Garrick, the Ghost and the Machine
1982; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 34; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/3206806
ISSN1086-332X
Autores Tópico(s)Fashion and Cultural Textiles
ResumoThe name of one Perkins, hair-dresser and wig-maker, enters into the history of the eighteenth-century stage on the strength of a technical contribution to David Garrick's Hamlet. The actor employed Perkins's services to enliven the Prince's first encounter with his father's ghost, a scene in which Garrick's famous start made Lichtenberg's flesh creep, set poor Partridge's knees to knocking, and moved Dr. Johnson to express concern over the effect of the shock on the ghost. When other spectators marveled that Hamlet's hair actually seemed to stand on end as the ghost appeared, they testified to a fact. The ingenious Perkins had engineered a mechanical wig to simulate the precise physiognomy of mortal dread. On the line Look my lord, it comes, the hairs of this remarkable appliance rose up obligingly at the actor's command. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, flipped his wig. This sudden perturbation astonished Garrick's audiences and embarrassed his subsequent biographers, who have found in Perkins's fright wig a cause for baffled amusement and apologetic muddle-just the sort of claptrap the actor was, alas, not above.'
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