ABSTRACT
Clive’s virago-like temper may have been not just a personality quirk but also her recognition of the historic strategies that thespian women needed in order to possess cultural authority. The eighteenth-century London theatre has recently been defined as ‘the crucible of celebrity’ – a place of confluence of powerful political, economic, and social forces (Tillyard, 20-27).1 Stella Tillyard convincingly claims that ‘celebrity was born at the moment private life became a tradeable public commodity’ (25). The emergence of celebrity may be linked not only to the marketing of privacy but also, I suggest, to the unprecedented appearance of women on stage after the Restoration. Celebrity, according to Tillyard, grants special attention to women: ‘It had, and still has a more feminine face than fame, because private life, and the kind of virtue around which reputations could pivot, were both seen to reside in femininity and in women’ (ibid.). The increased presence of women in the very public arena of the theatre meant that gossip about the private lives of a significant number of women, and especially sexual scandal, advanced with vigour. The most canny of celebrated actresses paradoxically
generated agency from their historically unprecedented situation: they carved out a coherent public personhood while projecting an accessible, layered interiority that traversed the boundaries between public display and personal revelation, and between dramatic character and private self.
