Rival Queens: Actresses, Performance, and the Eighteenth-Century British Theatre

Felicity Nussbaum. Rival Queens: Actresses, Performance, and the Eighteenth-Century British Theatre Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010 383 pp. $55.00 ISBN 978-0-8122-4233-1Over twenty years ago Felicity Nussbaum reinvigorated eighteenth-century studies when she championed the application of New Historicism to the field in her The New Eighteenth Century: Theory, Politics, English Literature (Routledge 1988), co-authored with Laura Brown. Since then she has brought her refreshing perspective to bear on many of the period's issues related to race, gender, monstrosity, the body, and empire. In her latest book, Rival Queens: Actresses, Performance, and the Eighteenth-Century British Theatre she tilts at a critical commonplace when she "attempts to extricate the discussion of the actress from the restrictions that the familiar proper lady/prostitute opposition imposes upon women players" (9). Instead, Nussbaum argues that eighteenth-century actresses "with loyal fans in tow participated significantly in [a] shifting of public/private boundaries" (16). In seeking "to reinsert celebrity firmly within its inaugural moments" (17), Nussbaum asserts that these actresses "figured as spectacular examples of women capable of autonomous actions...[they] were among those who constituted the first female subjects in the public arena" (17). Instead of being powerless victims of definitions imposed upon them by others, Nussbaum contends that these actresses "were self-reflexive economic agents who actively shaped their identities to make celebrated properties of themselves in an historical period marked by increasing privatization of property and identity" (17). She notes that this economic self-marketing by actresses was particularly remarkable as it took place "in a period when .. . women were seldom able to possess property or to sign contracts in their own names" (28).In chapter one, "The Economics of Celebrity," Nussbaum outlines the process by which "women's indispensability to the success of the commercial theatre was firmly, if sometimes grudgingly, established over the course of the eighteenth century" (33). She argues that the emergence of acting as a profession for women provided a stage for experimenting with both gender and class definitions. By performing on stage, actresses provided women an example of non-domesticated femininity and seduced working-class audience members with the hope that "celebrity. . . and instant success would relieve the drudgery of their manual labor" (38).In chapter two, "'Real, Beautiful Women:' Rival Queens," Nussbaum accounts for the continuing popularity of Nathaniel Lee's The Rival Queens (1677) during the eighteenth centuryas a consequence of women playing women. Borrowing language from Colley Cibber's Apology of 1740, Nussbaum argues that the fact that "real, beautiful women" were playing these roles "animated the metaphor of women's theatrical rivalries and alluded to the pejorative meaning of queen''' (68). The main plot line of the play regarding Alexander the Great was overshadowed in the eighteenth century by the sights and sounds of the actresses on stage, which absorbed the entire audiences' attention, both "the men who were seduced by them and the women who secretly sought to emulate them" (91). "In fulfilling the audience's abstract desires, the paired actresses furthered their careers and promoted their self-commodification into the cult of celebrated individuality as [each new duo] repeated their battles afresh" (91)."Actresses' Memories: Exceptional Virtues," chapter three, considers the role moral standards played in the way actresses were perceived during the period. …