Creative Spectacle: Hunt, Hazlitt and De Quincey

Abstract

Since Aristotle, spectacle has been one of the most vilified parts of theatrical production, and its condemnation has often led critics to devalue the spectacular achievements of the Romantic stage. While this condemnation was alive and well in the Romantic period, this article seeks to find a countertradition in the theatrical criticism of Leigh Hunt, Thomas De Quincey and William Hazlitt. These critics use the sublime to make spectacle empowering and even creative for the lower‐ and middle‐class audiences that frequented the theater. While these critics recognize the sublime’s tendency to overawe its audience, and even the sublime’s tendency to devolve into the vulgar, they find hope in the sublime’s tendency to bind an audience together before a common terror, to put its audience in touch with a material “real,” and ultimately to make the audience a creative participant in the spectacles they observe. For Hazlitt in particular, the audience exposed to spectacle goes through the same creative process as an artist copying nature; the mind flags when confronted with the inexpressible, but then rises to create its own kind of popular art.

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