Staging Romantic Chameleons and Imposters [Hardcover]

Examining chameleonic identities as seen in theatrical performances and literary texts during the Romantic period, this study explores cultural attitudes toward imposture and how it reveals important and much-debated issues about this time period. Brewer shows chameleonism evoked anxieties about both social instability and British selfhood.Introduction 1. The Case of the Pretended Duke of Ormond 2. Richard Cumberland's Imposters 3. Thomas Holcroft's Politicized Imposter and Sycophantic Chameleon 4. Fluid Identities in Hannah Cowley's Universal Masquerade 5. Mary Robinson's Polygraphs 6. James Kenney's Opportunistic, Reformative, and Imitative Chameleons Epilogue: The Perkin Warbeck Debate

William D. Brewers Staging Romantic Cha-meleons and Imposters proposes a broad definition of theatricality that moves from the stage to the page and from the world of fiction to real-life imposters. & This book will interest not only scholars of the periods drama but also students of, say, Keatsian poetics or Byronic mobility. (Recent Studies in the Nineteenth Century, Vol. 56 (4), Autumn, 2016) 

William D. Brewer is Professor of English at Appalachian State University, USA. Brewer cleverly distinguishes unique aspects of Romantic chameleons and imposters, both real and fictive, that sets them apart from a long history of deceptive behaviors in British culture. - Marjean D. Purinton, Professor of English, Texas Tech University, USA

Brewer's book is wholly original, carefully researched, and generally fascinating. It brings to light certain aspects of Romantic-period popular culture of which scholars who have browsed the periodical press of the 1780s and '90s have only shadowy conceptions. Brewer contributes much to recent scholarship on celebrity, sociability, and radical politics in the period, while also proving himself to be an incisive reader of comedy by such protean talents as Richard Cumberland, Hannah Cowll#(