Location: Georgian Theatre Royal, Richmond

I will speak about death and the legacy of the eighteenth-century actor, with a particular focus on David Garrick (1717-1779) and Edmund Kean (1787-1833, and occasional performer at the Richmond Theatre). Garrick’s widow, upon seeing Kean act Richard III, claimed that he reminded her of her dead husband, and this talk will explore a number of specific, morbid parallels between the two actors: both excelled at death scenes, and the bodies of both were subjected to autopsies. What made a good eighteenth-century stage death? And what did enquiring minds hope to discover when they cut up the dead body of a famous actor?