Guest Book Review: Owning Performance | Performing Ownership: Literary Property and the Eighteenth-Century British Stage

This is a book review provided by former PermaKat, Neil Wilkof.

To paraphrase Jane Austen, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a book about authors, drama, or publishing before the modern era will likely have been written by a scholar of literature and culture rather than by a legal researcher. One needs to look no further than Mark Rose, Authors and Owners, or Adrian Johns, The Nature of the Book. Jane Wessel's book, Owning Performance | Performing Ownership: Literary Property and the Eighteenth-Century British Stage, is a distinguished contribution to this scholarly pantheon. 

Wessel, a professor of English at the US Naval Academy, focuses on the British situation in the 18th century following the enactment of the Statute of Anne in 1710 through to passage of the Dramatic Literary Property Act in 1833. Her overarching question is how the various personages in the world of the theatre — the playwright, the actor, and the manager — sought to assert control over their creative efforts in the absence of statutory protection.

18th-century actors gazed jealously at playwrights, who now enjoyed statutory protection for their creative works by virtue of the Statute of Anne. The statute was silent regarding the creative contribution of actors, who anyway suffered from the fact that performance was "ephemeral". The dramatic act was here and now, and then — "poof", it was seemingly gone forever (although attempts were made to try and mitigate the effect of such ephemeralness). Theatre managers, for their part, were constantly seeking to find ways to acquire control and thereby be able to exercise commercial power.

As Wessel shows us, even playwrights, while protected against unauthorized publication, had to confront whether the publication of their works was strategically and commercially desirable. This was especially so since protection under the 1710 statute did not extend to performance. Were they better off seeking protection against unauthorized copying of the printed copies of their plays, or was it preferable to withhold their plays from publication and instead seek to reach a beneficial arrangement for a theatrical performance of their dramatic work? If the latter, publication, whatever protection that the copyright law offered, might be unwise commercially. 

More generally, in Wessel's words —

The story of how eighteenth-century playwrights, managers, and performers dealt with the lack of protection for the repeat performance of dramatic works is one that has not been told. These are the stories of this book (p. 13).

Before presenting these stories, Wessel's extensive Introduction provides an overview of her arguments regarding how the various personages sought to control their interests in performance. The reader is thereby provided with a useful roadmap for navigating the chapters that follow. 

Wessel divides these chapters into two parts. The first centers on the artistic creators in the world of performance—playwrights and actors, and their strategies to control their works. The second addresses how theatre managers, being those "most poised to benefit from performance rights", "appropriated" these strategies (p. 16).

Following this, Chapter 1 describes how Charles Macklin, as an actor-playwright, pioneered efforts to withhold publication of his works while publicly asserting that he had the sole right to perform them. Chapter 2 focuses on Samuel Foote, also an actor-playwright. Unlike Macklin, Foote adopted a strategy resting his celebrity status as an actor. In so doing, Foote emphasized the centrality of his physical presence in the performance, making use of improvisation and his distinctive physical movements, seeking, in Wessel's words, to leverage his celebrity status to " 'own' the works he wrote and physically embodied" (p. 17). This in turn led to mimicry of performance by competing performers.

Chapter 3 moves to the world of theatre managers. They too adopted a strategy of "nonpublication", by purchasing directly from the playwrights the right to print the play. In doing so, they could in effect seek to ensure exclusive performance in their theatres (although here, too, competitors developed workarounds to enable performance at other locations).

Chapter 4 centers on Tate Wilkinson, perhaps the master mimic of his time. Such mimicry enabled Wilkinson, in his later capacity as a theatre manager in regional Yorkshire theatres, to bring the performance of unprinted works to regional theatres and undermine the attempt by actors, such as Foote, to "own" their performance.

Chapter 5 focuses on Elizabeth Inchbald and John O'Keefe, among the most successful dramatists of their time. They adopted opposite strategies. Inchbald rejected the sale of her works to theatres, preferring publication, at least of her popular works (her translation into English of the play, "Lovers' Vows", became a key element of Jane Austen's novel, 'Mansfield Park'). O'Keefe, by contrast, opted to sell his copyrights to the theatres, thereby losing control of later circulation. 

The Epilogue describes the lead-up to the enactment of the 1833 Dramatic Literary Property Act. In so doing, the Epilogue discusses the case, Murray v. Elliston, with a featured role by Lord Byron, as the court sought to make sense of the relationship between print and performance.

The foregoing summary hardly does justice to Wessel's narrative. Particularly notable is her skill and careful research in describing the individual figures that play the major roles in her stories, while also reminding us that they were real people, some more likable, some less so. At the same time, she keeps the reader aware of the larger legal and cultural background, providing the necessary context to fully appreciate the tales that she is recounting.

For those, such as this reviewer, who believe that there is much to learn from how creative personages sought to protect their works prior to the establishment of the modern intellectual property law regime, this book is for you. And even if you are not so inclined, this book is for you. Read, learn, and enjoy.

Details:

Published: 2022

Format: Hardback, ebook

Extent: 220 pages 

ISBN: 978-0-472-13307-9 (hardback)

978-0-472-22025 (ebook)

Publisher: University of Michigan Press