Citation

Gregory F. Theatr. Surv. 2016; 57(2): 218-231.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2016, Cambridge University Press)

DOI

10.1017/S0040557416000065

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

In 1893, MRS. Patrick (Stella) Campbell appeared as the title character in Arthur Wing Pinero's The Second MRS Tanqueray at the St James's Theatre in London. The play told of a respectable widower, Aubrey Tanqueray, and his doomed second marriage to Paula, a younger woman with a past. Good wives did not have pasts, and Paula's is particularly scandalous for she has, since adolescence, kept house with a series of men. Aware that their marriage is unlikely to be accepted by their peers, Paula and Aubrey retreat to the country, where they are joined by Aubrey's adult daughter, Ellean. Ellean subsequently becomes engaged to a young soldier, Hugh Ardale. The crisis of the play occurs when Paula and Ardale come face to face and the audience learns that the pair had once lived together in London. With this revelation, Paula becomes convinced that she cannot outrun her past, and the play closes with her suicide. Despite the conventionality of its ending, the play was considered modern and daring and is remembered as one of the first attempts to represent the fallen woman sympathetically and to question the sexual double standard that operated in Victorian society. Campbell's clarity of expression and relatively unmannered delivery enhanced Pinero's uncommonly sympathetic portrait of a former courtesan. However, it was the actress's physical presence that particularly captured the audience's imagination. Campbell was tall, pale, and thin to the point of angularity - A representative example of the fashionable neurasthenic woman of the 1890s. Pinero's characterization joined with Campbell's playing style and (most important) her physicality to create the entity I dub Paula Tanqueray circa 1893. This entity haunted Campbell's entire career, acting as a ghostly double to her living body both onstage and off. Campbell continued to play the role of Paula Tanqueray into the 1920s, yet as the actress's body matured and changed, that of the ghost retained its svelte 1893 proportions and youthful charm, creating a corporeal dissonance that disrupted audience reception. © American Society for Theatre Research 2016.

Language: en