The following work was produced in April, 2004 in association with the University of South Florida
Endnotes
1 Though today's acting profession is regularly accused of moral and ethical laxity, the public's low regard for those associated with the Victorian theatre was particularly acute. Summarizing the general attitude, one author writes:
The actor was a social outcast without status and social respect. . . . In men it encouraged excessive egotism and vanity inflated by the adulation of their admirers. It also predisposed men to a life of self-indulgence encouraging 'lax principles' and 'complaisant tolerance' of a low morality. Even worse . . . was the recurrent suspicion of sexual immorality in their lifestyles. At worst there was a shadowy overlap between the theatre and prostitution. Some theatres had promenades and foyers where prostitutes paraded and solicited openly, while prostitutes and actresses were still not in wholly separate categories. Until late Victorian times "actress" was a disreputable description.' (Sanderson 11)
Opinions started to change in the 1830s as actor-managers Macready and Kean publicized their revulsion of their less disciplined fellow actors (Sanderson 11) and began drawing larger, better educated crowds to their "gentlemanly melodrama[s]" and scholarly productions of Shakespeare (Hughes 3). Their efforts, extending into the 1850s, were augmented by Samuel Phelps, whose Sadler's Wells company mounted popular, critically acclaimed Shakespeare plays from the mid-1840s until 1862 (Hughes 3). The subsequent drought of "serious" Shakespeare productions, lasting until Irving's Hamlet in 1874, account for references to Irving's revival of Shakespeare in William Archer’s Study and Stage (98). Return
2 Irving's extravagance and frequent insistence on historical accuracy are well-recorded. For example, to study for the role of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice (1879), Irving escorted his staff to Venice (Rowell 36).
For his 1882 production of Romeo and Juliet (at the cost of £10,000), Irving commissioned eighteen sets, which a modern critic relying on contemporary accounts describes:
Juliet's balcony was a lofty marble loggia instead of the “little wobbling cage” of tradition. . . . Irving's new lighting techniques displayed Juliet's bedroom in three different lights at different times of day, including a dawn that gathered and changed as the lovers parted. The costumes used rich new fabrics that were just beginning to come on the market. Walter Hann painted special tableau curtains that looked like embroidered cream satin, and Sir Julius Benedict composed romantic music for the big Lyceum orchestra and a “selected choir.” (Hughes 160)Furthermore, his production of Faust (1885), which required almost five years to prepare, cost almost £15,500 and employed over 430 in staff, cast, orchestra, and chorus (Rowell 26). Though the sets for King Lear (1892) were based on sketches and paintings provided by Pre-Raphaelite painter Ford Mattox Brown (Hughes 123), his productions of Macbeth (1888) and Cymbeline (1896), for instance, were designed in consultation with Shakespeare scholars (Hughes 108, 211). Henry VIII cost Irving an extraordinary £16,500 in 1892 (Hughes 17), part of which paid for Cardinal Wolsey's robe which the costumers, guided by portraits, first wove with a special silk to match the original, and then sent to Rome to be dyed in red (Findlater 139). In comparison, Ibsen's plays must have seemed unqualifiedly ascetic to Irving.
Tree was no different, believing that the sophistication of modern stagecraft was required to succeed, since it was possible to produce the play with “elaborate stage treatment” suggested by Shakespeare himself but unattainable in his day (Tree, “Personal Explanation” 1). Consequently, in productions that attracted audiences totaling more than 220,000 over the season in 1900, Tree mounted A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Her Majesty’s Theatre featuring “live rabbits and a carpet of grass with flowers that could be plucked” (Brockett 557). Similarly, his opening scene in The Tempest (1904) apparently so accurately portrayed a storm and shipwreck that members of the audience grew seasick, and in the 1906 production of Stephen Phillips’ Nero, Rome is reputed to have “burned so realistically that the more nervous among the audience got ready to leave” (“Beerbohm Tree” 2). Return
3 According to William Archer, Irving's emphasis on the intellect is probably the result of his reliance on three decades of self-training (Archer Henry Irving 54)—an unsurprising development, perhaps, due to the limited opportunities for drama education. Prior to the 1900s, instruction for aspiring actors was restricted to a few acting companies which provided expensive training for affluent children, a number of individual tutors (often retired actors), and some London colleges (especially music schools, where education emphasized elocution) (Sanderson 32-8). Irving's training, however, probably did not extend much beyond developing his voice. In 1849, the eleven-year old Irving attended London's City Commercial School, where the headmaster, Dr. Pinches, instructed him in elocution and encouraged his involvement in recitations and school entertainments. In 1852, Irving received elocution training in Henry Thomas's City Elocution Class, where the "old-fashioned ranting style" of declamatory acting was replaced by more naturalistic modes of expression (Bingham Henry Irving 27). He might have received some training in "the usual curriculum of acting, voice production, dancing, fencing, and play production" from actor-manager Ben Greet shortly thereafter, but there is no evidence that Irving ever formally enrolled (Sanderson 34-5). Return
4 On separate occasions, both Archer and Shaw proposed that Irving and his company were ideally suited for Ibsen’s plays. In a review of Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkman (premiering 16 January 1897), Shaw suggests that the play would have complimented the Lyceum company's repertory nicely; but he is quick to point out, "But Sir Henry Irving's insensibility to Ibsen is notorious: there is no chance, unfortunately, of the hint being taken" (Shaw, Pen Portraits 146). Similarly, in his 1906 introduction to an edition of Ibsen's The Pretenders, Archer suggests that Irving would have been perfect as Nicholas; however, he adds, "But of course no English actor-manager would dream of undertaking a character which dies in the middle of the third act" (qtd. in Postlewait 173). Of course, Irving never mounted a play by Ibsen or Shaw. Reflecting in 1929 on his first sight of Irving, Shaw writes, "I instinctively felt that a new drama inhered in this man, though I had then no conscious notion that I was destined to write it; and I perceive now that I never forgave him for baffling the plans I made for him (always, be it remembered, unconsciously)" (St. John xx). Return
5 Responding in 1904 to criticism that his production of The Tempest violated artistic conventions, good taste, and common sense, Tree responded with the publication of an apologia defending his treatment. The production, deemed “a landmark in the play’s theatrical history” by contemporary scholar David Lindley of the University of Leeds’ School of English (Tree “Personal Explanation” 1), also earned critical praise in Brian Pearce’s “Beerbohm Tree’s Production of The Tempest, 1904” (1995). Piecing together promptbooks, reviews and scholarship from the period, Pearce, a PhD from the University of London and a practicing theatre director, finds in Tree’s production innovation visual representations evocative of avant-garde surrealism (Pearce 304). Pearce argues, furthermore, that Tree’s sympathetic treatment of Caliban anticipates later scholarship emphasizing this character’s thematic centrality to the play (Pearce 6-7). Finally, Pearce suggests that in offering such new interpretations, Tree is no different from modern “scenic writers” who interpret the author’s work and assume artistic control over the text (Pearce 308). Return
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