サミュエル・フットの“不自然な”身体

Abstract

Samuel Foote (1720-1777) was a comedy playwright and actor whose plays were considered to be representative of eighteenth-century English theatre. However, these days, Foote is largely neglected by academia. My study of the Primitive Puppet-Shew reveals that the second marionette show Foote performed in his later years showed him performing with an unconventional casting that involved him and life-size wooden marionettes. Foote, who had a wooden prosthetic leg which he greatly depended upon, created a highly impressive production that raised questions regarding the boundaries between the human body and the marionette. A study of Foote’s first marionette show, Tragedy a-la-Mode, which he staged before the horse-riding accident in 1766 that cost him his leg, clarifies that Foote was aware of the significance of these questions even at that time. What exactly was the origin of Foote’s awareness of the significance of the body in experimental tragedy enacted using life-size pasteboard marionettes and a human actor? I attempt to answer this question through an exploration of Foote’s theatrical activities during his early to middle period, which can be regarded as the preparatory stage for his later marionette plays. Two of Foote’s theatrical essays are first analysed from his early period, “A Treatise on the Passions” and “The Roman and English Comedy Consider’d and Compar’d,” to clarify his attitude towards acting. In particular, I survey how Foote viewed Garrick’s “natural” style of acting, which the former examined in the two theatrical essays, and demonstrate that Foote intended to develop an acting technique that could compete with Garrick’s. I also elucidate Foote’s reaction to Garrick’s acting in his theatrical essays and how Foote’s concept of the body played an important role in his future theatrical activities as an actor and comedy playwright. Through an analysis of the character of Mrs. Cole in Foote’s masterpiece, The Minor, I clarify how he developed his concept of the actor’s body and subsequently applied it in his marionette plays.