What is it about?
This essay discusses recent appearances of Queen Victoria in television sketch comedy, tracing common tropes that have held fast since the nineteenth century, while arguing that Victoria's recent manifestations are more directly a response to heritage cinema and television, than a reaction to the anti-Establishment attitudes of the 1960s.
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Why is it important?
I focus on the comedic history of Queen Victoria being played by a man, and considers what it means in terms of gender theory when a 'pantomime Dame' figure is reclaimed by women.
Perspectives
Tracking comedic representations of Queen Victoria became a minor obsession for me while I was writing my PhD thesis 'Angry Ghosts: Staging the Victorians in British Theatre after 1968'. With this article, I was finally able to put them all in one place.
Dr Benjamin Poore
University of York
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Reclaiming the Dame: Cross-dressing as Queen Victoria in British theatre and television comedy, Comedy Studies, September 2012, Intellect,
DOI: 10.1386/cost.3.2.177_1.
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