Accessibility and Archives: Disability and Performance 2: “Such losses as these”

In the second of three blogs drawing on his experience as a Performing Arts Archivist, Philip Milnes-Smith uses a disability lens to offer some readings of those deviating from accepted social norms of behaviour.  Inspired by the work of Dr Laura Seymour[1], he draws evidence from biographies of Georgian era performers and then turns to one of Shakespeare’s contemporaries.  This post includes historic language which may cause offence.

Although the most suitable current model of disability for living people is the social model, its comparatively recent formulation means evidence from history will tend to have been framed by the medical model.  This notices the difference in the individual, rather than the disabling processes of a society which makes lives more difficult for those with such differences. 

Tate Wilkinson (1739-1803), an actor and manager, was regarded as an “eccentric”:  he seldom called people by the right name and was inclined to hiss his own actors from the auditorium if they failed to perform a part as he had advised them.  Wilkinson’s memoir refers to Bridge Frodsham (1734-1768), at one time known as “The York Garrick”, as someone whose “understanding, and superabundant good qualities, were all warped and undermined by nocturnal habits; which failings unfortunately were supplied by refreshing pulls at the brandy-bottle in the morning, to take off all qualms from the stomach, till the certain-consequence ensued of being enfeebled, disordered, mad, dropsical, and dead at the age of thirty”. 

Samuel Foote’s memoir similarly mentions the comic actor Thomas Weston (1737-1776) for whom he wrote parts that made the most of his powers (including Jerry Sneak in The Mayor of Garret).  Garrick said of Weston’s performance as Abel Drugger in Jonson’s The Alchemist, “that it was one of the finest pieces of acting he ever saw.”  However, Weston “had drawbacks in his passions which levelled him to the ground.”  In particular, he was “seldom sober” and “destroyed his constitution” as well as burning through all the cash he earned, leading him to struggling to meet basic expenses while dodging bailiffs.  Weston’s own biography also mentions periods when “he was violently afflicted with a scorbutic complaint [scurvy], which not only affected his face by breaking out in blotches in a very disagreeable manner, but also his legs, one of which had a hole in it that discharged a very great quantity of matter”.

Alcoholism, it should be noted, was not what followed the end of Weston’s career, but was present at its height.  He died “a miserable example of thoughtlessness and intoxication” but was said to have been mourned by Foote (an amputee) as follows: “Such losses as these pray who can withstand, to lose first my leg and then my right hand.”  Robert William Elliston (1774-1831), an actor-manager was another whose “conduct frequently outstepped eccentricity.”  His friend Warner Phipps wrote to him directly: “You are publicly — you are universally known as intemperate — the vice dishonours you as a companion, and puts a brand upon you as a public man… I will not add the unthankful perplexities of seeing my labours rendered abortive, by the madness or stupidity of habitual ebriation.”

George Frederick Cooke (1756-1812), privately reflected, “I am sometimes in a kind of mental intoxication: some would call it insanity. I believe it is allied to it. I then can imagine myself in strange situations and strange places. This humour, whatever it is, comes uninvited but it is nevertheless easily dispelled—at least, generally so. When it can not be dispelled it must, of course, become madness.’’  There is no doubt that, like Frodsham, Weston and Elliston, Cooke drank heavily (sometimes appearing “fighting drunk”, and arguing with the audience, and sometimes failing to show up).  His biographer attributes the mental intoxication to this infirmity which had “a tendency to ruin his health, injure his property, and destroy his social connexions.”  His memoirs reference a twenty-month gap starting in February 1780 when he seems not to have been acting and, in discussing 1796, the biographer claims that Cooke had just played “the madman in real life” for a year. 

Turning back to Early Modern playwrights, Aubrey says of Ben Jonson in particular that “he would many times exceed in drinke”.  Jonson self-reported himself at least once to have been dead drunk “so that he knew not wher he was”.  He was summed up by William Drummond of Hawarden as follows: “He is a great lover and praiser of himself, a contemner and scorner of others, given rather to losse a friend than a jest, jealous of every word and action of those about him, (especiallie after drink, which is one of the elements in which he liveth), a dissembler of ill parts which raigne in him, a bragger of some good that he wanteth,.. he is passionatly kynde and angry, careless either to gaine or keep, vindicative, but, if he be well answered, at himself.” 

His adopted son Thomas Randolph wrote a poem condemning drunkenness which notes “how it soone destroyes the grace of humane shape, spoyling the beauteous face… How does it nurse disease, infect the heart. Drawing some sicknesse into every part!.. The belly swells, the foot can hardly stand lam'd with the Gout; the Palsie shakes the Hand.  And through the flesh sick waters sinking in, doe bladder-like puffe up the dropsi'd skin.”  As early as 1603, Jonson was referring in a letter to being “infirm” and talking of his “despaired health”, while a poem of 1619 notes a “mountain belly” and “rocky face.”  He said he was “stricken with the palsy” in 1628, a condition noted in another Randolph poem, explicitly about him.  Perhaps relatedly, Aubrey reports Jonson to have “had one eie lower, than tother, and bigger” (see also the preview image),  By 1631 he was describing himself in a letter as “almost blind” and a poem as a “bed-rid wit”.  It would be crass to suggest that alcoholism made great men of the theatre, but it appears that eminence and success were not beyond the reach of those with difficulties and differences.

Guest blogs are welcome.  Please email diversityandinclusion@archives.org.uk.  We would also like to hear from you if you have found one of the Allies’ blogs helpful to your work

Thumbnail: Title page of Ben Jonson's Execration against Vulcan, engraving by Robert Vaughan, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

[1] Refusing to Behave in Early Modern Literature, Edinburgh University Press