“Ach for It”: Anthony Leigh, Autonomy, and Queer Pleasures in the Restoration Playhouse
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This essay's central premise - the queer pleasures and structures of feelings animated by performance though closed off in text, as embodied in the "carnal interplay" of spectator and Anthony Leigh's signature disabled old man roles - is exciting and important. The argument about the many ways in which performance queers the text and opens up affective and desiring possibilities is really excellent, but not as persuasively or as thoroughly followed through as it could/needs to be.
The word play with both "dotes"(p9) and "property" (P8) is weak. " A property" used in the context cited clearly means "a means to an end, a person to be made use of; a tool", with the theatrical connotation only a distant secondary meaning. Likewise, "to dote" is BOTH to bestow love AND to be intellectually impaired (though age). Acknowledging the textual play with meaning would strengthen the argument and open up more space for queer performance, as actors shape and give meaning to the text. The lack of attention to nuance made the reading, esp. of The Fond Husband, less persuasive.
The essay, for its claims to privilege performance and audiences, actually pays very little attention to either, focusing on the text and leaning on Cibber's 1740 assessment rather too heavily. More on the disjunction between the performer's physically impressive performance of incapacity and audience appreciation for this skill needed (think Dick van Dyke's Mr Dawes Sr in Mary Poppins, or for more contemporary examples, Falstaff, esp. in Merry Wives). The pleasure in "seeing through" the performance of impotence; the pleasure also of watching a brilliant physical comic routine. None of this detracts from the argument being made, but nuances it and, I think, highlights the variety of "non-genital pleasures" available in the playhouse.
Leigh's performance of the epilogue for Fond Husband deserves much closer scrutiny and analysis. The epilogue's traditional function is to seduce the audience (cf Solomon and Marsden), and thinking of how the "grotesque" comic male (and more on this line of performance & low comedy more generally) queers this space would be illuminating. In the same vein, I found the concluding analysis of the "lost" queer performance in Sir Anthony Love problematic as it stands. I can see the attractions in a contrafactual reading of the significance the scene might have had, but for an essay that purports to focus on embodied performance, a cut scene, which is not even a ghost of performance, is the wrong note to end on. You might instead look to Leigh's successor, Penkethman, who (anecdotally at least) danced his trousers off -much to the delighted horror of the audience - when playing a superannuated lover role.
The excellent engagement with queer/crip theory is not matched by attention to theories of performance and affect, and the difference between theatre and the novel not adequately acknowledged.
Essay also in need of careful proofreading and copyediting. Note to self retained (p 10, l. 378) and many typos.
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
I have detected some minor mistakes:
line 115: "oc=cupied"
p. 4, line 138: quotation formatting?
line 234: capital "A" at the end of line should be "a" (and)
line 235: missing "s" in "stake out"
line 250: quotation formatting?
line 404: "thy" instead of "they"
page note 15: correct 'see" to "see"
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
I would definitely recommend publication for this article - its timely, relevant and a fresh look at key plays of the period though a queer lens.
Suggestions for revision:
- Define 'queer' earlier in paper -and locate within queer lens on C17 drama - much of the theory/ critical material actually looks at C18 texts - so this just needs clarifying/ focalising - and should be to the author's benefit in situating originality of approach.
- Needs to (in doing 1) look at Valerie Traub Thinking Sex with the Early Moderns (2017) and Atwood ' Fashionably Late: Queer Temporality and the Restoration Fop' (2013) and Varnado The Shape of Fancy (2019)
- Some lay-out, colloquial word-choice and typo issues need correcting
- There are occasional traces of perhaps an oral paper and some notes to self (eg p.10 l.375) - these need smoothing over - including some repetition/ over-statement of argument
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
