ABSTRACT
Sarah Bernhardt and Eleonora Duse's physical forms, foreignness, personal lives, and perceived health, became integral factors in appraising and authenticating their performances of tuberculosis. Anglophone audiences looked to Bernhardt's body, and to the full vision of her embodiment, to "translate" what the courtesan's foreign tongue left enigmatic or incomprehensible. Bernhardt's francophone performance lent her Parisian courtesan especial validity for British and American audiences. Whether this honored or disparaged Bernhardt and her heritage depended much upon the reviewer's biases. Duse's somatic and performative techniques further distorted the notion that consumptive sufferers were endowed with a feminized, spiritual grace. Supplanting the meandering crosses, fleeting sculptural poses, and delicate, fluttering gestures of the romanticized Camilles were the secular, unorthodox movements of Duse's Marguerite. Despite Duse's disaffection for the script, both she and Bernhardt deemed the role too important to their repertoires to jettison, with Bernhardt habitually reviving the play when ticket sales flagged.
