The Decline and Fall of Sir Henry Irving
What wouldest thou do, old man?
Think'st thou that duty shall have dread to speak
When power to flattery bows? To plainness honor's bound
When majesty falls to folly.
King Lear I.i.146-49
On the evening of 13 October 1905, while returning to his room in the Midland Hotel in Bradford, England, to relax from his performance in the title role of Tennyson's Becket, Sir Henry Irving collapsed and died. The sudden end of the sixty-eight year-old actor-manager's long and distinguished life was not unexpected--his final tour had been interrupted by illnesses that deeply concerned his audiences and staff (Bingham 298-9)--but it was nevertheless keenly felt. Hundreds visited the body as it lay in state, and, with royalty in attendance, Irving was buried near David Garrick in Westminster Abbey. Meanwhile, newspapers were flooded with grandiloquent eulogies that, like Max Beerbohm's article for the Saturday Review, typically declaimed, "Irving was so romantically remarkable a figure in modern life . . . that his death is like the loss of a legend" (Beerbohm 396).
Even today, critics continue to lavish Irving with praise, describing him as the "leader of the English stage" (Findlater 124), "the greatest living actor of Shakespeare" in his time (Donaldson 69), and "the Victorian actor [sic]" (Rowell 173). Certainly, it is difficult to refute contentions that the actor-manager, born on 6 February 1838 and acting by 1856 at the age of eighteen, contributed significantly to the legitimacy and prestige of the theatre (Rowell 170-1). Irving's productions, never before equaled in splendor, expense, technical innovation and historical accuracy (Hughes 16-17), not only revived widespread interest in Shakespeare but they captivated long-standing admirers from every stratum of British society (Donaldson 54) and, in 1895, earned the actor the theatrical profession's first knighthood.
More puzzling are disparate and inadequate explanations for Irving's decline, which is generally regarded as having begun several years before the actor's death in 1905. Contemporary appraisals have appropriately noted the substantial setbacks caused by Irving's failing health and a devastating fire in his Lyceum Theatre in 1898, and, in 1902, the financial forfeiture of the theatre and leading lady Ellen Terry's departure from the company. But the turning point in Irving's career is placed variously between 1891, when Ibsen's Ghosts premiered at the Royalty Theatre (Rowell 153), and 1895, either because George Bernard Shaw's intimate correspondence with Terry was critical of her personal and professional association with Irving (Donaldson 97), or because Shaw, as drama critic for the Saturday Review, began publishing harshly unfavorable reviews of Irving's performances (Findlater 141), or both (Bingham 267-9). Of course, the question is less distressing to students of Henrik Ibsen, who, though not specifically addressing Irving's decline, imply an explanation by identifying the 1889 London premier of A Doll's House with the demise of Victorian theatre and the beginning of the inexorable rise of realistic drama (Postlewait 259; Fjelde xxv).
But Irving was not simply the innocent victim of misfortune. Nor is the actor-manager's decline accounted for merely by the appearance of Ibsen's plays. Though critics rarely fail to identify these important events as contributing both to the recession of Irving's preeminence and to the changing face of England's late nineteenth-century theatre, their prevalently idolatrous focus on Irving's achievements, as well as romantic conjecture about Shaw's relationship with Terry, usually obscure the less pleasant--and to theatre historians, immanently significant--likelihood that Irving was undermined by critics pursuing personal interests--interests which had been significantly advanced by the end of 1892.
Of course, it would be inappropriate to begin pointing fingers without first acknowledging that the Victorian theatre was undergoing important changes long before 1892, and that Irving was no less subject to or dependent on their influence. For example, with the growth of the London suburbs and improved access to the city in the 1830s onward, more and wealthier people were in need of entertainment (Schmid 9), and their patronage of the theatre combined favorably with actors William Charles Macready's and Charles Kean's efforts to diminish some of the long-standing prejudices against the art (Hughes 3).[1] Also, Irving's campaign for official recognition, begun in the early 1870s and complemented by a favorable opinion of the theatre delivered by a Church Congress in 1878 (Schmid 9), contributed significantly to public acceptance of the acting profession (Rowell 171). And as people from all social classes began attending performances, more theatres were built and existing theatres were modified to accommodate demands for comfort (Rowell 171-2). By 1882, London contained 57 licensed theatres and 415 music halls (Hughes 2), and the competition resulted in reduced prices for admission (Rowell 172), increased profits, and higher wages for actors (Hughes 2). Furthermore, actors were less frequently treated like "social and artistic outcast[s]" (Sanderson 11): with increased acceptance, their numbers jumped from 4565 in 1881 to 7321 in 1891, and by 1889 fully one third had attended a university (Sanderson 12-15).
In addition to contributing to and capitalizing on many of these changes, Irving mirrored other "modern" theatre manager's derision toward ballad-operas, foreign burlesques, and extravaganzas (Sanderson 24), and concentrated instead on providing a repertory of "so-called realistic melodramas" (Schmid 17). Unlike other managers, however, Irving spared no expense producing his spectacularly picturesque plays, and his romantic interpretations of Shakespeare appealed with unprecedented success to his intelligent audiences' increasing desire for serious drama (Schmid 17). By 1889, therefore, Irving, the acknowledged spokesman for his profession (Hughes 3), had helped reform the theatre by attracting larger, more literate audiences to more theatres than ever before--a necessary antecedent, one critic argues, for more sweeping change: the movement from melodramatic spectacles produced by powerful actor-managers like Irving to intellectual plays characterized by "ensemble acting, realistic settings, [and] contemporary themes" (Rowell 171).
But Irving was not seduced by the increasingly excited murmurs emanating from playhouses like the Novelty Theatre, where Ibsen's A Doll's House premiered on 7 June 1889. As demonstrated by an April, 1889 Command Performance of The Bells, the play that made him famous in 1871, his acting and managerial methods and philosophies were still attractive, still in demand. In fact, in an age when declamatory histrionics were still the accepted method of acting (Bingham 27), Irving's performances, while not always praised, were widely perceived as innovative and entertaining departures from theatrical standards. This hints, in fact, at one of Irving's goals: to entertain while educating the public (qtd. in Sanderson 16). His naturalistic character interpretations and splendid, historically accurate stages, meant to create illusions so vividly that his audiences could imagine themselves transported to another time (Rowell 170), were likewise intended to represent truth and beauty and, by extension, to elevate national morality (qtd. in Sanderson 16). Irving's art, therefore, was essentially romantic: though his characters and sets seemed realistic enough to be believable, they were ultimately conceived "to provide a beautiful and pleasing effect" (Rowell 36).
More clearly indebted to the romantic tradition is Irving's own articulation of his artistic goal, described in "The Art of Acting," an address delivered on 30 March 1885 at Harvard University while he toured America at the height of his career:
It is necessary to this art that the mind should have, as it were, a double consciousness, in which all the emotions proper to the occasion may have full swing, while the actor is all the time on the alert for every detail of his method. It may be that his playing will be more spirited one night than another. But the actor who combines the electric force of a strong personality with a mastery of the resources of his art must have a greater power over his audience than the passionless actor who gives a most artistic simulation of the emotions he never experiences. (Qtd. in Young 562)
Irving's technique of empathizing with a character's motives and passions while maintaining objective control of his own artistic abilities, developed from years of trial and error on the stage, stresses the intellect's conceptualizing powers.[2] Indeed, Irving studied his plays with scholarly precision and enthusiasm (Findlater 138), often researching and rehearsing privately for up to three months before performing all the parts for his cast (Bingham 158). As an actor, he spent much time perfecting nuances in his movement, expression, and articulation; as a director, he "drilled and drilled" his supporting cast with his interpretations of their roles (Donaldson 83-4), sometimes rehearsing up to ten weeks (Rowell 35); and as a producer, he spent remarkable sums of money both recreating with meticulous archaeological accuracy elaborate costumes and settings, and developing new gas, lime, and electric lighting techniques to emphasize themes, beauty, and moods (Hughes 16-7).[3] He was a perfectionist, envisioning and then demanding that his cast and crew recreate his conception of every part, every tone of voice, and every scene before opening night (Bingham 159).
Of course, more than one critic has logically pointed out that "the most marvellous powers of conception are of little use without an adequate faculty of expression and presentation" (Archer, W., Henry Irving 44; see also Hughes 14-15). Audiences were usually favorably overwhelmed by Irving's elaborate scenic displays--for example, Beerbohm, responding to complaints that "spectacle is a foe to poetry," wrote, "Irving may sometimes have overdone it; but he always overdid it beautifully" (Beerbohm 397)--and reactions to his performances were often positive. There seems to have been little disagreement, for instance, that Irving's stage presence was "intense" and "magnetic." As one review states:
By intensity I mean here that quality which results from the actor's capacity of delivering himself and all his forces and faculties, without reservation, to the demands of the character he assumes. . . . He never trifles, never forgets himself, never wearies, never relaxes the grip which he at once takes upon his part. . . . The dramatic consequence of such a high intensity is obviously great, but the value of the quality in holding the attention of the audiences is inestimable. (Qtd. in Young 560)
But praise of Irving's performances was frequently qualified by insistence that the spectator was invariably distracted by the actor's "thinnish voice, [his] strange diction, and some odd mannerisms" (Donaldson 52). One review reports, for example, "He has not learned how to sit, stand, or move with the ease, repose, vigor, and grace which are by turns or all together appropriate to attitude or action; and, worse even than this, he does not know how to speak his own language" (qtd. in Young 558). Another critic adds, "He had a dragging leg, an eccentric walk, and a voice without music. His legs were too thin, his shoulders high, his body clumsy and untrained" (Findlater 144). Furthermore, though many of Irving's contemporaries believed that his mannerisms enhanced his performances with "strange, suggestive . . . subtleties" (Beerbohm 397), still more maintained that they combined with his compelling intellectual control of his characters to create unprecedented (though inherently fascinating) interpretations. For instance, drama critic William Archer, writing in 1883, argues:
In proportion as a character calls for intellect rather than purely histrionic qualities in its interpreter--in proportion as it addresses itself to the intellect rather than the sympathy of the audience--in precisely the same proportion does Mr. Irving succeed in it. . . . By intellect he makes us forget his negative failings and forgive his positive faults. (Archer, W., Henry Irving 91-2).
Similarly, as George Bernard Shaw writes in Irving's obituary, "His Hamlet was not Shakespeare's Hamlet, nor his Lear Shakespeare's Lear: they were both avatars of the imaginary Irving in whom he was so absorbingly interested. . . . His creations were all his own; and they were all Irvings" (Shaw, Pen Portraits 163).
As his many profitable tours in the English provinces and America (Rowell 44), his post-performance banquets for royalty held on the stage of his Lyceum Theatre (Bingham 175), and his expensive productions attest, Irving's immense popular appeal weathered such criticism for decades. But his prominence also increasingly made him an ideal, perhaps even a preferred, target, especially for those interested in taking advantage of the changing attitudes toward the theatre which, ironically, Irving's success helped promote. As George Rowell, author of Theatre In the Age of Irving, has suggested, "theatrical reform must precede dramatic development" (5)--and for William Archer, drama critic for The World, and George Bernard Shaw, close friend of Archer and, in 1889, music critic for the same paper, the opportunity was ripe for development of a more realistic form of drama.
Though trained as a lawyer at Edinburgh University, William Archer (23 September 1856-27 December 1924), born one week before Irving's first professional performance, considered his first love the theatre. He was only seventeen years old in 1873 when, during a visit with relatives in Norway, he discovered Ibsen's Emperor and Galilean and immediately fell in love with the playwright's work (Archer, C., 36). He quickly assumed the role as translator and editor of Ibsen's plays, and thereafter he considered this work "one of the chief labours [and] . . . one of the greatest privileges" of his life (qtd. in Archer, C., 286). In fact, though his drama reviews for various papers including the Pall Mall Gazette and The World arguably established him as England's preeminent critic (Beerbohm 44), by the time of his death Archer had not only written almost 200 reviews and essays on Ibsen but he had translated almost all of his works, and he had even produced and directed several of his plays (Postlewait 4).
There is some disagreement about what attracted Archer to Ibsen. According to one critic, Archer was "more interested in the drama as an intellectual product than as a vehicle for acting," and therefore valued Ibsen's dramatic rendering of provocative social issues (Quinn 6). Another critic suggests that Archer responded to Ibsen's poetry and imagination (Schmid 40). However, a later critic argues that these opinions misrepresent Archer, who considered Ibsen worthy of his devotion for both reasons: in addition to believing that Ibsen's realistic dialogues "stimulate thought" by "destroying conventional lies and exorcising the 'ghosts' of dead truths," he admired what he called the playwright's poetically creative intelligence (qtd. in Postlewait 19). Archer believed Ibsen's plays force our consideration of "truth and falsehood, of justice and injustice, [which are] necessary to humanise the character and the situation" (qtd. in Postlewait 18).
In this respect, then, he was like Irving, believing that drama should elevate the mind toward truth. But it was not doctrinaire, or dogmatic, truth that Archer praised. A good play is not overtly didactic, resolving itself by "turning on points of causistry, questions of right and wrong" (Archer, W., Study and Stage 194). Instead, it should, like Ibsen's A Doll's House, "make people thoroughly realise the problem, not . . . force upon them the particular solution arrived at in this particular case" (qtd. in Postlewait 17). To Archer, a successful playwright "has stimulated thought; he has not tried to lay down a hard-and-fast rule of conduct" (qtd. in Postlewait 19).
Fulfilling this goal was less possible, Archer believed, within the kind of production Irving preferred, which compromised realism to melodramatic exaggeration and implausibility (Schmid 47).[4] Archer's artistic preference was for rationalism and naturalism (Postlewait 1), [5] and for a mimetic theatre which avoided "falsehood, distortion, and pose" as it interpreted psychological truth and natural beauty (Schmid 44-6). Predictably, Irving's flamboyant characters and extravagant stagecraft did not ordinarily compare well to plays like Ibsen's A Doll's House, with its "tastefully but not expensively furnished" set (Fjelde 43), and Nora's subtly played social awakening (Fjelde xxiii). If a play did not encourage intellectual appreciation, if it ended, like most melodrama, neatly or coincidentally, or if it distracted us with pageantry (as impressive as it might be), then it violated the criteria defining praiseworthy realism (Schmid 46-9).
Of course, this did not prevent Archer from applauding Irving occasionally. As late as 1893, Archer lauded the premier of Becket, claiming that Irving's character was well-spoken and beautifully composed (Archer, C. 202-3). But Archer's opinion of Irving was more regularly negative. As early as 1877, while still a student at Edinburgh University, he joined Robert Lowe and George Halkett in writing The Fashionable Tragedian, a scathing review of Irving's talents which focuses on the actor's distracting mannerisms (Archer, C., 69). Though he later excused this attack as a product of his "skittish" youth (Archer, C., 122), a handful of subsequent publications--among them, three pieces on Ibsen and another harsh review of Irving entitled, "Is Othello Fit for the Modern Stage?" (Archer, C., 421)--continue to insist upon verisimilitude in acting and movement toward a theatre of contemporary ideas (Shaw, Pen Portraits 22). This theme is repeated in his 1883 publication of Henry Irving: Actor and Manager: A Critical Study, which, though commending Irving for reviving the popularity of the theatre (28-32), argues for the emergence of modern realism:
It is impossible to doubt that his influence on the English drama is on the whole for good. What is to be most regretted in his policy of management . . . [is that] Mr. Irving confines his efforts almost entirely to the drama of the past. . . . He, if any one, is in a position to give us a serious modern drama which shall influence national life and thought beyond the circles of dilettantism. (107-8)
Archer's disappointment with Irving was shared by his colleague, George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856-2 November 1950), whom he first met in the British Museum reading room one year before the publication of Henry Irving. Shaw was similarly impatient with fashionable melodrama and actor-managers relying on proven, profitable repertories; however, his opinions were often more vehemently expressed. In his preface to Plays: Pleasant and Unpleasant, for example, Shaw complains, "The existing popular drama of the day is quite out of the question for cultivated people who are accustomed to use their brains" (I: x). Shaw believed that the theatre was largely controlled by actor-managers who, avoiding the controversy and risk inherent in staging modern realistic plays, bowed instead to public taste and to their own "growing Conservatism" (Shaw, Plays II: xi-xii). And in Shaw's mind, Irving, whom he accused of buying new plays to forestall their production (Shaw, Pen Portraits 24-5), represented the penultimate of these powerful conservative forces (Bingham 261).
Though Shaw believed that the theatre was a potentially influential social organ capable of humanizing its patrons (Donaldson 66), he was perhaps more vocal than Archer in promoting this change at Irving's expense. His reviews of Irving's performances, in addition to earning him the distinction as the actor's harshest critic (Rowell 104; Bingham 267), usually accentuated Irving's membership in the romantic old school (Donaldson 66). Properly, good plays illuminate truth by "forc[ing] the spectator to face unpleasant facts" (Shaw, Plays I: xxv); and to Shaw, Irving's productions were stale spectacles full of "false morality, sensationalism, artificiality, and hackneyed conventionality" (Greenfield 256).
Ultimately, Shaw considered Irving a great, albeit wasted, talent who clung to traditional Shakespeare in lieu of further reforming the theatre through Ibsen's modern realism (Greenfield 256-7; see also St. John xxiv). Certainly, he praised the actor for garnering respect for his profession (Shaw, Pen Portraits 165-8), and as late as 1896, Shaw even solicited Irving to produce a play of his, A Man of Destiny, though to no avail (Irving had, by that time, been angrily referring to the critic-playwright as "Mr. Pshaw") (Bingham 273-4). In fact, on separate occasions, both he and Archer proposed that Irving and his company were ideally suited for Ibsen's plays;[6] but the critics knew Irving was opposed to realistic drama, and Shaw, prevented by his commitment to theatrical reform from complimenting more than the actor-manager's sets and emotive prowess, strongly derided Irving's distracting mannerisms and profligacy (Bingham 267). [7]
When Shaw first met Archer in 1892, however, he did not yet have access to a medium through which to express his views, nor, at age twenty-five, was he fully prepared to articulate them (Schmid 28). It was not until Archer secured for him posts as book reviewer for the Pall Mall Gazette in 1884, and art critic for his own paper, The World, in 1886, that Shaw was better able to relate his socialist theories to the arts (Shaw, Collected Letters 105-6).[8] Though he was already remarkably active lecturing on Fabianism and Marxism, his association with the periodicals, and especially with William Archer, provided just the impetus he needed to develop his literary skills (Shaw, Collected Letters 107).
The friendship between Archer and Shaw was immediate and sure. When they discovered their mutual interest in promoting the realistic exploration of social issues in the theatre, Archer invited Shaw to help him proof his books and compose his drama reviews (Archer, C. 136; see also Shaw, Collected Letters 146-7 and 153-4). This collaboration quickly extended to work on a play, originally titled Rhinegold, for which Archer supplied the plot and Shaw the dialogue (Archer, C. 136). Archer eventually abandoned the play because of Shaw's modifications of his ideas (Archer, C. 137), but the two continued to find in their frequent visits to and discussions of the stage a similar desire for theatrical reform (Shaw, Collected Letters 154). [9]
By 1889, Archer and Shaw were on the verge of abetting one of the first significant attempts to initiate that reform: the June 7 premier of Ibsen's A Doll's House. Archer had already firmly established himself as a highly regarded proponent of the "New Drama" (Postlewait 4). Not only had his fellow critics learned to praise his "incorruptibility, intellectual force, and seriousness" (Schmid 98) but he had published several pieces about modern drama and four translations of Ibsen's plays (Archer, C. 421-3). Shaw, meanwhile, was in the process of becoming a celebrity himself through lectures and art reviews that were increasingly associated with inspired wit and uncompromising, fresh ideas (Shaw, Collected Letters 106-7). Now, as Novelty Theatre's June 7 premier of A Doll's House approached, Archer worked closely during rehearsals with Independent Theatre producer Charles Charrington and his wife, Janet Achurch, on his translation (Postlewait 14), and Shaw agreed to review the play to preserve Archer's credibility (Shaw, Collected Letters 213). Ironically, perhaps, Henry Irving and Ellen Terry, already well into their sixth month performing Macbeth, had, only a month earlier, produced Irving's earliest success, The Bells (1871) for a Command Performance (Brereton 270-2).
Though it might already be supposed that Archer's role as translator and assistant producer of A Doll's House jeopardizes the critic's objectivity, this in itself is not enough evidence to implicate him in a plot with Shaw to undermine Irving. There is reason, however, to suspect both men of bias. As Ibsen's translator, for example, Archer had an interest in the subsequent premiers of Rosmersholm (Vaudeville Theatre, 23 February 1891), Ghosts (Royalty Theatre, 13 March 1891), Hedda Gabler (Vaudeville Theatre, 20 April 1891), Peer Gynt (Vaudeville Theatre[?], Summer 1892), and The Master Builder (Trafalgar Square, 20 February 1893)--an interest which was appreciated by Ibsen himself, who thanked Archer "for all you have done in the past and are still doing to win admission for my works in England" (Ibsen 427). Indeed, according to one critic, Archer was intimately involved with daily rehearsals, "[working] closely with the actors on everything from changes in the phrasing . . . to delivery and blocking" (Postlewait 4). Admittedly, Shaw filled in for him as drama critic for The World while he published his own reviews of these productions in his competitors' journals (The Fortnightly Review, Cosmopolitan, and the Pall Mall Gazette among them [Postlewait 6]), but eventually he began writing favorably about Ibsen in his own paper (Shaw, Collected Letters 294). This decision induced him to seek Shaw's expertise as a proofreader in order to paliate his praise, and Shaw's responses often teased him for his hypocrisy (Shaw, Collected Letters 294 and 320-3).
Shaw, however, was perhaps no less guilty of critical bias than Archer. Of course, as Shaw's favorable reviews of Ibsen's works attest, he, too, was interested in the playwright's success, and he was profusely apologetic when Ibsen misunderstood Shaw's attempt to define the playwright's politics (Shaw, Collected Letters 257). Furthermore, Shaw made no secret of his intention to do harm to Irving's reputation (Bingham 269). Indeed, when he began his correspondence with Ellen Terry in June, 1992, he did so with the expressed purpose of driving a wedge between her and Irving. In a preface for an edition of his letters, Shaw writes:
This correspondence shews [sic] how, because Irving would not put his talent at the service of the new and intensely interesting development of the drama which had begun with Ibsen, and because he had wasted not only his own talent but Ellen Terry's, I destroyed her belief in him and gave shape and consciousness to her sense of having her possibilities sterilized by him. Then her position became unbearable; and she broke loose from the Ogre's castle, as I called it, only to find that she had waited too long for his sake, and that her withdrawal was rather a last service to him than a first service to herself. (St. John xxv)
In fact, in his third letter to the actress, Shaw attacks Irving for misquoting his book, The Quintessence of Ibsenism (October, 1891), by writing, "I will one day be even with Irving, who had better never had been born than quote my books without reading them" (Shaw, Collected Letters 347).
That Archer's and Shaw's efforts to promote modern drama at Irving's expense took their toll on the actor is undeniable. Shaw's correspondence with Terry, combined with reviews which regularly praised Terry while they derided Irving, left Irving feeling hurt and angry (Donaldson 98). Eventually, Irving asked Shaw to leave him alone (Bingham 274). Furthermore, Archer's persistent support for Ibsen frustrated Irving, because it was reulting both in the playwright's increased popularity and in the expanding influence of the Independent Theatre Society, which catered to modern drama and ensemble casts (Rowell 153). Finally, Irving's productions were turning less of a profit. Henry VIII (1892), for example, which cost Irving £11,000, failed to recoup expenses (Bingham 249), and King Lear (1892) closed with a loss after seventy-six performances (Hughes 117). Though Irving would succeed admirably with his 1893 production of Becket, he would never again enjoy the profits he had made before 1892 (Donaldson 103).
Indeed, it is clear that by December, 1892, when Shaw's first play, Widowers' Houses (a revision of his and Archer's Rhinegold) premiered, Irving's career was already suffering from the relentless advance of modern drama. And though the Queen would request a Command Performance of Becket in February, 1893 (Brereton 292), its success would be paled, somewhat, by the premier of Ibsen's The Master Builder later that same month. Archer and Shaw, promoting the realistic New Drama, had put the actor irreversibly on the defensive.
Chronology of Irving's Profession
Chronology of Ibsen, Shaw's & Archer's efforts, 1889-1893
Back to Bibliography and Scholarship
|
©2005 |
