Representations of disability in the early modern English theatre have garnered increasing scholarly attention in volumes such as Dissembling Disability in Early Modern English Drama (Lindsey Row-Heyveld, 2018), Early Modern Theatre and the Figure of Disability (Genevieve Love, 2019), and Performing Disability in Early Modern English Drama (ed. Leslie C. Dunn, 2020). Katherine Schaap Williams's 2021 monograph Unfixable Forms: Disability, Performance, and the Early Modern English Theater offers a timely contribution to this conversation, presenting a distinctive stance on discourses of disability—including deformity, sickness, and monstrosity—as they manifest on the English Renaissance stage.
The introduction, “Unfixing Early Modern Disability,” opens with a close reading of the “falling sickness” in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar to establish that the disabled, ailing, or ugly onstage serve as a metaphor for early modern audiences. Caesar, for Williams, is one of many examples, and it segues into the manuscript's overarching thesis: the varied disability metaphors onstage are problematic in that they are unstable and are not in fact “about disability” (3, italics original). Further, these disabilities operate more as theatrical devices than as embodied representations of actual conditions.
In Chapter 1, “Deformed: Wanting to See Richard III,” Williams rightly acknowledges that Shakespeare's Richard III cannot be ignored given the play's significance to disability studies and early modern theatre history. This chapter traces the villainous moniker of “disabled revenger” attached to Richard Gloucester (26) and probes what the disgraced king's body looks like onstage. Through persuasive analysis of Richard's deceptive rhetoric, including the character deeming himself a “marvelous proper man” and his claim that he “cannot flatter and look fair” in the play's first act (34–5), Williams finds that he allows for multiple (re)interpretations of his body, rendering it unknowable. Theatre history scholars will especially appreciate this chapter's engagement with Richard Burbage's well-known performance as Richard Gloucester and its contention that such a role provides the standard-bodied player a unique opportunity to flaunt his acting skills via impersonating deformity.
The second chapter, “Citizen Transformed: Being the Lame Soldier,” as its title suggests, addresses the “lame” soldier character and his relationship to citizenship and the social body in early modern England. Williams grapples with the tension between medical discourse's impulse toward “fixing bodies wounded by war” (57) and the theatrical impulse toward showcasing soldiers’ disabilities through prosthetics. Emphasis is granted to Stump's character in the anonymously authored A Larum for London, whose body represents “the consequences of war” (61), and Ralph's character in Thomas Dekker's The Shoemaker's Holiday, whose body serves as “visible evidence of soldierly shame rather than valor” (73).
Chapter 3, “Performing Cripple in Theatrical Exchange,” investigates disability as a form of comedy in The Fair Maid of the Exchange. Here Williams convincingly contends that the character of Cripple, who feigns disability, conflates his physical form with the theatrical experience in this unattributed city comedy. There is also an engaging examination of the comedy's punning on “crutch” as well as the possibilities for staging Cripple's “crooked habit” (106–9). The chapter ends by reminding readers that “Fair Maid reveals the stakes of the exchanges that depend on distinguishing between disability and imitation, turning a disability aesthetic into theatrical form” (118).
Although Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher's The Captain is briefly addressed, it is Thomas Middleton and William Rowley's The Changeling that receives the most significant coverage in the fourth chapter, “Changing the Ugly Body.” Williams first unpacks “ugliness” as difficult to define and extends this consideration into The Changeling's treatment of De Flores, who is deemed physically ugly, and Beatrice-Joanna, who is deemed morally ugly. Williams suggests that, in the theatrical sphere, De Flores's unattractiveness calls “attention to the structure of scrutiny that produces aesthetic judgments in the first place” (141). The chapter subsequently delves into broader notions of “the changeling” onstage and concludes that it is “both fixed shape and expression of unfixing,” which links directly with the original contention that ugliness is “illegible” (153).
The fifth chapter, “Playing Time, or Sick of Feigning,” speaks to theatrical representations of uncontrollable bodily movements. Williams theorizes that seeing tremors, epilepsy, and palsy onstage reminds spectators of their own physical vulnerability and that involuntary movements of the body reflect a character's lack of agency. Through analysis of epilepsy in Shakespeare's Othello, Williams suggests that the title character's epileptic fit disables him socially as much as physically. The chapter moves on to distinguish between artificial and legitimate performances of movements, including palsy and coughing, through robust assessment of Ben Jonson's Volpone. Williams finds that both performances—Volpone's initial feigning and the player's attempt to convey actual sickness—test the boundaries between an actor's presence and the character he embodies.
The monograph culminates with a necessary discussion of monstrosity. Chapter 6, “Making the Monster,” explores the discursive construction of monstrous figures onstage. By comparing theatrical and antitheatrical treatments of the monster in early modern texts, Williams surmises that an actor's body renders a much more unstable vision of monstrosity. Moreover, characters labeled fishlike, especially Shakespeare's Caliban of The Tempest, occupy much of the chapter's space. Through another compelling close reading alongside considerations of the play's costume history, Williams demonstrates that Caliban's monstrosity is “malleable” insofar as it “has to be made and to be made up” (214).
Overall, the monograph is well organized, with ample notes for greater insight into disability theories and early modern English drama. Williams's writing style is equally accessible, often relying on a conversational tone when framing complex ideas; indeed, the sixth chapter is followed by a “Coda,” wherein the author discloses personal experiences with disability. Although Unfixable Forms is aimed at early modern theatre and literary scholars, especially those interested in portrayals of nonstandard bodies, it could easily be incorporated into advanced undergraduate classrooms and is a recommended read for a range of academic audiences.
