Presented by Jim Davis

In Comic Acting and Portraiture in Late-Georgian and Regency England Jim Davis investigated the ways in which comic actors were portrayed in paintings, prints and caricatures, and asked how art theory and the work of various artists were used in discussions of comic acting. The first lecture in our 2016/17 series takes this discussion further. This public talk comments on actors and actresses not covered in the book, and considers the extent to which visual representations of comic actors changed in the Victorian period in keeping with other changes in the visual arts. This will also consider the tradition of representing theatre audiences as if they themselves are low comedy characters.

Jim Davis is Professor of Theatre Studies at the University of Warwick. His major research interest is in nineteenth-century British theatre and his most recent books are Comic Acting and Portraiture in Late-Georgian and Regency England (Cambridge University Press, 2015) and theatre & entertainment (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). He is the editor of Victorian Pantomime: A Collection of Critical Essays (2010) and Lives of Shakespearian Actors: Edmund Kean (2009). He is also joint author of a study of London theatre audiences in the nineteenth century, Reflecting the Audience: London Theatre-going 1840–1880 (2001), winner of the 2002 STR Theatre Book Prize. His books John Liston Comedian and The Britannia Diaries were both published by the Society for Theatre Research. In 2017 a two-volume edition of Victorian dramatizations of Dickens’s novels, co-edited with Jacky Bratton, will be published by Oxford University Press.