ABSTRACT
In the mid-1930s, after nearly three decades of remarkable success in the theatre-world, Somerset Maugham declared his permanent abandonment of playwriting in favour of literary fiction. But one of the first things he does upon severing ties with theatre is to write a novel so preoccupied with that art-form and industry that he entitles it Theatre. Casting Henry James’s The Tragic Muse as both parallel and counterpoint, I explore Maugham’s infrequently analysed theatre-novel as response to anxieties about theatre’s mediality in an era that, while affording playwrights new honours, also confronted them with graver threats. Central to this discussion is what I’ll present as one of theatre-fiction’s most perennial motifs—upstaging. Even as Theatre relentlessly spotlights its actress-protagonist Julia Lambert, it resonates with concerns about the medium’s subjugation to a star-system that Maugham himself had felt obliged to cater to for years. Drawing on Alex Woloch’s analysis of “character-space,” I explore the book as a revealing instance of theatre-fiction’s capacity to engage both thematically and formally with the asymmetrical distributions of theatre industries and dramatic forms.
