Spectral Spectacle: Traps, Disappearances, and Disembodiment in Nineteenth-Century British Melodrama

Abstract

Two nineteenth-century melodramas, J.R. Planché's The Vampire (1820) and Dion Boucicault's The Corsican Brothers (1852) exert a haunting influence on how we in the present conceptualise ghosts. Through rendering the seemingly invisible – that is, the ghostly body – spectacular through technology, while simultaneously concealing the mechanism behind that feat, the plays' eponymous traps heighten the effect of the spectral even as their workings elude visual perception. My study elucidates the mediation of the traps through other facets of production. To accomplish this task, I undertake a phenomenological inquiry into the play's sound, lighting, and scene design via an examination of the plays' production materials as well as modern reconstructions of the traps. The sensory signifiers associated with the traps, including musical motifs and lighting cues, linger in the public consciousness even when the technology behind them has been rendered obsolete by later technological iterations.