Introduction -- Wollstonecraft and romantic (anti) theatricality -- "Stage effect": transgressive theatricality in Wollstonecraft's The wrongs of woman; or Maria -- Becoming a "sign-post": ethics and theater -- "The subterfuge of law": theatricality and juridical discourse -- "The gallery is in the place of the house": the French revolution and state theater -- Retaliatory self-invention: Siddons, Wollstonecraft, and theatricality