‘They Shew Me Off in Every Form and Way’: The Iconography of English Comic Acting in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries

Abstract

Comic actors in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, such as John Liston and Joseph Munden, were familiar not only on stage but also iconographically. Critical writing on both performers indicates their strong visual impact. Some critics accused them of caricature, but references to Hogarth in accounts of these actors by Lamb and Hazlitt imply that they followed Hogarth's own emphasis on observation rather than caricature. Indeed, illustrations of comic actors or inspired by comic actors often hover on the borders of caricature, but ultimately avoid it. In performance the live body of the actor often counters or uses gestically the degradation implicit in caricature, although iconography sometimes fixes the actor in poses and expressions where caricature predominates.