The Ghost on the Machine: The Corsican Trap and the Spirit of Industrial Capitalism

Abstract

In 1852, Charles Kean (1811-1868) mounted the original production of a melodrama that spawned a multimedia sensation - The Corsican Brothers by Dion Boucicault (c. 1820-1890). The runaway success of Boucicault's melodrama was largely owed to the legendary ghost scene at the end of Act One, in which a phantom rose from beneath the stage, borne aloft by technology specifically invented for the play and eventually nicknamed ‘the Corsican trap’. The production history of The Corsican Brothers illuminates Victorian and Edwardian theatre's ambivalence towards the spirit of industrial capitalism. This ideology took root during the Industrial Revolution, inculcating expectations of ceaseless innovation in the realm of technology. It taught Victorians to value industrial wonders, modern machines like the trains and telegraphs transforming the world around them, machines that entered and re-entered the market in countless iterations, always new, improved, faster, more efficient and profitable. These attitudes towards industrial wonders informed reactions to what I term ‘New Spectral Stagecraft’, cutting-edge technologies invented to conjure theatrical phantasms. In 1852, the rapturous reception of the Corsican trap affirmed the spirit of industrial capitalism. And yet the contraption debuted in a play that resisted that same ideology, activating nostalgia for a pre-industrial, pre-enlightened past through its supernatural subject matter and romanticized display of obsolete machinery. In decades to follow, revivals of Boucicault's play further refused to satisfy Victorians’ hunger for the new, redeploying the Corsican trap in lieu of novel devices -- a nostalgic tribute to Kean's production that disappointed some audience members. In the end, the rise, fall and revival of the Corsican trap reveal mixed feelings towards technological innovation and further lay bare a persistent - and often productive - tension between industrial logic and theatrical aesthetics in Victorian and Edwardian London. The article concludes with remarks on how this case study shines a light on contemporary performance.