
Contents
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Natural History, Deep Time, and Wild Nature on Stage Natural History, Deep Time, and Wild Nature on Stage
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Freaks and Missing Links Freaks and Missing Links
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Deflating Darwinism Deflating Darwinism
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Parodying Evolution Parodying Evolution
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1 “I’m Evolving!”: Birds, Beasts, and Parodies
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Published:March 2015
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Abstract
This chapter focuses on theatrical engagements with evolution during the nineteenth century. The Victorian era witnessed a cultural landscape in which “curiosity was a great leveler.” Every type of theatrical performance was on offer, from melodramas to pantomime to music hall to fairground shows, circus, tableux vivants, and public exhibitions. Theater had a decisive role to play in the public taste for biology. Plays about everything from the “birds and the beasts” to physiognomy and galvanism testify to the public appetite for biologically based entertainment. This chapter explores the stage's incorporation of the abstract notion of geological “deep time” as well as the inner lives of animals. It also considers the influence of naturalism on specific plays, playwrights, and scenography during the period. It builds on, and complements, the existing scholarship on performance modes outside mainstream theater, such as freak shows and exhibits of commercially displayed peoples in the newly founded zoological gardens of cities like Paris, London, Berlin, and Copenhagen. Finally, it discusses counter-evolutionary forces in the popular theater that ridicule and parody Darwinism.
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