Personating the Ripper: Civilian Performance and the Melodramatic Mode

Abstract

This article illuminates how the Ripper murders and their 1888 coverage re-theatricalised not only London, but many provincial towns. It looks beyond canonical theatrical contexts for, and responses to the Ripper, exploring extra-theatrical, popular performance ‘scenarios’ by civilian men, outside professional sites of theatricalised or medicalised spectatorship. It examines how civilian men personated key figures in the Ripper ‘scenario’: the plain-clothes detective, the Ripper's female victims, and the Ripper himself. These civilian performances illuminate our understandings of fin-de-siècle masculinity and its intersections with the melodramatic mode in theatre and culture. Simultaneously interrogating these performances through the lenses of fin-de-siècle theatre culture, the periodical press, and the anthropology of ritual magic reveals the cultural complexities of the ‘personations’ happening in streets and homes across the United Kingdom.