirical Theatrical Portraits n the Attic Miscellany, a popular London periodical

devoted to cultural commentary, literary notices, and theater reviews.2 This chapter will analyze a representative selection of Theatrical Portraits to come to an understanding of

2 The Attic Miscellany and Characteristic Mirror of Men and Things, Including the Correspondent’s Museum, vols 1-3, (London: Bentley & Co., 1789- 1792). The pseudonym “Annibale Scratch” is a play on the name of the Italian artist Annibale Caracci (1560-1609), who was credited with the invention of caricature portraits in Le Vite de’ Pittori, Scultori, et Architetti (Rome, 1672) by Giovanni Pietro Bellori.

80 how graphic caricature and satire united with theories of performance in the eighteenth-

century. In particular I will focus on the way in which this was figured in terms of genre

and the artist’s performance. Considered together, these Theatrical Portraits and the accompanying textual satires, each titled The Actor, form a striking group that demonstrates the complicated conversation enacted between theatrical performance and graphic satire in eighteenth-century England.

Targeting contemporary stage performances, Scratch and Automaton used a combination of graphic caricature and satirical epistles to lampoon the acting techniques of famous actors who defined the London stage in the late eighteenth century. Among the stage luminaries, John Philip Kemble, Edwy Edwin, John Quick, and Sarah Siddons were all satirized for their performances. Important works of theater criticism, the Attic

Miscellany caricatures and the accompanying texts scrutinized the performances of stage luminaries by minutely dissecting their gestures, dialog and costume. Subjecting the actors to satiric representation, the Attic Miscellany caricatures dismantle the stage performances of the targeted actors by mounting parodic counter-performances on the page. Incorporating conventions of the lowest comedic genres – namely burlesque and farce – the engravings mobilize exaggerated gesture and speech (in the form of captions and inscriptions) to ridicule the actor’s performance. Shown in the midst of performances on stage, the actors featured in the periodical are isolated from the surrounding action to better highlight and tease apart the inadequacies of their performances. Conventions of stage comedy were thus mixed with the representational traditions of graphic satire, comedic painting, and the grotesque in the Attic Miscellany satires.

81 One of the first English theorists of art to draw a direct correspondence between

the artist’s and the actor’s use of gesture, William Hogarth described gesture in terms of

the inscription of line. Using Hogarth’s analogy as a means to understand how comic

engravings and caricatures operated as performance, I begin this chapter with an

examination of key passages in the final two chapters of the Analysis of Beauty, and of

the two illustrative plates to the text, often referred to as The Statuary’s Yard, Plate I

(figure 2.1) and The Country Dance, Plate II (figure 2.2) to demonstrate how Hogarth’s

metaphor allowed artists, especially those working with graphic media, to envision their

processes of art making as a new category of performance. The plates, which Hogarth

advertised as “two explanatory prints, serious and comical engraved on large copper-

plates, fit to frame as furniture,” were intended to be integral parts of the texts as well as

decorative objects.3 Each engraving features a large central scene surrounded by smaller

thumbnail engravings. The images in the borders are numbered, as are important

elements within each larger composition. The numbering system Hogarth uses appears to

be entirely haphazard, but is actually in keeping with his views on the pleasure of pursuit

since it is the “pleasing labour of the mind to solve the most difficult problems; allegories

and riddles… with what delight does it follow the well-connected thread of a play, or

novel, which ever increases as the plot thickens” (33). In this manner the engravings are

composed to both delight and instruct the reader who must constantly turn between the

text and the illustrations folded at the back of the volume. The Statuary’s Yard features a collection of famous antique sculptures, many of which were reproduced in plaster and brought to England by Grand Tourists. Most prominent in this scene are the Farnese

3 Quoted by Ronald Paulson in Hogarth’s Graphic Works, vol 1 ( New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965), 220.

82 Hercules and the Medici Venus, both sculptures that were ideal forms that formed the

basis of study for artist training in the classical academic tradition. The Country Dance,

on the other hand, is a scene of contemporary life and is full of action and life. Notably,

these compositions, set within their elaborate frames, feature bodies and demonstrate

Hogarth’s fascination with the figure in space.

Hogarth, who famously claimed that the figures in his painted and engraved

progresses were actors who exhibited a “dumb shew,” located the theatricality of his

images in the advancement of narrative plot and in the vitality of his figures. In

choosing to compare his print performances to dumb shows Hogarth aligned himself with

a traditional type of English performance wherein silent, pantomimed vignettes were

inserted into the structure of a play in order to summarize the action of the plot.4 With the direct analogy between the actor’s performance on stage and the artist’s performance

on the page, Hogarth constructed painted and engraved progresses in which his actors

encountered and interacted with each other as they moved though London and its

environs.

To provide theoretical support for the analogous relationship between his engravings and theater, Hogarth further connected the process of art making to acting through a description of gesture in the Analysis of Beauty. His assertion in the Analysis that “bodies in motion always describe some line or other in the air” (105), should be understood as a literal statement that unites the performance of artist and actor; as such it indicates the way in which Hogarth viewed his practice of art making as a performative

4 The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Christopher Baldick. Oxford University Press, 1996. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Brown University. 16 October 2007 http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t56.e290

83 act. Moreover, he connects gesture to line, and line to inscription, so that “bodies in

motion” can be understood to actively write or draw themselves. Such a concept

attempts to reconcile the impermanent – the action made in space – with the permanence

of the line inscribed on the copper plate or the page. The individual’s characteristic way of moving is further likened by Hogarth to handwriting, a “habitual movement” that makes character visible and legible. In this light, the figures that populate his images are

like actors engaged in a theatrical performance wherein they display their characters

through the body language of movement and gesture.

For Hogarth, the kinds of lines (straight, circular, or serpentine) made by the

gestures of artist or actor largely determined the nature of the characters represented and

of the work as a whole. Constructing a hierarchy of line, and therefore of gesture,

Hogarth placed the serpentine “line of beauty,” a fundamental feature of graceful figures

and compositions, at the very top of the hierarchy. In the Analysis Hogarth instructs

actors and artists to think of their movements as describing lines, particularly the

serpentine line, and promotes what he terms an “ornamental way of moving” that

corresponds to good drawing technique and elegant acting style. Yet, while Hogarth

encourages the application of this “line of beauty” in art and in action, he also addresses

what he considers to be lines of comedy – the sharp parallel lines of “unnatural length,”

and the whirls, circles and angles described by the bodies of actors in the Commedia

Dell’Arte, by “provincial figures,” and “very low people” (110-111).

Hogarth’s concept of a line of beauty was derived from the sixteenth-century

writings of Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo, who associated the figura serpentinata with the

theoretical writings and compositions of Michelangelo in Trattato dell’Arte de la Pittura

84 (1584).5 Lomazzo’s understanding of the figura serpentinata provided theoretical

support for the torsion of figures in Italian Mannerist compositions. In the Analysis,

Hogarth extracts Lomazzo’s compositional theories and even embellishes them to emphasize the active role of the serpentine line in the creation of moving figures and dynamic compositions. Hogarth quotes Lomazzo at length in the Analysis; given the old- fashioned spellings in his quotations, Hogarth was likely using Richard Haydock’s 1598 translation of Lomazzo’s treatise. Focusing on passages that stress the centrality of action to pictorial composition, Hogarth is taken with Lomazzo’s assertion that “the greatest grace and life that a picture can have is that it expresse Motion: which the

Painters call the spirite of a picture”(3). For Lomazzo, “there is no forme so fitte to expresse this motion as a flame of fire.” Following Lomozzo’s precepts, Hogarth figured the serpentine line as a tongue of fire, a wave on the ocean, or ringlets of hair on a young woman’s head. The serpentine line is therefore created by the actions of the bodies it describes, as in the swelling waves of the sea. Or, it is experienced by the eye led on a

“wanton chace [sic]” along the contours of the object of the gaze, or through the composition of an image (Analysis, 33). Action, therefore, is the ideal means through which and by which the “line of beauty” is expressed.

The beautiful line is acquired by the rehearsal of movement. Hogarth advises the attainment of elegant gesture through the kind of rote learning employed by students of handwriting. He advocates a kind of muscle memory and outlines rules for “an odd, but

5 For the history of Lomazzo’s conception of the figura serpentinata see David Summers, “Maniera and Movement: The Figura Serpentinata,” in Readings of Italian Mannerism, Liana De Girolami, ed. (New York: Peter Lang, 1997), 273-313. I would like to thank my colleague at Brown, Joseph Silva, for drawing my attention to this reference. First published in 1584 in Milan as Trattato dell’arte de la pittura, di Gio. Paolo Lomazzo milanese pittore. Diuiso in sette libri, (Milan: Paolo Gottardo Pontio, 1584), the book was quickly translated into English by Richard Haydock in 1598 and published with the title A Tracte Containing the Artes of Curious Paintinge, Carvinge & Buildinge (Oxford: J. Barnes, 1598).

85 perhaps efficacious method of acquiring a habit of moving the lines of grace and beauty”

(106-107). In this passage, Hogarth coaches the reader to learn a gesture by drawing its

corresponding line on two different surfaces: the blank page and the ogee molding, a type

of fashionable cornice decoration, which in cross-section forms an “S” curve. He describes: “Let anyone chalk the line [fig. 119, plate 2, left], on a flat surface, beginning

at either end, and he will move his hand and arm in a beautiful direction,” that is, a

simple “S” on a single plane. However, if the same gesture is made on a three- dimensional surface, like the ogee molding, “his hand will move in that more beautiful direction, which is distinguished by the name of grace.” The figure that illustrates

Hogarth’s point is small and rather simple, and it is remarkable that he chose a common room element for his example (figure 2.3). Privileging the gesture that re-creates the

three-dimensional curve of the molding over the one that conceives of the object as a

two-dimensional surface, Hogarth shows that the artist’s gesture used to make the line

determines the grace of the object rendered on the page; the more elegantly and

gracefully the artist moves his or her arm, the more delicate and beautiful the line will

become.

Hogarth’s obsession with gesture and action speaks to eighteenth-century

understandings of theatricality, which located the impermanence and contingency of performance within the actor’s body. Overall, Hogarth’s artistic works are informed by a positive perception of theater that linked entertainment and instruction. Seeking a

representational middle ground between academic history painting and genre scenes for

his own “modern moral subjects,” Hogarth was drawn to theatrical performance for the

variety of character and incident portrayed in contemporary productions, particularly in

86 comedies. Unlike history painting, which typically featured subjects drawn from biblical events or from ancient mythology and history, Hogarth’s works dealt with the mythology of modern London, largely driven by gossip and sensational news events. By actively appropriating elements of performance, Hogarth’s dynamic images participate in

narratives constructed over a series of climactic moments. In fact, the scenes themselves

are often interspersed with comic interludes, dramatic exits and entrances, and even

musical entertainment. The fourth plate of Hogarth’s 1745 engravings of his progress

Marriage-a-la-Mode, exemplifies his ability to blend theatrical and pictorial devices in a

“dumb show” format (figure 2.4). Known as The Levée, the engraving depicts the pivotal

and perilous moment in the series in which the young Countess and Silvertongue, her

lawyer, arrange a tryst that will precipitate a series of horrific events: a murder, a hanging

and a suicide. The Countess, having elevated her social status by marrying a Viscount,

has adopted the aristocratic practice of the elaborate morning levée. In fashionable

dishabille she sits in front of an elegant dressing table whilst a hairdresser sets the curls in

her hair. The countess attentively watches Silvertongue, who gestures expansively

toward a decorative screen that depicts a Masquerade and hands her a ticket to the event.

While the Countess and her lover plot to meet at a masquerade, their surrounding

assemblée, - including the hairdresser, whose thin build and long, spiky pony-tail codes

him as a French type, a dancing master with long spindly legs that jut inelegantly from

his body, an Italian castrato, and the country parson’s wife - provide the comedic and

musical entertainment that lighten the weighty content of the scene. The exaggerated

gestures, humorous facial expressions, and fashionable clothing are all shared aspects of

satire and caricature. Not just content to simply ridicule the tastes of dissolute aristocrats,

87 Hogarth fills the interior with imported paintings with erotic subject matter, jumbles of

ancient artifacts, and objects of vertú that act not just as emblematic elements but as

theatrical props that flesh out the characters and provide commentary on the scene.

These little decorative devices also create vignettes that display Hogarth’s skill at

composition and design. Other devices in the composition are overtly theatrical; the

curtain over the bed that opens in two swags to hint at the countess’ blatant debauchery

and refer to the theatricality of the levée, which is itself a carefully choreographed social

performance that turns the boudoir into a stage set. The self-conscious display of the

countess and her companions, their exaggerated reactions, and their entertainments also

relate this scene - and Hogarth’s progresses - more generally, to theatrical performances

that were likewise composed of a series of acts punctuated by burlesques, harlequinades,

dances, and songs, all of which were intended to entertain and capture the audience’s

attention. Moreover, Hogarth’s subject matter—contemporary scenes drawn from

“common life,” enacted by a range of characters one might encounter within the London

theater audience—is yet another feature of his works that gives the images a theatrical

finish.

While scholars have explored the theatricality of Hogarth’s images in terms of

their relationship to stage sets and contemporary performance practice, few have

adequately explored the centrality of the actor’s and the artist’s body to his concept of

theatricality.6 For Hogarth, who was so clearly obsessed with the centrality of movement

6 Among the scholars who have discussed Hogarth’s interest and theater and dance are: Mary Klinger Lindberg, “‘A Delightful Play Upon the Eye’: William Hogarth and Theatrical Dance,” Dance Chronicle, 4:1 (1981), 19-45; Ronald Paulson, “Life as a Journey and as Theater: Two Eighteenth-Century Narrative Structures,” New Literary History, 8:1, (Autumn 1967), 43-58; Annie Richardson, “An Aesthetics of Performance: Dance in Hogarth’s ‘Analysis of Beauty,’” Dance Research, 20:2 (Winter, 2002), 38-87.

88 and gesture on the stage and on the page, the body of the performer, as opposed to, say, the dramatic dialogue, forms the locus of theatrical expression. To demonstrate the centrality of the artist’s body, Hogarth directs the reader to The Country Dance, the second illustrative plate to the Analysis. A companion print to the first plate, known as

The Statuary Yard, The Country Dance replaces the marble sculptures, anatomical drawings and awkwardly posed figures that fill the courtyard with a lively representation of a country dance, known as a “Hay!,” at a provincial estate. Whereas the humor of The

Statuary Yard is located in the incongruous juxtaposition of objects and images, The

Country Dance uses the interplay of the dancer’s bodies and their facial expressions for comic appeal. Compared with the dancers, the figures in The Statuary Yard are static - none more so than the dancing master who poses next to the cast of Antinous. Standing next to the elegant statue posed in contrapposto, the dancing master appears strict and stiff. Hogarth’s view of the country ball room focuses on the movement and interaction of figures in order to illuminate the individual characteristics of each figure. With the exception of the dancers at the far left of the image, who exude grace and gentility, the figures are lighthearted and comic in their awkwardness as they abandon themselves to the vigorous pace of the dance. Not surprisingly, the elegant dancers are also the most attractive, with slender figures, regular features, and cosmopolitan clothing. Of all the figures, their actions are the most studied and they appear out of place in the surrounding company - country squires and their families - whose comical poses vary from figure to figure. Notably, the dancers are contrasted with the portraits hung on the walls of the ballroom. The canvases that line the walls include representations of English rulers, like

Henry VIII, who is rendered in a pose derived from Holbein’s portrait of the king,

89 worthies, and aristocrats. These figures encapsulate the historical English portrait as

rendered by artists (native and imported), often in imitation of their European

counterparts. The viewer is invited to compare these static English characters with the dancers moving across the ballroom floor. These figures in motion would seem to

exemplify modern English character for Hogarth, whereas the portraits are staid representations tied to an outmoded type of English character.

In order to help the reader understand the relationship between the postures of the dancers and the basic lines their bodies inscribe in the air, Hogarth includes a key to the dance in the upper left corner of the sheet (figure 2.5). In this oblong box, the figures of the dancers are each reduced to a series of hieroglyphic marks that follows the arrangement of the figures’ bodies. These hieroglyphs create a sort of shorthand of gesture and posture that reads from left to right beginning with the two serpentine lines, moving through an array of angles, circles and diagonals, and concluding with two lines that curve like parenthesis to contain the hieroglyphic characters. This language of form, translated into an artist’s alphabet of gesture, demonstrates the manner in which each figure warps the line of beauty in his or her own idiom. Moreover, while the dancer’s bodies form lines in space, the movement of the dance also traces lines on the floor of the ballroom. This motion is indicated by the dancers’ recession into space from left to right and by a related marginal illustration, just below the hieroglyphs, that shows the movement a pair of minuet dancers trace on the ball room floor (figure 2.6).

The undulating movement of the dancers across the floor illustrates the swiftly changing nature of the line of beauty. Hogarth explains:

The best representation in a picture, of even the most elegant dancing, as every figure is rather a suspended action in it than an attitude, must be always somewhat

90 unnatural and ridiculous; for were it possible in a real dance to fix every person at one instant of time, as in a picture, not one in twenty would appear to be graceful, tho’ each were ever so much so in their movements; nor could the figure of the dance be understood (113).

For Hogarth, then, this engraving captures one random moment within a performance in which only two figures attain the ideal pose. Hogarth categorizes the postures in which the dancers are caught as “suspended action” rather than “attitude” to differentiate the pose held by a model from the spontaneous movement quickly captured by the artist or by the viewer. Because of the nature of the serpentine line, even the ideal figure is impermanent, constantly shifting and reorganizing before the viewer’s eye. This obsession with the protean qualities of the line of beauty and suggests that, if frozen, even the most graceful dancers - or the clumsiest - might assume very different poses, their bodies inscribing different lines in space.

While Hogarth touted the serpentine line as an ideal on which to base pictorial composition and bodily action, it was by no means a stable line. In fact the very characteristics that defined the line of beauty threatened to destroy it. Paul Sandby, who produced an onslaught of vitriolic satires against Hogarth and his work, seems to have grasped this inherent problem. In his satire known as Pugg’s Graces, Sandby demonstrates how easily the line of beauty could be warped into a line of deformity

(figure 2.7). The satire shows Pugg’s Graces, actually three bulbous and misshapen nudes, who cavort and pose in Hogarth’s cluttered studio in front of the artist. Objects strewn on the studio floor and hung on the walls are randomly numbered and are intended by Sandby to recall the seemingly haphazard illustrations Hogarth included in the borders of the plates for the Analysis. A male visitor to the studio standing behind Hogarth scratches his head in confusion as he compares the text he holds to the scene in font of

91 him as if to parody the reader of Hogarth’s treatise. Ignoring Hogarth’s efforts in the

Analysis to make a clear distinction between the gently curved lines of beauty and

exaggerated curved forms, Sandby ridicules Hogarth’s work and attempts to align, or re-

align, Hogarth and his line of beauty with the practice of caricature. Not only does

Sandby set his sights on Hogarth’s works, but he attacks the artist himself depicting him

seated at his easel with the legs of a pug dog, alluding to Hogarth’s famous self portrait of

1745, his pugnacious character, and, most importantly, to his fundamentally animalistic

nature. 7 In highlighting Hogarth’s tendency to dwell on the potential for imperfection

and on the contingency inherent in the line of beauty, Sandby suggests that Hogarth’s text

burlesques itself by becoming a meditation on deformity.

By Hogarth’s admission, the line of beauty is elusive and difficult to manage, yet

it is also something individuals should aspire to through the rehearsal of gestures

intended to naturalize the line in the body. Admonishing artist and actor alike to imagine

his or her hand as always tracing lines in the air, Hogarth focuses on the acquisition of grace and elegance not through academic training or study of manners, but through practiced motion and imitation of movement. The actor or artist who observes and monitors his or her movements, comparing them to a notion of ideal action, acquires this graceful gesture by building muscle memory and by training the eye to identify the serpentine line wherever and whenever it occurs.

While, in Hogarth’s estimation, the line of beauty is an ideal of grace in action, he describes the lines most commonly made by humans and animals as “plain lines”

7 In this self portrait Hogarth represented himself in a complex picture-within-a-picture. Within the large rectangular painting, a self portrait painted on an oval canvas is set on a shelf draped in green cloth that obscures the limits of the oval canvas’ edges. A pug dog and a palette with a line of beauty flank the portrait to the right and left.

92 designated by a straight line or by the outer curve of a circle (106). To demonstrate this plain line, Hogarth chooses a representation of Sancho Panza from “a French Print” that illustrates “comical astonishment” as the figure pitches backward in laughter to form one long curve that Hogarth accentuates using a dotted line (figure 2.8).8 To contrast Sancho

Panza’s ridiculous posture, a graceful attitude is represented by a female figure that

Hogarth identifies as a Samaritan woman from “one of the best pictures Annibal Carrach

[sic] ever painted” (figure 2.9; 106).9 These two figures border opposite sides of the

frame in The Country Dance: the Caracci nearest the graceful dancers, and Coypel’s

Panza closest to the comical dancers at the right of the image. Bracketing the main scene,

they participate in a continuum that stretches from the left—the most graceful dancers

whose figures echo the elegant sway of the Samaritan woman—to the right—the least

graceful whose curved shapes coincide with that of Panza. The figures in the illustrative

borders even seem to interact with the dancers by bowing to the most graceful and by

laughing at the most comical.

Although the serpentine line may be best reserved for the highest subject matter,

Hogarth recognizes that a varied and balanced image must include a variety of lines in

the same way that an accurate image of a dance must show the most – and least –

graceful dancers. In fact, the comical figures in the dance, and the hieroglyphics they

correspond to, represent a variety of “plain” lines that can also be considered lines of

comedy by Hogarth’s definition. It cannot be an accident that Sancho Panza, the figure

8 The image of Sancho Panza Hogarth quotes is extracted from Charles-Antoine Coypel’s Don Quixote Attacks the Puppets (ca. 1731), a scene in a series of illustrations of Don Quixote commissioned by the Gobelins tapestry workshops. The series was likely known to Hogarth through print reproductions.

9 This figure is taken from Annibale Caracci’s painting, The Women of Samaria, now in the Brera Collection, Milan. Hogarth likely knew this painting from an engraving.

93 Hogarth chooses to represent the “plain” lines, is a “low” character from Miguel de

Cervantes’ 1605 work, Don Quixote de La Mancha.10 Even more convincing evidence of

Hogarth’s association between laughter and the plain line is his juxtaposition of two

cherubic faces in the illustrative border of The Country Dance (figure 2.10). The bottom face breaks into a full laugh described by sharp curves inscribed by the dimples of the face and by the mouth stretching back to reveal teeth. The top face smiles serenely, composed of gentle curves that are etched on the mouth with a light touch.

Associating the line of beauty with an “ornamental way of moving” and the plain line with “ordinary gestures of the body,” Hogarth unites the hierarchy of lines with hierarchy of gesture. This hierarchy, with the serpentine line at the top and the plain line

at the bottom, resonates with the hierarchy of action in theatrical performance that

followed along the conventions of genre wherein actors in tragic roles were expected to

use stately movements that conveyed the gravity of the scene, while actors in comedic

roles were given greater freedom of motion. Hogarth connects his understanding of line

and motion to the actor’s use of gesture in performance when he claims that the line of

beauty appears “to advantage” in “solemn acts of ceremony” and “in the address of

heroes on stage.” On the other end of the spectrum, the lines that form comedic figures

like the harlequin “are ingeniously composed of certain little, quick movements of the

head, hands and feet, some of which shoot out as it were from the body in straight lines or

are twirled about in little circles” (110). In linking Harlequin to the straight or twirling

line, Hogarth suggests that the lines formed by the actor’s body are a kind of handwriting

10 Ronald Paulson has written extensively about the impact Cervantes work had on eighteenth-century British comedy. See, Paulson, Don Quixote in England: The Aesthetics of Laughter (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998).

94 specific to the character. The actor, like the artist, must choose the strokes that he or she

performs to convey the character represented on stage and must cultivate an

understanding of line that unites gesture and form. Hogarth urges the actor to acquire a

“knowledge of lines; for whatever he copies from the life, by these principles may be strengthened, altered and adjusted as his judgment shall direct, and the part the author has given him shall require” (113).

Even in his praise of the line of beauty Hogarth indicates his own preference for the instructive comedy found in the combination of lines. Strikingly, his most commercially successful works were those paintings and graphic progresses that reveled in demonstrating variety in the characters, narratives, and urban landscapes they depicted.

These “modern moral subjects” were largely an attempt to appeal to a broad cross-section of the London population – much in the same way that theatric performances in eighteenth-century London attracted a heterogeneous audience. Although the serpentine

line is held up to be the ideal basis of action, grace, and variety, the illustration of the

Country Dance suggests that true variety and action is conveyed through a combination

of lines. In order to represent figures correctly, the artist and actor must cultivate an

understanding of line that unites gesture and form. Like the artist, the actor is urged to

seek his models in common life. Hogarth writes:

The comedian, whose business it is to imitate the actions belonging to particular characters in nature, may also find his account in the knowledge of lines; for what ever he copies from the life, by these principles may be strengthened, altered, and adjusted as his judgment shall direct, and the part the author has given him shall require (113).

Hogarth’s obsessive interest in separating the variety of comedy found in nature from the

grotesque or outré comedic forms that surpass nature is located in his construction of

95 character, which he strenuously defends from caricature. Actors representing comedic characters drawn from everyday life are here encouraged to construct their characters through observation, copying mannerisms “from the life,” and thinking of their movements as lines that flesh out figures as in drawings. To guard against outré performances resulting in caricatures or grotesques, the gesture articulating a line must be protected from excess at all cost. If the artist, like the actor, can naturalize his or her performance, then it appears uncontrived and artless. If he or she neglects to study movement and absorb the proper principles of graceful gesture, then the performance, or its product, will suffer and appear ridiculous: such is the criticism levied against actors, particularly Kemble and Siddons, by the satirists in the Attic Miscellany.

With the exception of the graceful couple, the dancers in the Country Dance represent a range of possibility for “plain” lines representing comedic action. Notably, a variety of line falls under the rubric of comedy whilst the serpentine line stands alone as the ideal form for elegance and nobility. Hogarth writes:

when the form of the body is divested of its serpentine lines it becomes ridiculous as a human figure, so likewise when all movements in such lines are excluded in a dance, it becomes low, grotesque, and comical; but however, being as was said composed of variety, made consistent with some character, and executed with agility, it nevertheless is very entertaining (110).

Hogarth’s association between comedy and entertainment is instructive, and it cannot be an accident that the laughing figure he chooses to illustrate the “plain” lines is a “low” character from a comic masterwork who possesses a fool’s wisdom. Similarly, the comedic dancers who are composed of plain lines belong to the countryside; their simple clothes and herky-jerky movements are decidedly un-cosmopolitan in comparison to the graceful dancers whose elegance looks out of place. Although these graceful dancers

96 may instruct the viewer in how to form the serpentine line bodily, entertainment is found

in the other dancers who act as foils to the idealized figures. The conjunction of

instruction and entertainment is an essential element of Hogarth’s works, particularly his

progresses: the “dumb shews” that sermonize even while they entertain.

In Hogarth’s works the entertaining and the comedic are described by quick

motions and simple lines: the body jerks backwards in a convulsion of laughter to form

an arc, or the mouth bursts open in surprise and delight forming a series of straight lines

and simple curves. Hogarth illustrates the relationship between the plain lines and

laughter in the illustration that juxtaposes the bottom portions of two cherubic faces,

demonstrating that the gentle smile is graced with slowly unfurling serpentine lines that

render the face serenely content. In contrast, the laughing mouth just below splits to form

a sharp combination of parentheses and angles, indicating the quick, automatic movement that accompanies a burst of laughter. Hogarth connects speed of motion to the line used in representation – quick and lively for comedy, and slow and stately for drama, tragedy and history.

When caricaturists yoked the physical features of the subject with idiosyncratic movement, they united outward appearance and action in manner that resonated with mimicry, a practice long associated with comedic stage performance.11 Mimicry, a technique whereby the actor imitated the gestures, voice, and characteristic actions of a famous or infamous individual in an exaggerated fashion, exposed the subject to public ridicule and was primarily used as a means to encourage the subject reform his or her

11 L. B. Connelly, “Personal Satire on the English Eighteenth-Century Stage,” Eighteenth-Century Studies, 9:4 (Summer, 1976), 599-607.

97 behavior. Actors who were known for their mimical talents were as feared as lauded for

their ability to assume and perform the character traits of their targets for comedic effect.

The “exaggerating force” was thus something to be tamed and managed so that it

remained within the limits of decency and experience – anything beyond that could

become confusing, illegible or monstrous.12

Overall, the comedy located in satiric display and caricature was calculated to

correct the transgressions and excesses exhibited by the subject. Throughout the

eighteenth century, the corrective function of comedies and satire were represented as

socially beneficial. Contrasting the merits of the dramatic genres comedy and tragedy,

James Peller Malcolm claimed: “Tragedy imitates the beautiful and the great; Comedy

imitates the ridiculous: one elevates the soul, and forms the heart; the other polishes the

behavior, and corrects the manners.”13 By publicly deriding the undesired behavior of

the subject, comedy ideally fostered a self-reflective process whereby the viewer learned

to recognize elements of his or her behavior in the satirical representation and make the

appropriate reforms. In the case of the Attic Miscellany satires, published at the end of

the eighteenth-century, both artist and writer exaggerated the actor’s physical

characteristics to comment on the excesses and deficiencies of his or her performance.

Combining satire with caricature, the Attic Miscellany engravings evidence an

important moment in the development of graphic caricature. Although caricature had

been foremost practiced by the closed social circles of aristocratic grand tourists in the

12 John Hill, 239.

13 James Peller Malcolm, Anecdotes of the Manners and Customs of London During the Eighteenth- Century; Including the Charities, Depravities, and Amusements of the Citizens of London During that Period; with a Review of the State of Society in 1807 (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees and Orme, 1808), 391.

98 early part of the century, it was increasingly employed in second half of the eighteenth- century to publicly censure the behavior of high-profile public figures. The causes of the shift from the comic “charged image” to the public censure meted out in social and political satires by artists like James Gillray and Thomas Rowlandson have been a favorite topic for speculation and a source of disagreement among scholars of the genre.

The impulse to intermesh physical traits with personality traits coincides with, and has been traditionally associated with the eighteenth-century fascination with biography and portraiture, and a wide-spread interest in the pseudo-science of physiognomy. As plausible as they may seem, these explanations fail to account for the overwhelming emphasis on bodily action, gesture, and voice displayed in caricatures. Only when works of graphic satire and caricature are connected to the theory and practice of contemporary performance can their central place in eighteenth-century visual culture, in its broadest

sense, become clear.

While the actor’s performance was the focus of Scratch’s criticism meted out in

graphic caricature, Automaton, the author of the text, places the demands of the audience

at the very center of the inversion whereby the poorly performed character becomes caricature. By courting audience applause and seeking the approbation of the vocal majority, rather than that of the elite minority, the actors are accused of pandering to the wrong public. In part, Automaton’s verbal attack against the actors is an expression of the critic’s frustration and a call for the actor to meet the expectations of the educated elite. By aiming his address at the fashionable readership of the magazine, Automaton is also calling on the Attic Miscellany audience to reform its behavior within the walls of the playhouse. While the implication is that members of the lower orders were the unruly

99 element in the theater, doubtless, it was not only the uneducated lower classes that vocally expressed their displeasure or enjoyed and applauded the spectacular effects actors incorporated into their performances.

On December 1, 1789, the first satirical caricature in the series of Theatrical

Portraits appeared and unequivocally set these issues in motion (figure 2.11). Titled

How to Tear a Speech to Tatters, the image and text parody John Philip Kemble’s recent

performance of Henry V in his adaptation of Shakespeare’s history play. This caricature has been briefly discussed by both Shearer West and Alan Downer in their studies of representations of actors. 14 West contextualizes the image with other portraits of the

actor and describes the way in which the image is an antidote for the static grand-manner

portraits of the actor as well as a critique of his stage performances. Downner, on the other hand, addresses this image in relation to other caricatures in the Attic Miscellany series and notes that the images were intended to “correct critics guilty of over praising their favorites.”15 In this satire, Kemble is accused of transgressing the boundaries of

character in performance. As both caricaturist and satirist vividly demonstrate, his stilted

diction and exuberant gestures travesty the role and transform his representation of the

heroic king into a caricature. By breaking with the conventions of tragic performance,

Kemble refigures the hero as a buffoon and is himself transformed from eminent actor to clown. According to Scratch and Automaton, Kemble’s violation of generic conventions

is an offence shared by all the actors portrayed in this series and occurs at the moment

14 This caricature has been discussed by both Shearer West in The Image of the Actor: Verbal and Visual Representation in the Age of Garrick and Kemble (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991), 76-78, and Alan Downer in “Nature to Advantage Dressed: Eighteenth Century Acting,” PLMA, 58:4 (Dec., 1943), 1002- 1037, 1018.

15 Ibid., 1018.

100 when the actor’s attention-seeking ego overrides the art of acting and courts audience applause.

In Scratch’s caricature, Kemble is isolated on an empty stage summarily indicated by a series of parallel lines. His role as Henry V is evoked by his costume, with showy plumes in his helmet, tunic, short skirt, and leggings. The text inscribed under the image is drawn from the rousing speech Shakespeare’s Henry V delivers just before the climactic battle, only the lines are here turned into gibberish by the satirist. The words

“From – this – day – to – the – end – ing – of - the – world,” and the nonsense they devolve into, “Ti – Tum – ti – ti – tum – ti,” are separated by hyphens that recreate

Kemble’s timing and inflection so that the viewer is shown exactly how Kemble tore the

‘speech to tatters’ by exaggerating the iambic pentameter of the verse.

Playing on the image of Henry V rallying his troops for battle, Theatricus

Automaton mocks Kemble’s efforts to summon his body to deliver the speech and comments with irony:

I commend your choice of attitude in the beginning of a turbulent speech; it summonses [sic] all the muscles to their duty, so that they are ready to sally either in detached parties or singly under the command of any passion that may occur, or, as it were, start out of the speech… 16

Theatricus Automaton complains that Kemble’s performance is motivated not by the words of the speech or the action of the play, but rather by the actor’s desire to take center stage. Indeed, Automaton accuses Kemble of assuming the pose of a “windmill,” which “occupies the stage more completely than any other figure; consequently holds more breadth of light and shadow, and gives the principle character a conspicuous situation in the groupe.” Comparing Kemble to a windmill, Theatricus Automaton calls

16 Attic Miscellany, 1789, I, 88.

101 attention to the whirling movement of his arms and references Don Quixote, who battled

windmills believing them to be giants. Yet Kemble’s shortcomings are also located in his

desire to maintain the spotlight for himself. His costume, decked with fat, waving

plumes, highlights his love of display and adds a foppish note to his appearance.

Theatricus Automaton notes that Kemble’s pose “has the peculiar effect (particularly in a

tall man) of keeping the secondaries at their proper distances: moreover, it prepares the

audience for something to be admired, and gives them time to adjust their canes, and

dispose of their gloves, prefatory to a clap, which never fills up the punctuation of a long

speech uttered by a leading performer.”17

Overall Theatricus Automaton faults Kemble for his inability to embody Henry V

and demonstrates how Kemble focuses on commanding the stage rather than on

portraying a king in command of his troops. Following this criticism, Annibale Scratch

depicts Kemble in an awkward pose suggestive of anything but heroic restraint: his arms

jut from his sides, shoulders draw up to his ears and fists clench at his waist while his

brow furrows to form an expression that suggests frustration and confusion rather than

nobility of character. As West has shown, contemporary criticism of Kemble’s acting style ranged from praise for the dignified classicism perceived in his stoic acting style to frustration over Kemble’s tendency toward melodramatics.18 Analyzing images of famed

eighteenth-century actors, including those of Kemble, West has argued against

interpreting eighteenth-century depictions of actors as accurate representations of their

performance practice, reasoning instead that the images offer insight into general

17 Ibid., 88.

18 West, 73-77.

102 audience and cultural perception rather than a record. Yet in her discussion of Kemble,

West also notes that the range of images - from caricatures that show the actor in a

paroxysm of action to the restrained, carefully composed academic portraits -

demonstrates that the actor was not easily categorized and may have (wisely) altered his

technique over the course of his career or even from performance to performance.19 The

Attic Miscellany image then belongs to a larger body of caricatures and satires of Kemble that participated in the critical debate over the merits and deficiencies of his acting style.

Five years after it was published in the Attic Miscellany, the caricature of Kemble was reissued in the Carleton House Magazine following his performance of Richard III at

Drury Lane (figure 2.12). Reproduced without alterations to the figure, the inscriptions at the top and bottom of the plate were burnished and replaced with the title of the periodical and with a new caption that proclaimed Kemble The Theatrical Ranter. The re-issue of the plate was not in itself a significant event since many caricatures, especially those that were well received by the public, were frequently reissued during the eighteenth-century, a practice that allowed the printer to capitalize on a lucrative plate.

This practice of re-working a plate for publication allowed satirists to fine-tune their images in response to the public who bought and circulated the prints. While many of the caricatures that were re-issued were exaggerated to amplify the features of an individual, they were also honed to a fine point, the bite of the caricature becoming more mordant.

Moreover, caricatures and satiric prints were altered in an attempt to appeal to the audience – to appear new and different, or perhaps to even encourage a collector to purchase prints in multiple states.

19 Ibid., 75-78.

103 However, in reissuing satiric and caricaturial images the satiric view of the

subject was reinforced and rehearsed in the public view. As a result, Kemble’s reputation

as a “Ranter” was secured by two types of rehearsal. For one, Kemble honed his acting

technique on stage in both rehearsals and performances of the roles he acted. Secondly,

his reputation as a ranter was also created and enforced by the quantity of representations

wherein the actor’s idiosyncratic gestures and delivery are repeated in a succession of

images. Joseph Roach has described the importance of rehearsal to the actor whose

performance “seems to depend on the extent to which his actions and thoughts have been

automatized, made second nature.” 20 While Kemble’s actions may have appeared to be

second nature to his fans, his critics pointed out that the actor’s movements are so rehearsed as to appear mechanical and unnatural. This distinction between bodily

movement and gestures that have been studied and internalized so they are preformed in a

way that seems effortless, and those gestures that appear studied and mannered, was of great importance to actors as well. For all fine artists, drawing was a fundamental skill learned through repetition of action - whether sketching from nature or from copying compositions of past masters. Dexterity and fluidity of motion, as well as the ability to seem natural when making art, were then basic components of acting and drawing, and perhaps the most difficult to master.

The re-publication of the Attic Miscellany satire of Kemble testifies to Scratch’s

success in capturing idiosyncratic elements of Kemble’s performance and in reiterating

popular criticism of his performance technique. The removal of plate number, title and

20 Joseph Roach, The Player’s Passion: Studies in the Science of Acting (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1985), 11-17, 16.

104 text from Scratch’s Henry V relates the caricature to Kemble’s performances generally,

rather than to one performance in particular. In the guise of the The Theatrical Ranter,

Kemble caricatures himself by consistently overacting at all times with an unwieldy stance, clenched hands, furrowed and furious face, and the overblown rhythm of his voice.

Ranting, the method of acting Kemble is criticized for in this satire, has been described as an off-shoot of the classical style of acting wherein “the actor addresses the

audience as if from a pulpit.” 21 This declamatory style of acting seems to have had many

critics. Downer has described the negative response to two styles of ranting – the

“declamatory monotone” and the “vocal claptrap”- and characterizes the first as a result

of “the nature of the writing,” which, “only a great actor could rise above, and the second as “as substitute for genuine ability.”22 Considered less physical than the style of acting

perfected by David Garrick in the first half of the century, practitioners of this declamatory technique generally emphasized voice rather than action to communicate with other characters on stage and address the audience. Typified by restrained movement, the technique of ranting lessened the interplay between actors and tended to highlight one actor on stage at a time.23 John Hill, for one, described ranting as “that

21 Downer, 1018.

22 Ibid., 1023.

23 Peter Thompson posits Kemble’s persistent respiratory illnesses, severe asthma, and chronic cough as a reason Kemble may have adopted the declamatory style of acting. Peter Thomson, “Kemble, John Philip (1757–1823),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) {http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/15322, accessed 29 Oct 2007]. Other theater historians have noted that the late-century renovations of the patent theaters Covent Garden and Drury Lane forced the actors to alter their performance techniques. Cavernous seating areas and enlarged stages compelled actors to amplify their voices and exaggerate their gestures so that the audience in the furthest reaches of the auditorium (the “cheap seats”) might follow the performance.

105 unmeaning recitation, that unnatural and monotonous delivery which too many of our

second rate players have fallen into.”24 For Hill, application of the technique could be a

means to conceal the actor’s lack of talent and aptitude for performance. For others,

ranting was a way to pander to the audience, particularly the lower ranks, who were

thought to be swayed by suspenseful pauses and dramatic fluctuations of voice. Even

while the ranting style of acting focused on physical restraint, the caricaturist clearly

plays on alternate connotations of the word that are associated with madness, loss of control, and even self-absorption.

Unlike other cultural venues for display, such as the Royal Academy’s exhibition rooms at Somerset House, the Royal Patent Theatres in London welcomed a socially diverse audience. Describing the cultural and social import of London theaters to his readers in Germany, Fredrick Wendeborn observed:

The entrance-price to the theaters, considering the dearness of everything in London, appears to be pretty moderate; and there is even, in Drury Lane, and Covent-Garden, after the first three acts of the play are over, admittance for half- price, except when a new pantomime is represented, on which occasion nothing less than the full price is taken.25

This custom of admitting audience members at reduced tariff halfway through the performance increased the social diversity of the audience so that “persons of high rank and others of the very lowest, are present; and it seems as if the latter were determined to initiate that they were as good as the former.”26 While the mixing of social classes may

have been alarming to the well-bred social and cultural elite who wished to maintain their

24 John Hill, 193.

25 Frederick Augustus Wendeborn, A View of England Towards the Close of the Eighteenth Century, 2 vols. (London: G. G. J. and J. Robinson, 1791), 244.

106 status unchallenged, another critic, James Peller Malcolm, who also wrote a history of

caricature that incorporated eighteenth-century artists, commented that the lower orders

seated in the cheapest seats were “generally attentive spectators and patient auditors”

during the performance, but could easily “become a very troublesome appendage to the

Theatre, when their highnesses divide into two parties, one for, and one against, the

repetition of a pleasing song.”27 The bemused tone Wendeborn and Malcolm assume in their portrayal of the audience indicates that attending the theater was a kind of social

safari that provided the upper classes a frisson of danger in the proximity of their

inferiors. Other critics noted that the conditions inside the playhouse gave license to all

members of the audience to socialize freely, and Malcolm even insinuates that the mixing

of classes may have provided the upper classes an opportunity to experiment with

adopting the manners of their social inferiors, and vice versa. Reacting to the elegant

aristocrats depicted by Hogarth in The Laughing Audience (figure 1.2), John Trusler

wrote: “it [was] extremely unfashionable, for people of the first rank, to pay attention to

the drama; their whole occupation, during the performance, being ogling, staring, trifling

and talking...”28 In this way, members of the audience became as much a part of the

spectacle of the playhouse as were the actors on stage. The audience seated in the fully

lit theater often conversed as loudly and gesticulated as much as the actors on stage. As a

26 Ibid., 248.

27 Malcolm 1808, 482. See also Malcolm, An Historical Sketch of the Art of Caricaturing with Graphic Illustrations (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees and Brown, 1813).

28 John Trusler, Hogarth Moralized, being a Complete Edition of Hogarth’s Works, Containing Near Fourscore Copper-plates… With an explanation pointing out the many beauties tht may hae hitherto escaped notice; and a commentary on their moral tendency (London: S. Hooper; and Mrs. Hogarth, 1768), 162.

107 result, actors had not only to compete among themselves for the audience’s attention, but

they were also forced to compete with the audience itself.

Overall, the Attic Miscellany satires of these late-century stage luminaries voice

two primary complaints: First, that the actors have travestied the characters they represent

on stage, and second, that in so doing the actors are motivated by a desire to obtain the

applause of the audience members seated in the upper gallery of the theater who were drawn from the lower ranks of society. Nowhere is this more explicitly stated than in

Automaton’ double-barreled assault on actor and audience in the third Theatrical Portrait

featured in the Attic Miscellany (1789; figure 2.13). In his acerbic treatment of the

comedian John Edwin, who played the role of Edwy Lingo in a musical farce, Automaton

writes:

Let me tell you gallery applause is the very best that can be had; it is the Vox Populi, the Vox Dei of the theatre; and will stand you in excellent stead against the puny hisses of the pit. As for the boxes, they are vox preterea nihil; and politely accommodate themselves at all times to the prevailing party. I divide a theatre, like a kingdom into three estates; King, Lord and Commons. The King, i.e. the Pit, makes pretensions to certain Je ne scai quoi rights and prerogatives, which, you know according to the system of modern politics, are, as elegant Lingo would say, all twaddle. The Lords – the Boxes – in the language of Lord Foppington – “are indeed pillars, but ornamental pillars only, of the State:” while the Galleries are all – right or wrong – the absolute majesty of the people. – Continue therefore to pay your court to the galleries.29

According to Automaton, the reversal of social power in the interior of the playhouse is enabled by the actors who pander to the lower social elements in the audience. Yet, since

the play for which Edwin is criticized is musical farce, already one of the lower genres of

29 Attic Miscellany, (April 1790) 246-247. See George BM 7713. Joseph Knight, “Edwin, John, the younger (1768–1805)”, rev. Nilanjana Banerji, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography ( Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/8571, accessed 15 Oct 2007]

108 performance, Automaton’s criticism is a bit puzzling. It would seem then, that the satiric

treatment the actors receive in this series represents a critical attempt to re-align the social

order of the theater by subjecting the actor to the judgment of Attic Miscellany readers, who were encouraged to censure their own behavior in order to ultimately impact the performance on stage. Automaton suggests that in altering the performance to target the vulgar taste of the crowd, the actor is likewise becoming grotesque and coarsened in

nature. Moreover, by losing control over his audience, Edwin becomes an active

participant in the disorder inside the theater, a disorder which is reflected in his

representation as a caricature in the pages of the Attic Miscellany.

Titled What Nature Ought to Be!, the caricature represents Edwin in the role of

Lingo, a French butler who mimicked the conduct of his social betters all the while delivering humorous commentary on their actions and manners. Edwin wears a coat and long vest that is cinched at the waist allowing it to flounce around his hips and reveal skin-tight leggings. The coat, embellished with large buttons and wide cuffs, looks like a cast-off from a wealthier man and contrasts with the austere shoes, simple tie, and wig.

Assuming the character of the butler, Edwin demonstrates the ridiculous, self absorbed behavior of the upper classes to the audience. The response of the audience was intended to encourage reform through laughter that rose from the lower ranks of society to the ears of their social betters (or equals) or rained down from the lower gallery and pit from the lowest members of the audience who were seated in the upper galleries. Yet the caricature also functions as a personal attack against Edwin, who was a close companion of the Earl of Barrymore, and spouse of noted comedian Elizabeth Rebecca Edwin.

Known for the comedic roles he performed on stage and for his social acquaintance,

109 Edwin is here compared to the servant who assumes the manners of his social betters,

another form of social inversion that is ridiculed in the print.

This anxiety over the social inversion that occurred in the interior of the playhouse was voiced by a number of eighteenth-century critics, including William

Cooke, who quoted Lord Melcombe on the subject:

The nobler, and what are the vulgarly called the higher classes of society, are insufficient in their number, their power, and co-operation of sentiment, to support any particular theater, or piece, independent of the public; and that it is only the great mass of people that can finally establish the fate of any theater representation. 30

Rather than praising the theater for the social variety within, Melcombe’s commentary

pointedly complains that the London theater is under the sway of mob rule, the “great

mass” undifferentiated in origin but clearly opposed to the nobility. Built into this commentary is the criticism that the commercial structure of dramatic entertainment makes popular support a necessary evil. Artists working in Britain had long bemoaned the lack of strong state, or aristocratic sponsorship for high-minded academic painting.

While the “great mass” had little economic influence on (and perhaps little interest in) the progress of painting and sculpture, plays, musicals and operas were not only available to them on a regular basis, they were one art form “the great mass” could influence and help define.

The threat of the unruly audience was a constant theme of eighteenth-century dramatic criticism and is featured in a number of print satires, most hilariously in those of

Thomas Rowlandson, whose works The Pigeon Hole, 1811 (figure 2.14), and Comedy in

30 William Cook, Memoirs of Samuel Foote, Esq. with a Collection of His Genuine Bon-Mots, Anecdotes, Opinions, &c. Mostly Original. And Three of His Dramatic Pieces, not Published in His Works (London: R. Phillips, 1805,) 116-117.

110 the Country/Tragedy in London, 1807 (figure 2.15), descend from Hogarth’s Laughing

Audience. In Comedy in the Country/Tragedy in London, Rowlandson surpasses Hogarth

in his representation of the grotesque audience, and associates country peasants and laborers with Comedy, and the middling and upper classes with Tragedy, a thinly veiled commentary on the relative sophistication of the two locales. Openly sobbing, the audiences in the city and in the country demonstrate two emotional extremes – uncontrolled laughter and sadness - through their tears and contorted facial expressions that recall the masks of comedy and tragedy representative of the two genres.

Rowlandson, however, reserves his greatest efforts of grotesque representation for the lowest orders. who occupy the pigeon holes in Covent Garden Theater. The Pigeon Hole, subtitled “A Covent Garden attempt to coop up the gods,” demonstrates that the gods, the noisy parties in the upper galleries who expressed their approbation and disgust with loud

catcalls, hooting, and stamping, can hardly be contained or removed from the life of the

theater by banishment to the eaves. Crammed into lunette-shaped balconies near the

ceiling of the auditorium, the spewing, jostling, and brawling audience threatens to taint

the audience below with their bodily presence (one man actually vomits over the

balcony). The gods on high in Rowlandson’s satire parody the classical ideal embodied

by the Greek and Roman gods who observed the failing of mortals from their perch on

Mt. Parnassus. Whilst the ancient gods, so avidly depicted by history painters and

sculptors, may have behaved badly from time to time (raping and tricking mortals,

drinking to excess), their bodies were still perfectly proportioned with bulging muscles

and elegant contours. Rowlandson’s gods, on the other hand, barely contain themselves

or restrain their behavior. Highlighting the grotesquery of the ‘gods,’ the laughter of

111 comedy, and the tears of tragedy, Rowlandson’s prints imply that attending a theatrical

performance is a shared physical experience where everyone threatens to give in to their

passions.

Proponents of theater and authors of acting treatises like John Hill, who referred

to the performer’s art as “paintings thus exposed on stage,” compared the two as a means

of justifying the techniques actors used to command the audience’s attention.31 Since

theatrical performances, like paintings are viewed at a distance by the majority of their

audiences, Hill argued, “they must therefore have a strength in the touches somewhat too

bold for a near view, but yet so moderated, that it may be overlooked in those that have

that situation, in consideration of the necessities of the rest.”32 While Hill maintained that

certain extravagancies in acting were warranted in order to address “the greater number

of the audience,” he was also clear that “judicious” audiences still expect performances to

remain “within the bounds of moderation, and that [they] keep up a kind of regularity.”33

Whereas Hill’s argument recognizes the positive, moderating influence an audience could have on the actor’s performance, for critics like Automaton, the reverse was true. These two views of the audience – as reformative force and as a force of distortion – demonstrate the fundamental instability of audience performance and audience expectation. Such an observation locks multiple performers – actors, audience, and critics – in a constant struggle over the control of the performance as a whole.

31 John Hill, 163. Physician, scientist, and actor, John Hill wrote The Actor in order to apply scientific rigor to the art of acting. For Hill’s fixation on the physiology, origins and management of sensibility in the actor see Roach, 100-115.

32 John Hill, 163.

33 Ibid, 238

112 In the text for the second Theatrical Portrait, the devices actors, managers and set

designers employed to dazzle and attract the viewer’s attention are compared to the use of

bright pigment and dramatic composition in contemporary painting. Terms employed to describe the visual effects and techniques of painting like intensity of pigment, quality of

brushstroke, and genre, are applied to the acting style of Charles Lee Lewes, who is

accused of using far too much color and too bold brush strokes in a Monstrous Elegant

Attitude (1790; figure 2.16). Automaton complains that in an effort to draw the viewer’s

attention, Lewes has “[laid] colouring on thick” since “it will have the finer effect at a

distance.” Coloring on canvas most obviously refers to the pigment, yet for Automaton

“coloring” also describes the actor’s practice of creating character through costume,

makeup, movement, and voice. Choosing to “lay it on thick,” Automaton grumbles that

Lewes follows “the practice of our great modern painters, and pays no regard whatever to

nature” (203)34 By ignoring nature, that is, failing to base his art on observation of the

manners, characters, and norms of eighteenth-century society, Lewes follows the

example of the “great modern painters,” who are give over to the use of bright colors and

tawdry effects. Instead of drawing on the manners and appearance of men of “quality,”

Automaton likens Lewes’ performance to “the airs of a footman, aping the manners of his

superior,” a complaint that is brought to fruition in the third Attic Miscellany satire of

Edwin.35 Based on wild exaggeration rather than decorous imitation, the performances of

34 Attic Miscellany (March 1790), 203. K. Dian Kriz has shown how the use of bright colors and the dramatic use of light in late eighteenth-century paintings was considered a particularly English practice. Such a use of color allowed paintings to stand out when hung on crowded gallery walls or in the lavishly decorated parade rooms of private houses. See Kriz, The Idea of the English Landscape Painter: Genius as Alibi in the Early Nineteenth Century (New Haven and London: Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art by Yale University Press, 1997), 38-39.

35 Attic Miscellany, 204.

113 Lewes and Edwin are characterized as “aping” the manners of their social betters – the very sort of vulgar mimicry associated with the burlesque and with caricature.

As Automaton and Scratch contend, Lewes fails to convey the refinement of the salon and instead carries the taint of the country farmyard. The text that serves as a caption for the image describes the posture Lewes assumes as “A Monstrous Elegant

Attitude,” and relates Lewes’ strut on stage to that of a preening rooster with the exclamation “Cock-a-Doodle-Do!” Lewes gazes at the viewer and stretches and points his left leg so that it forms a straight line, while his right leg elegantly rises to bring him to tip-toe. With his hands in the small of his back he presses his forward and parades on two thin legs, coattails trailing behind like tail feathers - even his wig comically flips at the sides to form two plumes. Scratch amplifies the rigidity of Lewes’ body so that his stride is affected and practiced. The angularity of Lewes’ movements are underscored by Automaton, who references Hogarth’s Analysis of Beauty, noting: “You have the true quality leg—look frequently at your legs—this will give your whole figure the pyramidal form, so much talked of by Hogarth in his Analysis of Beauty”(204). Pointing out the angularity of Lewes’ posture in contrast to the serpentine line of beauty, Automaton’s citation of Hogarth’s popular treatise parodies both Hogarth’s, and Lewes,’ attempts at literary and aesthetic achievement. Yet, by referencing the Analysis of Beauty

Automaton acknowledges the indebtedness of the Attic Miscellany satires to works, like those of Hogarth, which combined text and image to lay the foundation for late- eighteenth-century comedic prints.

Hogarth’s works may have paved the way for satirists and caricaturists working at the end of the eighteenth century; however, the Attic Miscellany satires owe a great deal

114 to a contemporary print phenomenon that developed in the 1770s when Matthew and

Mary Darly produced and sold a series of “Macaroni” caricatures in their London

printshop. 36 These images take as their subject the figure of the Macaroni, a London character, most often male, associated with fashionable clothing, precious mannerisms, and a love of bodily display. Linked with the affectations of the aristocracy and with a cosmopolitan lifestyle that smacked of foreign influence, the Macaroni was derided for rupturing traditional rules of social comportment, especially in his dress. Sold as separate sheets or bound in albums, the Macaroni caricatures cataloged a new type of Londoner; the prominent man-about-town who called attention to himself with foppish clothing and ostentatious deportment.

For these images the Darlys adopted a basic format in which the Macaroni was shown in a full length view so that his attire might be illustrated from head to toe.37 In most cases the Macaroni was placed against a blank background and identified by a caption that situated the figure in a particular London geography. For example, The St.

James’s Macaroni located the figure in one of the fashionable London neighborhoods

(figure 2.17). Although the Macaroni prints adopted a stylized format, consciously turning away from portraiture, the images and the captions engraved on the sheets gave sure clues to the Macaroni’s identity. As West points out in an essay that considers this print phenomenon, viewers of the engravings, such as Horace Walpole, used the prints as

36 Shearer West, “The Darly Macaroni Prints and the Politics of ‘Private Man,’” Eighteenth-Century Life, 25 (Spring 2001): 170-182. See also Amelia Rauser, Caricature Unmasked: Irony, Authenticity, and Individualism in Eighteenth-Century English Prints (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2008), 58-65.

37 This format was derived from the long-standing tradition of engraved portraits of city traders. For the history of this phenomena in England see the works of Sean Shesgreen, particularly: The Cries and Hawkers of London: Engravings and Drawings by Marcellus Laroon (Adlershot, England: Scholar Press, 1990).

115 a kind of identity game whereby they attempted to link the Macaroni portrait to the

individual on which it was based. 38 This game of identification was applied to all manner of caricatures; many of the print satires and caricatures formerly owned by

Walpole and now in the Lewis Walpole Library in Farmington, Connecticut, demonstrate this treatment with inscriptions added in the margins of the prints. One such print identified by Walpole is The Lilly Macaroni revealed as William John, Earl of Ancrum, later 5th Marquis of Lothian (figure 2.18). In the same way, the Attic Miscellany

caricatures mix the generic with the specific to reveal the thinly veiled identity of actor

and role.

Employing the conventions of Macaroni prints, like the full-length view and the

decisive, descriptive line, Scratch places Lewes on an empty stage the better to show his

pose and costume. By implication, Lewes is very like the Macaronis who adopted

continental manners, clothed themselves in luxurious fabrics and lavished attention on

their physical appearance. Yet, it was not simply that Macaronis looked the part, but they

acted it as well. Just as Macaronis were extravagant in their dress and makeup, they

were excessive in posture, gesture and facial expression, a feature heightened in the

engravings that frequently showed the Macaronis in action – walking through city streets,

in conversation, or gesturing to the viewer. This obsession with the body in motion

carried into the Theatrical Portraits, which focus on the actor’s bodily performance –

even to the point of providing lines of dialog.

The actors singled out for satiric treatment in the Attic Miscellany were among

the most admired for their abilities to interpret dramatic texts and to appeal to the

emotions of their audience. Theater historians seeking trends in performance history

38 West 2001, 174. 116 typically situate John Philip Kemble and his sister, Sarah Siddons, at the forefront of the late eighteenth century movement towards what is known as the declamatory or classical style of acting.39 While both siblings were acclaimed for their reserved and stoical

technique, they were also targets of satirical and caricaturial attacks and were commonly

featured in print productions that enumerated notable and notorious “Public

Characters.”40 It comes as no surprise, then, that Kemble was the first male actor

featured in the series or that Siddons was the first female actor to be singled out for satiric

treatment in the Attic Miscellany caricatures. 41

Although many of the actors satirized in The Attic Miscellany are accused of

delivering inconsistent performances and of constantly altering performances to appeal to

the audience, Automaton alleges that Siddons’ popularity with audiences and critics alike

has made her unwilling to revise or alter her performance style. The satire suggests that

Siddons has chosen to rest on her laurels so that her performances have become stale and

predictable; textbook recreations of emotion and character. In the caricature How to

Harrow Up the Soul, Siddons is shown in an inelegant posture; her right hand is thrust

39 For the association of Siddons and Kemble with the declamatory style see Downer, 1005, 1012 and 1017-1024. Downer divides eighteenth-century acting styles into 4 “schools of acting” that he bases on performance styles of notable actors of the century. He situates Kemble and Siddons in the 4th and last “school” of declamatory acting, which he contrasts with the style practiced by the “Garrick-Macklin” school.

40 Engravings of this type were not outwardly caricaturial, but served rather to catalog the (somewhat idiosyncratic) portraits of famous figures in eighteenth-century London, among them, politicians, courtesans, military heroes, and actors and actresses. For example see Public Characters of 1798 by J. Other caricaturial engravings of this nature did of course exist, as in Rowlandson’s work discussed in the previous chapter.

41 Images of Siddons are addressed in detail in several essays collected in the volume edited by Robyn Asleson, Notorious Muse: the Actress in British Art and Culture 1776-1812 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003) For the caricaturial treatment of Siddons see Heather McPherson’s essay in this volume entitled “Painting, Politics and the Stage in the Age of Caricature,” 171-193.

117 towards the audience, while the left rests melodramatically over her heart (figure 2.19).

As she gazes upwards under heavily peaked eyebrows, her mouth opens to emit the

exclamation, “Oh --- h---h!,” inscribed below the image. Siddons’ gestures, facial

expression, and the attenuated sigh are all calculated for maximum dramatic effect.

Even the caption to the image indicates the didactic regularity with which Siddons

delivered her poses.

Whereas Kemble was satirized in The Attic Miscellany for his inability to control his emotional displays on stage, Siddons’ emotions are characterized as automatic and unnatural, calculated to bring the audience to tears through repetition and rehearsal.

Automaton mocks:

I would always have besides me a set of starts, attitudes, and shakes of the chin, ready cut and dried for every occasion that would occur; and when I hit upon a mode of performing a part to my mind, after having convinced the world, in all the news papers, that it was the best possible way of acting it, I would never alter in the smallest degree; but have a look and attitude for every word, and a particular place on the stage where to set my foot ever after, with an exactness that might be written down in the Prompter’s book, as a standard by which actors might be formed out of any of the charity-schools of the kingdom, with no more trouble than Hughes or Astley take to instruct their horses.42

Ironically, the mechanical precision Siddons is accused of also enabled her to deliver

consistent performances night after night. Audiences were therefore assured that

Siddons’ performances would remain of the same quality and that their expectations of

the actor would be fulfilled. Himself consistently critical and irate, Automaton takes

particular issue with what he portrays as Siddons’ disregard for reviews. Incredulous, he

accuses Siddons of striking out and developing her own acting technique and winning

over the press that generally praised her performances. The evenness and reliability of

118 Siddons’ performances truly became a standard for aspiring and amateur actors when her son, Henry Siddons, published a translation of German dramatic theorist Johann Jacob

Engel’s acting manual, Ideen Zu Einer Mimik (1786), and based his instructions and

many of the illustrations within it on his mother’s performances.43 Compare, for example, the illustration of Reproach from Henry Siddon’s manual, clearly a portrait of Siddons

(figure 2.20), with the caricature from the pages of the Attic Miscellany. The pose

Siddons assumes in both images is strikingly similar; even in caricature, the actress is shown in statuesque proportions. Where Reproach is composed so that superfluous

elements, like costume and setting, are minimized to bring the focus to the actor’s pose,

and to convey the impression of the actor’s complete control over her actions, the

caricature is calculated to have the opposite effect. In caricature the irregular engraved

line combines with compositional elements like the broad extension of Siddon’s limbs,

the pleats and folds in her costume, and the plumes in her headdress that further

exaggerate the tilt of her head, to represent an actress whose performance might topple

over the edge of propriety. With alarming detail, the caricature distorts and exaggerates

Siddon’s features to highlight her long jaw, prominent nose and heavy eyebrows, a

striking contrast to the simplified features with which Siddons is depicted in Reproach.

Never one to pass up a good composition, Thomas Rowlandson produced a caricature of

Siddons in nearly the same posture (figure 2.21) (1789). The relationship between

Rowlandson’s caricature and Scratch’s is indeed very close – so close, that Rowlandson

42 Attic Miscellany, 407.

43 Henry Siddons, Practical Illustrations of Rhetorical Gesture and Action, 2nd ed. (London: 1822; New York: Benjamin Blom Inc., 1968). Johann Jacob Engel’s original version is: Ideen Zu Einer Mimik (Berlin: August Mylius.,1785-1786).

119 may have been one source for the Attic Miscellany caricaturist. The etching claims to

depict Siddons in rehearsal behind the scenes at Drury Lane. The intimate environment,

coupled with the bustle of other actors lends this image a sense of being drawn from the

life and in the moment. The pose, however, is carefully delineated and Siddons’s lack of

restraint belies the fact that this image was an invention.

Of this group of Attic Miscellany caricatures those of Kemble and Siddons are

perhaps the most remarkable because as tragic actors they are brought lowest by the

satirist’s pen. Since comedic actors already perform in a lower dramatic genre, their decline from comedy to farce was arguably less spectacular than that of the tragic actor who trips furthest down the hierarchical scale when the satirist transforms his or her comedic performance into a burlesque. For tragic actors, restraint and control were central to the success of their performances and to their ability to convey historical and heroic events that occurred in far away lands and in past times. While tragedies and dramas typically dealt with distant times and place, comedy was most often set in contemporary Europe. In further contrast to the gravitas invoked by dramas, comedies were defined by continuous movement, witty dialogue, and eccentric characters that burst on to the stage to applause and laughter, only to exit as quickly again. However, to satirize and debase tragic and comedic performers alike, graphic caricature wittily mobilized performance elements associated with comedy and farce.

Comic prints of famous actors, like those published in the Attic Miscellany, can only be fully understood when situated amongst other painted and engraved images that featured actors, theatrical scenes, and character portraits. Among the engravings of actors in circulation, the Attic Miscellany caricatures most closely relate to actor portraits that

120 were published throughout the eighteenth century as individual sheets or as illustrations

in books and periodicals. Typically full-length representations of costumed actors in the midst of a performance, these images and often commemorated noteworthy performances

and roles associated with an actor. Engravings of this kind were used to illustrate plays,

or, as we have seen in the case of Sarah Siddons and Kemble, they were incorporated into

acting manuals.44 The union of actor image and dramatic text is exemplified by the

publications of John Bell, who produced a multi-volume series of works by Shakespeare

(1774) and followed its success with another series featuring works by British

playwrights (1776-78). To increase the appeal of his publications, Bell offered the

promise that the illustrations depicted scenes from the play “as they are now

performed.”45 Often this was an erroneous claim since some of the actors illustrated in conjunction with specific texts were never associated with the roles.46 Yet the inaccuracy

of the portraits did not dampen their popularity amongst buyers of the series. West, for

one, has suggested that Bell’s productions probably owed their success to the novelty of

the actor portraits included with the texts. The dramatic texts were, in fact, frequently

criticized for being riddled with flaws.47

The portraits included in Bell’s publications are stiff and blandly lifeless in

comparison with the Attic Miscellany satires. Bell’s engraving of Kemble in the role of

Cato is a fairly typical instance of portraits of tragedians in this publication (figure 13).

44 Shearer West has described the variety engraved actor portraits in great detail in The Image of the Actor 1991, 50. See especially the second chapter of this work titled The Theatrical Portrait, 27-57.

45 This promise is made in the title of the series by John Bell, Bell’s British Theatre, Consisting of the Most Esteemed English Plays as They are Now Performed (London: J. Bell; & C. Etherington, 1776-1781).

46 West, 1991, 55-56.

47 Ibid., 55-56.

121 Isolated in front of a large column intended to indicate an ancient setting, Kemble gazes over his right shoulder, assuming a wooden pose reminiscent of the Apollo Belvedere, one of the classical sculptures actors were urged to study and imitate. The costume and stage set alone give little indication of the character Kemble plays; instead, he is intended to be the ideal embodiment of the classical actor.

Actor portraits and paintings of dramatic scenes bring focus to the actor’s body in a way that resonates with the performance practice known as “making points.” Actors and directors used points, stops in action that indicated the import of the dramatic moment, to signal pivotal moments in speeches or significant moments in plots. Such a tableau-making device wherein bodily gesture and facial expression were frozen on stage may now seem stilted, but in crowded and noisy eighteenth-century theaters, points could be a necessary means to recall the audience’s attention to the stage. In fact, these climactic moments were an important part of the theater-going experience; a memorable delivery could secure an actor’s fame and audience members relished applauding particularly well-delivered points. Automaton satirizes this practice in his estimation of

Kemble’s performance in How to Tear a Speech to Tatters, and turns a point, the serious part of the play, into a claptrap, a mere gimmick designed to gain the favor of the gallery.48 Wendeborn, who, it seems, visited the London theaters in order to marvel at the spectacle in the audience described claptraps as a moment of social reversal in the theater where “the upper gallery, “occupied by the low part of the audience,” rules the whole house. Claptraps were carefully planned by playwrights and actors alike as

“snares to catch the applause of the upper gallery, in order to balance the judgment of the

48 Wendeborn, 248-249.

122 critics below, in the pit.”49 These moments of non-verbal communication between actor

and audience were essential to the performance and allowed actor and audience to size

each other up and gauge the success of the performance.

For all eighteenth-century actors, gesture was tantamount to speech as a crucial

performance element. On stage, gesture preceded speech and directed the audience’s

attention to the performer about to give an address. Critics and theoreticians focused on

the importance of gesture because it was the actor’s first address to the body’s most

sensitive organs: the eyes.50 Moreover, gesture was also one of the first physical

manifestations of the passions in the actor’s body. In his work The Art of Acting, Aaron

Hill describes thoughts and objects as “images” and traces the movements of the passions from the initial perception of the image, which occurs when “The soul, inhabiting the

Brain… stamps instantaneously upon the Eye and Eyebrow, a struck image of conceived idea.”51 Next, impulses travel from the optic nerve to the heart:

These, in progressive impulse, push it on to every Nerve and joint and ligament, throughout the body, to such elastic, or remiss, co-operation with the look as modulates the voice to different tones (as changeably as stops upon an organ pipe) and, at the same time, bracing, or unwinding Mien and Movements, paints the Gesture with a like communication of the image.52

49 Ibid., 249.

50 In his 1757 work, Encyclopedie ou Dictionnaire Raisonné des Sciences, des Arts & des Métiers, Diderot declared: “Art. Geste, (Declamation), the gesture on the stage must always precede the word: one feels more readily than words can express it: and gesture is much more prompt than voice.” Quoted by Dene Barnett in,“The Performance Practice of Acting: The Eighteenth Century. Part II: The Hands.” Theatre Research International, vol III, no. 1 (1977) 3.

51 Aaron Hill, The Art of Acting, Part I, Deriving values from a new Principle, for Touching the Passions in a Natural Manner. An Essay of General Use, to Those, who Hear, or Speak in Public, And to the Practitioners of Many of the Elegant Arts; As Painters, Sculptors, and Designers: But Adapted in Particular to the Stage: With a view to quicken the delight of audiences, and form a judgment of the Actors in their Good, or Bad, Performances (London: J. Osborn,1746), iv.

52 Aaron Hill, v.

123

For Hill, gesture and speech are the expression of a complex series of interactions

between nerves and muscles that originate in the mind and travel outward to be expressed

by the actor’s body and his or her voice. Although the tone of voice is one way in which

the actor communicates emotions and ideas, Hill asserts that the “painted” gesture

ultimately conveys the “image” (thought) conceived by the actor. In the world of

performance, gesture was thus another form of language at the actor’s disposal and had to be calibrated to match the content and tone of the dramatist’s script brought to the stage.

Each actor had to give careful consideration to the gestures he or she employed to bring the character they conceived of in their minds onto the stage. Since bodily movement was the audience’s first clue to the stage character, viewers were attuned to subtle nuances in the position of the actor’s head, limbs and body.

Among the variety of materials that acquainted the public with the performer’s art, acting manuals and guides provided some of the most thorough information. Shortly after the passage of the Stage Licensing Act in 1737, when the British theater was undergoing a transformation from a writer’s to an actor’s theater, a number of actor’s handbooks outlining the proper study of the art were published in the English capital.53

Such texts provided tools of study for aspiring professional and amateur actors and theater goers and were illustrated with engravings that demonstrated proper gestures, poses, and facial and bodily expressions for performance. Derived from a range of sources that included high art visual resources like Charles Le Brun’s Charactères des

Passions, oil painting and classical sculpture, acting manuals were also conversant with

53 According to Downer, 20 of these texts were published between 1741 and 1790. Such a number was enough to constitute a veritable boom in the genre; 1027.

124 publications, such as conduct and rhetoric guides, which combined image and text to exhibit principles of correct social deportment. Like the other guides, acting manuals were demonstrative texts, illustrated with engravings accompanied by painstaking descriptions of motions that detailed the movements of each part of the body – eyes, hands, limbs, etc.54

In the eighteenth century, dramatic actors, like artists, were encouraged to model

the characters they portrayed on stage after classical statues, from which they were to

derive principles of gesture and pose. In his attempt to inspire eighteenth-century actors,

theater critic Roger Pickering went so far as to claim that even actors in ancient Greece

modeled their acting technique after paintings and sculpture. The highest style of modern

acting was not just imitation of antique works of art, but imitation of ancient actors.

In order to stress the nobility of classical forms, Pickering neglects the strong

Greco-Roman tradition of representing satire and the grotesque. With such an aesthetic

preference in place, it comes as little surprise that eighteenth-century actors studied the

antique rhetorical poses and gestures found in sculpture, vase painting, and text.55

Although these prized art works may have formed the basis of the neoclassical acting style, eighteenth century dramas clearly did not resemble a statuary yard. While tragic actors were encouraged to move economically, and only when the motion or gesture had

54 This is exactly the task Dene Barnett undertakes in his series of articles detailing “The Performance Practice of Acting.” Combing through a number of acting guides and manuals, Barnett details proscriptions for movement and action directed at each part of the actor’s body. See especially: “The Performance Practice of Acting,” Theatre Research International. Part I: “Ensemble Acting,” 2 (1977), 157-85; Par t 2: “The Hands,” 3 (1977), 1-19; Part 3: “The Arms,” 3 (1978) 79-93; Part 4: “The Eyes, Face and the Head,” 5 (1979-80), 1-13; Part V: “Posture and Attitudes,” 4:1, 1-32.

55 Alan Hughes “Art and Eighteenth-Century Acting Style, Part II: Attitudes,” Theater Notebook, 41:2 (1987), 79-89, p. 80. William Cooke even “listed specific statues whose attitudes should be imitated on the stage by men and women. Among the former were the Apollo Belvedere and the Farnese Antinous, both of which were extravagantly admired in the eighteenth century.”

125 significance to the play, theater historian Alan Hughes has cautioned against making the

assumption that the performances of tragic actors were little more than a series of antique

rhetorical poses.56 According to Hughes, gestures based on the antique were tempered with “commonplace human actions [that] were ‘corrected’ to conform to neoclassical aesthetic principles and enlarged to ‘read’ in enormous theaters.”57 In part these concessions were made in recognition of the heterogeneity of the audience. Dramatists and actors alike were aware that a large part of their audience belonged to the middling and lower orders and lacked the level of education their social betters received.

Performances that incorporated both rhetorical gestures and the sorts of commonplace

actions found in comedies were a kind of compromise between high and low and helped

to keep the play timely and current. The satires in the Attic Miscellany speak to the

snobbish objection made by purists who sneered at inclusive motions made towards the

less learned amongst the audience.

In addition to outlining appropriate bodily motion, acting manuals illustrated

awkward or improper gestures as pitfalls that awaited actors who failed to master such

techniques. One manual, published in late-century Paris by French critic Pierre Poupart,

outlined the consequences of actions and gestures that exceed the limits of decorum:

Propriety desires that geometric and harmonious proportions be faithfully observed. They are definitely not when gestures break the bounds, when it is raised above the head, when the elbows, drawn back and ready to touch each other, jerk forward the hands and fling them out in front. Gesture is base when it presents a closed hand, spread fingers, when the thigh is abruptly struck by the

56 Alan Hughes, “Art and Eighteenth-Century Acting Style, Part III: Passions,” Theater Notebook, 41:3 (1987), 128-39, 135.

57 Ibid., 136.

126 arm which falls on it, when the attitude, the position of the legs is that of a ruffian who takes his guard.58

The revulsion Poupart expresses at this sight of gesture gone haywire is located at the

moment the body extends beyond culturally defined limits of propriety. With the

inappropriate gesture, the body is contorted, bent and deformed. As a result of over- extension, the actor performs outside the role, burlesquing it –however unintentionally –

in an outré performance. Surely Annibale Scratch had this sort of criticism in mind

when he designed Kemble’s posture in the caricature print. Scratch’s caricature

encapsulates the dangers of bad acting outlined by Poupart in its rehearsal of elements of

baseness - close-handed gestures and elbows drawn back at angles. The criticism

launched by both Scratch and Poupart is targeted toward the actor who has not been

diligent in his or her studies – or has forgotten them altogether. The failed performance

therefore becomes a grotesque that caricatures both actor and dramatic character pointing

to flaws in technique and in character development.

Not only were tragic actors to guard against vulgar postures and movements, but

they also had to guard against “false gestures,” gestures entirely without meaning in the rhetorical tradition (figure 2.23). In Henry Siddons’s Practical Illustrations of Rhetorical

Gesture, engravings that demonstrate these movements are featured along side

illustrations of stage action meant to convey abstract emotions like “love,” “anger,” and

“joy.” The illustrations of false gesture included in his work make curious counterparts to

the Attic Miscellany satires. At first glance it may be difficult to identify exactly what

identifies these gestures as “false.” However, the clenched fists, level arms, and wrists

58 Pierre Poupart, Les Elements de l’art du comedien;… A l’usage des éleves st des amateurs du theatre (Paris, An VII [1799]), Pt. IV, p.10. Quoted by Dene Barnett 1977, Part 2, 8.

127 that hang limply indicate that the gestures are without object; they do little to direct the

viewer’s gaze, propel the action forward, or convey the emotions of character. The

excess of the false gestures illustrated by Siddons lies in the very fact that they are

superfluous and unnecessary, not that they are overly exuberant or extravagant. Yet both

varieties were equally abhorred by critics and adopted by caricaturists and satirists

wishing to point out the follies of contemporary actors.

The extent to which ideas about excessive bodily action and false gesture form

part of the caricaturists’ vocabulary is spelled out in the satiric engraving Dramatic

Actions Illustrated, a caricature of the eccentric amateur actor Robert Coates, whose

flamboyant acting style and love of ostentatious costumes made him a popular laughing stock and earned him the nickname “Diamond Coates” (figure 2.24).59 In a series of six

consecutive images the actor delivers a line; applying literal gestures to each word, so

that the word “wide” is indicated by the arms spread apart, whilst “ten” is demonstrated

with a display of the actor’s ten fingers. In addition to mocking Coates, the satirist also

parodies acting manuals and the pretense of learning acting from a book (as was the

practice of most amateurs) rather than honing skills on stage. Had Coates actually

applied the lessons he gleaned from the manuals to his on-stage performances, he may

have fared better. Yet Coates is an interesting case since his popularity, or notoriety, was

due to the defects and excesses of his performances that rendered him a “successful”

59 Nilanjana Banerji and K. D. Reynolds, “Coates, Robert [Romeo Coates] (1772-1848)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/5729, accessed 10 Aug. 2007] Robert Coates (1772-1848), born in Antigua was the son of plantation owner Alexander Coates. After his father’s death he inherited a fortune and set about making a name for himself as “The Celebrated Philanthropic Amateur” who performed in charitable productions. His career petered out around 1815 when audiences lost interest in his antics, still, his name continued to be associated with mediocre actors and bad acting.

128 comic spectacle. As a target for caricature, Coates must have been irresistible since the

superfluous gestures and the foppish clothing for which he was widely known associated him with the outré and the realm of satiric and caricaturial representation.

In Dramatic Action, Coates’s body language fails to construct character or complement the spoken lines. The gestures and words Coates performs are fragmented, unconnected, and segmented by the satirist into a grid on the sheet. As do the Attic

Miscellany satires, the engraving of Coates demonstrate a type of theater criticism emergent in graphic satire that used bodily excess, including ornate costumes, to criticize actors and their techniques. Selective exaggeration, the language of caricature, is the

basis for this brand of theater criticism, which functions by transforming dramatic

performances into a farce.

Overall, Coates and the actors represented in the Attic Miscellany satires are

mocked for disrupting a balance in performance that is expressed by an imbalance in

representation, namely caricature. Disproportionate and distracting gestures, exaggerated

coloring, and conspicuous ornamentation and display of the body with overblown

costume all place these actors and the representations of their performances off-center.

One of the claims made by the caricatures and satires that appeared in The Attic

Miscellany is that the actors have violated parameters of performance and transgressed

their assigned lines, whether they were lines of tragedy or comedy.

Whereas tragic actors were governed by conventions that regulated nearly every

aspect of performance and character, comedic actors, who represented a broader range of

characters encountered in everyday life, were encouraged to study the gestures,

129 movements and facial expressions of their contemporaries. 60 Nonetheless, comedians

had the task of performing within the bounds of polite comedy without straying into the grotesque or outré. Oliver Goldsmith tied the style of acting practiced by English actors to what he identified as the national temperament and a tendency to reserve. Complaining

that English actors were “infinitely more stiff and formal” than their European

counterparts, he encouraged the use of action in comedic performance.61 According to

Goldsmith, action was the best means by which the comedian might heighten his or her

art. He writes:

Though it would be inexcusable in the comedian to add any thing of his own to the Poet’s dialogue, yet as to action he is entirely at liberty. By this he may shew the fertility of his genius, the poignancy of his humour, and the exactness of his judgment; we scarce see a coxcomb or a fool in common life, that has not some peculiar oddity in his action. These peculiarities it is not in the power of words to represent, and depend solely upon the actor.62

Goldsmith’s assessment echoes William Hogarth’s assertion in the Analysis of Beauty

that character must be conveyed through form and action combined. Since character is

physically demonstrated by the actor’s movement, the comedian’s best means of enhancing the comedy was by embellishing the playwright’s lines with gestures and expressions that developed character. Praising a 1759 performance of the Mock Doctor by the comedian Richard Yates, Goldsmith exclaimed: “Here again the comedian had an opportunity of heightening the ridicule by action…. In short there is hardly a character in comedy to which a player of any real humour, might not add strokes of vivacity that

60 West, 1991, 123.

61 Oliver Goldsmith, “Remarks on Our Theatres,” Collected Works, Arthur Friedman, ed. vol 1 (1759; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), 359.

62 Ibid., 360.

130 could not fail of applause.”63 Encouraging the actor to use crowd-pleasing “strokes of

vivacity” to enliven comic performances, Goldsmith brings us to an important eighteenth- century conversation centered on the way in which actors and artists enhanced their performances with Hill’s “exaggerating force.”

Mobilized by fine artist and actor alike, the terms “line” and “stroke” were used to describe the performance processes of art making and acting. Just as actors were scrutinized for their ability to embody character through motion and voice, artists were judged for their ability to represent character and narrative scenes on canvas or paper.

For both actor and artist the quality and accuracy of the stroke – made by the actor’s

limbs in address of the audience, or by the artist’s hand holding the pen, burin or

paintbrush - determined the overall strength of the performance on the stage and on the

page. Critics and viewers thus judged the success of these performances by evaluating the

artist’s or actor’s ability to control his or her actions and create “strokes of vivacity.” The

actor or artist in turn was required to assemble a repertory of movement and line that would be repeatable and recognizable from production to production. The trick in the delivery of the performance was that the product had to appear natural and fresh rather than rehearsed and stagy, showing mastery of technique and innovation in design. With this in mind, the next part of the chapter considers the multiple and overlapping connotations of line, stroke and gesture in the eighteenth century.

The reader of an eighteenth-century review of any given performance may have encountered the concept of an actor’s lines employed in variety of ways; the most basic of which referred to the lines of dialogue written by the playwright. These are the lines

63 Ibid., 361.

131 the actor must memorize and animate with voice and physical movement. While such a process suggests the centrality of the text, during the eighteenth century the dramatist’s scripts by no means restricted actors who improvised and adlibbed, often in response to

claps and catcalls from the audience. Such flexibility was a hallmark of eighteenth-

century performance and indicates the authority actors could exert over their art and once

again shows the influence of the audience. Just as comedic actors had a greater variety

of gesture at their disposal than tragic actors, they were accorded more flexibility in the

delivery of their lines.

For an actor in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the term “lines of

business” described the kind of characters and roles they were engaged to play. In fact,

actors were so strongly associated with their lines (what we might today call being type

cast) that, by reading a playbill listing the actors engaged to play the principal roles, a

theatergoer would glean not only the genre of performance (tragedy, comedy, sentimental

comedy, farce, etc.) advertised, but he or she may have also discerned the plot.64 Then,

as now, scripts were frequently tailored to the skills and roles associated with particular

actors. Early in the century John Dennis remarked, “most Writers for the Stage in my

time, have not only adapted their Characters to their Actors, but these actors have it as it

were sate for them.”65

In part, the actor’s physical appearance and personality could also determine the

“lines” with which they were associated. As theater historian Robert Hume has noted,

64 Lisa Freeman, Character’s Theater: Genre and Identity on the Eighteenth-Century English Stage (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), 2-3.

65 Quoted by Robert Hume in The London Theatre World, 1660-1800 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1980), 171-172.

132 “Physical attributes determined to some extent which ‘lines’ –heroes, rakes, ingénues,

low comedians, chambermaids, old men, and so on—actors assumed.” Hume is quick to

follow this observation with the comment, “At no time was the personality of a good

actor submerged by his part. Life still instructed art.”66 Although a handful of actors

moved between the genres with ease—David Garrick is one such notable case—it would

seem that for the majority, their lines held them tightly.

Breaking with established lines of performance could have serious repercussions

for the eighteenth-century actor. Criticism launched at John Quick, the fourth actor to be

caricatured in the Attic Miscellany, chastises the actor for stepping out of line, even to the point of suggesting such actions may have endangered his career (figure 2.25).67 Quick, who began his career with successful appearances at Covent Garden Theater under the direction of Samuel Foote, achieved renown for his talent in physical comedy and personal imitation. Famous for his comedic performances, Quick is reprimanded in this satire for attempting the role of Richard III in Colley Cibber’s adaptation of

Shakespeare’s play. At first glance the print appears to reprise Scratch’s caricature of

Kemble. Quick is similarly dressed in an ermine cape with leggings while a medal indicating his royal status swings around his neck. Like Kemble, he assumes an awkward pose as he straddles the stage; his feet point in opposite directions and his arms extend aimlessly by his sides. The impotence of his gesture is underscored by the weak grasp he has on his sword hanging limply from his wrist. Even his costume reveals his unsuitability as king: where Kemble’s torso was wrapped in cloth to give him more body,

Quick’s bulk threatens to burst out of his tunic, which is patterned in chevron stripes that

66 Ibid., 171.

133 follow the bulge of his belly. The captions of the satire, “An Actor of Quick

Conceptions,” and “Of one or both of us the time is come,” make light of the actor’s bodily mass and locates the scene as the final confrontation between Richard III and his successor Henry, Earl of Richmond, who becomes Henry VII. Spoofing the actor’s gesture and expression, Scratch turns this climatic encounter just before the death of a king into a comic moment that display’s Quick’s unsuitability for the role.

Scratch’s caricature, dated June 1, 1790, references two performances in particular. In September of 1776, when on hiatus from Covent Garden Theatre, Quick performed Richard III in the fashionable resort town of Bristol. During this performance,

Quick began to play the role as it was written, but, goaded by the audience who jeered his dramatic efforts, he burlesqued the role to applause. Fourteen years later, on April 6,

1790, at a benefit performance at Covent Garden, Quick reprised Richard III and played it “straight” throughout, displeasing the audience, who had clearly hoped for a repeat of his comic delivery at Bristol.68 By performing the role as it was intended, that is, in the

tragic mode, Quick broke with his “line of business” and departed from the audience’s

expectation that he perform a comedic role. Although the audience in Bath overruled the

actor’s choice of representation by demanding he perform the role as a farce, the London

audience was not so successful. Scratch’s caricature deftly works to correct Quick’s

1790 performance by refashioning it as a burlesque and situating Quick firmly within his

line of business.

67 Attic Miscellany (March 1790), 328. 68 See BM catalog, 7714, and in Jim Davis, ‘Quick, John (1748–1831)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/22953, accessed 9 Oct 2007]

134 Automaton’s satirical response to Quick’s performance also claimed to reveal

something fundamental about the actor’s performance and targets Quick as too common to accurately portray a tragic or heroic figure on stage. The lines that Quick breaks are

thus not only professional, but are also in conflict with the actor’s fundamental disposition. Addressing Quick, Automaton writes:

I wish, my dear Bantum, you could divest yourself entirely of those abominable habits of common nature, which still hang about you. You, like some others, have got an ugly knack in general of both looking and speaking characters as they are, and not as they should be.69

Quick’s attempts at tragic or heroic performance were unsuccessful because he was

unable to abandon the comedic elements associated with nature and embrace the percepts

of the highest genres of representation. Following suit, the caricature of Quick depicts an

unkempt figure who appears to be more in keeping with the comedic hunchback or

harlequin, than with the villainous king. Yet Automaton also points to Quick’s mimical

talents, which produces characters “as they are,” that is, with idiosyncratic character traits

that stress their individuality rather than their universality. Were Quick more skilled at

his art, he would refine the characters he performs so they are represented “as they should

be,” highlighting enduring, general qualities of character.

The caricatures and satires included in the Theatrical Portraits suggest that the

unresolved contest between the dramatic character and the actor’s own character brings

about a kind of hybrid character, an exaggeration best illustrated in caricature. The

theatricality of these images is not merely that they satirize actors on stage, but that the

69 Attic Miscellany, 328.

135 struggle between character and caricature is acted out bodily- in the body of actor and

artist - and displayed in front of an audience.

Recently, literary scholar Lisa Freeman has explained the instability of character

that eighteenth-century drama mediated by demonstrating that “public exteriors were taken not merely as symptomatic of an interior, but rather as the only basis upon which

judgments about character could be formed.” 70 Freeman’s observation of the way in

which theatrical performance reinforced the tradition of reading character bodily is part

and parcel of eighteenth-century concepts of character and caricature in the two-

dimensional arts. As caricatures and academic portraits of public figures demonstrate,

reading the character of an individual was a complicated task; take, for example, the

many images of Kemble that each highlight vastly different character traits as essential or

central to his public character. Caricatures, by contrast, tended to focus on the excesses of

character and revealed traits and idiosyncrasies best kept under control if not completely

repressed. Audience members at Kemble’s performances and consumers of these images

of the actor were constantly analyzing his expressions, poses, movements and speech – both on the stage and on the page - to construct a nuanced understanding of character and to judge how well the actor portrayed his multiple roles.

Whereas Freeman focuses on the surfaces represented in drama, Deidre Lynch has focused her study on novelistic practices of character description in which readers were invited to draw a distinction between characters that were successfully ‘fleshed out” and

those which were illegible or flat.71 Lynch’s description of character as composed by

70 Freeman, 27.

71 Deidre Lynch, The Economy of Character: Novels, Market Culture, and the Business of Inner Meaning (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 23.

136 “strokes” or “touches” suggests another important way of understanding character, one

that I want to develop further here. Describing character as the aggregate of personality traits, Lynch writes:

The issue critics most often engaged in treating the protocols of mimesis were issues of discursive economy. They asked the judicious reader to count, to think about how many strokes or traits of character it would take for a character’s defining difference to become clear, and to take warning from the instances in which a superfluity of strokes pushed representation beyond the bounds of nature and into the domain of the grotesque.72

While Lynch demonstrates that the descriptive strokes an author might use to construct a fictional character are analogous to the strokes of an artist’s pen in rendering a portrait or

a caricature on paper, it is ultimately the reader or viewer who is charged with

determining the accuracy of the representation. The analysis of character was one that

tracked the accretion of traits from the general to the particular in order to determine the

moment at which character came perfectly into focus. The ultimate danger to character

was thus the moment at which a “particular representation might be excessively particularized, or ‘overcharged.’73 This overcharged character, burdened with an excess

of “touches,” is exactly the description of the portrait chargé, the caricature. Lynch

explores the inherent tension between “added touches that are meant to particularize

representation and to assist a more accurate imitation of nature” and those that “might

end up marring rather than mending the character.”74 Lynch’s description of character

focuses on the excessive stroke that might “disfigure character into what it is not,” but, as

eighteenth-century antiquarian Francis Grose has explained, the deficient stroke was also

72 Lynch, 9-10.

73 Ibid., 9-10

137 a form of caricature that denoted “meaness and vulgarity,” whereas the excessive stroke

indicated a surplus of character, of “genteel ugliness,” “having passed through the limits

of beauty.”75 Grose’s idea of the deficient or mean character was tied to his vision of class hierarchy, in which the lower classes would always lack true character. Deformity in this case was not a result of being over-drawn, but rather of being ill-defined.

Since Lynch is primarily interested in the use of characters by eighteenth-century readers, her study doesn’t consider the positive ways in which caricature and the grotesque were mobilized by actors, artists and authors in the eighteenth-century. In focusing on the anxiety created by the excessive stroke or touch, Lynch neglects to consider areas where this excess was constructive, entertaining, or even educational.

Graphic satires and comedic performances were productions that reveled in this excess.

Often overlooked in theater and art criticism during the eighteenth century, the proliferation of satiric and caricaturial images in the print shops and the popularity of performances of comedies, farces and burlesques on the London stage reveal the centrality of these images in visual culture. Among the theorists of art who engaged with these issues, William Hogarth stands out for his work that connected the actor’s and the artist’s performance of art. Although The Analysis of Beauty focuses on the creation

of elegant and graceful images, Hogarth also delivers significant commentary on the links

between comedic representation on the stage and on the page.

Of course, in making this comparison between painting and stage performance,

theoreticians like Hogarth were forced to confront the fundamental difference between

74 Ibid., 27.

75 Francis Grose, Rules for Drawing Caricaturas: With an Essay on Comic Painting (London: A. Grant, S. Hooper, 1789), 7-8.

138 the two formats -- specifically, stage performances unfolded over time whereas painting traditionally depicted the climatic moment of the narrative event. The contingencies of performance were thus pitted against what were considered fixed attributes of painting; among them, permanence, stability, and the representation of enduring character.

Throughout the eighteenth century, critics of theater and painting weighed the virtues of

the two arts to promote one or the other as the superior genre for public enlightenment.

Those certain of the superiority of painting claimed precedence for the perceived

timelessness and accuracy of canvases. Early in the eighteenth-century, portraitist and

theorist Jonathan Richardson wrote:

The Theater gives us Representations of Things different from both [words and pictures], and a kind of composition of both: There we see a sort of moving, speaking pictures, but these are Transient; whereas Painting remains and is always at hand. And what is more considerable, the stage never represents things Truly, especially of the Scene be Remote and the Story Ancient.76

For Richardson, painting was an uncompromised art form, free from the distraction of

verbal language. Most importantly, painting was a finished product, a permanent record

of the artist’s performance that carried the illusion of historical accuracy, and perhaps

even a small level of objectivity. Large canvasses depicting heroic events were thus

thought to inspired study and reflection and encourage the viewer to noble emulation.

Whereas painting made claims to timelessness and stability, theater was often

negatively associated with ephemerality. Not surprisingly, supporters of theater rallied to

its defense. Eighteenth-century theater critic Thomas Wilkes described the educational

benefits of theater when he declared: “The stage inspires more strongly with sentiments

76 Jonathan Richardson, An Essay on the Theory of Painting (London: A. C., 1725; 1793), 4-5.

139 of emulation; it teaches with pictures that have the semblance of reality through action.”77

Wilkes’ point, that manners and morals could be taught by showing audience members how to, or how not to, behave, transfers the process of learning from mental analysis to bodily imitation. At its best, theater could provide models of fitting conduct for the majority of audience members, or it could demonstrate those behaviors best avoided.

Hogarth’s theatrical understanding of art-making forms a foundation for the graphic counter-performances offered by Annibale Scratch and Theatricus Automaton in the Theatrical Portraits. Using line as gesture, Scratch demonstrates and exaggerates the perceived flawed gestures made by actors on stage while Automaton narrates the excesses of the performances of both Scratch and the targeted actor. Yet, while

Hogarth’s focus in his description of action is on the body of the artist and actor, Scratch and Automaton fixate on the role of the audience, whom they hold responsible for the overblown and miscalculated performances delivered on the stage. The following chapter will consider the importance of audience as participants in caricatural and theatrical performances.

77 Thomas Wilkes, A General View of the Stage (London: J. Coote, 1759), 2.

CHAPTER 3

THE LAUGHING AUDIENCE

AND THE LECTURE ON HEADS

At half past noon on April 30, 1764 a stocky and altogether unremarkable actor stepped onto the stage at the Little Haymarket Theater in London and begged his

audience to forgive his own poor appearance and accept in its place the busts, wigs, and

theatrical props arranged on the tables and screens behind him. For George Alexander

Stevens (1710-1784), this first performance of A Lecture upon Heads was a turning point

in a theatrical career mired in mediocrity and near obscurity. 1 Stevens had been living on

the edge of poverty throughout most of his career and the Lecture was conceived in attempt to resuscitate his finances and achieve some celebrity. The Lecture performed in

April of 1764 was not Stevens’s first attempt at the format, nor was Stevens the first performer to offer this type of entertainment. Regardless, Stevens had hit upon the formula for success in Lecture on Heads, which immediately became a part of the actor’s

1 The full titles of the 1764 Lecture, its precedents and descendants, were lengthy and discursive. In an advertisement for a 1764 presentation, Stevens promised: A Lecture upon Heads and No Heads. Being a Caput-all Exhibition, with Proper Apparatus, of Antique and Modern Sculptures, Bronzes, Pictures, &c., &c. With Observations on the Lexiconical and Phyzical Consequence of Wigs; wherein a Full-bottom Oration, and Secundum Artem dissertation, will be Caricatured, Horns will be accounted for Ab Origine: and the Genealogical Table of Nobody, properly explained. To conclude with a Dissection of Three Heads viz. 1st, a Stockjobbers; 2d An Author’s; 3d, a Critic’s. Attempted by G. Steven N. B. No Head For Politics. Gallery 2s. Pit 3s. Boxes 4s. As quoted in Philip Highfill, Kalman A. Burnim, and Edward Langhans, A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers and Other Stage Personnel in London 1660-1800. Philip Highfill, ed., vol. 14 (1991) (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1973-), 273.

140 141 repertoire. After an initial run of twelve performances in London, Stevens traveled with his show to urban centers across Britain and Ireland where he performed in front of receptive audiences.2

The performance history of Lecture spans a period of eighty years, outlasting

Stevens’ own life and continuing into the nineteenth century. From the first performance in 1764, to the last recorded performance in May 1820, the piece was regularly offered on established and makeshift stages in English speaking countries.3 Stevens himself performed the Lecture until about 1780, when Charles Lee Lewes purchased the act and became the primary performer until his death in 1803.4 Struggling actors across the

British Isles and in the British colonies also adopted the satiric format of this one-man show, which was appealing for the relative simplicity of the props and the flexibility of the text, making it both inexpensive to produce and easy to memorize.5 For these reasons, itinerant actors, who often worked in locations without theaters and needed to be able to easily pack and transport props, were especially drawn to the Lecture.

Furthermore, the script, a non-narrative series of satiric character sketches, could be

2 This chapter is indebted to the scholarship of Gerald Kahan, who has compiled the most complete research on Stevens to date in his work George Alexander Stevens and the Celebrated Lecture on Heads (Athens: the University of Georgia Press, 1984). Kahan has carefully detailed the production history of the Lecture and notes that after the first run in London Stevens brought his production to Dublin, Manchester, Bath and Bristol, 95-99.

3 Ibid., 91. Kahan’s production history of the Lecture indicates that it was performed in America, India, and in the British West Indies. The number of texts printed by publishers in America suggests that the lecture attained a level of popularity in the American colonies and the young Republic that rivaled, and perhaps even surpassed, its popularity in Britain. To date, inadequate work has been done on the performance of the lecture outside of the British Isles.

4 Kahan notes “it is unclear whether Stevens sold the rights to performance or production paraphernalia, or both.” More over, although Lewes “improved” the lecture – presumably to highlight his own abilities, he never achieved the same level of success as did its originator. Kahan, 40.

5 While the majority of the performers were men, women performed the Lecture as well. Kahan records an advertisement from January 6- March 12, 1766: “This and every evening until farther notice, the Lecture on Heads will be performed by a Young Lady, who never appeared in public.” Kahan,109.

142 adjusted to meet the expectations of the audience or tailored to the talents of the

performer. In fact, portions of the Lecture were occasionally performed on the stages of

the patent theaters as comic afterpieces, short and often ribald comedies offered after the

main play.

So popular was the Lecture that throughout his career Stevens was plagued by

outright forgeries, take-offs and cannibalized versions both on the stage and in printed

texts. Indeed, the extent to which Stevens was copied testifies to the ease with which the

Lecture could be reproduced. In an attempt to stay one step ahead of the copyists,

Stevens issued multiple versions of the text with updated character sketches, each an

attempt to assert his authority as the originator of the Lecture and maintain cultural

currency. The “improvements” Stevens made to the text of the Lecture were also

intended to advertise his work to theatergoers and draw in new audience members while

simultaneously offering innovations to attract those who had already seen his

performance. The discussion of the Lecture in this chapter will follow as closely as

possible the performances sanctioned by Stevens, however, the fact that alternative

versions of the Lecture were performed at the same time is not an insignificant

occurrence. While a select audience could claim to have seen Stevens or Lewes as

lecturer, a far broader audience was exposed to the Lecture in the hands of a number of

imitators in London, across the British Isles and abroad in the colonies.

Although the Lecture was an attempt by Stevens to rescue his finances, it bears

witness to an important moment in the history of comic character on the stage and the

page. The Lecture is a clever pastiche of elements current in eighteenth-century visual

culture assembled by Stevens. Drawing on a long-standing tradition of comedic

143 performance that combined impersonation, prop comedy, and physical humor, Stevens satirized a range of character types familiar to eighteenth-century Londoners. Adaptable, topical and easily balanced between general and personal satire, Stevens could alter the performance at will by gauging the audiences’ response and manipulating the characters and props he used on stage. From the very first performance, the Lecture successfully

resonated with his audience. This chapter is thus an attempt to explore the question of

what made the Lecture so appealing to the London audience – an audience inundated

with a number of entertainments.

Historians of eighteenth-century British theater have long bemoaned the difficulty

of reconstructing the theater going public. Studies of eighteenth-century audiences point

out that in reality only a small percentage of Londoners attended plays at the patent

theaters and that ticket prices were set at levels that excluded the lower orders of society

from the interiors of Covent Garden and Drury Lane.6 A moralistic discussion of how the

working class should spend their wages has colored impressions of the social

composition of the theater audience and it would seem that especially near the end of the

eighteenth century, a broad range of social classes had access to the theaters of London.

Harry William Pedicord has calculated that during the second half of the eighteenth

century only about 1.7 percent of the population of London attended plays in the patent

theaters.7 This estimation is tempered by Pedicord’s caution that certainly more than one

6 Harry William Pedicord, The Theatrical Public in the Time of Garrick (New York: King’s Crown Press, 1954). See also Allardyce Nicoll, The Garrick Stage: Theatres and Audience in the Eighteenth Century (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1980).

7 Pedicord constructs his calculation based on theater receipts and account books from which he reckons audience size and composition, 6-18.

144 group attended the theater and is supported by Theophilius Cibber’s reckoning that the audience renewed itself every seven years or so.8

If the audience for plays in the legitimate houses is difficult to reconstruct, the

composition of spectators at performances like Stevens’s Lecture is doubly so.

According to Kahan, by initially offering the play at noon, Stevens limited his audience

to members of the upper classes who could afford to indulge in a mid afternoon

entertainment.9 Moreover, the performance of the lecture in London, Bath, Bristol, and

Dublin -- prominent urban and leisure centers of Britain -- indicates a certain level of

qualité amongst members of the audience. These elite viewers would have easily grasped

the puns on French, Italian and Latin phrases as well as the references to fashions and

manners that peppered the text. Of course, one must not assume that audience

composition remained consistent over the long life of the performance. If the content of

the Lecture varied throughout the years, then it stands to reason that the audience

changed as well.

To account for the shift in audience for the Lecture conclusions can be drawn

from clues like ticket prices or analysis of the updates and improvements made to

publications of the Lecture texts. Still other cues can be found in the engraved

frontispieces made for printed editions of the Lecture. A survey of these engravings

demonstrates the affinity between Stevens’s show and graphic caricature, which, I will

argue, appealed to a similar if not the same audience.

8 Ibid., 17.

9 Kahan, 54

145 The earliest engravings of the Lecture were made as frontispieces and depict the

lecturer on stage surrounded by props and only cursorily include the audience. By the end of the eighteenth-century, however, representations of the Lecture focus on the

audience bringing the viewer’s attention from the activity on stage to the activity in the

house. These frontispieces follow a similar pictorial trend in caricatures and satires that

exhibit a fascination with groups of spectators at cultural events especially art exhibits,

performances, and most significantly for this study, the audiences gathered in front of

display windows of print shops.

To better understand what drew the audience to comedic performances this

chapter will explore the phenomenon of the Lecture through a consideration of printed

versions of the scripts. Authorized and spurious texts of the Lecture appeared in a

variety of formats including pamphlets, magazine articles, and bound illustrated editions.

Although vital documents, these texts can only suggest how the satire was presented in

performance; even those versions authorized by Stevens give little indication of how the

Lecture was staged by him and his followers. Although the texts claim to reproduce the

Lecture in its entirety, the alterations and variations an actor might experiment with on

any given night can not be fully recovered from the text alone. In fact, it is impossible to

say with any certainty that there ever was a performance of the Lecture that adhered

strictly to the text. Some of the ways in which the performance was presented can be

recovered through examination of the stage directions included in the scripts, a handful

of surviving audience commentaries, and, of course, the illustrative engravings.

One publication in particular offers tantalizing hints as to Stevens’ performance

practice. A spurious version of the work produced in 1777 by an “observer” includes

146 “critical observations [that were] made on the first night’s lecture, delivered this season at the Haymarket; and were confirmed to the observer, by several other evenings’ punctual attendance.”10 The notations inserted into the Lecture text provide running commentary

on the actor’s delivery and indicate how Stevens may have enacted particular segments of his presentation. The comments are a combination of brief descriptions of Stevens’ movements on the stage and critical judgments on the merits of various elements of the

performance. The anonymous observer even provides extra embellishment to the Lecture

by including an “Essay on Satirical Entertainments” as a means of introducing the piece.

Although the versions authored by Stevens were without this introductory work, short

essays on satire became a feature of later publications of the Lecture and form a curious

counterpart to the lecture text. The essays tend to validate the satirical content of the

Lecture by pointing out the social benefits of the genre, namely that it encourages

reformation of behavior among those who recognize themselves in the characters

represented. The anonymous commentator of the 1772 version even provides a brief

history of stage satire and contends satire is uniquely situated to “endeavor to correct

these blemishes of human nature” and “to check the progress of them, either directly by

punishment, or indirectly, by placing them in an unfavorable point of view.”11 Similarly,

Frederick Pilon’s “Essay on Satire,” appended after the Lecture performed and published

by Lewes, praises the satirist who is endowed with “peculiar penetrative faculties” and the ability to “correct our disposition where law and religion are seen to have no

10 Anonymous, An Essay on Satirical Entertainments. To which is added, Stevens’s New Lecture Upon Heads, now delivering at the Theatre Royal, Hay Market. With Critical Observations, 4th, ed. (London: J. Bell, 1772), vi.

11Ibid., 1

147 power.”12 Pilon enumerates the “species” of satire – narrative, dramatic and picturesque

– and extols Stevens for having combined all these into “perfect satire” claiming,

We cannot therefore be surprised that it should have been the most popular exhibition of the age. The heads and their dresses composed the picturesque: the assumption of character and dialogue by the lecturer, composed the dramatic; and the lively description of manners, the judicious propriety and pertinence of observation, composed the narrative.13

Emboldened by Stevens’ success and invoking a moral mandate, other actors

produced versions of the lectures that were not outright copies but followed the structure

of Stevens’ design. “Anatomical” lectures like James Solas Dodd’s “A Satyrical Lecture

on Hearts: to which is added a Critical Dissertation on Noses” and Edward Beetham’s

“New Lectures on Heads,” are both examples of brazen attempts to capitalize on

Stevens’s successful formula.14 Dodd and Beetham both produced works that followed

the organization of the Lecture that featured a sole presenter surrounded by props on a stage. According to parenthetical stage directions and notes incorporated into the text of

Dodd’s lecture, the performer exhibited colored or otherwise decorated hearts cut from

paper. For example, the heart of “Miss Charlotte Firm” is “(a heart pierced with arrows)

and her inconstant lover, Sir George Ingrate (a heart with black veins).”15 By delving

12 George Alexander Stevens, A Lecture on Heads, by George Alexander Stevens, with additions, as delivered by Mr. Charles Lee Lewes. To which is added an Essay on Satire. Embellished with Twenty-Five characteristic prints, from drawings by G. M. Woodward, Esq. (London: Printed for Vernor, Hood, and Sharpe, 1808). See Pilon’s “Essay on Satire,” first published in 1785, 86.

13 Ibid., 90-91.

14 James Solas Dodd, A Satyrical Lecture on Hearts: to Which is added, A Critical Dissertation on Noses. As they are now performing, at the Great Room, Exeter Exchange, 2nd ed. (London: G. Kearsley, 1767); Edward Beetham, New Lectures on Heads, describing the Characters, Passions, Morals, Fashions, Follies, Virtures, Vices and Absurdities Incident to Human Life; which are calculated to Divert the Fancy, engage the Attraction, improve the Understanding, rectify the Heart, put Vice out of countenance, and make Virtue shine in its pristine luster (Newcastle Upon Tyne: T. Robinson [1780?]).

15 Dodd, 33.

148 into the internal organs of a body, Dodd excavates that which is usually covered by layers of flesh, fabric, ornamental trimmings and makeup in order to reveal the inner character

of his subjects. Although symbolically charged, the heart is, quite obviously not outwardly visible and for this Dodd turns to a disquisition on noses. In fact, his

discussion of hearts is decidedly morbid; after all, anatomical lectures were usually

performed on corpses. To remedy this somewhat ghoulish project of examining hearts,

Dodd moves his lecture from the core of the body to its surface. Comparing the face to a

“little world” distinguished by “hills and mountains,” none of which is “more eminent in

the map of the face than that curious protuberance, the nose,” Dodd combines topography

with anatomy and physiognomy:

The nose being the most prominent part of the face, is generally beheld from afar, that is, if it is of any tolerable size. From the longitude and latitude of that Headland, we may give a shrewd guess at the temperament of the climate it belongs to, and the disposition of the wearer.16

Such a comparison may seem strange to the modern reader, but to a certain extent anatomy was topography for the eighteenth-century reader, or audience member. Dodd’s

focus on facial topography is yet another example of ways in which the diversity and irregularity of the British countenance were linked to the irregularities of the English

landscape and the relative freedom of the British subject when compared to his or her

European counterpart.17 By focusing on the features of the face, rather than on the

16 Ibid., 46.

17 See Chapter 1 of this dissertation for a discussion of the Ugly Clubs that celebrated physical deformity as a sign of English liberty. See also Diana Donald, 1996, 10-11; and Shearer West, “The Deformed Face of Democracy: Class Comedy and Character in Eighteenth-Century Portraiture,” Culture and Society in Britain, Jeremy Black, ed. (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1997), 163-188, 172, 182.

149 clothing and accessories that denote social standing, Dodd provides a traditional reading of Aristophanic character that unites physiognomy and personality in a simple formula.

For example, Dodd equates the “bottle-nose” with the genial character of “an honest, thoughtless, merry, talkative fellow…”18 This approach contrasts the comparatively

sophisticated character sketches in Steven’s performance in which the lecturer assumes

the character traits of the personality he represents.

Whereas Dodd’s lecture focused on the seemingly bizarre combination of hearts

and noses, Beetham more closely copied Stevens’ formula by offering an array of heads.

For both Stevens and Beetham, physiognomy is not the only indication of character;

rather actions combined with appearances demonstrated character. Such an

understanding of character recalls Hogarth’s observation that character is only expressed

when form and action are combined.19 To this end, Beetham highlights tones of voice and patterns of speech, rather than on the fashions displayed on the body. In describing the appearance of the passions on the face, Beetham tells his audience, “they are to be expressed by the different modulation of the speaker’s features as thus: Anger, Rage,

Cunning, Peevishness, Affection, Love, Jelousy, Hatred, Impatience, and Drunkeness,

which are to be accompanied by different tones of the voice, suitable to the passion you

are discoursing on.”20 The emphasis on performance technique in Beetham’s lecture

calls to mind the prevalence of acting manuals and rhetoric guides on the shelves of

London booksellers. Using the descriptions of the passions outlined by Charles Le Brun,

18 Dodd, 48.

19 William Hogarth, The Analysis of Beauty, Ronald Paulson, ed. (1753; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997).70.

20 Beetham, 35

150 Beetham emphasizes changes in voice and facial expression in the progression from one passion to another. That Dodd and Beetham were successful in mounting their performances, testifies to the popularity of Stevens’s performance. Yet, they were only poor imitations of Stevens’ performance, stiffly written and without the witty allusions that infused the original Lectures on Heads.

All of these lectures, illegitimate imitations and authorized versions alike, favored weathered jokes and stock character types. The popularity of the Lectures with London audiences, therefore, seems to have had less to do with skillfully written scripts than it did with the lecturer’s ability to cleverly represent characters on stage. Instead, the delivery of the Lecture and the quality of the props were key elements for success.

Popular lecturers like Stevens and his successor Lewes who were skilled physical comedians and experienced actors could count on crowded houses for performance after performance. Audiences came to see the Lecture for Stevens, or Lewes, much in the same way as they attended plays in the patent houses to bask in the presence of leading actors and actresses. Advertisements for performances of the Lecture took care to name the actor who would perform the entertainment and typically “puffed” their previous performances praising their skill and unique turn of phrase.

The performer of the lecture was, of course, not the only draw. The structure of the performance, which integrated a range of entertainments and exhibitions on offer in urban centers, was recognized by audiences as innovative and as such constituted a spectacle. After Lady Elizabeth Montagu attended a performance of the Lecture in Bath, she described the show in a letter to her husband as “a very singular entertainment.” Lady

Elizabeth writes that she “expected little better than a drole [sic] kind of buffoonery; but

151 on the contrary, it was a witty well bred satire.”21 Her assessment of the Lecture deems it

suitable for polite audiences and praises Stevens’ “fine voice and a gracefull [sic]

elocution,” noting “he ran through the follies of some professions and characters with

admirable humour. He gave us a law pleading, a medical dissertation, a politicians

discourse, a Presbyterian sermon with great humour, a very elegant allegory of genius,

jests on fashions, and in short an hour of the best theatrical entertainment I have seen.”

Lady Elizabeth attended an early performance of the lecture in a fashionable resort town.

How, then, might Stevens have altered the show for audiences in London? And, what

kinds of audiences did the Lecture attract as it evolved with the audience during the

second half of the eighteenth-century?

Among the lectures, spectacles and entertainments available to the eighteenth-

century Londoner, the politician’s speech, the quack doctor’s market-day sales pitch, the

pseudo-scientific physiognomist’s lecture, the anatomist’s lecture, and the preacher’s

sermon, were all parodied by Stevens. Stevens combined such shows and fairground

entertainments with two dimensional compositions, including graphic caricature, droll

genre scenes, and portraiture. This blend of genres and media, and the audience’s

acceptance of the mixture, indicates a level of fluidity between two-dimensional and

three-dimensional comedic representations that has yet to be explored either by historians

of art or of theater. By examining how Stevens combined these elements on stage, art

historians in particular may come to a better understanding of the ways in which satirical

engravers conceived of their graphic productions as similarly hybrid performances. My

interest in the Lecture is therefore not solely focused on what Stevens’s work can tell us

21 Elizabeth Montagu describing a performance of the Lecture delivered in December 1764. Quoted by Kahan, 97-98

152 about eighteenth-century theatrical comedy, but rather, I ask what can these composite performances illustrate about the analytical tools artists and audiences brought to bear on

a variety of cultural productions. At the center of this question is the issue of character

and the ways in which it was deployed in comedic performances on the stage and on the

page.

The 56 year period during which this Lecture was performed corresponds with the

heyday of Georgian caricature, as located by Diana Donald in the reign of George III and

in the Regency (1760-1820).22 For students of British graphic satire and caricature, 1764,

the year the lecture was first produced, also stands out as the year of William Hogarth’s

death. Hogarth’s graphic and painted productions altered the trajectory of British print

satire by encouraging artists to look to their immediate surroundings to inspire the

characters in their works just as playwrights did. Even while Hogarth advanced the cause of satirical art forms, at the time of his death, satiric caricature was still in its infancy and not widely or successfully practiced by graphic artists. As Amelia Rauser has recently shown, Hogarth’s own attempts at the form, for example his 1763 caricature of John Wilkes, were far from unqualified successes.23 However, by the third quarter of

the century the genre had matured. The development of caricature may have been guided

22 The title of Diana Donald’s book, The Age of Caricature: Satirical Prints in the Reign of George III makes this claim. Donald selects the years 1760-1820 as her boundaries because of the remarkable proliferation of satire in this time and takes an anonymous remark of a biographer of James Gillray who located the beginning of the “age of caricature” in the late works of Hogarth, and followed through to the end of the political era with the death of George III. Diana Donald, The Age of Caricature: Satirical Prints in the Reign of George III. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996), 1.

23 Amelia Rauser, Caricature Unmasked: Irony, Authenticity, and Individualism in Eighteenth-Century English Prints (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2008), 50-55. Rauser describes how this caricature, intended to castigate Wilkes, was embraced by his supporters who saw identified the caricature with the unapologetic directness of Wilkes’ personal character. The association of Wilkes’ physical ugliness with English liberty is a reversal that must have been particularly annoying to Hogarth, who clearly misfired in this caricature. By returning to the emblematic tradition and ignoring his own call of uniting form and action, Hogarth left the door open to ambiguous interpretation where this caricature is concerned.

153 by well known artists like Richard Newton, James Gillray and Thomas Rowlandson, but a veritable army of lesser-known artists and engravers drove the massive scale of print

production during the last third of the eighteenth-century.

To a large degree, the theatrical entertainments offered in a lecture format and the engraved caricatures and satires developed simultaneously. Just at this moment when

graphic satires and caricatures were becoming established visual forms produced by

artists working outside of the academic tradition, the lecture format developed as a means to mount theatrical productions outside of the strictures of the 1737 Stage Licensing Act.

Among the shared formal elements between the two genres, the use of quick

visual jokes, bright colors and the obsession with character united comedic performance

on the stage and the page. Doubtless, this moment in the history of character

representation witnessed an unprecedented growth aided by humorists. What is more, the

relationship between the artist and audience is a critical element to both artistic forms.

This chapter seeks to uncover the mechanisms through which this relationship was

drawn. With a sizeable audience constituted by a large cross section of British citizens –

ranging from the upper aristocracy to the lower classes - performances like the Lecture

and graphic caricatures and satires were constantly reconfigured to appeal to the

audience. Illustrations included in printed versions of the Lecture offer significant

indications of the how the audience was included in the performance.

Performers on stage took great pains to capture and hold the attention of the fickle

eighteenth-century audience. One of the ways that Stevens related to his audience was

through his incorporation of contemporary fashions in his Lecture. The very same wigs,

hats, and fabrics that were worn by the men and women seated in the audience were used

154 as comic props to adorn the heads on stage. Other materials Stevens used included papier-mâché busts, wooden wig-blocks, and painted canvasses. These mute objects were enlivened by Stevens with voice, gesture and facial expressions in order to represent characters ranging from Alexander the Great (a papier-mâché bust), to Sir Languishing

Lisping (a wig resembling “the top of a cabbage plant after a shower of snow”), and a

Methodist Parson (Stevens dressed in long black robes, bewigged and cross-eyed). 24

The performance techniques Stevens employed when handling these objects combined his experiences as a comedic actor and as a puppeteer. Stevens, who perhaps began his career as a puppeteer, seems to have been proficient with crafting and manipulating the busts, clothing and images used in his routine.25 His use of puppetry was an element of

the performance that linked him to popular entertainments found at the fairground and in

pantomime performances.

Many of the objects Stevens used in his Lecture probably weren’t animated, yet

one suggestion of the extent to which puppetry appeared in the Lecture is tucked into the

Critical Observations in the spurious 1772 publication of the Lecture. The anonymous

author who published his remarks on the Lecture describes the prologue of the 1772

performance noting “Mr. Stevens enters at the right-hand door abruptly and awkwardly”

and begins to address the audience with “some pertinent remarks on two or three

characters” in verse. What happens next in Stevens’ address is remarkable- if it is to be

24 As described by George Stevens, The Celebrated Lecture on Heads; Which Has Been Exhibited Upwards of One Hundred Successive Nights to Crouded [sic] Audiences and Met With the Most Universal Applause (London: Richard Bond, 1765), 4.

25 Kahan 49-51. For the history of puppetry in England see, George Speaight, The History of the English Puppet Theatre (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1990).

155 believed. In the following passage, the address is recorded by the observer then, in italics, stage directions:

In ridicule, that exhibition see As rich in raree-show, as repartee, Where wit squeeks round the room – Do you know me?

[Curtain draws up and discovers a variety of heads, differently ornamented, and in motion, repeating, “do you know me?”]26

The commentary on the performance, written below the prologue in italics, indicates that

the heads were animated and suggests puppetry may have played a larger role in the

performance than was previously thought. The use of animated or mechanized props in

eighteenth-century performance was wide spread and accepted in both dramatic and

comedic performances. Perhaps one of the most famous examples of this in a dramatic

setting was the fright wig David Garrick used in Hamlet. Although Garrick may have

used this wig to underscore the fright and horror Hamlet felt when approached by his

father’s ghost on the battlements, Joseph Roach suggests that Garrick was not above

using similar tools to heighten the comedy of his performances. Roach quotes a 1767

commentator in The Monitor who complained that Garrick “introduced stage tricks and

gestures as scientific, which were originally the motions of mountebanks, merry-andews,

and harlequins at Bartholomew Fair, to make the people laugh.” 27

The spectacular effect of moving heads in the Lecture created a troupe of

supporting actors that directly challenged the audience to identify them. Additionally,

this set the audience’s expectation of locating their social peers, betters and inferiors in

26 Anon., 16.

27 Joseph Roach, The Player’s Passion: Studies in the Science of Acting (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1985), 59.

156 the busts on stage. The extent to which Stevens used effects like this is not fully known; however, just as the script grew increasingly elaborate, so too must have the performance itself. With the success of the lecture, Stevens certainly recognized his need for new props and sophisticated stage tricks and devices in order to attract and maintain a level of excitement and interest in his audience.

Frontispieces for early publications of the Lecture suggest that the props Stevens used at least at first were rather basic. One such engraved representation of the Lecture

depicts a performer on shallow platform with his props arranged on tables and on the wall

behind (figure 3.1). In this illustration, published in the Universal Magazine and

Complete Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure (September 1765), the actor stands in

front of an attentive audience and holds in his left hand a bust of Alexander the Great, the

first head discussed in the Lecture. With his right hand he gestures towards the Cherokee

Chief, the second head discussed. Behind the entertainer, two groups of busts are

arranged on two tiers of risers placed on a long table. The busts are carefully

differentiated from one another and are numbered to indicate the order in which they appear in the performance. The inscribed numbers act as a key for the reader to recall or even recreate the performance. As such, the image functions as an illustration for the script and as a manual for performance. At the very top of the sheet the two dimensional representations used in performance–coats of arms, canvases, and prints- are also clearly indicated and legible. At the bottom of the image, several audience members are depicted watching the performance attentively. Although their backs are turned toward the viewer, their faces are partially visible and, with the exception of one figure, are all drawn with rather regular and generic features; the feature that varies amongst the male

157 observers is the shape of their wigs. One woman sits in the midst of her male companions to indicate the suitability of the performance for a mixed audience. The audience in attendance at this Lecture is shown in half-length, from the lower shoulders up, so that they also appear as busts and encourage comparison between their reserved expressions of polite enjoyment and the expressive busts. The one exception is a man seated at bottom right who is drawn in a comically exaggerated manner that rivals the busts on stage. His large eyes, heavy eyebrows and irregular profile (made even more irregular by the smirk that draws up the corners of his mouth) reveal his character. His profile is juxtaposed with the head of Alexander the Great in order to demonstrate the contrast between a modern British character and a classical Greek head.

Although the engraving shows the range of characters and the types of props

Stevens used in his act to represent them, the frontispiece does not illustrate a specific performance. For one thing, the expressionless actor in the engraving is a generic figure, a foil for his heads, and is not drawn with individuating features as in a portrait. And, for another, the space in the theater is collapsed so that spectators, actor, and props are layered over one another with little breathing room. The compression of space in the scene is enhanced by two dimensional images that border the top of the sheet. These upper registers are filled with images that depict statues, allegorical figures, and coats of arms, all of which are derived from the tradition of emblematic prints. 28 The emblem, a kind of “speaking picture” is interpreted by deciphering the relationship between the

28 The emblem has been widely recognized by print historians as one of the earliest languages of print satire. For a discussion of its use in eighteenth-century England see Donald, especially 56-58. See also Rauser, 25-30. for a historical discussion of emblems in the sixteenth-century see Tessa Watt, Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550-1640 (Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991). See also Joseph Monteyne, The Printed Image in Early Modern London: Urban Space, Visual Representation, and Social Exchange (Aldershot, England; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007).

158 image and the missing word. As the lecture text indicates, when Stevens presented the

Quack Doctor to his audience he first introduced the bust and next held up the coat of arms (figure 3.1, upper right), pointing to and explaining the symbols on the crest; ducks, death’s heads, and bills of mortality. Hogarth’s Company of Undertakers (1736; figure

1.5), with portraits of quack and real physicians featured on a crest comes immediately to mind as a source for Steven’s shield. The emblematic images Stevens incorporated into his Lecture were also allegorical in nature, like a representation of the five muses, for example. These images, painted onto shields, boards or canvases, and reminiscent of heraldic crests, shop signs and puzzle prints were all used by Stevens like visual punch lines for comedic effect.

Despite the simplicity of the engraver’s technique, which eschews any attempt to convey depth or movement, the arrangement of the overall image is visually complex in the way it attempts to convey the progression of the Lecture. Each head is numbered to designate the order in which the heads are introduced and to demonstrate the juxtapositions. The most prominent contrast is the first wherein the bald head of a

Native American (“Chief Sachem-Swampum-Scalpo-Tomahauk”), is contrasted with the plumed and helmeted head of Alexander the Great held by the performer. According to

Stevens, both heads belong to “mankillers” (“Formerly” and “Lately”). Stevens next compares them to the Quack Doctor, “a greater man-killer than either of the other two,” and levels the playing field by relating historical figures to a contemporary object of ridicule.29 After his opening comparison, Stevens narrows the focus of his satire to social

29 Kahan, 70. The inclusion of the Cherokee Chief was a topical and political move. The Anglo-Cherokee War (1758-1761) was a separate conflict that between the British forces and the Cherokee that arose during the Seven Years War. After peace had been negotiated, a delegation of Cherokee traveled to London

159 scenarios with particular disdain for members of the middling classes who mimic the fashions and mannerisms of their social betters. Men and women are both targeted for wearing ostentatious clothing and ornamenting themselves with trimmings and makeup, tall wigs, and hobbling shoes. While Stevens claims to mete out criticism to the Belle and the Beau the text indicates that women, and men who were perceived to be effeminate like the dandy, were most often the targets for ridicule. Stevens lingers on his comparisons of beautiful and vain young women with old crones and derides female vanity above all vices (nos. 11 and 9 in figure 3.1).

The contrast of incompatible or contrary characters was one of the long-standing techniques of comedy. In stage comedy, this type of juxtaposition was primarily located in traditions of burlesque character sketches and personal satire. Burlesque character sketches are brief performances wherein character traits are isolated and delivered with comic exaggeration in order to poke fun at the character type or individual lampooned.

Like a graphic caricature, the burlesque character sketch unites outward appearances - clothing, gesture and voice - with interior personality in the aim of exposing general flaws to public ridicule. An even more biting form of comedy, personal satire targeted specific individuals and publicly detailed their vices in caustic imitation. A mode of representation associated with ancient Greek theatrical satire exemplified by

Aristophanes, personal satire had come to be associated with comedic traditions of

(1762-3) where they had an audience with George III and were regarded as a public spectacle. For a discussion of the reception and representation of the Cherokee and other Native Americans in Britain see: Stephanie Pratt, “Reynolds' 'King of the Cherokees' and Other Mistaken Identities in the Portraiture of Native American Delegations, 1710-1762,” Oxford Art Journal, 21:2 (1998) 135-150. Of the comparison between the Cherokee and Alexander the Great, Stevens writes: “The exploits of Alexander are celebrated by half the great writers of the age; and yet this Alexander was nothing more than a murder and a madman; who ran from one end of the world to the other, seeking whom he might cut into pieces; --and this copper- complexioned hero wants nothing more to make him as great as Alexander, but the rust of antiquity to varnish over his crimes, and the pens of writers to illustrate his action” (70).

160 British theater from to the Renaissance forward and gained full expression in Restoration comedies. In an essay describing the theatrical history of personal satire, L. W. Connelly

identifies three distinct types of personal satire traditionally performed on the English

stage: “unscripted mimicry,” “satiric innuendo in the script itself,” and “spontaneous

satiric ad-libbing by one or more members of the cast.”30 So prevalent was personal

satire on the English stage that, Connelly notes, audiences were attuned to expect

personal satire and “intended or not, allusions were seen in speeches and characters in

scores of eighteenth-century plays” 31

The 1737 Stage Licensing Act was specifically designed to discourage scripted

personal satire, especially when levied against powerful political figures.32 Playwrights who wished to produce plays at the Royal Patent theaters, the only legitimate theaters for spoken drama, were required to submit their plays to the Lord Chamberlain for approval.

Any non-scripted text was strictly prohibited. Ad-libbing was especially difficult for the censors to control because it deviated from the script, and it was also spontaneous (or so it appeared) and used somewhat erratically. However, the most pernicious form of personal satire that prevailed on the stage was personal mimicry, which depended on the actors’ ability to parrot and exaggerate the gestures and speech patterns of his or her target. Since mimicry was a performance technique and therefore not necessarily something that could be scripted, it was particularly insidious. Actors, of course, had to

30 L.W. Conolly, “Personal Satire on the English Eighteenth-Century Stage,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 9:4 (Summer, 1976), 599-607, 599.

31 Connelly, 602.

32 Matthew Kinsevik has argued that the Stage Licensing Act was not purely punitive. The act was structured to “train playwrights” to write the kind of satires that were acceptable. Kinservik, Disciplining Satire: The Censorship of Satiric Comedy on the Eighteenth-Century London Stage ( Lewisburg PA: Bucknell University Press, 2002), 11.

161 be very careful when selecting targets or mobilizing their parodies; performing an unnamed or unspecified odious character with the speech patterns and gestures of the

Prime Minister, for example, was a dangerous undertaking.

Despite the strictures of the Stage Licensing Act, mimicry prevailed on the stage because of its popularity with audience members and actors alike. Attaching names to mannerisms performed by actors on stage became both a game for the audience and a test of virtuosity on the part of the actor. William Cooke, the biographer of Samuel Foote, commented on the pleasure of “the task of discovering the real individuals poutrayed

[sic] by the different personages which passed in review before them.”33 In fact,

assigning personal names to characters portrayed on stage could be superfluous since,

“when pictures so much resemble their originals that names are unnecessary, nobody

inscribes them.”34 Cooke’s comment echoes William Hogarth’s complaint that viewers of

Marriage a la Mode were eager to locate resemblance amongst the characters in the print series since “a general character will always bear some resemblance to a particular one.”35 It would seem that the practice of locating likeness in representations, whether in

theatrical satires by William Hogarth or in staged performances, was so prevalent that

audiences attempted to attach names to characters even when no similarities were

intended by the author.

33 William Cooke, Memoirs of Samuel Foote, Esq., with a Collection of His Genuine Bon-Mots, Anecdotes, Opinions, & c., vol. 11 ( London: Richard Phillips,1805), 40.

34 Ibid., 40-41

35 MS note by Hogarth publ. by John Ireland in Hogarth Illustrated, quoted by Paulson in Hogarth’s Graphic Works, vol 1 (London: Print Room, 1989), 189. While likeness may not have been intended in Marriage-à-la-Mode, Hogarth deliberately included notorious Londoners in other print series, The Harlot’s Progress, for example.

162 Of the mid-century actors who were renowned for their abilities at mimicry,

Samuel Foote was perhaps the most notorious and proudly touted the title: “The English

Artistophanes.” Foote, however, was far from the only actor to employ mimicry on the stage; David Garrick, Charles Macklin and even Sarah Siddons were known to be excellent mimics. Whereas Garrick, Macklin and Siddons were renowned for their versatility and ability to create developed characters in comedies and in tragedies, Foote, like Stevens, was a rather mediocre actor. Foote’s talents on stage found their best expression with mimicry, and he pursued it with a vengeance, often angering and alienating those he lampooned. 36

Known for his talents in physical comedy and for his daring, Foote broke new

ground in theatrical performance and paved the way for actors, like Stevens, whose

fortunes depended on their work outside of the patent houses. In order to circumvent the

Stage Licensing Act, Foote ingeniously instituted a number of entertainments based on a

lecture format, the first of which was The Diversions of the Morning, or a Dish of

Chocolate presented at the little Haymarket Theater during the 1746-7 season. By

inviting his audience to purchase a cup of chocolate rather than a theater ticket, Foote

instituted an evasive maneuver soon implemented by other actors. The Diversions Foote

performed were comic reviews wherein he mimicked the evening performances of the

leading actors of the British stage. The noon time hour of his performance was calculated

so that his show wouldn’t be in competition with the evening’s theatrical entertainment at

36 Phyllis Dircks, Foote’s biographer in the Dictionary of National Biography, notes that some of his more famous feuds were with Henry Fielding, Henry Woodward, Charles Macklin and Arthur Murphy. Foote also targeted David Garrick and Thomas Sheridan. Phyllis T. Dircks, ‘Foote, Samuel (bap. 1721, d. 1777)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/9808, accessed 25 Feb 2008]

163 Drury Lane or Covent Garden. In theory and perhaps in practice, the men and women who attended Foote’s parodic performance in the afternoon could see the caricatured star

in the flesh in the evening. Since Foote often performed on stage alongside those he

lampooned, and since he needed to keep abreast of developments and scandals on the

London stage, the choice to offer his diversions at noon time was a very practical

decision. Moreover, by taking off other actors, Foote targeted a group whose retaliation

was least likely to carry legal consequences and whose manners and affectations were on public display night after night. Foote’s performances may have angered some of his peers, but many also recognized it as a type of tribute since, to a certain extent, Foote promoted their performances by demonstrating how inimitable the leading lights of the

London stage actually were.

Foote’s invitation to take chocolate later turned to tea, and was offered in the evening hour, but the satire remained the same as Foote, in monologue format, lampooned famed London performers in quick succession. In his biography of Foote

Cooke often refers to the actor as a caricaturist and describes his technique of personal satire beginning with the actor’s “quick and discriminating eye towards the follies and vices of mankind” that “caught the leading feature of the character he wanted to expose, with some remarkable incident of his life.”37 As a caricaturist Foote was in collusion

with his audience who “were, at the same time against themselves: for the name of the

person to be mimicked, and the plow, being previously insinuated into the boxes, they

were prepared for the likeness; and finding a strong caricature thrust upon them, tricked

out with all the glare of coloring, they were either too much prepossessed, or had too little

37 Cooke 1805, vol. II, 32-33.

164 judgment to examine all the features.”38 The aggressive language Cooke uses to describe

Foote’s performance of caricature suggests an assault on the audience as well as on the target of his satire. Met with a caricature “thrust upon them” with a dazzling “glare of coloring” the audience is so carried away with the pleasure of recognition that they ignore the inaccuracies of the performance and the censure of the critique. The emphasis on immediate gratification and entertainment obscures the supposed moralizing benefits of satire and points to the pure pleasure extracted from such performances. In fact, Pilon observed that the printed versions of the Lecture were necessary counterparts to the stage

performance since “from a more close attention they will discover beauties of wit, humor,

character and imitation that were not perceived during its representation for the minds of

an audience are very susceptible to being diverted from attending to what is represented

before them.”39

Of course, the audience was prepared to be entertained from the moment they stepped into the Little Haymarket Theatre, a historically significant site that locates

Foote’s Diversions and Stevens’ Lecture within a longstanding tradition of comedic and burlesque stage entertainments. Constructed in 1720, the Haymarket was the theater at which Henry Fielding staged a number of his burlesque performances and comedic plays.

Most notable among Fielding’s productions was the 1734 play The Historical Register, which featured a particularly aggressive satire of Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole that spurred the Lord Chamberlain to institute a series of censorial restrictions culminating in the Stage Licensing Act. When royal patents were distributed by the Lord Chamberlain,

38 Ibid, 33.

39 Pilon, 96.

165 the Little Haymarket was snubbed. Actor, writer and manager Colley Cibber (1671-

1757) eventually managed to attain a general license that allowed the performance of plays for four months out of the year (May-August). However, it wasn’t until1766 when

Samuel Foote obtained a permanent license for the Haymarket.40 Although the theater

received a patent, it retained an association with the lecture format of comedic

performance.

Whereas Foote’s performances were characterized by personal satire, the extent to which Stevens caricatured specific personalities in his Lectures remains uncertain.

Certainly Stevens was inspired by the comic success of Foote’s imitations, and notes in the Critical Observations indicate that Stevens was indeed known to unite character type with recognizable personality in performance. That Stevens used personal satire is also

suggested in Dodd’s introduction to his Lecture on Hearts and Head wherein Dodd

promises that his lecture is an attempt to “please without having recourse to low wit,

ribaldry, personal reflection, pun or quibble.”41 Dodd’s declaration of the merits of his

lecture, particularly his guarantee that viewers will find no “personal reflection” suggests

that Stevens, in an implied contrast, indulged in personal satire. Beetham makes a similar claim and promises that his lecture carries “no indelicate illusion with it.”42 Since it is already clear that audiences looked for and found such “indelicate illusions,” such

40 Foote obtained this license for the Little Haymarket thanks to a riding accident that cost him his leg. When visiting the Delaval family and their guest of honor, the Duke of York, he was challenged to ride a horse belonging to the Duke. The horse quickly threw Foote, who severely broke his leg in two places, so much so that the leg had to be amputated. Foote then requested the Duke obtain a patent for the Haymarket in recompense for the accident. The Duke complied.

41 Dodd, viii.

42 Beetham, v.

166 promises seem to be token disclaimers intended to reassure the audience and the authorities that no bounds of propriety were transgressed in the works.

While the heads, headdresses and wigs, and props presented in the Lecture are designated by generic names like the “Quack Doctor,” the “Cuckhold,” the “Woman of the Town,” or the “Old Maid,” these fictional figures may very well have been performed with the characteristics of famous Londoners. On several occasions the Observer praises

Stevens’s “personification’ of some of the characters and even speculates: “This comic wag seems to play with the characters so easy and naturally, that we shrewdly guess it must have been in part familiar to him.”43 Many of the characters Stevens introduced

were in brief sketches that focused on two or three character traits. Some of his

characters were more fully fleshed out and were introduced in anecdotal narratives, as in

“The Life of a Blood;” in orations like “Dissertation on Sneezing and Snuff-Taking”; or

even more briefly in conjunction with various props including Statues of Honesty and

Flattery, hats, wigs and hoods, and satirical coats of arms.

The only figure that is satirized outright in the lecture is the concluding figure, the

“Head of a well known Methodist Parson with a Tabernacle Harangue,” easily

recognizable as George Whitefield, a powerful Methodist preacher whose public sermons

against entertainments threatened London theatergoers with hellfire. Not so easily

shamed, the theatrical community retaliated and Whitfield was frequently ridiculed in

print and on the stage.44 Caricatured for a marked squint in his right eye and his

43 Anon. 1772, 28.

44Whitefield’s most cited sermon on the immorality of theater was delivered in 1759. George Whitefield (1714-1770), became a figure head for religious extremism and was harshly depicted by Samuel Foote who took revenge against Whitefield and embodied the preacher and his characteristic squint in the character “Squintum” in The Minor (1760). Novelists Henry Fielding (Joseph Andrews and in Tom Jones), and

167 melodramatic oratorical techniques (not only did he gesticulate wildly, but he was frequently moved to tears by his own sermons), Whitefield’s mannerisms and appearance were easily adopted and made him an attractive physical target for satirists. Whitfield may have believed that his mission was to reform the souls of Londoners, but the reaction of theater managers, directors, and the engravers of popular prints indicates that the skirmish was really over the allegiance and financial support of the London audience.

Counter attacks levied by the theater world claim that Methodism is another type of performance.45 Indeed, charismatic preachers like Whitefield attracted sizable crowds

and accrued contributions in staggering sums that would make any theater manager

envious. Stevens makes this parallel patently clear in a song delivered at the end of The

Lecture where he conflates the role of performer and preacher and asks the audience to

“put some money in the plate, / Or I, your preacher cannot eat.” Asserting satire’s claim

to reform where law and religion hold no sway Stevens counters the argument of

preachers like Whitefield by relating his own performance to the sermon:

The motives of our deeds the same With Whitefield, I put in my claim; The pious thieves attack your purses, With cries, and tears, and pray’rs and curses; But, I more modest in the trade, Dare never damn the fools I’ve made. But will, if so your worships please,

Tobias Smollett (Humphrey Clinker) also satirized Whitefield as did artist William Hogarth, who made the preacher and his sermons the subject of his 1762 satirical engraving Credulity, Superstition and Fanaticism. Boyd Stanley Schlenther, ‘Whitefield, George (1714–1770)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/29281, accessed 7 Jan 2008]

45 John O’Brien discusses the figure of Harlequin Methodist in the 1720s and 1730s. O’Brien points out that the contagious enthusiasm of Methodism drew large audiences and became a popular public performance that threatened the livelihood of actors and theater managers. John O’Brien, Harlequin Britain: Pantomime and Entertainment, 1690 – 1760 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 175-180.

168 In future times, on bended knees, Say, sing, and swear, that those alone are right, Who crowd this tabernacle every night.46

Whereas Whitefield draws his congregation to him by first damning them, and then offering salvation to those that follow his interpretation of scripture, Stevens turns this relationship on its head by admitting that his career is actually dependent on his ability to please his audience.

Although the caricature of Whitefield may have been a fairly regular feature of

Stevens’s Lecture, the order of the satirical components of the performance changed regularly. Stevens, and those actors who adopted this format, added and cut characters at will to manipulate the fabric of the lecture. This had a sartorial effect in that the piece was altered to meet the reigning taste of the day. With the broad characters and caricatures represented in the performance and the flexibility inherent in the structure of the Lecture, Stevens’s work could be easily refreshed and kept up to date. The agility of easily altered performances could explain why his lectures experienced longevity while revues like Foote’s Diversions had a more limited audience.

In constructing the caricature of the Methodist parson, Stevens very likely found a model in Hogarth’s satiric caricature printed in1762. First printed with the title

Enthusiasm Delineated (1761) Hogarth altered the plate and published it with the title

Credulity, Superstition, and Fanaticism (1762; figures 3.2 & 3.3).47 Both prints are set in

a church interior that Ronald Paulson has convincingly identified as Whitefield’s

Tabernacle in Tottenham Court Road. The preacher stands behind a pulpit in front of his

46 Reproduced in Kahan, 90.

47 Paulson 1989, cat nos. 209 and 210

169 congregation and addresses them with a style of preaching that was “extemporaneous and emotional, a reaction against the carefully written, polished and read sermons of Anglican divines.”48 The congregation in both images is composed of grotesque figures that rave

in response to the preacher’s words. Heightened emotional responses to Methodist

sermons were common reactions and were thought to be appropriate evidence of the

process of being saved.49 Figures in Credulity, Superstition and Fanaticism perform

expressions of emotional extremes, while Mary Toft, intended to represent fanaticism,

miraculously births rabbits at the bottom left of the sheet.50 On the right side of the

composition, two thermometers monitor the emotion expressed by the preacher and

volleyed back by the crowd. The top thermometer refers to the emotion put out by the

preacher and reveals that his frenzy has reached a peak level indicated by wild gibberish:

“Chroist Blood Blood Blood.” The lower thermometer measures the audience’s response

extends in two directions representing the spirit, with the dove at top, and mind (mental

state), with the exposed brain at bottom. Measurements for both begin with “luke warm”

and indicate that the sermon may either bring the soul to “madness,” “convulsion fits,”

and “extacy [sic]” or dement the mind to “despair,” “madness” and “suicide”. The level

of emotion located in audience’s reaction is thus a direct measure of the success of the

sermon. To underscore the notion that the preacher is an entertainer akin to the

fairground performer, the pulpit is outfitted with puppets that resonate with popular folk

superstitions, among them a witch on a broom stick and a devil with a toasting rack. The

48 Ibid.,, 245

49 Ibid., 245.

50 Hogarth’s first satire of Mary Toft, Cunicularii, or the Wise Men of Godliman in Consultation, printed in 1726 is a mock Nativity scene with, among others, a dancing master, an “occult philosopher,” and a “Rabbet getter” all bearing witness to a monstrous birth. See Paulson 1989, no. 107, 131-132.

170 condescending nature of this presumption, that fanatic Methodists are uneducated rubes seduced by popular entertainments and given to wild emotional outbursts – allows the viewer to identify him or herself as the opposite – a sophisticated urbanite immune to cheap flash.

Hogarth’s satire makes the same claims against Whitefield as do Foote and

Stevens, namely, that the pastor offers a type of theater more insidious than anything produced on the stages of Drury Lane or Covent Garden. Steven’s Lecture provides an opportunity to explore the ways in which comedic performers looked to engraved productions to structure the form and content of their shows. It also reveals the active role the audience had in shaping the performances delivered on stage, in the pulpit or on the sheet. Of the print productions that influenced Stevens’ Lecture, it comes as no surprise that the works of Hogarth are among the most outstanding. Kahan has already considered how Hogarth’s The Five Orders of Perriwigs, (figure 1.24), inspired Steven’s criticisms of the fashionable world and their extravagant dress.51 Yet it is equally clear

that theatrical performances influenced Hogarth’s prints since the drama of the wigs in the coronation ceremony for George III was the impetus for Five Orders. A central

feature of Hogarth’s engraving and of Steven’s lecture, wigs were signs by which

profession, class, and gender are routinely expressed by mid-century Londoners. Stevens

used wigs to mark the theatrical body by placing them on his head to represent a

character, or by using them to adorn busts to transform one character into another.

Margaret Powell and Joseph Roach have described the inherent theatricality of the wigs

51 Kahan, 46. Kahan sites an issue of Adventure of a Speculist, vol. 2, 94, in which Stevens ridicules female and male fashions and advises his readers to purchase a copy of Hogarth’s print. Kahan notes: “His section on female fashions touches on the French Night Cap, the Ranelagh Hood, the Mary Queen of Scots Cap, the Fly Cap, and many others where are to appear in the Lecture.”

171 favored by the bon ton in the 1760s and 70s and argue that the prevalence of wigs on the stages of theaters fostered the trend on the world stage. Powell and Roach claim that hair is “one of the stagiest elements in the most expressive drama… the social performance of everyday life.”52 Amelia Rauser has also explored the fashion for big wigs amongst the

Macaronis for whom the headdress was an essential part of their public costume.53 While men almost never appeared in public with bald heads or in their natural hair, women were encouraged to augment their natural hair with “padding powder and decorations.”

To demonstrate how an ordinary head is transformed by artificial hair, Stevens starts with an undressed head that without a wig resembles the head of a “Bruiser.”

When the wig is added to the bust the “Bruiser” makes the cheeky transformation into a

“Councellor.” At the moment of coronation Stevens exclaimed “Behold how Naked, how simple a thing Nature is! But beho’d [sic], how luxurient is [placing a large tye wig on the head] Art!”54 Mocking the posturing of those who believe that the simple addition of

a wig will effect a change in status, Stevens contrasts the natural head, with the head

bedecked with false hair. Ultimately, he demonstrates that the trappings assumed to

conceal nature may in fact reveal the true nature of the individual. Hogarth’s Five

Orders similarly mocks the attempts to impose art onto nature by covering the head with an elaborate arrangement of hair. This artful form of concealment was ridiculed by

Hogarth who located the “line of beauty” in the “flowing curl” and the “intermingling

locks [that] ravish the eye” (Hogarth 34). Comparing the orders of wig to Vitruvian

52 Margaret K. Powell and Joseph Roach, “Big Hair,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 38:1 (2004)79-99, 80.

53 Amelia Rauser, “Hair, Authenticity, and the Self-Made Macaroni,” Eighteenth-Century Studies, 38:1 (2004) 101-117

54 Kahan, 71.

172 orders of classical architecture, Hogarth demonstrates the absurdity of the unspoken rules of fashion that dictated how wigs were worn and by whom. Stevens borrows the architectural metaphor and describes the fashion for wigs as a modern perversion of ancient art, announcing in his performance, “from the ancient custom of adorning the temples, came the modern custom of embellishing the whole head.”55 Cleverly

describing wigs as derived from “the ancient custom” of temple ornamentation, Stevens

contrasts the restrained decoration of ancient columns with the modern custom of

“embellishing the whole head.” The consequences of this new custom form the basis of

the satire in the Lecture as Stevens moves from head to head poking fun at the artifice of

modern character. Yet, Stevens probably also understood that the wigs and busts

Hogarth used to illustrate his satire of the Five Orders, referred to specific individuals and transformed Whigs into wigs.56 While Stevens’s Lecture is not overtly political the

practice of linking wigs to wearers is perhaps something he engaged in as well.

Stevens incorporated the content of Hogarth’s satire into his lecture and used the

design of engraved satires like the Five Orders to organize the visual structure of the

performance. In the lecture, the arrangement of busts into rows is an attempt on the part

of Stevens to impose order on what could be an undifferentiated mass – imagine for

instance the potential confusion of the wigs on heads congregating in a large public space

like the city street, the pleasure garden, or the theater. Representations of the lecture

55 Ibid., 71.

56 Among the individuals satirized in this print are, James “Athenian” Stuart, who published a work that described antiquities, William Warburton, the Episcopal w(h)ig, and Bubb Dodington. See Paulson 1965, vol 1, 244-245.

173 similarly reflect the impulse to organize and categorize the heads, for the artist to show and describe the components of the performance, rather than recreate the performance.

Hogarth’s Characters and Caricaturas likewise represents a group of characters suggestive of the diverse social space of London. Stevens’s Lecture restructures

Characters and Caricaturas into a legible group that is parsed apart in the performance

as one by one the busts are labeled and explained to the audience. Lynch has argued that

learning to interpret character was an important “coping mechanism” for the eighteenth

century Londoner who needed to navigate the changing social and cultural geography of

the city and of the nation.57 Deciphering character based on external cues was not just a

way to manage the anxiety of difference in a diverse modern city, but it also provided a

means to restructure the British body in a way that is more inclusive. Incorporating ideas

of liberty and diversity into the center of British character could also be a positive means

of identification and provide a way for members of the growing middle class to situate

themselves in the urban environment. The relish with which the audience consumed the

gamut of comedic performances, coupled with their strength of their desire to locate

aspects of their peers and themselves in these representations suggests a need to identify

themselves in the changing social world.

When describing the relationship between graphic caricatures and satires and

stage comedies, it is more accurate to describe the fabric of the two types of performance

as interwoven than it is to describe the relationship as reactive. The visual techniques of

print production and the staged comic performance are aligned in a number of ways that

indicates the interconnected nature of the two forms. For one, stage and page

57 Deidre Lynch, The Economy of Character: Novels, Market Culture and the Business of Inner Meaning (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 5.

174 performances represented a set range of character types in quick succession in way that repeated and reinforced each other. Stevens’ performance produced a parade of characters day after day and taught the audience how to read character in the comic character. Performances like the Lecture operate outside of the scripted narrative, and

allow actors to reconfigure the characters and the social situations in which they were

located in endless ways. Graphic satirists, whose works were considered to be ephemeral

objects that represented issues and trends of the moment, were accorded similar freedom

in representation. Examining fashion engravings in early eighteenth-century France

Sarah Cohen has observed a similar relationship between actor and printmakers.58 Cohen describes how with a limited array of costumes, poses and background designs printmakers created a seemingly infinite number of images as did theatrical dancers and masqueraders “who would constantly shift costumes, accoutrements, and physical styles to present themselves as different “characters.”59

Whereas the earliest representations of the Lecture in performance focus on the

actor and the heads on the stage - the constituents of the performance - later illustrations

become increasingly preoccupied with the audience. Such a shift is hardly surprising for

the simple reason that once the exhibition was familiar to the audience, illustrations

weren’t as needed to explain the mechanics of the lecture. This shift also suggests that

audiences attended the performance as much to observe their fellow spectators as to take

in the lecture. A frontispiece for the Lecture generates a dialogue between audience and

heads with the actor as their mediator (1785; figure 3.4). In this image, the stage has

58 Sarah. R. Cohen, “Body as ‘Character’ in Early Eighteenth-Century French Art and Performance,” The Art Bulletin, 78:3 (Sept., 1996), 454-466, 459.

59 Ibid., 460.

175 been reduced to a small window reminiscent of the performance space of puppet theaters.

Here the actor stands behind a ledge that obscures the lower portion of his body and holds a bust, perhaps that of the Quack Doctor, on the ledge. With only one bust in view the viewer’s gaze is directed towards the audience gathered in front of the stage. This composition replaces the busts on stage with an audience that is comprised of an assortment of comedic figures all shown in profile poses that emphasize the different noses, chins and eyes. The engraver also takes care to show a variety of hats, wigs and clothing and body types that further distinguish the bodies in the audience, which are laughing, talking, and enjoying the presentation. The caricatured audience is presented en masse so that they form a group by virtue of their ugliness, expressed in a distinctly different manner for each figure. The pattern of profiles is broken by a stocky man with squashed, flat nose in the lower right who looks directly outward in a manner that invites the viewer to join the crowd. This connection between viewer and audience is enhanced by the oblong frame of the engraving that echoes the frame of the performance space. As a result, two stages are created; one in which the actor presents his show, and the other on which the audience performs for the viewer.

While each of the figures is ugly in a different way, the presenter and one of his audience members are attractive in the same way. On opposite sides of the sheet the performer and a pretty young woman, who is physically set apart from the audience, gaze at each other. Just as the audience members gathered in front of the stage hail each other as equals, the lecturer, the young woman, and the viewer of the print are all in someway distanced from the caricatured audience. Instead, they create a triangle of gazes that is only broken by the impertinence of the little fellow in the lower right corner.

176 The most sophisticated frontispiece for the lecture was engraved by Thomas

Rowlandson in 1808 for a version of the Lecture published by Woodward and edited by

Lewes and Pilon (figure 3.5).60 The text claims to depict Lewes who purchased the

Lecture in 1774 from Stevens. However, the identification of Lewes as the actor in this print hearkens back to the heyday of the work and evokes the former popularity of the

Lecture, which by the early nineteenth-century was beginning to wane. The actor depicted on stage bears no resemblance to Lewes, who was illustrated earlier in this dissertation in a caricature published in The Attic Miscellany. Rather, the young,

idealized actor who stands at the front of the stage is the same generic type as the

performers that appear in earlier representations, especially the engraving of the Lecture

delivered in a small room. The bland features of the actor highlight the caricatured audience, and his composed demeanor contrasts with the animated bodies of the audience members.

In this elaborate cross-section view of Covent Garden Theater, the actor stands at the far right of the composition and holds a bust in his left hand. Clearly in the midst of a performance, his mouth is open to address the audience as he gestures toward the bust. A table draped in green cloth behind him is arranged with rows of busts in tiers so that each

head is visible. The busts all have comical, smiling expressions and are less dramatically

caricatured than are the Londoners who observe them. While the busts have maintained their prominence in performance, the canvasses and prints that appeared in earlier

60 Like many engravers, Rowlandson often returned to compositions he found successful. This engraving of the Lecture on Heads reprises a 1786 etching entitled Covent Garden Theatre, published by Henry Brookes on 20 July of that year. In the 1786 version two actors occupy the stage on the far right. They perform in front of a crowded audience that includes the royal family seated practically on stage in a special box. While the audience is not as strongly caricatured as they are in Rowlandson’s 1808 effort, they are shown to be talking, laughing and conversing during the performance.

177 representations of the Lecture have been replaced with a painted backdrop of an elegant garden scene with leafy trees and a rotunda. The performance onstage occupies less than one third of the page; the bulk of the composition is filled with the laughing audience, the real entertainment at hand. The viewer, whose vantage point is located somewhere near the first tier of side boxes, is immediately drawn into the audience by several animated figures in the foreground, a mix of men and women who divide their attention between the performance on stage and their fellow audience members. Of these men and women,

Rowlandson highlights the bottom left of the sheet where a large man with thick curly hair and a snub nose pitches backwards in his seat to indulge in a belly laugh. His companion, a woman wearing a veil over the crown of her head, turns her face and body from the stage to peer at this man, whose features generally resemble those of the bust the actor exhibits. Other men and women in the audience are engaged in the same type of comparisons invited by the performance. As the engraving suggests, the experience of locating resemblance between the general characters introduced on stage and the very real men and women in the audience was, at least by the end of the century, the real spectacle of this type of comedic performance. Theatre critic Thomas Wilkes was quick to point out that “comedy looses much of its force, unless we can compare the characters it presents with its originals; for they ought to be drawn from the groups that daily fall under the observation of everyone.” 61 Even so, Wilkes still cautions against the excesses of caricature claiming that the characters in comedy should be of “a proper assemblage, still taking care not to transcend the bounds of reason, truth and probability.”

61 Wilkes, 38.

178 Men and women laugh, converse and gossip in a clearly good natured manner; none of the figures appears to be chastened by the satire; instead, the humor of the performance unites the crowd and buoys their shared laughter. The audience is not inclined towards ridicule—no one is chastened or sulky—instead, they participate in a game of recognition and laugh hardest when they locate themselves and their peers amongst the character types on stage. The mirth expressed exceeds the controlled laughter of genteel comedy and embraces the raucous laughter of low comedy that

“rather diverts than instructs.”62 Despite the best efforts of satirical writers and

performers to validate their performances by touting the benefits of social instruction in

works like the Lecture, reformation, if it occurs at all, is only secondary to the diversion.

Pilon argued that printed texts of the lecture were a necessary counterpart to the

performance since the audience was so easily distracted by “the company they are with,

or the attractions of others whom they see among the audience.”63 Lisa Freeman has

argued that the eighteenth century theatergoer did not expect “a theater of absorption in

character” but rather “a theater of interaction in which the audience was as much a part of

the performance as the players” so that “no single controlling gaze regulated the space of

performance in the eighteenth century; the power of performance as routinely shared and

exchanged between audience and performers.”64 The experience of theater Freeman

describes focuses on audiences at Royal Patent theaters who were treated to performances

of the leading actors of the day and likely expected to have an active role in determining

62 Ibid., 40-41

63 Pilon, 35

64 Lisa Freeman, Character’s Theater: Genre and Identity on the Eighteenth-Century English Stage (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), 5.

179 the progress of the evening’s entertainment. Judging from the images of audiences at performances of the Lecture, the interaction between performer and audience was a highpoint of their experience. On the one hand, it would seem that the quick succession of comic character sketches held the attention of audiences for several hours at a time.

Yet, it also seems likely that the array of characters amongst audience members was equally essential to the success of the performance.

Although some elements of the Lecture have remained consistent through the decade, Rowlandson’s engraving reveals one important update made by Lewes in later versions of the performance. Towards the end of the eighteenth-century, the wigs that once formed the backbone of Stevens’s Lecture had largely gone out of style. Even the actor on stage wears his natural hair, and more significantly, members of the audience wear hats, veils and have their hair dressed, but few wear wigs, and those wigs on display are restrained. A closer look at the audience indicates a general moderation in fashion indicating that the audience is drawn from the middle class rather than the elites that once filled the seats. While the first viewers were bewigged and dressed in elegant fashions, the viewers at the end of the century, if Rowlandson is to be believed, wore comfortable fashions topped off by their natural hair. The heads on stage evolved to align with the heads in the audience. So too, the text changed to omit or temper many of the allusions, literary references, and witty jokes that so pleased Lady Elizabeth Montagu, the audience diversified in tandem. What for Lady Elizabeth was a novelty had become commonplace by the end of the century.

From the first performance the Lecture was a short entertainment delivered in an entirely different format from traditional plays. However, by the 1780s it had grown to 5

180 acts, a length some critics found too long. One reviewer of Lewes’s “improved” Lecture

complained that the length invited redundancy; “many of the characters appear duplicates

of each other, particularly the female heads—satire in every variety of form has been

exhausted on the subject, and fashion seems to gather obstinacy from reproof.”65 If the redundancy of satire in one single performance fostered obstinacy in the guilty, then what of the repeated performance night after night? Moreover, what was the cumulative effect of those caricatures and satires, especially when we consider the satirical performances were offered to an audience that regularly encountered – and perhaps even sought out – caricatures in shop windows, taverns and coffee houses and in their private libraries.

Art historians describing the audience for satirical prints frequently note that the cost of prints at the higher end of the market determined the audience. Certainly the price of hand-colored engravings made by graphic satirists and caricaturists at the top end of production were out of reach to all but the upper ranks of society; yet, members of the middling, and even lower classes still had access to this type of representation. Towards the end of the century large firms owned by Samuel Fores and Thomas Tegg opened the market to a broad audience by offering cheaply produced editions of well known prints and portfolios “To Be Let for the Evening.” Much in the same way that pirated versions of the Lecture proliferated, the satirist’s designs were frequently copied and reworked and printed in inexpensive formats. William Hogarth, for one, was subjected to poor imitations and piracies of his prints on the market. However, Hogarth like Rowlandson and Gillray also designed for the lower end of the market. Satirists were often poorly

65 Quoted by Kahan, 150.

181 paid and eager to make money; Gillray even pirated himself, sometimes issuing two versions of his the same print with two different print sellers.

There were (at least) two types of audiences for stage and page comedy in

eighteenth-century London: the public wished for by critics and artists composed of well-

bred women and men who understood and appreciated the witticisms and cultural

references the author took pains to include, and the actual audience that attended these

comedies, composed of members of a variety of social classes who were all willing to

splurge on entertainment.66 Rowlandson’s engravings of theater audiences represent the

range of classes who attended the theater, with particular emphasis on the middling and

lower classes as the source of comedy and chaos in the audience. The relationship

between comedy and the lower classes was established in by a long-standing artistic

tradition of representing the under classes – peasants, rustics and beggars – as grotesque

figures.67 Only in the eighteenth-century did this tradition become troubled when singularity and physical distinction came to also be related to the concept of character.

For Francis Grose character was a “slight deviation” from the ancient ideals of beauty

caused by the “predominancy [sic] of any feature.” 68 The distinguishing traits that

marked character were those that deviated from an ideal aesthetic. Yet, when in

caricature the upper classes, whose characters were distinguished by predominant

66 T. J. Clark makes the distinction between audience and public in the first chapter of Image of the People: Gustave Courbet and the Second French Republic 1848-1851 (Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society, 1973), 9-20. Clark describes “audience” as a quantifiable group retrievable through empirical evidence. The “public” on the other hand is an imaginary group, an invention of critics and writers; “nothing but the private representations that are made of it in…the case of the critic.” 12. I am grateful to Dian Kriz for directing me to this reference.

67 West, “Deformed Face of Democracy,” 163.

68 Francis Grose. Rules for Drawing Caricaturas, With an Essay on Comic Painting (London: A. Grant; S. Hooper, 1789), 6.

182 features, mixed with exaggeratedly comic figures in the middling and lower classes, the line between the two becomes difficult to decipher.

Thomas Rowlandson’s comic representations of theater audiences revel in the blurring of social boundaries between classes. The Boxes of 1809 shows a theater in chaos wherein social boundaries have been overturned by the Old Price Riots(figure 3.6).

Following the organization of the theater interior Rowlandson divides the composition

into a series of registers. In the bottom level of the theater, the pit, typically occupied by

members of the middle class, two couples argue and nearly come to blows. In the first

level of the boxes, which were traditionally occupied by the upper classes, men and women gossip, flirt, and converse. The second box from the left even appears to contain foreign visitors – one man with thick eyebrows and a curving mustache wears a turban and two other men have darkened faces, thick black caps of hair and expressions of delighted amazement. All of the figures are animated; however, the worst behavior is displayed by figures in the pigeon holes and those in the two rows of boxes near the top of the auditorium. Here, demi-reps and their procuresses hold engagements and troll for business, while drunken men and women lean over the sides to yell, argue, and even vomit on the figures below.

Ingeniously, Rowlandson shows a theater without a stage, a composition he may have been moving toward in his frontispiece to the Lecture wherein the stage is pushed to the far right of the page. Of the possible vantage points offered, the viewer assumes the position of the actor on stage observing the disordered audience. A reference to the experience of this spectator is inscribed at the bottom of the sheet, “O woe is me, t’have see what I have seen / Seeing what I see.” These lines from Hamlet III/I, in which

183 Ophelia reacts to Hamlet’s insanity, express the helpless distress of the viewer whose identity is revealed by an inscription located in a prominent oval ornament in the center of the composition that admonishes, “From N to O / Jack You Must Go.” 69 The

perspective on the stage and the emotional distress both belong to John Philip Kemble,

who raised ticket prices at the newly rebuilt Covent Garden Theatre and turned the third

level of boxes into subscription only seating. In an event known as the Old Price Riots

the new theater prices were protested by the middling and lower classes who occupied

Covent Garden after a performance of Macbeth and eventually resulted in a public

apology from Kemble. The view from the stage of an audience in control of the theater

reverses traditional structures of authority. The control of the actors and theater

management is completely reversed. Even more, Kemble is reduced from being an actor to an observer whose actions are futile. The event Rowlandson represents articulates

Kemble’s anxiety over the power of the audience as they assume the ultimate control

over the theater. At the same time, Rowlandson mocks Kemble for his arrogance in

believing that he, not the audience, was the real manager of the theater.

The prominence of the audience in representations of the Lecture recalls another

type of humorous composition that featured crowds of Londoners gathered in front of

print shop windows. Just as the audience in the theater interacts as much with the stage

performance as with each other, the men and women depicted in print shop images come

together in the city street to laugh at images showing a range of comic figures and

69 For a discussion of caricature and the O. P. Riots see, Heather McPherson, “Painting, Politics and the Stage in the Age of Caricature,” in Notorious Muse: The Actress in British Culture, 1776-1812, Robyn Asleson, ed. (New Haven & London: Published for The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and the Yale Center for British Art by Yale University Press, 2003), 171-193. McPherson discusses Isaac and George Cruikshank’s caricature The O. P. Spectacles (1809), which features the head of Clifford, the instigator of the riots. The glasses he wears reflect the view of the stage and the rioting audience at Covent Garden Theatre.

184 scenarios. Closer investigation of these graphic works typically reveals that often the men and women shown outside of the print shop are the very figures ridiculed in the engravings posted in the windows. The raptness in which the figures in front of the print shops view the caricatures parallels the viewer’s own experience with the sheet.

Moreover, they demonstrate the power of such productions to interpolate an audience from the street.

One of the earliest works in this genre is The Macaroni Print Shop (1772), a satire that advertises the print shop owned and operated by Matthew and Mary Darly on The

Strand (figure 3.7).70 The engraving signed by Edward Topham depicts the large shop

window in which satires of Macaronis are prominently displayed in the panes.71 This

commercial display draws a crowd of men who interact with the prints as much as they

interact with each other. The Macaronis assembled in front of the window recognize

themselves in the sheets and react with interest; the figure on the far right of the

composition leans forward to examine the image with good humor, as do the figures third

and fourth from the right who smile and greet each other. Their clothing betrays a class

difference between the two as the well-fed Macaroni on the right wears a coat trimmed

with braid, elaborate cuffs and a frothy necktie whilst the other Macaroni wears ragged

clothing on his rail-thin frame and drunkenly spills a tankard of liquid. Although the

70 The images displayed in the windows are clearly identifiable as belonging to the Darly’s stock of prints. Among two of the most recognizable are The Fly-catcher Macaroni, a satire of the naturalist and President of the Royal Society (1778-1820), Joseph Banks (1743-1820) (second in and down in top left window), and The Unfortunate Macaroni (third row down, fourth from left, left window).

71 Edward Topham (1751-1820) was a soldier, journalist, playwright and dandy who was frequently the target of caricatures in graphic works and on the stage in productions by his friend Frederick Reynolds. An amateur engraver, Topham began to foster his reputation whilst a student at Cambridge. John Russell Stephens, ‘Topham, Edward (1751–1820)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/27551, accessed 19 May 2008]

185 original London Macaronis were aristocratic gentlemen who returned from the Grand

Tour with a taste for continental fashions, by the early 1770s, the term was applied to “all ranks of people, indifferently” who adopted the dress and manners of the elite macaroni.72 The print, therefore, does not caricature the aristocratic Macaroni, but

instead targets upper class pretensions of the lower ranks and suggests even that they

derive their fashion sense from the caricatures. The pairing of the fat cit and the shabby

journeyman shows how the two are united by their identification with the Macaronis.

Like their counterparts in the display, the Macaronis gathered in front of the

window are all drawn in profile the better to delineate the outline of their facial features

and show the cuts of their coats and the styles of their headdresses (when the head is

dressed). Only one figure standing the left of the door seems to be completely dissatisfied

with the display; his down-turned mouth and the gesture of refusal he makes with his

right hand combine to convey his annoyance of being so treated. The figures gathered

outside the shop demonstrate the assortment of characters one might purchase within the

shop, with the notable exception of the female Macaronis who are depicted in the

window. The Macaronis are firmly sited on the street, their natural habitat. Their

location on the city street shows them from an outsider’s vantage point, one that implies a

contrast with the consumer inside the shop or with the engraver who works behind the

scenes to create the representations of the Marcaroni.

Given the nature of the images of the Lecture in performance, a comparison

between the stage and the shop window is particularly apt. The mechanics of the

production of these print satires – from the engraver’s tools to the printing press – are all

72 Rauser, 2004, 101.

186 backstage business that result in the performance staged in the windows. The Macaronis gathered in front of the window compare their costumes with those worn by the

Macaronis in the window, much in the same way that audiences compared themselves

with actors, or heads on stage. In situating the Macaronis on the street, pausing in the

course of the daily life, the Darly’s print highlights the flexibility of the audience and of

the performance in print, both of which alter on a regular basis. The window displays

were changed to highlight new offerings or best sellers just as the figures that pass in the

London street belong to a crowd that is never constituted in the same manner at any given

moment. The satire, then, speaks to the shifting location of the Macaroni prints in

London that move from the shop and into the hands of the owner, who may pass it on as

he or she sees fit. However, the inscriptions on the plate anchor the sheet to the Darly’s

Shop, No. 39 on The Strand, which lures this species of urban men and women only to

caricature them for profit.

The caricature of the Macaronis in front of the Darly’s shop was closely followed

by a mezzotint engraving of Miss Macaroni and Her Gallant at a Print-Shop (1773)

engraved by John Raphael Smith, one of the leading British mezzotint artists, and

published by John Bowles (figure 3.8).73 A young woman in an elaborate headdress and

fashionable gown titters behind her fan while her equally modish male companion points

to grave portraits in the window and laughs. Two soberly dressed men also peruse the

shop’s offerings and react dramatically to the images pasted in the panes, although their

interest is diverted by the caricatures of the Macaronis that fill the windows. The

73 John Bowles, and later Carrington and Bowles specialized in mezzotint drolls. Often they featured Macaronies and other figures from the fashionable monde. Other typical images were moralizing and/or sentimental prints. Donald, 3.

187 gentleman at the far right turns directs his distracted companion to an engraved portrait of

John Wesley passionately addressing his congregation in a rural setting (top row, second from right); notably, his finger hovers over a portrait of George Whitefield, whose hands are raised in a characteristic gesture of address. The second gentleman, dressed all in black, has his back toward the viewer. Although his face is hidden his lank dark hair helps to identify him as a Methodist, one who proudly eschewed the conventions of fashionable eighteenth-century toilette. The two somber men are connected to the portraits they study through their abstemious fashion sense and their use of gestures.

With hands raised from bent elbows or posed at chest level and extended, the gestures they perform mirror those of the preachers in the window, easily identified by their white tissue cloths tied around their necks. Comically, Smith incorporates a little black and white dog at the bottom of the composition. The ill mannered dog lifts his hind leg to urinate on the Methodist’s foot. The Methodist appears to be so rapt in his attention to the prints that he fails to notice the insult the little dog pays him. This self-absorption on the part of the Men of the cloth parallels that of the Macaronis who are equally unaware of how ridiculous they are.

Although the men of the cloth are captivated by the portraits of preachers, the

Macaroni couple scornfully laughs at the portraits and ignores the satires of the Macaroni belles and beaus. A cautionary inscription below the image intones:

While Macaroni and his Mistress here at these Characters, in Picture sneer, To the Vain Couple is but little known How much deserving ridicule their own.

188 Too egocentric to recognize similarities with the Macaronis in the windows, the couple fail to see themselves as ridiculous. This level of self-absorption troubled critics of satire like the anonymous editor of a 1772 version of the Lecture, who worried that satirical

entertainments did not have enough effect on “particular classes of people,” i.e. “those

who paid for their admission, and came therefore not to be taken off, but amused.”74 The critic continues on to relate the viewer insensitive to satiric rebuke to “the deluded followers of Methodism, who fancy no thundering anathema can be applicable to them,

because they divest themselves of impiety as they contribute to their teacher.” Although

the Methodists and the Macaronis are two antagonistic groups; the one parading the

conspicuous consumption of luxury goods, the other displaying an ascetic lifestyle that

equated virtue with denial of pleasure, the verse could be applied to both pairs equally.

The inscription also addresses the viewer of the print and cautions against imagining themselves outside of or above ridicule like the Macaronis and Methodists who look doubly absurd. Along side the engraved portraits and the satirical mezzotints Bowles specialized in, this print may very well have graced the front window of the shop where it could broadcast its message.

Both of the engravings shop window engravings discuss thus far underline the notion that the real performance of these images is located in the bodies of the audience that originated the engraving or staged lecture. The trend of depicting crowds gathered for these sidewalk exhibitions extended into the early nineteenth-century and beyond.

Complicated images like the view of Londoners gathered in front of Paul Robert’s commercial premises on Middle Row, Holborn in the Caricature Shop (1801) show

74 Anon. 1772, 6-7.

189 tightly packed groups figures gathered to laugh at the caricatures on display (figure 3.9).

Like moths to a flame, ladies, gentlemen, cripples and crooks, are all drawn to the brightly colored caricatures pasted in the window. As do other prints of this type, the engraving advertises the shop and provides information on the location of the building and on the types of prints Roberts specialized in. The prints in the window detail a range of social satires from comic mishaps that befall Londoners to the superstitions of country rustics mocked in the prints of Richard Newton (shown in the first two panes, top left). A caricaturist - perhaps Roberts himself? - wearing a long brown workman’s robe stands in the doorway at the left of the composition to observe the laughing crowd. He is delineated in manner that, while it includes features like his paunch and double chin, falls short of the excesses of caricature. The crowd, on the other hand is full of comic figures that rival the subjects of the prints. To capture these likenesses, the caricaturist in the doorway stands at the ready with a pencil or etcher’s stylus in hand to capture the crowd in his next batch of prints. Remarkably, the lame, old, fat, fashionable, and ugly men and women who stand outside the shop are represent a variety of social classes from the lowest beggars to the wealthy.

As if to acknowledge the changing face of London, Roberts even includes a figure of African descent at the back of the crowd who gapes at the caricatures in the windows as well as at the men and women of London. The presence of this foreign figure bookends the gaze of the caricaturist as they form a sort of encapsulation of the crowd of

London: on the one end the cool artist whose engravings both caricature and categorize the urban audience; on the other end, the lowliest member of that audience, a poor black, the most grotesquely rendered figure in the group. The anonymous caricaturist of this

190 image juxtaposes this least privileged member of the crowd with an elegant young woman whose graceful pose contrasts the ragged angles of the black man behind her. In fact, the caricaturist seems to be looking most intently at this pair, whether to caricature the black figure or to flirt with the white woman is unclear.

The density of this image is mitigated by careful hand-coloring that catches the eye and propels it through the engraving. The colorist has applied touches of red to help the viewer navigate through the scene ultimately bringing his or her eye to the top right of the composition where four dark red shapes hover over the crowd. These hanging objects somewhat sinisterly recall butchered carcasses and add a dark note to the comedy: Is the audience like a side of beef – meat for the satirist’s project? Or is it a reference to the satirist’s duty of flaying and exposing immorality? Both metaphors seem appropriate, as does the simple observation that print shops were one among many of the sites of commerce and exchange in London where people came together for a variety of reasons from buying a fillet for the dinner table to buying a caricature to enjoy as an evening’s entertainment after the main course.

One such image that was likely brought home for an evening’s entertainment is

The Tail Piece (ca. 1807-14), which was engraved by Rowlandson for the third volume of Thomas Tegg’s Caricature Magazine (figure 3.10). Tegg’s popular magazines are

more appropriately thought of as albums of rather unsophisticated caricatures, many of

which were printed from worn, damaged or pirated plates and arranged in no discernable

order.75 The Tail Piece is one example of the low quality of Tegg’s prints. Although

Rowlandson was a talented draughtsman, the imprecise lines in this engraving unravel

75 Donald, 4-5.

191 into thin wisps and the coloring is careless, often exceeding the boundaries of the lines.

Tegg’s enterprise targeted an audience at the lower end of the print-buying spectrum with

often crude social satires and caricatures at bargain prices. The engravings that make up

these magazines are of a lesser quality than those in the inventory of dealers like Rudolph

Ackerman, for whom Rowlandson also worked. Nevertheless they found a receptive audience. Buyers of Tegg’s Magazines may have been ignorant of, or uninterested in connoisseurial questions of quality, but they were well versed in the rudiments of print satire and caricature and knew how to read these visual jokes. Notably, other print sellers like Samuel Fores attempted to reach out to the middle class audience by offering

“Caricatures to be Lent for the Evening,” a nod to the ephemeral, timely nature of these images as well as to the pockets of budget-minded customers.

The volumes published by Tegg typically feature a humorous title page at the front of the volume and conclude with an equally humorous tailpiece. The Tailpiece to the third volume irresistibly uses a theater curtain to frame a view of Tegg’s shop. The image depicts a busy commercial street framed by the “Apollo Library” on the left and the arched baroque doorway of St. Mary Le Bow on the right, an edifice directly across from 111 Cheapside. This juxtaposition immediately situates Tegg’s shop in the city of

London and suggests that the Apollo Library and St. Mary Le Bow are equally city landmarks. The print shop, with windows full of comic engravings and advertisements, draws the crowd and even garners the attention of men and women on the opposite side of the street. Whereas in the image of Robert’s shop the caricaturist appears pen in hand to find ideas in the crowd, Tegg takes a different approach and appears in the door to the shop with a rifle to shoot Folly as he flies over the city. A group of grotesque green

192 monsters, the “Genii of Caricature,” drag a net towards Tegg.76 These Genii have

proudly captured inspirations for caricatures and satires including; “Portraits,”

“Oddities,” “Mrs Clarke” (Mary Anne Clarke, mistress of Frederick, duke of York),

“Manners,” “Fashion,” and “Crim Con,” that is, criminal conversation. Political satires

are notably absent. Instead, as the inscription under the image indicates, Tegg’s satires

“Eye Natures Walks shoot Folly as it Flies,/ and catch the manners living as they rise.”77

A red swag with gold fringe turns the top of the caricature frame into a proscenium arch while a wig punctuates the center like a plaster ornament. Although out of fashion in the early nineteenth century, this wig, with its long tail puns on the idea of a tail piece as an after piece, the last comedic act to an evening’s entertainment.

Rowlandson’s engraving brings us full circle to Stevens’s Lecture on Heads which was inspired by the follies of fashion, most of all, the large wigs that marked the theatrical bodies of contemporary Londoners. The wig without a head is a fitting conclusion for this chapter since it opens the possibility that character was at least as flexible as fashion, and the better for it.

Whether grouped in front of a stage or crowded around a print shop window, the heterogeneous audience forms the heart of the performance. In this chapter I have argued that images of the Lecture and the caricatures and satires pasted in windowpanes of print shops participate in a tradition of categorizing variety of characters found in the London

76 These Genii, with squat naked bodies painted a revolting shade of green are clearly derived from the goblin that sits on the chest of the young damsel in Henry Fuseli’s painting The Nightmare (1781). Rowlandson’s borrowing is far from surprising since caricaturists immediately recognized the comic potential in the dreamlike and grotesque subject matter of Fuseli’s composition.

77 This quote is attributed to Pope and it is indeed from An Essay on Man, Epistle I. (1734).

193 audience. In general these images pit the performer – be he Stevens, Lewes or Roberts– in opposition to the audience members who eagerly gather in order to see themselves or their peers “taken off” by the satirist’s pen, each character taking a turn in the limelight.

Although proponents of satire claimed the reformative powers as its strengths, critics countered that the entertainment value located in these performances overshadowed any potential for social reform. Yet the ways in which these various comedic performances communicated with the audience is of greater interest for this study than whether or not performances effected any moral improvements in the viewers. What seems clear is that the Lecture and other spectacles like print shop windows appealed to a laughing audience that welcomed the chance to visualize themselves in relation to the various performances of character in eighteenth-century England.

CONCLUSION

This study has aimed to demonstrate the depth of the highly-nuanced relationship between theatrical comedy and graphic satire and caricature in late Georgian London. In order to do so, I have organized my chapters around three key components of the conversation enacted between the two formats.

In the first chapter I discussed the issues surrounding the representation and interpretation of character in the mid- and late-eighteenth-century. In his satirical works, artist William Hogarth outlined a theatrical understanding of character with playwright and novelist Henry Fielding. For both Hogarth and Fielding the concept of modern

English character was rooted in British stage traditions wherein actors used bodily performance – gestures and tone of voice – to convey touches of character. Caricature, on the other hand, was defined by Hogarth as a foreign practice that ultimately effaced character trough grotesque exaggeration. In order to clarify the differences between the two Hogarth engraved Characters and Caricaturas (figure 1.1), as a subscription ticket for his print series Marriage-à-la-Mode. However, on its own, this ticket seems to have had limited success in its aims. For one, the relationship between the flock of heads that fills the top half the sheet and the characters and caricatures at the bottom of the image is not immediately evident. These disembodied heads seem to have as little to do with the characters Hogarth derives from examples found in history painting as with the caricatures he derived from the grotesques of Leonardo da Vinci or caricatures by

194 195 Carracci, and Ghezzi. Although Hogarth intended his characters to resonate with those of

Raphael, they seen oddly unconnected. Instead, they illustrate combinations of facial of features, the ‘peculiar touches’ that individuate modern heads and, as such, occupy a

middle ground between the idealized representation and caricature. Whether it is because

of the strange proliferation of heads, or the sheer fact that - in his efforts to represent

diversity - some of profiles really do appear to be humorous pastiches, Characters and

Caricaturas falls short of truly delineating the line between the two formats. Mary

Darly, for one seems to have been thinking of the strangeness of some of the profiles in this image when she crafted her Rules for Drawing Caricaturas.

Hogarth’s achievement, however, lies in his mobilization of theatrical character in

his moralizing ‘progresses’ that mixed satire and comedy in their criticisms of

contemporary London. Two of the vital elements of the ‘modern moral comedy’

conceptualized by Hogarth and Henry Fielding were that it should represent scenes from

contemporary life and depict a range of characters drawn from a variety of social spheres.

In satirical compositions like Marriage-à-la-Mode, Hogarth ridicules the manners of the

fashionable upper classes alongside those of the middle classes. In the first plate of his

series (figure 2.4), for example, Hogarth represents an array of characters from the young

Countess of Squanderfield (herself recently elevated from mercantile origins) to the

Italian performers, a French hairdresser, and social climbers - an upper middleclass woman and her companion. While the countess and her lover arrange their tryst, they are serenaded by a musical entertainment that delights the guests at the levée. One can

practically hear an untoward squeal of delight from the tonish woman who is most

enraptured by the singer and musician. Through a network of gestures, glances and 196 bodily action, the behavior of each figure reveals their characters. Moreover, the decorations that fill the room – erotic paintings, tumbling piles of antiquities and virtú – set the stage and provide significant commentary on the narrative that defines the

relationship between the figures while intimating the disastrous conclusion of the series.

These very features– the use of gestures, costumes, props and a carefully staged setting -

were also employed in the practice of caricature, especially in the last quarter of the

century.

As such, the theatrical notion of comic characterization opposed the self-aware

and self-contained body represented in portraiture. Caricature featured bodies caught in

whirls of action, in decidedly casual poses, or even in a state of dishabille. Portraiture, on

the other hand, offered compositions that idealized the sitter and elevated his or her

character traits. Whereas portraiture typically assumes a level of complicity between

artist, patron, and subject, caricature takes no such relationship for granted. Unlike the

caricatures made when on the Grand Tour or in private drawing rooms among a select

group of acquaintance, the public caricatures often took the subjects off-guard. James

Gillray even developed guerilla tactics for attaining likenesses of his subject and

stealthily sketched small pencil portraits on palm-sized cards when on visits to the

galleries of Parliament.1 This gesture of subterfuge indicates the importance of

observation for artists like Gillray, and adds a quality of reporting that contributes to a sense of immediacy to the print.

The observation of the subject in motion and on the world stage thus defies the portraitist’s intimate study of his or her subject in the studio. Of course, caricaturists were not always able to depict characters from the life and for this they turned to other

1 Richard Godfrey, James Gillray: The Art of Caricature, (London: Tate Publishing Ltd, 2001), 16. 197 images of their subject in circulation – many of which were printed portraits. The use of

prints as for study and inspiration was widespread amongst artists. Thomas Rowlandson

notoriously turned to his collection of prints for ideas of compositions or to study images

of his subjects

In the second chapter I connected the artist’s gesture when drawing on the page to

the actor’s use of gesture on the stage. As we saw in the quote that introduced this study,

William Cooke noted that the actor and the artist must learn to discern one or two

“particular strokes” from the many characteristics of their subjects. Both actor and artist must learn to deftly represent these strokes so that the characters they represent ring true and appear natural. The economy of line used in the caricature is suggestive of the quick sketch that aspires to capture only one or two ‘touches:’ idiosyncratic gestures and

peculiar facial expressions. While the caricaturists who worked at the top end of the

trade carefully worked out their compositions, the best caricatures appear to represent a

slice of time and capture the subject in the moment just before – or after – the decisive

action.

The series of caricatures of London actors published in The Attic Miscellany

claims to represent unflattering moments extracted from the actors’ performances. In

addition to offering a counter-performance on the page, these images also offset the many

portraits of actors and actresses that filled the London print shops. In so doing, they

demonstrate the extent to which caricature relates to the large body of representations of

the actors that circulated through the city. Portraits of actors, like the engraved image of

Kemble in the role of Cato (figure 2.22), circulated throughout London and were just as

likely to be found in print shop windows, affixed to tavern walls, or framed in drawing 198 rooms. Such popular images demonstrate the physical fitness of the actor to his or her

part and also show how effectively the actor embodied the character he or she

represented. Caricatures, on the other hand, counter the stabilizing portrait and

demonstrate that the actor’s art lies in his or her ability to move and deliver their lines,

rather than command the stage with a statuesque pose.

Graphic caricature and theater were brought together in the performance of

Lecture on Heads, in which George Alexander Stevens used his comedic talents to bring

life to a variety of props, – wigs, papier-mâché busts, and painted canvasses - many of which were inspired by the print satires of William Hogarth. The success of Stevens’s performance depended on his ability to use gestures and voice to activate the busts, paints and prints. The characters Stevens represented on stage were largely drawn from stereotypes, which Stevens claimed he derived from observation from nature. While

Stevens may have also resorted to mimicry to engage and amuse his audience, the extent to which he used it is still unknown. However, as we have seen, London audiences were liable to ascribe likeness, even where none was intended by the performer.

Many of the print shops that sold caricatures were a short walk from the theaters and entertainment centers of the city. In fact, it not unlikely that a man or woman on the way to the theater would pass a print shop decorated with brightly colored prints that featured the celebrities of the day. Print shops located in the midst of commercial thoroughfares - Thomas Tegg’s Apollo Library, on Cheapside, Rudolph Ackermann’s

“Repository of Arts” on The Strand, or Hannah Humphrey’s shop on St. James’s Street - were situated in locations where constant streams of people flied past. Graphic caricatures that feature these windows show that laughing audiences gathered in front of 199 shops eager to find amusement at the latest satire. The audiences in these images actively invite comparison between themselves and the caricatures on display. The comparison seems then not so much to be a censure of behavior, but a means to embrace the variety of modern English characters.

Because of the scope of my dissertation, the writings and engraved productions of William Hogarth and Thomas Rowlandson figured prominently. Both artists formed intimate friendships with key players in the London theater world and regularly attended the theater. Hogarth was a life long friend of David Garrick’s and Henry Fielding’s, while

Rowlandson had close ties with many actors including the comic actor Jack Bannister.

While biographical studies of these artists have touched on the friendships between actors and artists, such relationships have yet to be contextualized in relation to ways in which actors and artists alike thought of their works. An avenue for further study will be an exploration of how and whether these actors and artists came to think of their lively hoods as professions in similar ways. 200

Figure I.1 James Mc Ardell after Benjamin Wilson Garrick as Hamlet, mezzotini, n.d. 201

•

Figure I.2 James Gillray A Voluptuary Under the Horrors of Digestion 1792 202

Figure 1.1 William Hogarth Characters & Caricaturas 1743 203

Figure 1.2 William Hogarth The Laughing Audience 1733

Figure 1.3 William Hogarth A Chorus of Singers 1732 204

Figure 1.4 William Hogarth Scholars at a Lecture 1736/7

Figure 1.5 William Hogarth The Company of Undertakers 1736/7 205

Figure 1.6 William Hogarth after James Thornhill? Four Heads from the Raphael Cartoons at Hampton Court 1729

Figure 1.7 William Hogarth Characters and Caricaturas, detail 206

Figure 1.8 Pier Leone Ghezzi Thomas Bentley 1725-6 207

Figure 1.9 William Hogarth The Bench, first state 1758

Figure 1.10 William Hogarth PlateI, The Analysis of Beauty, detail 1753 208

Figure 1.11 George Townshend The Recruiting Serjeant or Brittannias Happy Prospect 1757 209

Figure 1.12 William Hogarth The Bench, fourth state 1758 210

Figure 1.13 Clarles Le Brun Le Rire : tête vue de face Pen, ink and black chalk (?) ca. 1668-1690 211

Figures 1.14 (top) & 1.15 (bottom) Charles Le Brun La Colere, (Anger) and La Tranquilité (Tranquility) Pen and black ink (top), Pen and brown ink (bottom) ca. 1688-1690 212

Figure 1.16 Jonathan Richardson Alexander Pope oil on canvas, ca. 1737 213

Figure 1.17 Thomas Rowlandson & G. M. Woodward Anger 1800

Figure 1.18 Thomas Rowlandson & G. M. Woodward Laughter 1800 214

Figure 1.19 Thomas Rowlandson & G. M. Woodward Horror 1800 215

Figure 1.20 M. Darly Title Page, A Book of Caricaturas… (1779) 216

Figure 1.21 M. Darly Straightlined Carrics & Angular Carrics 1779 217

Figure 1.22 M. Darly Ogee Carrics & External Circular Carrics 1779 218

Figure 1.23 Francis Grose Rules for Drawing Caricaturas, Plate I 1788 219

Figure 1.24 William Hogarth Five Orders of Perriwigs 1761 220

Figure 1.25 William Grose Rules for Drawing Caricatures, Plate II 1788 221

Figure 1.26 Thomas Rowlandson Public Characters, 1801 Hand colored etching 222

Figure 2.1 William Hogarth The Analysis of Beauty, Plate I, The Statuary's Yard 1753 223

Figure 2.2 William Hogarth The Analysis of Beauty, Plate II, The Country Dance 1753 224

Figure 2.3 William Hogarth The Ogee Molding, (Fig. 119), The Analysis of Beauty, Plate II, The Country Dance 1753 225

Figure 2.4 William Hogarth, Engraved by S. Ravenet Marriage A-la-Mode, Plate IV 1745 226

Figures 2.5 and 2.6 The Key to the Dance, (fig.71) and The Minuet (fig. 122) Analysis of Beauty, Plate II, The Country Dance. 227

Figure 2.7 Paul Sandby Puggs Graces 1758 228

Figures 2.8 and 2.9 The Samaritan Woman (fig. 74) and Sancho Panza (fig. 75), from The Analysis of Beauty, Plate II, The Country Dance 229

Figure 2.10 The Gentle Smile and Laughter (figs. 108 & 109), from The Analysis of Beauty, Plate II, The Country Dance 1753 230

Figure 2.11 Figure 2.12 Theatrical Portraiture, No 1. The Theatrical Ranter Henry V 1794 1789 231

Figure 2.13 What Nature Ought to Be 1789 232

Figure 2.14 Thomas Rowlandson, The Pigeon Hole 1811 233

Figure 2.15 Thomas Rowlandson Comedy in the Country/Tragedy in London 1807 234

Figure 2.16 A Monstrous Elegant Attitude, Theatrical Portraiture 1790 235

Figure 2.17 Figure 2.18 M. Darly M. Darly St. James’s Macaroni The Lilly Macaroni 1772 1771 236

Figure 2.19 Figure 2.20 How to Harrow Up the Soul, Reporach, from Practical Theatrical Portraiture No. 6 Illustrations of Gesture and Action 1790 1822 237

Figure 2.21 Thomas Rowlandson Mrs Siddons, Old Kemble, and Henderson Rehearsing in the Green Room 1789 Etching 238

Figure 2.22 Kemble as Cato from Bell’s British Theatre (2nd Edition) 1793 239

Figure 2.23 False Gesture, illustrations from Henry Siddon’s Practical Guide to Rhetorical Gesture 1822 240

Figure 2.24 Dramatic Action Illustrated 1818 241

Figure 2.25 An Actor of QUICK Conceptions 1790 242

Figure 3.1 Anonymous The Lecture on Heads, from “The Universal Museum and Complete Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure” (Sept, 1765) 243

Figure 3.2 William Hogarth Enthusiasm Delineated c. 1761 244

Figure 3.3 William Hogarth Credulity, Superstition, and Fanaticism 1762 245

Figure 3.4 Anonymous (Thomas Trotter after James Fox?) Lecture on Heads, Frontispiece 1785 246

Figure 3.5 Thomas Rowlandson, after Woodward Lecture on Heads, Frontispiece 1808 247

Figure 3.6 Thomas Rowlandson The Boxes 248

Figure 3.7 E. Topham The Macaroni Print Shop 1772 249

Figure 3.8 J. R. Smith Miss Macaroni and her Gallant at a Print Shop 1773 250

Figure 3.9 Anon, publ . Paul Roberts Caricature Shop 1801 251

Figure 3.10 Thomas Rowlandson, after Woodward Tail Piece

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