1 - Forms and Increments of Performance

Summary

Just as spectacle was integral to Victorian culture, the understanding and active critique of performance in its myriad forms and situations was integral to Victorian political life. Liberals and Radicals applied this to a variety of organisational formats and gatherings – pre-eminently, meetings linked to other events through performance chaining – to enhance their impact. A dramaturgical approach reveals how performance and performance critique were integrated into political work. Starting with Thomas Thompson, this is evident across three generations of the Thompson-Chesson family. George Thompsons lecturing acumen built from this, establishing the basis for the Trans-Atlantic Anti-Slavery Movement during the 1830s. Frederick Chessons acumen as a political organiser helps show how the realm of the sensible (arts) was integral with reform in a dramaturgy of the intelligible starting in the 1850s. While this recenters liberalism within aesthetics, Amelia Chessons additionally provides ways to revise the historiography of the public/private divide.