Location: Death, the Dying and the Dead on the Early Modern Stage, St Catherine’s College, Oxford

This paper examines the relationship between celebrity and death, arguing that intimations of mortality helped shape Garrick’s public appeal both during and after his life. While I draw some of my examples from accounts of Garrick dying on-stage and at his London residence in January 1779, I also examine both hostile and hagiographic attempts to imagine this actor’s afterlives, in Hades, Parnassus and elsewhere. Analysis of this material provides further evidence for the changing social status of actors in the eighteenth century, while also challenging established models of performance and celebrity, including those of Joseph Roach, Marvin Carlson and Antoine Lilti.