Barnard Hewitt Award honorable mention
The idea that actors are hypocrites and fakes and therefore dangerous to society was widespread in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Fangs of Malice examines the equation between the vice of hypocrisy and the craft of acting as it appears in antitheatrical tracts, in popular and high culture, and especially in plays of the period. Rousseau and others argue that actors, expert at seeming other than they are, pose a threat to society; yet dissembling seems also to be an inevitable consequence of human social intercourse. The 鈥渁ntitheatrical prejudice鈥 offers a unique perspective on the high value that modern western culture places on sincerity, on being true to one's own self.
Taking a cue from the antitheatrical critics themselves, Matthew Wikander structures his book in acts and scenes, each based on a particular slander against actors. A prologue introduces his main issues. Act One deals with the proposition 鈥淭hey Dress Up鈥: foppish slavery to fashion, cross-dressing, and dressing as clergy. Act Two treats the proposition 鈥淭hey Lie鈥 by focusing on social dissembling and the phenomenon of the self-deceiving hypocrite and the public, princely hypocrite. Act Three, 鈥淭hey Drink,鈥 examines a wide range of antisocial behavior ascribed to actors, such as drinking, gambling, and whoring. An epilogue ties the ancient ideas of possession and the panic that actors inspire to contemporary anxieties about representation not only in theatre but also in the visual and literary arts.
Fangs of Malice will be of great interest to scholars and students of drama as well as to theatre professionals and buffs.
鈥淧rofessor Wikander develops a highly original take on the theme of antitheatricalism into a powerful critical method. Both wise and clever, his absorbing book finds important new things to say about many dramatists, including, almost amazingly, Shakespeare, Moli猫re, and Ibsen.鈥濃 Michael Goldman, Princeton University
鈥Fangs of Maliceis about the age-old suspicion that theatrical mimesis is a kind of lying. The ramifications of this major insight are explored with genuine insight and a range of theatrical knowledge. . . . Shakespeare, Moli猫re, Sheridan, Goldsmith, Rousseau, Ibsen, O'Neill鈥攁ll prove to be sites of rich interpretive value on the topic of the actor.鈥濃擠avid Bevington, University of Chicago
鈥淭his is a superb book: brilliantly and forcefully written, it offers readers a range of knowledges and pleasures and, in addition, is simply pleasurable in itself, a joy to read."鈥 Barbara Hodgdon, Drake University
鈥淲ide-ranging and insightful.鈥濃擬ichael Caines, TLS
