John Ruskin and the Victorian Theatre

John Ruskin and the Victorian Theatre Katherine Newey and Jeffrey Richards John Ruskin and the Victorian Theatre Als...

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John Ruskin and the Victorian Theatre Katherine Newey and Jeffrey Richards

John Ruskin and the Victorian Theatre

Also by Katherine Newey: WOMEN’S THEATRE WRITING IN VICTORIAN BRITAIN MARY SHELLEY’S FRANKENSTEIN RUSKIN, THE THEATRE AND VICTORIAN VISUAL CULTURE (edited with Anselm Heinrich and Jeffrey Richards) Also by Jeffrey Richards: IMPERIALISM AND MUSIC SIR HENRY IRVING: A VICTORIAN ACTOR AND HIS WORLD HOLLYWOOD’S ANCIENT WORLDS THE ANCIENT WORLD ON THE VICTORIAN AND EDWARDIAN STAGE A NIGHT TO REMEMBER: THE DEFINITIVE TITANIC FILM DIANA: THE MAKING OF A MEDIA SAINT (edited with Scott Wilson and Linda Woodhead ) THE UNKNOWN 1930s: AN ALTERNATIVE HISTORY OF BRITISH CINEMA, 1929–1939 (editor ) UNEASY CHAIRS: LIFE AS A PROFESSOR (editor )

John Ruskin and the Victorian Theatre Katherine Newey and

Jeffrey Richards

© Katherine Newey and Jeffrey Richards 2010 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978–0–230–52499–6

hardback

This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Newey, Katherine. John Ruskin and the Victorian theatre / Katherine Newey and Jeffrey Richards. p. cm. Summary: “This the first sustained study of the interest of John Ruskin in the theatre of his time. It examines Ruskin’s active engagement with and influence on the Victorian popular theatre. Ruskin was an enthusiastic and catholic theatre-goer, enjoying pantomime as much as Shakespeare. Through the lens of Ruskin’s discussions of pantomime, melodrama, Shakespearean tragedy, and painting and the stage, Newey and Richards offer a new view of the late Victorian stage focusing on London’s West End in its heyday”—Provided by publisher. ISBN 978–0–230–52499–6 (hardback) 1. Theater—Great Britain—History—19th century. 2. Ruskin, John, 1819–1900—Influence. 3. Ruskin, John, 1819–1900—Knowledge—Performing arts. I. Richards, Jeffrey. II. Title. PN2594.N49 2010 792.0942'09034—dc22 2010002707 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

For David Mayer

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Contents List of Illustrations

viii

Acknowledgements

ix

1. John Ruskin at the Theatre

1

2. Ruskinian Influences

19

3. E.W. Godwin and Ruskinian Aesthetics

45

4. Toga Plays

83

5. Melodrama

114

6. Pantomime

140

7. Ruskinian Shakespeare

168

8. Stage Beauty

209

Endnotes

233

Index

253

vii

List of Illustrations Cover:

Mary Anderson as Galatea, in Pygmalion and Galatea. The Graphic, 22 December 1883. Author’s collection

Figure 1: Ellen Terry as Ophelia. Author’s collection

221

Figure 2: Mary Anderson as Hermione. Author’s collection

222

Figure 3: Engraving of W.S. Herrick, Othello and Desdemona. Illustrated London News, 21 February 1874. Author’s collection

224

Figure 4: Mary Anderson as Juliet. Author’s collection

230

viii

Acknowledgements The authors wish to thank the Arts and Humanities Research Council for their substantial support of ‘Ruskinian Theatre: The Aesthetics of the Late Nineteenth Century Popular London Stage, 1870–1901’, the research project of which this book and Ruskin, the Theatre and Victorian Visual Culture (also published by Palgrave Macmillan) are the products. Our postdoctoral research associates, Drs Anselm Heinrich and Peter Yeandle, contributed their considerable expertise, energy and imagination to the project, and extended and developed it through their invaluable work. Other support was offered by the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC, that true haven for scholars, where Kate Newey was a Folger Fellow in 2006–7. The Ruskin Seminar provided a knowledgeable and interested scholarly community for testing our work in progress, and we would particularly like to thank Professors Keith Hanley and Stephen Wildman, and Dr Andrew Tate. Libraries and librarians as always make our work possible: thanks to our colleagues at the Ruskin Library (Lancaster) and the University Library, Lancaster, the Brotherton Library (Leeds), the University Library, Birmingham, the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC, the Pierpont Morgan Library and Museum, New York, the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas (Austin), the British Library, the National Library of Scotland, and the Theatre Museum, Blythe House. We acknowledge the generosity of these libraries and archives in allowing us to quote from archives, scrapbooks and manuscripts in their holdings. Our colleagues in the Department of History, Lancaster University, and the Department of Drama and Theatre Arts, University of Birmingham, have been interested and supportive throughout. Substantial contributions were made to this project by the participants in three annual Ruskinian Theatre colloquia from 2005 to 2007, and we thank all speakers and other participants. Personal thanks from the authors go to members of the Historiography Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research (particularly Tom Postlewait), Ken Cerniglia, Claire Cochrane, Alison Collins, Jim Davis, James Dearden, Rachel Dickinson, Richard Foulkes, Cynthia Gamble, Howard Hull, Russell Jackson, Adrien Lanusse, Emma Loveridge, Gail Marshall, Gillian Mawby, Lauren Proctor, June Rye, Richard Schoch and Sharon Aronofsky Weltman. This book, and the project from which it comes, survived both authors’ broken wrists and, for Kate Newey, a job and house move, three years as Head of Department and the relocation of an entire Department. Our thanks to our Palgrave editors, Paula Kennedy and Steven Hall, for bearing ix

x

Acknowledgements

with us. And finally, our thanks to our dedicatee, David Mayer, whose work as a theatre historian is challenging and inspirational, and whose personal support is unstinting, however much he may wish to argue with us over the contents of this book. All references to Ruskin’s works are from E.T Cook and Alexander Wedderburn (eds) (1903–12) The Complete Works of John Ruskin (London: George Allen) and are indicated by CW, volume and page number parenthetically within the text. References to Ruskin’s diaries are from Joan Evans and John Howard Whitehouse (eds) (1956–9) The Diaries of John Ruskin (Oxford: Clarendon) and are indicated by EW, volume and page number parenthetically within the text.

1 John Ruskin at the Theatre

The name of John Ruskin, the sage of Brantwood, pre-eminent Victorian art critic and social commentator, is not one that has customarily been associated with the theatre. But he was a long-time theatregoer, had a circle of friends associated with the theatre and made regular pronouncements about the value of the theatre as an educational form. In this book, we trace the ways in which Ruskin’s direct and indirect engagements with the popular theatre of his time reveal theatre as a medium through which art can elevate and educate a mass audience. Through the lens of Ruskin’s social and aesthetic theories, we argue that the Victorian theatre develops the model of a ‘feeling individual’, in the service of traditional morality, seeking to stage a vision of the world which resists the reduction of character to mechanism through the forces of late Victorian industrial capitalism. In 1888 Ruskin was reported as saying: ‘I have always held the stage quite among the best and most necessary means of education – moral and intellectual’ (CW 34.549). This was only the latest of a succession of such pronouncements. In his 1880 essay on the functions and formation of a museum or picture gallery, he equated the museum and the theatre, saying: ‘both are means of noble education’ (CW 34.259). We can assume that he saw the function of the theatre as he saw the function of the museum and gallery being ‘primarily for simple persons. Children that is to say, and peasants’, and that it was to ‘manifest to these simple persons the beauty and life of all things and creatures in their perfectness. Not their modes of corruption, disease or death’. In the gallery, ‘every form of noble art would take harmonious and instructive place’. In 1874 he had compared the church and the pantomime as ‘these two theatrical entertainments – where the imaginative congregations still retain some true notions of the value of human and beautiful things’ and ‘they return some just notion of truth in moral things’ (CW 28.52). Truth, beauty and harmony: these emerge as recurrent themes in his pronouncements on art. He set out his priorities in 1

2 John Ruskin and the Victorian Theatre

judging a work of art in The Stones of Venice and he applied the same criteria to plays as to paintings: It is well, when we have strong moral and poetical feeling manifested in painting to mark this as the best part of the work; but it is not well to consider as a thing of small account the painter’s language in which that feeling is conveyed; for if that language be not good and lovely, the man may indeed be a just moralist or a great poet, but he is not a painter and it was wrong of him to paint (CW 9.448). He gave a practical example of the educational value of theatre in a lecture in 1875 when he said: Remember that no mortal of you is able to write history at all, or understand a single event of it, unless he can understand the motives and the movements of the strongest minds of men, and has sympathy and passion scarcely less than theirs. I only know four bits of perfect history in the English language – Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, King John, Richard the Second, Henry the Fourth (CW 22.300). By 1884, when he was writing his notes for the continuation of St Mark’s Rest, he had included Scott along with Shakespeare as a teacher of history: There have been only two real historians (to my thinking) since Herodotus-Shakespeare and Walter Scott. Neither are entirely to be trusted as to dates, or even material facts. Even Thucydides is only a chronicler, a useful sort of person, but not an historian. But once understand Shakespeare’s Caesar, Henry the Fifth, and John of Gaunt; once understand Scott’s Marmion, King James, Coeur de Lion, Saladin, and Robin Hood, and after that you may read the chronicles of the great ages, and see your way into them for yourself (CW 24.432). This preference for drama as the teacher of history – and Scott’s novels were much dramatised in the nineteenth century and performed alongside Shakespeare – stemmed from Ruskin’s basic definition of history, which was that: the most important part of the history of man is that of his imagination. What he actually does, is always in great part accidental; it is at best a partial fulfilment of his purpose; and what we call history is often […] merely a record of the external accidents which befall men getting together in large crowds. The real history of mankind is that of the slow advance of resolved deed following laboriously just thought; and all the greatest men live in their purpose and effort more than it is

John Ruskin at the Theatre

3

possible for them to live in reality […] It is therefore a true historian’s work diligently to separate the deed from the imagination; and when these become inconsistent, to remember that the imagination, if precious at all, is indeed the most precious (CW 22.269). The novelist and the dramatist, then, by exploring the mind, the imagination and the motivation of the great men who shape history are truer guides to the deeper historical truth than mere chroniclers. However, institutions which set out to provide edification for the people did not always live up to Ruskin’s high expectations. When the Crystal Palace moved to Sydenham, Ruskin hoped it would be used as a vehicle for artistic and educational uplift, for a population ‘thirsting for knowledge, where contemplation may be consistent with rest, and instruction with enjoyment. It is impossible to estimate the influence of such an institution on the minds of the working classes’ (CW 12.418). Ruskin went regularly to the Crystal Palace to attend concerts and to play chess against a chessplaying automaton (CW 34.xlv). But he was appalled by the vulgarity of some of the displays, for example the gigantic head of a pantomime clown continually collapsed by machinery. He insisted that it was impossible to combine ‘a place of amusement and an art school’ and called for the Palace and similar institutions to improve their educational thrust – with plenty of flowers, ‘always carefully named, and with good popular and useful information about them given in a cheap alphabetical catalogue’; good prints and pictures and panoramas and dioramas ‘with an attention to truth and a splendour and care in the execution which should […] be very truly a school both in physical geography and art’. He added significantly: ‘I am prepared to use the theatre, and that largely, but a very different kind of theatre from any we frequent now’ (CW 19.217–18).1 To Evangelical Protestants, the theatre was anathema. Although not hostile to culture in general – they favoured reading the classics, singing and performing sacred music, studying pictures for the moral uplift, sightseeing and nature study – they were intensely suspicious of public amusements (theatregoing, dancing, card-playing, field sports). They were particularly suspicious of theatre, which they saw as a distraction from religion, as a vehicle for a bohemian life-style and value-system antithetical to their own and as a promoter of frivolity, vanity and female forwardness. These views were clearly shared by Ruskin’s mother Margaret, who disapproved of the theatre and never visited it. However, somewhat surprisingly, Ruskin’s father John James loved the theatre. John James Ruskin had been an enthusiastic boy actor at school, often reminisced in his letters about his theatrical experiences and continued to enjoy theatre.2 John Ruskin, who was introduced to the theatre by his father, came to share John James’ love of the theatre and to inherit his talent for the dramatic. Ruskin, though not an actor, was an inspiring and influential lecturer, and the good lecturer has


to have something of the actor in him. Many of Ruskin’s books began as lecture series, but he lectured from notes rather than fully written out texts, often utilising humour and sometimes deploying illustrations and diagrams. He undoubtedly saw his lectures as performances, describing himself – with reference to his beloved pantomimes – as ‘a legitimate pantaloon’. Contemporary comments from audience members include ‘his action as a lecturer was always significant and dramatic’; ‘striding back and forth behind his platform rail, he poured out a rhapsody of exalted thought in rhythmic phrases’ and his delivery was ‘marked by great vigour and verve’.3 He was not above startling his audiences, as on the occasion recalled by the Dean of Durham. Lecturing on the Psalms of David, he was reminded of a Mendelssohn setting, ‘in which the solemn dignity of the Psalms was lowered by the frivolous prettiness of the music. It was “oh, for the wings” etc that he had heard with disgust, and he suddenly began to dance and recite, with the strangest flappings of his MA gown, and the oddest look on his excited face’.4 In 1882 Ruskin jocularly listed among the pleasant things to do ‘going to all manner of wicked plays and pantomimes’ (CW 33.xxx). In Praeterita (1886–9) he recorded that he could not recall anything of his first trip to the theatre ‘though I was full twelve before I was taken’ (CW 35.175). His memory here was at fault. He was at the theatre in Birmingham nine months earlier than his twelfth year, as his diary entry for 2 June 1830 reveals.5 Ruskin went on: ‘afterwards, it was a matter of intense rapture of a common sort, to be taken to a pantomime’ (CW 35.175). As early as 1838, while he was an undergraduate at Oxford, Ruskin had proposed at the Oxford Union the motion ‘that theatrical representations are upon the whole highly beneficial to the character of the nation’ and spoke strongly in support of it (CW 1.xxxv). At the age of 17, pained by his unrequited love for Adele Domecq, Ruskin turned, like many another tormented adolescent, to poetry. He set himself, as he recalled in Praeterita: ‘in a state of imbecility, to write a tragedy on a Venetian subject in which the sorrows of my soul were to be enshrined in immortal verse’ (CW 35.182). He completed three acts of a proposed five-act poetic tragedy, Marcolini, with scenes set in the Rialto, St Mark’s Square and the princely palaces of Venice. It was full of echoes of Byron and Shakespeare (in particular Othello and Romeo and Juliet), replete with long soliloquies and featured classic romantic tropes (a wronged nobleman Friuli returning to Venice in disguise to avenge the death of his father at the hands of Count Orsini’s father; two friends Orsini and Marcolini in love with the same woman, Bianca; and Friuli seeking to set them against each other as part of his revenge plot). He eventually gave up on it because ‘when I had described a gondola, a bravo, the heroine Bianca, and moonlight on the Grand Canal, I found I had not much more to say’ (CW 35.222). Although she never stopped John James taking their son to the theatre, Margaret Ruskin’s ‘puritanical’ objection to the theatre increased as she got


5

older, particularly after John James’ death, and she made her disapproval clear to her son.6 W.G. Collingwood reported: She objected strongly, in these later years, to the theatre; and when sometimes her son would wish to take a party into town to see the latest new piece; her permission had to be asked, and was not readily granted, unless to Miss Agnew, who was the ambassadress in such affairs of diplomacy.7 The painter Arthur Severn, who married Ruskin’s cousin Joan Agnew, confirms this: We were great play-goers, driving all the way from Herne Hill into London, and back at night. Ruskin had always been very fond of the theatre, but in older days at Denmark Hill had been a little shy of going, as old Mrs. Ruskin never quite liked it. When they did go, my wife, then Miss Agnew, was generally told off to break it gently to the old lady.8 Like many educated and cultivated persons of the time, Ruskin went to the opera and to French plays in the original language. He regularly went to operas on his continental tours and expressed his opinions of them with characteristic trenchancy. Writing from Amiens on 12 October 1880, he expressed how: indignant I was, a few days ago, to see the drop-scene(!) of the Folies at Paris composed of huge advertisements! The ghastly want of sense of beauty, and endurance of loathsomeness gaining hourly on the people! They were playing the Fille du Tambour Major superbly, for the most part; they gave the introductory convent scene without the least caricature, the Abbess being played by a very beautiful and gracefullymannered actress, and the whole thing would have been delightful had the mere decorations of the theatre been clean and pretty. To think that all the strength of the world combining in Paris to amuse itself can’t have clean box-curtains! or a pretty landscape sketch for a drop scene! – but sits in squalor and dismalness, with bills stuck all over its rideau! I saw Le Châlet here last night, in many respects well played and sung, and it is a quite charming little opera in its story, only it requires an actress of extreme refinement for the main part, and everybody last night sang too loud. There is no music of any high quality in it, but the piece is one which, played with such delicacy as almost any clever, wellbred girl could put into the heroine’s part (if the audiences would look for acting more than voice), ought to be extremely delightful to simple persons. On the other hand, I heard William Tell entirely massacred at the great opera house at Paris. My belief is they scarcely sang a piece of pure Rossini all night, but had fitted in modern skimble-skamble tunes, and quite


unspeakably clumsy and common ballet. I scarcely came away in better humour from the mouthed tediousness of Garin at the Française, but they took pains with it, and I suppose it pleased a certain class of audience. The William Tell could please nobody at heart. The libretto of Jean de Nivelle is very beautiful, and ought to have new music written for it. Anything so helplessly tuneless as its present music I never heard, except mosquitos and cicadas (CW 34.550). The visits of French theatrical companies to London to perform plays in the original language became a major feature not only of theatrical but of social life from the 1840s onwards. This development was essentially initiated by John Mitchell, a Bond Street ticket agent, who took over the St James’s Theatre in 1842 and ran annual French theatre seasons for 12 years. The great French actress Rachel appeared regularly to great acclaim. Queen Victoria was a frequent attendee. The St James’s was so closely associated with this aspect of the drama that it was popularly known as ‘The French Theatre’. After Mitchell retired, the tradition was taken up by John Hollingshead, who ran the Gaiety Theatre from 1868 to 1886, regularly imported French companies and achieved a coup in 1879 when he persuaded the complete Comédie Française company to appear. The result was a sell-out six week season and an electrifying London debut by Sarah Bernhardt. Matthew Arnold, who attended the season, tartly observed that the season had attracted an audience ‘of those acquainted with the French language perfectly, of those acquainted with it a little, and of those not acquainted with it at all’.9 Ruskin, who spent much of 1879 at Brantwood, seems to have missed this major cultural event. However, he recorded other visits to the French plays in his diaries. In November 1870 he paid two recorded visits to the French theatre – one to an unnamed play and another to the comedy Les premières armes de Richelieu (‘delicious acting’) (EW 2.707). In January 1872 he went to a comedy Voyage de M. Perrichon (‘Excellent in analysis of small vanity’) and the tragi-comedy Frou-Frou (‘dreadful’) (EW 2.719). In February 1873 he was at an unnamed French play (‘mad scenes with nice doctor, but stupid’) (EW 2.738). He also went to see French plays when in France (EW 2.592; 2.658). In a fascinating, ground-breaking recent essay, Andrew Tate has identified J.B.P. Molière as a significant influence on Ruskin. In a letter entitled ‘Books which have influenced me’, published in the British Weekly and written from Brantwood on 14 May 1887, Ruskin identified Molière along with Dante, Byron and Scott. He claims to have valued Molière ‘always’ (CW 34.605–6). Ruskin studied the texts of Molière’s plays and, where possible, attended productions of the plays when in France. We know of at least two visits to performances of Tartuffe in 1868 and 1880 (EW 2.658; 3.988). Ruskin made regular allusions in his writings to Molière’s plays, in particular


7

Le Misanthrope and Tartuffe, and goes so far as to claim that Molière was the true precursor of Pre-Raphaelite aesthetics (EW 2.658; 3.988). Tate argues convincingly that Ruskin saw Molière as ‘a fearless moralist whose work contradicted the dissolute tendencies of his era, but [...] he also locates the dramatist as a precursor of the English Romantic tradition’.10 He associates him directly with Wordsworth (CW 5.374–5). Tate also intriguingly suggests that Ruskin identified strongly with Alceste, the disenchanted title character of Le Misanthrope, particularly in his withdrawal from the centre of civilisation to the periphery, a withdrawal paralleling Ruskin’s own retreat to Brantwood. Writing in Modern Painters III, he paid tribute to Molière in characteristic terms: Living in the blindest period of the world’s history, in the most luxurious city, and the most corrupted court of the time, he yet manifests through all his writings an exquisite natural wisdom; a capacity for the most simple enjoyment; a high sense of all nobleness, honour and purity, variously marked throughout his slighter work, but distinctly made the theme of his two perfect plays – the Tartuffe and Misanthrope; and in all that he says of art or science he has an unerring instinct for what is useful and sincere, and uses his whole power to defend it, with as keen a hatred of everything affected and vain (CW 5.375). Unlike his father, John Ruskin did not go to tragedies and dramas, apart from those of Shakespeare, in whom he had a lifelong interest. Ruskin had grown up with Shakespeare, his father regularly reading the plays aloud to the family. Ruskin read and re-read the plays throughout his life.11 He recorded in his diaries his reactions to the printed text. On 25 February 1843 he reported: ‘Read King John completely for the first time; I like the history plays better than the pet ones, A Midsummer Night’s Dream I like least of any in Shakespeare. I think the death scene in King John one of the very finest things in Shakespeare; but Constance talks too much Billingsgate’ (EW 1.245). On 29 December 1866 he was reading Henry IV, Part 1 (EW 2.606). On 27 June 1886 he wrote: ‘read with understanding for first time in my life the first scene of As You Like It ’ (EW 3.1131). In The Mystery of Life and its Arts he wrote: ‘It does not matter how little, or how much, any of us have read, either of Homer and Shakespeare, everything around us, in substance, or in thought, has been moulded by them [...] The intellectual measure of every man, since born, in the domains of creative thought, may be assigned to him, according to the degree to which he has been taught by Shakespeare’ (CW 18.139). Ruskin did see some of the finest contemporary interpreters of Shakespeare in action but was not always impressed by them. He saw Macready in Macbeth on 23 January 1843: ‘wretched beyond all I had conceived possible’


(EW 1.240). On 22 September 1870 he saw A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Queen’s Theatre, Longacre, with Samuel Phelps as Bottom (EW 2.703). The production was generally praised for both the acting and the staging (with Mendelssohn’s music, picturesque scene painting of the woods, Theseus’ palace in the approved ‘archaeological’ manner and a troupe of 150 well-drilled children as fairies). Ruskin did not record his view of it. He had seen Henry Irving in his early success Two Roses (1870).12 He saw Irving and Ellen Terry in Much Ado About Nothing at the Lyceum and recorded in his diary on 16 December 1882: ‘Yesterday at Lyceum to Irving and Helen Terry’s Much Ado (he always called her Helen Terry), which taught me a good deal in Beatrice that I had not felt, but I am not sure how far truly. Irving’s Benedict of course offensive only, yet suggestive’ (EW 3.1044). But in 1879, having been taken by Oscar Wilde to see Irving’s revolutionary new production of The Merchant of Venice, Ruskin became embroiled in a public controversy about Irving’s interpretation of Shylock. Irving’s view was that Shylock was a victim: ‘I look on Shylock as the type of a persecuted race, almost the only gentleman in the play, and the most ill-used.’13 The artist W. Graham Robertson recalled the performance as one which ‘united the soul of Savonarola and the bearing of Charles the First, with just a touch of Lord Beaconsfield’.14 It was widely praised, not least by the Jewish press, but such notable figures as Henry James, Bernard Shaw and Lewis Carroll all strongly objected to Irving’s view of Shylock as a ‘martyred saint’. Taken backstage to meet Irving, Ruskin praised his acting as ‘noble, tender and true’. This was reported in The Theatre magazine, a journal run by a noted Irvingite, Clement Scott.15 Ruskin felt obliged to write to both Irving and the journal to say that his praise of Irving’s acting was not to be taken as approval of the interpretation of the play from which he ‘entirely and indignantly’ dissented. He thought the supporting cast inadequate, Ellen Terry’s Portia lacking in the humility which he saw as a vital element of her character and objected to the elimination of the Prince of Aragon and the diluting of Shakespeare’s message – an attack on usury.16 This was the root of his objection to Irving’s Shylock, an interpretation which became the dominant one to such an extent that Ruskin wrote in a postscript to St Mark’s Rest (1884) that the modern view of Shylock was erroneous: ‘the public […] now – consistently and naturally enough, but ominously – considers Shylock a victim to the support of the principles of legitimate trade and Antonio “a spectacular sentimentalist”’, thus reversing completely what Ruskin saw as the relative vice and virtue of their positions (CW 24.418).17 He saw the great Italian actor Tomasso Salvini in Othello (24 April 1875). Marvin Rosenberg in his study of the performers of the role, The Masks of Othello, records that he was: One of the theater’s greatest Othellos […] His terrible magnificence set a standard […] He came out of Italy like a tornado, and his first


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performances in England – spoken entirely in Italian – almost blasted the Victorians from their theatres […] But his Moor was recognized as a masterpiece of passion (except by those too fearful of passion), of a frank, erotic sensuality, then of a grief that transcended violence, finally of an utter despair of nobility, sunk in delusion, torment and disaster – and yet never ignoble.18 One of those evidently fearful of the passion was Ruskin, who wrote in his diary (24 April 1875) ‘Yesterday […] horrible Italian Othello, spoiling all’ (EW 3.842). He expanded on his feelings in Fors Clavigera 91 (September 1883) and it was precisely the animalistic passion that disturbed him. He wrote: Very few young people, brought up on modern principles, have ever felt love, or even know what it means, except under the conditions in which it is also possible to the lowest animals. I could easily prove this […] by the evidence given me in a single evening, during which I watched the enthusiastic acceptance by an English audience of Salvini’s frightful, and radically false, interpretation of Othello (CW 29.445). He evidently conceived love as something refined, noble and uplifting and not tempestuous and violent, as an aesthetic, perhaps, rather than an erotic experience. This in turn may help to explain his tormented private life. He went on 27 April 1867 to the Haymarket to see the London debut of Mrs Scott-Siddons as Rosalind in As You Like It (EW 2.617). Considerable interest was generated by the fact of her being a descendant of the great Sarah Siddons. The Era (14 April 1867) reported that her performance was natural, free of ‘staginess’ and that ‘expectations were more than realised by her personation of this exquisite heroine’. On 19 December 1870 Ruskin was at Drury Lane for the benefit night of Adelaide Neilson, a production of Romeo and Juliet under the patronage of the Prince and Princess of Wales (who were at the last moment prevented from attending) (EW 2.708). The Era (25 December 1870) noted: ‘It is no exaggeration to say that all through the long and difficult play Miss Neilson held the audience firmly in her grasp.’ After the play, she recited Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade. Ruskin went to the Crystal Palace to see Tom Taylor’s production of Hamlet starring the American actor Steele Mackaye. Even before it was seen, it was denounced by The Era (22 April 1873), as Taylor had announced his intention of directing his own adapted text of the play, ‘Shakespeare at Sydenham, with little scenery, without much attention to costume, and above all with a scratch company of actors, seems to us to be a “fantastic trick” which ought to be condemned “for the sake of the dramatic art and the public”, at whose improvement Mr Taylor professes to be aiming. We


object to the whole of this scheme, in which we think Mr Taylor is illogical and inconsistent’. They thought the Crystal Palace, with its poor acoustics, entirely the wrong place for a Shakespeare production. After the production opened, The Era (11 May 1873) reviewed it: ‘We recently offered our readers some rather hostile criticism upon Mr Tom Taylor’s scheme for doing justice to Shakespeare at the Crystal Palace. Last Saturday that criticism, in the presence of a tolerable audience, which included many notabilities of art and literature was fully endorsed; and although the applause of undisguised partisans was not wanting, we do not hesitate to say that Hamlet, our “immortal bard’s” masterpiece, has never been more vilely massacred anywhere off the amateur stage.’ This opinion was not shared by other reviewers. The Illustrated London News (10 May 1873) pronounced it a success, praising the acting, Taylor’s judicious adaptation of the text, the costumes after designs from the works of Viollet le Duc and scenery, painted by F. Fenton. The Times (5 May 1873) agreed, drawing attention to Taylor’s desire to produce the play not as a star vehicle but for ‘artistic and aesthetic reasons’ as an ensemble piece, newly interpreted and dispensing with much traditional business, tastefully staged and intelligently acted. Ruskin went to Hamlet on 14 May 1873 and he wrote about it on 29 September 1873, saying ‘Hamlet. Drama dealing only with the heart; all “spectacle” contrary to it. Hamlet at Crystal Palace: ranting; snow on the ground, and the speech on election of Fortinbras omitted!’ (EW 2.746; 760). The Antony and Cleopatra he attended at the Haymarket on 7 December 1866 was not Shakespeare’s play but Frank Burnand’s burlesque version of the story (EW 2.604). The Era (25 November 1866) reported that ‘four scenes, carefully painted by Messrs. O’Connor and Morris, give a semi-spectacular grace to the extravaganza’. This may well have been one of the attractions for Ruskin. It was not thought to be particularly funny, with The Era observing: ‘The performers have a very arduous task assigned them in reducing their acknowledged talents to the level of burlesque, and that such a subject should have been chosen by the author, and have been so liberally embellished by the Management, indicates a curious opinion of the present condition of popular taste. There was a faint burst of applause at the end, but no further token of approval.’ Why did Ruskin so sedulously avoid drama and tragedy? One reason may be because he shared the conventional view of the day as he expressed it himself in Time and Tide that there was a ‘direct and constant’ connection between the many horrific crimes reported in the press and ‘the modern love of excitement in the sensational novel and drama […] all furious pursuit of pleasure ending in actual desire of horror and delight in death’ (CW 28.468). Another reason he avoided drama was the language. He wrote: ‘as regards the literature of modern plays, I think that in comedies the language is very often precious and piquant – more in French than in English pieces; but I know of no tragedy, French or English, whose language satisfies me’ (CW 34.669).


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But perhaps most influential in his decision-making was that he found drama too emotionally harrowing. In The Eagle’s Nest he wrote: It is death in ourselves which seeks the exaggerated external stimulus […] The most complete rest and refreshment I can get, when I am overworked, in London […] is in seeing a French play. But the French act so perfectly that I am obliged to make sure beforehand that all is to end well, or it is as bad as being helplessly present at some real misery. I was beguiled the other day, by seeing it announced as a ‘Comédie’, into going to see ‘Frou-Frou’. Most of you probably know that the three first of its five acts are comedy, or at least playful drama, and that it plunges down, in the last two, to the sorrowfullest catastrophe of all conceivable – though too frequent in daily life – in which irretrievable grief is brought about by the passion of the moment, and the ruin of all that she loves, caused by the heroic error of an entirely good and unselfish person. The sight of it made me thoroughly ill, and I was not myself again for a week (CW 22.173–4). He went regularly to comedies, pantomimes and to the Christy Minstrels. Ruskin recorded some of his theatre visits in his diaries, but he rarely commented on them in detail. W.G. Collingwood reported a story that he heard from Sir Edward Burne-Jones of a visit with Ruskin in the summer of 1877 to the St James’s Hall to see the Moore and Burgess company of Christy Minstrels: ‘the Professor dragged him there, to a front seat, and those burntcorked people anticked and shouted, and Burne-Jones wanted to go, and Ruskin wouldn’t, but sat laughing through the whole performance as if he loved it. An afternoon to him of oblivion in the cares of life.’19 Ruskin praised the Moore and Burgess Minstrels for their singing qualities (CW 29.85). He recorded visits to the Christy Minstrels in July 1866, January 1867, July and August 1870, October 1870 and November 1870 (EW 2.594; 608; 698; 705; 707). On 27 October 1887, Ruskin wrote to his niece Joan that he had been to see Sophia, a four-act comedy by Robert Buchanan, at the Vaudeville Theatre, but he had been deeply disappointed to find that it was actually an adaptation of ‘the old Tom Jones’. He also disliked ‘the quantities of time wasted in what an English audience always seems to like, imitations of drunkenness, and the “spinster aunt” business of middle-aged women’. However, there were some compensations: ‘The Tom was extremely good however – the Sophia beautiful – and the peasant girl Molly extremely pretty and clever.’20 Ruskin was also a devotee of the pantomime. In a letter to Dr George Parsons, physician of Hawkshead, dated 11 February 1884, from Herne Hill, Ruskin writes: ‘I hope to get my second lecture well over, and then after a pantomime or two I shall set my face North and be within your episcopate again by the 25th or so.’ Ruskin went regularly and the pantomimes inspired


strong feelings.21 It is clear that he saw pantomime as fulfilling that role of moral and intellectual education which he ascribed to the stage in general (see Chapter 6 for further discussion). There is some question over his idiosyncratic judgement of plays. For instance, he calls Dion Boucicault’s comedy London Assurance, which he saw on 5 July 1877 and which starred the Bancrofts and the Kendals, ‘the vilest rubbish’, yet it is one of the few mid-Victorian plays to have survived in the repertoire and is wholly delightful (EW 3.964). Then there is his comment on the performance of W.C. Macready, the greatest actor of his age, in Macbeth. His diary entry for 24 January 1843 reads: I am getting quite dissipated; out at Drury Lane last night. Macready in Macbeth – wretched beyond all I had conceived possible. Quite tired and bored, but Gordon liked it, and as it was for him that I went, I was well pleased. I was surprised to see him completely affected and upset by the scene where Macduff hears of the death of his children (EW 1.240). (The Gordon referred to was his close Oxford friend Rev. Osborne Gordon.) These somewhat odd judgements may have something to do with the reasons why Ruskin went to the theatre. One reason is that he was a fan. Ruskin was a particular fan of the actress Madge Robertson, later Mrs Madge Kendal, later still Dame Madge Kendal, who acted regularly with her husband W.H. Kendal. The Theatre magazine wrote of her: ‘No living actress has done more by means of her art to teach men to be true and women to be tender’, something likely to commend her to Ruskin.22 He often went back to see her productions several times, declaring himself ‘delighted’ with the play Lady Fiona which he saw on 15 April 1875, and going back to see it again on 21 April (EW 3.841). He thought Queen Mab ‘a really lovely play’ when he saw it on 28 March 1874, and with it My Uncle’s Wife ‘a quite inoffensive afterpiece’ (EW 3.781–2). The result was ‘an entirely satisfactory evening’. In Deucalion, Ruskin called Mrs Kendal ‘my much-regarded friend’, praising the play New Men and Old Acres by Tom Taylor and A.W. Dubourg, in which he saw her in 1869 and which incidentally contains the line: ‘In spite of her Ruskinism-run-mad, she isn’t half a bad sort’ (CW 26.378). Even Dame Madge, however, could not save some plays. He recorded on 24 October 1883: ‘At stupidest play last night I ever saw the Kendals in’ (EW 3.1049). This will have been Young Folks’ Ways by W.H. Gillette and Mrs Burnett, which ran for 50 nights but was described by The Theatre magazine as ‘a disappointing play. It begins well, dawdles in the middle and ends badly’, and by The Times as ‘a poor play well acted’.23 The actor Frank Archer, who later made the acquaintance of the Severns, recalled that the only time he saw Ruskin was when he attended his lecture at the Royal Institution on snakes on 17 March 1880, and saw the Kendals


13

in the audience.24 The title of the lecture was ‘a caution to snakes’. It was taken from a line in the play New Men and Old Acres which had starred Mrs Kendal – ‘and his wife – well she’s a caution for snakes’ (CW 26.327–8). The friendship between Ruskin and Mrs Kendal is confirmed by a letter from Lily Severn to Ruskin, undated but evidently sent in 1898. Lily reports that she and her mother Joan went to the St James’s Theatre to see Mrs Kendal in The Elder Miss Blossom, which opened on 22 September 1898. They went backstage after the performance and ‘she at once enquired most affectionately after you and sends best love’.25 Another reason for Ruskin’s theatregoing is that it took him out of himself. It was a sort of therapy. He records in his diary for 22 March 1867, ‘Languid all day’ and that in the evening he went to see Lavater, J.R. Planché’s comedy-drama, and Samuel Foote’s Liar at the Olympic Theatre (EW 2.613). Cause and effect by the sound of it. Then on 30 November 1875, he records ‘utterly black all day. At Rip Van Winkle in the evening, and very much enjoyed it – but’, implying that he could not be lifted out of his depression even by a good play (EW 3.874). On 1 August 1862 in Milan, he recorded in his diary: ‘Went to see Linda again [presumed to be Donizetti’s opera Linda de Chamounix] – and got none the merrier’, suggesting that he specifically went to be cheered up (EW 2.566). In 1871 Ruskin, trying to cheer up a dyspeptic Thomas Carlyle, invited him to share his box for the pantomime The Dragon of Wantley at Drury Lane, saying ‘Nobody would see him and he would see … some fairly good fooling’.26 Sadly Carlyle declined to go. He recommended plays to others for rest and recuperation. On 17 April 1884, he wrote to Lizzie Weston: ‘Do you know French well enough to read French plays? They’re the prettiest and pleasantest things in the world for rest after Dante!’ (CW 37.482). But plays also caused Ruskin to think about his work. In 1871 he wrote to Squire Bancroft, the leading actor-manager, to thank him for the pleasure afforded by Bancroft’s production of Tom Robertson’s Ours starring Bancroft and his wife, Marie, and saying: ‘I get more help in my own work from a good play than from any other kind of thoughtful rest’ (CW 37.28–9). So it is more than just escapism, it is intellectual stimulation that theatre provides. In his diary for 26 January 1872 he recorded, ‘At French play last night. Saw the dreadful Frou-Frou – the best views of Venice I ever saw on the stage. Gives one much to think of’ (EW 2.719). Apart from Mrs Kendal, Ruskin did number other actors and actresses among his circle of friends and acquaintances. One of them was Helen Faucit, once Macready’s leading lady and the greatest actress of her age. She married essayist, critic and poet Sir Theodore Martin, the official biographer of Prince Albert, in 1851 and she retired from the stage in 1871. Following retirement and encouraged by friends, she began to write interpretative essays on Shakespeare’s heroines, an interest she shared with Ruskin (see Chapter 2 for further discussion). Ruskin also made the acquaintance of


the beautiful American actress Mary Anderson, who took on Mrs Kendal’s old role of Galatea in a revival of Pygmalion and Galatea. He discussed the play with her but he told art critic M.H. Spielmann in early 1884 that he was ‘a critical admirer […] with many reservations, of Miss Mary Anderson […] a sweet lady and an excellent person, but not, I think, a great actress’ – a view shared by many contemporary critics though not by her adoring audiences27 (see Chapter 4 for further discussion). Another close theatrical friend of Ruskin was Wilson Barrett. Barrett’s friendship with Ruskin was a form of discipleship: in one letter to Ruskin, Barrett addresses him as ‘Master’.28 Ruskin broke with his customary embargo on attending tragic plays to go to Wilson Barrett’s production of the historical melodrama Claudian. He saw it three times, wrote a letter of appreciation to Barrett and initiated an influential friendship. Ruskin later told the art critic M. H. Spielmann: ‘I like Wilson Barrett, he flatters me so deliciously and in such tactful taste.’29 Barrett assisted Ruskin directly, helping him with the visual illustrations and effects in the first of the two lectures to the Royal Institution which formed the basis of The Storm Cloud of the Nineteenth Century (1884). On 20 February 1884 Ruskin wrote accepting an invitation from Barrett for himself and the Severns to pay a Sunday visit. He said: ‘to me, it will be a new and long wished for privilege to speak of things close to my heart in the drama with an actor capable of sustaining its greatest parts and it will be a double privilege, since I find him also a personal friend.’30 The young poet Richard Le Gallienne, writing excitedly to his father in Liverpool on 5 January 1889 to inform him that he had been appointed literary secretary to Wilson Barrett, described him as ‘a gentleman and a man of honour […] his passion in his art as an earnest, conscientious, intelligent artist is second only to that of Henry Irving’, adding as a clinching argument, ‘Ruskin who thinks a great deal of him and has praised him very highly in print […] stays at his house’.31 Indeed, Ruskin and Barrett were on sufficiently intimate terms for Barrett to send Ruskin throat lozenges when he was suffering from a bad cold. Ruskin complained: ‘they’re rather nasty […] as if they had dropped overboard and been at sea some time.’32 Barrett would much later acknowledge the importance of Ruskin’s encouragement to him in his ambition to stage a series of artistically beautiful classical dramas (see Chapters 4 and 5). In 1883 George Alexander directed The Tale of Troy, a fashionable largely amateur production, based on The Iliad and The Odyssey. Ruskin was present at one of the performances and made a presentation to Alexander. In 1900, Alexander, by now a leading London actor-manager, wrote to Joan Severn on Ruskin’s death: You will be deluged with letters. I am loath to add mine to the number but I must just express my sympathy with you and yours, and my deep


15

regret at the loss of so great a man. I had nothing but great kindness at his hands.33 This suggests that there developed a friendship between them at some point, perhaps initiated by this contact. In 1884 Alexander Wedderburn, who was looking after ‘Dave’, the collie belonging to George Alexander, then currently on tour in America with Irving, took the dog to stay at Brantwood. The dog would be run over in the street and killed the day after his master returned from America.34 Alexander and his wife attended the memorial service for Ruskin at Westminster Abbey. This would add another leading actor to Ruskin’s circle along with Mrs Kendal, Mary Anderson, Helen Faucit and Wilson Barrett. One step removed from acting and more widely deemed thoroughly respectable was public recitation, and Ruskin counted several well-known reciters among his acquaintances. The most notable were the Webling sisters. Robert James Webling, a jeweller and silversmith, and his wife Maria had six daughters: Ethel (born c. 1861), Josephine (born in 1862), Ruth (born in 1866), Rosalind (born in 1868), Peggy (born in 1871) and Lucy (born c. 1878). Rosalind and Peggy were infant prodigies and in 1879 their mother arranged for them at the ages of 10 and 8, together with Josephine (17), to give a programme of public recitations at the Steinway Hall, Lower Seymour Street. The programme included Shelley’s Ode to a Skylark, Longfellow’s Hiawatha and R.H. Barham’s The Jackdaw of Rheims, together with a 15 minute playlet Only a Dream specially written for them by the playwright Alfred C. Calmour. They were reviewed in the press, photographed by the London Stereoscopic Society and embarked on a career as reciters. Their regular programme included poetry, scenes from Shakespeare and extracts from Alice in Wonderland. Predictably Lewis Carroll sought them out and, as Peggy later recalled, ‘it later became fashionable to have “the little Weblings” for afternoon and evening parties’.35 Ruskin first met Ethel and Peggy Webling at the home of Marcus Huish, editor of the Art Journal, and was enchanted by them. He went to see them perform and wrote to their father on 16 February 1880: ‘I heard your daughters’ recitation in London last autumn, with quite unmixed pleasure and the sincerest admiration – not merely that, but with grave change in my opinion of the general value of recitations as means of public instruction [...] I have not seen any public entertainment – for many a long year – at once so sweet, so innocent and so helpful, as that which your children can give to all the gentle and simple in mind and heart’ (CW 34.545–6). Rosalind rapidly became his favourite and she and Peggy were invited to stay at Brantwood: ‘the most memorable month of my childhood’ recalled Peggy.36 Later Peggy, Josephine, Rosalind and their mother all went to stay. Peggy wrote that Ruskin’s affection was ‘perhaps the strongest influence of my youth’. Ruskin wrote to their father to say ‘there never were sweeter or more rightly behaved children [...] It is the best of results to me to have them to play with and to teach the little


things which will be useful to them hereafter’. These useful things included rowing, drawing and water-colour painting. He taught Rosalind the Greek alphabet, read to them from Scott and the Bible and acted little playlets with them. They nicknamed him ‘Fidelity’ and he nicknamed Rosalind ‘Gratia’ and Peggy ‘Fate’. The Weblings began touring the country with their recitations and Ruskin began and kept up a correspondence individually with Josephine, Rosalind and Peggy. Ruskin went to see them whenever he and they were in London. ‘The joy of our friendship with the Professor went on for a long time’, Peggy recalled. Eventually the youngest sister Lucy joined the act and during the 1890s they toured Canada and the United States. But as they grew up and the appeal of their recitations faded, Josephine and Rosalind both married Canadians, Lucy became a straight actress joining George Alexander’s company at the St James’s Theatre and Peggy turned to journalism and writing short stories, novels and plays, the most celebrated being her 1930 stage adaptation of Frankenstein. Rosalind continued to write to Ruskin until his death and visited him at Brantwood near the end of his life. She and Peggy visited his grave two years after his death and scattered fresh leaves on it. Ethel, who studied at the Slade School of Fine Art and became a miniaturist, painted a miniature of Ruskin which she exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1888, and Peggy wrote about her friendship with Ruskin in her memoirs, Peggy (1924) and a 29 page A Sketch of John Ruskin published in 1920. Writing about recitation in her memoirs, Peggy observed that the art of recitation died with Clifford Harrison. Harrison, a former actor, embarked on a career as reciter in 1877 and from then until ill-health curtailed his career in 1888 performed at private parties, schools, mechanics’ institutes and charitable functions as well as in public. He made the acquaintance of many celebrities, among them Tennyson, Browning, Matthew Arnold, George Eliot and Ruskin. The friendship with Ruskin was initiated in 1885 when Harrison wrote to Ruskin to thank him for inspiring and instructing him and later sending him some of his drawings of Alpine scenes. This led to several meetings, exchanges of letters and animated discussions of painting, drawing, acting and reciting. Harrison recalled in his memoirs that ‘Acting and dramatic speaking had always, it seemed, greatly interested him and he had seen and heard the best actors and speakers of the day. He had theories about them [...] In speaking of great actors, he nearly always brought against them the charge of artificiality. They were not “natural”, not “spontaneous” enough; they had thought about it all too much. This he said most emphatically about Macready whereby challenging a little good-natured argument with my mother’37 (Harrison’s mother, Ellen Clifford, had acted with Macready). Harrison recited privately for Ruskin and received a very Ruskinian reaction: After he had heard me recite, he told me that my reciting was ‘all too studied’, was not ‘natural’ enough; that he was sure I should recite much


17

better if I did not learn my pieces, or think them out in every tone and gesture, but just took the book up and read them dramatically, as I felt at the moment. I pointed out to him that this was in effect the very denial of all his pet theories in another art; this was haphazard, slapdash, rough art with a vengeance. But he said the matter was essentially different. No such parallel could be drawn. And on further talk I discovered the real reason for all this, namely, that recitation, and in a sense acting, was but a voice of literature to him, not per se an art.38 It is clear that the theatre, in its search for artistic and social respectability, was anxious for the imprimatur of leading cultural authorities. So Ruskin’s presence in the audience of plays was reported in the press. His favourable comments on Wilson Barrett’s Claudian (1883) were repeated over and over again for the rest of the century. When Praeterita was published, the theatrical trade paper The Era (27 February 1886) took the opportunity to extract and summarise Ruskin’s references to his early theatregoing. However, this enlistment of Ruskinian approval spectacularly backfired in the dispute with Irving about the character of Shylock and Irving’s interpretation of The Merchant of Venice. By the 1890s, although Ruskin was now confined to Brantwood, he was kept up to date with the theatrical world by his cousin Joan Severn who sent him regular letters reporting on her theatre visits, which she obviously felt would be of interest to him and which relate to his known interests. It was Arthur Severn, her husband, who reported to Ruskin the visit to see Irving in King Lear (13 December 1892): ‘I do not think him very good – he wants dignity – but I dare say it is a very difficult part.’ It was Joan, however, who went to see Irving in King Arthur (‘it was wonderful’) (5 February 1895). Interestingly she went with friends to see Irving and Ellen Terry in The Merchant of Venice (18 March 1898) and, given the famous quarrel with Ruskin about the play, her comments are intriguing: ‘we all enjoyed it wildly – the scenery was so lovely – it made me think of ’oo at every turn! – and Irving was marvellous as the Jew – and Ellen Terry a triumph as Portia – and all the other characters were excellent – and well sustained, we even had a gondola now and then gliding along.’ An undated letter has her at a performance of Waterloo in Manchester with Irving and Terry (‘so charming – but most touching’) (this was probably the autumn tour of 1897 when Irving played Waterloo in a double bill with The Bells in Manchester). Joan went to see the Kendals in The Greatest of These (30 June 1896), The Silver Shell (undated) and most interestingly The Elder Miss Blossom. The letter about this, undated, from Lily Severn reports ‘Mother is resting after being late at the theatre last night. She sends her love. We so enjoyed seeing Mrs Kendal in a charming new play “The Elder Miss Blossom”’.39 The Elder Miss Blossom by Ernest Hendrie and Metcalfe Wood opened at the St James’s Theatre on 22 September 1898 and Mrs Kendal called it ‘one of my most successful and popular parts’.40


Joan went to see George Alexander at the St James’s Theatre in Lord Anerley (7 November 1891) and Henry Arthur Jones’ The Masqueraders (28 June 1894). On 14 March 1897 she reported a visit on the previous evening to Nelson’s Enchantress at the Avenue Theatre, with Johnston Forbes Robertson as Nelson and Mrs Patrick Campbell as Emma Hamilton: ‘We greatly enjoyed seeing Nelson yesterday tho’ Violet and I both sobbed bitterly at his parting with Lady Hamilton and his death.’ However, the theatregoing public did not share their enthusiasm and the play which opened on 11 February closed on 20 March. On 29 November 1897 she wrote to say they were going to see John Hare in A Pair of Spectacles (‘such a charming play’) at the Camberwell Theatre (‘How I wish you were here – and going with us!’). On 11 July 1896 she reported a visit to ‘Wilson Barrett’s great play’ The Sign of the Cross but expressed disappointment that Barrett and his leading lady were on holiday and replacement actors played the leads. She went several times to the ‘lovely new Camberwell Theatre’, presumably the Metropole, Camberwell, opened in 1894, to see not only Hare in A Pair of Spectacles but also in Caste. She also went to a revival of the popular mid-century hit Our Boys (undated letters) and to Charley’s Aunt (27 May 1893) (‘the success of the season’). Like Ruskin, she was a regular attender at the pantomime, seeing Robinson Crusoe at Drury Lane (17 February 1894), Cinderella at the new Camberwell Theatre (2 February 1895) and Bluebeard (undated).41 In his last published work, Praeterita (1886–9), Ruskin had recorded ‘And I greatly enjoy theatre to this day – it is one of the pleasures that have least worn out’ (CW 35.175). Joan evidently sought almost to the end to stimulate that still surviving appetite for the drama in the old man’s steadily dimming faculties.

2 Ruskinian Influences

Throughout his life, Ruskin had no doubt that the arts were a basic necessity for humankind. The role of painting and poetry as religious guides, moral educators, and guides to feeling, seeing and living, sing through all his work. However idealised, however inaccurate as historical discourse, his homage to the medieval craftsmen in Modern Painters for their work showing their individuality, their roughness, their savagery, was typical of Ruskin’s commitment to knowledge and education through art and craft. As we will see throughout this study, Ruskin’s evangelical zeal for ‘right seeing’ was catholic. He cared little for arbitrary boundaries between ‘high’ culture and the arts and crafts of the working classes. His central criterion for valuable art was that it moved the spectator to a closer understanding of the truth: the difference between a noble and ignoble painter is in nothing more sharply defined than in this, – that the first wishes to put into his work as much truth as possible, and yet to keep it looking un-real; the second wishes to get through his work lazily, with as little truth as possible, and yet to make it look real (CW 5.186). However, as Ruskin developed his aesthetic theories as social and political theory, he argued that the purposes of art were not merely individual; they were also national. In his extraordinary address to the unwitting burghers of Bradford in 1864, ‘Traffic’, Ruskin tells his audience that: you cannot have good architecture merely by asking people’s advice on occasion. All good architecture is the expression of national life and character; and it is produced by a prevalent and eager national taste, or desire for beauty (CW 18.434). He goes on to explain himself: Permit me, therefore, to fortify this old dogma of mine somewhat. Taste is not only a part and an index of morality; – it is the ONLY morality. 19


The first, and last, and closest trial question to any living creature is, ‘What do you like?’ Tell me what you like and I’ll tell you what you are. […] And the entire object of true education is to make people not merely do the right things, but enjoy the right things: – not merely industrious, but to love industry – not merely learned, but to love knowledge – not merely pure, but to love purity – not merely just, but to hunger and thirst after justice (CW 18.434). Although Ruskin does not articulate it here, he viewed the theatre – as we have seen in Chapter 1 – as a prime vehicle for national education of taste and morality. As Ruskin told his Bradford audience, ‘there is no national virtue, small or great, which is not manifestly expressed in all the art which circumstances enable the people possessing that virtue to produce’ (CW 18.437). Ruskin’s interest in the theatre was part of a broader interest in recreation and pleasure, as the corollary to work. Both were necessary, according to Ruskin, and both were threatened by the encroachments of industrial capitalism – by what Carlyle (Ruskin’s sometime intellectual uncle) called ‘the cash nexus’. The theatre could offer recreation which could both educate and amuse its audiences. And both aspects of the theatre were important for Ruskin. Ruskin’s direct engagement with the theatre comprised a life-long and catholic attendance at West End theatres, and friendships with actors and managers, which included advising and debating with them. But, apart from the comments cited in Chapter 1, Ruskin never wrote on the theatre in any sustained and systematic way. However, the influence of his aesthetic and social thinking is discernible in the theatre writing of those theatre practitioners he came to know, and in the work of several influential writers who made significant commentaries and critiques on the British theatre in the last third of the nineteenth century. From Helen Faucit and Madge Kendal, through Henry Arthur Jones and Stewart Headlam, to Lewis Carroll and Matthew Arnold, those who wished to make and change the theatre in the late nineteenth century were all Ruskinians, to a greater or lesser degree. Like Ruskin, Matthew Arnold wrote comparatively little about the theatre, but he always took it seriously. He was a regular theatregoer not only in Britain but also in France and Germany. He expressed his love of theatre in sonnets to Shakespeare, Sophocles and the French actress Rachel. As such, not only was he, like Ruskin, a fan, he also shared Ruskin’s taste for Shakespeare, comedy and French plays in the original language. But he also went to fashionable dramatic and melodramatic successes too, such as The Silver King, Forget-Me-Not and The Duke’s Motto. He set out his major ideas on the drama in an essay on ‘The French Play in London’, inspired by the visit of the Comédie Française to London in 1879. It had been a major cultural event. Inspired by the French company, he set out a blueprint for a subsidised British national theatre, which would not

Ruskinian Influences

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be realised for 100 years.1 Others were also to argue for a national theatre, many of them inspired directly by Ruskinian ideals.2 At various times Arnold planned to write plays himself, one set at the end of the Roman Republic and another on the life of the Latin poet Lucretius. Neither materialised. But he did publish a drama on a Greek theme, Merope in 1858. He wrote on 6 March 1858 asking Helen Faucit to play Merope on the stage.3 She refused the play, ‘pointing out some of the difficulties which she saw would stand in the way of its success on the stage’.4 Merope never made it to the stage. Arnold offered his reflections on a lifetime of theatregoing in his five ‘letters from an old playgoer’ published in the Pall Mall Gazette between December 1882 and October 1884.5 He was moved by Irving’s Hamlet and wrote on 7 March 1878 inviting him to dine.6 He devoted one of his letters of an old playgoer to Irving’s production of Much Ado About Nothing (‘beautifully put upon the stage’) arguing that Irving and Ellen Terry had personalities which peculiarly fitted them for this kind of comedy. He was in the audience for Wilson Barrett’s Hamlet and also wrote on it for the Pall Mall Gazette. There is a striking parallel to Ruskin’s theatregoing and theatre interests in those of Lewis Carroll. Both had been strictly brought up – in Carroll’s case by a clergyman father and in Ruskin’s by evangelical parents. Carroll himself became a clergyman and was all too aware of the longstanding clerical prejudice against the stage. But, like Ruskin, Carroll became entranced by the stage. They shared similar tastes – Shakespeare, comedy, and in particular pantomime. They each went to three or four a year, though Carroll also patronised melodrama which Ruskin did not, and not the French plays in the original language that Ruskin favoured. Both were fans: Carroll of the Terry sisters, Ruskin of Mrs Kendal. Both wrote about the theatre. Carroll subscribed to the Theatre magazine and wrote two articles for it. Both wrote stories for children (Ruskin’s King of the Golden River and Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland were both much-reprinted classics of the genre). Both went to see Claudian three times, and Carroll’s comments directly echo those of Ruskin. Both were obsessed by young girls, an obsession which in these knowing times has led to accusations of paedophilia, a condition of which Catherine Robson seeks to acquit both of them.7 Ruskin and Carroll knew each other in Oxford and Carroll actually photographed Ruskin. They also had friends in common, particularly the Liddells and George MacDonald, another author of fairy stories, unlike Ruskin and Carroll a married man with children of his own, though described by those who knew him as a puer aeternus – a child man.8 W.E. Gladstone, who was Prime Minister during the years 1868–74, 1880–5, 1886 and 1892–4, had been brought up in a strict Scottish Presbyterian atmosphere and had inevitably imbibed the deep evangelical mistrust of the stage. He recorded in his diary on 19 December 1832 his belief that the


races and the theatre ‘involve the encouragement of sin’. But at Eton and Oxford he was required to study the repertoire of classical plays and the standard texts on rhetoric and gesture. When he took up politics, he turned these studies to good effect, as well as harnessing his natural gifts, and became a renowned orator. In the 1850s Gladstone underwent something of a conversion to theatrical performance. This may have been due to the regime of his fellow Etonian Charles Kean at the Princess’s Theatre. There is no doubt that Gladstone found Kean’s regime very much to his taste. He saw Kean’s productions of The Winter’s Tale (1856), Richard II (1857), The Tempest (1857), King Lear (1858), The Merchant of Venice (1858), Henry V (1859), The Corsican Brothers (1859) and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1859). He arranged for Kean to give him a guided tour of his theatre in 1857 and he spoke at Kean’s retirement dinner in 1859, lamenting the fact that his parliamentary duties kept him from attending the theatre as often as he would have liked. Gladstone praised Kean for labouring ‘in the noble and holy cause of endeavouring to dissociate the element of the drama from all moral and social contamination’. His conversion extended to writing in 1878 an open letter advocating the creation of a National Theatre. Gladstone had read and seen all of Shakespeare’s major plays. Not surprisingly he became a regular attendee at the Lyceum under Irving’s management. He recorded his many visits in his diary between 1875 and 1893 when his increasing deafness made theatregoing impracticable. He saw Irving in Hamlet, Othello, Richard III, Romeo and Juliet, Much Ado About Nothing, Henry VIII and King Lear. But he also went to the Lyceum for Irving’s melodrama productions The Lady of Lyons, The Lyons Mail, Ravenswood, The Corsican Brothers, Faust and poetic dramas The Cup and Becket. Other visits to Shakespeare productions included Mary Anderson in Romeo and Juliet, Lillie Langtry in Antony and Cleopatra and Charles Fechter in Hamlet. But Gladstone’s theatregoing was nothing if not catholic. He went to the ballet at the Alhambra, the opera (Gounod, Wagner) at Covent Garden, the circus, the Metropolitan Music Hall, the pantomime at Drury Lane, comedies (Money, A Pair of Spectacles), popular melodrama (The Ticket of Leave Man, Peril), the French plays to see Sarah Bernhardt, and Tomasso Salvini in Il Gladiatore. On Salvini, Gladstone’s opinion (‘manifestly an actor of real greatness’) differed markedly from Ruskin’s.9 Ruskin became a friend and regular guest of Gladstone. Gladstone read 13 of Ruskin’s works, attended Ruskin’s lectures and enjoyed lively and interesting discussions with him on political (crime, education) and cultural (Scott, Homer) matters. Gladstone called him ‘In some respects an unrivalled guest’ (CW 33.xxxi). In 1892 Gladstone wanted Ruskin to succeed Tennyson as Poet Laureate, but his deteriorating health precluded such a development. Although Ruskin had fallen silent by the 1880s, the gospel according to Ruskin was effectively preached by leading playwright and polemicist


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Henry Arthur Jones (1851–1929). He has been described as ‘the most popular dramatist of the 1890s’.10 In 1895 he published a collection of his essays and lectures from the previous 10 years under the title The Renascence of the English Drama. These pieces are suffused with direct and indirect references to Ruskin and are evidence of the role of Ruskinism in debates about theatre. George Bernard Shaw explicitly described him as ‘a disciple of Ruskin’.11 In the introduction, he outlines the recurrent themes of his writing: ‘I have fought for a recognition of the distinction between the art of the drama on the one hand and popular amusement on the other, and of the greater pleasure to be derived from the art of the drama’; ‘I have fought for the entire freedom of the modern dramatist, for his right to portray all aspects of human life, all passions, all opinions’; ‘I have fought for sanity and wholesomeness, for largeness and breadth of view. I have fought against the cramping and deadening influence of modern pessimistic realism, its littleness, its ugliness, its narrowness, its parochial aims’.12 The context in which he writes is his perception that over the previous decade society has moved from a prevailing spirit of materialism to a more spiritual interpretation of life. He argues that the four chief qualities that any work of art can possess, be it play, picture, poem or statue, are beauty, mystery, passion and imagination. The modern realistic drama, he believes, not only does not possess these qualities, it derides them. In his essay ‘The Theatre and the Mob’ (first published in The Nineteenth Century in 1883), he laments the influence of mass popular taste on the theatre, quoting Ruskin to the effect that the multitude ‘always awake to the lowest pleasures art can bestow and blunt to the highest’.13 The taste of the mob has dictated the prevalence in the theatre of burlesque, comedy and sensation drama. Managers pander to this taste when they should be seeking to raise taste. But he sees hope in ‘a general awakening of art-feeling and art-curiosity in the country’, a growing interest in the drama as an art among audiences and critics. He ends with a quote from ‘our great English seer’ (by which he means Ruskin): Must it be then only with our poets that we insist they shall either create for us the image of a noble morality, or among us create none? Or shall we not also keep guard over all other workers for the people (including our playwrights, and managers and actors), and forbid them to make what is ill-customed, and unrestrained, and ungentle, and without order or shape, either in likeness of living things or in buildings, or in any other thing whatsoever that is made for the people. And shall we not rather seek for workers who can track the inner nature of all that may be sweetly schemed; so that the young men as living in a wholesome place may be profited by everything that in work fairly wrought may touch them through hearing or sight, as if it were a breeze bringing health to them from places strong with life.14


In ‘Religion and the Stage’ (published in The Nineteenth Century in 1885) he complains about the elimination of serious subjects (religion, politics, business) from the stage: ‘The only restriction that should be placed upon (the playwright) is that he should not offend against the recognised code of social decency, and here we have a sufficient safeguard in the censorship and the “common-sense of most”.’15 In a short essay on truth and realism, published in the New York Dramatic Mirror (19 April 1890), in which he calls for art to be put at the service of the former rather than the latter, he approvingly quotes Ruskin on Turner.16 In an essay on ‘The Future of the English Drama’ (New Review, 1893) he identifies the positive changes in the theatre over the previous 20 years: the decline of adaptations from the French and the rise of original English dramas, the awakening of dramatic intelligence in the audience, the growing distinction between the theatre as ‘a funny entertainment and as a mirror of life’, the fact that more serious subjects are being dealt with on the stage and that there are now half a dozen theatres devoted to the drama as an art.17 In ‘A Playwright’s Grumble’ (To-Day, 1884) he gives as a creed for the modern playwright Ruskin’s statement in his Lectures on Art: ‘The highest thing that art can do is to set before you the true image of the presence of a noble human being. It has never done more than this, and it ought not to do less.’18 In ‘The Dramatic Outlook’ (English Illustrated Magazine, 1885), he points to ‘the enormous and ever-growing popularity of the theatre with all classes’ and ‘the comparative scarcity of major modern plays of high excellence and serious import’. He declares ‘our great need is, then, for a school of plays of serious intention, plays that implicitly assert the value and dignity of human life, that it has great passions and great aims, and is full of meaning and importance’.19 He identifies ‘truthful character drawing’ and ‘adequate language’ as the two cardinal tests of the merits of a play. He quotes as still relevant the rules of art laid down by Ruskin in Modern Painters and urges his readers ‘if you will but study him, you will find that much of what he has said there may be as usefully applied to the criticism of the drama as to the criticism of pictures. So true is that fine saying, which I think is Michael Angelo’s, “There is but one art” ’.20 In ‘On Playmaking’, a lecture delivered to the National Sunday League on 15 February 1891, he advocates as models for the aspiring playwright, in an evident echo of Ruskin, the technique of Turner and the structure and nature of the Gothic church, in other words a combination of truth, beauty, variety and harmony.21 He launches a fierce attack of the Realists: Lately a school has arisen amongst us which proclaims that the details of ugliness and disease are of the chief importance for us to study, and that curious and distorted forms of vice and selfishness and human degradation are the essential elements to be preserved and treasured


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in our plays. I protest against it with all my might. I say that all great art is instinctively healthy, instinctively rejects and hates and tramples upon all mere disease, ugliness and vice, and uses them only by way of contrast, and to produce the impression of truthfulness. I think that in this respect art should strictly follow nature by preserving a balance, as nature always does – a balance of health, of beauty, and pleasure in life.22 The lecture provoked the ire of the critic A.B. Walkley who rejected his dismissal of the realists, characterising Jones as ‘one of the old apostles who preach that there are things not convenient for the stage. He has not yet cast out the devil […] of Ruskinism. Art must be “healthy”’.23 In ‘Our Modern Drama – is it an art or an amusement?’, a lecture delivered to The Playgoers Club on 5 November 1890, he quotes with approval the opinion of ‘the greatest art critic the world has ever seen, John Ruskin’: ‘The end of art is not to amuse. All art which proposes amusement as its end, or which is sought for that end, must be of an inferior, and is probably of a harmful, class.’24 In a lecture on ‘The Relations of the Drama to Education’, delivered to the City of London College (12 October 1893), he called for recognition of the drama as an educative force: ‘The drama should teach; if it does not it is meaningless, empty, puerile, trivial. It should never teach directly and with set purpose; if it does, it is meddlesome, one-sided, intolerant, irritating and tiresome. Briefly we may say, it should teach, but it should never preach.’25 ‘The stage is not merely the most vivid and forcible teacher of the truths and wisdom of life. It is also the most flexible, the most humane, the most tolerant teacher … beyond giving a deep and searching knowledge of the heart of man and the great truths of life, the stage has a lighter and pleasanter task in teaching good manners and the delicacies and amenities of social intercourse.’26 Jones wrote an introduction to the English translation of Augustin Filon’s history of the English stage, originally published in France. Augustin Filon invoked Ruskin in his defence of the archaeological accuracy and artistic harmony of Irving’s Lyceum productions of Shakespeare: Irving is to be looked on not merely as an interpreter of Shakespeare. Hardly less important has been his work in editing the plays for the modern theatre, and in staging them worthily: at the Lyceum he has given them a setting than which the great dramatist, had he lived in our days (and read Ruskin), could have wished for nothing better.27 Jones not only lectured on Ruskin’s ideas but sought to give them dramatic form in his plays. His 1889 play Wealth, which starred Herbert Beerbohm Tree, was his attempt to illustrate the Ruskinian maxim ‘There is no wealth but life’. The central character in Wealth is the millionaire Sheffield


ironmaster Matthew Ruddock, who, having no son, wants his daughter Edith to marry her cousin John who will inherit the business and carry on the family name. She refuses, being in love with Paul Davoren, who is both a socialist and a rival ironmaster. He enrages Ruddock when he decides to take his workmen into partnership in his business. Ruddock refuses his consent to her marriage to Paul and banishes her. She denounces him because ‘money has been your god’ and she believes ‘all the riches in the world are nothing weighed against love’. Ruddock embarks on a wild spree of reckless speculation and comes to believe that he is bankrupt. His mind gives way under the strain and Edith returns to look after him. In a distinctly Ruskinian manner Ruddock rhapsodises about the beauty of flowers he has picked, never having noticed them before in his money-obsessed heyday. He soliloquises: ‘Oh for money, money, money, not for myself, but to give, give, give, to pour it all away like water, to scatter plenty like God, to rain happiness everywhere round me.’28 On discovering that he is not bankrupt after all but dying, he agrees to the marriage of Edith and Paul and makes a final declaration of his belief: ‘I had millions and was poor! I had nothing and was rich! Rich! Rich! Rich! […] Not money – not that sort of riches – heavenly riches – Love, love, love.’29 The play was a critical and box office failure. But Jones achieved greater success later in the same year with his play The Middleman which starred E.S. Willard. Jones described the theme of the play as ‘a fight between grasping commercialism and inventive genius’.30 It dramatises the very Ruskinian idea of the superiority of skilled craftsmanship to moneymaking. The central figure is Cyrus Blenkarn, a potter who devotes his life to seeking to rediscover the lost ancient method of glazing. He is contrasted with his employer, Chandler, the rich and smug owner of the porcelain factory. Cyrus is reduced to poverty by his search for the perfect pot but eventually he succeeds in producing it. This makes his fortune while the Chandlers are reduced to poverty. The play was ‘a great and immediate success’.31 It ran for 182 nights at the Shaftesbury Theatre and was later successfully produced in New York. In the first systematic critical analysis of Jones’ work, Richard A. Cordell declared in 1932 that Jones was ‘a liberal Victorian and drew his intellectual and spiritual nutrition largely from his contemporaries. There is hardly an “idea” in any of his plays that cannot be found expressed somewhere in Ruskin or Arnold or one of their fellowliberals’.32 Jones’ increasingly emphatic critique of popular entertainment is underscored by a general critical assumption that the drama and the theatre had become separated in the English theatre industry in the nineteenth century. Critics’ and practitioners’ contemplation of this division recurs throughout the period. But they had different answers to the problem. The gap between literature and the theatre, between drama and theatre, was felt by critics and theorists to be an almost insuperable barrier to arresting what his fellow theatre reformer, William Archer, called in 1897 the ‘blight on the drama’.


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Acknowledging himself as an ‘outsider’ and, as such, not privy to the actual financial arrangements of managers, he still regrets that the economics of the London theatre are such that managers tend towards fads and crazes, as well as the Christmas pantomime, to cover their costs, and the ‘theatrical public’ has one simple desire: ‘it demands to be amused and interested, and does not in the least care how.’33 In the light of this, he calls for an endowed theatre to free the drama from the commercial demands of the theatre. An endowed, non-commercial theatre would stage plays: that appeal to the thousands, not to the tens of thousands; plays that interest intelligent people without being sufficiently sensational, or amusing, or sentimental, or vulgar to run for two hundred and fifty nights; plays that have no star-part to tempt an actor-manager; plays in which the female interest is weak; plays that end, must end, unhappily; plays, in fine, that do not fulfil the thousand and one trivial conditions on which popular success is supposed to depend.34 While Jones’ and Archer’s views on the theatre diverged from those of actors and managers, such as Wilson Barrett and the Kendals (for further discussion of these divergences, see Chapter 5), their differences were largely about the ways in which the theatre might be renovated. The basic principles which should guide that renovation were never in dispute: critics and practitioners were united in the Ruskinian vision of art that is beautiful, useful and playful. Such art would contribute to the education of a morally-aware and feeling individual, equipped to resist the mechanisation of industrial capitalism. The controversial Anglican cleric Reverend Stewart Duckworth Headlam (1847–1924) was another public figure to promote Ruskinian ideas about the stage. Educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, Headlam had been ordained as a deacon in the Church of England in 1870 and as a priest in 1872. From 1870 to 1873 he was curate of St John’s, Drury Lane, where he encountered the dancers and theatricals who he was to champion for the rest of his life. At a time when women on the stage were considered little better than prostitutes, Headlam earned disapproval from his superiors for defending dancers in particular against disparagement and arguing that dance was essentially sacramental and godly. But throughout his life he courted controversy and provoked outrage by his actions. In 1895 he stood bail for Oscar Wilde and in 1897 took him into his house after his release from prison. He defended the atheist M.P. Charles Bradlaugh, barred from taking his seat in Parliament for refusing to swear the oath of allegiance. He established a Sunday School for the children of ballerinas. An AngloCatholic and a Christian Socialist, he was so far at odds with the mainstream views of his Church that the Bishop of London removed his licence to preach in 1878; he did not regain it until 1898.


Headlam was not only inspired by Ruskin’s views on the stage but also by his doctrine of political economy. He wrote in 1907: It is especially worth noting that the teaching which has revolutionised Political Economy in England was founded on Christ’s saying, ‘I will give unto this last even as unto thee’. It is to be hoped that, now that Mr Ruskin’s epoch-making little book can be obtained for a few pence, it will be read far and wide as a text-book of Political Economy which is essentially Christian.35 As a member of the London School Board, Headlam pressed to have Unto This Last made compulsory reading. Embracing and expounding Ruskin’s views both on art and on society, Headlam became a thoroughgoing Ruskinian. The last straw for his bishop may well have been the enthusiastic lecture that Headlam, by now Curate of St Matthew’s, Bethnal Green, delivered to the Commonwealth Club on 7 October 1877 on the subject of theatre and music hall. A summary was published in the theatrical journal The Era (18 November 1877) under the heading ‘startling defence by clergyman’ and it was subsequently issued as a pamphlet. It contained the arguments that were to be the basis of Headlam’s lectures, addresses and articles for the rest of his life. He acknowledged that many clergymen considered theatres to be evil but declared firmly ‘at the outset what a deep respect I have for all those whose work it is to minister to our amusements; how disastrous it is to give such people a bad name. I regard the profession of an actor or singer or dancer as an entirely honourable profession’. He applauded the profession’s ‘extreme usefulness in our present state of society […] most of us work and live such worried, complicated lives, that we can ill afford to depreciate those who make it their duty to amuse us’. He urged his audience to attend serious drama like Irving’s productions of Macbeth and Hamlet for the moral lessons they teach: ‘I defy anyone to see one of Shakespeare’s great tragedies fairly well acted without having most tremendous moral lessons brought home to him.’ He declared it a duty for people to see ‘really great drama’ in the interests of self-culture. Theatregoing, he thought, had a ‘brightening, educating effect on those who go’. On the lighter side of theatre, he praised Lydia Thompson’s production of Bluebeard, Nellie Farren and Kate Vaughan at the Gaiety, and pantomime stars the Vokes family ‘who have delighted us Christmas after Christmas at Drury Lane’. But he valued in particular the art of dance, though confessing ‘with real shame’ that he had not mastered it himself: ‘I do seriously put it before you as an art which you should get all your children taught. I am sure it would do the children in the elementary schools more good than the military drill which they are now taught.’ He clinched the argument in favour of dance by citing Ruskin: Mr Ruskin who is you know one of the greatest art critics, who probably knows more about the arts of drawing, painting and sculpture than any


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man in England, puts dancing above them all, as the highest of all the arts; and constantly to see a beautiful dance on the stage – ballet as we will call it – is an exhilarating sight. Some dances and dancers are bad but: don’t let us be blind to the essential beauty of the ballet, or to the fact that the majority of the dances to be seen in London music halls and theatres are pure and beautiful; above all don’t let us speak with scorn of the ladies who dance on the stage.36 This address expounded the essential elements of Headlam’s justification of the stage – the educational value of the drama, the invaluable role of the theatre in spreading joy, uplift and wholesome diversion and the divine exaltation produced by participating in and witnessing dance. Headlam’s next step was to set up the Church and Stage Guild, which he did on 30 May 1879 with himself as its honorary secretary. Its objects were ‘to break down the prejudice against theatres, actors, music-hall artists, stage-singers, and dancers, in those days all too common among Churchmen; to promote social and religious sympathy between Church and Stage; to vindicate the worthiness of acting and dancing as arts, no less capable of being dedicated to God’s service than any other work of man conscientiously pursued; and to claim for religious persons the right to take part in theatrical amusements, whether as performers or spectators. There was one thing we always repudiated as a Guild and that was having any idea of undertaking a mission to the dramatic profession. Such a notion would have seemed to us an impertinence’.37 Within a year, the Guild had 470 members, of whom 172 were theatricals and 91 clergy. There were monthly meetings, papers were read and there were ‘at homes’ and conversaziones. Senior members of the acting profession such as Irving and the Kendals kept aloof from the Guild, because it treated music hall performers as the equal of actors, though Irving was later to say that it was Headlam, not he, who should be credited with raising the esteem in which the stage was held. But Headlam enjoyed the enthusiastic support of others in the acting profession such as Ben Greet and Johnston Forbes Robertson, both future theatrical knights, and lectures were given by such luminaries as Bernard Shaw and William Poel. Bishop James Fraser of Manchester, Canon Henry Liddon and Lewis Carroll all refused to join the Guild, Liddon declaring his belief that it was impossible to enlist the stage ‘in the cause of Religion and Morality’.38 But the Guild survived until 1900, its role being taken up by the Actors’ Church Union which emerged in 1898 under the leadership of Rev. Donald Hole. Headlam enlisted the support of Ruskin for the Guild and Ruskin wrote to him on 18 July 1879 to say that he did not know ‘when I have been more pleased, amused, or amazed by your letter and the papers of


the Guild’, adding ‘quite seriously, you have my entire sympathy and good wishes’ (CW 37.292–3). Headlam had another outlet for his view, the journal The Church Reformer, which he took over in 1884 and ran until 1895, subsidising it out of his own pocket. The journal included theatrical reviews, reports on the Church and Stage Guild and essays on the moral ministry of the stage alongside articles on theology and economy. Headlam sent the first issue of The Church Reformer under his editorship to Ruskin, who wrote to him: ‘I never yet looked through a paper I thought so right or likely to be so useful.’39 Ruskin was quoted regularly in Headlam’s articles and lectures and in the contributions of his regular writers, notably Selwyn Image, another convinced Ruskinian. Headlam printed a large extract from Fors Clavigera 39 in The Church Reformer 7 (December 1888), in which Ruskin described the church and the pantomime as ‘these two theatrical entertainments’ whose ‘imaginative congregations still retain true notions of the value of human and beautiful things’. In ‘Applause’, a paper read to the Church and Stage Guild and reprinted in The Church Reformer 5 (May 1886), Headlam quoted Ruskin as saying ‘all the arts of mankind and womankind are only rightly learned and practised when they are so with the definite purpose of pleasing others’. In The Function of the Stage (1889), a pamphlet which expanded and developed his lecture on ‘The Moral Ministry of the Stage’, Headlam quoted Ruskin saying ‘just as life without industry is guilt, so industry without art is brutality’.40 In ‘The Moral Ministry of the Stage’ summarised in The Church Reformer 8 (1889), Headlam reiterated his message: ‘The moral ministry of the stage depends upon the fact that we can be made better people by being made brighter and happier people.’ He saw the role of tragedy as serving humanity ‘by purifying our passions, by correcting and refining our pity and terror, making us pity what we ought to pity, dread what we ought to dread; but it does this education for us in a pleasurable way’. Comedy was equally important: ‘Caricaturing and ridiculing our faults, foibles and follies, but at the same time arousing human sympathy with, and interest in, the affairs and events of everyday life; and, at any rate, in the last resource, making us laugh and forget ourselves altogether.’ He said the ballet had a ‘consoling, healing, exhilarating influence’ on the masses ‘overworked and worried, living too often in gloomy streets, surrounded by mud, dirt, grime, meagreness’. So it was a message of uplift and instruction. Richard Foulkes has traced the often troubled relations between church and stage in the nineteenth century and has identified something of a rapprochement between the two by the end of the century. This was brought about partly by the eminently respectable lives lived by key figures in the profession such as William Charles Macready, Samuel Phelps, Henry Irving (the first actor to be knighted), Helen Faucit (later Lady Martin), Marie Wilton and Madge Kendal (ultimately Dame Madge Kendal). Not only the


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careers of such key figures but the religious, social and intellectual transformations of the Victorian age caused attitudes to the theatre slowly but surely to change. The manifestations of this change included the mission of Bishop Fraser of Manchester to that city’s theatres, aiming to purify rather than abolish the stage, the popularity of the Oberammergau Passion Play which inspired home-grown Bible story tableaux vivants at inner city churches, and the foundation of student drama societies at both Oxford and Cambridge, where the authorities had previously discouraged theatricals.41 While the church was undergoing changes, so too was the stage. The middle class audience began to return in large numbers, the professional status of actors and the gentility and moral tone of plays began to be stressed. The cult of Shakespeare as the pre-eminent British cultural hero proved as inspiring to clerics as to laymen. The National Shakespeare Committee planning the Shakespeare tercentenary of 1864 included three archbishops and four bishops. Headlam campaigned ceaselessly for the teaching and performance of Shakespeare in London schools. He was president of the London Shakespeare League from 1914 until his death. Eventually, after the censor had ensured that religious themes and Bible stories were rigorously excluded from the stage for much of the nineteenth century, there was a breakthrough in the 1890s, when the prohibition was relaxed and the religious problem dramas of the Ruskinian Henry Arthur Jones (Judah, Michael and His Lost Angel), Hall Caine (The Christian, The Eternal City) and above all the spectacular melodrama of the early days of Christianity, Ruskinian Wilson Barrett’s The Sign of the Cross, which was recommended by clergymen from the pulpit, achieved theatrical and moral success. The principal institutional expressions of this rapprochement were undoubtedly the Church and Stage Guild and The Church Reformer through which Headlam consistently preached his Ruskinian gospel of the stage. The pessimism of critics such as Jones and Archer was refuted by professionals within the mainstream. Given that their daily work comprised of balancing the often contradictory aims of pleasing a diverse theatrical public, offering work which had artistic integrity, and earning a living (or at least a return on their capital investment in the case of managers such as Irving and Barrett), a defence of both drama and theatre is to be expected. But the defence of the mainstream theatre of the period by its pre-eminent practitioners went much further than this, and neatly turned Victorian antitheatrical prejudices back on themselves, by representing the theatre as the epitome of Victorian morality and respectability. Leading actor-managers became advocates of Ruskinian ideas. The role and future of the theatre in national culture is a recurring topic in publicity, interviews and the other ephemera of fame surrounding Sir Henry Irving, Wilson Barrett and, to a lesser extent, Madge Kendal. In the late nineteenth century the theatrical profession was still subject to some aspersion, suggested by the force and number of articles still being published in this


period arguing for the theatre as educative and a power for good in society. In their public statements on the theatre and society, all three practitioners take on the role of spokesperson for their profession with enthusiasm, and all three use the occasions offered them to reiterate the double and linked purposes of the theatre: to educate by amusing. All three emphasise the work, the skill, the professionalism of the actor. Understandably, they are enthusiastic about recommending the theatre as a source of pleasure and amusement, as well as a place of honest thought and work. But in this they are at one with a central message of Ruskin’s social theory, which is always to suggest that pleasure must accompany work and art in a seamless wealth of life. In their public utterances over the state of the drama, its morality and its social role, Irving, Barrett and Kendal give the weight of their considerable reputations, as both individuals of probity and theatre practitioners of renown, to the view represented by Ruskin’s private comments about the value of the theatre. As noted in Chapter 1, personal relations between Ruskin and Irving (1838–1905) were soured by the controversy over Irving’s interpretation of Shylock. Nevertheless, Irving continued to be influenced by Ruskin’s aesthetic and educational ideas. Ruskin had laid out in Modern Painters what he considered to be the characteristics of Great Art. He wrote: Great art dwells on all that is beautiful […] great art accepts Nature as she is, but directs the eyes and thoughts to what is most perfect in her […] High art, therefore, consists neither in altering, nor in improving nature; but in seeking throughout nature for ‘whatsoever things are lovely, and whatsoever things are pure;’ in loving these, in displaying to the utmost of the painter’s power such loveliness as is in them, and directing the thoughts of others to them by winning art, or gentle emphasis. Art is great in exact proportion to the love of beauty shown by the painter, provided that love of beauty forfeit no atom of truth. The next characteristic of great art is that it includes the largest possible quantity of Truth in the most perfect possible harmony. If it were possible for art to give all the truths of nature, it ought to do it. But this is not possible. Choice must always be made of some facts which can be represented from among others which must be passed by in silence, or even in some respects, misrepresented (CW 5.56–9). He went on to give Rembrandt and Veronese as examples of artists whose use of colour, light and shade creates a harmonious whole, which conveys truth and beauty. This Ruskinian creed can be seen to lie behind the philosophy of the stage and the drama articulated by Sir Henry Irving. Irving said: ‘in the consideration of the Art of Acting, it must never be forgotten that its ultimate aim is beauty. Truth itself is only an element of beauty, and merely to reproduce things vile and squalid and mean is a


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debasement of Art.’ He was committed to a great cause: ‘We go forth, armed with the luminous panoply which genius has forged for us, to do battle with dullness, with coarseness, with apathy, with every form of vice and evil.’ He declared: ‘Truly the actor’s work embraces all the arts. He must first have the gift or faculty of acting […] His sympathy must then realise to himself the image in the poet’s mind, and by the exercise of his art use his natural powers to the best advantage. His form and emotions are, in common with the sculptor’s work, graceful and purposeful; his appearance and expression heightened by costume and pictorial preparation, are in common with the efforts of the musician – to arouse the intelligence by the vibrations and modulations of organized sound.’42 Here is the same concern for compositional harmony as Ruskin expounded in discussing painting. Irving was certainly familiar with Ruskin’s ideas. He possessed a good range of Ruskin’s works. When he fell on hard times at the end of his career and was forced to sell off part of his library, he sold among many other works his five-volume set of Modern Painters, his three-volume set of Stones of Venice (1873–4) and his nine-volume set of Fors Clavigera (1871–87). But he retained until his death a single volume containing Ruskin’s ‘Pre-Raphaelitism’; ‘Notes on the Turner Gallery at Marlborough House’, ‘The Nature of Gothic Architecture’ and ‘Notes on the Royal Academy’ numbers 3, 4 and 5. This was sold with the rest of his library after his death. Despite their disagreements about the portrayal of Shylock, Irving continued to preach an essentially Ruskinian gospel about the uplifting and ennobling role of the stage: Not for a moment is the position to be accepted that the theatre is merely a place of amusement […] it is a living power, to be used for good, or possibly for evil; and far-seeing men recognise in it, based though it be on the relaxation and pleasures of the people, an educational medium of no mean order. Its progress in the past century has been the means of teaching to millions of people a great number of facts which had perhaps otherwise been lost to them. How many are there who have had brought home to them in an understandable manner by stage-plays the costumes, habits, manners, and customs of countries and ages other than their own; what insights have they thus obtained into facts and vicissitudes of life – of passions and sorrows and ambitions outside the narrow scope of their own lives, and which yet may and do mould the destinies of man. All this is education – education in its widest sense, for it broadens the sympathies and enlarges the intellectual grasp. And beyond this again […] there is that higher education of the heart, which raises in the scale of creation all who are subject to its sweetening influences.43 In a true Ruskinian sense, Irving was strongly committed to the spread of culture to the people. He regularly accepted invitations to open libraries,


galleries and exhibitions. By so doing, he was implicitly linking theatre to libraries and art galleries as a cultural and education force, and as an expression of the gospel of rational recreation. The practical expression of this gospel was a network of mechanics institutes, mutual improvement societies and working men’s clubs, all providing adult education. This was catered for by increasing numbers of art galleries and museums. There were also public libraries funded by both individual philanthropists and local authorities after the 1850 and 1855 Public Libraries Acts, which authorised a penny rate to pay for them. Ruskin was the most influential figure linking art, society and religion. Ruskin wrote in 1867: ‘Every one of our principal cities ought to have a permanent gallery of art of which the function should be wholly educational, as distinguished from the historical and general purpose of the collections of the British Museum and National Gallery’ (CW 19.221). In 1880 he added ‘the first function of a Museum […] is to give example of perfect order and perfect elegance, in the true sense of that test word, to the disorderly and rude population’ (CW 34.247; 251). Ruskin wanted them well-warmed, well-lighted and accessible to all classes, but he proposed a small entrance fee to discourage mere idlers, though overwhelmingly the advocates of museums and galleries argued for free access. He also believed that minor as well as major artists should be included, if they had a moral lesson to teach. As with libraries, the move to provide museums and art galleries was partly due to local government initiative and partly private philanthropic enterprise. Irving enlarged upon the civilising effect of paintings for the masses, when he opened the eleventh annual exhibition of paintings at St Jude’s School, Whitechapel, on 17 March 1891, and again when he opened a free exhibition of pictures at the town hall, Stratford East, on 3 May 1887. He said at Whitechapel: The good which can be done by exhibitions of this kind is incalculable. It is at all times wise to wake in the minds of all, both young and old, new ideas, more especially when such ideas tend to the lovely and imaginative side of life. There is too much sad and squalid realism already and what we want is now and again a glimpse of that ideal which we all yearn for, and yearn in proportion to the exacting nature of our lives. He made a direct link between theatre and gallery: One cannot help thinking there is much in common between my art – the art of the player and the art of the painter. From canvas and sculpture actors have often caught the inspiration of vivid action, and their ambition has been kindled by studies of the statuesque; whilst the theatre has sometimes afforded painters subjects for their work, and also that stimulus and enthusiasm which the living, breathing action of the player may


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sometimes inspire. The fields of history and fancy are open to the actor, as to the painter, the actor perhaps having one advantage – inexact and fading though his work may be – of directly moving a multitude of spectators in the mimic scene. Art has its pulpit, and picture galleries and clean and wholesome theatres preach very often very excellent sermons.44 In his Stratford East speech, Irving praised the munificence of West Ham Borough Council in providing municipal institutions for public use – a public hall, free libraries, two recreation grounds and public baths: You are rapidly extending the means and opportunities of rational and aesthetic recreation. These pictures have already enlarged the horizons of many minds. They have done incalculable good by giving impressions of beauty to men and women who toil amidst conditions not always helpful to conceptions of the beautiful. They are true missionaries of civilization, ministering to that eternal need of the ideal, which is as instinctive in us as the craving for material happiness.45 In 1892 Henry Arthur Jones played a prominent role in the movement for the Sunday opening of museums and received a strongly supportive letter from Irving: ‘You are to my mind taking an excellent stand in your advocacy of opening Museums and Picture Galleries on Sundays and I most heartily wish that the movement may be successful.’46 Wilson Barrett’s views of a National Theatre combined education, entertainment, and moral teaching. Like Irving, Barrett was frequently asked questions about the future and role of the theatre. Again, like Irving, he saw it as entirely possible that the right kind of manager, attracting the right kinds of audiences, can bring about the elevation of the theatre. Like Irving, however, Barrett’s views on the ‘right’ kinds of plays and productions were significantly different from the views of critics and theorists such as Jones and Archer. On one of his Antipodean tours, speaking in St Paul’s Cathedral, Dunedin, on 12 January 1902 Barrett gave the fullest outline of his production philosophy, quoting Ruskin in support of his vision of the stage. Referring to himself and his audiences as ‘we Christians’ he sought to reconcile church and stage: Religion is not designed to kill our pleasures, or make them less; it is meant to purify and elevate them; to make them innocent and helpful […] For the desire of recreation and amusement is God’s gift to us […] and it is the duty of Christians not to crush this desire (as the Puritans vainly taught and teach still) but to regulate and guide it. And, in regard to that desire for recreation which finds its gratification in the theatre – it is impossible to ignore the fact that the Drama is, and always will be, a very powerful social instrument for good or for evil, according as it is


rightly or wrongly directed. The popularity of the Drama, its vividness, the directness of its appeal to the imagination and to the emotions will always secure for it this influence. The theatre appeals to certain aspects of human nature – to the imagination, to the instinct of curiosity about life, to the desire to have the emotions touched by actual pictures of various situations in life which either do not usually come within the ‘ken’ of many people, or if they do are not seen dramatically […] it will always be popular […] the Drama has under one form or another been an important factor in civilization and human development, and has played its part in the social evolution of peoples. In a distinctly Ruskinian spirit, he goes on: I venture to say that in these days, it is more than ever desirable that the drama should exercise an elevating and invigorating influence upon society, for the dry, matter of fact commercial spirit which is so prevalent has a hardening, narrowing tendency – it obscures the larger views of human life with its tragedies and its comedies, its humour and its pathos. I have known business men who found in the amusement of the theatre a wholesome escape from that ‘dustiness’ of the heart (so to speak) which attached to their business hours. A good play afforded them an opportunity of getting a breath of fresh air as it were, and an insight into the largeness of life with its strong emotions and elemental passions. They did their business all the better for it afterwards. In another echo of such Ruskin pronouncements as ‘tell me what you like and I’ll tell you what you are’ and his definition of the elements of greatness in art as ‘nobility of subject, beauty, sincerity and imaginative power’, Barrett said: The influence of the drama may and ought to be a moral influence […] A people’s character depends upon their amusements as well as upon their more serious employments; and what was said of ballads may be said as truly of plays, that they influence people as much as their laws. The stage ought to promote all that is healthiest in morality, as well as that which is inspiriting to the intellect, and pleasurable to the imagination. In short, the true function of theatrical representations should be to purify and elevate […] The business of the dramatist, and of the actor […] should be to interest, to uplift, to refine, to touch the heart and open the eyes, to recall, to suggest, to reveal true and lofty ideals […] He will tell us of the evil, the sordid, the terrible […] but he will never put evil for good, or mislead our judgement, or confuse our moral sense, pervert our sympathies, make vice attractive. All this is false to what is truly natural, false to truth and beauty.


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He admitted that there were plays that had a bad influence ‘often clever and brilliant, but […] frankly cynical and almost contemptuous of virtue, honour and truth’, plays which undermined the ideals of true womanhood and the sanctity of marriage, and he urged his hearers to reject them, quoting Ruskin directly: What John Ruskin said about literature may be applied equally well to the drama: ‘In these days’ he says, ‘it is of the greatest importance to keep out of the salt swamps of literature, and live on a little rocky island of our own with a spring and a lake in it pure and good […] It is of more consequence that (books) (and plays) should be right than clever, not oppressively instructive but that the thoughts they express should be just, and the feelings they excite generous. He concludes: ‘The Drama makes for good certainly, it is helpful, not harmful when it presents us with embodied parables of life – with its fair and tragic possibilities; when it enables us to view, as it were from the outside the heights and depths to which we ourselves may rise or fall; when it holds up the contemptible to our contempt, the hateful to our hate, the lovely and the loveable to our love.’47 The fact that Barrett practised what he preached was demonstrated by The Man of the World, in its profile of Barrett: The actor-manager-dramatist may be described in a familiar figure of speech as three gentlemen rolled into one; and Mr. Wilson Barrett is an eminent example of the triple personage, for he has achieved notable success in the several capacities of actor, manager, and dramatist. A good deal of nonsense is talked about the elevation of the drama by this or that manager, although a theatre, as Mr. Bancroft frankly told the public on one occasion, is carried on, like any other business, for the purpose of making money. The theatrical manager should be, above all things, a man of business. Still, Mr. Wilson Barrett, more than any man of his time, may be said to have elevated the drama, for it must be allowed that a new era in the history of the stage in this country dates from the production of The Silver King at the Princess’s Theatre.48 Madge Kendal’s public utterances about the theatre offer further examples of the formal defence of the theatre by its professionals; in Kendal’s case, what is perhaps more interesting is her negotiation of Victorian gender roles generally thought to have limited women theatre practitioners’ choices and reputations. Like Irving and Barrett, Kendal turns disapproving Victorian anti-theatricality back on itself. In Dramatic Opinions and ‘The Drama’, her address to the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science (1884), Kendal argues that the earning capacity of the actress does not run


counter to her role as a private, domestic woman, but instead enhances and enables the development of a womanly character:49 I do not think there is a thing in the world that a woman could be better than an actress; there is no other calling in which she can earn so much money, – no other calling in which she can keep her own standard so high; no other calling in which she can set a better example and do more good. An actress lives in a world of her own creation and imagination for the time being – a world in which she is perfectly happy or perfectly miserable, as the case may be; and she holds a position which is unique if she has the necessary qualifications, – such as the perseverance which is necessary even when the talent is already there.50 The ‘blessedness of independence’ deriving from earning one’s living in the theatre extends to children as well, in Kendal’s view. In answer to unnamed interlocutors who question the desirability of a stage career for children, Mrs Kendal maintains they have a good life in the theatre, and grow in knowledge, maturity and independence. Rather than interfering with their education, Kendal maintains that work in the theatre provides meaningful and enjoyable work for children, who might otherwise face poverty and ill-treatment: this I do know, that by giving children the recreation of going to a theatre and dancing, you are providing for them an immense pleasure; you employ them in a childish pursuit, and you enable large numbers to make merry together. Why, the dancing-mistress at Drury Lane is simply worshipped by the children. Again, the manager, as a rule, if he keeps them certain hours over time, will give them food. And when they return home, the little child of the lowest and poorest woman in the world will certainly be looked upon and treated with more urbanity and kindness for being the bread-winner.51 In this, she adopts Ruskin’s view of the child pantomime performers he discusses in Fors Clavigera 39, ‘The Cart Goes Better So’. Rachel Dickinson and Sharon Aronofsky Weltman have discussed this letter in detail, finding in it a central example of the ways in which the theatre, pleasure and makebelieve constituted a significant element of his social and aesthetic theory.52 David Mayer’s point, that in his idealisation of the fairy-world of the pantomime stage ‘Ruskin was blind to the strong links between stage illusion and industrialisation’, is cogent and accurate,53 but also assumes that Ruskin intends his aesthetic and social theories to operate at the level of material, practical reality. Ruskin’s social theories were aimed at countering what he saw as the cold logic-chopping of the Utilitarians and other political radicals and reformers. His counter-arguments to the ‘modern soi-disant science of


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political economy’ (CW 17.25), as laid out in works such as Unto this Last and Sesame and Lilies, were playful, rhetorical and metaphoric. And the theatre, as part of this counter-blast against the dehumanising effects of industrialisation, was for Ruskin a means of providing similar ‘thoughtful rest’: ‘hours of escapist entertainment, but […] also […] to present what he calls the True Ideal’ which, as Weltman argues, ‘is a paradoxical claim for the greater truth of theatrical illusion’.54 Although Kendal is keen to emphasise the fun and joy child performers have in their work, she also stresses the necessity for hard work and learning, notwithstanding the level of natural talent possessed by a would-be performer. The theatre is a school not simply for child actors, according to Kendal, but an ideal teacher for adults, to develop them into ‘intelligent and cultivated’ professionals.55 However, most middle class aspirants have not ‘the slightest idea of the amount of study, of labour, and of devotion to the art – to say nothing of natural aptitude – that is necessary for success’. Not only is the theatre profession an education for actors, it is an institution ‘more charitable […] than any other’ in the chances it offers ‘to all men and women; no matter what their part has been’.56 Thus, Mrs Kendal’s public statements about the theatre not only refute enduring moral doubts about the theatre (its focus on commerce, the employment of children and women, and the welcoming of aspirants from all classes) but also turn these doubts into examples of the high moral and pedagogical practices of the theatre. As we shall see in Chapter 8, the framework of femininity within which actresses practised their art enacted some of the contradictions of the operation of Victorian gender ideology more broadly. Even Mrs Kendal’s apparently radical support of female work, earning power and independence is cast in the domestic mould of helpmeet and family support. Helen Faucit’s and Madge Kendal’s successes as actresses and authority as commentators are characterised as emanating from their goodness as women, in a celebration of the ‘truth’ of their morality and sensibility. It is this celebration of idealised femininity which Ruskin enjoys in the theatre, but which feminist literary historians have argued is a disabling distancing of women from significant sources of social power and self-determination. This belief in the unique mission of women as guides to an idealised moral world – for their audiences or their families – is one of the twin axes of Ruskin’s major statement on gender roles in contemporary Victorian society, Sesame and Lilies. His second axis is a critique of a materialistic masculinity, and the education system which serves it. Famously, in ‘Of Queens’ Gardens’, Ruskin outlines the queenship of women in the domestic sphere: But the woman’s power is for rule, not for battle, – and her intellect is not for invention or creation, but for sweet ordering, arrangement, and decision. She sees the qualities of things, their claims and their places. Her


great function is Praise: she enters into no contest, but infallibly judges the crown of the contest (CW 18.121). After two decades of feminist scholarship following Kate Millet’s critique of Ruskin’s ‘compulsive masculine fantasy’ in ‘Of Queens’ Gardens’,57 recent scholarship has focussed on Ruskin’s argument for the education of boys and men, ‘Of Kings’ Treasuries’. Admitting to playful teasing of his audience, Ruskin states at the beginning of ‘Of Kings’ Treasuries’ that: I am not going to talk of kings, known as regnant, nor of treasuries, understood to contain wealth; but of quite another order of royalty, and another material of riches, than those usually acknowledged (CW 18.53). Ruskin goes on to ask his audience to consider the purposes of education. Education for what?, he asks them. His challenge to them is to pursue the right kind of education to fit themselves for a place in life. The ‘court of the past’ of great books, warns Ruskin, is open ‘to labour and to merit, but to nothing else. No wealth will bribe, no name overawe, no artifice deceive’ in this court (CW 18.62). Ruskin’s ‘court’ of great books enables men to be ‘rightly occupied’ so that ‘their amusement grows out of their work’ (CW 18.97). As Jan Marsh points out, Ruskin’s rhetoric in ‘Of Kings’ Treasuries’ is directed against the materialism of the industrial bourgeoisie and the kind of false culture it creates (and she notes that the irony of Ruskin’s own economic position did not strike him, at least in public): ‘But now, we have no true business, we pour our whole masculine energy into the false business of money-making’ (CW 18.97). Ruskin’s blast against this false masculinity is counter-balanced by his positioning of femininity as protector and guardian of the Home, that symbol of all that is not part of the ‘false business’ of industrial capitalism. The authority of the English National poet, and Ruskin’s great touchstone, Shakespeare, is saved for the discussion of the power and moral authority of women. Part of Ruskin’s evidence for the power of women is that Shakespeare has no heroes: he has only heroines. There is not one entirely heroic figure in all his plays […]. In his laboured and perfect plays you have no hero. Othello would have been one, if his simplicity had not been so great as to leave him the prey of every base practice round him; but he is the only example even approximating to the heroic type (CW 18.112). Ruskin is unrelenting in his catalogue of disastrous masculinity in Shakespeare’s plays: The catastrophe of every play is caused always by the folly or fault of a man; the redemption, if there be any, is by the wisdom and virtue of a


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woman, and, failing that, there is none. The catastrophe of King Lear is owing to his own want of judgment, his impatient vanity, his misunderstanding of his children; the virtue of his one true daughter would have saved him from all the injuries of the others, unless he had cast her away from him; as it is, she all but saves him (CW 18.97). On the other hand, he writes at length about Shakespeare’s heroines in Proserpina (1879), identifying them as incarnations of various kinds of love. Shakespeare – and Aeschylus, Dante and Homer – are the authorities for Ruskin’s radical proposition that women’s education should fit them for moral leadership in the home. As Marsh points out, Ruskin’s argument touches on several points in common with the later arguments developed in John Stuart Mill’s On the Subjection of Women.58 Linda H. Peterson (in something of an historicist re-thinking of Millet’s position) argues that Ruskin’s use of Shakespeare in ‘Of Queens’ Gardens’ can be read as specifically feminist in its sources and impact, particularly in his unacknowledged debt to Anna Jameson.59 As Ruskin castigates his audience for the corruption of boys by inculcation with the false values of money-making, so he criticises the conventions of bringing up girls ‘as if they were meant for sideboard ornaments’ (CW 18.132). Shakespearean tragic heroines offer a model of moral power which, while perhaps ‘bitter and prickly’ (CW 18.131), offer examples of the rigorous demands of moral ‘queenship’. The plays are blueprints for action when seen, and solid material for reflection when read and re-read. In these published texts of his 1864 public lectures in Manchester, Ruskin uses Shakespeare’s drama as an exemplary intellectual and aesthetic framework for his ‘right thinking’ about books, and to carry his argument about the right thinking approach to education, its purposes and result. More generally, Shakespeare held a special place in Ruskin’s critical thinking in all areas of his moral, social and aesthetic theory. For Ruskin, Shakespeare represented both the native art of the English language and the demonstration of ideal ethics and aesthetics in action. Ruskin’s writings are saturated with references to Shakespeare, suggesting that Ruskin’s deep understanding of Shakespeare’s language and dramaturgy frame much of his aesthetic and moral theory. This familiarity began, according to Ruskin in Praeterita, at an early age, and certainly Ruskin’s private reading of Shakespeare runs in parallel with his attendance at the theatre from his boyhood. One could speculate (as Francis O’Gorman has) on the symbolic filial relationship Ruskin felt for Shakespeare as his moral and aesthetic ‘father’, connected as his reading and seeing of plays was with the figure of his actual father, John James Ruskin.60 Ruskin’s certainty of Shakespeare’s pedagogical power waned in his later life, as he pronounced gloomily in Praeterita ‘his wisdom so useless, that at this time of being and speaking, among active and purposeful Englishmen, I know not one who shows a trace of ever having felt a passion of Shakespeare’s, or learnt a lesson from him’ (CW 35.36). However,


Shakespeare’s plays, together with the Bible – another authority whose certainty he lost after his ‘unconversion’ in 1858 – remained constant touchstones of Ruskin’s intellectual life. His engagement with these texts, even when disillusioned about their spiritual or moral powers, continued at an intellectual and pedagogical level, until his silence in old age and illness. Ruskin’s writings on Shakespeare and women were recognised by theatre practitioners as well as literary critics. The work of Helen Faucit (Lady Martin) on Shakespeare’s Heroines, for example, bears testimony to the mutual respect developed between her and Ruskin. In fact, one of her essays, on Beatrice, was dedicated to Ruskin. The essays, originally published in Blackwood’s Magazine, were collected in 1885 in a volume called Some of Shakespeare’s Female Characters. It went through 6 editions before 1904. The St James’s Gazette said that only two women had previously had anything worthwhile to say about Shakespeare’s heroines – Anna Jameson and Fanny Kemble – and Helen Faucit should now be added to that number. Helen Faucit’s distinctive innovation was to add passages considering the life of the heroines after the end of the play and she for instance envisaged Portia visiting the sick and broken Shylock and bringing him food and wine. This was objected to by both Ruskin ‘who thought it was not in the spirit of the age’ (i.e. the Renaissance) and Browning (dedicatee of the Rosalind essay) who thought ‘the whole party would be more likely to rejoice over the discomfiture of the Jew’. Helen pondered over whether to delete the passage but eventually decided to keep it in.61 Faucit’s essay on Beatrice, the heroine of Much Ado About Nothing, is addressed to Ruskin. He wrote to her in 1885 about her Beatrice essay: ‘I thought I knew Beatrice, of any lady, by heart, but you have made her still more real and dear to me, especially by the little sentences in which you speak of your own feelings in certain moments of acting her’ (CW 37.515–16). In so doing, he acknowledges the revelatory possibilities of acting as opposed to just reading about a Shakespeare heroine. It is not known if Ruskin saw her on the stage, which, given his avoidance of drama and tragedy, in which she excelled, is perhaps unlikely. ‘Beatrice’ was a late addition to Shakespeare’s Female Characters, and Faucit recorded elsewhere that the role was not a favourite of the first rank with her. However, she offers her essay to Ruskin in an act of shared appreciation of the character: I am glad to see by your letter that Beatrice is a favourite with you. The heresy of Campbell and others, that describes her as a compound of tomboy, flirt, and shrew, – ‘an odious woman,’ I think, Campbell calls her, – has manifestly not enlisted you among its adherents. Whilst, therefore, I am sure of your sympathy in trying to put into words the conception of this brilliant and charming woman which I endeavoured to embody on the stage, still I must approach the subject with great trepidation, as you tell me that you are ‘listening with all your heart to what I shall say


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of her.’ […] The lesson Shakespeare teaches seems to me to be entirely in accordance with your own belief, expressed in many ways, ‘that no man ever lived a right life who had not been chastened by a woman’s love, strengthened by her courage, and guided by her discretion.’62 In her review of Helen Faucit’s Shakespeare’s Female Characters, Dinah Mulock Craik mutes some her customary asperity about the modern theatre to praise Shakespeare’s plays in spite of their robustness of plot, topic and expression: ‘over the foulness [of contemporary London theatres] is thrown a certain veneer of refinement. Shakespeare, though often coarse in language […] is always pure at heart […]. His women, too, spite of our ultra-realistic modern actresses […] are and always will be the ideal of all feminine purity.’63 Helen Faucit’s performance and her reflections on her performing career through the characters of Shakespeare’s women are judged by Craik to mirror this wholesomeness and purity. Faucit’s extended series of meditations on the interpretation and performance of Shakespeare’s heroines were powerful because, Craik argues, ‘the secret of her success was not art but nature. She felt all she acted. Her cultivated mind, which, if not absolutely poetic, had a sympathetic appreciation of poetry’.64 Craik’s contention that ‘No woman who was not good, pure, and highminded could have impersonated Shakespeare’s women as Helen Faucit used to do’65 is akin to Mrs Kendal’s comment that audiences expected her to be of a private character similar to those stage characters she represented. Mrs Kendal cites her audience’s satisfaction with her on-stage partnership with her husband: ‘the very fact of knowing we are man and wife, gives them a certain satisfaction in witnessing our performance, which they would not otherwise feel.’66 Mrs Kendal, however, was sceptical about this view of characterisation, but commented that ‘there is no doubt about it that we bring on to the stage an atmosphere of our own’.67 In the late Victorian period, the popular theatre once again became an arena for debates over the possibilities of the theatre as a vehicle for an education in morality and aesthetics. These are debates familiar to the historian of the Victorian theatre, emerging from what might be called the aesthetic panic of the 1820s and 1830s, when the so-called ‘decline of the Drama’ was discussed as a matter of national importance.68 But by the late nineteenth century, several aspects of the theatre as a profession had changed, not least the public voice of prominent women theatre practitioners. Such women, and their male colleagues, challenged Clement Scott’s outrageous claim that no woman who ‘endeavours to keep her purity’ could succeed in a stage career, by turning the very rhetoric of anti-theatricality on its head. They were supported by the personal and institutional power wielded by Victorian critics and sages discussed here, pre-eminent among them John Ruskin. The speeches and lectures by leading theatre practitioners in Victorian England linked their theatre practice in choice of roles and repertoire


and the writing of plays with the creation of institutions to promote acceptance of the theatre. As Richard Foulkes puts it, the drive to develop theatre into ‘a common culture for all sections of society’69 demonstrates the extent to which Ruskinian ideas on art in general and the theatre in particular had influenced the culture.

3 E.W. Godwin and Ruskinian Aesthetics

John Ruskin himself had limited direct personal input into the staging of plays. So who acted as the conduit for Ruskin’s ideas about the theatre and actual theatre practice? The prime candidate must be Edward William Godwin, the man Oscar Wilde dubbed ‘one of the most artistic spirits of this century in England’.1 E.W. Godwin was an architect, archaeologist, antiquarian, furniture designer, textile and wallpaper designer and drama critic. He was to have significant influence on thinking about stage production. Moelwyn Merchant in his seminal work Shakespeare and the Artist (1959) called him ‘the most considerable figure in theatre design in the latter half of the (nineteenth) century’.2 What is extraordinary is that despite his multifarious achievements, there is still only one single-authored biography of this remarkable man, The Conscious Stone by Dudley Harbron, published as long ago as 1949, though the neglect has been partially remedied by a handsomely produced volume of essays on the various aspects of his work, edited by Susan Soros and published in 1999.3 Born in Bristol in 1833, Godwin trained as an architect but was from the first a devotee of the theatre, a regular patron of the Theatre Royal, Bristol, whose productions he reviewed anonymously and without payment for the Western Daily Press during the period 1862–4. Like Ruskin, he was devoted to both Scott and Shakespeare, memorising large chunks of the latter. In 1858 he read Ruskin’s Seven Lamps of Architecture and The Stones of Venice and experienced an instant conversion. When he won the commission to design Northampton Town Hall, he applied Ruskin’s interpretation of the Gothic and declared that the completed building was ‘entirely founded upon the Stones of Venice’.4 During the work, he received several letters of advice from Ruskin, employed a master mason who had studied Ruskin and received a letter of congratulation from Ruskin upon its completion. But his Ruskinian architectural career was far from plain sailing. Although he won the competition for designs for Bristol Assize Court and Leicester Town Hall and encomiums from fellow architects, they were rejected by 45


the city fathers and other architects employed instead. He was, however, successful in executing his designs for Congleton Town Hall and Plymouth Guildhall. There is an apparent problem in claiming Godwin as a thorough-going Ruskinian. In a lecture on his career to a group of young architects in Manchester in 1875, he recounted his conversion to Ruskin in 1858 but then claimed an unconversion around 1864 when he abandoned Ruskin’s ideas on the Gothic to follow a new path, which led eventually to the Aesthetic movement, the Queen Anne style and the creative eclecticism of later Victorian architecture. Historians have taken this account at face value and claimed that Godwin went over from Ruskin to the Aesthetes, a defection symbolised by his siding with his friend Whistler against Ruskin in the famous Ruskin-Whistler libel case in 1878. In that same year Godwin began a note in the British Architect (15 February 1878) with the question ‘Is Mr Ruskin Living Too Long?’. But that note is a criticism of a letter to the press by Ruskin on the current trade depression, saying that Ruskin knows nothing about the laws and conditions of trade. Elsewhere he defends Ruskin’s architectural criticism against Philistine attack and sees it as constructive for the profession. He adopted a moral position on some art forms, denouncing the prevalence of burlesque in the modern theatre as frivolous and degrading, eclipsing ‘the dignity and beauty of art’, but excepting Gilbert and Sullivan (‘wholly admirable’) and declaring his dislike for paintings which depicted bucolic realism: ‘I do not myself care much for cottage interiors, farm yards, agricultural labourers and the like; nor do I think that the tendency in modern times to paint sad subjects (sometimes in very sad colours too) is a wholesome tendency.’5 In an important revisionist article, Aileen Reid persuasively maintains that, contrary to what he said in his 1875 lecture, Godwin actually remained a Ruskinian to the end.6 He was employing Ruskinian arguments in his debates with the classicists in the 1860s and 1870s. In his architectural journalism, he continued to advocate the importance of a moral basis for design, so that, despite his move away from strict Gothic towards a more free-flowing Aestheticism, he remained committed to the Ruskinian concept of theoria, the grounding of the appreciation of beauty on a moral foundation rather than the ‘art for art’s sake’, morality-free, senses-based Aesthesis embraced by, for instance, Oscar Wilde. Wilde did move from disciple of Ruskin to out-and-out Aesthete, ‘a departure’ as Wilde himself put it, ‘definite and different and decisive from Ruskin’s gospel’.7 Edward Gordon Craig testified to the influence of Ruskin on both of his parents, Edward Godwin and Ellen Terry, in his autobiography. He recalled his own passion for reading Ruskin when he was a teenager: Yes, the books of Ruskin appealed to me, I don’t know why […] I suppose my mother favoured him as good for me and she was quite right. I suppose

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she somehow conveyed pleasure to me without going into the question why his work was so excellent and what it was about. But my father had read Ruskin to her and he, of course, had well understood the great books. And so it was a happiness to my mother – now that my father was no longer able to be near by – to see this happening to me and hear me chattering about Ruskin – slight link as it was to E.W.G.8 One of the reasons for Godwin’s comparative neglect is that although he was a prolific author of articles, reviews and lectures, he produced no great series of books on his artistic philosophy, as Ruskin did. Juliet Kinchin and Paul Stirton have sought to remedy that situation by distilling his philosophy from the full range of his writings in an extensive and handsomely produced selection of extracts. What comes through very clearly in his writing on all manner of subjects is a world-view that the Germans would call Gesamtkunstwerk and what we might describe in English as a holistic philosophy of the arts, in which whether he is writing about buildings, furniture, clothes or plays, the same ideas predominate: the deployment of colour, light and space in harmony, balance, proportion and appropriateness, and the essential unity of all the arts in the creation of great art-work. In his own chosen profession of architecture, he was calling as early as 1863 for a unified approach to the ‘sister arts’ of painting, sculpture and architecture. In his advice to young architects, he called upon them to visit the theatre, the circus, the art gallery, the sanitary exhibition and ecclesiastical functions, as all art was the product of interconnectedness. He advocated the study of archaeology as a progressive force, providing inspiration and education. He did not favour straightforward imitation or ‘superficial skimming’ of the past, but a comprehensive study of all the architectural styles of past ages in search of a personal style. This was in effect a manifesto for the creative eclecticism which came to characterise High Victorian architecture. He continually invoked other art forms when writing about specific works, for example describing Scott’s St Pancras Station, Street’s Law Courts and Waterhouse’s Natural History Museum as ‘frozen music’ and talking about E.G. Gregory’s painting Dawn in terms of its mise-en-scène and stage management. He constantly attacked the leaders of his own architectural profession for failing to provide leadership in the terms which Godwin required to confirm the position of the architect as an artist. He denounced commercialisation, repetitiveness and the desire for respectability as stultifying forces in the profession. He called on the Royal Academy, which consistently favoured painting, to promote a union of the arts of painting, sculpture and architecture. He attacked what he saw as the under-valuation of sculpture in Victorian society and the perpetual interference of customers and patrons in the activities of architects, who he saw as the creative spirits who should combine building, design and decoration in their commissions.


There were two areas in which he was able to give practical expression to his holistic approach: artists’ houses and the stage. There was a trend for artists to have their houses specially designed and purpose built, and these houses attracted high profile coverage in the press. It began with the building of Leighton House, the home of Sir Frederic Leighton, in Holland Park Road and it continued with Godwin designing and decorating houses for himself, Whistler, Frank Miles and Archibald Stuart Wortley, which excited considerable interest and controversy, and further opportunity for an exposition of Godwin’s views. He was responsible not just for building the houses but designing furniture, curtains, wallpaper, carpets and so forth as part of a harmonious artistic whole.9 It may have been the frustration of having his superb designs for public buildings so regularly rejected that led Godwin to turn from architecture to his other great love, the theatre, in a way which can be described as Ruskinian – using theatre to educate the public. In 1875 he called theatre ‘at once the most evanescent and the most comprehensive of any possible union of the arts. It is only in the theatre that we see (or, rather, might see) the noblest results of civilisation. Poetry, music, architecture, painting, sculpture, meet in undisturbed harmony’.10 He expanded on this in 1880, writing: Certainly nothing would tend more to a refined and artistic enjoyment of life than completeness in dramatic representations. It is not enough to have good writing, or one or two first-rate actors, or merely picturesque scenery and dresses […] Art demands on the stage nothing less than allround completeness. The language must be good; all the actors, to the remotest ‘super’, must be intelligent; their costume must have in it nothing to dispel illusion even to the most accomplished archaeologist; the scenery must never be less excellent and true than Mr Bancroft’s scenery in his production of ‘The Merchant of Venice’, the properties should look genuine to the front row of the stalls; and the stage-management should always be in the hands of a quick-witted, cultured man.11 E.W Godwin’s theatre reviews for the Western Daily Press in 1862–4 set out his philosophy of theatre robustly. Reviewing the latest offering at the Bristol Theatre Royal, Laid Up in Port (‘I hope […] that the introduction of such bloodand-murder tomfoolery was more an accident than a design’), he argued: The theatre is, or ought to be, a school, not to play down to low and narrow desires, but to lift us up from the confined circles of our daily life, that our sympathies may become enlarged, that our hearts may feed awhile on the poetry of humanity as we take our two or three hours’ rest from the wearing thoughts of money making.12 This is a statement directly echoing Ruskin and prefiguring Irving.


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He actually quoted Ruskin in support of his argument when making a plea for the moral elevation of the stage in a review of The Robber’s Wife, which he found as ‘devoid of amusement as it is of instruction’. The use of the word ‘instruction’ is itself instructive, as he evidently saw that as the objective of stage performance. He conceded that it was ‘impossible […] for the management of a provincial theatre to raise the art, which ministers also to our instruction if he is to be left alone, and without that moral support which can be given only by the educated’. He went on: ‘I am not one of those who would deprive the poor or the uneducated of their enjoyment, far from it.’ He saw the role of theatre as ‘infusing some beauty and some good into the lifeless, monotonous, heavy atmosphere which involves so many labourers in populous cities, and which of necessity drives them to seek enjoyment, and rest, and freedom, falsely persuading themselves […] that they are to be found in unrestrained looseness and wild excitement’. If the manager is to draw back to the theatre ‘the great support of the better educated amongst us – the scholar, the clergy, the literary man, the scientific and the artistic’, he must avoid ‘anything of doubtful character’, for example, ‘the loose moralities of French plays, or […] the low ruffianism of the lowest type of humanity’.13 He is constantly urging James Henry Chute, the manager of the Theatre Royal, Bristol, to put on more elevated and elevating material. He called upon theatres to establish their own libraries of reference works, to instruct young actors in pronunciation and to acquire works of antiquarianism and archaeology ‘to decide as to the less familiar costumes and scenery’.14 While he gave detailed analyses of the acting, he returned again and again to the questions of authenticity of scenery and costume. Of a production of Richard III at the Theatre Royal, Bristol, he wrote: I shall pass by the costume (only 800 years wrong!) with the two remarks that chain, mail, or scale or ring armour being introduced made Richard’s reference to the armourer at his work simple nonsense, whilst Richmond ought to have been ashamed of himself for wearing a fashionable helmet, with a suit of mail that must have belonged to the father of his great-great-grandmother…I cannot but think it would have been wiser if Miss Cleveland had denied herself crinoline – bad enough as a modern fashion, irredeemably vulgar when forced upon a graceful fashion of the past.15 Of a production of Romeo and Juliet there he said: Is it quite hopeless to expect anything in the way of decent scenery and dresses upon the Bristol stage? On Juliet and Romeo we had sleeves of the period of Edward III, and bodice of a century or two later, with a scolloped hat and feather of no period at all. The nurse was in costume


two centuries later even than the time of Shakespeare himself! Lawrence, the Franciscan or grey friar, appeared in a costume compounded of the Benedictine and the Geneva gown!16 Of the 1864 Hamlet he complained: ‘A tall feather, black kid gloves and lace ruffles are not by any means in harmony with the Danish fashion which prevailed in the time of Claudius, King of Denmark.’17 He applied the same strictures to the scenery as to the costumes. Of an 1862 production of Romeo and Juliet at the Theatre Royal, Bristol, he complained that the balcony scene would have been ‘of double value if the balcony itself had been a pierced or open one instead of a solid terracelike wall’, that Friar Lawrence’s cell looked like Peterborough Cathedral and the Apothecary’s shop a Tudor mansion.18 Venturing to London, he dismissed Charles Fechter’s much-praised Hamlet at the Lyceum as a collection of gimmicks: ‘A long flaxen wig, a dark tunic, with a 13th century border, and a colloquialism which is as mannered and conventional as the declamatory style of the old school.’ He declared the company ‘effete’ apart from John Brougham’s Polonius and Kate Terry’s Ophelia (‘I should have preferred less hysterics’). But he railed against the setting: ‘If the scenery, costumes and general appointments of the play be so far from correct, so full of false representation to some – I say false because ignorance on such things now-a-day is no justifiable plea – so replete with confusion to others, and so wearyingly offensive to the Shakespearian student, what words can describe the acting?’ He complained that the architecture, processions, court manners, dress and swords derived from the thirteenth century, in particular the court of Henry III, whereas the play is set in the period before the Norman Conquest. Elsinore Castle was ‘a much magnified Edwardian castle’, a Room of State in the Castle ‘Mr Telbin’s version of Canterbury Cathedral’ and a more remote part of the platform ‘looks very like a sea beach, with a few blasted pines’.19 Of the 1864 Bristol Romeo and Juliet, with Kate Terry as Juliet, he complained: The scenery as of old – not the slightest attempt to improve in this any more than in the costume. As to the ‘properties’, the modern candlesticks, the 19th century toilet table, the bed, the chairs – well, I have seen better in a booth at Henley-upon-Thames. Surely, if Romeo and Juliet is worth acting at all, it is worth some expenditure on the part of the manager.20 Reviewing the Drury Lane production of Cymbeline, he thought that only three of the cast (Samuel Phelps as Posthumus, Helen Faucit as Imogen and Mr Rayner as Cymbeline) ‘seemed to have the smallest notion of what they


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were supposed to be doing’. The rest of the cast were ‘stagy, wearisome, and, at times, offensive’. The scenery was ‘disgraceful’. A chamber in the Palace was ‘like the octagonal lobby […] of the present Houses of Parliament’ and the bedstead of a British Princess ‘a modern French lace-bedecked tentshaped apparatus placed in the middle of the room’. The Romans were dressed ‘à la Octavius Caesar’. The Britons were dressed as Anglo-Saxons and the King’s son in fourteenth century costume with a chain like the modern collar of the Order of the Garter.21 He did not confine his complaints to Shakespearean production, extending them to pantomime and burlesque, of which, like Ruskin, he was apparently a devotee at this period. Declaring ‘the scenery is never out of place in burlesque or pantomime’, he heaped praise on the burlesque Perseus and Andromeda: If managers would take note that the greater truth they can give in their scenic representations of nature or art, the better pleased the public are, and act thereon, we should not be worried out of our proprieties as we often are […] by unmeaning anachronisms in scenery. He singled out two scenes for special praise: the Athenian effect in the first scene and the sunlit scene on the sea-shore where Andromeda was discovered bound to a rock: ‘these two scenes are worth all the money […] we must not grumble if the others fall short.’ However, there was something else which earned his unqualified approval – the statue scene: The group was very powerful, and the effect of white marble could not have been surpassed; but, what was best of all, these statues exhibited the classic learning of the spirited manager in no small measure, and assure us that he is not unacquainted with the Duke of Serradifalco, Professor Cockerell-Gibson, and others, for a close observer could detect traces of colour in the shaded side of the statues, as for instance occasional red on the thigh and blue in out of the way places.22 Then of the pantomime Cinderella being given at the Theatre Royal for Christmas 1862/3, he suggested that of the 15 or 16 scenes, 3 were worth going to see more than once: a corridor in the palace ‘not only brilliantly painted but what is more valuable, because more rare […] a very fair study of the Court of the Lions, Casa Real de la Alhambra’, Bristol bridge and bridgehouse ‘particularly happy’ and the exterior of the Baron’s house.23 Visiting the London pantomimes, he found the transformation scene in Covent Garden’s Beauty and the Beast ‘very pretty’ but ‘the other scenery altogether unworthy of London or any other place’, Astley’s Lady Bird or Harlequin Lord Dundreary ‘a mistake from beginning to end […] The scenery


is coarse in the last degree’. But he lavished praise on Riquet with the Tuft at the Princess’s Theatre, calling it ‘a true pantomime’: The wild dance of the witches’ brooms in the opening scene, the flying off of the two witches on the broomstick, their arrival in the Country of Mushrooms, the development of the mushroom crop, slowly rising into a mushroom forest, the discovery of the sleeping army within and beneath them, the wild war dance, and the busy cooking scene are all just what they should be – the one kind funny without being ugly, the other beautiful without being tame. The ballet dances were well arranged and admirably danced; but, like most dance, there was too much of it. The great feature, however, at the Princess’s is Mr Beverley’s scenery; with one exception […] there is no fault to be found. The interlaced and twisted and knotted, wintry, wild, and weird-looking branches, stretching the whole width of the stage, were natural and highly effective, while the scenes themselves are pictures well worth special visits.24 The educational imperative lying behind his pronouncements was underlined by his denunciation of the ‘higgledy piggledy’ costuming of a production of The Merchant of Venice in Bristol: I maintain that we do not go to the theatre simply to hear passionate recitations and funny speeches, but to witness such a performance as will place us as nearly as possible in the position of spectators of the original scene or the thing represented, and so gain information of men, manners, customs, and countries – and this result is only attainable where accuracy in every particular is secured.25 Without this being the case, he felt people might just as well stay at home and read the text. From the mid-1870s, Godwin published prolifically in The Architect, Building News and the British Architect, of which he became London editor in 1878. Theatre was a regular theme of his writing. Writing in Building News (19 March 1875), he recalled that ten years previously he had published jottings on the acting, scenery, properties, costume and the management of ‘two of our chief provincial theatres’ (the Theatre Royal, Bristol and the Theatre Royal, Bath). But he added ‘And now, after the lapse of a decade, I do not hesitate to say that, so far from any art progress having been made in theatrical matters, the chief London theatres of to-day are wholly below the standard attained in those two provincial theatres’. His mission was to raise the artistic level of the theatre and he preached tirelessly his gospel of theatre art. He began his campaign by calling for an improvement in the deplorable conditions backstage in most theatres: the cramped, filthy, unventilated and insanitary dressing rooms, workshops, green room,


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scene dock. A second article (18 June 1875) attacked the conservatism and stagnation of theatre design and called for a renaissance in theatre architecture. A third article, prompted by a theatre fire in Vienna (27 January 1882), proposed a series of measures to prevent theatre fires in British theatres. They related to the planning of the building, the materials used for building, means of lighting and style of management. He recommended the inclusion of distinct entrances for each part of the house and ample staircases for each level, the employment of brick, terra-cotta or cement rather than wood and other flammable materials, electric rather than gas lighting and a management that was constantly present on the premises and concerned with the safety and comfort of the audience. The British Architect became the principal vehicle for his criticism of current theatrical practice. He nailed his colours to the mast in a trenchant article called ‘Scenic Art’ (28 November 1879), in which he attacked the current level of scene painting and the over-dressing of the stage with properties: To a certain extent, no doubt, artistic tastes, and even what modern slang calls ‘aestheticism’ are gratified by a show of carved chairs, damask stuffs, and embossed brass work; but such additions to the completeness of stage decoration do not increase the talents of an artist, or call into play more than the taste to choose handsome materials and the will to purchase them. We speak of scenic art as the absolute painting employed on the canvas, which is to show forth, with more or less illusory force, landscapes, with all the perspective of air and outline, or interiors with their marble or wood illusions and carved ornamentation. The upholsterer is killing the artist. He praised the work of master scene painters turned artists, David Roberts and Clarkson Stanfield, whose back-cloths were ‘a monument of scenic talent and puissant effect, with its stereoscopic reliefs and subdued chiaroscuro’. He advocated their revival as a lesson to living scene painters. He admits that ‘we have some excellent scene-painters’, as is demonstrated by Irving’s production of The Merchant of Venice at the Lyceum: The first scene of the Quays of Venice and the Piazza St Mark, by WILLIAM TELBIN the younger, is a worthy example of scene painting. Correct in perspective, and a faithful copy of nature, probably painted from sketches made on the spot, […] there is a brilliancy of atmospheric effect, from the boats and their sails in the foreground wings to the luminous clouds which roll over the far sky, that is too seldom seen on our stage now-a-days […] Mr. WALTER HANN is making great progress. There is a front cloth representing a side canal on Venice, which might have been painted by BEVERLEY. This name recalls some excellent work, and probably most of our present scenic artists have been pupils of


BEVERLEY, who has had […] a transparency of treatment and a beauty of colour not easily surpassed. But Godwin is critical of Irving’s principal scene painter, Hawes Craven: ‘with all his power, this gentleman is with difficulty persuaded to subdue his pictures.’ He goes on to make a general point about the nature of scene painting: All scenes are backgrounds to the figures in front, in whose action the interest centres. If scenery is so painted that while the action is going on, the eye is continually being called away to note details which rush into prominence, there is something wrong in the hand which produces such a result. Even in spectacular tableaux the whole should be in harmony with the parts, and yet we see continually in the criticisms that appear in the daily press, lavish praise of the veriest daubs, where perspective is conspicuous by its absence, and where reds swallow up all tone, and vulgar chromes drive harmony out of the field. The worst fault of our School of Stage Painting is ignorance – ignorance of simple rules of drawing and colour, but more than all, ignorance of all science connected with art. He recommended English scenic artists to study the work of their French counterparts: Their landscapes are dull and monotonous, their fairy scenes do not revel in brilliancy as on the English stage, but you will never find the rules of history or character violated. Their interiors, as a rule, show an accurate knowledge of the architecture and artistic accessories of the period or the style represented. The details are correct, their drawing studied, and their light and shade well harmonised; but look into the drawing of any figures or arabesques now to be seen on the London boards, and you will find bad design, mixed styles, positive ignorance of authorities, and careless modelling, if any at all. He concluded with a blast, declaring that almost all the scene painters currently at work in London ‘lack the reading and education necessary to give them knowledge, and probably are so imbued with their own individual talents that they have cut their leading string before they could walk, and are now tumbling over paint pots and brushes to the disadvantage of art, and with the result of producing the most glaring and crudest daubing ever yet dignified with the name of scenic art’.26 Thereafter he subjected new productions to minute scrutiny of their component parts. Reviewing W.G. Wills’ Ninon at the Adelphi, he declared: ‘Ninon’ is a four-act play of the period of the French Revolution, and is full of movement and dramatic force. The scenery, bar one interior, was,


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as a rule, fairly good, thanks to Mr Julian Hicks. The acting throughout was careful, though slightly dragging in parts, and the dresses and properties were better than the Adelphi usually exhibits. […] The chief defect of the representation was as usual to be found in the stage management; a riotous crowd eager for blood would not turn itself into a sort of merrygo-round, nor would the noise of a revolutionary mob always be stationary, and just round the corner. To increase the volume of real sound, but subduing it by making it more and more distant, is one of the artistic things stage managers have yet to learn, and it is very easy to do, even with the rawest supers.27 In 1880 As You Like It was produced at the Imperial Theatre, with Marie Litton as Rosalind, Hermann Vezin as Jaques and Kyrle Bellew as Orlando. The costumes were designed by Johnston Forbes Robertson. The Theatre (1 April 1880) declared: Among recent Shakespearian revivals we have had none more complete and careful than this […] The costumes have been artistically and consistently designed by Mr Forbes Robertson, specially fitted for such a task by his accomplishments both as actor and artist. The scenery has been excellently planned and painted by Mr Perkins, the music well selected and superintended by Mr Barnard. But with these elements of effect I am glad to find […] evidence of thorough rehearsal, intelligent study of the text, and supervision of the stage-arrangements.28 As to the acting, Marie Litton was ‘quite one of the best Rosalinds I have seen’, Bellew’s Orlando ‘the best I remember’, but Vezin’s Jaques ‘too sad and serious and not cynical enough’. But Godwin took issue with the general praise: ‘So much had been written in the daily press about the wonderfully complete manner in which “As you like it” was put on the stage of the Imperial Theatre, that I was induced the other Saturday to submit myself to the torture of semi-suffocation for the sake of seeing the New Rosalind, and what Mr Forbes Robertson had done for the costumes.’ He was unimpressed on both counts. ‘Miss Litton in no instance reached, or even came near, either of the other Rosalinds I have seen’, which he identified as Helen Faucit and Kate Terry. There were also problems with the costumes: Unquestionably the most artistic work was Mr Vezin’s personification of Jaques. Had this actor been dressed properly, and not been given up to gauntlets, and placed under the shadow of a huge Maximilian hat, he would have been Jaques […] After Jaques comes Mr Kyrle Bellew’s Orlando – graceful, natural, poetical, and happily rightly dressed. Touchstone is well rendered by Mr Lionel Brough, but a court jester surely never wandered


through the country attired merely in his ordinary indoor motley? The Duke showed a very poor attempt to realise the furred gown of c.1490, but on one of his attendants was a fairly good costume of 1460. The six pages also represented the genuine costume of the huntsmen in an illumination of about the time of Henry VII, published by Lacroix in his ‘Manners and Customs During the Middle Ages’. These books of Lacroix, I find, are too often in the hands of young students, which is a great pity, for they overflow with error, especially in that most important detail of affixing the right date to a manuscript or illumination. However, taking one thing with another, Mr Forbes Robertson might easily have fallen into worse error than he has. Indeed, one could scarcely expect it to be otherwise. The study of costume is not the easy thing some people assume it to be; even with a dated manuscript before one, the illuminations are not always to be accepted as of the same date; often they are by more than one hand, and in more than one fashion, and sometimes they are altogether spurious.29 As an indication of the standard they should have reached, he printed his own designs for the costumes of As You Like It explaining that he dated As You Like It to the reign of King Louis XI (1461–83) and that he had copied the costumes from some ‘beautiful French MSS preserved in the British Museum’ and all of them deriving from the second half of the fifteenth century.30 The characteristics they shared were: The materials were rich, and the embroidered patterns chiefly of the net and pineapple kind, large and often beautifully worked in Venice gold. Trimmings of fur are constantly found, and a single feather is occasionally seen in the gentleman’s hat.31 When Mrs Bateman produced Romeo and Juliet at Sadler’s Wells with Isabel Bateman as Juliet and a new young actor Clifford Harrison as Romeo, Godwin praised the performances but was dismayed by the costumes. Of Romeo: ‘His costumes, though new and costly, were wholly unlike what the young Montagues of Verona wore in the time of the story, and was as far removed from what obtained in Shakspere’s time.’ Of Juliet: ‘Why cannot her dress be made like those which young ladies of Verona wore in 1300– 1310.’32 Once again, he was inspired to publish his own costume sketches for Romeo and Juliet, citing as the proper sources for a play set in the early fourteenth century the sculptures on the Ducal Palace at Venice (1301), the figures on the tomb of Aymer de Valence in Westminster (1323–6), the paintings of Giotto, Taddeo Gaddi and Orcagna, the illuminations of the Arundel Psalter, and those of the Italian manuscripts from 1300 to 1350.33 Wilson Barrett, with whom he was to enjoy his most fruitful theatrical collaboration, first came to his notice when he presented the distinguished


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Polish actress Helena Modjeska in a season of plays at the Court Theatre. She made her debut in Heartsease, a new English adaptation of Alexandre Dumas Fils’ La Dame aux Camèlias, suitably cleaned up for English audiences. Godwin was enraptured: ‘It is a long time since anyone has appeared so unaffectedly natural, so pretty in her affection, so impassioned in her love as this latest histrionic embodiment of grace and art […] her impersonation was an artistic triumph from first to last.’ He declared roundly: ‘If the whole Art World in London be as grateful to Mr Wilson Barrett as I am for introducing Madame Helena Modjeska to the English stage, then the energetic lessee and manager will have of thanks a mountain heaped on him that will “make Ossa like a wart!”’ He went on to praise the production: ‘Most of her costumes are refined and beautiful, but the first cloak and the china shepherdess hat are poor; and the make of the dress in the third act, which she describes as “simple” and clothed in which she says she “skips along the fields”, should certainly not be tight and with such a train. The scenery is good with the one exception of the interior of the third act, where the curtains with their white lace trimmings are neither beautiful nor appropriate.’34 Godwin was at the Court Theatre for Modjeska’s follow-up production, an English adaptation by Hon. Lewis Wingfield of Schiller’s Mary Stuart, a favourite role of the actress. Godwin called it ‘the great theatrical event of this winter season’ and, although he had some criticisms of her performance, conceded that ‘each and every adverse judgement is swept away in the torrent of her splendidly earnest acting. Not an attitude, not a finger was out of place, and all seemed wholly unstudied. Her dignity was never overstrained, and she never looked other than the daughter of Mary of Guise’. Of the production, he reported: ‘Madame Modjeska was dressed in costly apparel, and like all the rest to a great extent right, but not yet quite right enough to produce the illusion I long to witness. Mr Wilson Barrett deserves to be congratulated on the whole production, and especially on the scenery and most of the furniture […] Perhaps the window in the Westminster Palace mars it a little, the imitation of stained glass being very weak.’35 But Romeo and Juliet, which opened on 26 March 1881, with Modjeska as Juliet, Forbes Robertson as Romeo and Wilson Barrett as Mercutio, roused his ire: We all know by this, that the time of the action belongs to the first years of the 14th century […]; but at the Court Theatre we are introduced to the folk of Verona as they appeared in the second half of the 15th century – for what reason does not appear. We would wish that Romeo would dispense with his white drapery, not that we object to drapery, but the raw whiteness of it makes all Verona dull. The nurse, too, might have secured a more becoming attire, and Tybalt’s wardrobe should have been a trifle handsomer. With the exception of Mr Cooper (Capulet), all were fairly


fitted to their parts, and the play was full of intelligent readings and lively action.36 Even the Lyceum productions of Henry Irving, universally praised for their beauty and accuracy, prompted critical comment from Godwin. Of W.G. Wills’ Iolanthe, Godwin declared ‘there can be no question that Mr Irving has produced a charming and picturesque ensemble’. But noting that King René of Naples, Sicily and Jerusalem, who figures in the story, lived from 1409 to 1480, he regrets that ‘every feature that bears on the past should recall not Iolanthe’s world but her grandmother’s’. Tristan’s costume is ‘so scalloped on edge of jupon, hood and trailing sleeve that it tells us not merely of a different time, but of a different character – of the court fop rather than the brave knight’. He even complains about Craven’s scene painting: ‘Mr Craven ought […] to know that the flower beds in the fifteenth century garden had a very distinct character of their own, and were not level with the lawn or pathways’. He concludes: ‘Had the mise-en-scène been as perfect as most of the acting, it would have been good indeed.’37 He also dissented from the general verdict on The Cup which was universally praised for its archaeological accuracy and aesthetic beauty. ‘The mounting of Mr Tennyson’s classical play “The Cup” […] is not quite all some of our contemporaries would have us believe.’ He thought the temple of Artemis was laid out more like the tabernacle of the Jews than a Greek temple, with the altar, statue and entrance all in the wrong position. The stunted Ionic columns with bas-reliefs at the base were a contradiction. There was, however, praise for the first scene, ‘Distant View of a City in Galatia’, ‘painted in Mr Telbin’s best manner, and planned with admirable skill’. He admitted to ‘partial praise’ for the costumes: Camma appropriately and convincingly Greek, but Irving’s Synorix looking like ‘an African refugee of the period’.38 Godwin shared the general enthusiasm for the visit of the Meiningen Court Players, whose London season was retrospectively deemed so influential on British theatre practice: ‘Julius Caesar […] was certainly put before us in a manner so thoroughly artistic as to invite the closest attention and the most careful criticism […] the stage management and the lighting arrangements were of the highest order of excellence […] we have seen nothing on the stage during the past thirty years that could compare for energy and realism with the Roman populace that filled the processional scenes.’ However, the play fell down in the area of authenticity: The architectural scenery was admirably painted, and nothing in this country has been done with anything like the artistic vigour and detailed care bestowed by the scene painters on the public place that served for the whole of Act I, and the senate scene, Act 3. But it is as scene painting and as scenic work that we admire them and not for their archaeology


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or history, for the Rome presented to us […] is not the Rome of the Commonwealth, as Julius Caesar saw it […] Classic Rome, as we use the phrase, did not exist and did not even begin to be reared until the comparatively peaceful days of Augustus. The Rome of the time of Julius was a crowded town, chiefly built of brick, tufa, and wood […] What the Meiningen management gave us was far more like the grand marblebuilt, many pillared city of the Flavian dynasty, that commenced more than a century after the date of the play. He found the same fault with the costumes. The crowd was too well-dressed. The senators were pleasingly clad in simple white togas but again they really recalled the days of the Empire rather than the Republic. But leaving these objections aside, he concluded that ‘never before has a great spectacular tragedy, like this of “Julius Caesar” been put on the stage with such complete earnestness […] For with the Meiningen Company their stage work results emphatically in pictures, as if painted by one master hand, the general form, action and colour of which are always good, leaving – nearly always – nothing to be desired’. He earnestly hoped that the visit would leave its mark on the English stage and encourage it to produce plays in the same way.39 Godwin applied his archaeological principles to the study of dress. In a lecture of 1868, Godwin asked the question: ‘What has Dress to do with the study of Architecture and Archaeology?’ and answered by arguing that the study of dress was as much the business of architects as the study of animal and vegetable life.40 He suggested that there were two systems of dress: the historical (the past) and the conventional (the present). The past could be recovered by archaeology but the principles thereby established might help to lift the conventions of the present to the level of art. He advocated rejecting the ‘arbitrary power and sole despotic sway of the French milliners and the west-end tailors’ and in Ruskinian mode declared: ‘I see no reason whatever to question the assertion that all art is the expression of man’s delight in God’s works.’ He praised ‘those who robe themselves in purity of colour, in simple graceful forms, subtle harmonies and delicate contrasts for their own sakes and not because “they are worn”’. He denounced the evils of modern fashion: the changeableness, the absence of colour, the wide difference between male and female fashions, the lack of discrimination. He put it down to the ‘lack of positive art instruction rather than from wilfulness of choice’. Dress, he believed, was an art form dependent on colour, form and harmony. He ended by describing the study of costume as an important branch of archaeology: Archaeology fills in the details of every picture of the past, it forges the links of the chain which binds together all time; it brings into stronger light all those great events which have contributed to build up those


blessings we now enjoy. It clothes with vivid reality all those noble ones whose figures would otherwise have had but a shadowy indistinctness in the mighty procession of the world’s issue. It tells us among many other things how the decoration of dress was once as much an art as the decoration of a temple […] It helps us to a better appreciation of the wonderful picturings of such poets as Chaucer and Dante, and illustrates every page of our early literature.41 In advocating rational, healthy and artistic dress, like other reformers, he looked to classical, medieval and Japanese styles which all allowed natural movement. He lectured on dress and its relation to health and climate at the 1884 International Health Exhibition, for which he organised a display of fashion on living models, while Lewis Wingfield organised the display of historical costumes. He argued that beauty and health went together. The counterpart to his positive advocacy of historically inspired new fashions was his intolerance of inaccuracy in the reproduction of period costume. He denounced those painters who ‘travestied and vulgarised’ historical costume, painting medieval costume which they had not taken the trouble to study. He was vitriolic about Frank Dicksee’s Othello and Desdemona for its ‘ludicrous costuming’. On the other hand he praised Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (‘one of the most correct painters of costume we have’) and Edwin Long’s Babylonian Marriage Market (‘unquestionably the work of an artist who has manfully striven to be right’).42 This was a very Ruskinian stance, in line with Ruskin’s regular insistence that art should neither alter nor improve Nature and should include ‘the largest possible quantity of truth’. It was his mounting annoyance at such inaccuracy that led Godwin in 1882 to set up the Costume Society. It first met on 27 July 1882 and elected Godwin its Honorary Secretary. The subtitle of the Society proclaimed its mission: ‘Society for promoting the knowledge of Costume by copying and publishing Historical Costume from Contemporary Sources only.’ Its members included painters Alma-Tadema, Luke Fildes, Marcus Stone, Sir Noel Paton, John Tenniel, actors Herbert Beerbohm Tree and Hermann Vezin and playwrights W.G. Wills, Joseph Comyns Carr and Oscar Wilde. By October 1882 it had a membership of 98 and, by May 1883, 230. The Standard (28 September 1882) welcomed its foundation: ‘It is indeed of considerable importance that accuracy of costume should be observed in pictures, statuary, and in Theatrical representations.’ It was hoped ‘that there may be an end, once and forever, to the anachronisms and anomalies of all kind in dress by which the works of artists, architects and dramatists are now so often disfigured’. The article considered that it was painters and stage costume designers who would benefit most from membership of the society. One of its aims was the publication of drawings, photographs and descriptions of historical costume from contemporary sources. Its first folio


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of such illustrations appeared in May 1883. But the society was wound up in July 1884, because of financial problems and ‘the all too common burden of labour falling on the shoulders of a few enthusiasts’.43 The presence of Vezin and Tree among the members is significant, as Vezin had worked regularly with Godwin and although Tree did not enter management until after Godwin’s death, he was evidently much influenced by Godwin’s artistic philosophy. Not everyone was as welcoming of the Society as the Standard. In the January 1883 issue of Time there was an attack by A.H. Wall on the Costume Society, claiming that it was established for the purpose of ‘subordinating sentiment, feeling and true dramatic effect to a hard, bold, dry, unsympathetic regard for archaeological correctness’. He argued that the play and the actors were more important than the costume and the scenery and that Shakespeare was full of anachronisms and dressed all his characters in Tudor clothes. This was to be a regular refrain in the attacks on the advocates of archaeological accuracy. This particular attack was answered by Herbert Beerbohm Tree. Tree was a close friend of Godwin, a fellow member of the Costume Society, and met him regularly, despite the strong disapproval of his fiancée and later wife Maud Holt, who thought Godwin profoundly immoral. Writing in The Theatre, the journal in which battle was regularly joined by the proponents and opponents of the Godwin gospel, Tree declared that the object of the Society so far as the stage was concerned was ‘to aid the sentiment, the feeling and the dramatic effect by encouraging archaeological correctness’. Also the public demanded it: ‘The taste displayed by Mr Irving in his revivals at the Lyceum has undoubtedly had the effect of educating the public up to a certain standard of correctness, and who shall say that these beautiful productions do not owe something to the decided advance in the matter of costumes and general correctness.’ He pronounced Shakespeare’s anachronisms trivial and unimportant. He expressed the belief that ‘had he lived, Shakespeare would have been one of the first subscribers’ to the Costume Society.44 In his zeal for archaeological and antiquarian correctness on the stage, Godwin published 33 articles on the correct architecture and costume for each of Shakespeare’s plays in The Architect in 1874 and 1875. His aim was to correct the state of affairs he outlined in the essay on The Merry Wives of Windsor: The usual street scene of the modern stage, if it has the slightest pretension to belong to the Middle Ages, is a wonderfully elastic and convenient device. For we find it in the heart of populous cities, and we recognise the same old friend in quiet market towns and villages; to-day it serves and perhaps not altogether inappropriately, for Eastchepe in the time of HENRY IV, to-morrow it does duty at Windsor. In the summer we find it


at Venice, supporting with its picturesque gables the figures of SHYLOCK and the merchants, and in the winter the dear old scene turns up again, doing duty in Canada, perhaps as the background of some modern trash or emasculated adaptation. Considering what small amounts are demanded by the most promising, painstaking scene painters, and what enormous amounts are paid for advertisements and monster placards, it does not seem surprising that there should exist throughout the country such poverty of thought and meanness of resource in almost every instance of an architectural scene being placed on the stage. The scene painter is not to blame, his order is to paint, not, mind, a scene altogether fitted to a certain play, but a scene that will serve a manager as a sort of general servant, attempting everything and doing nothing well. I venture to say that there is not a play put on the stage which might not have complete and special scenery of its own, without incurring any extra cost above its present gross outlay, and without reducing the receipts. A play properly represented on the stage makes every spectator a living poster and a walking advertisement.45 He was unsparingly dismissive of those Shakespeare plays which could not be precisely located. He described Pericles, Prince of Tyre as a ‘drama that has not been acted for a long time, and it is devoutly to be hoped never may be acted again […] There is nothing, probably, in the whole range of dramatic writing where the unities of time and place are so persistently disregarded as in Pericles’. Although set in the reign of Antiochus the Great, ruler of Syria (223–187 B.C.), the play ‘teems with anachronisms’, among them pistols, stringed viols, tennis courts, bellows, parish churches, beadles, tournaments, a Spaniard in a ruff and a French knight.46 He was much happier with a play like The Merchant of Venice which he could date precisely to 1590 and ‘with the paintings and prints in our public galleries and the materials of South Kensington to refer to, error in the costume of The Merchant of Venice would be quite inexcusable, for it must arise either from sheer carelessness or childish incompetency to handle the facts’. He even gave advice on how the actors should move and stand in order to conform to the practice of the period in which ‘the manners of the period were characterised by courtesy combined with a stately dignified action, and that what we call stiffness of manner was then regarded as quite the correct thing. But modern actors and actresses rarely hold the mirror high enough to reflect the mien, deportment or bearing of the men and women of a past age. The air or look of gentlemen and ladies during the great period of the Renaissance can be ascertained from the documents and the pictures of the time, and if an actor fails to reproduce it he is not fitted to play in the comedies of the great dramatist of that period. Correctness of costume, and scenery, and properties, and furniture is all very well, but if, through it all, we see nineteenth-century action, modern style […] then


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the picture must be discordant and the dramatic representation woefully incomplete’.47 Godwin’s final grand statement about the importance of stage archaeology came in a series of seven articles he wrote for the Dramatic Review in 1885, in which he stressed the necessity for the stage archaeologist to be at the same time an artist: Archaeology means, literally, the word about old things. The application of the sound principles of induction to the study of the things of the past has resulted in our day in raising this study to the dignity of a science. A science that clothes and reanimates the dead, and gives colour to the pale, shadowy forms of forgotten folk. The purpose of the archaeologist is to bring before us those old times, to make history a reality. That is his purpose as touching the realities of life. The stage demands of the antiquary something more than this. Stage pictures of the past times should be treated pari passu as life itself is treated by the dramatist. The archaeologist, in a word, must be an artist, endowed with the sense of form and colour, having constructiveness well developed and in sympathy with the dramatic purpose. He made a clear distinction between the kinds of plays and the archaeological treatment they required: It follows that plays which run closely parallel to the life of the period of the action, as in society comedies, whether of the 18th or any other century, must be treated by the archaeologist with far greater accuracy of detail than romantic dramas in blank verse, or plays of high poetical value, for such comedies deal as a rule, very largely, with manners and customs and these are much more intimately connected with the costume and external than some people imagine. On the other hand, the higher poetical drama represented by Shakespeare demands, first of all, for its costume, scenery and properties, artistic treatment. If the science of archaeology supplies us with the materials of bygone time that seems in harmony with the plot of the drama or the intention of the poet, the artist cannot do better than accept them as the foundation of his work. And should the materials happen to belong to a period of considerable art culture, as in the classic times of Pericles, or the medieval days of Henry III, then it might perhaps be as well for him to take heed how little he alters one or the other to meet managerial views of any exigency of the stage.48 He also drew attention to: ‘The great difficulty which the archaeologist and artist have to encounter in the mounting of any historical play is in what is called the taste of certain actors and actresses on the subject of dress. If the


company should happen to include in its number one who can produce a clever sketch, it is specially unfortunate for the mounting, and no costume play will be completely well done until the manager puts his foot down firmly on all interference of any kind whatsoever with the artist-antiquary who is responsible for the designs. The leading actress is often the greatest blot on the picture.’49 So much for Godwin’s gospel. But he had a more personal connection with the theatre than simply as reviewer and theorist. His theatregoing in Bristol had led him to make the acquaintance in 1862 of the 15 year old actress Ellen Terry, who was appearing in repertory in Bristol.50 In 1864 Ellen (only 16) married the 46 year old painter G.F. Watts. After ten months the marriage broke down and they separated. They were not divorced until 1877. In 1867 Ellen met Godwin again and embarked on an affair with him. In 1868 they eloped together and lived in the country for six years. They never married but she produced two children, Edy and Edward Gordon Craig. Ellen had abandoned the stage at the time of the elopement but poverty forced her to resume her stage career in 1874 and the relationship with Godwin ended. Godwin promptly married his pupil Beatrice Philip. But it was the relationship with Ellen that led directly to Godwin’s first involvement with the theatre. The Bancrofts, Squire and Marie, were the actor-manager team who ran the Prince of Wales’s Theatre in Charlotte Street. In 1875 they decided to mount a production of The Merchant of Venice, casting Ellen Terry as Portia and Charles Coghlan as Shylock. Why did the Bancrofts, who had made their name with the series of Tom Robertson’s ‘cup and saucer’ comedies and latterly revivals of classic comedies, Bulwer-Lytton’s Money and Sheridan’s The School for Scandal, opt for a Shakespeare play and in particular The Merchant of Venice? It was one of the best known and most popular of Shakespeare’s plays. It was also one of the most frequently painted: 150 canvases of scenes from the play are recorded for the nineteenth century. Linda Rozmovits calls it ‘a late Victorian popular obsession’, its relevance attributable to three burning issues of the period; mass education, the woman question and the Jewish issue. Following the passing of the 1870 Education Act, it became an important feature in the teaching of English.51 Over 60 school editions of The Merchant were published between 1870 and 1920. It was valued because it was both accessible and morally instructive. The characters of Portia and Shylock became the centre of cultural debate on the proper role of women in society, the presence of the Jews and the question of ‘Jewish usury’. There was also a new vogue for Shakespeare productions in London, sparked by the unprecedented success of Henry Irving’s production of Hamlet at the Lyceum. The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News (17 April 1875), noting the opening of The Merchant, observed: ‘It is a significant indication of the revival of a more elevated taste on the part of the public for the legitimate drama that Shakspeare’s plays [sic] are now being represented at and drawing full houses to four of the metropolitan theatres – Hamlet at


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the Lyceum, The Tempest at the Gaiety, Hamlet and Othello at the Surrey; and Othello, with Signor Salvini and his Italian company, on the off nights of the opera at Drury Lane […] At the Crystal Palace, too, Shakspeare’s […] plays, excellently cast, and produced under the direction of Mr Charles Wyndham, have drawn full and appreciating audiences.’ But there was another attraction – Venice. Bancroft revealed that his two favourite Shakespeare plays were The Merchant of Venice and Othello, both plays with Venetian settings.52 But Venice was also something of an obsession for the late Victorian middle and upper classes. ‘All wonder, enchantment […] brightness and the glory of a dream’ said the novelist Margaret Oliphant of Venice.53 Celebrated by Byron, Turner and, above all, Ruskin, Venice was seen as one of the architectural wonders of the world, the quintessence of Gothic and the place where the three great architectural styles, Roman, Lombard and Arab, achieved reconciliation. But Venice was also seen as an analogue of the British Empire, at once an idealised mercantile and maritime republic, proto-Protestant, public spirited and visually splendid, both an ideal and a warning of decay and fall if the dominant values are lost. Travellers to Venice, their numbers increasing in the age of Thomas Cook, clutched and consulted their Stones of Venice as they inspected and marvelled at the architectural glories of what was in essence a preserved heritage site.54 As John Pemble remarks: ‘Those too poor to go to Venice now had Venice brought to them. Venice reconstructed on the stage dazzled theatrical London. For the price of a seat in the gallery you could buy the illusion of travel.’ He points to Henry Irving’s 1879 The Merchant of Venice with its authentic scenery and costumes, and Imre Kiralfy’s spectacular recreation of Venice in his 1892 exhibition ‘Venice – the Bride of the Sea’ at Olympia. But he recognised the Bancrofts’ 1875 production as the first of these theatrical experiences.55 Not surprisingly then, William Kleb in his account of the production notes that ‘To insure absolute realism, the Bancrofts […] took Ruskin’s admonition to “go to Nature” seriously, and, during September 1874, went to Venice’.56 As part of the pursuit of authenticity, Godwin was engaged as archaeological adviser. This was to provoke controversy later, when Edward Gordon Craig, Godwin’s son, writing in 1908, claimed that his father had produced the play. The Bancrofts, infuriated, added a sentence to the 1909 edition of their joint autobiography, writing ‘The scenic artists also consulted a great authority, E. W. Godwin, who kindly gave them valuable archaeological help, which was acknowledged at Gordon’s wish, in the programmes. To attribute further assistance in the production to Mr Godwin is an error’.57 The Gordon is George Gordon, the senior scene painter who with William Harford provided the highly praised views of Venice shown between the acts – the campanile of St Mark’s, the Rialto and the Grand Canal – as well as the sets themselves. There is no doubt that Squire Bancroft himself prepared the text used and that Gordon and Harford painted the scenery, but Gordon evidently followed Godwin’s


advice about what to see and which artists to study when he paid a research trip to Venice ahead of the production.58 Godwin had set out his views on the architecture and costuming of The Merchant of Venice in two lengthy articles in The Architect (27 March 1875 and 3 April 1875), articles which Moelwyn Merchant thought the finest of his series of Shakespeare articles.59 They undoubtedly contain the information that Godwin furnished to Gordon. Godwin concluded that no more than five scenes were needed for the action (a street, before Shylock’s house, the court of justice, a hall and a garden), but that these could be performed in three sets, which he illustrated in precisely constructed diagrams. He reminded prospective scene painters that Venice was neither a city of palaces nor of ruins and that three styles – Byzantine, Gothic and Renaissance – prevailed in the architecture in 1590, the date he had decided was the most appropriate for the action of the play. He described the buildings, the materials used, the style of decoration, the furniture and fittings, citing Ruskin’s The Stones of Venice in support of his descriptions at one point. For the costumes, he recommended as a basic text a work dated 1589, Habiti Antichi et Moderni di tutto il Mondo. Di Cesare Vecellio, 81 pages of which were devoted to Venetian costume: ‘with this book in one’s hand, the paintings and prints in our public galleries and the materials at South Kensington to refer to, error in the costume of The Merchant of Venice would be quite inexcusable, for it must arise either from sheer carelessness or childish incompetency to handle the facts.’60 The painters he recommended studying alongside the book were Tintoretto, Bassano, Zelotti and Veronese. Evidently anxious to distance themselves from Godwin, the Bancrofts in their autobiography stressed their involvement in the visuals. They had travelled to Venice, met Gordon and while there ‘We bought many books, made many drawings, we were satiated with Titian and Veronese, we bought many photographs and copies of their gorgeous pictures to guide our costumes’. They also selected the Court of Justice, the Sala della Bussola in the Doge’s Palace as the most convenient for reproduction on their stage, rather than the Sala del Maggior Consiglio and the Sala della Scrutinio, which Godwin recommended. Bancroft, in his acting text, divided the play into seven scenes, requiring five major sets, again contrary to Godwin.61 In a letter to The Times (23 April 1875) which had attributed the costumes to his archaeological research, Godwin disclaimed responsibility for the costumes, though he does seem to have designed Ellen Terry’s.62 But this response may have been a reaction to the review in the Building News (23 April 1875) which, recognising Vecchio’s Book of Costume (Godwin’s recommended text) as the source for the costumes, nevertheless detailed the ‘petty incongruities’ that undermined the strict accuracy Godwin would have required. Whatever they may have disagreed about, the Bancrofts certainly followed the Godwin gospel of archaeological and historical authenticity and the


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Ruskinian demand for truth to Nature. The Bancrofts wrote: ‘The utmost realism was attained. Elaborate capitals of enormous weight, absolute reproductions of those which crown the pillars of the colonnade of the Doge’s Palace, were cast in plaster and part of a wall of the theatre had to be cut away to find room for them to be moved, by means of trucks, on and off the small stage.’63 The play opened on 17 April 1875. Along with the historical accuracy, the play met another of the Ruskinian imperatives – education. After the play closed, James Spedding, the eminent Shakespearian scholar, wrote a lengthy article in Fraser’s Magazine, deeply regretting the withdrawal of the production and praising its outstanding educational value.64 He wrote of the Bancrofts: They set it forth with scenery, costume, grouping, and general pictorial effect equal to anything of the kind that has been produced in these times, when the arts of decoration have been so much studied. They took great pains both with the dialogue and the action, in all the parts, and in the minutest particulars. He lamented too the disappearance from the stage of Ellen Terry’s Portia: ‘it will be difficult to find another part so well suited to the exercise of Miss Terry’s peculiar gifts, and impossible to find another actress so well qualified to represent one of the most delightful of Shakespeare’s female creations.’65 The bid for realism was recognised by leading critic Dutton Cook of the Pall Mall Gazette, who praised ‘the pictures, at once brilliant and careful, of Venetian life in the sixteenth century, which occupy the stage. Mr Gordon’s scenery is so admirably painted and contrived that the small space at the command of the performers is never perceived as a defect; the costumes and accessories are remarkable for their picturesqueness not less than for their richness and appropriateness. Since Mr Kean in 1858 converted the play into a pageant and a spectacle “The Merchant of Venice” has not been so handsomely cared for by upholsterers, dressmakers, scene painters and “property” manufacturers’.66 The Morning Post (19 April 1875) thought the characters in the play looked like ‘portraits having stepped down from their frames’. The Times (19 April 1875) had nothing but praise for ‘the beauty and taste’ of the visuals: ‘The most thorough feeling for finish and propriety prevails throughout.’ The Era (18 April 1875) declared: ‘the scenery […] is beyond all praise; and we may say without exaggeration that few, if any, plays within our recollection could equal this in gorgeousness’ (see also the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, 24 April 1875). But these same journals damned the acting of Charles Coghlan. The Times flatly declared his Shylock ‘a failure’. The Era caustically observed that the play was performed ‘without a Shylock’, Coghlan being totally inadequate (‘Shylock is out of his line and manifestly beyond his reach’). The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News dismissed Coghlan’s Shylock as ‘tame, spiritless


and ineffective’. The great success of the evening was Ellen Terry: ‘the prominent figure of the whole was Portia, played in the best spirit by Miss Ellen Terry’ (The Times); ‘The feature of the evening was the Portia of Miss Ellen Terry […] Her acting fairly charmed everybody’ (The Era) and ‘The redeeming and most charming impersonation of the revival is the “Portia” of Miss Ellen Terry, who represents the heiress of Belmont with surprising grace of manner, sprightly wit, and in some portions deep impressiveness’ (Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News). Bancroft, noting the presence in the audience of ‘a remarkable number of Royal Academicians’, observed of the play ‘it all looked so unlike a theatre, and so much more like old Italian pictures than anything that had been previously shown upon any stage’.67 But already opposition was beginning to be voiced against the concentration on visuals at the expense of the acting. Clement Scott of the Daily Telegraph (19 April 1875) thundered: Beautiful pictures containing no incident, superb robes for the covering of shadows, a city of romance denied its idealism, subject-matter sacrificed for marvellous detail, character put on one side for cameos and frescoes substituted for fancy, the glory of the upholsterer and the neglect of the poet, the play subordinate to the decorator, Shakespeare existing only in name, a Venice without a story, and the ‘Merchant of Venice’ without a Shylock […] The stage is something more than a picture gallery. We go to the theatre to think, as well as to look. No one for a moment disputes the value of all this archaeological study, the beauty of these marvellous stage pictures, the accuracy and completeness of the detail or the depth of the research. But there is a higher value in ‘The Merchant of Venice’ than in Venetian pictures and the perfection of Venetian costume.68 But the critics were not confined to the stalls. There was discontent in the gallery. Bancroft put it tactfully: Some of the dresses seemed to puzzle many among the audience, notably those worn by Bassanio and by the Venetian nobles who accompanied him to Belmont in their beautiful velvet robes of State reaching to the ground, the striking and correct costume of the Prince of Morocco and his gorgeous attendants, and that of the equally picturesque Spanish nobles who accompanied the Prince of Arragon. I need not add that the painters were loud in praise of all this. It may be that it all came before the proper time and we saw things too far in advance.69 Clement Scott more forcibly rep orted: ‘The first performance of Shakespeare at this theatre brought with it a noisy and captious audience, apparently determined to make unnecessary calls, and to laugh at costumes they chose to consider ridiculous; but experience shows that such little


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outbursts as these have their origin very frequently in the feeling of disappointment to which we have ventured to allude’, a feeling that Dutton Cook of the Pall Mall Gazette also picked up.70 The World (21 April 1875) reported periodic ‘outbursts of ribaldry’ directed against ‘quaint medieval costumes’. Coghlan’s failure as Shylock, a failure which unbalanced the entire production, doomed the play at the box office and it closed after only 36 days at a loss to the Bancrofts of £3,000. But the artistic community were conscious that something remarkable had occurred. In her autobiography, Ellen Terry lamented the shortness of the run: It was a pity, if only because a more gorgeous and complete little spectacle had never been seen on the English stage. Veronese’s ‘Marriage of Cana’ had inspired many of the stage pictures, and the expenditure in carrying them out had been lavish. In the casket scene I wore a dress like almond blossom. I was very thin and all the ideal young heroines of Shakespeare ought to be thin. Fat is fatal to ideality. I played the part more stiffly and more slowly at the Prince of Wales’s than I did in later years. I moved and spoke slowly. The clothes seemed to demand it, and the setting of the play developed the Italian feeling in it […] The aesthetic craze, with all its faults, was responsible for a great deal of true enthusiasm for anything beautiful. It made people welcome the Bancrofts’ production of ‘The Merchant of Venice’ with an appreciation which took the practical form of an offer to keep the performance going by subscription, as the general public was not supporting them. Sir Frederick and Lady Pollock, James Spedding, Edwin Arnold, Sir Frederick Leighton and others made the proposal to the Bancrofts, but nothing came of it […] The audience may have been scanty, but they were wonderful. O’Shaughnessy, Watts-Dunton, Oscar Wilde, Alfred Gilbert, and I think Swinburne were there. A poetic and artistic atmosphere pervaded the front of the house as well as the stage itself.71 In 1876 Godwin was called in to advise actor-manager John Coleman on his production of Henry V at the Queen’s Theatre. He was billed in the programme, which said ‘the entire archaeology of the Play has been under the superintendence of Mr E.W. Godwin F.S.A.’. Declaring that this was the first time he had been ‘professionally called in’ to provide historical advice, he devoted a lengthy article in The Architect to explaining his researches. Thanking the officials in the Library and Manuscript Departments of the British Museum, he identified the various illuminated books and manuscripts from the early fifteenth century which he had consulted and described in detail the costumes they had inspired. For the King himself and his various noblemen and warriors, Godwin had copied and measured the details on monumental effigies and memorial brasses of the period. For coats of arms, he consulted the Rous Roll and the Roll of Richard II as well as the Agincourt Battle Roll.


The architecture, apart from Westminster Abbey and the Jerusalem Chamber, he had had to design where the costumes were merely selected and copied. He found the manuscript drawings of buildings before 1415 defective in proportion and too overly stylised to be accepted as literal scenes. So he combined elements from them with his observations of medieval buildings preserved in Lincoln, York, Bristol and Exeter, to create the required London streets. He concluded his article hopefully: ‘Of the host of details which beset the path of the archaeological referee I need say nothing, many and troublesome as they may be, the trouble is of little count if they are only fairly carried out with ordinary good will and intelligence.’72 In a follow-up article reviewing the opening night of the play, he declared himself shocked to see that many of his designs had simply not been utilised. He claimed to have seen nothing in advance but for ‘the banners, the scenes, some odd properties and some half dressed supernumeraries’, but his diaries record his regularly attending rehearsals and complaining about inaccuracies. He began by recording his pleasure in the scene painting of George Gordon, who had for the most part followed his designs. ‘The scenes which he himself has painted from my sketches are Eastcheap, Harfleur, and London Bridge; and with two, or at the most three, very trifling details any errors that can be fixed on them are wholly mine. The Jerusalem Chamber and the interior of the Palace of Troyes are also painted from my design with tolerable fidelity […] Of the other scenes I know absolutely nothing, except so far as I gave a few hints to Mr Gordon for the interior of Westminster Abbey. The scenes which came on me […] by surprise, are the “Temple of History” and the “Palace of Charles VI”.’ Coleman had replaced Shakespeare’s chorus by Clio, the Muse of History, in her temple and Godwin poured scorn on the idea of the Muse, ‘dressed in the fashion of the best period of Greek art’ in a temple modelled on the Renaissance work in the Ducal Palace in Venice and hung with Greek drapes. Of the Palace of Charles VI, he pointed out that when a building is of various dates, ‘it is not usual to find the whole of the substructure later than the rest by about three centuries’. In addtion the scenery was too far forward on the stage, damaging the pictorial effect for the audience. As to the costumes, the ladies of the French Court with two exceptions wore costumes from the second half of the fifteenth century, as he demonstrated by reference to a variety of medieval manuscripts. Furthermore, they were rendered ridiculous by the fact that the Queen and her attendants were dressed in fashions 25–50 years later than those of the Princess and Lady Alice. Not one of his accurate designs for medieval hoods had been carried out. He attributed Tom Mead’s conception of Pistol sufficient to account for ‘the melodramatic-transpontine character of his dress, a sort of cross between the dissembling villain of tradition and the popular portrait of Guy Fawkes’. He noted that ‘the faults in the execution of the heraldry on banner, surcoat, or shield are very few’, the Marquis of Exeter having


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what looked like kittens rather than the lions of England on his surcoat and the Earl of Oxford having his quarterings reversed. The problem was that the various historical characters were all carrying the wrong banners. ‘The defects in the military costume are quite gratuitous on the part of the makers thereof […] How often must it be said that the skirt of the surcoat of HENRY V’s knights and nobles who are clad in complete suits of armour should not descend half way down the thigh, and that the chain mail should be only just visible beneath it, instead of hanging almost to the knees, bobbing about like an open-worked ballet dress. Again the plate armour itself has been made too much of one size, and that much too small.’ And so it went on. However, Godwin magnanimously acquitted Coleman of responsibility for all this, blaming his subordinates. ‘That Mr COLEMAN heartily wished to give his work an archaeological completeness no former revival of the play had attained, I, for one, most firmly believe, nor do I think that he had any desire of himself to depart from or supplement the studies and researches made for him. And yet had he turned a deaf ear to well-meaning but officious friends and employés, he would probably have made enemies, or at least very luke-warm adherents of them, and this, for his first venture in London, he very naturally dreaded.’ But he ended by expressing the hope that the scenic artists and costumiers would amend their errors during the run of the play.73 But the play failed and was soon withdrawn. Ironically it was the sets and costumes that garnered such praise as there was. The Times (19 September 1876) declared: ‘As a specimen of that “Painting and carpentry” which Ben Jonson declares to be “the soul of mask”, the performance is certainly not without merit. As an adequate representation of the play of Shakespeare, Henry V […] cannot, as it seems to us, be in any way accepted.’ The text had been much rearranged and cut, presented in four rather than the customary five acts, two ballets interpolated (which were booed on the opening night and subsequently dropped) and two scenes from Henry IV, Part 2 introduced, with Samuel Phelps making a guest appearance as the dying Henry IV. Coleman himself played Henry V. However, The Times reported tartly: ‘Neither of the King nor his following is there much more to be said than that their dresses were very sumptuous, and in that respect they were suitable figures in the pageants of which they were apart.’ However, having dismissed the acting, The Times critic praised the production: There were certainly several pictures of remarkable colour and effect presented to the eye, on the composition of which much care and research have been very properly spent. The dresses were very gorgeous, and, there is every reason to believe, correct; and the stage at the proper time was well filled with very creditably trained representatives of soldiers, citizens, lord and ladies in waiting, […] and the care and liberality of the management at these points was suitably acknowledged, as it deserved to


be. Beyond this, however, we do not know that there is much else to be said for this latest ‘Shakesperian Revival’.74 In his autobiography, John Coleman recalled the production as an artistic triumph, claiming ‘every scene, every costume, every weapon, every suit of armour, every trophy and banner were prepared from the highest authority, after the designs of Mr Godwin, the eminent archaeologist’ and that for spectacle, both Mrs Charles Kean and J.R. Planché told him it had never been equalled, and he adds ‘I am bold enough to assert even now that it has never since been surpassed’. But it led to financial disaster. £6,000 had been spent on the production, £1,000 on redecorating the auditorium and he had lost £5,000 spent on preparing productions of Othello, Hamlet and Macbeth for the celebrated Italian tragedian Salvini, who had decamped to Italy after only three days, causing the cancellation of the season. Henry V resulted in his being overdrawn even before the curtain went up, and he was forced to give up the lease of the theatre.75 Coleman was more caustic about Godwin in journal articles. When Godwin renewed his criticism of Coleman in an article ‘Archaeology on the Stage – II’ (Dramatic Review, 22 February 1885), Coleman responded with a magisterial put-down, claiming that Godwin had been engaged ‘not as an artist, but an archaeologist’, adding ‘I regard the former as a creator, the latter as a copyist – hence I retained this gentleman to copy certain costumes, scenes and properties’ (Dramatic Review, 28 March 1885). In a previous article ‘On Stage Management’ in the Dramatic Review (14 March 1885) he had already pointed out that it was the role of the ‘competent stage manager’ (director) to tell the archaeologist what he needed from him and the costumier ‘the shape, material and colour of the costumes’ and the property man ‘the make, size, dimensions, and date of the furniture and properties requisite’. It was not until the 1880s that Godwin returned to theatrical design and then it was with a series of costume designs for serious productions. Evidently London managements were taking notice of his strictures. In 1881 he designed the costumes for the leads in a production of Romeo and Juliet at the Olympic Theatre. R.B. Mantell wore his Godwin-designed costume and earned from Godwin the praise that ‘Mr Mantell is the first Romeo we have ever seen who looked like a Montague of Verona during the first quarter of the fourteenth century’. But Miss Ellen Wallis did not wear hers, causing Godwin to lament that ‘Actresses will not dress in Medieval costume as they should’, preferring to wear clothes more in line with the contemporary aesthetic taste of the late nineteenth century.76 He also designed costumes for Mrs Bateman’s production of Othello at Sadler’s Wells and for Hermann Vezin’s productions of Hamlet (1881), The Lady of Lyons (1882) and The Merchant of Venice (1883), and Mrs Scott Siddons’ production of Queen and Cardinal (1881).


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Godwin was commissioned at fairly short notice to design the costumes for a production of Othello at Sadler’s Wells which Mrs Bateman was putting on to take advantage of the unexpected availability of Charles Warner to play the title role. Isabel Bateman played Desdemona and Hermann Vezin, Iago. Mrs Bateman had just a fortnight to prepare the production and she may have recalled Godwin’s comments on an earlier performance of Othello at Sadler’s Wells, also featuring Vezin as Iago. ‘Mr Vezin, as Iago, was of course the point of attraction, and I am free to admit that the artists did more than anyone I have yet seen to put before us the character as Shakspere drew it. The costumes were mostly English, of the time of Mary, but Mr Vezin was dressed like a young scholar of Venice, more or less after Vecellio. He would have done better to have consulted Amman. Short trunks and short cloak would have suited Mr Vezin’s figure better than those he wore and would have been more appropriate to an officer.’77 Godwin had no compunction about reviewing the production, despite his own participation, and declared Warner’s Othello the best he had encountered apart from Salvini’s, Vezin’s Iago ‘better than ever’ and Isabel Bateman’s Desdemona ‘earnest and looked well’. With some satisfaction, he declared: ‘Some of the dresses were altogether new and taken from portraits and engravings of the time (1570). Many of the others were modified to agree with them, and, although time did not permit any remarkable excellence, there was little or nothing of the nature of an anachronism, thanks to the exertions of those engaged in the theatre. Still there was no reason why Iago’s shoulder puffs should not have been raised on to the shoulders, or why Cassio and Rodrigo should not have clothed their legs in colours more suitable to the rest of their apparel and more in accordance with Venetian fashion.’78 Clement Scott in the Daily Telegraph (22 September 1880) was unimpressed, declaring of Warner’s Othello: He suffered, we think, from a set of costumes that may be aesthetically correct, but were consistently ugly – so ugly indeed and unbecoming as to jeopardise any chance of success. Archaeology is unquestionably a valuable feature in connection with the Shakespearian drama, but artists should understand that to swathe the Moor during the senate scene in stiff, unyielding petticoats is to create ridicule and not to inspire sympathy, and that faultless imitations of pictures or fancies of colour may well be sacrificed in favour of picturesque appearance. He described Isabel Bateman’s Desdemona as ‘most unbecomingly attired’. Godwin published his costume sketches for Othello in the British Architect (15 October 1880) with an explanation of their style. In 1881 Godwin was commissioned to do all the costumes for Mrs Mary Frances Scott-Siddons’ production of Queen and Cardinal except for Anne Boleyn’s, which was to be done by Lewis Wingfield. Mrs Mary Frances


Scott-Siddons (1844–96) had been a hit as Rosalind in As You Like It in 1867. The Daily News (9 April 1867) had called her ‘saucy and attractive’. But she had gone abroad for a long time and this was her comeback play. It was a poetic drama on the tragedy of Anne Boleyn by Walter S. Raleigh. Archie Nathan of the costumiers Nathans recalled: ‘The firm had a good deal of trouble with this Mrs Scott-Siddons, who was by no means the great actress she imagined herself to be […] She was most meticulous about materials and matching, but was evidently a better judge of that sort of thing than of the dramatic quality of the play.’79 The Globe (26 October 1881) noted that ‘the play was mounted throughout in excellent taste. The views of castled slope and forest glade were picturesque and striking. The dresses, designed by Mr E.W. Godwin and supplied by Messrs L. and H. Nathan, were admirable alike in accuracy and effect. In saying this, however, all that can be advanced in favour of the performance is said’. It tore into the writing and acting, as did the rest of the press. Clement Scott, who had dismissed the play in six lines, found himself deluged by correspondence from the aggrieved author. ‘Mr Walter Raleigh, in his voluminous correspondence, has threatened me with all sorts of pains and penalties. He has questioned my candour, my common sense, my judgment, and apparently my sanity.’ In one of his letters, Raleigh lamented that ten years’ labour and £2,000 had gone in a moment: ‘On Thursday morning, when the articles of “The Daily Telegraph”, “The Standard”, “The Daily News” and “The Morning Post” appeared, no less than one hundred stalls booked at different places for that morning were cancelled, every one of them, and on Friday the receipts fell to 16 (pounds), the result of “The Times” article.’ Scott’s comment on this was that this represented ‘the triumph and vindication of independent and fair criticism’. Scott declared that Raleigh had attributed the play’s failure to everything but the real cause. He complained that the rehearsals had been insufficient, the dresses had arrived late, he knew nothing of stage management and the critics had been unfair. But Scott declared that the real cause of its failure was ‘the public assembled to see it did not care for it in the least possible degree or was really interested in it for five consecutive minutes […] The age did not want it, the theatre was unsuited to it, and there was no interest whatever in the heroine’.80 The Times (28 October 1881) thought there was ‘no good reason’ for the existence of Queen and Cardinal, the story of Anne Boleyn having been effectively covered in Shakespeare’s Henry VIII and Tom Taylor’s Anne Boleyn. ‘It really throws no new light on a very familiar passage of English history […] also one fails to see in what way it is to contribute to the public entertainment.’ The character drawing was poor, the blank verse ‘flat’ and it concluded: ‘Nor have the faults of the subject-matter been redeemed by any strength or novelty of scene, any ingenuity of construction, any grace of style.’ Punch (5 November 1881) suggested that all Raleigh had done in the play was ‘string together some of the strongest dramatic situations from HARRISON AINSWORTH’S Windsor Castle and […] produced his indifferent


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patchwork as “a new and original poetical historical play” without the slightest acknowledgment of the source whence he derived his materials’. The Times reported on 7 November 1881 that the play had been taken off and replaced by As You Like It with Mrs Scott-Siddons as Rosalind. Godwin made a breakthrough in his bid to control the look and artistic feel of an entire production through his friendship with the Irish playwright W.G. Wills. Wills had written Juana, a tragedy in verse set in fifteenth century Spain, as a vehicle for Helena Modjeska and Wilson Barrett. Wills introduced Godwin to Barrett and Barrett hired him to design scenery, costumes and properties. The scenery was to be executed by Barrett’s team of scenic artists, William Beverley, Stafford Hall and Walter Hann. The play told the story of Juana Esteban who falls in love with the handsome but profligate Don Carlos de Narciso when she tends his wounds after an attack by ruffians who had left him for dead. They marry but he embarks on an affair with her best friend Clara Perez. When Juana discovers the affair, she goes mad and stabs Carlos to death. However, her father confessor, Friar John, who is secretly but unrequitedly in love with her, takes on himself the blame for the crime. He is condemned to be walled up alive. But Juana recovers her reason, confesses her guilt and dies in Father John’s arms. The play opened at the Court Theatre on 7 May 1881. The critics generally praised the poetry and the acting (Modjeska as Juana, Forbes Robertson as Carlos and Wilson Barrett as Father John) but pronounced the play gloomy, verbose and old fashioned, and predicted its rapid closure. ‘Poetry with gloom may be accepted in the study but will not do on the stage’ said The Era (14 May 1881). ‘Hardly a streak of silver is to be seen in the black and heavy cloud from which a ceaseless stream of lamentation and mourning and woe is poured on the unoffending spectator’ lamented The Times (9 May 1881). The Daily Telegraph (9 May 1881) complained about the ‘persistent and impenetrable gloom, with shuddering scenes and the physical horror of distraught minds, with the shrieks of madwomen and the bloodstained details of the dread ordeal by touch, with dirges and wails and “misereres” chanted by processional monks, by the ghastly preparing for walling up impenitent friars, and by a long drawn out note of melancholy agony’. However, the mounting of the play received general commendation. Godwin had researched the period extensively and sought to recreate Toledo in 1496 faithfully on the stage. The Era said: ‘The mounting of the play was simply magnificent, special notice of a commendatory character being due to the loggia of the Castle, which forms the scene of the first and second acts.’ The Daily Telegraph declared: ‘The new tragedy has derived every possible advantage from the taste and archaeological accuracy of Mr E.W. Godwin, who has found here a labour of love.’ The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News (14 May 1881) said: ‘Mr Godwin deserves credit for the manner in which arrangements of scene and dress, according to the fifteenth century fashion of Spain, both instruct and delight the eye.’


The play closed after a month. Madame Modjeska blamed Barrett for casting himself and not Forbes Robertson as Friar John: ‘I believe […] that had Forbes Robertson played the poetic monk instead of Wilson Barrett, the play would have had a better chance. It was a grave mistake, though it would be hard to blame an actor-manager for keeping the best part for himself.’ Forbes Robertson did later play the role with Modjeska on a provincial tour (‘He played beautifully, and looked a saint to perfection’).81 However, Wills was so pleased with Godwin’s work that he dedicated the play to him, writing: ‘To Edward William Godwin this play is dedicated as a slight token of friendship: as an acknowledgement of his sympathy and interest in its creation, and as a tribute to the manner in which he has conveyed the true semblance of past times in those plays to which his researches have been applied.’82 Godwin himself, writing in 1885, recalled of his designs for stage properties, ‘Those for Mr Wills’s play for Juana were perhaps, on the whole, the best that have ever been executed for me’. But he felt compelled to add: ‘But in Juana, as indeed in every costume play with which I have had anything to do, there were touches which rendered the illusion incomplete, and features for which I was entirely irresponsible.’ By this he meant that Madame Modjeska had insisted on wearing her own choice of gowns, ignoring Godwin’s designs.83 Despite the failure of Juana, Godwin began his productive partnership with Wilson Barrett, designing his subsequent productions Claudian (1883), Hamlet (1884), Junius (1885) and Clito (1886), set respectively in the Byzantine Empire, medieval Denmark, Ancient Rome and classical Athens. The high point of this cycle was Claudian, which elicited the admiration of both Oscar Wilde and John Ruskin and led to a productive friendship between Ruskin and Barrett (these plays are discussed in detail below). Even with Barrett, Godwin was to have problems, notably a ferocious row over a Byzantine litter designed for Claudian which Barrett refused to use. Godwin finally gained complete control over the production and design of plays in a series of largely amateur productions: As You Like It (1884), The Faithfull Shepherdesse (1885), Fair Rosamund (1886) and Helena in Troas (1886). Godwin’s opportunity to take complete control of a production and to impose upon every aspect his desired unity of design came in 1884. Lady Archibald Campbell, socialite and aesthete, was painting the portrait of the actress Eleanor Calhoun in the costume of Rosalind in the woods at Coombe Warren when she had the idea of staging an open air production of As You Like It for charity. James McNeill Whistler, who was himself painting a portrait of Lady Archibald, introduced her to Godwin, who undertook to prepare the Shakespeare text for production, design the costumes and direct the actors. The Duke of Cambridge having refused the use of his Coombe estate, Dr McGeagh gave permission for the use of his estate and an acting area was created in Coombe Woods. A cast was assembled which consisted of


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amateurs and professionals, among them Eleanor Calhoun as Rosalind, Hermann Vezin as Jaques and two of the members of Wilson Barrett’s company, Charles Fulton as the exiled Duke and George Foss as Adam. Lady Archibald herself played Orlando. The production attracted considerable interest from both high society and the quality press. It was deemed so successful that the performance was repeated in 1885 and Lady Archibald and Godwin set up the Society of Pastoral Players to undertake further productions. The production consisted only of the forest scenes from the play, arranged by Godwin, and some critics felt that this detracted from the dramatic design of Shakespeare’s original. But other critics found themselves bowled over by the novelty, the realism and the visual coherence. Godwin wore friar’s dress so that he could appear in the scene whenever necessary. A correspondent to The Theatre gave a first hand account of the costumes: Although the designs could not be entirely carried out in the dresses supplied by Messrs May, the costumes were altered to accord, as far as possible, with Mr Godwin’s idea of accuracy and harmonious colouring, due consideration being given to the hues and shades employed, in order that they might blend picturesquely with the surrounding foliage. The period was fixed between the years 1470 and 1480, as after that date there were no more independent dukes in France. Day after day was passed at the costumier’s in selecting colours and materials; and I noticed how especially careful the manager was to choose old dresses for the banished landless lords and their followers, to contrast with the fresher and more showy costumes worn by the ‘young gentlemen of estate’, who were the new arrivals in the forest. Touchstone’s dress was the only absolutely new one furnished by Messrs May, and accurately following the design. Miss Calhoun wore her own dress as Rosalind, the same in which she appeared at the Imperial Theatre. Lady Archibald’s Orlando dress was made from the same pattern in different colours. It struck me as founded more or less on the Saint Hubert of Albrecht Durer. Miss A. Schletter, as Celia, wore a costume that accorded better with Mr Godwin’s ideas than did the dresses of the other ladies. Mrs Plowden certainly made a picture as Phoebe, but her costume might be fairly considered a little out of keeping with the general picture, from its over-brilliant colouring […] The bycocket caps, so familiar to students of the fifteenth century, were donned by Jaques, and the other stage lords, and were more suitable than the head-gear usually worn in the stage presentation of the play. The same correspondent pointed out that ‘All conventional stage business was set aside, and the whole representation thought out from an artist’s standpoint, illustrating the spirit of play in its fullest and most perfect sense’. This involved even the call-boy, Master W. Phillips being dressed as


a shepherd and leading cattle and sheep across the stage at appropriate points. ‘The procession of the dead deer and the real staghounds, the goats led across the stage, and the claiming of their tuneful set of bells, all contributed to heighten the effect.’84 The poet Alfred Austin, paying tribute to Lady Archibald both for her performance (‘A more graceful and gallant Orlando it would have been impossible to ask for’) and for having the idea of the open-air performance as the best way of rendering the play, wrote: No one who went to Coombe to put the theory to the test of practice, can doubt that Orlando was right. I confess that I, for one, entertained some misgiving as to the soundness of the principle involved. I feared that the perfect naturalness of the surroundings would detract from the illusion of the performance. I cheerfully confess that I was utterly wrong. But I had no conception that the idea would be carried out with such completeness, whether in the mechanical and artistic arrangements, presided over with so much skill and taste by Mr Godwin, in the mimetic presentation of the piece, or in its gay and fascinating accessories.85 Oscar Wilde, who attended the 1885 revival, was also impressed: The condition then under which this comedy was produced […] did not place any great limitations on the actor’s art, and increased tenfold the value of the play as a picture. Through an alley of white hawthorn and gold laburnum we passed into the green pavilion that served as the theatre, the air sweet with the odour of lilac and with the blackbird’s song; and when the curtain fell into its trench of flowers, and the play commenced, we saw before us a real forest, and we knew it to be Arden […] As for the players themselves, the pleasing naturalness of their method harmonised delightfully with their natural surroundings. Those of them who were amateurs were too artistic to be stagey, and those who were actors too experienced to be artificial […] As regards the costumes the colour scheme was very perfect. Brown and green were the dominant notes and yellow was most artistically used. As You Like It has probably never been so well mounted, nor costumes worn with more ease and simplicity.86 Godwin followed As You Like It with open air productions of John Fletcher’s The Faithfull Shepherdesse and Fair Rosamund, an adaptation of Lord Tennyson’s play Becket. The Faithfull Shepherdesse, performed in the same place as As You Like It, with the addition of a statue and altar of the god Pan, created by Godwin from originals in the British Museum, was admired by some critics for its visual effects. ‘It is the effective tableaux, the colouring of the piece, the quaint costumes of the skin-clad shepherds and the lissom


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shepherdesses, the statue of the god Pan with the incense-burning altar, the festoons of lilac and laburnum, the arrival of Perigot and Amoret in a golden chariot drawn by two gentle heifers, which enchain the attention of the spectator’ reported The Stage (3 July 1885). But there were beginning to be critical reservations about these open-air productions. One critic, writing under the pen-name ‘Ignotus’, reviewed The Faithfull Shepherdesse. Fanny Baldwin suggests that ‘Ignotus’ is Oscar Wilde but in its facetious style it reads more like George Bernard Shaw, who was writing music criticism for the Dramatic Review in 1885–6. He dismissed it as ‘a piece of exquisite tomfoolery’: If I were asked to tell the outer world my own impression of the affair, it would doubtless be in a critical sense vague and unsatisfactory, for I could only see Lady Archibald Campbell, in green tights striking stained-glass attitudes under a tree, and anon, all the love-sick maidens from Patience disporting themselves to fiddle-de-de music, in company with creatures disguised in tow and yellow ochre, but whom it could be seen by the programme were Shepherds, suffering more or less from temporary insanity. This may sound harsh, and no doubt I am a veritable Goth, but let it be understood that, on the other hand, I fully recognise Mr Godwin’s effort to make the ugly beautiful, and I am conscious of his archaeological accuracy. But when I acknowledge that his costumes were beautifully ugly, there is an end of my appreciation. ‘Ignotus’ challenged the whole idea of the superior authenticity of out of doors production: What one wants to see upon a stage, whether the boards or grass, is art, not nature; nature bores us, and is extremely monotonous, where it is not absolutely repulsive. Art is that which teaches us to be refined when our vulgar natures call aloud for dirtiness. Therefore, bare legs and broad language, in our educated days give place to trousers and smoother tongues.87 The same idea was taken up by Freeman Wills, the brother of playwright W.G. Wills, who in an article on ‘Open Air Theatres’ said: It is in no carping spirit, rather owning the significance of these out-door theatricals, that I would raise the question of their tendency and dramatic value. It is a new experiment of blending the real and the fictitious. I would ask, then, must not the truest art be untrue, a gathering into focus for the eye of scenes which in reality would be widely spread out and separated? There is a necessary unreality in the drama which creates its difficulty for the would-be dramatist. To colour and arrange the optic


delusion for the eye that has to see from a false distance, and to make the falsity represent truth, is the difficulty of art. When this has been accomplished successfully, the mind is pleased by a harmony and correctness of impression; but when the drama thus adapted to the mental eye is thrown out upon a background of actual nature, then we have the distortion of the mediaeval picture. In its false setting it appeared true; in its true setting it appears false.88 The culmination of these amateur productions was Godwin’s staging at Hengler’s circus in a reproduction of an ancient Greek theatre of John Todhunter’s translation and adaptation of Sophocles’ play, Helena in Troas. It opened on 26 May 1886. Typically Willie Wilde in The Theatre reported that, except for Hermann Vezin, the acting was ‘earnest and well-intentioned but of fire and passion there was none’ and the delivery was ‘slow, sonorous and dull’. But, on the other hand, ‘the designer’s work was altogether excellent. Mr Godwin has given beauty, unity and harmony, to the details of archaeology. His theatre was strictly accurate, his classical lore severe, yet his treatment was poetical, and not pedantic’.89 It played to packed houses for the scheduled two weeks and made ‘a considerable profit’.90 The success of the open air productions tempted Godwin fatally into commercial production. He entered into a partnership with two society beauties, Mrs Sophie Mackintosh and her sister Miss Janette Steer, took a lease on the Opera Comique and prepared a revival of Tom Taylor’s The Fool’s Revenge, an adaptation of Hugo’s Le Roi S’Amuse, which had first been produced in 1859. The appeal for Godwin was the Renaissance setting. The beauties played the leading female roles and the supporting cast was largely amateur, with the notable exception of Hermann Vezin in the role of the Fool Bertuccio. But the combination of bad reviews, a poor supporting cast, unusually hot weather and the start of the holiday season doomed it. It opened on 3 July 1886 and while Vezin was generally praised, the whole venture was damned. The Times (6 July 1886) said: ‘Midsummer is the silly season in theatrical affairs, but it has seldom seen a rasher undertaking than the reopening of the unfortunate Opera Comique […] with The Fool’s Revenge.’ The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News (10 July 1886) said of the female leads, ‘We can only recommend these ladies to resume that position in private life which they no doubt greatly adorn. The public stage is not the place for these desperate experiments’. The Era (10 July 1886) reported the irreverence with which the production was received: ‘When a door would not open, a “god” suggested to the actor who was endeavouring to open it to “give it a kick”; admonitions to “speak up” were not infrequent; and when Manfredi bore down from Malatesta’s balcony what appeared to be a bundle of “old clo” instead of a female form divine a roar of hearty laughter burst from the audience.’ However, Godwin’s death later in 1886 from complications


81

following an operation to remove kidney stones brought to a sudden and unexpected end one of the most remarkable careers in nineteenth century theatre. The significance of the failure of The Fool’s Revenge was highlighted by an article by ‘Lys’ in the Dramatic Review: This (failure) is very much to be regretted from all points of view; but by none is the disappointment more keenly felt than by that section of the art world, which, recognising the aesthetic imperfection characteristic of too many of our theatres at the present time, seeks by all legitimate means to promote the closest union between Art and the Stage. The situation has, indeed, about it many elements of danger to such a cause. That Mr Godwin, whom the public cannot fail to regard as a champion of art principles, should have sustained a conspicuous defeat at the very opening of his campaign is a bad omen for the future of the movement; and such a disaster must inevitably encourage adversaries already existing, and have an evil tendency to turn into avowed opponents many who, hitherto, wavering, have been prepared for some time past to throw in their lot with whichever side gave the more evident promise of ultimate success […] They will be encouraged to declaim against the very presence of Art in our theatres, and to assert that attention to aesthetic matters is a positive advantage, and a certain source of popular disfavour.91 What made matters worse, according to ‘Lys’, was that ‘the failure has been far from undeserved’ because of the ‘amateurish incompetence’ of the cast (apart from Hermann Vezin) and that ‘No attempt, as far as can be seen, has been made to utilise those opportunities for pictorial effect which abound throughout the action of this play, and which are on the stage capable of being turned to account by a manager possessed of artistic instincts. Colour harmonies have not been attempted, and haphazard juxtapositions of discordant hues frequently offend the eye. All is careless and undisciplined: without scheme and without arrangement’. Godwin’s obituary in the British Architect (15 October 1886) acknowledged the importance and excellence of his theatre work, while suggesting that his immersion in it and the demands it made on him hastened his end: To sit down and design costumes and scenery for a play is one thing, and to superintend their production is another, especially where, as in Godwin’s case, absolute correctness of detail is taken to be the essential and all-important element of success. Take for example, his work in the production of ‘Claudian’ at the Princess’s. The vivid reality of the scene in the prologue was surely never surpassed; no person, however insignificant in the plot, no portion in the scenery, and no article brought onto the


stage seemed to have escaped his attention. In the same way, his Greek play ‘Helena in Troas’ showed an artistic ensemble the peculiar characteristic of which was its thoroughness. It was indeed this patient earnestness of spirit and painstaking attention to detail which gave to all Godwin’s work that subtle charm of finish and completeness which characterised it. Although the open air and Ancient Greek productions might be regarded as elite experiments, there can be little doubt about Godwin’s aesthetic and ideological influence on mainstream commercial theatre. Looking back in 1900, Herbert Beerbohm Tree, friend and disciple of Godwin, recalled the Bancrofts’ The Merchant of Venice as ‘my earliest theatrical recollection of that kind; and I do not remember to have seen any Shakespearian presentation more satisfying to my judgement; it was the first production in which the modern spirit of stage-management asserted itself, transporting us as it did into the atmosphere of Venice, into the rarefied realms of Shakespearian comedy’.92 He went on to list the Shakespearian productions staged in what might be called the Godwinian spirit, among them Irving’s ‘beautiful Shakespearian presentations from 1874 to 1896’ and Tree’s own at the Haymarket and later Her Majesty’s Theatre. There is no doubt that the principles enunciated by Godwin and Ruskin were being implemented at the Lyceum by Sir Henry Irving. But Godwin only worked there once. He designed Camma’s costumes and the actual cup for the production of The Cup, at the suggestion of Ellen Terry, who was playing Camma. Despite their obvious similarity of aesthetic outlook, Irving was perhaps reluctant to have permanently on hand the former partner of his leading lady, with whom he himself was now in love. Godwin did a whole series of costume and set designs for his friend W.G. Wills’ Rienzi (1883), a play specifically written for Irving, perhaps in the hope of securing the commission for the forthcoming production. In the event, Irving never produced the play. However, Edward Gordon Craig, Godwin’s son, the stage protégé of Irving and the man who wrote one of the most insightful studies of Irving, listed the influences upon Irving’s stage vision – among them Charles Dickens, Gustave Doré, the actors Samuel Phelps and Charles Fechter, the actorproducers Charles Kean and Dion Boucicault, the writer and antiquarian James Robinson Planché – and E.W. Godwin.93 If the three most prominent London theatrical regimes in the last decades of the nineteenth century may be regarded as those of Irving, Tree and Barrett, then Godwin can be said to have had a significant influence, either direct or indirect, upon all of them and Godwin’s philosophy of art was constructed on Ruskinian principles.

4 Toga Plays

One of Ruskin’s most famous and much-quoted pronouncements on an individual stage production came in an 1884 letter to the actor-manager Wilson Barrett. Complimenting him on his production of the play Claudian, he remarked: ‘With scene-painting like that the Princess’s (theatre) might do more for art teaching than all the galleries and professors of Christendom’ (CW 37.474). Claudian was a prime example of the genre known as ‘toga plays’ which recreated the Ancient World on the stage. There had always been plays set in the Ancient World. Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Coriolanus and Antony and Cleopatra were prime examples of the dramatisation of episodes from ancient history. But in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, they had been overtaken in popularity by Joseph Addison’s Cato (1713) and Sheridan Knowles’ Virginius (1820) among others. The late Victorian toga play differed from its predecessors in the underlying themes binding the genre together. These themes have been identified by David Mayer in his seminal study of the genre. First, there was the conflict between the values of a decadent pagan Roman Empire and a burgeoning Christianity, a conflict which focussed attention on the nature of Empire and the nature of faith. Second, there was the debate about the nature and role of women, provoked by the rise of feminism and the concept of ‘The New Woman’. Both these themes were given added force by the intellectual and spiritual crisis provoked by the rise of Darwinism in the aftermath of the publication of The Origin of Species in 1859 and the panic about the Decadent movement, and in particular the ideas of Wilde and Wildeanism, which were feared to be sapping the virility of an imperial nation.1 But the toga play did not stand alone. It was an integral part of a major cultural strand that can be found in literature and painting, in politics and education. For Britain in the second half of the nineteenth century, already master of the mightiest Empire the world had ever seen, the reference point for comparison, for guidance, for lessons was the Roman Empire. Anthony Trollope observed in 1870 that Rome and the Roman Empire were part of 83


modern history and modern political life in a way that Greece could never be.2 Where Rome had the Pax Romana, Britain had the Pax Britannica; Britain had imperial proconsuls; the architecture of the Empire tended to favour the classical style in its public buildings; the utterances of Britain’s imperial statesmen were steeped in classical allusion. The British admired the Romans for their stoicism, their courage, their administration and their legal system, their concept of citizenship, their straight roads and aqueducts, their common currency and common language. The prospective elite of the British Empire were taught Latin and the classics, and were provided with inspiring examples of dedication, duty and service from Roman history.3 However, Britain did not just look to Rome for laudatory parallels, but also for lessons about what destroys empires, and this was a source of much reflection, thought and argument. A classic example from the debate is The Roman and the Teuton, a series of inaugural lectures given by Rev. Charles Kingsley on his appointment as Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge and published in 1864. Painting a lurid picture of corruption and decadence in the Roman Empire of the late fourth century and warning that the picture could be repeated in the British Empire ‘if we are not careful’, he identified the key factors in the decline as the absence of parliamentary democracy and a responsible aristocracy, the existence of slavery, the decay of public spirit and civic virtue, the decline of racial purity, the employment of mercenaries and, most importantly, the absence of genuine Christianity.4 In the nineteenth century major religious polemicists took to the novel to work out their debates about the nature of the faith and, writing as they were during the heyday of the British Empire, they often set their debates during the Roman Empire. Whether Protestant like Charles Kingsley in Hypatia (1853) or Catholic like Cardinal Wiseman in Fabiola (1854) and Cardinal Newman in Callista (1855), they were at one in the belief that the most potent force to deploy against paganism, unrestrained sensuality and political despotism was Christianity. The fashion for Roman novels essentially began with Edward BulwerLytton’s The Last Days of Pompeii (1834) and climaxed with General Lew Wallace’s Ben Hur (1880) and Henryk Sienkiewicz’s Quo Vadis (1896), novels by an Englishman, an American and a Pole respectively, but all hugely popular bestsellers, endlessly reprinted, adapted for and performed on the stage throughout the English-speaking world in the nineteenth century. Focussing on the conflict of Christianity and paganism, the message of most of these novels was the same – without a genuinely felt and practised Christianity, Empire will fail, for Christianity is seen to be synonymous with democracy and public virtue and in opposition to sensuality, profligacy, slavery, corruption and tyranny.5 Now where does Ruskin figure in this debate? He wrote from the position of someone who believed in Britain’s imperial destiny, a doctrine he

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proclaimed in his inaugural lecture as Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford in a passage he later called ‘the most pregnant and essential’ of his teaching. He called upon the country to ‘found colonies as fast and as far as she is able, formed of her most energetic and worthiest men: seizing every piece of fruitful waste ground she can set her foot on, and there teaching these colonists that their chief virtue is to be fidelity to their country, and that their first aim is to be to advance the power of England by land and sea’. He defined his ideal British Empire as a seaborne Empire, an Empire sustained by Christian faith, an Empire informed by a deep sense of duty, and an Empire that is above all spiritual and not material (CW 20.40–3). Despite the overwhelming Victorian preoccupation with the fall of the Roman Empire and its lessons for Britain, Ruskin has comparatively little to say about that Empire. With characteristic individualism – some might say perversity – he dismissed the fears and obsessions of the likes of Kingsley in The Bible of Amiens, pointing out that ‘it seems almost wholly lost sight of by ordinary historians that in the wars of the last Romans with the Goths the great Gothic captains were all Christians; and that the vigorous and naïve forms which the dawning faith took in their minds is a more important subject of investigation, by far, than the inevitable wars which followed the retirement of Diocletian, or the confused schisms and crimes of the lascivious court of Constantine’ (CW 33.97–8). In Valle Crucis he paid tribute to ‘the gentleness by which […] pride was tempered in the gracious emperors of the third century, and made Rome capable of becoming the centre of Christianity’ (CW 33.214–15). But he did see a lesson for Britain in the fate of other empires – not Rome, which was essentially a military and land-based Empire, but Tyre and Venice, which, like England (as he calls it persistently) were seaborne empires. He attributed the fall of Tyre to sensuality, the worship of false gods and the predominance of materialism over spirituality (CW 24.448; 28.562). In The Stones of Venice he directly attributed the decline of the Venetian Empire to the decline of religion (CW 9.23–30). His firmly expressed view – and this links him to commentators like Kingsley – is that Christianity and spirituality are essential ingredients of a successful Empire and in particular Protestant Christianity. Lack of spirituality leads to the fatal dominance of materialism, particularly in commercial empires, and the failure to adopt the right sort of Christianity, i.e. Protestant Christianity (and he saw Venetian religion as essentially proto-Protestant), is a guarantee of decline and fall. The late Victorian vogue for toga plays coincided with the classical revival in painting which lasted from the 1860s to 1914. According to Christopher Wood in his authoritative Olympian Dreamers, Victorian classicism is not easy to define and meant different things to different people: ‘It was an influence rather than a coherent body of opinion; a catalyst rather than a clearly defined artistic movement.’ In support of this view, he characterises the leading classical painters as follows: ‘the lofty aspirations of Leighton,


the antiquarianism of Alma-Tadema, the aesthetic classicism of Moore and Burne-Jones, the decadence of Simeon Solomon and Aubrey Beardsley, and the high romanticism of Waterhouse.’ What links them, he suggests, is that they were part of a reaction against ‘the domination of English art by Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites. The new generation of artists wished to break away from the moral strait-jacket of Ruskin and the insularity of the Pre-Raphaelites, and to renew contact with the great traditions of European art.’6 But, as Joseph Kestner argues, Victorian classical painting constructs images of masculinity and femininity which habitually reinforce the gender divisions and gender images classically summarised by Ruskin in ‘Of Queens’ Gardens’. In his later years Ruskin developed a fascination with mythology, particularly Greek mythology. Lecturing on ‘The Art of England’ in 1883, he said: ‘The thoughts of all the greatest and wisest men hitherto, since the world was made, have been expressed through mythology’ (CW 33.294). His works began to carry mythological titles – The Cestus of Aglaia, Ariadne Florentina, Proserpina, Deucalion, Queen of the Air (the goddess Athena) – as he proceeded to explore a mythical symbolism which he believed encoded timeless moral teachings, explained the relationship of Man and Nature and defined gender roles.7 ‘Mythology became part of contemporary sociology through Ruskin’ says Kestner.8 Ruskin’s immersion in myth coincided with both the Victorian classical revival in painting and with the vogue for classical plays on both the professional and amateur stage, through which Ruskin believed appreciation of great art and the principles of morality could be taught. The classical painters turned again and again to the heroes of Ancient Greece (Theseus, Perseus, Jason, Achilles, Hercules, Odysseus, Orpheus, Pygmalion) for their archetypes of male behaviour (active, energetic, fearless, self-reliant) and to the myth of rescue (Andromeda by Perseus, Alcestis by Hercules, Eurydice by Orpheus) as the paradigm of male-female relationships. The female role models they chose from mythology conformed to two overarching stereotypes: the submissive woman, passive, loving, self-effacing, companionable, compliant (Penelope, Alcestis, Oenone, Echo, Cassandra, Nausicaa, Clytie, Andromeda) and the destructive woman, fatal, dangerous, cruel, perverse, aggressive, demonic, deceptive, treacherous, unfaithful (Helen of Troy, Clytemnestra, Electra, Pandora, Medusa, Calypso, Medea, Leda, Danae, Ariadne, Phaedra, Niobe). Kestner concludes that ‘nineteenth century British mythological painting was part of a system of cultural indoctrination that represented women as terrifying or submissive and men as the heroic stabilizing factor in the social structure’.9 The Olympians mostly steered clear of the Roman Empire, preferring the purity and idealisation of Ancient Greece. But Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, ‘best known and best-paid of all Victorian classical painters’, was celebrated for the fidelity of his genre paintings of everyday life in the Ancient World, particularly Rome. His desire, as he put it in an 1899 interview, was ‘to

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express in my pictures that the old Romans were flesh and blood like ourselves, moved by the same passions and emotions’.10 The secret of his success was to portray the rituals, practices and mores of wealthy Romans – their dinner parties, their courtship rituals, their shopping expeditions, their visits to the baths – so that they appeared to spectators, as one commentator has put it, like ‘Victorians in togas’. At the same time he drew on archaeology to create as accurate a picture as possible of buildings, furniture and clothing, so that spectators felt they were learning while viewing. So said Alma-Tadema: ‘If I am to revive ancient life, if I am to make it relive on canvas, I can do so only by transporting my mind into the far off ages, which deeply interest me, but I must do it with the aid of archaeology. I must not only create a mise-en-scène that is possible, but probable.’11 It was his archaeological accuracy and sense of dramatic composition which led leading actor-managers to employ him to design their productions: Sir Henry Irving on his productions of Cymbeline and Coriolanus and Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree on his productions of Julius Caesar and Hypatia (his stage adaptation of Kingsley’s novel). Ruskin approved of some of the classical painters. In The Art of England (1883), he identified six different schools of painting, one of which was the classical. He was generous in his praise of Sir Frederic Leighton, universally recognised as the leader of the classical school. He praised ‘his acutely observant and enthusiastic study of the organism of the human body’, ‘his precision of terminal outline’ and his ‘painting with a soft charm, peculiarly his own, the witchcraft and wonderfulness of childhood’ (CW 33.318–19). He was much more critical of Alma-Tadema, whose ‘varied and complex powers of minute draughtsmanship’ he admired, but whom he criticised severely for his lack of moral teaching. He had already taken him to task in his 1875 Academy Notes for wasting his talent on so unworthy and trivial a subject as ‘The Sculpture Gallery’: ‘The Old French Republicans, reading of Rome, chose such events to illustrate her history, as the battle of Romulus with the Sabines, the vow of the Horatii, or the self-martyrdom of Lucretia. The modern Republican sees in the Rome he studies so profoundly only a central establishment for the manufacture and sale of imitation-Greek articles of virtu’ (CW 14.265; 271). He returned to this theme in his 1883 lectures, denouncing the fact that many of Alma-Tadema’s interiors were seen in twilight and that people were lolling about or crouching ‘in fear or laziness’. In particular he detested ‘the most gloomy, the most crouching, the most dastardly of all these representations of classic life […] the little piece called the Pyrrhic Dance, of which the general effect was exactly like a microscopic view of a small detachment of black beetles in search of a dead rat’. He reminded Alma-Tadema and his readers that ‘the true meaning of classic art and classic literature (was) not the license of pleasure, but the law of goodness’ (CW 33.320–1; 323). Given Ruskin’s reservations about the lack of overt and direct moral teaching in


the paintings of artists like Alma-Tadema, Poynter and Moore, where was this teaching to be found? The answer is on the stage, where the art of the Victorian classical painters could be deployed to realise dramatic texts in which educational and moral lessons were uppermost in the minds of the producers and authors. It first became the fashion to perform Greek plays in the original language at the ancient universities. Because Edinburgh, Harvard and Westminster School were putting on Greek plays, either in Greek or English, it was suggested in 1880 that New College stage a production of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon. Third year undergraduate Frank Benson, hitherto known as a star athlete, was invited to play Clytemnestra and to direct. Benson, who acknowledged the influence of Ruskin, Morris and Burne-Jones on his aesthetic vision, rounded up a cast ‘choosing them for their athleticism, scholarship and histrionic or musical accomplishments’.12 He consulted by letter and interview Leighton, Alma-Tadema and Burne-Jones for advice on how to create an authentic Greek effect for the robes the cast would wear. The Slade Professor of Fine Art, William Richmond, sketched the chariot of the sun which was to decorate the central pediment, and the scene painting was carried out by Rennell Rodd and A.S. Ryle. It was performed in Balliol Hall in June 1880 and was a triumph. It was extensively reviewed in the press and letters of congratulation were received from Tennyson, Gladstone, Goschen, Browning, Millais, George Eliot and many others. The performance was repeated at Oxford, given at Harrow, Eton, Winchester and London, and created something of a vogue for such productions.13 This theatrical success led directly to the formation of the Oxford Union Dramatic Society (OUDS) in 1884. It was the OUDS which put on a production of Julius Caesar at Oxford’s New Theatre in 1889. The scenery for the capitol and forum scenes was designed by Alma-Tadema and executed by professional London scene painters T.W. Hall and Joseph Harker. The play included a ‘realisation’ of Gérôme’s celebrated painting The Death of Caesar. Again, there was extensive press coverage, partly inspired by the desire to cover the stage debut of H.B. Irving, the eldest son of Sir Henry Irving. Alma-Tadema’s scenery was taken over by Frank Benson for his professional production of Julius Caesar, first seen on the provincial tour of 1890 and thereafter remaining in his repertoire. It was apparently still in use in 1939. Frank Benson told Percy Cross Standing, Alma-Tadema’s biographer, about the help he received from Alma-Tadema when staging Agamemnon: Sir L. Alma-Tadema gave me invaluable hints and advice as to Greek draperies and costume folds, etc. I have a lively and grateful recollection of the skill with which he arranged draperies and folds, and of the simple beauty of the results, and I was much impressed by the infinite patience and labour whereby they were achieved.

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Adding that he now owned the ‘very beautiful scenery’ Alma-Tadema designed for the Oxford production of Julius Caesar, he noted that ‘into this design he has harmoniously blended the same richness of detail and character as he so successfully puts into his Academy pictures’.14 In London celebrity amateur productions of The Tale of Troy (1883 and 1886) and The Story of Orestes (1886) were staged in aid of charity and with the participation of leading classical painters. The Tale of Troy was an arrangement of scenes from the Iliad and the Odyssey, made by George C. Warr, Professor of Classical Literature at London University. It was first performed on four occasions in May and June 1883 at Cromwell House before celebrity and high society audiences, which included Mr Gladstone, Lord Dufferin and the Dean of Westminster. The cast was a mixture of professional and amateur actors and the play was directed by actor-manager George Alexander, later Sir George Alexander. Considerable efforts were made to ensure an authentic and artistic realisation of the text, in line with the demand for archaeologically accurate and intellectually educational stage productions. Sir Charles Newton, keeper of classical antiquities at the British Museum and an old friend of Ruskin, was consulted about properties. The scenery was designed by Leighton, Poynter and G.F. Watts among others and was executed by professional scene painter John O’Connor. The Theatre reported: ‘On the fourth occasion Mr. Ruskin, who is said to be nothing if not critical, came and forgot to criticise. At the close of the last performance the corps dramatique assembled in the green-room to present a testimonial (a copy of Shakespeare) to Mr George Alexander, the stage manager, which Mr Ruskin consented to hand to him with a few words of which Mr. Alexander may be proud.’15 The production was revived on Friday, 14 May 1886 at the Prince’s Hall, Piccadilly. The scenery had to be repainted because of the larger scale of the venue. The highly praised Leighton tableau – ‘The Pledge of Aphrodite Redeemed’ – used in the prologue was retained, but this time almost all the other scenes and tableaux were designed by G.F. Watts and painted by T.W. Hall. Henry Holiday designed the scene of the grotto of Calypso and Walter Crane supervised the art direction of the production, designing new costumes, scenery and accessories where appropriate. Both Holiday and Crane were avowed Ruskinians. Crane recalled in his autobiography that Ruskin had made encouraging remarks about his illustrations to Tennyson’s ‘The Lady of Shalott’ when shown them in 1858 and that Ruskin had ‘no more enthusiastic admirer and devoted follower at that time’ than himself. He professed himself influenced by Ruskin’s economic writings and saddened by a visit to Brantwood in 1897 when he found Ruskin frail and monosyllabic. On Ruskin’s death he wrote a memorial poem published in the Westminster Gazette (23 January 1900) celebrating Ruskin’s denunciation of materialism and support for the principles of Pre-Raphaelitism.16 Similarly,


Henry Holiday in his autobiography recalls several visits to Ruskin and the stimulating conversations held with him. In the preface to the book he outlines his distinctly Ruskinian philosophy in his definition of Art: By Art we mean, not a form of luxury for the palaces of a few rich people, but an all-pervading beauty, elevating and delighting the whole community and each of its members. External beauty to be genuine must be the outward and visible sign of a true inward and spiritual grace, and we shall not achieve this till we have abandoned the present chaotic scramble for profit, with its ceaseless and ruinously wasteful conflicts, its wholesale frauds and chicanery, its heartless sweating of the workers, its bad work, its sham art and its sham religion.17 On 13 and 15 May 1886, also at Prince’s Hall, there was a production of Professor Watt’s translation of scenes from Aeschylus, The Story of Orestes with proscenium design and art direction by Walter Crane. G.F. Watts, Edward Poynter and Crane himself designed the scenery which was executed by Walter Severn and Sir Jocelyn Coghill (Bart). The presence of a fashionable audience headed by the Prince and Princess of Wales and including Sir Frederic Leighton again ensured extensive press coverage. But this time, unlike with The Tale of Troy, the reviews were distinctly uncomplimentary and The Era (15 May 1886) reported: ‘Boredom was writ large – boredom polite, but unmistakable upon the countenances of the spectators long before the performance had come to a conclusion.’ The culmination of this classical cycle was undoubtedly E.W. Godwin’s production of Helena in Troas, John Todhunter’s adaptation of Sophocles, staged as a benefit for the British School of Archaeology in Rome. The poet and playwright John Todhunter was strongly influenced by Ruskin’s ideas, quoting him with approval in his essay on aesthetics, ‘A Theory of the Beautiful’ (1872). He toured Venice, using Ruskin’s writings as his guide. When Ruskin died, he was one of many to pen a memorial sonnet. It was published in the March 1900 issue of the Cornhill Magazine. It included the lines: The century dies with him, its loveliest light, The century dies with him, its noblest voice; Who taught men best what things to love and hate, Who saw things none beheld, with clearest sight; Godwin was the man who, it has been suggested earlier, was the major link between Ruskin’s ideas and the stage. He was seeking in this production the total integration of performance, design and production under his sole direction and without the intervention of the actor-manager, with whom he had previously had to contend to get his ideas realised. Godwin took over Hengler’s Circus in Great Pulteney Street which had an arena normally used

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for equestrian shows. He did not seek to reproduce the scenery or costumes of Ancient Greek plays and dispensed with the masks and speaking trumpets which were then in use. But he did try to recreate a Greek theatre with the audience seated in tiers of seats around two-thirds of the arena, a painted oilcloth showing tessellated marble covering the floor of the arena and in the middle an altar burning incense. The play opened on 17 May 1886 and was played in front of an audience which included the Prince and Princess of Wales, Oscar Wilde, Henry Irving, Ellen Terry, Frederic Leighton and Lawrence Alma-Tadema. Professional actors played the leading roles, but notable society beauties were to be found in the chorus and in minor roles. The painter Louise Jopling was ‘instructed to drape and seat half a dozen figures in the same attitudes of those on the frieze of the Parthenon. The poor things had to remain without moving during the whole time the play was in progress! They were attired in unbleached draperies, which simulated the white marble, just tinged with age, wonderfully well’. She noted ‘Godwin was a splendid producer: he spared no trouble, and incidentally, no expense, to arrive at perfection’ and she called him ‘one of the most fascinating of men. He worshipped Greek art. He was the only man I knew who had a life-sized figure of the Venice Venus de Milo in his chambers’.18 The play was widely reviewed and the general consensus was that as a play it was dull but as an aesthetic experience it was superb. Critics regularly referenced Alma-Tadema when describing the visuals. Typically The Era (22 May 1886) reported ‘that the general effect produced by the performance was boredom, mitigated by gratified curiosity, was to be attributed not so much to the author or the actors, as to the difference between the taste of our own day and that of Euripides […] What atoned for this dullness was the novelty of the whole production, the graceful forms and archaic costumes of the chorus, their eloquent attitudes and quaint, if monotonous, chants, the calm, severe beauty of the skene […] the performance was well worth seeing, simply as a curiosity of archaeological research and conscientious reproduction of the Past’. But for aesthetes it was a revelation. Oscar Wilde, himself a disciple of Ruskin in earlier years, writing in the Dramatic Review (22 May 1886), called it ‘the most perfect exhibition of Greek dramatic performance that has as yet been seen in this country’. He rhapsodised about the setting: ‘The scene was lovely, not merely in the harmony of its colour but in the exquisite delicacy of its architectural proportions. No nation has ever felt the pure beauty of mere constructions so strongly as the Greeks, and in this respect Mr Godwin has fully caught the Greek feeling.’ He had some reservations about the acting, but concluded: As an artistic whole, however, the performance was undoubtedly a great success. It has been much praised for its archaeology, but Mr Godwin


is something more than a mere antiquarian. He takes the facts of archaeology, but he converts them into artistic and dramatic effects, and the historical accuracy that underlies the visible shapes of beauty that he presents to us, is not by any means the distinguishing quality of the complete work of art. This quality is the absolute unity and harmony of the entire presentation, the presence of one mind controlling the most minute details, and revealing itself only in that true perfection which hides personality […] the secret of its beauty was the perfect correspondence of form and matter, the delicate equilibrium of spirit and sense […] It is much to be regretted that Mr Godwin’s beautiful theatre cannot be made a permanent institution. Even looked at from the low standpoint of educational value, such a performance as that given last Monday might be of the greatest service to modern culture.19 This cycle of productions, employing as it did the talents of leading painters of the classical school and exhaustive archaeological research, combined art education with the personification of Ruskinian gender archetypes, both male (Odysseus, Hector, Achilles, Orestes) and female (Helen, Clytemnestra, Andromache, Cassandra, Hecuba, Penelope, Nausicaa, Oenone, Calypso). But so far they had reached only elite audiences. It was popular theatre that represented the best opportunity to get the Ruskinian gospel out to a wider audience. Two of the principal exponents of the toga play in the later nineteenth century were two artists whose work Ruskin went out of his way to praise – namely Mary Anderson and Wilson Barrett. Interestingly, The Era (15 May 1886), reviewing E.W. Godwin’s production of Helena at Troas, linked the play directly to the classical painting school and to Wilson Barrett’s plays at the Princess’s Theatre. It noted ‘the outburst of neo-classicism’ characterising the fourth quarter of the nineteenth century. The painters such as Leighton and Alma-Tadema had set the ball rolling and the writers like Pater had kept it in motion. ‘The drama – always the last of the arts to be moved by new intellectual impulses […] has at length succumbed.’ On the English stage, it had taken two forms, a popular form at the Princess’s Theatre where Barrett, on the direct advice of Ruskin, was staging a series of classically set plays and an academic form at the two universities ‘which have vied with one another in the revival of Greek tragedy with much pomp of mounting and archaeological parade’. The play identified by Mayer as the first of the late nineteenth century toga cycle was Lord Tennyson’s The Cup. It ran at the Lyceum Theatre from January to April 1881 and it is unlikely that Ruskin saw it, as he suffered a deterioration in his mental condition in late autumn 1880, experienced a total mental collapse at the end of February 1881 and spent the rest of the year recovering. The text of the play conformed to the themes of the later toga plays, focussing on the proper role for women, the celebration of marital fidelity, the denunciation of male sensuality and licentiousness and an

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exploration of the conflict of ethics and political necessity in imperial rule. The play was staged with an archaeologically accurate reconstruction of the temple of Diana at Ephesus. The costumes for Ellen Terry, playing the heroine Camma, and the cup itself were designed by E.W. Godwin. The critics, entranced by the visual splendours of the production, turned to painting to describe the stage effects. Clement Scott of the Daily Telegraph and the critics of Pan and Truth among others invoked Leighton and Alma-Tadema as the inspiration for the visuals. Alma-Tadema was present at the Lyceum on the first night of The Cup and expressed his admiration for the scene painting.20 It was a production that the critics long remembered. William Archer, often critical of Irving, said in 1882 that Irving ‘mounted the piece with a taste and lavishness positively unexampled. Each scene was a masterpiece in itself. I doubt if a more elaborate and perfect stage-picture of its kind has ever been seen, and if so, certainly not in England’.21 But The Cup had a precursor in the toga cycle in W.S. Gilbert’s Pygmalion and Galatea (1871). Pygmalion and the statue he created and brought to life after praying to Venus is one of the most enduring of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The statue only received the name Galatea in the eighteenth century, when the myth received a major boost in the dramatisation by Rousseau, first performed in 1770. It was very popular, widely performed and particularly influential on the English Romantics.22 As Richard Jenkyns puts it, ‘The story of Pygmalion haunted the nineteenth century imagination’.23 The myth was painted by Burne-Jones, Watts, Ernest Normand, W.H. Margetson, Herbert Gustave Schmalz and Gérôme, dramatised in light opera by Victor Massé, Ambroise Thomas and Franz von Suppé and retold in verse by Robert Buchanan, William Morris, James Payn and Ernest Dowson. In the nineteenth century it became something of a bone of contention around the question of the propriety of descriptions of the naked female body. Defenders justified the use of nudity as an expression of Hellenism; opponents denounced the use of Hellenism as an excuse for indecency. Painter William Bell Scott quoted the Pygmalion story as a demonstration of the argument that there was a danger in making the physical more important than the spiritual.24 Gail Marshall argues that Galatea was a male image of female subjection. She is created by Man, remains only and always the image of his desires, but when liberated from her marble subjection causes chaos and has to be returned to her immobile state on her pedestal. Marshall attributes this to concern about women stepping away from their domestic pedestal to become liberated.25 Gail Marshall has claimed that most nineteenth century poets deviated from the Ovidian original by having Galatea transformed back into a statue.26 Essaka Joshua has contested this, claiming that the majority of nineteenth century poets retained a human Galatea at the end of the narrative.27 But she admits that a few dramas featured the altered ending and it is arguable that W.S. Gilbert’s play, which was one of them,


had more influence on public perception than any other version in the nineteenth century. During the course of the century large numbers of classical sculptures appeared in British museums, two of the most popular being the Venus de Milo and the Venus de Medici. Following the authoritative pronouncements of the art historian Winckelmann, classical sculpture became synonymous with simplicity, purity and nobility, and not surprisingly the statue metaphor carrying these values came to be applied to the ideal nineteenth century woman. The classical statues of Venus made her, as Gail Marshall has argued, at the same time ‘sexually available and angelically idealised; an ambivalent response which influenced attitudes to nudity in Victorian art’.28 The language of the Venus statue informed descriptions of real-life beauties like Lillie Langtry and the attitude of men to women in fictions like Henry James’ The Portrait of a Lady and George Meredith’s The Egoist. The obsession with the statues of women became a classifiable form of erotomania dubbed by Havelock Ellis ‘Pygmalionism’ after the mythical Greek sculptor. This stemmed in part from the view that sculptures should be as lifelike as possible. As Ruskin put it, ‘It is the function of the best sculptor – the true Daedalus – to make stillness look like breathing, and marble look like flesh’ (CW 20.282). Victorian painters regularly painted nude models being sculpted and the models were frequently living versions of real statues. Alma-Tadema’s A Sculptor’s Model (1877) had the sculptor modelling the Esquiline Venus, G.F. Watts’ The Wife of Pygmalion was inspired by the Oxford Sappho and Albert Moore’s A Venus, by the Venus de Milo.29 Leighton’s The Bath of Pysche had the girl’s pose based on the Aphrodite Callipygos. Greek sculptors were among the cultural heroes of Victorian Britain, notably the mythical Pygmalion and the historical Phidias. G.F. Watts claimed of his art ‘I learned in one school only – that of Phidias’.30 Pygmalion was a regular subject for painters, with Burne-Jones completing four panels featuring his story. Alma-Tadema painted Phidias and the Parthenon (1868) in which Phidias is showing the Parthenon frieze to Pericles and Aspasia. Poynter created mosaics of the sculptors Phidias and Apelles for the South Kensington Museum. It is not surprising then that Wilson Barrett made a sculptor the hero of one of his toga plays – Clito. The physical perfection of Greek statues of women provided an ideal for the stage and several nineteenth century actresses achieved stardom in part by embodying this ideal and doing so in a classical setting. Notable among them were Helen Faucit painted in classical costume by Frederic Burton as ‘The Greek Muse’, and Mary Anderson and Lillie Langtry, who both played Pygmalion’s creation, Galatea. Gail Marshall has thoroughly and persuasively traced the ubiquity of the sculptural metaphor in the attitude to and discussions of actresses in the nineteenth century. As early as 1775 acting manuals were recommending

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the study of antique statuary for both men and women intent on stage careers. Edward Cooke recommended male actors to study the two Antinouses, the Farnese Hercules, the Apollo Belvedere, the Apollo de’Medici, the Caracalla and the Fighting and Dying Gladiators, and for females the ‘Venus de Medicis, The Venus De Calipaedia, Diana, Flora and The Graces’.31 Between 1800 and 1817 white muslin dresses, modelled on classical sculptures, were all the rage. Emma Hamilton became famous for her ‘attitudes’ – poses imitating classical sculptures and mythological characters which gave rise to a tradition of tableaux vivants and poses plastiques, scantily clad women in classical poses imitating famous paintings and statues. Classical costume and classical attitudes became even more familiar in the genre of classical burlesques, which for nearly 50 years remained popular on the London stage after James Robinson Planché launched them with Olympic Revels (1831). It starred Madame Vestris in the first of a succession of classical roles which captured the imagination of playgoers. Actormanager John Coleman recalled that ‘she was just the height and build of the Medicean Venus’ and quoted a contemporary observer to stress her impact: ‘when Madame made her first appearance – through a trap on the stage – as Pandora, her youth, her beauty, her superbly symmetrical proportions, displayed to the utmost advantage by her classic costume, and possibly by the novelty of her position, procured her a reception so enthusiastic and so overwhelming that she fairly broke down under it, and had to wipe away her tears before she could utter a word.’32 Billed as ‘an original mythological comedy’, W.S. Gilbert’s Pygmalion and Galatea, which takes place in the space of 24 hours, is set in Pygmalion’s studio in Athens. In Act 1, Pygmalion is happily married to Cynisca. He has created a statue of what he regards as the perfect woman in Galatea. When Cynisca has to go away, Pygmalion, regretting the lifelessness of his creation, successfully prays to the gods to bring her to life. Galatea asks Pygmalion what is a man, and he delivers a properly Ruskinian gender definition: A being strongly framed, To wait on woman, and protect her from All ills that strength and courage can avert; To work and toil for her, that she may rest; To weep and mourn for her, that she may laugh; To fight and die for her, that she may live. They express their love for each other, which sets up a conflict in Pygmalion with his love for his wife. He tries to send Galatea away, fails and they fall into each other’s arms. In Act 2, Galatea in her innocence and ignorance of life and the world proceeds to cause havoc, breaking up two relationships. Finally Cynisca returns and, believing Pygmalion to be unfaithful, strikes him blind by the


aid of the goddess Artemis. In Act 3, the two estranged couples are reunited when the misunderstandings are resolved. The blind Pygmalion, mistaking Galatea for his wife, tells her he did not love Galatea. He loved the statue because it was based on his wife, but the love for the statue died when it came to life. Overhearing this, Cynisca forgives Pygmalion and restores his sight. Galatea returns to her pedestal and is restored to stone. The play, which starred W.H. Kendal as Pygmalion and his wife, the erstwhile Madge Robertson, as Galatea, boasted a Greek interior ‘realized with archaeological fidelity’ by John O’Connor. It contained a view of ancient Athens seen through the portal. The statue of Galatea was modelled by J.B. Phillips R.A., sculptor of the Albert Memorial. The play was an instant hit on its premiere at the Haymarket Theatre on 9 December 1871. The usually severe Dutton Cook of the Pall Mall Gazette thought ‘the production merits high praise for its fantastic cleverness and genuine freshness of treatment’, praised the verse (‘terse and bright’) and the dialogue for ‘their quaint humour and vivacity’ and said: ‘the representation owed much to the skill and charm of Miss Robertson’s Galatea. The lady wears her classical drapery most gracefully, and enunciates her speeches with admirable art. In the last act she displayed a command of pathetic expression with which she has not hitherto been credited.’33 E.W. Godwin, reviewing the play for The Architect (16 December 1871), concluded that Pygmalion and Galatea had ‘an especial attraction for the artist and architect. Compared with other current pieces, its literary dialogue and dramatic construction, its excellent acting and artistic mounting, should make it one of the attractions of the season for all theatre-goers’. He praised the setting (‘Altogether the scene representing Pygmalion’s studio is quite an artistic work, correct enough in every architectural detail, and grateful to every correct taste by its quiet and yet rich effect of colour’), but he was characteristically hypercritical about the costumes. The dresses of the female characters ‘need greater shortness of skirt to fall in proper fold, and also allow the sandaled feet to be occasionally visible’, Pygmalion’s tunic was correctly cut but ‘sadly disfigured by chess-board trimmings’; Miss Hall’s costume as Cynisca ‘has more the appearance of a Highland heroine of the Scots type than of a Greek matron’. By the 1890s, Pygmalion and Galatea had been played all over the world ‘from Calcutta to St Petersburg’.34 It was revived at the Haymarket in 1877 with Marion Terry as Galatea and Harriet Hodson as Cynisca. Terry was criticised by some as passionless and praised by others for being statuesque, suggesting an inherent tension in the role.35 Mrs Kendal recorded in her autobiography of her production: ‘Mr John Ruskin liked the play very much and came often to see it.’36 One of the attractions was evidently the nature of the classical drapery. Gail Marshall interprets the use of classical drapery on stage as enabling the actress to signal to her audience ‘a chaste permission’ to desire, negotiating the delicate balance between desire and

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decorum.37 Ruskin had made clear the role of classical drapery in his lectures on sculpture, Aratra Pentelici. He wrote: One of the essential distinctions between the Athenian and Florentine schools is dependent on their treatment of drapery […]; an Athenian always sets it to exhibit the action of the body, by flowing with it, or over it, or from it, so as to illustrate both its form and gesture; a Florentine, on the contrary, always uses his drapery to conceal or disguise the forms of the body, and exhibit mental emotion. He elaborated on this in a passage he deleted from the final lecture: When a Greek sculptor uses drapery […] his object in practically dealing with it is nevertheless to show as much of the bodily form as may be naturally (or even sometimes by violent artifice) (CW 20.273–4). The play achieved even greater success when revived in the 1880s as part of the full-blown toga cycle. Mary Anderson, the beautiful and popular American actress, who had already played Galatea in New York, negotiated with Gilbert to play it in London. She acted in it in 1883, 1884 and 1888. It was a role peculiarly suited to her as the adjective most often applied to her was ‘statuesque’. Her most devoted admirer, senior American critic William Winter, declared: ‘Such a presence for the lofty statuesque, passionate heroines of the classic drama has not come upon the stage for many years.’ He thought that she possessed ‘a sumptuous and supple figure that can realise the ideals of statuary […] Her affiliations were all with grandeur, purity and loveliness. An inherent and passionate tendency toward classic stateliness increased in her more and more. Characters of the statuesque order attracted her imagination – Ion, Galatea, Hermione – but she did not leave them soulless’.38 Mary Anderson’s decision to play Galatea in London provoked considerable controversy, as she recalled in her autobiography: During the rehearsals […] I was frequently told that my reading of the character would not be tolerated by the London public. Galatea, the child of Pygmalion’s art, a statue come to life, could not, it seemed to me, think, look, stand, or speak like an earthly-born maiden; some remnant of the inanimate marble would inevitably linger about her, giving to her movements a plastic grace and to her thoughts and their expression a touch of the ethereal. Mr Gilbert did not agree with my conception of the classic meaning of Galatea’s character – which seemed to me its strongest and most effective side – saying that the play was a nineteenth century comedy dressed in Greek costume, ‘which’ he added, ‘is the only classic thing about it’. I had undertaken the part on condition that I should act


it according to my own ideas; and painful and embarrassing as it was for me not to be versatile enough to carry out the brilliant author’s wish that Galatea should speak certain comic speeches with a visible consciousness of their meaning, I felt convinced that my only hope of success was to stamp every word, look, tone and movement with that ingenuousness which seemed to me the key-note of her nature.39 She adds ruefully: ‘The success I thought was deserved not for any excellence on my part, but because of the suffering I had undergone during the many rehearsals.’40 J.H. Barnes, who played Pygmalion, gives us a flavour of this suffering, recalling that faced with Mary Anderson’s interpretation of the part, Gilbert, who was ‘more than ordinarily dogmatic’, ‘objected strongly to some of these effects and points, with the result that the two came to loggerheads one day. The rehearsal was dismissed and things looked black’. But Michael Gunn, who was managing Mary Anderson’s tour on behalf of impresario Henry Abbey, took Gilbert out to lunch, smoothed him down ‘and when we met next day the clouds had rolled by and the sky was clear again’.41 Evidently word of these disagreements got out and Gilbert was forced to issue a statement to clarify the position: I have never concealed my high opinion of Mrs Kendal’s performance of Galatea, which was of course founded upon my own views, communicated to her at the rehearsal. It may therefore be taken as a fair expression of the intention I had in my mind when I wrote the play. Miss Anderson formed her idea of the character without any assistance from me, and it differs widely from Mrs Kendal’s Galatea. Admitting the correctness of Miss Anderson’s conception of the part […] I cannot imagine it more beautifully realized. But, while I admit that the difference between the two Galateas is considerable, I wish it to be distinctly understood that it was with my full concurrence that Miss Anderson gave her version of the character […] On the whole I consider Miss Anderson’s conception of the part to be artistically more beautiful, but dramatically less effective than Mrs Kendal’s.42 Gilbert’s view, outlined in a letter to Clement Scott (dated 10 December 1883) was that ‘when Galatea is a statue, she cannot be too statue-like, when she comes to life, she cannot be too womanly’ and that was not how Mary Anderson played it.43 This was not the only row to mar the pre-production period of the play. It is clear that Mary Anderson sought to emphasise the classical and archaeological aspect of the play at the expense of the comedy, for she called in Lawrence Alma-Tadema to advise on her draperies. He suggested she be draped in the manner of the Tanagra figurines, but when she appeared in them during the dress rehearsals, Gilbert complained

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that she looked ‘like a stiff medieval saint’ and demanded their removal. Alma-Tadema, furious, told the Pall Mall Gazette that he considered the play ‘clumsy and silly with no archaeological pretensions at all’.44 The upshot was that Mary and her mother devised a new form of drapery. Mary recalled: ‘In my white Greek clothes, with swollen eyes and tear-stained face, I worked for an hour before the long mirror, when suddenly the statue I wanted stood before me. The audience received it with round after round of applause and Mr Gilbert acknowledged himself satisfied.’45 The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News (15 December 1883) was even more critical. Noting her undoubted popularity, it said: In a sense […] it seems heresy to say that we are deeply disappointed with Miss Anderson’s acting, especially as it is exhibited in the part of Galatea. Yet the truth must be told: Mr Gilbert’s play as we understand it almost wholly misses its mark at the Lyceum, and […] the chief defect lies in Miss Anderson’s own treatment of the heroine. We should, of course, be the last to deny that the embodiment of the statue while it remains a statue has a rare perfection. […] But when the breath of life comes to be breathed into the stone, and the statue steps down from its pedestal a woman, Miss Anderson seems to us to miss one after another of the points of the comedy. Its humour she treats heavily, or, at any rate, coldly. Evidently Mrs Kendal shared the critical misgivings about Mary Anderson’s performance. Taking care to praise her personally (‘I saw a good deal of her when she first came to London. She was delightful; naïve and a charming companion. She entered the highest society, every member of which fell at her feet’), she writes in her autobiography that Gilbert asked her to attend a rehearsal of the play and she gave Mary advice on how to play the part. But she adds tactfully that she never saw the play during its run and does not know if Mary adopted her suggestions.46 Later she notes pointedly that she received the greatest ovation of her career for her Galatea. Mrs Kendal is also careful to reproduce a letter from the playwright Dion Boucicault saying that her successors in the role, Mary Anderson and Lillie Langtry, were both inferior to her and that Mrs Kendal’s performance was a revelation.47 Mary Anderson played the role 106 times on its initial London run, took it to the provinces and revived it in 1884 and 1888. She became so associated with the part that although she retired from the stage in 1890 after her marriage to barrister Antonio de Navarro, she emerged from that retirement during World War I to play Galatea again in London and the provinces to raise money for war charities.48 What explains her success in the face of critical disdain? One is fashion. She conformed exactly to the current model of ideal feminine beauty and style – the Grecian model. It is no coincidence that G.F. Watts painted her


in Greek costume, pose and style. The second is social approval. Her co-star J.H. Barnes recalled that Mary Anderson’s debut in Ingomar ‘did not draw much more than working expenses’. However, when during the run of The Lady of Lyons the Prince and Princess of Wales came to see the show and, when Mary was presented, the Princess handed her the bouquet she was carrying, word got out, ‘business improved appreciably the next day; and when we, in a short time, produced Pygmalion and Galatea, the success was complete. For weeks and months the Lyceum was scarcely large enough to hold the audiences that worshipped at the shrine of the new star’.49 Just as he had been to see Mrs Kendal in the 1871 production, Ruskin went to see Mary Anderson as Galatea and told her afterwards ‘that he had never cared for plastic art; and was good enough to add that my Galatea had given him more of an appreciation for it than he had ever expected to have’.50 As Richard Jenkyns has written of Ruskin, ‘Despite his lifelong admiration of Greek literature, Greek art failed to arouse in him the same enthusiasm. Greek sculpture he respected, but it did not stir his blood’.51 But here again the stage is acting as an educational tool for Ruskin and the wider audience in the appreciation of Greek sculpture, an aspect of that art education which he saw as a major function of theatre. He subsequently wrote gnomically to Charles Eliot Norton: ‘I am beginning to reform the drama – by help of Miss Anderson.’52 What did he mean? I suggest that he viewed Mary Anderson’s production of Pygmalion and Galatea as putting into action on the stage the principles he had been advocating, i.e. the theatre as a vehicle for moral, intellectual and aesthetic education: in this case the endorsement of conjugal fidelity and traditional gender roles along with the appreciation of faithful reproductions of classical art, whatever the objections of Alma-Tadema. A devout Catholic, Mary Anderson evidently saw the value of her stage career in terms of its provision of role models and examples for her audience, as she wrote in her autobiography.53 Another significant theatrical figure attracted to the role of Galatea in Gilbert’s play was Mrs Lillie Langtry. Mrs Langtry, the daughter of the Dean of Jersey, was a ‘PB’ (professional beauty), one of a select group of society ladies in the 1870s and 1880s, famous for being famous and painted and photographed extensively because of their classical good looks. She was also known to be the mistress of the Prince of Wales and later Prince Louis of Battenberg among many others. Lady Wilton said that she looked like ‘the women’s faces in Leighton and Burne-Jones’ pictures’54 and she was indeed painted by Millais, Poynter, Watts, Burne-Jones, Whistler, Leighton and Frank Miles. When Poynter was commissioned in the 1870s by Lord Wharncliffe to produce four large canvases to decorate the billiard room of his stately home, Wortley Hall, he gave three of them classical themes, Perseus and Andromeda, Atalanta’s Race and Nausicaa and her maidens playing ball (the fourth was the local legend The Dragon of Wantley). He invited Lillie Langtry to sit for Nausicaa and the

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resulting painting was displayed in 1879. Lady Poynter, Lady Wharncliffe and Miss Violet Lindsay (later the Duchess of Rutland) sat for the other classical roles.55 Leighton painted her as one of two nymphs, scantily clad, Lillie with a nipple tantalisingly exposed, and reclining languorously while listening to a shepherd playing a pipe in his 1881 painting Idyll. It was the title of Millais’ portrait that enshrined the nickname given her by Frank Miles, ‘The Jersey Lily’. The painter Graham Robertson in Time Was, calling her ‘the Venus Annodomini, the modern Helen’, gives an impression of the impact she made upon contemporaries: For the first and only time in my life I beheld perfect beauty. The face was that of the lost Venus of Praxiteles. The small head was not reared straight on the white column of the throat as a capital crowns a pillar, but drooped slightly forward like a violet or a snowdrop, the perfect nose was made less perfect and a thousand times more beautiful by a slight tilt at the tip. The wonderful face was pale with the glow of absolute health behind the pallor, the eyes gray beneath dark lashes, the hair brown with glints of gold in it, the figure in its poise and motion conveyed the impression of something wild, eternally young, nymph-like.56 Lillie was thus seen as an archetype of Greek beauty and began to live up to the image. She allowed Oscar Wilde to tutor her in Latin and Greek, visited the British Museum to view the statuary and attended Sir Charles Newton’s King’s College lectures on Greek art.57 Wilde hailed her in a long poem as ‘The New Helen’. She was the first choice to play Helen of Troy in E.W. Godwin’s production of Helena in Troas and featured in the prospectus of the production. However, in the event she dropped out, to be replaced by Alma Murray.58 It was Lillie’s great admirer and artistic mentor Wilde who brought Ruskin to see Lillie and, inspired perhaps by her beauty, ‘He held forth on his pet topic – Greek art – in a fervently enthusiastic manner, and as vehemently denounced the Japanese style […] describing it as the glorification of ugliness and artificiality’.59 As well as being a fixture on the social scene, Lillie moved easily in London’s artistic circles, counting among her friends not only Wilde but also Whistler, Millais and E.W. Godwin. However by the 1880s, estranged from her cuckolded husband Edward Langtry, by now bankrupt and an alcoholic, she was forced to seek a means of earning her living. Having appeared in aristocratic tableaux vivants, she decided to embark on a stage career. She made her professional debut for the Bancrofts at the Haymarket in their 1881 revival of Tom Robertson’s Ours.60 She now developed a repertoire which directly echoed that of fellow beauty Mary Anderson, including as it did the roles of Pauline in The Lady of Lyons, Rosalind in As You Like It, Julia in The Hunchback and Galatea in Pygmalion and Galatea. She assembled a company and in


1882 embarked on a provincial tour of ten cities, including Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dublin and Belfast, which saw her ‘splendidly received’ by audiences but receiving distinctly mixed critical notices. She followed her provincial tour with a triumphant American tour and thereafter divided her time between acting in Britain and acting in America. Regular royal patronage and some discreet aristocratic investment ensured London success, and her notoriety and her beauty attracted audiences abroad. In April 1883 she made her first appearance as Galatea in New York, recording that Sir Frederic Leighton had designed her costume ‘making the draperies of flesh tint, with blue and gold touches, as he said that all Greek statues had originally been coloured’.61 Leighton had made a speciality of classical drapery, saying ‘I can paint a figure in two days but it may take me thirty to drape it’.62 Mrs Langtry’s first English appearance as Galatea at the Prince’s Theatre, Manchester, was thought sufficiently significant to attract coverage from the stage press. W. Davenport Adams in The Theatre (1 September 1883) wrote that ‘she gives pleasure […] by the elegance of her posing and the classic contour of her features’ and that she is ‘excellent’ in the comedy sequences. But the passion and the pathos are beyond her. ‘We recognise the grace, intelligence, the earnestness of the performer; but we also recognise her inability to sound the required depths of feeling.’63 The Era (18 August 1883) pronounced a harsher verdict on her Manchester Galatea, criticising her monotonous voice, restricted emotional range and limited facial expressions. How good an actress was she? The critic William Winter, looking back in 1913, expressed the general opinion best: She was not, in a high sense, a great actress and she did not pretend to greatness, but she was possessed of inherent dramatic faculty, combined with unusual advantages of person, of physical training, and of social culture, and in seeking the Stage she followed her natural bent. She was a born actress.64 After a second season consisting of Romeo and Juliet, The Hunchback and revivals of Pygmalion and Galatea and Ingomar, Mary Anderson’s 1887–8 season at the Lyceum (10 September–24 March) was devoted to her production of The Winter’s Tale in a text that she herself had prepared. All productions of The Winter’s Tale were compared with the spectacular 1856 revival by Charles Kean which had securely established it as a Greek play, setting it in 330 B.C., excising any textual references which might clash with that and substituting Bithynia for Shakespeare’s Bohemia. The attractions for Mary Anderson would seem to be the Greek setting, which she retained, and the chance once again to play a statue. She prepared a version of the play, in which, according to Stephen Orgel, ‘references to sexuality, and to the darker passions generally, including all

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Leontes’ soliloquies on his jealousy, were omitted, as were even references to Hermione’s pregnancy and Paulina’s recriminations after Hermione’s death – in short most of the drama of the first half of the play was considered tasteless and was cut’.65 But she took the unprecedented decision to double the roles of Hermione and Perdita, giving her audience two Greek maidens for the price of one. She noted in her autobiography: ‘My surprise and disappointment may be imagined when […] it was not received with any marked enthusiasm on its first night in London […] I heard that many of the first-nighters voted it dull and heavy, and prophesied that it could not run for more than two weeks.’66 The Era (17 September 1887) noted that ‘a spirit of distaste and hostility pervaded the auditorium during the whole evening’. It was not just that the play was not in itself popular (‘The Winter’s Tale can hardly be called a deeply enthralling piece of dramatic work’) but there was resentment that the pit space had been reduced to make room for an enlargement of the stalls. ‘The cheaper portions of the house’ demonstrated this discontent by ‘guying’ the opening scenes, laughing openly at the appearances of the ‘pretty bairn’ in swaddling clothes and during intervals between the acts greeting ‘Buffalo Bill’ Cody, who was there in a private box, with ‘shrill Indian yells’. None of this appeared to diminish popular affection for Mary Anderson, who, recorded The Era, was given ‘a warm reception’ on her first entry, ‘hearty calls’ between the acts and also at the conclusion of the performance. The Times (12 September 1887) felt that most people would find the doubling of roles ‘objectionable’. The critic felt that the doubling led to ‘a certain confusion of identity between mother and daughter which detracts from the spectator’s enjoyment of the play as a whole’. He thought her Perdita ‘as near to perfection as one would wish. Youthful, romantic, playful and at the same time proud and dignified’. But the Hermione was judged ‘unconvincing. There is something of the virago in the deep masculine tones which the actress brings forth from her chest in pathetic moments; there is little to suggest a sweet-natured, but deeply-wronged woman’. Forbes Robertson’s Leontes was praised but most of the rest dismissed, a view shared by The Era and the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News (17 September 1887). The latter found her Hermione ‘wholly inadequate’ and said: ‘She never for a moment realises either the poetry or the dignified passion of Shakespeare’s Hermione […] Indeed it is only when for the time Hermione simulates a statue that she is wholly satisfactory; and living statues have nothing to do but pose gracefully and keep still.’ Johnston Forbes Robertson, who had been Mary Anderson’s leading man on her 1885–6 American tour, not only played Leontes but designed the dresses for the play. He thought her performance as Hermione ‘as noble and imposing as the Perdita was the very embodiment of youth and beauty’.67 Despite the criticism, the play ran for 164 nights in London and could, thought Mary, have run another 100 nights, had her tenancy of the Lyceum


not expired. It was the longest running production of The Winter’s Tale in Britain and America in the nineteenth century.68 Most of the reviews concentrated on Mary’s performance, to the exclusion of all else, but the production was evidently beautiful to look at. The sets of William Telbin, Walter Hann and Hawes Craven earned the approbation of The Era, The Theatre, The Times, the Daily News and the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News. She returned to America touring The Winter’s Tale, but a nervous breakdown during the tour led her to abandon the stage permanently. After she recovered, she married her long-time admirer Antonio de Navarro, returned permanently to England to live and settled down to the life of a leisured country lady. Fittingly her final professional performance on the stage had been as a statue – Hermione coming to life at the end of The Winter’s Tale. The undisputed master of the toga play was Wilson Barrett (1848–1904) and it was through Wilson Barrett that Ruskin had his greatest influence on the stage, both direct and indirect. Critical opinion about Barrett was deeply divided. As journalist J.B. Booth recalled: ‘In spite of his immense following, few stage favourites have suffered so much from the disdainful attitude of critics and “high-brows” of the period as Barrett.’69 He suffered from his passionate commitment to melodrama, making his name in such popular and profitable hits as The Lights O’ London, The Silver King and The Manxman, which he played successfully all over Britain as well as in the Empire and the United States. However, by the last decades of the nineteenth century the intelligentsia were beginning to dismiss the genre as crude and old fashioned. Handsome, curly-haired and trimly muscled, although, according to his press agent Percy Burton, totally devoid of a sense of humour, Wilson Barrett was the epitome of Victorian masculinity and virility.70 At just five feet six inches tall, he was short for heroic roles but wore elevated boots to increase his height. The journalist Alex M. Thompson, a friend and collaborator of Barrett on an ultimately abandoned project, wrote of him: Wilson Barrett was a handsome man, with a countenance as emotionally sensitive as a woman’s; an abundance of curly hair, fine eyes susceptible of kindly laughter, peremptory command and piteous melancholy; a mellow voice, sonorously tremulous in pathos as a vibratory note on a cello; and a noble bearing of a quality so essentially statuesque that it naturally impelled him to the performance of ‘classic’ parts. While William Archer, the translator and dour prophet of Ibsen, coaxed, entreated and bullied him to represent Scandinavian persons whose stove-pipe trousers, barrelshaped coats and chimney-pot hats would have made him look grotesque – as he always did in conventional garb – Barrett very properly preferred to stick to the toga or buff of his congenial Claudian, Marcus Superbus, Lemuel, Virginius, et similia.71

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The contemporary theatre critic Austin Brereton identified many of these same traits in his acting. He thought Barrett’s acting ‘natural, simple and affecting’ and praised his ‘handsome and expressive countenance’, his ‘sweet and musical voice’, his graceful movements, his sense of repose and his ‘understanding of the human heart’.72 Pardonably vain about his physique, Barrett delighted in displaying it in décolleté tunics, leading critics to complain that he was too fond of showing off his chest.73 Directly influenced by Ruskin’s teachings, he was to base his career on writing and starring in plays which took the form of melodrama, embodied parables of life and sought to use his plays to elevate, educate and purify. It was Barrett’s first toga play, Claudian, staged in 1883, that inaugurated the friendship with Ruskin. Claudian was written by W.G. Wills and Henry Herman, designed by E.W. Godwin and contained a spectacular earthquake sequence, designed by Herman. The story of Claudian was a variation of the ‘Flying Dutchman’ or ‘Wandering Jew’ myths. A decadent aristocrat of the fourth century called Claudian pursues a young married Christian woman, Serena, fatally injures a holy man, Holy Clement, who intervenes to protect her and causes the young woman to die of shock. Dying, the holy man curses Claudian with everlasting youth and beauty. A century later, still youthful, he survives an earthquake but gets a chance for expiation. A blind girl, Almida, with whom he has fallen in love is swept away by the earthquake and he gets the chance to restore her life and sight by sacrificing his own, which he does. This very moral tale unfolded amid spectacular scenes set in Byzantium and Bithynia. Critical praise for Barrett’s performance, the beauty of the stage scenery and the spectacular effectiveness of the earthquake was all but universal. Oscar Wilde pronounced the play an aesthetic triumph: ‘The ancient world awakes from its sleep, and history moves as a pageant before our eyes.’74 Leading critic Clement Scott of the Daily Telegraph went to see the play three times and writing in The Theatre magazine said of it: ‘I am bound to confess, few plays have grown on me more than Claudian.’ Calling it ‘a noble sermon’, he declared: ‘We see the sin; we see also its after sorrow. We behold the fault; we witness the atonement.’ He expressed his admiration of Barrett’s performance as the proud selfish reckless Roman pagan and the same man later ‘Christianised and chastened by an ever-present sorrow’. He declared: ‘If we […] study closely Mr. Barrett’s beautiful realisation of a noble theme, we shall see how the dawning of love is the day-star of this poor haunted soul. He leans on love to free him from the dreadful curse. It is woman who must be his salvation […] Nothing could be more beautiful than Mr Barrett’s exposition of this saving power of love and the anguish of its disappointment.’75 Another three time visitor to Claudian was Lewis Carroll. He wrote to Barrett from Oxford on 15 January 1884 to say: ‘We (I and the young friend I brought) thoroughly enjoyed Claudian: and a good deal more than I had


expected, as I thought it would be difficult to give anything like a living interest to such ancient history: but I think Mr Wills and you have done it to a marvellous extent.’ He thought the earthquake ‘One of the most effective things of that kind I had ever seen’ and urged him to publish the text of the play. He wrote again on 12 May 1884 to say he had become ‘a periodical visitant at your delightful play’ and suggested a piece of business to enhance the realism of one of the scenes.76 He went again on 3 May (‘Claudian went even better than before’) and on 17 May 1884.77 Someone else who went to see it three times and took away the same message was John Ruskin. In an interview with M.H. Spielmann for the Pall Mall Gazette (25 April 1884) Ruskin said: I was immensely pleased with Claudian and Mr Wilson Barrett’s acting of it. Indeed, I admired it so much that I went to see it three times from pure enjoyment of it, though as a rule I cannot sit out a tragic play. It is not only that it is the most beautifully mounted piece I ever saw, but it is that every feeling that is expressed in the play, and every law of morality that is taught in it, is entirely right. What is fascinating here is Ruskin’s delight in both the artistic beauty and the moral message. The play exposes the decadence of the Roman Empire, preaches a tale of individual moral redemption and sets the whole thing among beautifully realised and archaeologically accurate sets. Its ability to enthral Ruskin, given the importance to him of Rose La Touche (who had died eight years earlier), may also lie in the theme of a dead young girl being brought back to life by the power of love. He expanded on his view in a long and detailed letter he wrote on 16 February 1884 to Wilson Barrett about Claudian: You know perfectly well, as all great artists do, that the thing is beautiful and that you do it perfectly. I regret the extreme terror of it, but the admirable doing of what you intend doing, and the faithful cooperation of all your companions, the extreme beauty and beautiful acting of Serena and Miss Eastlake, and the exquisite scenery gave me not only much more than delight at the time, but are a possession in memory of very great value. What a lovely thing it would be to do the noble parts of Roman and Gothic history in a series of such plays. You could be such a grand Theodoric – or (by Jupiter, forgot!) Theodelinda’s first husband [he means Autharis the Lombard] – or Clovis – or Aurelian – or Probus – or Roger Guiscard – or what not of heroic and good. And with scene-painting like that – this Princess’ theatre might do more for art teaching than all the Galleries and Professors of Christendom (CW 37.474). (‘By Jupiter, forgot’ is a direct quote from Coriolanus.)

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This letter evidently did not remain private because the final sentence was much quoted in the nineteenth century in articles, pamphlets, books and even in the official Dictionary of National Biography entry on Barrett.78 Ruskin was both giving his imprimatur to Claudian and laying out a dramatic prospectus for Barrett. The letter was quoted in The Era’s obituary for Wilson Barrett (23 July 1904) and described as ‘a valued possession’. For a while after Claudian, Barrett and Ruskin corresponded and met regularly (see Chapter 1). The last in the surviving run of Ruskin letters to Barrett is an undated one from Oxford, saying ‘I am really thirsting for some theatre after nine months of meditation on clouds and hills’, reflecting how amazing it is that ‘nobody has ever written a play in early Venice! What scenery one might have’ and asking, ‘Have you ever thought of Sardanapalus?’. He is still recommending theatrical recreations of the Ancient World, in this case Byron’s Assyrian drama which had been spectacularly produced earlier in the century by both Macready and Charles Kean. Ruskin concludes, perhaps referring back to his criticisms of Barrett’s Hamlet: ‘Please understand that I shall always have the same interest in what you do – whether I hold it right or wrong – but you might more easily change my opinion of a picture than of a play.’79 The London production of Claudian did not make money. It cost Barrett £1,200 a week to stage, a total of £47,800 for the whole 39 week run. Barrett’s losses amounted to £6,500 on the production, though sale of the American rights for £5,000 partially compensated.80 Barrett followed Claudian with a production of Hamlet but then decided to continue the classical plays begun with Claudian, a decision attributed by his modern biographer James Thomas directly to the encouragement of Ruskin.81 His choice fell on Brutus, an unfinished, unpublished and unacted blank verse tragedy by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, author of The Last Days of Pompeii. It was completed and revised by Lytton’s son, the second Lord Lytton, himself a published poet. The play, dealing as it did with the rape of Lucretia, her suicide and the revenge of Junius Brutus on her ravisher Tarquin, was precisely one of the appropriate subjects Ruskin had recommended in 1883 as suitable for classical painters. Barrett persuaded Lytton to reduce the politics in the play and foreground the domestic drama. Retitling the play Junius or The Household Gods Barrett put on the play at the Princess’s Theatre on 26 February 1885. It ran for less than 30 days and was withdrawn and never revived. It lost £2,500. John Coleman, surveying Barrett’s career, called Junius ‘a noble folly’ and expressed surprise that so great a writer as Bulwer-Lytton could write such a bad play, ‘a platitudinised play upon an unsavoury subject’.82 Austin Brereton, a journalist sympathetic to Barrett, surveyed the wreckage in an article in The Theatre. He conceded the validity of the generally expressed criticisms: ‘its story was too repulsive for one body of playgoers; it was too


familiar for the general public. The Play was too dull, it lacked humour and variety.’ The acting ‘fell short’ with Barrett’s ‘resources as an actor not called into great prominence by the part of Lucius Junius Brutus’. However, ‘it was handsomely mounted and dressed, and few grander pictures have been seen upon the stage than that of the last act depicting the fall of Tarquin’. But on the other hand, he argues: the play did not get a fair hearing. Produced in mid-Lent, in a season of financial depression, with the nation excited and its feelings carried away by far more important matters than those of the theatre [by which he probably means the Fenian bomb outrages in London and the besieging of General Gordon in Khartoum], the play required every possible aid to obtain for it popular appreciation […] Whatever its faults – and they were many – it was a work which at least called for special support and earnest encouragement. Instead of this, it was received by a powerful press with scorn, contempt, and all uncharitableness. One or two writers ventured to do their best for a play of purpose, passion, or poetry. They were met by sneers and contumely, chaffed as fools or upbraided as sycophants.83 But what all the critics were agreed upon was the visual splendour of the production, once again under the oversight of E.W. Godwin. For example, The Era (28 February 1885) said: ‘Each act brings before the spectator a stage picture of wondrous beauty, and all who see Junius will long remember the marvellous change in the first act from the street in Rome to Tarquin’s Palace; the weird grandeur of the Ruined Temple of Romulus in the second; and, most elaborate and impressive of all, the “interior” at the end, with its throne of gold, its marble columns, its crimson canopy, its well-armed guards, and a host of details that severely tax the eye, that would take them in. Such scenes […] speak volumes for the archaeological research of Mr E.W. Godwin, for the artistic skill of Messrs Beverley, Telbin, Hall and Hann (the scene-painters), and for the liberality of a management that is liberal almost beyond compare.’ Undaunted, Barrett pressed ahead with his Ruskinian project, in the form of a new play, co-written by himself and Sydney Grundy and designed by Godwin, Clito, which opened on 1 May 1886. Barrett provided the plot, which The Times (3 May 1886) noted was a variation on the story of Samson and Delilah, and Grundy the dialogue. Set in the Athens of 404 B.C., it paints the picture of a corrupt and profligate society, in which the people groan under the tyranny of the nobles. The hero, Clito, is a sculptor who is regarded by the nobles as a potential leader of popular revolt and is hated by the all-powerful courtesan Helle, mistress of the tyrant Critias, whose immorality he has publicly denounced. It is in the interests of both to destroy him. Helle agrees, at the instigation of Glaucias, who has designs on Clito’s sister Irene, to ensnare Clito by her charms. Persuading him that

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she is pure and virtuous and has been the victim of malicious and envious tongues, she wins his love and gleans information from him about the would-be rebels who are then killed by the nobles. Helle denounces Clito as a fool and a dupe. Irene is discovered to have killed herself to escape the attentions of Glaucias and Clito kills him. Helle later seeks refuge at Clito’s studio from a vengeful mob, but they find her and kill her, and Clito too is mortally wounded. The Times (3 May 1886) paid tribute to the Barrett regime and its mission, but warned about its tendency to preach: ‘More than once, a laudable endeavour has been made at the Princess’s to educate popular taste. It has not always been successful, not because the public of that theatre are incapable of appreciating anything beyond the sensationalism of melodrama, but because the lesson taught has too often been in the nature of a homily, very well meant but rather tiresome.’ In this regard Barrett was doing what Ruskin had advised him when he wrote: ‘It is of more consequence that (plays) should be right, than clever, not oppressively instructive, but that the thoughts they express should be just.’84 But, according The Times, he had strayed too far into the ‘oppressively instructive.’ However, most critics disliked it. ‘Gloomy and repulsive’ said the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News. The Era (8 May 1886) declared: ‘The theme selected is not pleasant, and its treatment will by many be considered repulsive.’ Clement Scott, who had so admired Claudian, wrote: ‘Human nature is bad and brutal enough outside the walls of a theatre, without dishing it up on stage for our edification. I want to believe that men and women are in reality better than they appear to be, and not more monstrous. I want the stage to teach each successive audience to be purified by hope and by the contemplation of lovely natures, not sickened and saddened by opening cesspools under their noses.’85 Once again, however, the visuals earned general praise. The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News (8 May 1886) said: The preparation of the tragedy had evidently been perfect […] and nothing could well be better of their kind than Mr Hann’s sunny street in Athens, or than Mr Telbin’s illustration of the magnificent palace where Helle […] presides over the Bacchic revels of her retainers. Mr E.W. Godwin has looked carefully after the archaeology of the dresses, which, however, are not in all cases as becoming as they are correct. After a short and unprofitable run, the play closed and Barrett embarked on the first of five American tours aimed at recouping his fortune. His biographer James Thomas characterises the years 1886–94 as Barrett’s period of ‘international wandering’, as he was more often abroad or on provincial tours than he was in London. This coincided with the period of Ruskin’s final withdrawal from public life and his ceasing to write after he had


abandoned Praeterita, his autobiography.86 However, Barrett never forgot the advice he had been given by Ruskin and the values Ruskin had advocated for theatre. Barrett returned in 1895 to the form in which he had tried and failed to achieve success ten years before. The result was The Sign of the Cross, which was more than a play. It was a cultural phenomenon and it was the dramatic zenith of Ruskinian theatre. It arose from Barrett’s desire to combat what he called ‘the unwholesome tendencies of the so-called “problem play”’ (and he cited in particular The Second Mrs Tanqueray). ‘These “sex pieces” were frightening family people from the theatre. I wanted to bring wives and daughters to it, and at the same time bridge the gulf dividing regular theatre goers from the class which avoids the playhouse from religious motives’ he said.87 In 1894, having returned from his fourth American tour, he was turning over the problem in his mind and several things coalesced, as he told Jerome K. Jerome of The Idler magazine: ‘A resolve to simplify the situation by a fervent dramatic appeal to whatever was Christ-like in woman and man, had by a brain wave presented itself as “the sign of the cross”, that the advice of his friend John Ruskin had confirmed him in his choice of a “classic” period, and that the story had, without perceptible effort, already begun to take shape in his thoughts.’88 So, although they had been out of contact for some years, Barrett was still being guided by Ruskinian ideals. The plot, which reworked elements of Claudian, without the immortality angle, was set during the period of the persecution of the Christians by the Emperor Nero. It revolved around two characters, the proud pagan Marcus Superbus and the gentle Christian maiden Mercia. Marcus, put in charge of rounding up the Christians, falls in love with Mercia and after attempting in vain to seduce her is won over to her Christian faith and gladly goes with her into the arena to suffer martyrdom. The play would highlight the ‘vivid contrast through them of sensuality with purity, self-indulgence with self-sacrifice, the fierce glory of dominion with the gentle rapture of faith’. In his normal manner, he approached several established dramatists to collaborate with him on the writing. But they all turned him down, one rejecting the project ‘because of his profound disbelief in any popular acceptance for the theme’.89 So Barrett wrote it himself, determined to try it out on his forthcoming fifth American tour. It premiered in St Louis on 27 March 1895 and was played for the rest of the tour to critical acclaim and box office success. Back in England, Barrett gave it its British premiere at the Grand Theatre, Leeds, on 26 August 1895, before transferring it to London, where it opened at the Lyric Theatre on 4 January 1896. It ran for 435 performances initially and later played all over the world. It had been staged an estimated 10,000 times by the time of Barrett’s death in 1904. Nine touring companies were sent out with productions of the play. The result of all this was that Barrett was able to settle his outstanding debts of £40,000.90 Female members of the cast in costume

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were photographed against classical backdrops and emerged looking like recreations of the canvases of Albert Moore and Alma-Tadema. Walter Hann and Stafford Hall did the scene painting, Barrett played Marcus Superbus, Prefect of Rome, and Maud Jeffries the Christian maiden Mercia. After Leeds, Barrett performed it in Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, Birmingham, Bristol, Nottingham, Newcastle and Cardiff, his tour ‘a veritable march of triumph’.91 Then came London. The Times (6 January 1896), reporting the enthusiastic reception by the first night audience, declared: Both as a spectacle and as a dramatic story, with its requisite point of sensationalism, The Sign of the Cross contains all the elements that go to the making of a great popular success; and, happily, it comes at a moment when the public, weary of the aridities and the sordid trivialities of realism, are likely to turn with zest to a new dramatic gospel, or rather to the old dramatic gospel here revived. Mr Barrett knows the value of ornate treatment in romance, nobody better; and undeniably the stage pictures of this story […] are extremely beautiful. Nor can the most cynical deny the fascination of the theme of self-sacrifice embodied in the tragic loves of Marcus and Mercia. But in the intellectual quarters it provoked a reaction of withering contempt. In The World, William Archer, describing the play as ‘a Salvationist pantomime’, asked: Why should the dramatic critic devote a moment’s thought to a combination of the penny dreadful with the Sunday-school picture-book. My business is with the drama as a form of art, and art has nothing to say to this series of tawdry tableaux, with their crude appeal to the shallowest sentiments and lowest instincts of the mob. He denounced the naiveté of those clergymen who had been bamboozled into endorsing the play.92 But if intellectuals scoffed, the Church applauded. Clergymen preached sermons on the play, urging their congregations to attend the theatre to see it.93 The Bishop of Truro wrote an admiring preface to Barrett’s novelisation of his script.94 Letters of appreciation from clergymen poured in to Barrett.95 Mr Gladstone, the Prince of Wales and J.M. Barrie all attended the play and sang its praises.96 Many ordinary theatregoers wrote to Barrett to tell him how the play had changed their lives. The Idler concluded: The pulpit, the press, and the peoples of two great continents it has conquered. Thousands of unbelievers it has converted to faith in the power of the theatre for good. And it has made possible upon the stage


the one supreme subject of absorbing interest to the civilised world – the subject of […] religion […] In doing this, Mr Barrett’s play has done the stage inestimable service, and has surely set an imperishable seal upon a remarkable career.97 Ruskin himself was long past theatregoing but his niece Joan Severn wrote to tell him that she had been to see the play, although to her intense disappointment Wilson Barrett and his leading lady were on holiday and their roles being played by understudies. Barrett sought unsuccessfully to repeat his success with The Sign of the Cross with the plays The Daughters of Babylon, (1897) Quo Vadis (1900) and The Christian King (1902). But The Sign of the Cross remained in his repertoire until his death in 1904, continued to be performed after his death, was spectacularly filmed by Cecil B. De Mille in 1932 and was successfully reissued in 1944. Sir Henry Irving, although he had initiated the new toga vogue with his production of The Cup in 1881, returned only rarely to the Ancient World, notably in Cymbeline (1896) and Coriolanus (1901). Both were designed for Irving by Alma-Tadema and highly praised for their visual achievement and mise-en-scène. But where Cymbeline was a box office success, Coriolanus, Irving’s last new Shakespeare production, failed and was withdrawn after 36 performances. Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, who generally avoided duplicating Irving’s productions, achieved much greater success with the Ancient World, staging handsome and successful productions of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (1898), also designed by Alma-Tadema, Antony and Cleopatra (1906) and The Winter’s Tale (1906). He also emulated Barrett in running the gamut of ancient civilisations by producing new plays set in Byzantium (Hypatia, 1893), Judaea (Herod, 1900), classical Greece (Ulysses, 1902), imperial Rome (Nero, 1906) and pharaonic Egypt (False Gods, 1909). But the era of the toga play ended with a change in the nature of the audience and the transformation of theatrical taste, both of which occurred at the time of World War I. The rise of the cinema creamed off the mass working class audience, who now preferred to see realistic and lifelike versions of their old stage favourites on the screen. But with the theatre audience shrinking to a largely middle class constituency, the nature of theatrical fare changed. Symptomatic of the change was the subtle and sardonic subversion of previously popular genres by that sly old iconoclast George Bernard Shaw. He provided a modern dress version of Pygmalion (1914), transposed to Edwardian England and centring on a professor of phonetics who converts a cockney guttersnipe into a lady. His Androcles and the Lion was a precise parody of The Sign of the Cross, with a set of characters directly analogous to Barrett’s. Shaw had sent up Barrett’s play in his review in the Saturday Review, praising him – tongue firmly in

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cheek – for drawing a ‘terrible contrast between the Romans […] with their straightforward sensuality, with the strange perverted voluptuousness of the Christians, with their shuddering exaltations of longing for the whip, the rack, the stake and the lions’.98 Picking up on William Archer’s even more withering dismissal of it as ‘a Salvationist pantomime’, Shaw said of his own play: ‘Here I take historical tragedy at its deepest; a point reached only by religious persecution. And the thing is done as if it were […] a Christmas pantomime, the chief figure being a pantomime lion.’99 Caesar and Cleopatra was Shaw’s response to Shakespeare’s Roman world. Disdainful of Antony and Cleopatra (‘I have a technical objection to making sexual infatuation a tragic theme. Experience proves that it is only effective in a comic spirit’) and Julius Caesar (‘Shakespear (sic), who knew human weakness so well, never knew human strength of the Caesarian type. His Caesar is an admitted failure’) he created his own version.100 Utilising the recognised ingredients of the genre (spectacle, lavish sets and costumes, large casts), he deliberately intruded anachronisms, inserted a critique of British imperialism and constructed a Caesar who, rather than a ruthless dictator, emerges as a wise and witty analogue of Shaw himself. But while middle class theatregoers were able to enjoy the Shavian send-ups of the hallowed genre, cinemagoers still flocked to their local cinemas to see new and straight versions of Ingomar, The Last Days of Pompeii, The Sign of the Cross, Quo Vadis and Ben Hur.

5 Melodrama

The toga plays discussed in Chapter 4 belong to the broader genre of melodrama and are a part of the development of that form in the nineteenth century in Britain into a theatrical genre which combined moral purpose, social conscience and stage beauty in performances of strong feeling. As we have seen, Wilson Barrett’s toga plays attracted the direct praise of Ruskin for their excellence in educating through the display of beauty. Ruskin’s interest in Wilson Barrett’s work developed into an affectionate relationship between the actor-manager and the writer grounded in mutual respect for the other’s professional expertise. But Barrett’s Ruskinism extended beyond his playing out the Christian imperial dream: as David Mayer points out, although Barrett sought other toga roles after his success in Claudian, he alternated these with playing the heroes of contemporary melodramas, such as The Silver King, The Golden Ladder and Ben My Chree.1 In the contemporary melodramas Barrett produced as actor-manager, Barrett was star actor and often also playwright, although his work as a playwright we might more accurately today identify as that of a dramaturg. In his creative collaborations with authors such as Henry Arthur Jones, Henry Herman and Thomas Hall Caine, Barrett shaped the material of his playwright collaborators, offering critical feedback on the practicalities of their scripts for the late Victorian stage. In these plays, Barrett’s Ruskinism is articulated through the dramaturgical features of melodrama, in both text and performance. The combination of aesthetic form and ethical argument – the Ruskinian desideratum of beauty as right thinking and right feeling – is to be found in the repeated patterns of Barrett’s best-known melodramas. Barrett’s specific articulation of his Ruskinian discipleship was to come later in his career, particularly after his role in The Sign of the Cross, but his imbibing of Ruskin’s moral and aesthetic principles can be traced through his work in melodrama, in collaboration with two other self-declared Ruskinians, Henry Arthur Jones and Thomas Hall Caine. In order to understand the significance of Barrett’s work as a producer and innovator of melodrama, and the importance of Ruskin’s social and 114

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aesthetic theories in relation to Barrett’s work, it is necessary to consider attitudes towards melodrama, both in the last three decades of the nineteenth century and in its subsequent reputation and historiography. Melodrama was omnipresent in the Victorian theatre, and yet was one of its most vilified forms then and later. Yet this vilification cannot obscure the ways in which the aesthetic and ethical conventions of melodrama pervaded Victorian culture. The moral security and certainties offered by stage melodrama were a welcome surety in a world where changes occurred with unsettling rapidity. Melodrama created a world on stage with recognisable types, settings, characters and plots, yet its compacted plot and action, contrived resolutions, and public revelations of guilt and villainy transformed quotidian materials into what Eric Bentley has called the ‘the Naturalism of the dream world’.2 Forty years ago, Michael Booth recognised the oppositional politics of this dramaturgy with his neat formulation that melodrama offered ‘the world its audiences want but cannot get’.3 Since Bentley and Booth, other literary and theatre historians have found in melodrama an explanation for the intellectual and emotional ‘structures of feeling’ of the Victorian period, although most discussions of the ‘melodramatic’ quickly move away from the stage practices of melodrama as a performance genre.4 However, neither popularity with audiences then nor interest in melodrama as an intellectual trope now has guaranteed that the stage tradition of melodrama has been seen as a positive and serious element in the formation of British (and specifically English) performance culture. Stage melodramas, in all their messy fecundity, are still seen as symptomatic of the problems of mass culture in the nineteenth century, rather than centrally significant cultural products in their own right. Victorian melodrama has achieved some ‘respectability’ in cultural studies circles, chiefly after Peter Brooks’ groundbreaking study, The Melodramatic Imagination, which read melodrama via Freud and neo-Marxist notions of revolution. But, as Jacky Bratton has recently pointed out, Brooks is ‘ultimately writing about the novel, his approach is psychological and semiotic, and he dismisses all stage melodrama after the 1820s as the form in decline’.5 It was Brooks’ ability to place melodrama at the forefront of a radical, revolutionary sensibility which is so useful and exciting in looking at melodrama, particularly in working class theatres and for working class audiences in London and elsewhere. Cultural critics and historians, such as Elaine Hadley, took up this category of the ‘melodramatic’, but such discussions moved quickly from the material practices and conditions of the theatre to apply the term more broadly to Victorian culture. In these discussions, deriving from Brooks’ psychoanalytical approach or the materialist approaches of Michael Booth, Louis James, Martha Vicinus and Clive Barker, melodrama is characterised as the drama of the ‘helpless and unfriended’ as Martha Vicinus puts it, and the theatrical expression of the working class democratic instinct playing itself out in Britain after the French Revolution.6


This is even more the case with the kinds of mainstream, middle-brow popular theatre in which Barrett made his career, and of which Ruskin was an enthusiastic spectator. Barrett’s work was not the quasi-National Theatre created by Irving at the Lyceum – as his biographer comments: Like many another manager both then and now, Will [Barrett] has been severely criticised for giving the public what it wants. What these critics refuse to consider is the inescapable fact that if the public does not get what it wants it will refuse to come in, and then the manager must cease to operate. There were no State subsidies in those days, and unlike Irving, who was backed by the Batemans until he had achieved stardom, Will, from the first moment he launched his attack on London, used only his own money, saved during those years of work in the provinces.7 Barrett’s work, and that of other actor-managers like him, such as the Kendals, has tended to fall into the historical and historiographical interstices between studies of the highbrow literary drama and the populist and potentially radical theatres of the working classes. Revisionist theatre history scholarship on British nineteenth century theatre, and melodrama in particular, has been assiduous in opening up discussions of theatre for working class areas and audiences. This has been the way that theatre historians have generally countered the previous excessive emphasis on the literary drama and the consequent devaluing or – more usually – complete failure to attend to the drama and theatre in the nineteenth century. What are we to make of melodrama in the last decades of the nineteenth century which does not lend itself quite so easily to this radical or, at least, democratic, narrative? What cultural work is done by the heavily Christian melodramas part or fully-written, staged and performed by Wilson Barrett? The major theatrical experience for many London audiences, of the middle-brow, morally conservative, commercial mainstream has been overlooked, and the lack of significance in British cultural and theatrical history of its activities and practices has been taken as given. The pairing of Ruskin and melodrama may seem to be counterintuitive. As we have seen, Ruskin’s personal theatregoing preferences were for Shakespeare and the pantomime. Both Shakespeare and the pantomime were dramatic and theatrical experiences embedded deeply in his boyhood, and powerful for their connections with his home life, as well as for the intrinsic effects of theatrical performance.8 However, melodrama provided powerful moral teaching in an idealised world in a way different from, but complementary to, the pantomime, and both genres can claim to be the archetypal Victorian theatrical genres. As pantomime takes the ‘real’ world and turns it into what Rachel Dickinson has discussed as the Ruskinian Real ‘where the good, the ideal resides’,9 then melodrama too takes the ‘real’ world of the social and moral discord caused by the pursuit of wealth

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emptied of life (‘illth’ to Ruskin), and finds the redemptive Real of renewed and reformed social bonds, freed from the corruptions of money and rank. Barrett’s productions of melodramas with an emphasis on finding faith, redemption and reconciliation placed ordinary people in extraordinary, but recognisable, circumstances and offered his audiences highly moral lessons. The commitment of Barrett and his collaborators to a Christian vision of the ancient and modern worlds offered reassuringly didactic versions of established melodramatic formulae, while introducing that creature of modernity, the ‘divided hero-villain’.10 The work in which Ruskin was interested was neither the popular entertainment of, for example, the music halls and theatres such as the Britannia in Hoxton, nor the literary drama promoted by playwrights and critics such as Henry Arthur Jones, Arthur Wing Pinero and William Archer, nor the modernist theatre of Ibsen and his supporters (and imitators). Apart from French plays in the original language, the tastes which informed Ruskin’s public and private discussions of the theatre were determinedly middlebrow, commercial and mainstream. He corresponded with, advised and argued with theatre practitioners of the commercial mainstream, such as the Kendals, Henry Irving and Wilson Barrett. Apart from recent studies of Irving on his centenary, there has been relatively little serious attention paid to this commercial mainstream. The challenge is to examine these practitioners without resorting to the enduring binary opposition between the ‘literary’ theatre and the rough and ready theatre of popular and working class entertainment. Moreover, although Ruskin himself is being read increasingly as a commentator on modernity, it is also necessary to position the theatre of the commercial mainstream at the end of the nineteenth century, and Ruskin’s direct and indirect influences on it, in the face of an aggressive Modernist critical practice and historiography. As Andreas Huyssen and Ann Ardis have pointed out, Modernist artists and critics attempted to follow Ezra Pound’s dictum to ‘make it new’ by destroying most of what had gone before.11 These currents in contemporary criticism and historiography have distorted or occluded our approaches to the work of practitioners such as Wilson Barrett, and clouded what we might learn about mainstream Victorian culture from such work. As Jim Davis and Victor Emeljanow point out, it is in the last few decades of the nineteenth century that London’s West End was established as the centre of theatrical tourism, and this is when we see the changes in theatrical practices of acting, writing and theatre management which enabled and developed this trend.12 Other scholars, such as Viv Gardner and Susan Torrey Barstow, have commented on the increasing numbers of women (particularly young women) who attended matinées in the West End. Barstow argues that it was these new audiences who made the matinee economically viable for theatre managers.13 Here we start to develop a broader understanding of the cultural work


that mainstream theatre was doing in the late nineteenth century, and particularly the work of mainstream melodrama as part of the phenomenon of popular modernity, as represented in the management and production practices of Wilson Barrett. As Francis O’Gorman and Elizabeth Helsinger point out, the work of ‘late Ruskin’ (to use O’Gorman’s phrase) is concerned with the exercise of male heroism and ethics in a society apparently given over to materialist pleasures and ideologies. In Fors Clavigera and ‘Of Kings’ Treasuries’ Ruskin advocates a renewal of masculine virtue as part of a critique of late nineteenth century capitalism. The iconoclastic mix of Ruskin’s radical critique of capitalism with his advocacy of hierarchical social organisation, which led him to describe himself as a ‘violent Tory of the old school’ in the opening lines of Praeterita, is in sympathy with the century-long English tradition of melodrama and its stage conventions. If Ruskin’s critique of capitalism seems contradictory to us now, this is as much to do with what Gareth Stedman Jones has identified as post-Marx expectations, that any critique of capitalism is framed by a Marxist analysis of class.14 In his social and political thought, Ruskin consistently returns to the social relationships of older forms of mutual reliance, rather than the new structures created by the political economy of industrial capitalism. Morag Shiach’s comments on late Ruskin highlight his alertness to the contradictions of Victorian industrial capitalism. Ruskin, Shiach argues, displays a ‘tension between an almost visceral sensitivity to new social and cultural movements and forces and a determined clinging to institutions, relationships and concepts that seem to enable the perception of order, continuity and community’.15 Similarly, Ruskin’s cultural theory, which called for the integration and combination of aesthetic and ethical seeing and reading, parallels the set of values to be found at the centre of melodrama as a genre. To see rightly is the central precept of Ruskin’s thinking; in spite of the protean and often contradictory character of his writings, this principle never changes. A reading of melodrama in Ruskinian terms and, conversely, an examination of the ways in which Ruskin engaged with contemporary melodrama offer a re-reading of both the contemporary stage and British theatre history, which illuminates the cultural value of the commercial, mainstream, West End stage of the last 30 years of the nineteenth century. The mainstream popular theatre offered, in Ruskin’s view, a site of education through meaningful pleasure and play. As we have seen, such ‘thoughtful ease’, or what the Victorians thought of as rational recreation, was important to Ruskin personally and was a lynchpin of his later social theory. From his sage-like pronouncement that ‘The only wealth is life’ to his detailed prescriptions of domestic work and crafts in The Ethics of the Dust, Sesame and Lilies or Fors Clavigera, Ruskin’s aim was to direct his readers’ preferences – their likings and pleasures – to that which was good, and to teach how to recognise and ‘read rightly’ such art.

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Of all Ruskin’s theatrical acquaintance, it was Wilson Barrett who was the theatre artist closest to Ruskin, in both his personal relationship and his espousal of Ruskinian views. Ruskin thought highly of Barrett. As discussed in Chapter 4, Ruskin’s enthusiastic response to Claudian laid out a dramatic prospectus for Barrett, suggesting ‘What a lovely thing it would be to do the noble parts of Roman and Gothic history in a series of such plays. You could be such a grand Theodoric – or […] Theodelinda’s first husband […] – or Clovis – or Aurelian – or Probus – or Roger Guiscard – or what not of heroic and good’ (CW 37.474). Ruskin recommended Barrett’s performances to others unreservedly, although typically gruffly. In a letter to Fanny Talbot, he wrote ‘Wilson B is always worth seeing whatever he does. —but he does a lot of nonsense. I like the man himself much’.16 Barrett followed Ruskin in a form of discipleship that is familiar in accounts of Ruskin’s intellectual and social life. In Barrett’s case, this was played out in the material practices of his theatrical management: his choice of plays, his choice of parts, his public identity and his managerial practices. In an affectionate reversal of Barrett’s address to Ruskin as ‘Master’, Barrett played the role of tutor to Ruskin in his public speaking career, and offered advice and throat pastilles, as well as teasing notes: When will you come to see ‘Hamlet’ The Professor chided me because those lozenges were nasty in their taste. Now is it fair of Ruskin to expect his physic to taste like jam? There it is – we all like it – Our mental & bodily medicine must all have the sugar coating – so we make wry faces.17 It was in support of Barrett’s work that Ruskin was inspired to speak, publicly and privately, in favour of the theatre and its role in the moral education of the British people. And it was Ruskin’s combination of aesthetic and ethical theory which Barrett promulgated in his off-stage addresses and public persona, as well as staging through melodramas such as The Silver King, Claudian, Hoodman Blind, The Manxman, The Lord Harry and Chatterton, where morality and aesthetics combined to establish Barrett, together with his collaborators, Henry Arthur Jones and Hall Caine, as Ruskinians of the Victorian stage. We might speculate that Ruskin may have been thinking of some specific constituencies in need of the aesthetic and moral lessons he finds at the Princess’s Theatre which ‘might do more for art teaching than all the Galleries and Professors of Christendom’ (CW 37.474). In this statement, Ruskin may have been thinking of the working men he addresses in Fors Clavigera, or the young women in whose education he was vitally interested, or the young men and women addressed in Sesame and Lilies. The theatre could serve as a mass pulpit for the inculcation of right-thinking about moral action, but also for beauty – fine language well spoken, performed in accurate and beautiful stage settings. And this is very much the set of concerns to


be found in what Francis O’Gorman has labelled ‘late Ruskin’: Ruskin’s turn towards a particular type of social criticism in the 1870s and 1880s, which was concerned with the ‘immediate particularities of his imagined audience’s life […] the texture of lived life in England in the early 1870s’.18 The story of Barrett’s collaborations with Henry Arthur Jones and Hall Caine is an instance of the high ambitions of all three men to reform the popular stage, in order to make it a place of art and enlightenment. These aims link them, but they are also linked by an explicit commitment to Ruskin, as both a man and social and aesthetic theorist. Barrett’s, Jones’ and Caine’s attempts were pursued through the writing and staging of plays, of course, but also through other varieties of public discourse and performance. While on tour, Barrett gave interviews, preached and wrote about the moral potential of the theatre. Like his contemporary (and sometime rival) Henry Irving, Barrett faced the arduous and conflicting demands of art and commerce for the rest of his career. However, Jones and Caine, as writers, were able to step away from the demands of the popular theatre to entertain while educating. Jones, after rejecting Barrett’s invitation to continue writing ‘melodramatic or spectacular pieces’ for him, turned to ‘strong serious plays’ and public lectures on the current and future state of the English drama. In a move typical of the nineteenth century, Caine pursued his ambitions for a literary career through popular fiction, rather than continue with the stage. Ironically, Jones’ successful collaborations with Wilson Barrett, on The Silver King in particular, have survived in the popular memory rather more robustly than his ‘serious stronger’ dramas or his public pronouncements about the future of English theatre. Jones’ version of what was good for the English theatre was swept away at the beginning of the twentieth century by the advancing causes of Ibsenism and Modernism, whereas the melodramas he resented remain recognised in the historical record, distinct in the clarity of their moral purpose, as models of middle-brow, popular entertainment for ‘a representative public’, the audience of Barrett’s melodramas.19 While The Silver King (Princess’s Theatre, 1882) has been described as part of the movement of ‘new melodrama’, plays which were ‘remarkable for lively and unforced dialogue and honest character-drawing’,20 Barrett himself claimed kin to the ‘old fashioned’ theatre of earlier melodrama. The Silver King offers the familiar pleasures of the genre: heavy dramatic irony, strong feeling, public revelation of villainy and restorative justice. But it offers more than that in its portrayal of a contemporary man, weak but willing to take action to reclaim his pride and moral standing through work and suffering. Wilfred Denver’s remorse is the memorable ‘structure of feeling’ of The Silver King, and a dramatic and theatrical tour de force by Wilson Barrett, noted over and over by critics who were otherwise quick to condemn melodramatic sentimentality. The melding of Jones and Herman’s text, Barrett’s dramaturgy and acting, and Barrett’s careful staging combined to offer something that took London critics by surprise.

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The impact of The Silver King was through its reformulation of that much despised and criticised genre of melodrama into a form which appealed to the late nineteenth century sensibility, and excited those who had hitherto dismissed the theatre as trash. The Silver King tells the story of Wilfred Denver, a rash young man, but a devoted husband, despite his tendency to drink too much and mix with the wrong company. He is doing this at the Wheatsheaf Inn, a sporting pub, in the first scene of the play when he becomes the centre of a conspiracy to steal. He finds himself falsely accused of murder but, in an innovative plot twist, does not realise that the accusation is false until near the resolution of the play. The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News offers a useful plot summary: Round the central figure of a man, who reasonably believes himself a murderer, are grouped his suffering wife and children and a gang of criminals, whose leader is known to the audience to have done the deed for which the hero suffers such keen remorse. The links which keep together these two chains of narrative are most ingeniously welded, and the diverse action is kept together with remarkable art.21 The bare bones of the plot in summary reduce the play to the crude mechanics of simplistic retributive moral justice, and George Rowell argues that ‘The Silver King owed its success largely to Wilson Barrett’s exploitation of its vigorous expression of remorse’.22 Barrett’s characterisation of guilt and remorse, and the pattern of characterisation which Mayer sees as common to Barrett’s toga plays – the complexity of the hero’s self- knowledge that ‘a single headstrong act has changed his life’23 – caused many critics to look past their usual reflex tendencies to denigrate melodrama and instead offered subtle, responsive accounts of the script and Barrett’s performance. Matthew Arnold wrote that in The Silver King, ‘Instead of giving to their audience transpontine diction and sentiments, Messrs. Jones and Herman give them literature’.24 Arnold’s evaluation of the production is framed in critical terms which valued the literary above the theatrical as a way of indicating the play’s complexity. Arnold’s judgement of The Silver King consistently draws attention to the way it avoids its likely fate as a ‘transpontine’ melodrama. ‘It is not Shakespeare’, he cautions, ‘it is melodrama’, but it is melodrama: in which the diction and sentiments do not overstep the modesty of nature. In general, in drama of this kind, the diction and sentiments, like the incidents, are extravagant, impossible, transpontine; here they are not. This is a very great merit, a very great advantage. The imagination can lend itself to almost any incidents, however violent; but good taste will always revolt against transpontine diction and sentiments.25


Arnold’s sense of relief at the play’s taste is widespread in the daily and weekly press. Other critics, responding immediately after its first night, also recognised the achievement of the play. As The Era critic writes: The Silver King is worthy to be ranked as one of the best constructed and best written plays the stage has seen for many years. The authors have provided ‘sensation,’ but it is sensation of an order different from what we have been accustomed to. […] The ‘sensation’ comes directly from the deep interest that is awakened in the fate of the principal characters introduced. […] It is sensation that is purely legitimate, because it affects the heart rather than the eye.26 The Times began its review of The Silver King with the usual melancholy complaint about the decline of the drama: ‘It must be confessed that of late the melodrama of the London stage has sunk to a deplorable level.’ However, The Silver King, it judges: though belonging to the sensational class […] mark[s], it is to be hoped, a reaction against this state of things. […] It may be premature to say that we have touched the lowest depth of the degradation of the stage, but the example and the success of melodrama, as now seen at the Princess’s and the Adelphi, ought to count for something in the redemption of that species of dramatic work from the obloquy and contempt under which it has lately rested. 27 The Daily Telegraph echoes this sense of relief: It is best to begin with the good news. ‘The Silver King’ […] is certainly the most complete, well-balanced, and satisfactory drama that has been produced in London for many years.28 Arnold’s judgement of the play as ‘literature’, published in the Pall Mall Gazette, is an echo of these immediate responses, which all focus on the quality of the writing, the staging and, primarily, Wilson Barrett’s performance. Barrett’s performance elicits universally high praise, notable for the recognition of the complexity of the characterisation of Wilfred Denver. Russell Jackson comments that ‘a good deal of the characterisation in The Silver King is rudimentary’, pointing out that the loyal retainer Jaikes is a type stretching back at least as far as Adam in As You Like It, and Nelly Denver is a ‘standard victim-heroine’.29 However, the role of Denver impressed critics for its mix of human frailty and heroic recovery, and Barrett for his skill in the portrayal of such a conflicted hero. Writing of the ‘arduous task’ of playing Denver, The Era remarked: So many exactions were made upon the physical resources of the actor even in the opening scenes that it seemed impossible for them to last out

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to the end; but last out they did, and the energy of the artist was as great and effective at the end as at the beginning. It was a splendidly balanced performance throughout, full of light and shade, and by turns powerful and pathetic.30 The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News considered Barrett’s melodramatic power to be ‘beyond any with which we have hitherto credited him’,31 while The Times judged that Barrett ‘has seldom exhibited greater power, either in the direction of concentrated energy or of pathos’.32 The Daily Telegraph, generally reluctant to applaud, offered almost unalloyed praise of Barrett’s performance. Before The Silver King, Barrett was a respected actor-manager of middling reputation; in this production, he achieved almost unanimous critical acclaim and established his position as a leader of the profession and a spokesman for its moral status: Wilson Barrett is never so successful as when he is playing one of those characters of men who endure and love much. He has a better chance here, because his actions are natural and intelligible, his sentiments are lofty, and they are expressed in fitting and often beautiful language. One speech of the horrors of a murderer’s sleep is in itself a prose poem or rhapsody, and it was delivered by Mr. Barrett with such excellent feeling and emphasis that it commanded strong attention. […] The actor filled it with so much strength and tenderness, such vigour and such affection, that the audience watched breathlessly, and watching was convinced.33 All these responses attest to what was to become the foundation of the rest of Wilson Barrett’s career: his capacity to portray more morally complex melodramatic heroes than the genre had hitherto afforded. Although Barrett never reached the heights of reputation of his nearest rival, Henry Irving, his talent for playing conflict-ridden and flawed heroes in melodrama was a significant element in the remaking of that genre. The Silver King is a melodrama, with all the conventions of that genre – the secrets and misunderstandings, which the audience knows about but the characters do not (a strong helping of dramatic irony is central to melodrama), and the public revelation and restitution of the right moral order. It made not only Barrett’s reputation, but Henry Arthur Jones’ career as a playwright. Russell Jackson’s extraction of a series of Jones’ letters to American producer, Herbert Palmer, in October 1889 reveals a playwright confident – even over-confident – in the profits his playwriting will make the manager in America: I see you say ‘Wealth was a signal failure.’ It was only a first-night failure – it makes money every week for the management, one week a profit of £300. And this in spite of tropical weather. The Middleman [a play


discussed with Barrett] is playing to splendid business. On Saturday every reserved seat in the house was sold before we opened.34 Later that month, Jones told Palmer that ‘I am certain to have things a great deal my own way over here for the next few years, and it will be worth your while to work with me’.35 In spite of Jones’ later protestations to Barrett, his work with Barrett yielded plays with more of the enduring and educative qualities than his later work, after he had sloughed off what he felt to be Barrett’s confining yoke, and Barrett’s demands of him to write melodrama. The exchange of letters between Barrett and Jones is telling – the clash between Barrett as a man of the theatre, with a very successful dramaturgical nose for an audience-pleasing play (and a man of the theatre who is also aware of the need to find ways to pay for the theatre), with Jones, who increasingly embodied the rhetoric and action of the National Theatre, one step removed from the need to please audiences in quite the way Barrett went on pleasing them: I do not propose to write any more melodramatic or spectacular pieces. I have my plans very clearly mapped out, and I shall continue these strong serious plays while the public will let me. I did not abuse The Silver King – it has been a good friend to both of us. But if you had let me have my way six years ago and take my natural bent instead of putting me at such work as Hoodman Blind and The Lord Harry you would have made a good harvest I think. However it is useless to recall the past and I shall be very glad to do my best for you now. Only you must let me have my way throughout. I am in splendid spirits, the last few months have made a strange alteration in my work and I feel certain now of doing all you expected of me when you first brought me out.36 Barrett is doughty in defence of The Silver King, and astute in his response to Jones, balancing aesthetic concerns with commercial realities: I did not say a melodrama – but a play. Do not be unjust to ‘The Silver King’ It will outlive many a better praised work & continue to draw when they are forgotten. Your letter is not quite clear. You gave me to understand the last time we spoke together that you wished me back in a theatre of my own to write a play for me. Have you changed your mind? If so – why? If we continue as we have begun – we take the largest amount of money ever drawn to a dramatic entertainment in one week at this location. The new theatre will not be too large, or too small, for any good play. Do not fear that.37

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Barrett’s defence of The Silver King is prescient; it has outlived the kinds of plays Jones went on to write, and Jones’ switch from active playwriting to proselytising for the theatre of his own vision suggests the difficulties faced by a writer who aspires to the status of ‘man of letters’ but who came to this through the commercial theatre. Jones’ ambivalence about his own industry and profession is to be found everywhere in his polemical writing about the stage. In his public statements on the stage and the state of English drama, he advocates a National Theatre which is not dependent on income at the box office, arguing that what is needed is the ‘severance of the drama from popular entertainment’.38 This view diverges substantially from Barrett’s stated opinion given in an interview while on tour in America, that a suitable National Theatre could be established without state subsidy, but: By subscription as in the case of Italian Opera. Half a dozen leading citizens forming themselves into a company for the express purpose of establishing a National theatre would if the Manager be a capable one, find themselves in less than two years not only at the head of a National theatre – which would be improving the stage and benefiting the whole of the country, but they would be reaping a profit which would I venture to predict bring cent per cent, and more than cent per cent for their investments. […] The Manager of such a theatre being well chosen should have an absolutely free hand, and not be hampered in any way by outward interference or considerations. If he were capable he would under these circumstances assuredly write or procure to be written a play that would under any conditions, but assuredly under such favourable ones – be successful. This success would not be confined to the particular theatre in which it was produced. The other cities of the Union would always be looking to the National theatre. The management of which would send its successful pieces on the road with carefully selected companies and the stamp of the National theatre success would be upon that play and playgoers all over the country would wait with eagerness its appearance and knowing the play to be good, pure and wholesome they would patronise – thus the financial result would be assured to the Manager, even as the moral and artistic value of the play would be insured to the public.39 Although Jones attempted to dissociate himself from The Silver King, it is the play which, ironically, is seen to mark the move of commercial theatre into the kind of drama which many contemporary critics, such as William Archer, George Bernard Shaw and Jones himself, sought in the renovation of English drama.40 It is above all a modern play, with recognisably contemporary settings and characterisation. The use of what critics have identified as the Manichean structures of Good and Evil (in Peter Brooks’ terms) or processes of social justice and retribution (seen by materialist critics as the


defining structure of melodrama) are used to focus on the subjectivity of an obviously modern man (Jones included almost documentary scenes of modern life in the piece); Barrett’s skill in a kind of psychologised performance – similar to but not the same as the interiorised performance style advocated a little later on by Stanislavski – was arguably the unifying factor in the piece and the key to its success, as Wilson Barrett’s grandson and biographer, Wilson Barrett Jr. argues in more general terms: He brought to melodrama the intensity and impressiveness of the tragic actor with the humanity of the character actor, – the inspiration and methods of the poetic drama to the interpretation of the so-called drama of prose. He wrought in bronze so well because he had been a worker in marble. And, over and above the actor, was that personality of the man himself, which […] decides the value, the total significance of the artistic product.41 The material aspects of stage beauty here were significant in the impact of Wilson Barrett’s work – together with the Christian morality of The Sign of the Cross – which so impressed Britain and America. Barrett’s productions were renowned for the accuracy and sumptuousness of the settings and costumes, and the care with which he staged his productions. The correspondence between Barrett and Lord Lytton (son of Bulwer-Lytton) is a case in point – Lytton and Barrett engaged in a long correspondence over Barrett’s production of Bulwer-Lytton’s hitherto unperformed play, Junius, often concerned with the accuracy of the Roman settings; the discussion was backed up by, in Lytton’s case, extensive consultation with architectural historians and Roman texts, and in Barrett’s case, with concerns about the ways such documentary and archaeological information could be translated and represented in practicable ways on the London stage.42 In the flurry of press and public praise for The Sign of the Cross, the settings and their lavishness were praised as part of the excellence of the piece. The ways in which Wilson Barrett was praised for elevating the drama included this care and attention to detail, evident in the extant records of his career as an actor-manager, and also in the critical reception and record of his work. Such attention to the practicalities of staging was seen to be part of his more general approach to ‘elevating the drama’ and what Ruskin sees as the lessons in art to be learned at the Princess’s Theatre. This formulation of ‘the old melodrama’ was in distinction to what Barrett himself later identified as ‘the infection of a certain kind of modern popular play’.43 As we have seen, Barrett’s sermon to the Anglicans of Dunedin while on tour in New Zealand in 1902 is an explicit defence of melodrama in Ruskinian terms, and draws a deliberate contrast between the ‘old fashioned’ melodrama and the English and continental European problem play. Barrett expounds a Ruskinian philosophy of moral truth and beauty – but it is not a Puritanical anti-theatrical one – like Dickens’ Sleary, Barrett and

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Ruskin are always clear that the people must have their amusements. In a transcript of an interview given while on tour in America, Barrett explains his ethical and aesthetic principles at length: I consider that the [function] of the Drama is a very complex one. First and foremost: it should amuse. I have said before, and, I cannot too often repeat, the statement, that relaxation is as necessary for the mind as the exercise of the body. ‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy’ and I cannot imagine any better mental relaxation […] ask yourself if you can have a doubt that the purpose of the drama is not only to amuse but to teach to lead and influence. […] The influence must be wholly for good. It stands to reason that men are more or less influenced by their surroundings. […] You yourself Dr Wells spoke very warmly just now of the way in which I shared the better and higher feelings of my audience last night. If […] I did sway the nobler instincts of such an inured audience as that of last evening, think, for a moment what effect would be produced by a competent company playing a really fine work. Things one reads or hears merely spoken of or described may leave the memory and be forgotten but it is seldom that a man forgets the effect made upon him by a real actor or a real situation in a play. His mind eye heart and ear have all been appealed to and it is quite a common thing to hear a blasé man of the world declare with even deep emotion the effect made upon him years & years before by some powerful piece of acting or some strong situation in a Drama.44 Barrett’s interest was pre-eminently in the practice of theatre and in exploiting all that theatrical representation could do in moving, stimulating and educating its audiences. Yet, as we can see from his grandson’s defence of Barrett’s performance, and his own insistence on arguing his case in public speeches and interviews, Barrett was conscious of the judgement that melodrama is ‘old fashioned’ and is work in bronze, not marble. One of the co-authors of The Silver King, Henry Arthur Jones, quickly distanced himself from the play (although he was anxious enough that his authorship be acknowledged when it looked as though it was in dispute with Henry Herman). Jones had success and had ‘discovered’ the more edgy, contemporary ‘problem play’ such as Michael and His Lost Angel. His self-image as a playwright – and more obviously later as polemicist in theatrical and critical matters – was now for the ‘modern’, the literary drama. Ironically, he never quite achieved the same success in that field as he did with his collaborations with Barrett – primarily in The Silver King, but also with Hoodman Blind and The Manxman. Barrett’s work as an actor-manager was dominated by an interest in using the rich resources of the stage to achieve pedagogical objectives. He did this principally through melodramas which combined careful writing with


beautiful staging. Barrett’s role as a dramaturg – his grasp of the structures and rhythms of the plays he produced, co-wrote and performed – was a significant part of this ability to work with writers, as was his detailed oversight of settings, casting and acting, and his concern for the aesthetic whole of the production. He was interested in exploiting all that theatrical representation could do in its combination of emotional, sensory, moral and intellectual engagement of the audience. He pursued this work through the self admitted ‘old fashioned’ melodrama, but also through a strong commercial drive. The premiere of The Sign of the Cross, for example, was timed very carefully – it opened on an American tour, was heavily pre-publicised and puffed, with particular mention of its spectacular scenery and staging of decadent Rome, and Barrett’s letters back to England on that tour emphasise just how important was its financial success. His much praised attention to the details of staging and the luxury of his settings and costumes were probably developed with an eye to profit from outstaging the competition, by offering London audiences something they could not get elsewhere: spectacle with erudition and accuracy. Barrett’s productions of melodramas stand interestingly between the popular novelties of the local theatres and scratch companies of the South Bank and East End, and the problem plays of the contemporary literary drama hitting London from the 1880s. He deliberately linked his work with the despised ‘old fashioned’ melodrama, and his series of productions fitted very comfortably into the middle ground of mainstream theatre, still the staple of the West End, but for which we do not really have an adequate critical or theatre historical vocabulary other than as ‘literature’. He was a working theatre professional in a period before state subsidy (although while on tour in America, he discusses a National Theatre which is also a commercial theatre); he was a business man, albeit not always a successful one. Yet, as a theatre practitioner he was taken up by and collaborated with interesting and challenging figures of the late nineteenth century, such as E.W. Godwin and John Ruskin. There is more at stake here than simply the skill of an actor-manager and star. The significance of Barrett’s dramaturgical, aesthetic and pedagogical theatre production practices is demonstrated in his collaboration with Thomas Hall Caine. Barrett collaborated with Caine to write and stage several adaptations of Caine’s novels, with greater or lesser degrees of success. The importance of Barrett’s adaptations of Caine’s plays was not the one-way process we might assume, where Barrett’s status as adaptor was secondary to that of Caine as the creator of the original source. In the working relationship between Barrett and Caine, Caine had as much to gain from Barrett’s adaptations of his novels as Barrett did from his productions of Caine’s bestsellers. In Caine’s career ambitions to establish himself as a man of letters, he deliberately sought out theatrical opportunities, as well as those which might be assumed to offer higher status in the literary hierarchy of late Victorian Britain. His pursuit of the theatre, and Barrett and Irving in particular, was carried on in parallel

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with more conventional forms of literary ambition. During a brief period of employment as a teacher, Caine published ‘violent propagandist articles to “Mona’s Herald”’, a journal ‘in which three years previously he had preached the virtues of conservatism, and attracted the attention of John Ruskin by his eulogies of Ruskin’s work’.45 In his autobiography, Caine notes that although at the time, Ruskin’s views of political economy were: something too puerile for serious treatment […]. The years which have intervened have seen the triumph of many of his theories, once so flippantly derided; and it pleased him well that I should say so when I visited at Coniston a little while before his death.46 Caine’s alignment of his views with Ruskin’s was at the foundation of his literary career (Caine’s stewardship of Rossetti also gained him Ruskin’s personal approbation). The connection with Ruskin was extended through Caine’s subsequent collaborations with Barrett. In private, Caine was frank about the trials of establishing his literary career. In a letter to Theodore Watts-Dunton, after the publication of his first book, Sonnets of Three Centuries, Caine expressed his frustration: I have just seen a review of the sonnets [Sonnets of Three Centuries] that appeared in Tuesday’s St James’s Gazette. This is by far the most depreciatory yet published & though nothing contained in it disturbs me I now realize that there is (as you have long said) a deliberate design to shut me out. The only view I take of the situation is that the antagonism will make it longer work to get such recognition in literature as will enable me to live; but perhaps after all the recognition will be the surer when it comes. Meantime from my inmost soul I despise these paltry fellows who without the power to say one word about one’s book which to really thoughtful minds can be considered damaging, have not the honesty (not to speak of the good-nature) to leave the youngest of writing men to his legitimate chances of a livelihood.47 Involvement in the theatre was very much a deliberate and instrumental part of Caine’s career ‘plan’. Before he left his job with architect John Murray in Liverpool, Caine wrote for local papers and was a theatre critic, meeting and becoming firm friends with Bram Stoker, then Henry Irving’s manager, and through Stoker, with Irving himself. He sought out theatre managers with his own treatments and adaptations of his novels as plays, and wrote plays himself, both drawn from his novels and original pieces in their own right. He also collaborated on several screen plays in the early years of the British film industry, and his novels were adapted throughout the silent era – most notably, Alfred Hitchcock’s adaptation of The Manxman in 1929 – indeed, Hitchcock’s last silent film. Caine had recognised the market value of The


Manxman, writing to Watts-Dunton, probably in 1894, about his own adaptation of The Manxman, with implicit recognition of its probable market value: I am writing a line in haste to ask you not to tell Mr Beerbohm Tree that I wish you to introduce me with a view to proposing a play. I have more than one market for the scheme I indicated (the Pope business) & it would injure one proposal that now comes without solicitation if it were to appear (even by a side-wind) that I had been coquetting for another. In fact I have now no need to do this; & besides, I am anxious not to suggest anything to Mr. Tree that might affect Mr Jones, who has a play in Tree’s hands at present.48 Barrett had a rather different view in private, as he wrote to Miss Jackson, a confidante on personal and business matters: Hall Caine is one of the worries. He cajoled me into writing two ‘Manxmans’. He got me to adapt his ‘Christian’ [published by Caine in 1897] & collared my ideas all along the line & now coolly expects me to cancel our contract & let him take all the fees. He is a curious kind of man. No sense of humour & a curious sense of the rights & wrongs of things. I am not going to be [treated?] in this free & easy way this time. It may mean the law courts – but he needs a lesson. It is not only with me that he plays these little tricks. I didn’t want his ‘Christian’ do not like the book – or any of the people in it. They do not appeal either to my common sense or my imagination. They are mostly [useless?] – & when they are not that – they are – to me – silly & inconsequential. He seems to have guessed this & tells me that he ‘fears that I am not in sympathy with [the] nobility & exquisite spirituality of his great creations.’ !!! ‘Spirituality’ of a woman who lets down her back hair, unhooks her dress – throws herself upon a man yelling out ‘kiss me John’ &c &c. I don’t mind what she does to the Reverend neuter. Let spirituality be blamed! He is the largest kind of ass Caine has yet invented – & that is saying a good deal. That I have no sympathy with his people may be a cause for his regret – but not for the stoppage of my fees.49 In the end it was Wilson Barrett’s version of The Manxman, not The Christian which hit the stage, starting in Leeds and playing in London at the Shaftesbury, in Manchester, and then touring America. As befitted a major production of a popular novel by a well-regarded actor-manager, working at the centre of British theatre, and often setting its standards, Barrett’s version of The Manxman received wide notice. The anonymous reviewer of The Sketch opens his review with the impossibility of adaptation: Among the impossible tasks that can be set, such as weaving ropes of sand which used to perplex the Evil One, is that of making a dramatic version

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of a notable novel which will do justice to the original. There are people who put a greater value on ‘The Manxman’ as a book than I do, yet I must admit it is a work of some nobility as well as excessive length […] Mr. Hall Caine’s method is to build up his characters carefully and laboriously; […] Unfortunately, or fortunately, whatever may be his quality, even to a Shaksperian degree, we do not allow a large canvas to the dramatist. […] I do not mean to say that [The Manxman] at the Shaftesbury is not an interesting, excellent, melodrama, but it is nothing more. This reviewer’s summary assessment of the play was very much Caine’s rather frustrated account of its production, as he wrote to Watts-Dunton, his mentor and confidant in his literary career: Do try to pardon my silence. I have been worried beyond expression. The rehearsals have given me the heart-ache. I thought the essential study of the piece was being quite whittled away with the familiar, & no doubt pardonable thought of avoiding offence. Rows, hard work etc etc. But the ways are now going more smoothly & I shall be no longer unwilling that you should be a spectator of our troubles. No rehearsal to-day, an imperfect one to-morrow, but I think a complete one on Friday. I’m writing to ask, & will wire to-morrow morning [illegible] if Friday will do for you. The dress rehearsal on Monday night, I trust you’ll be able to come. I’ll let you know the hour. Barrett will send you seats for the first night. Between ourselves my heart is utterly sick of melodrama. It is nothing on God’s earth but serious farce. I’ll do no more of such stuff if I can avoid it. But mum’s the word on this head, or Heaven knows what thunders may light on me. A man of half the talents can do such balderdash twice as well. However, nobody knows this better than Barrett, who is an able & excellent fellow.50 Over a decade later in his autobiography, My Story, Caine’s public assessment of Barrett is as generous, and rather less dismissive: I realised […] that I had been working in a medium that was new to me, and not all the supernatural wisdom I had won in earlier days as a dramatic critic had taught me the hundred and one technical tricks that are necessary to success on the stage. What Barrett himself did to make my first play a practical effort it is unnecessary to say, but sure I am that without his knowledge of the ‘ropes’ of the theatre the dramatic instinct on which my friend Blackmore had counted to produce ‘a grand and moving drama’ would have gone for nothing, and, conscious of this, I insisted on coupling Barrett’s name with mine when the play came to be produced.51


Clement Scott uses the occasion of The Manxman to muse on the nature and potentials of adaptation, writing in the Illustrated London News that: To my mind the end of ‘The Manxman’ is grandly dramatic. Would it not have been possible to give on the stage that distant salute of the passing vessel taking poor Pete away from the island of misery, whilst Philip and Kate, clean and confessed, stood hand in hand, boldly facing the inevitable? Here, then, was the dramatic Manxman of my imagination. I wanted Philip to be a mixture of the hero of ‘The Scarlet Letter’ and of Judah Llewellyn and of Sidney [sic] Carton and of Siddhartha – any hero, in fact, whose life was an embodiment of self-sacrifice. And then, of course, one’s mind wandered off in search of a hero for such a romance. Now it was Henry Irving. All who have seen him as Mathias and Eugene Aram knew what a Philip he might have been. Now it was Forbes Robertson. He has played in ‘The Scarlet Letter’ to perfection: what an ideal picturesque Philip he would have been! Now it was E. S. Willard. A man who could play Judah Llewellyn as superbly was bound to satisfy as Philip.52 Scott’s reading of the novel here has supplied him with an adaptation of his imagination, against which he measures the live show on the Shaftesbury stage, but that imagined realisation is notably an amalgam of novel and stage shows: the heroes and the titles mentioned are from Scott’s experiences of stage melodrama, although the titles are also titles of novels. Scott’s response is part of the circulation of plots, ideas, imagined and realised stage pictures across media which is typical of popular culture. Scott’s framing of his experience is typical of the ways that novels came into popular discourse throughout the nineteenth century and, indeed, still do. Although Caine had a vast readership, dramatisations of his novels placed those novels centrally – visually and physically – in his audience’s consciousness, and even more noticeably through their adaptation in the early film industry. In the case of The Manxman, adaptation throws a spotlight on what Philip Cox notes from the early decades of the century: the instability of generic categories, and their respective and relative places in the hierarchy of the arts.53 In these commentaries, melodrama is apparently both inevitable but unsatisfactory. The most positive critique of The Manxman was published in the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, which pronounced that the play: may or may not be a really adequate version of Mr. Hall Caine’s novel ‘The Manxman’. For our own part we do not think it is, for we miss from the drama the elevation of tone and the poetry of treatment we found in the original story. But even if this be so it does not follow that ‘The Manxman’ fails to hit its mark on the stage. It is, as a matter of fact, a sound, straightforward, domestic drama, broad and simple in

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characterisation, effective in situation, and in spite of some rather highfalutin passages of dialogue, a good deal better written than most works of its order.54 ‘Sound, straightforward, domestic drama’ was damning with faint praise, but identifying too a sense of disappointment, of failure implicit in a major cultural and indeed economically essential practice of the theatre industry throughout the nineteenth century. Yet this critical response is in contradistinction to audience desire and pleasure, and in clear opposition to the aesthetic and commercial practices of several generations of theatre managers. Obviously, melodramatic adaptations of novels did something for spectators that critics were unwilling to write about. Critical investments in aesthetic hierarchies, emerging from pronouncements about the decorums and proprieties of art from institutions such as the Royal Academy and high cultural gatekeeping over theatrical ‘legitimacy’ at the beginning of the nineteenth century, still had substantial currency value at the end of that century. The Manxman revolves around the divided-hero type made so popular by Barrett in The Silver King. Philip Christian – the Manxman – is the island’s Deemster, an inherited position which places him socially far above Kate, the woman he loves. The farm labourer, Pete Quilliam, loves Kate, who promises to marry him on his return from seeking his fortune in the Kimberley mines, although she yearns after Philip. While Pete is away, Philip and Kate become close, but Philip arrogantly refuses to marry her, because he dare not; Kate accuses him of cowardice because ‘Kitty Cregeen the tavern keepers [sic] daughter is not fit to be the Deemsters [sic] wife’.55 The inevitable happens: Pete returns from South Africa and marries Kate. She runs away, seeking out Philip, and telling him that her child is his. Although there are powerful scenes between Kate and Philip throughout, the final scenes focus on the complex emotional relationship of Philip and Pete. Brought up as brothers, but separated by rank and wealth, it is Pete and Philip who close the performance with a public revelation of the chasm in their relationship: Philip: Punishment? Do you know the meaning of the word – you brave true soul – Does any man as honest as you are know what it is to be a villian [sic] – a liar – a hound with a conscience? Strike and strike hard – and as the axe falls my punishment ends – Punishment? Release – surcease from torture – Let me tell you the sentence I the judge has passed upon myself. To live on despised by those I have despised – to strip the robes of office from my own shoulders – and in the hall of justice – plead guilty to treachery and hypocrisy to the truest man – to strip the mask from my own false face – the shield from my own false heart– and with all my hideous festering sins naked to the world live among those who now honour me – dishonoured – hated – a thing of contempt to the


most contemptable [sic] – a bye word even to the children. That is my sentence – Answer Pete is justice done?56 Philip’s articulation of his divided self closes the play, and stages a powerful expression of vulnerable masculinity. Barrett’s melodramas provided mainstream vehicles for the expression of strong feeling in a culture where emotion could appear devalued in the processes of getting and spending, through heavily policed gender practices and behaviours in everyday life and through performance. Sara Ahmed argues that emotion is generally conceptualised as bodily, feminine and ‘“beneath” the faculties of thought and reason’.57 However, in Barrett’s melodramas, the focus on the feeling individual is very pointedly a focus on masculine feeling, on a hero whose heroic status is morally compromised, but rescued through spiritual (or specifically religious) revival. His career offers insights into the cultural politics of emotion as performed through the masculine body and Victorian types of masculinity. Barrett’s most famous and enduring play, The Sign of the Cross, has been discussed as a ‘toga play’, communicating a Ruskinian message of ethical and aesthetic harmony. In form and genre it is also a melodrama, and typical of the form in its emotionalism, morality and attention to the suffering individual of humble status. As the performance practices of melodrama developed in the nineteenth century, melodrama’s combination of a morality and artistic conventions could be adapted to communicate a strong and direct sense of spiritual revival through clear aesthetic conventions as part of the Ruskinian ethos. The results indicate the ways in which a popular, ephemeral form could embody what Ruskin argued was the ethical and aesthetic educative function of art. What is also striking is the way in which melodrama served to channel strong emotions into acceptable expressions of feeling. However, these feelings constantly threatened to overflow their conventional vessels. In 1896, William Archer denounced The Sign of the Cross in a vituperative review which used the play as the starting point for a general condemnation of melodrama as garbage.58 A year later, Archer returned to the shortcomings of The Sign of the Cross in his review of Barrett’s latest play, The Daughters of Babylon, in The Theatrical ‘World’ of 1897. Such dismissals of melodrama are not unusual in the period, but Archer’s response is notable for the strength of his response to the play, and his apparently obsessive repetition of this theme. In his review of Daughters of Babylon, Archer spends almost three pages on The Sign of the Cross again, asserting that this ‘brutal and vulgar spectacle’ is ‘neither low art nor bad art, but no art at all [… which] remains […] beyond the range of criticism’.59 Anyone who admires The Sign of the Cross, argued Archer, ‘does not know what art is’, whereas those with whom Archer shared common ground: do not require any demonstration, from me or anyone else, that The Sign of the Cross is, artistically speaking, a thing beyond the pale. Its popularity is a

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phenomenon of a certain interest to all who concern themselves about the stage. It is a fact, like any other; and it is useless to close our eyes to facts. But there is a vast difference between recognising the fact and criticising the play. Its admirers and champions complain bitterly that I have never criticised it – and they are right. I have simply denounced it from the first.60 Archer’s investment in opposing popular melodrama was tied up with his championship of new writing and the work of Ibsen in particular. What is fascinating here is Archer’s horrified fixation with the continuing existence and influence of The Sign of the Cross. He returns to it as if fascinated by its forbidden, ‘not-art’ status, almost neurotically dividing his audience into those who understand him, and so need no further discussion with him, and those who do not understand him, and as a consequence can no longer be in dialogue with him. A play like The Sign of the Cross is, in Archer’s critical framework, unspeakable. Yet it was a fact. Barrett’s ability to make his audience feel without caveat is richly documented in his performance as Marcus in The Sign of the Cross. The Barrett family papers preserve an extraordinary series of letters from individual spectators who express their responses to his plays and performances. Here is a sample: 1. I heard you for the first time in the ‘Sign of the Cross’ last year, at the Theatre Royal, and I shall never, never forget you. You took me away from Scotland, and placed me in Imperial Rome, – I forgot everything else. I cannot explain the strange feeling, that wrung my heart during the play, – or, how glad I was that ‘Marcus’ had not forsaken ‘Mercia’ but would die with her, – It was such a triumph. Since then I have seen several London companies, with ‘Stars’ too, but there was not one a quarter so nice as yours. We often spoke of ‘Mercia’ & ‘Marcus,’ for so we called you, somehow it came easier, – and longed for your return. When I learned you were coming I was overjoyed, I had longed so much to hear Miss Maud Jefferies’s voice again – it had rung in my ears for months, ‘Give up all that thou hast and follow me.’61 2. I am not going to bother you with a long letter but I feel I must tell you how your piece (I cannot call it a play as I consider it sacred) has influenced my life since seeing it I am a changed man till then I never knew what Christianity was. Your piece showed me myself in my true colours and saved me from a life of misery and degradation and now I can truthfully say ‘Christ has triumphed’.62 3. However, the play [The Lord Harry] is one that does credit to the stage it is simply beautiful and as an admirer of the stage and the beauties of it I cannot let it pass without conveying my humble opinion. Which is that you deserve a good word in every family circle throughout the land for always endeavouring to place an entertainment before the theatrical


world wholesome, pure, entertaining and elevating – and I hope my dear Mr. Barrett that God in his goodness will spare you long to do so; helping you also in your undertaking to counteract the miserable muck that many are lured to get before.63 4. I am only a poor country parson, & the 3/4 of an hour spent outside the pit today previous to the opening of the Doors were indeed well rewarded by the most wonderful sermon I have ever heard – Would that more actors could devote their talents in trying to make the world better – Would that more of us clergy could devote our time to rendering the story of the Cross so that we like Mercia might win the best of men as she won Marcus to sacrifice all; – yea Life itself – for the Master’s sake. To win souls for CHRIST must be done by Purity of Life and total self dedication to Him. Marcus & Mercia – Nero & Stephanus will never fade from my memory. I go back to the loneliness of my Parish in a lovely part of Essex to work with, I pray God, greater zeal & greater devotion to CHRIST – all because of what you, under God, have been allowed to do for the greatest & noblest Cause in the world.64 5. Dear Sir, Having witnessed The Performance, namely The Sign of the Cross, about 20 Times and Knowing almost every word Spoken I am Pleased To State that is the Best Play i have Ever Wittnessed in my life being most Sensational, Comic, and Pathetic. There is one Point about it that i Should much like To be enlightened upon. Namely where it is Stated, do thou no Longer Love Ancaria. i Thought that the only 2 Rival Lovers where Mercia and Berenis, (unless Ancaria is a Gay woman of those Times whom Marcus once Loved) Pardon Me for writing on This Subject, has i Should Much Like To understand it. I am Sir your most Obedient Servant. J Bailey c/o of J. Hill & co Furniture Dealers Waterloo Rd S. E. (A Working Man)65 And, as a seal of the play’s and Barrett’s respectability, there is the famous letter from William Gladstone, subsequently reproduced in a souvenir programme of The Sign of the Cross: Though little weight can justly be attached to my judgement I cannot but think that the piece displays a strong dramatic spirit a lofty aim and much judgement and tact as well as force in the management of a difficult dialogue. You seem to me to have rendered, while acting strictly within the lines of the Theatre, a great service to the best and holiest of all causes, the

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cause of Faith, the audience which showed reasonable self-government even in the smaller points, appreciated most highly the passages which were most directly associated with this service and with the fundamental idea of the piece. And I rejoice to hear of the wide and warm approval which the piece has received most of all because its popularity betokens sound leanings and beliefs in the mass of the people and shows you acted nobly as well as boldly in placing your reliance upon them.66 The striking thing about these letters is the openness of feeling and the strength of emotion, particularly as it is expressed through religious feeling and from male correspondents. Setting aside questions of belief and faith (although these are not negligible), there is a strong assumption that the theatre, and these melodramas particularly, are the appropriate cultural and social spaces in which spectators can experience something they do not or cannot experience elsewhere. Furthermore, Barrett’s career and his engagements with the canonical figure of Ruskin demonstrate that delineations of high and popular culture were permeable in theory and also in lived professional and aesthetic practice. Barrett’s career and his reflections on the theatre also demonstrate a level of self-awareness of the aesthetic, the pedagogical, and more broadly the social roles of the theatre, in ways which hitherto have been attributed to proponents of Modernism and the avant-garde. Barrett offers an example of what Peter Bailey calls ‘popular modernity’.67 However, Barrett’s modernity is not inflected with a radical or democratic imperative, but finds its constituency in the middle-brow middle class. In melodrama, Barrett places the ‘feeling individual’ at the centre of the drama, the spectacle and the publicity, and argues for a moral and an aesthetic understanding of the world through the emotion as well as the intellect. But this was not primarily achieved in terms set out by the advocates of the literary drama, but through a pursuit of the popular commercial mainstream. The cultural work here for the Victorians was a renewal of the importance of theatricality and theatrical representation within the framework of conventions of Victorian morality, an important point in a period when performance, theatricality – what we might now call performativity – were contentious and treacherous fractured ground. Barrett’s career, his ‘renovation’ of the melodrama, his connections with such canonical figures as John Ruskin, suggests we need to overhaul our narratives of the theatre, particularly as a national cultural institution which reflects, represents and constructs identity, to allow us to think through the implications of the endurance of a popular mainstream and commercial theatre as a central aesthetic and pedagogical experience in British culture, although such theatrical experience in the nineteenth century has been written out of the historical narrative and our historiographical practice.


Victorian melodrama had an ambivalent relationship with the social realities in which its audiences lived outside the walls of the theatre. The rhetoric of reality – recognisable sets, locations, character types – which is a feature of melodrama throughout the century was one of the ways in which audiences were offered a means to make sense of the world around them.68 Audiences were invited to make connections between the fictional worlds created onstage and the material world offstage, and as Bailey argues, such popular entertainments could help audiences adapt, learn and negotiate their way through the new world of modern industry and leisure. Of course, as David Mayer points out, melodrama is a fluid genre, which changes significantly across the nineteenth century.69 In this way, melodrama was one of the most modern forms of cultural production in the nineteenth century. The stage took on the machinery and technologies of modernity in theatrical producers’ constant search for sensation and novelty, and playwrights and actors sought to reflect the realities of their audiences’ lives in their performances. However, melodrama’s potential radicalism, and its desire to ‘speak truth to power’ through its representation of the intense emotion nascent in the lives of ordinary people, was a constant challenge to governing social structures, as demonstrated by the continued imposition of stage censorship throughout the century. If a stage melodrama never caused audiences to rush to the barricades of social revolution, it could, as Douglas Jerrold maintained in the 1820s, ‘set before the world the heroism of the poor’.70 In so doing, the theatre offered a potent vehicle for social critique. What is to be gained by identifying and articulating the Ruskinian influences in a handful of late nineteenth century melodramas? The lens of Ruskin’s aesthetic and social theories offers several new views of this wellworn area of the Victorian theatre, as well as reflecting back to us a different Ruskin. Ruskin as a man of the theatre is intrigued by the displays of popular art in its modern forms, for all his avowed violent Toryism and opposition to materialistic commerce. The web of connections between Barrett, Jones and Hall Caine is in large part attributable to their individual engagements with Ruskin’s work, and their recognition of his central ethic of the power of art to elevate and educate a mass audience. The plots, characters and emotions of melodrama also sought to protect older, pre-industrial bonds of community, religious, personal and class relationships. This radical conservatism is a constant feature of melodrama throughout the period. As a form of social commentary it has much in common with Ruskin’s late works and his specific comments – public and private – about the theatre and its professionals. Seeing this mainstream stage melodrama through the lens of ‘Ruskinian theatre’ offers a way out of historiographical binaries and value judgements; it also clarifies and articulates the cultural and political work done by melodrama in the social positioning of emotion, particularly strong emotion expressed by male characters. The ‘feeling individual’, so central to a politi-

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cal understanding of melodrama in the heyday of melodrama as a popular and potentially radical entertainment in the 1820s and 1830s, links politics to the personal and private emotions of the spectator, in the service of a traditional morality, but through non-traditional means. Strong religious feeling allows the anti-theatricality of Victorian ethics and morality to be set aside, and works as a conduit for other feeling to be expressed. For Ruskin, the cultural work of emotional expression (although he would never have used such a phrase) is implicit in all his writings on art and society. Knowledge can only lead to understanding, argues Ruskin repeatedly, through right thinking. And this is a process of moral cognition which must involve the heart as well as the head.

6 Pantomime

Apart from Shakespeare and comedy, Ruskin’s other great theatrical passion was the pantomime. The distinctive Victorian pantomime emerged in the middle of the nineteenth century. Its predecessor, the Regency pantomime, was the clown-centred harlequinade, which reached its apogee during the pre-eminence of Joseph Grimaldi (1806–37), who both performed in and staged pantomimes. The Regency pantomime had a short one or two scene ‘opening’ with a plot derived from fairy story, nursery rhyme, myth, legend and the much longer harlequinade in which the characters of the opening were transformed into the characters of the Commedia dell’arte – harlequin, columbine and pantaloon – engaged in a knockabout sequence of song, dance and acrobatics. The largely dialogue-less form of the Regency pantomime was dictated by the 1737 Licensing Act, which gave a monopoly of the spoken word on stage to the patent theatres, Drury Lane and Covent Garden. Also, the pantomime was performed to a largely adult audience, not just at Christmas but four times a year: Lord Mayor’s Day (9 November) and the period following; Boxing Day (26 December) and following days; Easter Monday or Whit Monday and the following period; and early July.1 However, the passing of the Theatre Regulation Act of 1843 signalled a major shift in the nature of the genre. This act abolished the patent theatres’ monopoly of the spoken word and opened up the use of dialogue to all theatres. This had a direct effect on the ‘opening’, which now got longer and longer, revelling in the linguistic freedom allowed by rhyming couplets, the ability to pun and the chance to comment on current events. At the same time, another popular form was grafted onto the pantomime. This was the extravaganza, which burlesqued popular legends and folk tales and combined this with glittering spectacle. The form, first seen in Olympic Revels (1831), was largely the work of J.R. Planché (1796–1880). The previous dominance of Harlequin and Columbine was challenged by the rise of the principal boy and the dame as the characteristic figures of the pantomime. The principal boy, a female performer in male dress, appeared due to the success of Madame Vestris in the breeches roles in the Lyceum extravaganza. 140

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The dame, a man in drag, appeared in the wake of recruitment of music hall performers into pantomime casts. The pantomime came to be restricted to the Christmas season and its audience widened to include the whole family. So the opening lengthened and the harlequinade shrank. By the 1890s the opening ran to several hours and the harlequinade to a couple of scenes. The attractions of the pantomime were now spectacle, lavish ballet sequences, troupes of child performers, music hall favourites and high quality scene painting. The transformation in the nature of the pantomime makes it as a genre a manifestation of the phenomenon described by Diane Purkiss: ‘It is in Victorian England that fairyland […] undergoes a popular explosion. Fairies, elves, gnomes and small winged things of every kind multiply into swarms and infest writing and art and the minds of men and women.’2 France and Germany were the home of the fairy tale in the eighteenth century. England was not, due to the suppression of literary fairy tales by the forces of Puritanism. In France and Germany in the work of Charles Perrault, Madame d’Aulnoy, E.T.A. Hoffman and the Brothers Grimm, the fairy tale became a new art form and the expression of the new Romantic sensibility, which included a fascination with the supernatural. In England the fairy tale was revived as part of the reaction against the regimentation, depersonalisation and materialism associated with the Industrial Revolution and the factory system. New fairy tales were written in the 1840s and 1850s in particular to critique the failings of the urban and industrial world of the nineteenth century.3 Collections of fairy tales began to appear in English. In 1823 and 1826 there appeared an English translation by Edgar Taylor of Grimms’ Fairy Tales, German Popular Stories, illustrated by Cruikshank. It has been called ‘the most important publication to stimulate an awakened interest in fairy tales by children and adults’.4 In 1827 Carlyle published a selection of German fairy tales in two volumes, German Romances. In 1840 there was a translation by Edwin Lane of tales from the Arabian Nights. In 1846 the first translation of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales appeared. In addition, new fairy stories were being written by noted writers in England, among them Dickens, Carlyle, Thackeray, Hood and Ruskin. The King of the Golden River, written in 1841 for his future wife Effie Gray, was Ruskin’s contribution to the genre. It was not published until 1850, just in time for Christmas, and was illustrated by Dicky Doyle, the noted illustrator; it was an instant hit. Four more editions were published in 1851 and eventually 130 different editions appeared in a wide variety of languages. A cross between Dickens and the Brothers Grimm, with echoes of earlier fairy tales, Cinderella, Puss in Boots and The Yellow Dwarf, and with a characteristically Ruskinian celebration of the beauties of the Alps, it told the story of three brothers, Schwartz, Hans and Gluck. The two elder brothers


were grasping, cruel and ugly; the youngest was good-looking, kindly and good-natured. The eldest two exploited the land, killed off the animals, profiteered from their neighbours, oppressed and exploited their workers and ill-treated their youngest brother. They were the unacceptable face of capitalism. A little old gentleman, the South West Wind Esquire, ill-treated by the two elder brothers and well treated by the youngest, devastates their house and land and causes a drought, wiping out the property of the brothers. They become goldsmiths, melting down their plate and adulterating it with copper. They create a gold mug in the shape of a little old man. He comes to life as a golden dwarf, the King of the Golden River. He says that whoever pours three drops of holy water into the cataract in the Treasure Valley will turn it into gold, but anyone who uses unholy water will be turned into a black stone. Hans steals holy water, goes up the mountain and refuses refreshment to a dog, a child and an old man dying of thirst he encounters on the way. He is turned into a black stone. Schwartz gets holy water from a bad priest and similarly denies the three in need of refreshment; he is also turned into a black stone. Gluck does give them water and the King of the Golden River tells him that water refused to those in need is unholy, hence the fate of his brothers. But Gluck’s actions cause a new river to spring up which revives the valley, the desert becomes a garden and the boy’s inheritance, lost because of cruelty, is regained by love. It is, like Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and Kingsley’s The Water Babies, a celebration of Christian charity and compassion and a denunciation of exploitative and materialistic capitalism. Where almost all the fairy tales of the 1840s and 1850s were allegorical critiques of modern industrial capitalism, the genre diverged from 1860 onwards as the majority of writers of fairy stories sought to reconcile their readers to the status quo (for example, Mrs Craik, Andrew Lang and E. Nesbit) while a minority questioned the existing social structure and values (Lewis Carroll, George MacDonald and Oscar Wilde). There is however a strong feminine, sometimes even feminist, strain in the writing of both male and female fairy story writers, with the foregrounding of strong female characters. At the same time fairies were desexualised and linked with the idea of childhood innocence. This is very clear in Ruskin’s writing on the subject. Ruskin not only wrote a significant fairy story himself but he persuaded the publisher J.C. Hotten in 1869 to reissue Edgar Taylor’s edition of Grimms’ Fairy Tales, German Popular Stories, originally published in two series in 1823 and 1826, complete with the Cruikshank illustrations. Ruskin himself contributed an introductory essay. The volume was to be frequently reprinted. Ruskin declared himself dissatisfied with recent stories for children. Some of them were too satirical and aimed as much at adults as at children: Children should laugh, but not mock; and when they laugh, it should not be at the weaknesses and faults of others. They should be taught, as

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far as they are permitted to concern themselves with the characters of those around them, to seek faithfully for good, not to lie in wait maliciously to make themselves merry with evil; they should be too painfully sensitive to wrong, to smile at it; and too modest to constitute themselves its judges […] As the simplicity of the sense of beauty has been lost in recent tales for children, so also the simplicity of their conception of love (CW 19.234). Love, he described as ‘that word which, in the heart of a child, should represent the most constant and vital part of its being, which ought to be the sign of the most solemn thoughts that inform its awakening soul’. He deplored the tendency of parents to use amusement to instruct children rather than teach them themselves: Parents who are too indolent and self-indulgent to form their children’s characters by wholesome discipline, or in their own habits and principles of life are conscious of setting before them no faultless example, vainly endeavour to substitute the persuasive influence of moral precept, intruded in the guise of amusement, for the strength of moral habit compelled by righteous authority (CW 19.235). He had a clear view of the nature of children: ‘A child should not need to choose between right and wrong; it should not be capable of wrong; it should not conceive of wrong.’ A child should be obedient, truthful, gentle, strong and self-commanding. ‘Children so trained have no need of moral fairy tales’ but they will find in the old traditions honestly delivered ‘a teaching for which no other can be substituted, and of which the power cannot be measured’. Crucially he argues that fairy tales are remnants of old historic traditions and despite changes and modifications to fit new manners and the new temper of the times, they remain essentially true. They derive from the time when there were walled cities, full of bustling life, surrounded by ‘bright and unblemished country’ with ‘the calm enchantment of pastoral and woodland scenery’. This contrast leads to the invention ‘instinctively of spiritual forms of wildness and beauty […] mingling always in its fancy humorous and vulgar circumstances’ derived from the life of the town with ‘pathetic ones’ from the spirituality of the countryside. In this account he could almost be describing the formula of the classic Victorian pantomime, which may be one reason he was so drawn to the form (CW 19.232–9). It is clear that Ruskin was part of the cultural mainstream in his advocacy of the value of fairy stories. It was a mainstream that included Dickens and later Chesterton. Ruskin’s views on fairy stories were still being quoted as authoritative at the end of the nineteenth century.5 When in 1853 the artist George Cruikshank, who had become a fervent campaigner for total abstinence, issued the first number of a projected Fairy


Library, retelling the story of ‘Hop O’ My Thumb’ with a strong injection of preachment against the demon drink, Dickens wrote an essay for Household Words (1 October 1853) denouncing and ridiculing the project. He wrote in a Ruskinian vein: We may assume that we are not singular in entertaining a very great tenderness for the fairy literature of our childhood. What enchanted us then, and is captivating a million of young fancies now, has, at the same blessed time of life, enchanted vast hosts of men and women who have done their long day’s work, and laid their grey heads down to rest. It would be hard to estimate the amount of gentleness and mercy that has made its way among us through these slight channels. Forbearance, courtesy, consideration for the poor and aged, kind treatment of animals, the love of nature, abhorrence of tyranny and brute force – many such good things have been first nourished in the child’s heart by this powerful aid. It has greatly helped to keep us, in some sense, ever young, by preserving through our worldly ways one slender track not overgrown with weeds, where we may walk with children, sharing their delights. In a utilitarian age, of all other times, it is a matter of grave importance that Fairy tales should be respected […] To preserve them in their usefulness, they must be as much preserved in their simplicity, and purity and innocent extravagance, as if they were actual fact. Whoever alters them to suit his own opinions, whatever they are, is guilty to our thinking, of an act of presumption.6 He went on to retell the story of Cinderella with the heroine a member of the Band of Hope, Prince Charming a campaigner for total abstinence and the glass slipper the result of a campaign by the Fairy Godmother for sensible and rational dress. This provoked a fierce controversy with Cruikshank, whose version of Cinderella when it appeared in 1854 was indeed a temperance sermon which, it has been said, outparodied even Dickens’ parody. But the Cruikshank series was thereafter killed by ridicule. The ethical value of fairy tales was stressed by G.K. Chesterton who declared: My first and last philosophy, that which I believe in with unbroken certainty, I learnt in the nursery […] The things I believed most then, the things I believe most now, are the things called fairy tales. They seem to me to be the entirely reasonable things […] If I were describing them in detail I could note many noble and healthy principles that arise from them. There is the chivalrous lesson of ‘Jack the Giant Killer’; that giants should be killed because they are gigantic. It is a manly mutiny against pride as such […] There is the lesson of ‘Cinderella’, which is the same as that of the Magnificat – exaltavit humiles. There is the great lesson of ‘Beauty and the Beast’; that a thing must be loved before it is loveable.

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There is the terrible allegory of the ‘Sleeping Beauty’, which tells how the human creature was blessed with all birthday gifts, yet cursed with death; and how death also may perhaps be softened to a sleep.7 Interestingly the views of commentators like Ruskin, Dickens and Chesterton were formalised in the education system. An amendment to the 1882 Education Code made it compulsory to teach one third of all literacy lessons from reading books which told ‘simple stories from English history’. These historical reading books usually began with stories from the distant past and deliberately interwove fact and fable. The followers of the educational theorist Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776–1841) went even further, positively recommending using fairy tales to teach literacy because they appealed to the child’s emotion and imagination and contained simple moral lessons. Catherine I. Dodd in her Introduction to the Herbartian Principles of Teaching (1901) asked which of the histories of Jack the Giant Killer, the Black Prince or Mr Gladstone was most suitable for teaching a child of five and concluded it was Jack the Giant Killer, a hero who accorded ‘with the child’s taste and understanding, because Jack belongs to the same stage of culture as the child’.8 In her proposed scheme of reading for primary schools, she suggested, for children of four, nursery rhymes (Mother Goose, Queen of Hearts, etc.) and fairy tales (Sleeping Beauty, the Three Bears, Jack the Giant Killer, the Ugly Duckling, etc.), for children of five, Grimms’ and Andersen’s fairy tales and then for children of six, the Greek myths.9 There was a strong tradition of fairy painting in Victorian England, as exemplified by the work of Richard Dadd, Joseph Noel Paton, Dicky Doyle, John Anster Fitzgerald (known as ‘Fairy Fitzgerald’) and Arthur Rackham, who illustrated Barrie’s Peter Pan, one of the later and most influential celebrations of fairies. A Midsummer Night’s Dream inspired 135 paintings between 1750 and 1900, chiefly of the fairy scenes.10 Some of the fairy painting was dark, sinister and disturbing, particularly the work of Dadd who went mad, murdered his father and spent the rest of his life in a lunatic asylum where he continued to paint fairyland. Ruskin was a powerful advocate of the school of fairy painting, but he preferred the more wholesome and innocent creations of Kate Greenaway and Helen Allingham.11 Ruskin devoted one of the six lectures that made up The Art of England to ‘Fairyland’. In it he claimed to have been brought up ‘principally on fairy legends’ and to entertain a predilection for them (CW 33.327). In considering fairyland painting, he calls it ‘the art which intends to address only childish imagination, and whose object is primarily to entertain with grace […] and […] with as much seriousness as an entirely fictitious subject may admit of, seeing that it touches the border of the higher world which is not fictitious’. He singles out Shakespeare’s fairy verse in A Midsummer Night’s Dream as an example of the best approach to fairyland, and the opening of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Iolanthe, with its fairies dancing round a cabstand and


the Queen of the Fairies falling in love with a sentry, as the worst, as a vulgarisation and defamation of a great tradition. He favours the traditional fairy story and also the traditional fable ‘expanded into narrative which gives a true account of the life of animals, supposing them to be endowed with human intelligence, directed to the interests of their animal life’ (CW 33.335). He believes that ‘we are able to foster the fancy, up to the point of influencing our feelings and character in the strongest way; and for the strength of that healthy imaginative faculty, and all the blending of the good and grace […] we are wholly responsible. We may cultivate it to what brightness we choose, merely by living in a quiet relation with natural objects and great and good people, past or present’ (CW 37.330–1). He denounces ‘the coarse delight in mere pain and crisis of danger, which in our infidel art and literature for the young, fills our books of travel with pictures of alligators swallowing children, hippopotami upsetting canoes full of savages, bears on their hind-legs doing battle with northern navigators, avalanches burying Alpine villages, and the like’ (CW 33.335). Not wishing to dwell longer on the ‘fallacies in representation either of the fairy or the animal kingdom’, he passes ‘to the happier duty of returning thanks for the truth with which our living painters have drawn for us the lovely dynasty of little creatures, about whose reality there can be no doubt; and who are at once the most powerful of fairies, and the most amusing, if not always the most sagacious, of animals’ (CW 33.338). He associates fairies directly with children, pointing out that neither Greek nor Gothic art gave any conception of children. But this changed with the rise of Christianity: ‘From the moment when the spirit of Christianity had been entirely interpreted to the Western races, the sanctity of womanhood worshipped in the Madonna, and the sanctity of childhood in unity with that of Christ, became the light of every honest hearth, and the joy of every pure and chastened soul.’ It took two centuries for this to affect art, but it did so in the child angels of ‘Luca, Mino of Fesole, Luini, Angelico, Perugino, and the first days of Raphael’. The children in Rubens, Rembrandt, Van Dyck and Reynolds were always beautiful. In England, the painters generally represented ‘the children of the poor as in wickedness or misery’. He is not certain when the position in England began to change, but is inclined to attribute it to the influence of a now forgotten authoress, Mary Russell Mitford: Her village children in the Lowlands – in the Highlands, the Lucy Grays and Alice Fells of Wordsworth brought back to us the hues of Fairy Land, and although long by Academic art denied or resisted, at least the charm is felt in London itself – on pilgrimage in whose suburbs you find the Little Nells and David Copperfields; and in the heart of it, Kit’s baby brother at Astley’s [note the link with childhood innocence and the stage] until at last, bursting out like one of the sweet Surrey fountains,

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all dazzling and pure, you have the radiance and innocence of reinstated infant divinity showered again among the flowers of English meadows by Mrs Allingham and Kate Greenaway (CW 33.339–40). These writers have been insufficiently represented in exhibitions. He praises Helen Allingham’s Tea Party (The Children’s Tea, 1882) as ‘a most lovely example of her feeling and her art’. He regrets the omission of the names of other artists who have protested against the portrayal of children in misery ‘by painting the real inheritance of childhood in the meadows and fresh air. But the graciousness and sentiment of them all is enough represented by the hitherto undreamt-of, and, in its range, unrivalled, fancy, which is now re-establishing throughout gentle Europe, the manners and customs of fairyland’ (CW 33.341–2). He focuses on the work of Kate Greenaway as an example of this movement, displaying a sketch of the dance of fairies under a mushroom which she did as a response to Ruskin asking her to show him what fairies were like. ‘They’ll be very like children’ she said, and Ruskin replied that he did not mind. He praises the delicacy of line, the colour and the pastoral landscape, ‘no railroads [...] no gasworks! no waterworks, no mowing machines, no sewing machines, no telegraph poles, no vestige, in fact, of science, civilization, economical arrangements, or commercial enterprise!!!’ (CW 33.347). He says of her fairy pictures: ‘They are blissful, just in the degree that they are natural; and the fairy land she creates for you is not beyond the sky nor beneath the sea, but nigh you, even at your doors. She does but show you how to see it, and how to cherish. Long since I told you this great law of noble imagination. It does not create, it does not even adorn, it does but reveal, the treasures to be possessed by this spirit.’ He ends with a passionate peroration: Let me tell you yet once more, and if possible, more vehemently, that neither sound art, policy, nor religion, can exist in England, until […] you resolve that the streets which are the habitation of the poor, and the fields which are the playgrounds of their children, shall be again restored to the rule of the spirits, whoever they are in earth, and heaven, that ordain, and reward, with constant and conscious felicity, all that is decent and orderly, beautiful and pure (CW 33.348–9). It is clear, then, that he associated fairies directly with childhood innocence and fairyland with a beautiful and spiritual pre-industrial landscape, an ideal and idealised prelapsarian world. Despite the importance of fairy story books and the vogue for fairy paintings, the place where fairyland came alive for most Victorians was the theatre. As Tracy Davis records: ‘fairies appear in productions from every decade and in every genre […] To some people fairies were commensurate with theatre and theatrical practice, indelible to the idea of theatre as a


metonym of faith in magicality.’12 Part of the appeal to the Victorians of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, of which there were spectacular productions in the nineteenth century by Madame Vestris, Samuel Phelps and Charles Kean, was the fairies. It was an article of faith in Victorian Britain that the fairy tale was one of the highest and purest forms of literature. This extended to its stage manifestations. As The Era put it (30 December 1877), reviewing the children’s fairy ballet Rose and Marie: It has been well said that there is no class of writing that can enthral the imagination, enchain the heart, or influence the fancy of a child like Fairy Lore; and, again, that an implicit belief and unwavering faith in beings endowed with supernatural gifts and possessing unlimited powers are ever prevailing traits in a child’s credulity, and that it is long before this vanishes under the disenchantments of prosaic realities or melts into thin air under the stern actualities of life. What is here set forth may be applied with equal force to the influence of Fairy Lore, not as found in books, but as presented on the stage, and we imagine that there are cases where this influence becomes greatly enhanced if the illustration of the legend selected can be adequately carried out by children themselves. It was the pantomime which was the principal and continuing vehicle for the transmission of fairy lore in its most vivid and immediate form to an audience of both children and adults. The seriousness with which pantomime as a theatrical form was regarded is evidenced by the lengthy coverage annually accorded to it by that venerable organ of national record, The Times, which on 27 December 1850 reported: It is comfortable to reflect that although some colour may be given to the cry of ‘the drama is in decline’, the vogue of pantomime is in nowise diminished. Clown is still the favoured jester who satirises the follies of the day. The public is his king and master, and he uses the same liberty of speech as Sir Dinadam (sic) at the court of King Arthur, or the anonymous fool of Lear. Then quoting Hobbes, Bacon and Socrates, the writer went on to deliver a learned disquisition on humour before tackling the review of the Christmas pantomime at Drury Lane. In the mid-nineteenth century, the pantomime was usually preceded by a full-length play or several pieces, and report after report tells us that the dialogue was drowned out by the audience talking, shouting, even fighting, as they were only there for the pantomime. The Times (27 December 1853) reported ‘last night at Drury Lane was a “boxing night” of the good old

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noisy school, the uproar being based on the established holyday principle, that the pieces preceding the pantomime were played on purpose not to be heard’. Mark Lemon’s sentimental drama Gwyneth Vaughan at least got through to its curtain but Delicate Grounds was ‘damned’ outright, ‘the cast silenced by a storm of hisses and shouts of “Off! Off!”’ and although the stage manager appeared to tell them there was only 20 minutes left of the play, the actors retreated and the curtain fell ‘to the general satisfaction of everyone’. There are regular reports in the early 1850s of the play preceding the pantomime being drowned out by noise that only fell silent when the pantomime began. The intrinsic value of pantomime was confirmed by that most severe and austere of critics, William Archer, the translator and advocate of Ibsen and the theatre of ideas, who, admitting in The Theatrical 'World' of 1893 that ‘the full glory of the mimic world did not burst upon me until I saw a Drury Lane pantomime – Beauty and the Beast’, declared the pantomime ‘a national art form – or perhaps I had better say a national institution’, going on to say: It is, in its essence, an invaluable art-form, far superior to the French revue […] There is room within its infinitely flexible, expansible framework for all sorts of ingenious and delightful developments – for poetry, fantasy, parody, satire, sense, nonsense, the most ingenuous nursery babble and the most penetrating criticism of life. The ideal pantomime should charm the senses, stimulate the imagination, and satisfy the intelligence. It should be an enchanting fairy-tale to the young, to the old a witty, graceful, genially-satiric phantasmagoria. It has this immense advantage over burlesque, that it does not necessarily involve the degradation of anything noble or beautiful. The nursery folk-lore in which it finds its traditional subjects presents just the requisite blending of the graceful with the grotesque.13 Many notable and prominent Victorians were to be found in the audiences at the pantomime. Lewis Carroll was as devoted an attender at the pantomime as Ruskin and for much the same reasons: the visual splendours, the moral messages, the young girls as symbols of innocence. He went every year to E.L. Blanchard’s Drury Lane pantomime, sometimes making return visits. Like Ruskin, he admired the Vokes family. He disliked the harlequinade and usually left before it began. Also like Ruskin, he was fond of and attended all-child pantomimes. He recorded his impressions in his diaries, for instance proclaiming Little King Pippin (1866–7) ‘the most beautiful spectacle I ever saw’. He was so taken with the performance of the young actor Percy Roselle in the title role that he contemplated writing a domestic drama as a vehicle for his talents and sketched out a scenario, but it was deemed unviable by Ellen Terry and Tom Taylor.14 Matthew Arnold took his wife and children to a day performance of the Blanchard pantomime Goody Two Shoes


at Drury Lane in 1863; W.E. Gladstone also went to Goody Two Shoes, which he pronounced ‘most laughable’.15 The undisputed master of this theatrical form was Edward Leman Blanchard (1820–89). A typically prolific mid-Victorian man of letters, he wrote dramas, songs, guide books and theatrical criticism, but he was best known for his pantomimes. For nearly 40 years (1852–89) he wrote the annual Drury Lane pantomime, as well as providing pantomimes for many other theatres. In 1852 alone he had five pantomimes playing at different London theatres. The Illustrated London News (1 January 1876) called him ‘the prince of modern pantomime inventors’. The World called him ‘the genius of pantomime’.16 The magazine Judy presented him with the Ally Sloper Award of Merit as ‘The King of Pantomime Writers’.17 Modern pantomime historian Gerald Frow wrote: ‘He was one of the most prolific, the most literary, the most consistently inventive of pantomime writers, and his work stands as a monument to the charm, grace, prettiness and true delights of Victorian pantomime.’18 The Blanchard pantomime combined a book of inventive rhyming couplets, the imaginative retelling and sometimes interweaving of fairy tales, folk tales and nursery rhymes, beautiful scene painting and moral lessons. Blanchard was the hero of all those who valued the traditional pantomime. The Illustrated London News (2 January 1875) recognised the importance of the moral message when it declared: Might we not find piety in a pantomime and as much ‘good’ in a harlequinade as in ‘everything else’. Every skilful concocter of a pantomime feels that he must provide a meaning for it, and that its idlest scene must have a significance. True it is the product of the wildest fancy: but then fancy is a sacred faculty. To it we are indebted for Spenser’s ‘Fairie Queen’ and Shakespeare’s ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’, works which symbolise spiritualism the most abstruse […] We may suggest that there may be more in a pantomime than meets the ear or the eye […] Of modern pantomime-writers who have thought thus worthily of pantomime-writing and carried their thoughts into act and scene, Mr E.L. Blanchard claims the highest rank. His openings are always carefully written, and his rhymed couplets emulate the elegance of Pope in ‘The Rape of the Lock’ or ‘The Dunciad’. True, the satire is of the mildest form, and ought to be: else, wherefore is the disguise of allegory assured. As important as the moral message was the visual appeal and here the Blanchard pantomimes were able to draw on the talents of one of the greatest scene painters of the nineteenth century, William Roxby Beverley (1814–89). Beverley was the youngest son of William Roxby (1765–1842), a well-known actor-manager who performed under the name William Roxby Beverley. The younger William became a scene painter, working for his father and brothers

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who controlled the Durham circuit of theatres. His first London engagement was in 1839, painting the scenes for the pantomime Baron Munchausen. From 1847 to 1855 he worked at the Lyceum, under the management of Madame Vestris, providing the scenes for among other productions the extravaganzas of J.R. Planché. In his autobiography, Planché, who regarded Beverley as combining the pictorial talent of the artist Clarkson Stanfield and the mechanical ingenuity of the mechanist William Bradwell, expressed some exasperation that Beverley’s scene painting came to overshadow his texts: ‘Year after year Mr Beverley’s powers were tasked to outdo his former outdoings. The last scene became the first in the estimation of the management. The most complicated machinery, the most costly materials, were annually put into requisition […] As to me, I was positively painted out. Nothing was considered brilliant but the last scene.’19 This was because Beverley had perfected the transformation scene, the often spectacular sequence that linked the opening, as the first part was called, and the harlequinade, the traditional clowning sequences. Beverley was also a distinguished watercolourist, exhibiting 29 paintings, mainly seascapes, at the Royal Academy in 1865–80. From 1853 Beverley was Scenic Director of the Italian Opera and was responsible for the scenery of many of the operas produced under the Gye regime. In 1854 he began his association with Drury Lane and painted the scenery both for Shakespeare and the pantomime until 1884, when his eyesight failed and he had to retire. Season after season his scene painting for the annual Blanchard pantomime was lauded. Blanchard did not share Planché’s sense of irritation with the praise accorded to the scene painting. He dedicated the published script of his pantomime Riquet with the Tuft (1863) to ‘Mr William Beverley whose artistic ability and exquisite taste in embellishment for so many years have enabled the Wonders of Fairyland to be realised on the English stage, which he has done so much to adorn by his pictorial skill and poetical fancy’. However, by the 1870s the nature of the pantomime was changing, with the role of the harlequinade increasingly curtailed, prose replacing the rhyming couplets and most significantly the interjection into the stories of music hall comedians and their acts. Augustus Harris Senior (1825–73), who for 27 years was associated with the stage and general management of Covent Garden, was retrospectively accused of beginning the ‘vulgarisation’ of the pantomime and specifically introducing music hall performers into West End pantomime. The key date was said to be 1871 when G.H. MacDermott appeared in Bluebeard at Covent Garden. Soon music hall performers like Harry Nicholls and Herbert Campbell were appearing in pantomimes in both West End and East End.20 It was Harris’ son, Augustus Harris Junior, who set the seal of this development when he took over Drury Lane in 1879. The Christmas pantomime now became a combination of music hall knockabout (with the much loved team of Dan Leno and Herbert Campbell packing the audiences in at Drury Lane) and costly and lavish spectacle, in


particular processions of the Kings and Queens of England, nursery rhyme characters or famous beauties of history. Traditionalists lamented the disappearance of the old elegant, charming and fanciful pantomimes of yesteryear. Typically the critic W. Davenport Adams wrote an article entitled ‘The Decline of Pantomime’ in The Theatre (1 February 1882).21 He denounced the vulgarisation of the pantomime by the introduction of the music hall element, which led to ‘impropriety of word, gesture and “business” which makes so much of our pantomimes unsuited to the youthful ear and eye and […] unpleasant to all people of whatever age, who possess great taste and feeling’. The music hall songs, gags and dances were all out of place and the spectacle of men dressed as women and scantily-dressed women posing as men was gratuitous and deeply distasteful to set before children. Blanchard’s diaries record his increasing distress at the way in which his scripts were distorted and adulterated by Harris to accommodate the music hall favourites. On 19 December 1881, he wrote: ‘Look over the ghastly proofs of my Drury annual [Robinson Crusoe], in which I find my smooth and pointed lines are turned into ragged prose and arrant nonsense. Consider the payment made to me as an equivalent for the harm done to my literary reputation, and shall henceforth look upon it in that light alone.’22 On 26 December 1882, he wrote of Sinbad at Drury Lane: ‘though exquisitely got up, it is a very dreary music-hall entertainment; and for the misprinting and grossly interpolated book I am in no way responsible. It is deservedly hissed at various portions – hardly anything there as I had intended, or spoken as I had written; the music hall element crushing out the rest, and the good old fairy tales never to be again illustrated as they should be’,23 and so it went on until his death in 1889. From the 1870s onwards battle for the soul of the pantomime and the purity of fairyland was joined – and Ruskin was on the side of the angels, or rather the fairies. Ruskin’s most sustained writing on the pantomime came in Fors Clavigera 39 (March 1874), in which he reveals that ‘during the last three weeks, the greater part of my available leisure has been spent between Cinderella and Jackin-the-Box’. He had been to Hengler’s five times to see Cinderella and to Drury Lane for Jack-in-the-Box. He records in his diary his visit to Drury Lane to see Jack-in-the-Box on 22 January 1874, when he noted ‘really enjoyed myself’ (EW 3.772). The pantomime caused him to reflect on escapism, beauty, the mechanisation of society, morality, even republicanism – and there is clear evidence here of that creative intellectual stimulus that theatre provided. He writes that he has spent so much time in the theatre that he has begun to ask himself ‘which is the reality and which the pantomime?’. He concludes: Both are equally real; and the only question is whether the cheerful state of things which the spectators, especially the youngest and wisest, entirely applaud and approve at Hengler’s and Drury Lane, must necessarily be interrupted always by the woeful interlude of the outside world.

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In a clear autobiographical reference, he refers to the contrast between the pantomime and his own real ‘world of sorrow’ – the world of grieving for the ongoing illness and progressive decline of Rose La Touche, the girl he had hoped to marry. She died on 25 May 1875. He wrote: Inside the Circus, there have been wonderful Mr Edward Cooke, and pretty Mademoiselle Aguzzi, and the three brothers Leonard, like the three brothers in a German story, and grave little Sandy, and bright and graceful Miss Hengler, all doing the most splendid feats of strength, and patience and skill. There have been dear little Cinderella and her Prince, and all the pretty children beautifully dressed, taught thoroughly how to behave, and how to dance, and how to sit still, and giving everybody delight that looks at them; whereas, the instant I come outside the door, I find all the children about the streets ill-dressed, and ill-taught, and illbehaved, and nobody cares to look at them (CW 28.51). The Times (27 December 1873) concurred with Ruskin’s view of Cinderella: The pretty tale of ‘Cinderella’ has seldom – perhaps never – assumed a form more attractive than that in which it is now being presented at Hengler’s Circus, Argyll Place, to the delight of childhood and the more sober enjoyment of grown-up people […] The cherished faith of childhood was respected, and probably confirmed by a spectacle which, perhaps to many who looked upon it, appeared for the moment like beautiful reality. Miss Carter, as Cinderella, arrayed for the ball, was sufficiently pretty to satisfy any child’s fancy, and the gilt coach in which she is drawn about by four of the smallest and prettiest ponies was in itself enough to create a large amount of juvenile envy. The prettiest scene of all, however, is the arena, when, as if by magic, it is converted into a ballroom, with statuary, flowers and all the other accessories befitting a Royal entertainment. It is just to add that good taste pervades the whole of the representation, that the dresses are rich and bright, and that the actors […] play their respective parts very satisfactorily. In the pantomime Ruskin finds the beauty, grace and humanity he associated with the true fairy story and which he thinks lacking in the real world of modern industrial society, writing of Jack-in-the-Box: And then, at Drury Lane, there’s just everything I want people to have always got for them, for a little while; and they seem to enjoy them just as I should expect they would. Mushroom Common, with its lovely mushrooms, white and grey, so finely set off by the incognita fairy’s scarlet cloak; the golden land of plenty with furrow and sheath; Buttercup Green, with its flock of mechanical sheep, which the whole audience claps because


they are of pasteboard, as they do the sheep in Little Red Riding Hood because they are alive; but in either case, must have them on the stage in order to be pleased with them, and never clap when they see the creatures in a field outside. They can’t have enough, any more than I can, of the loving duet between Tom Tucker and Little Bo Peep: they would make the dark fairy dance all night long in her amber light if they could; and yet contentedly return to what they call a necessary state of things outside, where their corn is reaped by machinery, and the only duets are between steam and whistles […] They still seem to have human ears and eyes, in the Theatre; to know there, for an hour or two, that golden light, and song, and human skill and grace, are better than smoke-blackness, and shrieks of iron and fire, and monstrous powers of constrained elements. And then they return to their underground railroad, and say ‘This, behold, – this is the right way to move, and live in a real world’ (CW 28.51). The Times (27 December 1873) declared Jack-in-the-Box ‘perhaps the most effective’ of all the pantomimes produced by F.B. Chatterton and written by E.L. Blanchard. ‘Its comic force is not remarkable, but the splendour of its choreographic displays could not be surpassed.’ It called the transformation scene ‘one of the most felicitous products of Mr Beverley’s fancy, being not only beautiful but original’. The pantomime opens in the village of Gotham where the ‘three wise men’ are constructing a bowl in which to go to sea. Prince Felix of the Fortunate Isles arrives, disguised as Tom Tucker, a travelling artisan. He sings a song replete with Ruskinian sentiment: If in lives of honest labour All men do their best, I’m sure Every man must do good to his neighbour Till all are better off than before Cockalorum, King of Cockaigne, arrives on a royal progress and declares that he will give the hand of his daughter, Princess Poppet, in marriage to whoever will give her wealth and lands and common sense. Prince Felix, who already loves her, determines to seek fairy help. He discovers that every 100 years a Fairy Fair is held on Midsummer Eve on Gotham Common. He comes to the aid of an old woman, who turns into Elfina, Queen of the Fairies. Mushrooms spring up and turn into stalls, presided over by fairies. Prince Felix receives a Jack in the Box from one and out of it pops an elf who will do his bidding. He turns up at court and offers Jack in the Box as a present. Princess Poppet accepts it but is too proud to marry a mere artisan. Jack in the Box promises to cure her of her conceit. Jack reduces the King, Princess, Tom and the royal court to child-sized nursery rhyme characters (Princess as Bo Peep, King as Little Jack Horner, etc.) – all played

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by children – and removes them all to Buttercup Green on Nursery Island. There Princess Poppet learns her lesson – patience, economy, industriousness, humility – leading Tom Tucker to say: Why, thus endowed, you’d lead a useful life, And I would marry had I such a wife. There follows the Reformation, Restoration, Reconciliation and Transformation as Jack in the Box returns them to their normal size and identities and they return to the Golden Land of Plenty and the Harvest Home of the Fairies. Prince and Princess are united. Three of King Cockalorum’s ministers were made up to look like Prime Minister W.E. Gladstone, Home Secretary Robert Lowe and Tory leader Benjamin Disraeli, their appearance eliciting a round of applause. Ruskin referred approvingly to the ‘Arcadias of Pantomime’ (CW 27.256), seeing them as representations of an ideal or idealised world, and interestingly, he compares the Church and the pantomime ‘these two theatrical entertainments – where the imaginative congregations still retain some true notions of the value of human and beautiful things’, and ‘also they retain some just notion of the truth, in moral things’. He laments, however, that the audiences fail to take away the moral lessons of the pantomime: In all dramatic representation of Little Red Riding Hood, everybody disapproves of the carnivorous propensities of the Wolf. They clearly distinguish there – as clearly as the Fourteenth Psalm itself – between the class of animal which eats, and the class of animal which is eaten. But once outside the theatre, they declare the whole human race to be carnivorous – and are ready themselves to eat up any quantity of Red Riding Hoods, body and soul, if they can make money by them. He concludes by reflecting that in the pantomime: The whole of the pleasure of life depends on the existence of princes, princesses and Fairies. One never hears of a Republican pantomime; one never thinks Cinderella would be a bit better off if there were no princes. The audience understand that though it is not every good little housemaid who can marry a prince, the world would not be the least pleasanter, for the rest, if there were no princes to marry (CW 28.52). But in the absence of Prince Charming or a Fairy Godmother, then the next best thing for a real life Cinderella will be love. He was much less taken with Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, as he explained in a letter dated 25 February 1867 and published in Time and Tide and also


in the Pall Mall Gazette on 1 March 1867. It was headed ‘The Corruption of Modern Pleasure’. He wrote: I am going to tell you what I was thinking on Friday evening last, in Covent Garden Theatre, as I was looking, and not laughing, at the pantomime of ‘Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves’. Seeing the pantomime caused him to reflect that the working classes deserve more than just a wage large enough to provide lodgings, food and clothes. They deserve entertainment. But there is good entertainment and bad entertainment and Ali Baba was bad entertainment: There are three things to which man is born – labour, and sorrow, and joy. Each of these three things has its baseness and its nobleness. There is base labour, and noble labour. There is base sorrow, and noble sorrow. There is base joy, and noble joy. But you must not think to avoid the corruption of these things by doing without the things themselves. Nor can any life be right that has not all three. Labour without joy is base. Joy without labour is base. Why was Ali Baba bad?: The forty thieves were girls. The forty thieves had forty companions who were girls. The forty thieves and their forty companions were in some way mixed up with about four hundred and forty fairies, who were girls. There was an Oxford and Cambridge boat-race, in which the Oxford and Cambridge men were girls. There was a transformation scene, with a forest, in which the flowers were girls, and a chandelier, in which the lamps were girls, and a great rainbow which was all of girls. Mingled incongruously with these seraphic, and, as far as my boyish experience extends, novel, elements of pantomime, there were yet some of its old and fast-expiring elements. There were, in speciality, two thoroughly good pantomime actors – Mr W.H. Payne and Mr Frederick Payne. All that these two did, was done admirably. There were two subordinate actors, who played, subordinately well, the fore and hind legs of a donkey. And there was a little actress of whom I have chiefly to speak, who played exquisitely the part she had to play. The scene in which she appeared was the only one in the whole pantomime in which there was any dramatic effort, or, with a few rare exceptions, any dramatic possibility; […] and the little lady I spoke of, eight or nine years old, – dances a pas-de-deux with the donkey. She did it beautifully and simply, as a child ought to dance. She was not an infant prodigy; there was no evidence, in the finish or strength of her

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motion, that she had been put to continual torture through half her eight or nine years. She did nothing more than any child, well taught, but painlessly, might easily do. She caricatured no older person, – attempted no curious or fantastic skill. She was dressed decently, – she moved decently, – she looked and behaved innocently, and she danced her joyful dance with perfect grace, spirit sweetness, and self-forgetfulness. And through all the vast theatre, full of English fathers and mothers and children, there was no one hand lifted to give her sign of praise but mine. This gives the intriguing picture of Ruskin as the only person in the audience applauding this little dancer. But there was worse to come: Presently after this, came on forty thieves, who, as I told you, were girls; and, there being no thieving to be presently done, and time hanging heavy on their hands, arms, and legs, the forty thief-girls proceeded to light forty cigars. Whereupon the British public gave them a round of applause. Whereupon I fell a thinking; and saw little more of the piece, except as an ugly and disturbing dream (CW 38.335–8).24 Ruskin loathed smoking and this was clearly a total desecration of womanhood epitomised for Ruskin by the grace and innocence of the eight year old dancer. John Rosenberg has suggested that his reactions to Ali Baba should be seen in the context of ‘the recurrent sexual nightmares of young girls and coiled serpents – “singularly unclean, disgusting, ludicrous dreams” he calls them – which began to plague him in 1867’. He argues that ‘the underlying energy’ of Ruskin’s indictment of the pantomime ‘springs from his self disgust at his own perversity, his horrified fascination at child-like innocence […] becoming suddenly and loathsomely adult’. But E.L. Blanchard also shared Ruskin’s distaste for Ali Baba, writing in his diary of his visit to the Covent Garden pantomime: ‘coarsely treated – all legs and limelight – but splendidly got up.’25 Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, written by Gilbert À Beckett, subordinated the fairy tale elements of the story to contemporary references. His dialogue was spattered with allusions to such modern phenomena as the Derby, cabs, water rates and cod liver oil. The show opened in the office of a crooked solicitor who was trying to profit from encouraging his clients into fruitless speculation. The thieves’ cave was an up-to-date London club room complete with billiard tables and a prominent role in the action was taken by the Baghdad police force. It is not surprising to see why both Ruskin and Blanchard should detest it. Nor is it surprising to learn that it was produced by Augustus Harris Senior. Ruskin’s distaste for Ali Baba was not shared by either the critics or the audience. The editor of The Galaxy magazine wrote of Ruskin’s Ali Baba letter


that it ‘like most of what he writes, has teaching for it purpose, and like much of what he writes, teaches falsely’. Rejecting Ruskin’s denunciation of the participation of the girls in the show, the editor declared: people go to the theatre to be amused, to be taken out of their daily life. They have done so always, as well in Shakespeare’s day as in ours; and Shakespeare’s plays are no more simple nature than Turner’s pictures are. They are as much out of the common experience of most men and women as girl flowers and girl rainbows. They afford amusement of a higher order than that which is to be derived from pantomimes, but the amusement is in both cases dependent upon the fact that what is presented is something more than any child, or any man or woman sees, and knows, and does, in daily life. This is the secret of all public entertainment, whether of a high or low order.26 Alfred Mellon was the newly installed manager of the Royal English Opera, Covent Garden and The Era (30 December 1866) believed that: ‘If the ancient fame of Covent-garden for the production of Pantomime is to be restored, Mr Mellon is certainly a likely person to bring about such a state of things, for he has set about the task in the best spirit, namely, that of extreme liberality in preparing his Christmas fare.’ He set out to excel the Opera House’s two previous pantomime productions, Cinderella and Aladdin. The Era believed that he had succeeded and that Ali Baba was ‘superior’ even to those lavish productions: ‘All that exquisite taste could do in regulating masses of gorgeous colour and a profusion of glittering ornament has been done for Ali Baba, and every department being under the control of master minds in their craft, the result is a magnificent spectacle which, to be once seen, must be remembered for a life time.’ The writer Gilbert À Beckett was ‘complimented upon the quality of his rhymes and the pungency of his satirical comments upon the follies and deceptions of the day. The author is evidently imbued with the true spirit of Pantomime writing, and avoids that word-torturing which, after a time, becomes so intolerable’. W.H. and Fred Payne as Ali Baba and Ganem were praised as ‘pantomimists in the strict sense of the word, and in everything they do there is a thought and meaning which we sometimes look for in vain’ and they are accompanied by ‘the very best property donkey ever seen on any stage’. The scenery was pronounced ‘superb’. Matthew Morgan’s ‘The Dryads’ Sylvan Home’ was declared: ‘a remarkably pretty thing in its way, and in his treatment of the forest subject the artist has shown as much refinement of taste and knowledge of his art’. ‘The Cavern of the Forty Thieves’ was notable because ‘the richness of the costumes, and the splendour of stage decorations, have certainly never been surpassed. Every shapely member of the select “Forty” is a perfect study’. Thomas Grieve had ‘surpassed himself in his Transformation Scene, which is unquestionably more imposing than either of its predecessors, and as a specimen of elaborate

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stage contrivance is, probably, unequalled. The whole design proclaims the mind of a thorough artist; and the pure, refined taste evinced by Mr Grieve in the distribution and regulation of the colour is something remarkable even in the present age of great scene painters’. The scene, the Enchanted Home of the Genii on the Golden Heights of Sunshine, is described: At the back of the stage a rainbow is seen arching across the clouds, and dimly through a kind of film this immense curve is found to be peopled with Genii, who recline upon it, and look down on all the superb picture below. In a break of the clouds, immediately below, figures appear; and a group of Genii in silver tissue dresses, rise up in front of some glittering palm trees. The whole surface of the stage is covered with gold and silver palm trees and fern leaves, and from this gorgeous carpet spring tapering altars with fire burning thereon. Helmeted figures slowly rise all over the stage, and the Genii seem to float in from the wings to complete the tableau. The film rises from before the rainbow, and this long curve of female forms spanning the stage is a background of extraordinary beauty for, probably, the grandest Transformation Scene on record. On Boxing Night, Thomas Grieve and Matthew Morgan were called for, as was Augustus Harris (the producer) and Alfred Mellon (the manager). All were cheered vociferously and The Era concluded ‘no Manager ever did more to deserve popular favour than he has done in placing so grand a spectacle before the pleasure-seekers of a great city’. The reviewer praised the Oxford and Cambridge boat race episode in the harlequinade as ‘a most admirable representation […] realism cannot go much beyond the point gained here’. This was not isolated praise. The Era review was echoed virtually point by point by The Times (27 December 1866) which reported that ‘no feature in it is open to criticism, except a certain redundancy in the dialogue’ which the critic thought might be resolved by compression of the script. But he praised the dialogue as written with ‘spirit, neatness and humour’, proclaimed the acting ‘admirable throughout’, with the Paynes ‘inimitable, the quiet humour of the elder contrasting admirably with the restless activity of the younger’, the donkey ‘the best […] that has probably been witnessed on stage’ and ‘the ladies were all good’. The two ballets were ‘excellent’, the scenery ‘as gorgeous as any we can remember’ and as a result ‘the pantomime was entirely successful’. It was a Blanchard pantomime to which Ruskin proposed taking Carlyle and which he himself visited at least twice. On 18 January 1871, he wrote to Mary Aitken, Carlyle’s niece, inviting her and her uncle to share his private box at Drury Lane on Saturday next. He was going to have a look at it ahead of that visit. He wrote directly to Carlyle on 21 January, enclosing the programme of the pantomime and repeating the hope that Carlyle and Miss Aitken might come, saying they might regard it as ‘wickedly foolish’


but it was ‘well done in its way in some parts’.27 He recorded in his diary on 19 January: ‘At Pantomime last night – Dragon of Wantley. Splendid dancing’ (EW 2.710). The story of The Dragon of Wantley or Harlequin and Old Mother Shipton starring the Vokes family centred on the fearsome dragon who laid waste to Wantley and Sir Guy the Grim, Baron of Wantley, who tyrannised over the poor and sought to marry his ward, wealthy heiress Lady Joan. The impoverished but noble knight, Baron Moore of Moore Hall, with the aid of a suit of armour provided by the local wise woman Mother Shipton, kills the dragon and wins the hand of Lady Joan. The Illustrated London News (31 December 1870) praised Blanchard’s rhyming dialogue (‘terse, charming and pointed’) and the contribution of William Beverley. In ‘The Haunt of the Water Nymphs’, which featured an ‘admirable’ ballet representing the marriage of the Rivers Thames and Medway, Beverley was said to display ‘that marvellous power of landscape-painting in which he scarcely has any rival’ and the transformation scene, the World of Waters and Britannia’s throne upon the Waters, was ‘one of the wonders of Mr Beverley’s invention’. The Era proclaimed it ‘a model of a fairy opening’. Little Red Riding Hood (starring the Vokes family), which Ruskin saw on 9 February 1884, he declared in his diary ‘utterly disgusting’ (EW 3.1058). He does not elaborate and this is something of a puzzle, for he admired the Vokes family, whose speciality was dancing. Little Red Riding Hood was produced at Her Majesty’s Theatre and it inspired The Times (27 December 1883) to raptures of delight. It had been produced, said The Times, ‘with scrupulous regard for pantomime tradition in the treatment of the fable’ and ‘marvellous fertility of resource in the matter of episode and spectacular display’. It argued that the artistic level attained by Little Red Riding Hood and by Cinderella at Drury Lane would be ‘satisfactory to those who have deplored the corruption of Boxing-day morals through the influence of the music hall. Here, and at Drury Lane, the youthful spectator is at once transported from a prosaic world into the realm of fancy and kept there while the librettist, the scene-painter, the stage carpenter and the stage manager combine to awe and dazzle him with alternate doses of the supernatural, the grotesque, the mysterious and the beautiful’. Later the critic declares: ‘A rare combination of artistic taste with fancy lifts this pantomime quite out of the category of ordinary Boxing-day performances and makes it a feast for the eye of the most fastidious.’ It sounds as if it ought to have been perfect for Ruskin, but evidently it was not. Perhaps the story of the pantomime had something to do with it. In Frank Green’s narrative, the Demon King had placed King Kantankeros on the throne rightfully belonging to Prince Pelerin in return for his promise to marry the Demon King’s hideous daughter Venoma. After ten years, when Kantankeros has failed to fulfil his promise, the Demon King offers to restore Prince Pelerin on the same terms and he agrees. A popular uprising overthrows the King. The Prince, restored to the throne, falls in love with

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Red Riding Hood and refuses to marry Venoma. He is transformed into a wolf with a desire to eat Red Riding Hood. But after the traditional story is enacted, the spell is broken and the Prince marries Red Riding Hood. It may have been the legitimisation of revolt against the crown, which Ruskin, as a good monarchist, deplored. However, it is more likely to have been the threat to an innocent young girl by a ravening wolf and the fact that two royal figures reneged on a promise to marry that Ruskin found unacceptable. 2 February was the anniversary of his proposal of marriage to Rose La Touche, and he was particularly upset around that time. Ruskin’s biographer Tim Hilton records that ‘All through the earlier part of 1884 he alternated between irritability, over-excitement and depression’ and Little Red Riding Hood seems to have found him in at least one of those states.28 A vital element in the success of pantomimes were its troupes of child performers. It has been estimated that in 1887, 1,000 children were hired as supernumeraries and dancers for the London pantomime.29 They were a particular feature of the Drury Lane pantomimes where they performed both in the opening and the harlequinade, regularly receiving ecstatic applause. Taking as examples two of the Drury Lane pantomimes that we know Ruskin saw, the significance of such an aspect can be demonstrated. Scene four of The Dragon of Wantley, which The Era thought would ‘be talked of ere long in a thousand nurseries’, was performed entirely by children and was a scene of a farmyard in the village of Wantley: The whole of the daily work in a farmyard is shown with pantomimic action by children […] The maids pass along with their milking pails, the men reaping and shoe their horses, unload the wagons, blow the bellows, carry ‘grist to the mill’, and set to work at tailoring. The pedlar is pestered by the girls; a wedding party arrives, and the day ends with a harvesthome jollification. A clog dance, invented by Mr Cormack, and danced to perfection by the youngsters, is interrupted by a frightful apparition. The Dragon of Wantley appears on the top of a hill snorting out fire and flapping his hideous wings. The villagers rush off paralysed by fright. One of the episodes of the harlequinade was 300 children performing in the Highland Games at Balmoral. In Jack-in-the-Box the adult characters were turned into children, and the girls playing Tom Tucker and Bo-Peep, Miss Amelia and Miss Violet Cameron, ‘made quite a hit, and gained some of the loudest applause heard during the evening. Their love-making was charming; their singing elicited an overwhelming encore; and their dancing gained a similar complement’. The play was punctuated by children’s dances, notably one in which the children played buttercups and daisies. The Era called it ‘one of the prettiest and freshest things we have seen for a long time […] The real flowers hardly ever danced more gaily in the wind than did the little folk who filled


the stage, and once more proved how cleverly they had been trained’. In pantomime after pantomime the dancing of the child performers regularly stopped the show, as they appeared as birds, squirrels, dolls, elves, cats and so forth in carefully choreographed and well drilled routines. But it was not just that children appeared in adult pantomimes – there were pantomimes performed entirely by children. Ruskin mentioned that he had visited Hengler’s Circus on 5 January 1878 (EW 3.973). The Times annual review of Christmas shows (27 December 1877) reveals what show he saw. It reports: ‘Mr Hengler’s Circus keeps up its well-earned reputation and the crowds which filled the building twice yesterday certainly did not go away disappointed. Horses and gymnastic feats are sure to please a British public and of these there were enough to satisfy anyone.’ The chief attraction of the programme, however, was the ‘juvenile pantomime’, The Faeries’ Garden Party in honour of Little Red Riding Hood. After the bareback horseriding, the ring was transformed into ‘an elegant garden’, ‘the scene of the labours of a very operatic group of gardeners, who sang with much effect “Beautiful Flowers”’. Little Red Riding Hood, summoned by the Good Fairy, received her guests, the legendary figures of nursery rhymes, Little Bo-Peep, Jack and Jill, Little Jack Horner etc., followed by ‘distinguished representatives of all nations’ – Marshal MacMahon (the French President), Napoleon I, the German Emperor, John Bull, Rob Roy and Gainsborough’s Duchess, ‘all of them well made up, but particularly Bonaparte, who was the living image of Gilray’s caricature’. Songs and dances followed and it ended with a lime-lighted tableau. The Times concluded: ‘The pantomime […] was a most decided success, being well-managed throughout. It was fortunate with its leading idea, the acting of all the parts by children, and we have never seen the grown-up actors perform with better spirit. Miss E. Hill, as Little Red Riding Hood, made a very graceful hostess to her menagerie of guests, and the dancing was extremely good, the children all entering into the fun with genuine childish gaiety.’ Ruskin did not record his opinion but it sounds like the sort of show he would have loved. But Ruskin paid as much attention to the audience as he did to the play when he went to the theatre, and this prompted reflections on the inequalities and injustices of society set down in Fors Clavigera 61 (January 1876): We, of the so-called ‘educated’ classes, who take it upon us to be the better and upper part of the world cannot possibly understand our relations to the rest better than we may where actual life may be seen in front of its Shakespearean image, from the stalls of a theatre. I never stand up to rest myself, and look round the house, without renewal of wonder how the crowd in the pit, and shilling gallery, allow us of the boxes and stalls to keep our places! Think of it; – those fellows behind there have housed us and fed us; their wives have washed our clothes, and kept us tidy; – they have bought us the best places, – brought us through the cold to them; and there they sit behind us, patiently, seeing and hearing what they

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may. There they pack themselves, squeezed and distant, behind our chairs; – we, their elect toys and pet puppets, oiled and varnished, and incensed, lounge in front, placidly, or for the greater part, wearily and sickly contemplative. Here we are again, all of us, this Christmas! [...] Where did you get your money? Some of you […] by selling the Gospel; others by selling Justice; others by selling their Blood – (and no man has any right to sell aught of these three things, any more than a woman her body), – the rest, if not by swindling, by simple taxation of the labour of the shilling gallery, – or of the yet poorer or better persons who have not so much, or will not spend so much, as the shilling to get there. How else should you, or could you, get your money, simpletons? [...] and once and again I tell you, the words of Christ are true, […] and that day has come for fasting and prayer, not for feasting; but above all, for labour – personal and direct labour – on the Earth that bears you, and buries – as best it can (CW 28.489-91). This interest is widened in the diary. He records on 24 January 1872 in his diary: Yesterday at pantomime again [he doesn’t name or describe it] […] Beautiful English family in stage upper box: three girls strong, innocent, powerful in feature, proud in lip, yet simply and eagerly interested when not indignant. Modestly dressed – white up to the throat. What they thought of pantomime? (EW 2.719). Young girls in the audience; young girls on the stage as the only redeeming feature of Ali Baba. I think we have here evidence of a more personal interest in the theatre than what was happening on the stage, and again that mingling of polemical, analytical and autobiographical that characterises so much of Ruskin’s work and was present even in his accounts of his theatregoing. The simplistic post-Freudian interpretation of Ruskin’s interest in little girls as paedophiliac has recently been challenged by Catherine Robson in a carefully argued and persuasive analysis of the idealisation of girls by Victorian gentlemen. She points to the fact that childhood was a preoccupation of two of the dominant value systems of the nineteenth century, Romanticism and Evangelicalism. For Romantics the child represented ‘a pure point of origin, deeply connected to the natural and primitive world, and as yet unmired by the sullying forces of language, sexuality and society’. For Evangelicals, children were not only to be instructed and disciplined but ‘to be closely observed because they offered adults glimpses of an original heavenly purity’. Both value systems subscribed to a view of childhood as ‘a paradise of innocence and purity’. Victorian books, poems and paintings


are replete with such visions of childhood. Ruskin’s own writings on fairyland strongly support this view. But in addition, Robson argues, many middle class males experienced feminised childhoods before a transition to masculinity around the ages of six or seven, so retrospectively the innocent young girl becomes an identification figure for the adult middle class male looking back on his early years. This account fits Ruskin perfectly. Not only was he steeped in Romanticism and Evangelicalism and their visions of childhood but, as she demonstrates by reference to his autobiography Praeterita, Ruskin perceived his childhood in feminised terms. She concludes that in Ruskin’s schema, ‘young femininity is connected to the unsullied and vital purity of long-lost origins, and placed in opposition to the defiled world of the present day and a miserably compromised and decrepit male maturity’.30 The feminist American scholar Sharon Aronofsky Weltman, in a thoughtful essay on Ruskin and the pantomime, argues that ‘the intense reaction’ of Ruskin to the pantomime ‘suggests a special concern for the effect of performance on identity’ and that ‘Victorian performances threaten Ruskin’s already unstable pretense that genders are immutable’.31 Theatre in particular destabilises gender norms. She writes: With long runs of successful shows, with annual mounting of popular Christmas pantomimes that routinely cast a woman as Principal Boy and a man as a Dame, with continual productions of cross-dressed Shakespeare, Victorian theatre ritually reiterated notions of gender identity that fell outside Victorian social norms, helping to destabilise them.32 She argues that the Victorians in general and Ruskin in particular worked hard to maintain gender distinctions and that Ruskin was repeatedly fascinated with and repelled by examples of metamorphosis and hybridity. However, she notes that, despite Ruskin’s frequent attendance at the theatre, his published Works contain only a few sustained responses to theatrical performance in general or to gender performance in general. This is revealing – perhaps it was not as significant to Ruskin as she argues. His ferocity about the cigar-smoking girls is partly, she concedes, that he hated smoking. It is partly that young girls should not smoke publicly – it was immodest. It is partly because the audiences applauded this and not the artistic dance. It is only partly that the girls are engaging in masculine behaviour. They are smoking cigars. ‘The phallic symbolism of the cigar needs no Freud to declare itself’,33 she says – but sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Victorians accepted the shapely principal boy but got upset when women became too aggressively masculine, as with the cigar routine. Rather than cross-dressing and male impersonation destabilising Victorian social norms, it could just as well be argued that they provided a safety valve which actually reinforced the existing norms.

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Ruskin was far from being alone in lamenting the vulgarisation and debasement of what had been seen as a beautiful and delicate entertainment. Voice after voice was raised in defence of the old pantomime. In his book The Pantomimes and All About Them (1881), rather incongruously dedicated to Augustus Harris, whom many held responsible for the deterioration of the much-loved form, Leopold Wagner began by complaining: There was a time, alas! when Pantomime was something very different to the now-a-day entertainment of that name, which has been described as ‘a mass of insane absurdity and senseless incongruity’, a time when reason and fanciful invention were called into requisition, to produce results as dignified as they were pleasing. Those were the days when visiting the theatre during the coldest nights of January might be regarded as a real treat; when the Pantomime was built upon a story or legend, intelligible to the merest child; when genuine delight was depicted on every countenance; when the jokes were new and practical; when acting was in earnest, and singing rendered with due regard to vocal harmony; when knockabout niggers, clog dancers, gymnasts, contortionists, Whitechapel songsters, and other music hall ‘novelties’ were not considered indispensable for success; and when pageants and processions, realistic representations of farm-yards with their live stock, cataracts of real water, and extravagant ballet scenes, with the lime-light directed upon an array of palpably naked thighs, which decency should require to be covered with skirts – were as yet unheard of.34 The journalist Charles Dickens Jr., writing in 1896 in The Theatre on ‘On the Decadence of Pantomime’, complained: ‘The simple fact is that the pantomime of to-day is not only not pantomime at all, but has no connection whatever with it.’ He recalled the simplicity and individuality of pantomime 50 years before when it was done by gesture and without dialogue, and in which the harlequinade and its characters were dominant. He recalled the Vestris extravaganza with its ‘beautiful’ final scenes by William Beverley that led managers to compete in visual extravagance. Even when dialogue came in – and the earliest one he could recall as a verbal pantomime was in 1857 – they had a coherent story, outstanding clowning, and often ‘the delightful and never-to-be forgotten Vokes family – the nimble and humorous Fred, the charming Victoria […] and the irresistible Rosina’. Pantomime at that time was still ‘bright, and lively, and amusing, as well as sufficiently showy and splendid’. But then came the deluge. ‘The floodgates of the music hall opened and all that was agreeable about “the grand comic Christmas pantomime” was promptly and effectually drowned out.’ And then began the period of ‘hopeless, inane, and offensive vulgarity all over the country’ which, he admitted, had been ‘highly remunerative to performers and managers alike’. He concluded sadly: ‘The old English pantomime is dead.’35


Theatre historian T. Edgar Pemberton, writing in the same issue of The Theatre, ‘The “Book” of the Pantomime’ of a failed attempt to revive the old fairy pantomime, wondered if the pantomimes of his boyhood ‘were really as beautiful and laughter-moving as sweet memory tells me? Possibly not. And yet I hope always to cherish the recollection of a stage on which the prototypes of the fairies that Grimm and Gammer Grethel and Hans Christian Andersen had taught me to believe in gaily and realistically tripped; of one of the dear old familiar nursery stories unfolded through a series of scenes of sufficiently sustained sentiment and well restrained fun; of convincing demons playing havoc with the fortunes of an ideal prince and a perfect princess, and of a transformation scene in which, at the wave of the queen fairy’s wand, vanquished vice became purloining clown and buffeted pantaloon, and victorious virtue blossomed into pirouetting columbine and bespangled harlequin’.36 Augustus Harris robustly defended the deployment of spectacle in the theatre in an article ‘Spectacle’ in the Magazine of Art. He rejected the calls for the revival of the old harlequinade, dismissing it as visually wretched and recalling: Three weeks were considered a long time to give to the preparation of the Christmas entertainment; old spangled dresses were looked out and ‘dodged up’; a few pairs of flats and a couple of set scenes were painted new; some elaborate tricks were made for the harlequinade, the majority of which, not working on the first night, were cut out on the second. A popular clown, with a veteran to assist him as pantaloon, one of the ‘ballet gentlemen’ from the opera house dressed like harlequin, and one of the ‘front row’ of the ballet as columbine, were supposed to be good enough to attract our forefathers to the pantomime […] The dear old ladies and gentlemen who now insist that this class of performance should be played to day, because it met with the approval of their generation, forget that the School Board was not invented when they were young. Whereas in the olden times a pantomime ran a few weeks, it now runs so many months. In some of our provincial towns the harlequinade is now dispensed with, and in all others reduced to the smallest limits. As in London so in the provinces, the appearance of the clown is the signal for departure. So for Harris the key to theatrical change was the increased level of education of the audience. He argued that it was not sufficient just to spend money: A spectacular theatre must be, so to day, the trysting-place of all the arts. The work itself must be a labour of love, of perseverance, and of pluck; the co-operation of the most accomplished masters of the various arts should be secured […] It is, indeed, a question whether all the exquisite

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colourings and delightful combinations are fully appreciated, except by a small and highly-cultivated minority. Why, then, many ask, take the trouble to do the thing properly if not appreciated? Why not follow the old Boucicaultian managerial axiom, ‘never try to educate your audience’? Because the minority is fast becoming the majority, thanks to the march of education […] the liberal expenditure of money in itself has little to do with an artistic result, but Art is a very extravagant and lavish mistress […] those who talk so much of the love of art whilst producing very little that is artistic, are generally those who are either unable or unwilling to make such financial sacrifices at the shrine of the goddess as she demands.37 Thus, Harris is defending his lavish pantomimes in terms of art and education, almost a Ruskinian position paradoxically for someone who traditionalists accused of vulgarising and undermining the form. Jimmy Glover, musical director at Drury Lane, writing in 1911, put it in perspective: ‘It is ridiculous for people to state that pantomime has declined. It has not declined; it has, however, changed, and increased its public […] Whatever the criticisms may be, the intent of the present pantomime provider has always been good. We live in an age of splendour, luxury and comfort. Therefore the best in spectacular display, in talent, in music, and interpretation is provided.’38 It is clear too that audiences loved them, and whatever the laments of traditionalists, the box office had the final say. The Augustus Harris formula was followed all over the country and entered a new phase which combined spectacle, pantomime and music hall as the fairy world of Ruskinian theatre was decisively defeated.

7 Ruskinian Shakespeare

When John Ruskin wrote to Wilson Barrett in 1884 praising his production of Claudian and urging him to follow it up with other classically-set plays, he ended his letter with the ringing statement: ‘With scene-painting like that at the Princess’s Theatre, (you) might do more for art teaching than all the galleries and professors of Christendom’ (CW 37.34). In so doing, he entered into what was to become a major debate in late Victorian artistic circles – the question of whether or not theatrical scene painting should rank alongside other forms of painting as an art rather than as a theatrical craft. Ruskin’s statement was regularly quoted in support of scene painting and in an 1888 article for the Magazine of Art entitled ‘The Stage as a School of Art and Archaeology’, Henry Herman, co-author of Claudian, took up Ruskin’s cry and used his statement as a stick to beat those actor-managers who, although claiming to do so, failed to achieve that historical authenticity which would vindicate the educational mission of the stage which was so close to Ruskin’s heart: It is given only to men of deep research and honest self-denial in the cause of art to penetrate behind the veil of popular glamour, of gaudy impressiveness, with which the best spectacles of the stage of the present day are shrouded, and to find there the germ of a new school of art, a popular school of art, a school-mind what our great art-teacher says – that might do more for art-teaching than all the galleries and professors of Christendom. He denounced the critics for taking at face value the claims from actormanagers that their productions were archaeologically accurate: ‘As a matter of fact […] not one out of twenty among them knows the difference between a Greek and a Roman helmet, and not one in ten could tell you whether his own countrymen fifteen or sixteen hundred years ago wore boots, or shoes, or sandals, or what […] In the innocence of their hearts, a great scene painter’s name or the name of a costumier was sufficient absolution for any 168

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number of incongruities, and what the eye does not see the heart does not grieve for.’ Of the practitioners he fulminated: How much has been done with small means may be learned from the fact that so few, so very few, among those most interested in making the stage a really artistic attraction, have taken the trouble to study their business, to acquire anything more than the most rudimentary knowledge of their art. He went on to say: ‘We had the great worker in the field of archaeology and art among us, the late E.W. Godwin, and we still have the Hon. Lewis Wingfield; but outside cultured student minds like these, the realm of art and archaeology on the stage is simply fertile ground ready to produce a great harvest, but barely ploughed, much less properly cultivated.’ He singles out for criticism as examples of ‘the strange incongruities foisted upon an unsuspecting public by the very best of our stage-managers’ (i.e. Henry Irving) the Lyceum Romeo and Juliet in which ‘the actors wore a mixture of costumes ranging over a period of a hundred years’ and Wilson Barrett’s production of Clito with ‘living representations of goat-tailed and bicorned satyrs! Think of it, ye gods! Where is mythology?’. He concedes ruefully that the principal obstacle in the way of ‘truly and permanently artistic work on the stage’ is money. ‘The prize to be gained by the highest endeavours in the cause of art is not sufficiently dazzling to compensate a manager for the additional great outlay he would have to incur. He is perfectly aware that his work will be just as much appreciated by the vast army of playgoers, that it will be just as much praised by the marshalled army of the critics, if he simply uses such ordinary care as will avoid very glaring defects as it would be if he had employed Alma-Tadema to make his designs.’ He went on to pour scorn on managers’ claim to be producing art. ‘Let him preach as much as he likes about high art (of the very definition of which he often has not the faintest idea) but he had but one object in view – […] to make money.’ Despite his strictures on the archaeological inaccuracy of actor-managers, Henry Herman ended his article on the art of the stage by declaring: ‘In the art of scene-painting England stands paramount and alone among nations.’ He listed W.R. Beverley, William Telbin, Hawes Craven, Walter Hann, T.E. Ryan, Stafford Hall and William Harford as ‘artists in the truest and best sense of the word’, and it is to their work that John Ruskin principally refers when he speaks of the stage as ‘a possible school of art’. He ended by calling upon the star actors and actresses to make it their business to ensure that the stage became ‘a home of true art’.1 Herman found an ally in his desire for scene painters to be taken seriously in Oscar Wilde. Wilde dismissed the idea that a play could be smothered in its mounting: ‘To talk of the passion of a play being hidden by the paint,


and of sentiment being killed by scenery, is mere emptiness and folly of words. A noble play, nobly mounted, gives us double artistic pleasure. The eye as well as the ear is gratified, and the whole nature is made exquisitely receptive of the influence of imaginative work.’ He argued that critics should ‘exert whatever influence they possess towards restoring the scene painter to his proper position as an artist, […] I have never seen any reason why such artists as Mr Beverley, Mr Walter Hann and Mr Telbin should not be entitled to become Academicians. They have certainly as good a claim as have many of those RAs whose total inability to paint we can see every May for a shilling’.2 From the 1880s the Magazine of Art ran regular features under the title ‘Art in the Theatre’ and gave scenic artists space to argue their case; eventually books with titles like The Art of the Victorian Stage were being published. The public’s demand for the archaeological approach was supported in an article in The Theatre (n.s. 2 (1883) 1 September) by Philip Beck, who noted that ‘The almost universal craving for Realism is now one of the most curious signs of the times’. By realism he did not mean the ‘objectionable’ realism of the modern French novel of Zola and his imitators or the sensational works of some of the contemporary lady novelists from which ‘the wholesome tone is absent’. Rather, he meant the archaeologically accurate and aesthetically pleasing realism of the Bancrofts’ Robertsonian productions, the contemporary melodramas of Augustus Harris and Wilson Barrett, Charles Kean’s productions at the Princess’s Theatre and ‘in such triumphs of Realism as the revivals of “Romeo and Juliet” and “Much Ado About Nothing”’. He attributed it to a higher appreciation of art brought about by the aesthetic movement, extended facilities for travel and observation, an improved standard of general education and the availability of cheap editions of great literature. He concluded: ‘So far as the stage is concerned, one cannot question but that, so long as dramatic Realism is true and without offence, so long as it is used to give effect to the work of the author and the effort of the actor, so long as it is restrained from gaining such prominence as to smother the words of the playwright and stifle the work of the player, so long may it be given its way without let or hindrance, and be permitted to fulfil its legitimate mission.’3 As scenery and set design became more and more elaborate in the commercial theatre, the question of the nature of stage scenery became a running debate, in particular from the 1870s onwards. It was fought out in the pages of specialist magazines like The Theatre and the Magazine of Art. As early as 1878 Percy Fitzgerald published his ‘Thoughts on Scenery’ in The Theatre. He was a staunch conservative in the matter of scenery, believing that ‘too much light, too much colour and the principles of “set scenes”’ were destructive of illusion, which he saw as the prime aim of theatre. He claimed: Through this excess the art of scene-painting appears to be lost in England, not through any fault of the artists, who have to arrange and


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use such colours as will bear the furnace glare that will be thrown on them. Shadows are useless under such conditions, and the effect of retreating portions need not be given, by paint at least, as the carpenter will contrive all that. The result is garishness and poverty, and at this moment, as the curtain rises on a new piece, though there is applause at the art of the scene-painter, and the newspapers tell us how Messrs Gordon or Hann or Craven were called for, there is nothing to give real pleasure to the cultivated eye. He thought it a grave mistake ‘to combine the hostile elements of pictorial or artificial distance, shadows etc. with real effects of distance’. As such, a combination of built-up houses, bridges and hills with painted backdrops led to each destroying the effect of the other. He favoured the flat painted backdrop: A really well-painted flat scene, the perspective skilfully drawn, the colours artfully moderated, will convey a far better idea of space and distance than if the whole stage had been thrown open to the back wall. A further principle he adumbrated: ‘The aim of scenery should be rather negative than positive – viz. to protect the spectator from the disturbing influence of prose and real life – and supply a background of so abstract a kind that it will harmonize with the sentiments of the piece.’ These were to remain his themes for the rest of the century, regularly repeated in articles and books: the distracting nature of built-up scenery, the destruction of illusion by mixing painted backdrops and three-dimensional sets and the danger of swamping the play, the acting and the dramatic message.4 But the tide was with the scenic artists, and the ongoing battle to secure recognition of the scene painters as fully fledged artists reached a climax in 1904. A complimentary dinner for the principal scenic artists of the day was given by a committee of artists, authors and composers convened by the painter Sir Philip Burne-Jones at the Imperial Restaurant in Regent Street on 31 January 1904. Twenty scenic artists attended and eight sent their apologies. The eminence of the invited guests there to pay tribute to the artists of the stage is striking. There were leading painters, playwrights, actor-managers and public figures including the Poet Laureate Alfred Austin, Boer War hero Major-General Baden-Powell and the barrister Marshall Hall. The chairman for the evening was Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema and he began by reading a telegram from Sir Henry Irving, who was on tour in America: ‘Love and greetings to all friends. I wish I could be with you to-night to help in doing honour to an art and its artists to which and to whom I am in so many ways indebted.’ The speeches which followed set out the case for recognition of theatrical scene painting as an art.


Alma-Tadema, in a generous and good hearted tribute, began by saying that he presumed that it was owing to the fact that he had worked several times with scene painters that he was called upon ‘to thank them for all they had done in the past, as well as for all they proposed doing in the future’: The modern stage could not exist without the scenic artist. There was a time when English actors and audiences were content with a bare stage, and when a written announcement ‘This is a wood’, ‘This is a seashore’ served the purposes of leading into the right direction the minds of a public accustomed to using its imaginative faculties. But an audience of today was not prepared thus to evoke scenes for itself, and the scenepainter’s art, in its later developments, had certainly had a great effect upon the stage at large […] it seemed to him that the more illusion of the surroundings could be given the more likely would the actor be to give, and the audience to receive, fitting expressions of the emotions. And this illusion became all the more necessary when the spirit of the past had to be evoked, for the mere imagination of the actor and spectator could not suffice to recreate the aspect or resuscitate the atmosphere of bygone ages. The art of scene-painting was indeed a very beautiful art, which had at its disposal means that were denied to other forms of painting. The scenic painter had long deserved some recognition beyond the occasional off-hand mention of his endeavours in the papers. It was a pity that the work of their friends and brothers was so short-lived; he wished it were otherwise. It was as a painter as well as a member of the public that he expressed his gratitude to their guests for the delight their work had given him, for the noble settings they had provided for the masterpieces of literature and of histrionic achievement. The other speakers, Joseph Comyns Carr, Rufus Isaacs, Arthur Pinero, Alfred Austin, John Hare and Herbert Beerbohm Tree, endorsed Alma-Tadema’s judgement. Herbert Beerbohm Tree said: it was only lately that the art of the scene-painter had been properly appreciated, and only that night that it had been publicly recognised. In no direction had that art been more profitably employed than in illustrating the art of Shakespeare. Yet there was a tendency in some quarters to decry pictorial illustration of the poet. But the artists to-day were happily agreed with the public as to the manner in which the great works of art should be represented. In his view, everything that aided the illusion was right, and everything that interfered with it was wrong. For his part, he had always felt deep admiration for the painter’s art, and had stood in wonder at the magic mimicry of nature which they had put before spectators. The scenic artist must be possessed not only of a vivid imagination – he must also have a sense of local colour. His art – like that of the actor


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himself – was a fleeting one, but no-one would deny the poetry and charm those brethren of the brush had given to our modern stage.5 Three months later, on 30 April 1904, the Scenic Artists Association was established, with Hawes Craven as president and Joseph Harker as vicepresident. Within a year they had 80 members. Institutionalisation was proceeding apace. The annual general meeting was held on 9 January 1905 at the Caledonian Hotel with Walter Hann in the chair in the absence of Craven and Harker. 34 members attended. It was announced that the committee had met 16 times, had elected 23 honorary members, a mixture of influential painters (Edwin Abbey, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Edward Poynter, Sir William Richmond, Sir Philip Burne-Jones and Sir James Linton) and actor-managers (Sir Henry Irving, Sir Squire Bancroft, George Alexander, John Martin-Harvey, John Hare, Cyril Maude, Johnston Forbes Robertson, Herbert Beerbohm Tree and Lewis Waller). It was resolved at the meeting that members could if they wished put the letters M.S.S.A. (Member of the Scenic Artists Association) after their name. A Scenic Artists Benevolent Fund was set up to take care of scenic artists and their widows and orphans who had fallen on hard times. A major exhibition of the work of the scenic artists was held at the Grafton Galleries, Bond Street from 10 to 15 April. The Era (15 April 1905) reported on the exhibition, declaring the display of 400 sketches and models by scenic artists ‘most interesting’ and hoped it might become an annual event. The exhibits covered not only the work of current artists but famous artists of the past, from Philippe de Loutherbourg through Clarkson Stanfield, William R. Beverley, Thomas and William Grieve to John O’Connor and William Telbin the elder. Ironically it was not many years before the nature of the theatre and of scene painting changed forever. The debate about the artistic validity of the archaeological approach to sets, costume and staging came to focus specifically on the production of the plays of Shakespeare. There were three main critical standpoints ranged against the advocates of archaeological accuracy: the traditionalists, who supported simple painted back cloths and flats and opposed built-out scenery, the atavists, who sought to return to plain Elizabethan staging techniques, and the modernists, who advocated abstract scenery and lighting effects in place of realistic scene painting and properties.6 Summarising the arguments he had been advancing for 30 years, Percy Fitzgerald in his Shakespearean Representation: Its Laws and Limits was intensely critical of what he saw as the subordination of the Shakespearean text to the scenic ambitions of the actor-managers and the unnecessary abridgement of the texts due to their desire to give themselves and their roles undeserved prominence. He argued that too much splendour stifled meaning and the emphasis on the star performer distorted meaning, reducing the other characters to ciphers and not presenting the play in the round. He wanted the restoration of simple stagings, intelligent reading of the text and proper enunciation


of the lines.7 Fitzgerald had many allies in his stance and they had been pressing their arguments in the journals for many decades. By the end of the nineteenth century, the principal target of such criticism was Herbert Beerbohm Tree. Tree struck back in 1900 when he delivered an address to the Oxford Union entitled ‘The Staging of Shakespeare – A Defence of Public Taste’. It was subsequently published in the Fortnightly Review. When he included it in his collected essays Thoughts and After-Thoughts in 1913, he had retitled it ‘The Living Shakespeare’ and subtitled it ‘A Defence of Modern Taste’. It is interesting to note that he equates modern taste with public taste and he later cites the evidence of the box office in support of his contention.8 He sets out to show ‘that the public of to-day demands that, if acted at all, Shakespeare shall be presented with all the resources of the theatre of our time – that he shall be treated, not as a dead author speaking a dead language, but as a living force speaking with the voice of a living humanity’. Public taste is to be ascertained not by reading pundits and critics, but by counting the people paying to see productions. He cites the evidence of the 632,000 people who had been to see his most recent Shakespeare productions: Julius Caesar (242,000), King John (170,000) and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (220,000), concluding ‘I think, therefore, it is not too much to claim that the public taste clearly and undoubtedly lies in the direction of the method in which Shakespeare has been presented of late years by the chief metropolitan managers’.9 He rejects those critics who argue for mere ‘adequacy’ in the production of Shakespeare: We are assured that we are not to apply to Shakespearian productions the same care, the same reverence for accuracy, the same regard for stage illusion, for mounting, scenery, and costume, which we devote to authors of lesser degree; that we should not, in fact, avail ourselves of those adjuncts which in these days science and art place at the manager’s right hand; in other words, that we are to produce our national poet’s works without the crowds and armies, without the pride, pomp and circumstance which are suggested in every page of the dramatist’s work, and the absence of which Shakespeare himself so frequently laments in his plays. On this subject […] the public has spoken with no hesitating voice; the trend of its taste has undoubtedly been towards putting Shakespeare upon the stage as worthily and as munificently as the manager can afford.10 Significantly he identifies the Bancrofts’ pioneering Godwin-influenced production of The Merchant of Venice as ‘the first production in which the modern spirit of stage-management asserted itself’. Since then, in the same spirit, there have been Irving’s ‘beautiful Shakespearian presentations from 1874 to 1896’, including Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, Much Ado About Nothing,


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King Lear, Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, Henry VIII, Richard III and Cymbeline; Mary Anderson’s ‘memorable’ A Winter’s Tale, John Hare’s As You Like It, Wilson Barrett’s Hamlet and Othello, George Alexander’s As You Like It and Much Ado About Nothing, and his own Haymarket productions of Hamlet, The Merry Wives of Windsor and Henry IV, Part 1. In the Ruskinian spirit of combining aesthetic excellence with education, he argues that ‘the proper function of putting Shakespeare on the stage is not only to provide an evening’s amusement at the theatre, but also to give stimulus to the further study of our great poet’s works’.11 He rejects two of the regular criticisms made against modern Shakespeare: that the text is cut to give an unwarranted prominence to the actor-manager’s role and the actors entrusted with supporting roles are deliberately chosen to be inferior, in order to allow the actor-manager to shine. He says it is impossible to play Shakespeare uncut. It would take five hours and ‘Dinner is so necessary – nowadays!’. He rejects the idea of inferior casts by citing the cast of Irving’s Henry VIII which included, beside Irving himself, Ellen Terry, William Terriss, Johnston Forbes Robertson, Arthur Stirling, Alfred Bishop and Mrs Arthur Bourchier.12 He finally argues for the holistic view of the stage production also advocated by Irving and Godwin: worthily to represent Shakespeare, the scenic embellishment should be as beautiful and costly as the subject of the drama being performed seems to demand; that it should not be subordinate to, but rather harmonious with, the dramatic interest, just as every other element of art introduced into the representation should be – whether those arts be of acting, painting, sculpture, music, or what not. He suggests Wagner as the nearest approach to Shakespeare in dramatic genius: he availed himself of all the effects with which modern art could help him […] All these he enslaved in the service of the theatre. Wagner’s works are primarily dramas heightened by the aid of music, of scenery, of atmosphere, of costumes, all gorgeous or simple as the situation requires. Stripped of these aids, would Wagner have the deep effect on audiences such as we have witnessed at Bayreuth? No! Every man should avail himself of the aids which his generation affords him. It is only the weakling who harks back echoically to the methods of a bygone generation. So he is proclaiming the essential superiority of the concept of Gesamtkunstwerk, in which a single controlling mind utilised all the arts to produce a consistent and coherent vision on the stage. It was the role in Britain which Godwin, Irving and Tree conceived for themselves.


Oscar Wilde entered the controversy in an essay on ‘Shakespeare on Scenery’ in the Dramatic Review (14 May 1885). He has no doubt that Shakespeare would have approved of Irving’s Much Ado and Wilson Barrett’s Hamlet because in Henry V he laments the inadequacy of the stage to achieve the effects he wants, apologises for the lack of supers and the inability to bring on real horses. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream he satirises the lack of proper scenery for a theatrical company. If he had had today’s possibilities for illustration, we would have lost the poetry of his descriptions of, for instance, Cleopatra’s barge: Yet lovely as all Shakespeare’s descriptive passages are, a description is in its essence undramatic. Theatrical audiences are far more impressed by what they look at than by what they listen to; and the modern dramatist, in having the surroundings of his play visibly presented to the audience when the curtain rises, enjoys an advantage for which Shakespeare often expresses his desire […] the introduction of self-explanatory scenery enables the modern method to be far more direct, while the loveliness of form and colour which it gives us, seems to me often to create an artistic temperament in the audience, and to produce that joy in beauty for beauty’s sake, without which the great masterpieces of art can never be understood.13 Explicitly rejecting the view of an unnamed actor-manager (Tree in fact) that the chorus’ speech in Henry V showed that Shakespeare would have welcomed modern scenic devices, Shakespeare biographer Sir Sidney Lee weighed in on the side of the purists in an article in The Nineteenth Century: At the present time there is a widening divergence of view […] between those who defend in theory the adaptability of Shakespeare to the stage and the leading theatrical managers who alone possess the power of conferring on the Shakespearean drama theatrical interpretation. In the most influential circles of the theatrical profession it has become a commonplace to assert that Shakespearean drama cannot be successfully produced on the stage, cannot be rendered tolerable to any large section of the playgoing public, without a plethora of scenic spectacle and gorgeous costume which the student regards as superfluous and inappropriate. But he thought that excess in scenic display weakened and distorted the power of Shakespeare’s work. It appealed mainly to the eye, whereas ‘no one would seriously deny that the Shakespearean drama appeals primarily to the head and to the heart’. The pursuit of realism destroys illusion, in for instance filling the stage with supernumeraries when only a few are needed to produce the illusion of a crowd. He cites Julius Caesar, an allusion no


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doubt to Tree’s production. He denounces the introduction of redundant tableaux: ‘In Antony and Cleopatra the pageant of Cleopatra’s voyage up the river Cydnus to meet her lover Antony should have no existence outside the gorgeous description given of it by Enobarbus’, another oblique reference to a recent production, Lillie Langtry’s Antony and Cleopatra. The long runs entailed by expensive productions result in mechanical, soulless acting. Simple unspectacular productions would save their producers a considerable amount of money and he cites the debts incurred by Charles Kean, Henry Irving and Charles Calvert in mounting spectacular Shakespeare. He held up for emulation the regime of Samuel Phelps at Sadler’s Wells where 31 of Shakespeare’s plays were produced in an 18 year period: ‘The programme was constantly changed; the scenic appliances were simple, adequate and inexpensive; the supernumerary staff was restricted to the smallest practicable number.’ Lee concluded by calling upon lovers of Shakespeare ‘to lose no opportunity of urging the cause of simplicity in the production of the plays of Shakespeare. Practical common sense, practical considerations of a pecuniary kind teach us that it is only by the adoption of simple methods of production that we can hope to have Shakespeare represented in our theatres constantly and in all his variety.’14 The arguments would continue until the theatre was overtaken by events – with the mass audience removing to the cinema, managers could no longer afford the spectacle which had characterised an earlier age. Whatever the theorists said, in the commercial theatre, pictorial Shakespeare reigned supreme, characterised by spectacle, lavish scene painting and claims of archaeological accuracy and educational value – in other words Ruskinian Shakespeare. Henry Irving was securely established as the Hamlet of his generation. He had first played the part in London on 31 October 1874 in a production that ran for a record 200 consecutive performances. He selected the role again to inaugurate his own management of the Lyceum on 30 December 1878. His Hamlet was a gentleman and a scholar, characterised by Irving as a mixture of ‘chivalry, high-strung ecstasy and melancholy grace’, something of which was captured in Edwin Long’s celebrated painting of the actor as Hamlet.15 With Irving away on his 1884 American tour, Wilson Barrett deemed the time right to attempt a new Hamlet. It was a bold move for an actor primarily associated in the public mind with popular melodrama. But the influential critic Clement Scott wrote that it was ‘the best thing Wilson Barrett could possibly do, not only for his popularity, which is personal to himself, but for his influence, which is everything for the playgoer’.16 He suggests that fully half of Barrett’s usual audience would never have seen Hamlet and the implication is that Barrett would not only be testing himself in the role that set apart the great actors (‘the actor who plays “Hamlet” with anything like intelligence is the actor who will never be forgotten’) but would be raising the cultural level of the melodrama audience.


Barrett prepared a new acting version of the play in which there were new act divisions to make the story more comprehensible, many usually deleted lines were restored to the roles of Claudius and Laertes, making them more substantial and rounded characters, and – most controversially – Barrett played Hamlet as an energetic, youthful, revenge-seeking 18 year old student rather than the poetic, philosophical, reflective 30 year old prince that audiences were used to. The play, which opened on 16 October 1884, ran until 21 February 1885, 110 performances in all. But Barrett incurred losses of £5,000, partly because of the high production costs and partly because he kept the play running with dwindling audiences after 60 profitable performances as he wanted to pass the magic 100 performance mark, which was the sign of a success.17 The fact that he had himself painted in costume by Frank Holl suggests a conscious bid to emulate Irving’s success in the role. The play received extensive coverage in the press. The Times (17 October 1884) called Barrett’s Hamlet ‘the most original the stage has ever seen’ and thought his reading of the character and the setting he had given it ‘admirably reasonable and consistent’. The key to the whole play was Hamlet’s ‘extreme boyishness – he looks barely out of his teens’ and The Times concluded ‘It will readily be conceived how much the dramatic action of the play gained in vigour and in vraisemblance from this novel rendering’. The transfer of the play within the play from the court to the orchard where the old king died was ‘plausible and reasonable’ and ‘furnished the occasion for a beautiful “set”’. The effect of Barrett’s changes was that ‘from being the sombre, dismal, funereal, and only half-comprehensible production to which playgoers have been accustomed from their youth upwards, Hamlet, in his hands, becomes a bright and interesting panorama, full of colour, movement, and human nature’. He noted that the supporting cast was ‘substantial rather than excellent’ and that in the final analysis Barrett’s Hamlet was ‘deficient in poetry, but vivid and powerful dramatically’. The review prompted a stream of letters to The Times, some from noted Shakespearean scholars, debating Barrett’s new line readings, the age of 18 and the eleventh century setting.18 The main point of comparison for theatregoers would obviously be Irving’s Lyceum production and the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News (25 October 1884) opined: It may be said at the outset that Hamlet at the Princess’s is not likely to please best those who have most enjoyed Hamlet at the Lyceum. It appeals chiefly to those for whom Shakespeare’s play has little that is dreamily vague or mystical, or profoundly philosophical about it; who are tired of hearing it discussed as a psychological study; who care nothing about the Goethe view of its inner meaning, and who in fact regard it chiefly as a well-written play, with a good thrilling ghost story, and


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with excellent opportunities for telling stage effects. We are far from saying that this treatment of the drama is an unworthy one; given, indeed, as it is at the Princess’s, it brings out in a most valuable manner many points of interest which have hitherto been consistently overlooked, and it provides a consistent archaeological accuracy such as has certainly not been before attempted. Clement Scott in the Daily Telegraph neatly summed up the novelty and the impact of Barrett’s Hamlet: Mr Wilson Barrett’s Hamlet was one of the surprises, we had almost said one of the audacities, of modern art. It was rapid, emotional, hysterical, passionate and restless. In the actor’s effort to avoid being conventional he often rushed into the opposite extreme and forgot to be reflective […] Mr Barrett determined that his Hamlet should not be one of theatrical tradition – it should be some contribution to the school of natural acting; the text be spoken fluently and without affectation; and he evidently made up his mind to stand or fall by his passionate style, his wild and declamatory manner, and his own impulsive temperament. Now, all this is very well, but the actor must have seen at the outset that the character of Hamlet does not lend itself exactly to the expression of natural acting that Mr Barrett sought to convey. There is another Hamlet feasible, with the best intention of natural style, who is more than an hysterical youth and an impassioned orator. There is Hamlet the lover, Hamlet the thinker, Hamlet the philosopher, Hamlet the man of grace and courtliness, Hamlet the glass of fashion, Hamlet the man of breeding and culture. All these Hamlets might have been present to Mr Barrett’s mind, but he had no time to attend to them.19 In his 1900 book Some Notable Hamlets of the Present Time, Scott included Barrett along with Sarah Bernhardt, Henry Irving, Forbes Robertson and Beerbohm Tree. But in the agreed canon of great Hamlets, Barrett has not figured. After Irving, the accolade passed to his chosen successor in the role, Johnston Forbes Robertson, who opened in the role on 11 September 1897 and was universally hailed as the successor to Irving, embodying many of those qualities that Scott had not found in Barrett. The Clarion (18 September 1897) praised ‘the refined and dreamy melancholy, the graceful suppleness of his form, the delicate romanticism of his whole character and being’. In his study of the great tradition of Hamlets, John Mills goes directly from Irving to Forbes Robertson, omitting all mention of Barrett.20 Yet in Barrett’s performance we can see a precursor of the very recent and ultra-modern stage interpretations of Hamlet by Kenneth Branagh and Ben Whishaw – youthful, energetic, passionate rather than dreamy, philosophical and poetic.


The nature of the welcome the contemporary critics gave Barrett’s Hamlet depended on the extent to which they were wedded to the dreamy, poetic interpretation. But most critics gave Barrett praise for the power and consistency of his interpretation. The Stage, for instance, said: ‘Mr Barrett’s Hamlet is a quick, passionate, impetuous piece of acting, and if we are to accept Hamlet as being nearer twenty than thirty years of age, it is a fine rendering of the character […] But the said, dreamy, poetical Hamlet is lost sight of in Mr Barrett’s terribly earnest, determined, and youthful hero.’ While the Illustrated London News proclaimed Barrett’s Hamlet ‘the boldest and most triumphantly successful that has been seen for many a day’ and Society said: ‘The new reading of the part is in every sense a gain, and is highly creditable to the discretion and to the courage of Mr Barrett’, most critics echoed The Stage. Equally controversial was the archaeological staging of the play, which was in the hands of Barrett’s artistic adviser E.W. Godwin. Godwin had made clear his approach to the setting of Hamlet in an 1874 article.21 He said there were three possible approaches: to set the play in the period in which the action took place, to set it in the time it was written or to ignore both and set it when and where the actor and actress, stage manager and painter pleased. He thought there was little support for playing Hamlet in Tudor costume, and that most productions hitherto (with the exceptions of Charles Fechter at the Lyceum and Tom Taylor at the Crystal Palace who had made some use of archaeology) had adopted the third course, ‘a strange jumble, neither English nor Danish’. He proposed adopting the first course, setting the play precisely in 1012. Then citing illuminated manuscripts, descriptions in the poems and sagas and artefacts recovered from Viking tombs, he described the appropriate architecture and costume for the play. He got the chance to put his ideas into effect when Barrett decided to stage Hamlet. Barrett paid for Godwin to travel to Denmark, to visit Elsinore and Copenhagen and study jewellery, weaponry, clothing and hairstyles in museums and libraries. Godwin gave an interview in Life magazine (16 October 1884) on the eve of the play’s opening, in which he said his ambition was to present ‘a picture of the people as they lived, with their leather-banded legs, their huge personal adornments, bold embroideries, and semi-spherical or Phrygian-shaped headgear’. He discussed his designs for sets and costumes in detail, including his innovation of having the play The Mousetrap performed in the garden rather than inside the palace. As Russell Jackson has written, ‘Godwin’s scheme was to use bright colours, predominantly red, against a sombre background, placing the figures and properties in greater relief’. The throne was ivory and vermilion; Claudius’ standard was red emblazoned with a black eagle; shields were painted red; Claudius wore a blue and yellow mantle over a red and yellow tunic, with silver edging, red tights and yellow cross-garters; Gertrude wore a white and gold dress, with red mantle. Even Hamlet, conventionally clad in black tights and tunic, with white shirt open at the neck in the décolleté


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style demanded by Barrett, wore a red silk-lined cloak for the graveyard scene. The décolleté style, Barrett’s trademark, elicited disapproval from The Athenaeum, whose critics thought it ‘unsuited to artistic effect as well as to the Northern latitudes’. Godwin was on hand throughout rehearsals to answer queries about costume and properties. But the scenery was painted by a top team of scenic artists, W.R. Beverley, William Telbin, Walter Hann and Stafford Hall. Godwin was displeased with the scenery for the final act, but praised Hann’s palace interior.22 Reactions to the archaeologically accurate production were predictably mixed. The Morning Post rhapsodised: In all spectacular respects the representation was the finest ever given, the rendering of the principal characters was thoughtful and scholarly, and the whole marked by the perfect discipline which Mr Barrett has been successful in introducing upon English boards […] The costumes of the play belong to the early portion of the eleventh century. A complete change of spectacle is thus obtained. In place of the mailed warriors to whom we are used, we see soldiers whose headgear is made of the skins of animals, whose dresses have as protection a few plates of armour, and whose weapons consist principally of spears. In the representation of the castle of Elsinore the artistic taste of the scene painter has found ample opportunity, and the views of the long lines of turret and battlement, with the base lapped by the waters of the sound, are supremely beautiful. The finest view is possibly that of the scene without the castle, in a species of garden, in which takes place an al fresco representation of the murder of Gonzago. Quite defensible is the idea of having this scene in the open air, and the effect of the bright silver moonlight, and the red glare of the torches is admirable. Scarcely less good is the interior, in which the effect of the woven arras with which the walls are lined is very striking. The Standard praised W.R. Beverley’s painting of the scene of the castle walls rising above the banks of the river (‘very picturesque’) and the scene of the last act (‘very pretty’), though noting that the work of Telbin, Hann and Stafford was ‘likewise good’. The Daily News praised Walter Hann’s ‘view of the platform and castle of Kronborg rising sternly, tower upon tower and bastion upon bastion, far away into the grey sky’ and his ‘great hall with its primitive simplicity of arch and column, rudely decorated with coloured drawings, its walls hung with arras printed with figures and groups’ which it called ‘brilliant’. But on the other side Clement Scott of the Daily Telegraph was deeply unimpressed: It is an age of realism and realistic authorities have had full scope for the exercise of their ingenuity. Once start the scenic artist or the stage


archaeologist on the subject of Denmark, and away he goes. The scene is in Denmark, and the play deals with Denmark, and that is quite enough. Whatever is ugly, whatever is grotesque, unusual, semi-barbaric, must be introduced at the expense of the innate poetry of the play. If the Danes of that period wore hideous swords, ungainly fighting implements; if they covered their heads with eccentric gear strange and uncouth to the modern eye; if they lived out-of-doors, or in draughty rooms half furnished with coarse rude benches and stiff hangings; if they clothed themselves with startling and inharmonious colours – all these realisms must be introduced to justify accuracy of treatment and to confound the spectator. Did Shakespeare act on this principle or on one that is its exact opposite? The church in Hamlet, to the mind of the reader of Hamlet, is as much outside Denmark as can possibly be conceived; the gravediggers are pure Warwickshire labourers […] No journeys to Denmark, no faithful copies of Danish churches or graveyards, no ugly reproduction of what is foreign to the mind and understanding, will ever take the imagination away from the scene that Shakespeare loved and so faithfully painted.23 The Observer agreed, lamenting that the ‘laudable efforts’ of Beverley, Hann and Telbin ‘to produce pretty pictures seem to have been considerably hampered by Mr E. W. Godwin’s equally praiseworthy determination to have everything archaeologically correct. We cannot for ourselves profess to know how far Mr Godwin has succeeded in giving an accurate notion of costume, domestic furniture, and appointments generally as they were in Denmark eight or nine hundred years ago. But the hastiest glance at the interiors of the castle and at the dresses worn by Horatio and Laertes is sufficient to convince us that such liberal sacrifice of all that is beautiful and pleasing can only have been made with some important object in view’. Both The Era and The Stage disliked the costumes, The Era declaring that ‘archaeologically correct costumes are occasionally grotesque, and sometimes border on the ridiculous’, and The Stage that ‘some of the costumes are positively ugly’.24 Barrett’s Hamlet roused strong feelings in his friend John Ruskin. In October 1884, there was an exchange of letters about Barrett’s forthcoming production of Hamlet. On 10 October Ruskin, turning down an invitation from Barrett on account of a heavy cold, expressed the hope that he would be able to come and see Hamlet in due course. On 12 October Ruskin, reporting that his cold was ‘fast going away’, wrote asking Barrett to reserve him a stall for the opening night. He intended to come to the play alone. As he wrote to Kate Greenaway on 18 October: ‘I didn’t want anybody at Hamlet with me – I wanted to watch.’ On 15 October Ruskin wrote to Barrett, confirming his intention to attend and thanking him for the lozenges he had sent him.25 The press noted Ruskin’s presence in the audience. For example, Clement Scott in the Daily Telegraph reported that ‘literature


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was represented by such true lovers of the drama as Lord Lytton, Professor Ruskin and Mr Matthew Arnold’.26 Having attended the first night of Hamlet on 16 October, Ruskin wrote the next day to Barrett about the play: Many things grieved me – the first – that you did not look yourself – but spoiled your face by strained expressions – the second – that those big violences of expression and changes in feature were to my mind unworthy of the Knight, Prince and Dane. My entire ideal of Hamlet is intense calm of self-hiding and self-command, bursting out as a catastrophe like Claudian’s earthquake the storm at the grave – you also spoiled every gesture throughout the play by the high heeled shoes. I would rather have seen you in shoebuckles and the Lord Chancellor’s Wig – and – while some bits of scenes, the Play scene, and the last, were perfect – the great ghost scene was execrable […] the ghost looked like the ghost of a Debtor escaping from the Marshalsea under repair – and – the entirely unnecessary darkness made that scene and the Queen’s closet one just as useless to me as if you had played behind the green curtain. I haven’t done! But enough for a first post. He ended the letter ‘Forgive and love me still, from your faithful J. Ruskin’. Evidently Barrett’s passionate young Hamlet was the opposite of Ruskin’s conception of the role. Barrett replied to Ruskin and Ruskin responded on 23 October 1884, pointing out that nearly all the journals had agreed with him on the ‘ignobleness of the ghost’. He asked him to play ‘good Handel’ between acts (‘Your new Hamlet “music” is mere dishwashing’). Finally he solemnly beseeched him ‘don’t cry at the grave. He must have been absolutely and sternly prepared for her death, and for his own, nor does any deep feeling in a strong man break into tears at once, the deepest I believe not at all – I cried beside my nurse’s dead body – but – not else’. For all his strictures, on 6 November 1884 Ruskin wrote asking Barrett for a box for Hamlet next week, adding ‘and – just for my sake – do kill off Rosenkranz [sic] and G[uildenstern] – your missing the cabin scene was atrocious and it kind of left the whole a muddle’. Ruskin mentions neither Hamlet visit in his diary.27 A letter by Matthew Arnold to the Pall Mall Gazette, dated 23 October 1884, was devoted to that production, which he thought Barrett had put ‘effectively and finely on the stage’, agreeing with the critics about the excellence of the performers playing Claudius and Gertrude (‘whom one sees and hears with pleasure’) and Ophelia (‘the impression finally left […] was one of approval and respect’). Of Barrett himself, he wrote that his Hamlet was ‘fresh, natural, young, prepossessing, animated, coherent; the piece moves’. But providing historical context, he added: ‘All Hamlets whom I have seen


dissatisfy us in something. Macready wanted person, Charles Kean mind, Fechter English; Mr Wilson Barrett wants elocution.’28 When in 1884 the Gaiety Theatre staged a burlesque of Wilson Barrett’s production of Hamlet called Very Little Hamlet, William Yardley’s script included as minor characters the Hon. Lewis Rosenkranz and E.W. Guildenstern, who declared that they were there to guarantee the archaeological accuracy of the play.29 Nothing testifies more eloquently to the widely recognised importance (confirmed by Henry Herman) of E.W. Godwin (who had designed the Barrett Hamlet) and the Hon. Lewis Wingfield, who was becoming equally well known for the accurate and artistic stagings of Shakespeare. Wingfield’s Shakespeare productions were characterised by controversy both behind the scenes and in terms of their critical reception, epitomising the sharp division of opinion about historical and archaeological accuracy in the staging of classic dramas. The Hon. Lewis Wingfield (1842–91) was the third and youngest son of the sixth Viscount Powerscourt. Educated at Eton and Bonn, he was the classic dilettante. He went briefly on the stage in 1865, playing Roderigo in a production of Othello at the Haymarket Theatre, starring the black American tragedian Ira Aldridge. He indulged in many ‘whimsical experiments’, including attending the Derby disguised as a black-faced minstrel, spending nights in the workhouse and becoming an attendant in a madhouse. He travelled widely including to the interior of China. During the FrancoPrussian War he spent the whole period of the siege of Paris inside the city, nursing the wounded and sending back journalistic reports on events to The Times and the Daily Telegraph. He next became a painter and a member of the Royal Hibernian Academy. Clement Scott recalled that he painted pictures so huge that they could never be exhibited. But between 1869 and 1875 he did exhibit five domestic scenes at the Royal Academy and other galleries. Between 1876 and 1891 he wrote a dozen novels and several unproduced plays. For a time he also contributed theatrical criticism, ‘very good and entertaining’ according to Clement Scott, to The Globe under the pseudonym ‘Whyte Tyghe’.30 He joined the English Army in Egypt to report on the war in 1882 but was hospitalised for a lengthy period in Egypt with an illness that permanently undermined his health. Although he returned home and later took a convalescent voyage to Australia, he died in 1891.31 But Wingfield made his greatest artistic impact on the stage. His first contribution to the stage was to prepare an adaptation in 1880 of Schiller’s Mary Stuart as a vehicle for the Polish tragedian Madame Helena Modjeska. Mary Stuart was a favourite role of the actress who was undertaking a season of performances in London presented by Wilson Barrett. Wingfield’s version combined two English translations, those of Mellish and Fanny Kemble, with cuts and ‘improvements’ made by Wingfield, who ‘introduced


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several lines into the final scene of the last act that are not in the original of Schiller’. Madame Modjeska recalled: By a curious coincidence, Mr Wingfield’s ancestor, Sir Robert Wingfield, a high English official of the time, had been commissioned by Queen Elizabeth to be present at the execution of Mary. His report on the occasion, a very circumstantial one, is yet in the government archives, and it is from this description that a few details were added to the version.32 Criticism was mixed. Generally her performance was praised. ‘Acting more subtle or refined, more passionate and powerful, than Madam Modjeska presented in the part of Mary Stuart can rarely have been seen on the stage’ said Dutton Cook. But the play was not much liked. Dutton Cook thought it ‘an undramatic and oppressive work; it is deficient in action, its length is prodigious, and the characters are apt to engage in endless discussions’. He praised the adaptation: ‘The play has been newly and skilfully arranged for representation by Hon. Lewis Wingfield, who might perhaps be encouraged to continue the work of retrenchment and reform.’33 In other words, it would benefit from further cutting. However, it ran for 100 performances. He next took up costume designing and turned himself into enough of an expert on the history of costume to arrange the display and write the catalogue for the history of civil costume in England from 1066 to the early nineteenth century for the International Health Exhibition of 1884. Godwin did the display of modern costume for the same exhibition. He designed the costumes for five major London Shakespeare productions: J.S. Clarke’s The Comedy of Errors (1883), Mary Anderson’s Romeo and Juliet (1884), the Kendals’ As You Like It (1885) and Mrs Lillie Langtry’s As You Like It (1890) and Antony and Cleopatra (1890). Wingfield set out his philosophy of stage design in a series of influential journal articles. Writing in the Fortnightly Review, he dismissed the idea that the age of Siddons and Kemble had been a golden age of the theatre and declared: ‘It seems to me fair to conclude that the “Palmy Days” are those in which we live. The stage was never so highly considered as now, never had so much done for it, or could reckon in its ranks so many ladies and gentlemen of birth, refinement and education.’ He had praised the Comedie Française and the Saxe-Meiningen Company on their visits to London but today he could ‘dare assert that British dramatic art is fit to hold its own’. This is because great acting is now matched with visual realism. He traced the progress of stage realism over the course of the century, attributing its rise to the activities of J.R. Planché and his work with Madame Vestris. Samuel Phelps and Charles Kean had carried the development further. But he criticised Kean for going too far. He had ‘choked his productions with heraldic archaeology; everybody was talking of the astonishing change of


seasons in The Tempest, of the second Richard’s lists at Coventry. The actors were nowhere; the composition awry’. Where initially Realism took the form of reproduction of illustrations from Froissart and Monstrelet, Tom Robertson and the Bancrofts introduced everyday realism in the ‘teacup and saucer’ dramas at the Prince of Wales’s Theatre. Although some criticised this trend, complaining that they did not go out to see their own drawing rooms, they were wrong. The faithfulness to detail in dress, accessories and manners – the truth to nature – revolutionised the stage. Wingfield compared this development to Ruskin’s championing of the Pre-Raphaelites: ‘Mr Robertson did for the modern stage what Mr Ruskin did for pictorial art.’ Wingfield, however, denounced Boucicault for the misapplication of stage realism to sensational drama and to what he calls ‘The Drama of the Dials’, i.e. Seven Dials, melodramas set in the London slums. In this genre, realism was being put at the service of plays whose content was low and morally degrading, a distinct echo of disapproving Ruskinism. He went on to indict Wilson Barrett for producing slum melodramas at the Princess’s Theatre: He did it with a completeness which was the apotheosis of Realism awry. There was to be a scene of low life in St Giles’s. Conscientious Mr Barrett would have the real article or nothing. He engaged denizens of frowzy courts and alleys with their own barrows and the cabbages which during their day’s labour they had failed to sell. Mr Barrett imbued his costermongers with a spice of his own thoroughgoing energy. Not a rough fellow among them but adored him. That the play was low and demoralizing signified nothing. The taste was for cabbages and barrows. Salvation came in the form of Henry Irving who restored realism to the poetic drama, realism of ‘a more ennobling kind’, which involved poetic studies of Venice, ‘the patrician robes of Portia’ and the ‘broidered bravery of Benedick’, references to the much-praised Lyceum productions of The Merchant of Venice and Much Ado. He noted that Wilson Barrett had now followed Irving’s lead and produced Claudian: Claudian is not a good play. It has a fine beginning, but crumbles act by act as the story develops. It is badly constructed, and the dialogue is sometimes stilted, always verbose, and overweighted with strained imagery. Nor is it well acted, except in two or three parts; notably that of the hero. Yet the play interests. It is superbly mounted. In certain scenes realism is shown at its best – picturesque, not over accentuated. The play is wholesome, of good tendency, and the public, ashamed of past vagaries, are content to be led to the appreciation of better things, even through a defile of dullness.


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This singling out of the artistic perfection and the wholesome nature of the content exactly echoes Ruskin’s celebrated praise of the play both in public print and in a private letter to Barrett, in what can be seen as a definition of Ruskinian theatre. Wingfield ends with one warning – do not overdo the historical accuracy: ‘absolute correctness of costume on the stage is undesirable […] Those who give attention to the mounting of historical plays aim usually, not at absolute correctness, but at the production of an artistic and complete whole, a kaleidoscopic series of effects of colour, carefully thought out and calculated.’34 Wingfield then contributed an essay on costume designing to the Magazine of Art in 1888, in which he expounded a view very similar to that articulated by E.W. Godwin: History and Archaeology are sisters, and the Historic Drama is their handmaid. By her faithful service both are made familiar to the public as instruments of instruction as well as of recreation. Moving hand-in-hand under guidance they perfect each the other, conjuring before the mental retina a picturesque vision of the past. Like Godwin he wanted the actors to learn to move and hold themselves as the characters of the period of the play would, their deportment dictated by the cut, weight and shape of their costume. When actors complained that they could not act in his costumes, he would say ‘try’ and only consent to modification if convinced that the costume would jeopardise the success of the play. But, also like Godwin, he was willing to sacrifice absolute accuracy in favour of accessibility: The education of the masses is not far enough advanced as yet for an historic presentment to be made upon the stage in its bald truth. Concessions have to be allowed in a spirit of indulgence for weak vessels. There are certain details of costume, furniture, or accessories of almost every past period which, too literally followed, would by unfamiliar quaintness or unexpected bizarrerie distract the attention of the spectator and give rise to inopportune laughter. Artistic effort being the pursuit of the beautiful, that which is ugly must be eschewed. He believed that efficient ‘stage-dressers’ were few because the stage dresser needed a thorough practical knowledge of stage-effect-lighting, grouping and movement. They must have ‘matriculated as professional painters’ and mastered the science of colour and harmony. In addition, they must be masters of archaeological lore and have an ‘educated refinement of taste’. It was crucial to design and plan dresses with an awareness of the distance of the actors from the spectators.


He concluded that public taste and the appreciation of plays was steadily improving: The eye of the public becomes more educated daily; opinion more severe anent anachronism, more appreciative of the real and the true. An audience is beginning to detect by a kind of instinct what is right, arriving without knowing why, much at the same conclusion as we do by archaeological study and scientific rule. But he ended with dismissal of the critics: Oddly enough, the professional critics as a body do not advance in the same ratio as the general public. They speak with authority about the carpentering of plays according to dramatic canon, and the relative merits of performance; but the acquaintance they can claim with stage matters of another kind is so limited that their verdict is of little value. They are, for the most part, so busy with multifarious duties as to find no time for advancing their art-education. Some, gracefully admitting this with commendable candour, refrain from judging us at all, or indulging in unsafe dogma. Others, less prudent, shroud ignorance under commonplaces and mask emptiness behind Olympian frowns […] On our side are ranged such names as Kean, Phelps, Irving, Sardou, and the cultured managements of the Comédie Française and of Saxe-Meiningen – whose enlightened enthusiasm and perseverance have pioneered along the rugged way. Well, well! the convictions and conclusions of these are living and practical examples; the deductions we may draw from their achievements are worth more than the babble of critics.35 John S. Clarke, the brother-in-law of the great American actor Edwin Booth, and someone who, according to the Daily Telegraph (19 January 1883), had ‘promoted farce acting to the dignity of a fine art’, had prepared the adaptation of the rarely performed The Comedy of Errors (‘a singularly neat threeact version of the old story, manipulated without any injury to Shakespeare or undue desecration of the text’). It was produced at the Strand Theatre and Clarke played Dromio of Syracuse. The Daily Telegraph reported that ‘The people took to this farce as if it were by a modern hand, and greeted it with constant laughter and continuous applause’. Wingfield’s costumes also earned praise: ‘Availing himself of every liberty that Shakespearean geography and chronology invariably give, Mr Lewis Wingfield has filled the streets of Ephesus with brilliant costumes, silks, satins and stuffs, that might have been unearthed from some old Eastern bazaar. What with the guard of Janissaries and the duke himself, who looks like a mythical hero of Wagnerian opera, what with the pretty scenes and gay colouring, the eye is as much pleased as the mind is constantly amused.’


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The Times (20 January 1883), pointing out that there was no indication of which epoch the play was set in, quoted Wingfield as arguing that the peculiarities of the comedy fit in with the historical features of the reign of the first Sultan of European Turkey, and that the play is accordingly set in the fifteenth century when Ephesus was at the height of its picturesqueness: The streets are thronged with merchants hailing from the numerous mercantile centres of the Mediterranean, clad in the garb of Syracuse, of Venice, of distant Tangier. The Duke is protected by a guard of Janissaries, from Constantinople, wearing Turkish dress; while Antipholus, Adriana and Luciana affect the mode of Venice, much as fine people of the present day consider it essential to their dignity to wear French bonnets and French gloves. The architecture, too, presents a new and unusual picture to the eye; Greek polished marble, Roman tiles, stand cheek by jowl with Byzantine mosaic and Oriental fretwork. The Times reported: ‘All this, tastefully but not extravagantly represented, goes to make up a series of pretty stage pictures.’ The scope of his involvement increased considerably in Mary Anderson’s production of Romeo and Juliet in 1884. Mary Anderson, popularly known as ‘La Belle Americaine’, was born in California in 1859 and made her stage debut at the age of 16 playing Juliet. During the next eight years she became a favourite all over America and in three seasons in England (1883–4, 1884–5, 1887–8) she conquered London and, in several successful tours of the British provinces, established herself as a favourite in ‘fastidious Edinburgh, critical Manchester, and impulsive but exacting Dublin’.36 She was not just an actress but an actress-manager, in that she selected her own repertoire, prepared the acting editions, chose the actors and designers and supervised the production – eventually the cumulative strain of all these activities caused a nervous collapse and her early retirement from the stage. Despite her undoubted popularity with audiences, Mary Anderson divided the critics. William Winter, the American critic, was her greatest admirer, arguing that she combined beauty with charm, sweetness and sincerity, and this combined with her uncommon stature and her ‘magnificent voice – copious, melodious, penetrating, loud and clear, yet soft and gentle’ – ensured her stardom. But she was much criticised both for her acting and her repertoire, largely early nineteenth century plays (Ion, Fazio, Ingomar, Evadne, Love and The Hunchback) regarded by the 1880s as antiquated. Another veteran American critic, John Ranken Towse, took a diametrically opposite view to that expounded by William Winter. Conceding her beauty, graciousness, intelligence, charm and refined manner, he declared ‘she was never a great actress or a great artist […] she never succeeded in identifying herself with any of the first-rate tragedy parts which she undertook’, in tragedy she exhibited ‘little versatility in method or variety of resource’,


‘she had certain formulas in which she was proficient, and she applied them to corresponding types of situation with a deadly and unmodified reiteration. In the mechanism of her art she never advanced beyond a moderate proficiency’. A limited actress, she was ‘always, solely and inevitably Mary Anderson’. She was successful only in those parts that fitted her like a glove: ‘in great parts, demanding imagination, passionate eloquence, or subtle discrimination, she was second-rate.’ ‘In parts which really suited her – whose component elements were those of her own temperament and personality – Mary Anderson was wholly delightful.’ These roles he identified as Galatea, Parthenia and Perdita.37 Wingfield’s first engagement with Mary Anderson was designing the dresses for Ingomar the Barbarian, a play first performed in 1851. The new production opened on 7 September 1883. The Era (8 September 1883) thought Wingfield’s costume designs contributed ‘not a little to the beauty and completeness of the mounting’. Many critics, however, thought the play old fashioned and Mary Anderson beautiful but artificial. The Times (8 September 1883) judged her ‘more concerned with the fall of her drapery than the effect of her speeches’. In 1884 she decided on a revival of Romeo and Juliet with William Terriss as Romeo and enlisted Wingfield to oversee all aspects of the production. Wingfield prepared the acting text, eliminating Garrick’s additions but making two new spectacular additions – the secret wedding ceremony of Romeo and Juliet which normally took place offstage and a funeral procession or pageant for Juliet added to the fifth act. ‘Here the body of Juliet, robed in a dress of silver tissue, will be carried on a purple canopied bier, followed by a great crowd, weeping and throwing flowers over the corpse.’ The ballroom scene was also planned as a grant pageant with Juliet dancing a measure devised specially by choreographer John D’Auban. Wingfield’s brief was to make the Anderson production as different as possible from Irving’s triumphant production of Romeo and Juliet two years earlier. ‘Mr Irving in his revival’, Wingfield told the Pall Mall Gazette (24 October 1884), ‘presented a series of most beautiful pictures, but they did not show us Verona, while his dresses were quite imaginary, and belonged to no period at all. I have adhered most rigidly to one period, and so far as was possible every detail is correct and faithful.’ The journal reported: ‘The scenery is to be most elaborate, and an attempt has been made to give an accurate picture of old Verona – its thoroughfares, its manners, and its dress in 1300 A.D.’38 As the key to the style of the production, Wingfield turned to the series of pictures of the life of St Ursula on the wall of the Accademia in Venice, ‘glowing with truth, glorious in suggestion of harmonies, overflowing with small but precious details of contemporary manners and customers’. It was, he said, an epoch of the Middle Ages never used before on the stage. The bedroom of St Ursula by Carpaccio was to be the model for Juliet’s bedroom.


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‘Large photographs of the Carpaccio series lay on my table for constant reference – whether with regard to tunics, tights, boots, wigs, hats, chairs, tables, and domestic implements.’39 Carpaccio’s Dream of St Ursula was a particular favourite of Ruskin. Since 1876 he had been obsessed with the painting. He recounted the story of the saint’s life in Fors Clavigera, made his own copy of the painting and came increasingly to associate Ursula’s life and martyrdom with the life and death of his beloved Rose La Touche, Ursula’s vision of an angel evoking Ruskin’s longing for a visionary appearance of the lost Rose. When Ruskin lectured on ‘The Pleasures of Truth’ in his lecture series on ‘The Pleasures of England’ on 15 November and 17 November 1884, during the run of the play, he displayed that very picture and the Pall Mall Gazette, reporting the lecture, noted that it was ‘the picture of which Mr Ruskin has written so much in Fors Clavigera and his Venetian guide-books, and which was largely referred to […] by Mr Wingfield in the recent revival of Romeo and Juliet at the Lyceum, for the details of a Venetian interior’ (CW 33.507). Mary Anderson had travelled to Verona to visit the scenes associated with the play. An ‘excellent Neapolitan artist’ who accompanied her sketched the places chosen as locations for the play. Back in London, Wingfield selected the scenic artists. John O’Connor, who had lived in Verona and had executed a series of sketches there for the Duke of Westminster, as well as being an accomplished scene painter, was recruited to do the Verona street scenes. Hawes Craven, master of outdoor scenes and Irving’s chief scene painter, William Perkins, T.W. Hall and Bruce Smith, whose pantomimic changes recently utilised in Adelphi melodramas were to be incorporated, made up the rest of the scene painting team. Their brief was to be ‘authenticity’. The Pall Mall Gazette reported: ‘The scenic artists have been careful to delineate actual streets, actually existing squares and gardens – expunging from their canvas such houses as were proved by internal evidence to belong to a later time; and substituting in their stead buildings of a correct character and style […] The glades and walks shaded by stonepines are copied from actual walks and glades, while the final scene of all was suggested by an impressive grove of antique cypresses, that yet rear their venerable heads in the celebrated Giusti Gardens. The armorial bearings and escutcheons have been culled from Litta’s “Famiglie Italiane”.’ But for Wingfield the balance and harmony of colour was also vital, so he met with all the scene painters to agree the colour schemes for each scene. In creating the costumes, he decided to use genuine brocades and damasks of the period instead of modern imitations. So with ‘Miss Anderson’s sympathy and consent’ he ransacked the curio shops of London and Paris and selected materials which would harmonise with the scenic colour schemes. These were then submitted to his ‘trusty first lieutenant’, Patience Harris (‘in her way a genius’), sister of Drury Lane impresario Sir Augustus Harris and


the person responsible for making up the costumes. There was ‘many a fierce fight’ between them but agreement was eventually reached. Having selected the materials and agreed the colour schemes, he set about designing the costumes, beginning with Romeo and Juliet, who would each need half a dozen costumes: Juliet’s costumes must be considered before her lover’s. They had to approach as near to Carpaccio as might be without peril. They must be becoming, beautiful, appropriate, varied; and, above all, must satisfy the ‘star’. My star was fastidious and difficult to satisfy, given to carping over details. They must harmonise with Mr Terriss’s (also difficult to please), never jar with casual crowds and scenic changes. The book of the play must always be in one hand; while with the others, the stuffs were picked from heaps, colours juxtaposed, materials sifted and rejected. Carefully following the book, I was expected to behold, as in a magic mirror, Miss Anderson and Mr Terriss in front of Mr O’Connor’s ‘set’; to remember that the same dresses were to appear afterwards before a ‘front cloth’ by Mr Hall. Juliet’s attire chancing to be of a pale silvery blue, Mr O’Connor obligingly consented to avoid that colour in his picture, and it behoved me to send a post-card to Mr Hall, warning him to do the same. A like precaution was necessary with regard to every background by every artist, according to the attire to be assumed by the leading person in the scene. After the principals the rest of the characters were costumed, ‘never forgetting their places on the stage, their relations with Romeo or Juliet’: It was like the putting together of a puzzle, and – as in a puzzle – the last piece would decline sometimes to fit into its place, and require the re-modelling of the whole. Sometime – oh! horror – the star, changing her mind, as ladies will, would announce an intention of transposing her dresses; of wearing in Act III what was intended for Act II, or vice versa; a step that would bring crumbling down my house of cards, involving the labour of re-arranging all. Often a character would strut up to me – usually the most insignificant – and vow that his particular stuff was just what did not suit him […] and in consequence of many worries of this sort I have made it a rule recently to try on the garments of the small fry only in linings of calico, so that they may never know, until completed, the style of garb which they must wear. After the colour had been settled, there was the question of modification. In costumes of both men and women, ‘certain details must be omitted or slurred over, which would appear so singular as to invite ridicule. […] Garments, of whatever epoch, are so modified and altered – the same, but


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translated, as it were, into another tongue – that, while seeming to be sternly correct, yet are in their way original’.40 In addition to preparing the text, supervising the costumiers and scene painters, the dance rehearsals and fencing lessons, Wingfield drilled the supers. He told the Pall Mall Gazette: ‘It is now four months since I began my work. I have had the “supers” in hand for the last six weeks, and as our complement is 180, and, every group, every action, every bit of pantomime, every step has to be carefully taught; it may be imagined the task was not easy. These 180, by the way, were drilled to their work in batches of six.’ Not only did they have to be drilled but also taught to perform differently from Irving’s 1882 production. ‘Several times while drilling the mobs the supermaster said to me “That’s what we did with Mr Irving”; and he received each time the same reply, “Out with it, then; we’ll work from another standpoint”.’41 For all this work, Wingfield did not direct the principals and Russell Jackson concludes, I think correctly, that he combined the activities of stage manager and historical and artistic adviser rather than director of the whole thing.42 Oscar Wilde, who wrote his poetic drama The Duchess of Padua for Mary Anderson, advised her in 1882 that she could only obtain success in England ‘by the beauty of costume, the dignity of scenery, the perfection of detail and dramatic order’.43 She shrewdly turned down Duchess saying: ‘The play in its present form would no more please the public of today than would Venice Preserved or Lucretia Borgia.’44 But she took his advice when planning Romeo and Juliet. However, when writing her autobiography, published in 1896, she did not look back on the experience of Romeo and Juliet with any affection. She evidently found the whole business an almost intolerable burden. She had difficulty in selecting her acting company as she clearly adhered to the Godwinian principle that actors should wear their costumes and move according to the manners of the period of the play. In this regard, she lamented the prevalence of modern dress plays on the stage: However excellent an artist may be in these he is often at sea in costume parts, where he has no trouser-pockets for his hands, no mantel-shelves to pose against, and no cigarette to tide him over rough places. It is a simple matter to don classic or medieval clothes, but not so easy to wear them well. This however, is the least part of their trouble, for those who are glib with ‘By Jove, my boy’ and the like, stumble more hopelessly over their blank verse than over their swords and flowing draperies.45 She recalled: ‘My ambition was to have the stage in such good taste and balance with the play and epoch as to attract no particular notice to itself: like a well-dressed woman, whose clothes never catch the eye. Unfortunately, little by little, and almost unconsciously, I was led into a lavish production of “Romeo and Juliet”, which caused me infinite trouble, and took


up so much of my time that I had none left for restudying my own part.’ The production cost an estimated £6,000 to stage. She does not explicitly blame Wingfield, who himself later recalled their disagreements and the fraught nature of their collaboration, but there is implied blame. She praises O’Connor’s sets: ‘Some of his sets were as beautiful as anything I have seen on the stage.’ However, she reports that the sets were so heavy and took so long to get into place that the dress rehearsal, which began at 7.00 pm the day before the opening, went on until 6.00 a.m. and even then they did not get round to the death scene. The scenery involved revolving sets: the balcony swung round to convert itself into the interior of Juliet’s bedroom for instance. Anderson lamented: ‘How I longed for the simple scenery of the old days, when the characters were the chief consideration and the upholsterer and the scenic artist very minor adjuncts.’ Exhausted and tearful, Mary Anderson went on as Juliet, the scenery worked but the funeral procession was cut, allowing the play to end at 11.30 pm. She recalled: ‘Juliet was received with far more enthusiasm than she deserved. Fortunately, applause does not blind one to one’s shortcomings. I knew I had not entered into the character, and was accordingly unhappy and humiliated. I resolved, therefore, to restudy and remodel the part. The result was that […] at the end of the season I found (Juliet) more deserving of the success she received.’46 The play ran from 1 November 1884 to 21 February 1885, half the run of Irving’s production. She later took the production to New York, with Johnston Forbes Robertson as her Romeo. But she never worked with Wingfield again. Many critics thought it was the best thing she had yet done (The Times, 3 November 1884; The Era, 8 November 1884) but this for some was not saying that much. The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News (8 November 1884) noted with evident irritation that the play would be bound to attract an audience because of the fact that Mary Anderson had taken ‘so totally unaccountable a hold upon the fancy of a certain section of playgoers, who may not be judges of acting, but who do not mind paying money for a passing fad’. The critic concluded: ‘On the whole her impersonation will certainly not advance her reputation as a mistress of her art, but it will more than satisfy the demands of her many admirers.’ Clement Scott, writing in The Theatre, was withering: Never before in our memory have we seen ‘Romeo and Juliet’ […] rendered in such a listless and unimaginative fashion … Of Mary’s Juliet, he wrote that she was: a Juliet beautiful but self-conscious, never absorbed or abstracted, modern, unideal and unexaggerative in every tender scene; a Juliet who acts with her lips, not with her heart[…] all, all trick, and artificial to the last


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degree […] as far from Juliet as darkness from dawn. What is it then? A most excellent representation of Miss Mary Anderson, the favourite of the hour. She has never come out of herself. She appears as Parthenia, Pauline, Galatea, the French actress in ‘Comedy and Tragedy’, but she is always Miss Mary Anderson. Never once is she any one else. The best of it is, the public does not want her to be any one else. They want to see Mary Anderson, and that is all.47 Her champion, William Winter, writing in 1915, explicitly rejected the verdict of Clement Scott. He had seen Mary Anderson play Juliet 35 times and he declared her performance ‘one of intrinsic charm, superlative beauty of artistic form, and great energy of passion and power of pathos; and more than […] any other actress whom I have ever seen in the part, it was saturated with the force and colour of tragedy’.48 It also presented a new milestone in artistic presentation of Shakespeare on the stage. Its visual splendours were universally acknowledged, but dissatisfaction with some of the acting led to something of a critical reaction against this style. Herbert Standing’s Mercutio was booed for delivering the Queen Mab speech as if the thoughts were just occurring to him rather than as a recitation, a modern approach but one which annoyed the audience; the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News thought the acting company ‘cannot be considered remarkable for strength’; William Terriss (who had been a hit as Mercutio in Irving’s Romeo and Juliet) was dashing and fiery, but some critics thought he did not understand the meaning of some of the lines he was speaking.49 Only the veterans (Mrs Stirling as the Nurse and Mrs Charles Calvert as Lady Capulet) came out of the reviews well. It became the latest focus for the continuing debate on how to stage Shakespeare. Clement Scott led the charge: The splendid revival of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ at the Lyceum, interesting as it may be to the spectator, is not convincing to the Shakespearean student. We are gradually overdoing spectacle so much that poetry must suffer in the long run. The question is no longer how this or that character in Shakespeare ought to be played, but how much money can be spent on this or that scene. The stage decorator, the costumier, and the carpenter are in the ascendant […] The whole of the stage seems to be sacrificed to the harvest of the eye, and not the satisfaction of the senses. Acting is more and more made subordinate to mere scenic success […] That the play is superbly mounted, no one can doubt. It dazzles and it delights the stupid and unimaginative. Stage machinery has become a miracle. Houses change into gardens, palaces are whirled into prisons, cloisters are transformed into tombs. It is a lovely panorama, and little else.50


William Winter put the case for the defence in the New York Tribune (an opinion he was to repeat almost word for word in his 1915 study Shakespeare on the Stage): An old civilisation, the repose of massive towers, the solidity and picturesque beauty of time-worn buildings, the strength and peace of aged and mossy trees, the cool gloom and awful splendour of ancient churches, the mystery and silence of dark cathedral crypts, the climate of the South, the glimmering glory of moonlit summer nights – all these were needful, in Shakespeare’s scheme, as a background to the story of ‘Romeo and Juliet’. For such a background his text makes ample provision […] The true and right way is to let the scenery grow out of the drama and crystallise around it. This law has been respected in the present Shakespeare revival; and therefore, although the embellishment is elaborate, the result of it is natural. The tragedy has not been produced to show how well a scenic artist can paint or how skilfully a stage machinist can work his cords, […] it has simply been provided […] to […] render more real to (the spectator’s) imagination and his heart a poetic picture, at once beautiful and terrible, of the passion and agony of human life that is shipwrecked by human love.51 He noted that of the 17 distinct scenes, the best were produced by John O’Connor, Hawes Craven and Bruce Smith, notably O’Connor’s public square and churchyard, the grove of sycamores by Craven and Smith’s Friar’s cell, which he thought would be remembered as ‘perfect works for the purpose that they serve – and something more […] Several of the paintings are worthy of a permanent place in the archives of art’. ‘Whoever looks upon the scenes which have been provided by Miss Anderson for this production has looked upon Verona itself, has listened to the rustling of leaves in the scented air of the southern night, and heard the nightingale sing in the dusky Italian woods.’52 The Era, noting that the setting of scenes necessitated ‘great labour and long waits between the acts’, nevertheless approved. ‘Whether a Shakespearian play requires so much elaboration is a question which may well be discussed, but we for the present are quite willing to believe that what has been done in this latest revival has been done with the desire to do honour to the poet […] rather than with the wish to eclipse the former splendours of Shakespearian production at the house under notice’ (i.e. Irving’s productions at the Lyceum). Others in the press were beginning to express misgivings. The Times noted that ‘the scenery and costumes are as lavish and […] as accurate as misapplied ingenuity can make there. There may be some subtle satisfaction to the public in knowing that the clothes worn by the lowliest super as correct to a button. But assuredly their pleasure in the play is not affected one


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way or another […] The setting is, however, a thing of beauty for the eye to rest upon, and some wonderful feats are accomplished with revolving scenes. The Friar’s cell and Juliet’s chamber are alternately turned inside out, in full view of the house. Whole sets are also dragged bodily across the stage.’ The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News declared that: ‘Under the care of Mr Lewis Wingfield there has been prepared such a series of pictures of Verona as has certainly never before been presented on any stage […] It is true that he has sometimes made a mistake in distracting the attention from the play by its gorgeous setting. The pantomimic effect, for example, which is produced by the tricky change which turns Juliet’s solidly-built chamber inside out is ingenious enough, but wholly inappropriate to tragedy.’ Robert, first Earl of Lytton, who was a published poet under the name of Owen Meredith, was so appalled by the criticism of Mary Anderson’s acting that he devoted a full-length essay in The Nineteenth Century to a defence of her performance. Citing the leading critical comments, he began: ‘Briefly and broadly stated, our impressions were, in the first place, that scarcely one of their objections to Miss Anderson’s Juliet, and not a single one of the praises bestowed by them on the other performers, had any foundation in fact. In the next place […] we all agreed that Miss Anderson’s acting of this extremely difficult part […] so far from revealing her “incapacity to portray passion”, was full of feeling and tenderness; and that the tenderness was in some passages profoundly touching. As regards my own particular impressions on this point, I must add here that, although I have seen many stage Juliets […] Miss Anderson’s is the only one that has ever drawn a tear from me.’ He went on in a scene by scene analysis of the performance to justify his verdict, ending by warning his readers ‘Put not your trust in newspaper criticism’. But even more controversial than his defence of Mary Anderson was his throwaway footnote dismissing the vaunted accuracy of the sets: ‘The attempt to archaeologise the Shakespearean drama is one of the stupidest pedantries of this age of prigs. Archaeology would not be more out of place in a fairy tale than it is in a play of Shakespeare. This scene is beautiful and animated, and that is all that is wanted.’53 This stimulated another round in the battle about stage archaeology and provoked a reply from Oscar Wilde. Oscar Wilde lined up with the archaeologists in The Truth of Masks (1891) in which he reworked a journal article from The Nineteenth Century (May 1885) on ‘Shakespeare and Stage Costume’, an article Godwin praised in a letter to Wilde.54 Wilde defended the use of beautiful and historically accurate costumes and archaeologically accurate sets. He claimed that much of the action in Shakespeare hinged on costume details and the plays were full of costume references: To put any play of Shakespeare on the stage, absolutely as he himself wished it to be done, requires the services of a good property-man, a clever


wig-maker, a costumier with a sense of colour and a knowledge of textures, a master of the methods of making up, a fencing-master, a dancingmaster, and an artist to direct personally the whole production. In a reference to the view expressed by Lord Lytton in his review that the introduction of archaeological accuracy onto the stage was ‘one of the stupidest pedantries of this age of prigs’, Wilde declared that archaeology ‘so far from being a bit of priggish pedantry, is in every way legitimate and beautiful. For the stage is not merely the meeting place of all the arts, but is also the return of art to life […] The ancient world wakes from its sleep, and history moves as a pageant before our eyes, without obliging us to have recourse to a dictionary or an encyclopedia for the perfection of our enjoyment’. He stated: For what is the use to the stage of that archaeology which has so strangely terrified the critics, but that it, and it alone, can give the architecture and apparel suitable to the time in which the action of the play passes? It enables us to see a Greek dressed like a Greek and an Italian like an Italian; to enjoy the arcades of Venice and the balconies of Verona; and, if the play deals with any of the great eras in our country’s history, to contemplate the age and its proper attire, and the King in his habit as he lived. He contrasts the present with the past when the stage saw Lear in lace ruffles and Lady Macbeth in a crinoline. Like Ruskin he claims educational value for the history plays. He says Shakespeare took pains to get his facts right, following Holinshed faithfully: If it be really necessary that the School Board children should know about the Wars of the Roses, they could learn their lessons just as well out of Shakespeare as out of shilling primers, and learn them, I need not say, far more pleasurably. Wilde here directly echoes Ruskin, who regularly rejected a narrowly mechanical, utilitarian approach to education in favour of a broad physical, ethical and aesthetic training. Ruskin’s much-quoted aphorism was ‘the entire object of true education is to make people not merely do the right things but enjoy the right things’ (CW 18.435). Wilde continued: Perfect accuracy of detail, for the sake of perfect illusion is necessary for us. What we have to see is that the details are not allowed to usurp the principal place. They must be subordinate always to the general motive of the play. But subordination in art does not mean disregard for truth; it means conversion of fact into effect, and assigning to each detail its proper relative value.


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He says ‘it should be noted that the most lovely scenes that have been produced on our stage have been those that have been characterized by perfect accuracy’ and he singles out the Bancrofts’ eighteenth century revivals at the Haymarket, Irving’s Much Ado and Barrett’s Claudian. But it was the ‘illusion’ of perfect accuracy Wilde was praising.55 Shakespeare had become so fashionable in the London theatres that the Kendals and John Hare at the St James’s Theatre decided to put on a production of As You Like It in 1885. The Kendals had starred in a production of the play ten years earlier at the Opera Comique, but they decided to do it now in the approved spectacular manner and engaged Lewis Wingfield as artistic adviser (‘a very gifted man and an artist at heart’ recalled Mrs Kendal in her autobiography).56 Wingfield set out his conception of the play in an interview with the Pall Mall Gazette (24 January 1885). He had decided to set the play about 1422 in the reign of Charles VII of France and he had gone to Froissart for most of his designs, bearing in mind John Hare’s stricture: ‘for heaven’s sake don’t make us look as if we had stepped down from a church window.’ The Duke’s palace became a feudal castle inspired by the Chateau d’Amboise, while the Forest of Arden boasted real vegetation, a cascade and sunlight effects produced by electricity from above. Wingfield’s forest grass was feathers dyed and sewn into mats to give a more realistic effect than the real thing. In a major departure from tradition, he decided that the courtiers and their attendants would no longer wander through the forest clad in Lincoln green, ‘looking like so many Free Foresters at a Crystal Palace fête’. Instead they would be splendidly dressed in velvets and furs. The justification for this, Wingfield claimed, was that ‘the sumptuary laws of the period forbade any one of high rank to wear simple cloth. No. Go where he would, he must maintain his rank and dignity and his rich costumes’. The guards were dressed in black and white, designed after a set of court playing cards, and were enacted by members of the Brigade of Guards. The wrestling match, instead of a simple rural romp, would be staged as a great court occasion. The production, however, received mixed reviews. The Times (26 January 1885) critic opened his review with praise for the mise-en-scène: A more artistic setting than is here given to this most idealistic of Shakespeare’s plays is not readily conceivable […] The forest scene, where so much of the poet’s conception takes shape, breathes the very spirit of pastoral poetry. It is a beautiful sample of the mechanical art of the stage, with its charming glades and vistas, its trickling moss-banked streams, and its spreading oaks, beneath whose boughs the exiled duke and his followers picnic with rustic simplicity […] The whole personnel of the play too, harmonizes with the fanciful world in which they move, thanks partly to the intelligence of the stage management, partly to the idealistic costumes designed by Mr Lewis Wingfield.


However, having said this, the critic went on: ‘If as much could be said for the acting as for the mise-en-scène, the present revival would unquestionably be the most ideally perfect representation of the play ever seen.’ Of Mrs Kendal’s Rosalind: ‘She is womanly, bright, vivacious, and sympathetic, and her art enables her at times to fully overcome the disadvantages of a mature physique.’ But ‘matronly dignity’ was inappropriate for a juvenile lead like Rosalind. Mr Kendal, while ‘handsome and manly’ was ‘somewhat sententious and heavy. He has few of the characteristics of the love-sick youth’. John Hare’s Touchstone, his performance handicapped by acute first night nerves, was a new conception whose chief characteristic was refinement: ‘He is much more of a philosopher than a buffoon, his wit never degenerates into folly […] He wears his motley like a gentleman.’ Hermann Vezin’s Jaques was ‘a thoroughly sound piece of acting, skilful in its elocution and subtle in its grasp of contemplative character’. The Era (31 January 1885) agreed in pronouncing Mrs Kendal’s Rosalind ‘sadly disappointing’, her interpretation lacking in delicacy, her reading altogether too theatrical, self-conscious and bold, too much like modern comedy and not enough like Shakespeare’s romance. ‘She interpolated curious laughs that we have never heard a Rosalind indulge in before, and in the “Cuckoo” song, borrowed from Love’s Labours Lost, she ran hither and thither about the stage pretending to hear a real cuckoo and indulging in starts and grimaces that were altogether out of place.’ Mr Kendal, the critic thought, ‘excellent […] we do not know that the love-sick youth […] could have a much better representative’. But Hare’s Touchstone ‘a great mistake […] What he can do in modern comedy all the world knows; but he has nothing of Shakespearian humour in him, and least of all the humour of Shakespeare’s most famous clown’. There were harsh words too for the mise-en-scène: Until Messrs. Hare and Kendal took the comedy in hand and called in the Hon. Lewis Wingfield to consult the ‘authorities’, As You Like It had been thought sufficient for representation and acceptance upon its own merits, and with one pretty scene of the Forest of Arden was considered good enough without Froissart, and was altogether independent of the meretricious aids of pomp and pageantry. It was a delightful pastoral; it has now been made […] a modern spectacle […] The story of As You Like It must stand still in order that Mr. Hare’s admirably trained stage crowds may assemble, and in order, too, that there may be a dazzling procession in seeming rivalry with what Mr Augustus Harris has given us in pantomime at Drury Lane. There is much to admire without doubt: plenty of life, plenty of movement, plenty of colour, plenty of realism; but it is all against the play, and it kills the poetry. When our eyes are busily discovering the grandeur of the details of Mr. Perkins’s solidly built up ducal palace our ears shut out Shakespeare, for the scenic artist is all assertive, and the poet must give way. And thus it may be said that, mounted with


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magnificence, As You Like It has been treated shabbily. Its simplicity was its recommendation. It has been robbed of that, and in its place we are offered medieval splendour and archaeological correctness. William Harford’s forest scene, with its real waterfall, elicited praise: ‘a picture of sylvan beauty such as the stage has seldom, if ever, seen.’ But then there was a sumptuous banquet, compared to the Lord Mayor’s Banquet at the Mansion House, and with everyone in velvet and furs. ‘Never did dwellers in the Forest of Arden disport themselves more gaily, nor feast so magnificently nor dress themselves so bravely as those introduced to us at the St. James’s Theatre.’ But all ‘the frippery and finery’ completely eclipsed the poetry. Clement Scott in the Daily Telegraph (26 January 1885) was much more severe. He thought the St James’s team wholly unsuited to Shakespeare and said so at the start of his review: Shakespeare is the last author and ‘As You Like It’ certainly the very last play that any one would have deemed possible at a theatre presided over by such a trio of accomplished artists as Mr. and Mrs Kendal and Mr. John Hare. Together, by their combined intelligence and industry, they have established a school – a true school – of modern comedy acting. One and all, they are modern and nineteenth-century to the backbone. They have won their way to fame by studies of the age in which we live. The ideal, the imaginative, the picturesque, and the poetic are altogether outside of the scheme of their art. They have not identified themselves with romance in any form or shape whatever […] As a light comedian and as a swift caricaturist the brother managers can hold their own against all comers. And so can Mrs Kendal as the pathetic matron. As the leader of the English comedy school Mrs Kendal has no rival. She is an artist in the highest sense of the word, […] but to see her at her best she must be arrayed in well-cut garments by a Bond-street milliner, and she must appeal to the tastes and fancies of what is called a fashionable audience […] Plays in verse are outside the education of the company; they have not been trained to appreciate or even understand poetry. He was also critical of Wingfield’s contribution: Shakespeare nowadays is the hobby of stage decorators. He is a peg on which they can hang their archaeological lore. We are told that we ought and are bound to admire exactly what we do not want to have. Hitherto we had thought of nothing like Froissart in connection with this pastoral play. It is a pure poem of the English woods. It was written by Shakespeare as a relief from the toil of history. He sat him down at home amidst his beloved English forests to weave a romance under the mighty trees. The period of the drama is immaterial; its costume is utterly unimportant.


Describing the magnificence of the costumes and the abandonment of the foresters’ uniform of Lincoln green, he acknowledged: ‘No one can doubt the sincerity of Mr. Lewis Wingfield. He has worked, as he ever does, with enthusiasm.’ But he thought the feasting outlaws bore a suspicious resemblance to modern society picnickers at Burnham Beeches. He argued that Wingfield’s costumes interfered with the pastoral simplicity of William Harford’s scene painting, which ‘brings us nearer to “As You Like It” than any one else’. It ran for nine weeks and closed on 28 March. Most critics echoed the view that the Kendals had been miscast. They were divided on the visuals, but the elimination of the customary contrast between richly garbed courtiers and exiles in Robin Hood outfits was universally regretted. Intriguingly the production brought criticism from two of the staunchest supporters of archaeological accuracy – E.W. Godwin and Oscar Wilde. In the Dramatic Review Godwin wrote: This first experiment by Hare and Kendal deserved encouragement; and though they, in a measure, failed in the arrangement of the play, in the stage management, in the acting, and in the archaeology, it was only because they were not in sympathy with the pastoral drama of the Renaissance – at least, that is the impression the work at the St James’s Theatre produced on me. Even in the scenery, which was quite the best part of the production […] the stage was far too much occupied by ‘building out’, and the forest scenes were in consequence cramped, thus rendering some of the movements extremely awkward. For the dresses a good word and a bad one may be said. Good, because, in certain costumes there was evidence of a determination to be right at all hazards, and because, in some few instances, notably in the case of Le Beau (with the wing-flapping falcon), a distinctly beautiful picture was realised. The bad word arises because there was a singular want of common sense. It is not enough that a costume be right in respect to a given period and country, it must also be appropriate to, or right for, the player under the circumstances in which he is placed in the play. The youngest son of dead Sir Rowland de Boys, whose elder brother oppresses him, compels him to feed with the servants, and keeps back the four thousand crowns his father left him, would not certainly be attired in such apparel as Mr. Kendal wore in the first scene, for the dramatic situation and the words lose a portion of their value when our eyes will not allow us to believe our ears. So in forest scenes, where people (whether gentlemen or outlaws matters not) hunt the deer on foot, they would do their level best to equip them as hunters; wearing brown leather jerkins, long leather boots or gaiters, and large, thick gauntlets, whilst the bycocket would probably be the favourite form of cap, as its shape was specially adapted for the purpose. Again, in the last scene, when Jaques de Boys comes so unexpectedly on the scene, it may fairly be assumed that he has


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ridden post haste from Duke Frederick’s Court to the forest, to bring the glad tidings of the wicked Duke’s repentance, and he should, therefore, have entered on the scene in riding trim, booted and spurred, and certainly not in slippers and tights, and in a robe that suggested a curtailed dressing-gown. It is unnecessary to go further into detail over this latest Shakespearean revival. The only thing it has shown us new that was worth remembering was, that there was a young man on the stage who could wear a fifteenth century dress as if to the manner born. The dress itself was rather Italian than French, and had a touch of Carpaccio in it – quite permissible in the Court of a French Duke.57 Wilde criticised the Orlando in Lewis Wingfield’s As You Like It as too gorgeously dressed. He dismissed Wingfield’s justification that it conformed with medieval sumptuary laws by pointing out that outlaws ignored the law and they were described in the play as being dressed like Robin Hood and his outlaws. He proclaimed Godwin’s outdoor production of As You Like It as much more accurate and artistic: The whole production showed once for all that, unless a dress is archaeologically correct and artistically sympathetic, it always looks unreal, unnatural, and theatrical in the sense of artificial.58 But Wingfield was not yet done with As You Like It. He returned to it in 1890, when engaged by Lillie Langtry. Mrs Langtry, ‘The Jersey Lily’, was a renowned PB (professional beauty), famous for being famous and widely known to be the mistress of the Prince of Wales. As an archetype of female beauty for the late Victorian era, she was painted by Millais, Poynter, Watts, Whistler, Burne-Jones, Leighton and Frank Miles. Lillie’s admirer Oscar Wilde brought Ruskin to see Lillie and, inspired perhaps by her beauty, he ‘held forth on his pet topic – Greek art – in a fervently enthusiastic manner, and as vehemently denounced the Japanese style […] describing it as “the glorification of ugliness and artificiality”’.59 Financial difficulties drove her to seek a career on the stage and after taking acting lessons from Henrietta Hodson, she made her professional debut for the Bancrofts at the Haymarket in their revival of Tom Robertson’s Ours. She developed a repertoire which echoed that of Mary Anderson, including as it did Pauline in The Lady of Lyons, Rosalind in As You Like It, Julia in The Hunchback and Galatea in Pygmalion and Galatea. A provincial tour of ten cities found her ‘splendidly received’.60 Triumphant tours of the USA followed. Regular royal patronage ensured her success in London and her notoriety attracted audiences abroad. Returning to England after an absence of eight years, she decided to revive As You Like It, with Arthur Bourchier as her leading man. She engaged Lewis Wingfield ‘who had the name of being the best scenic director of


Shakespeare plays at the moment, to arrange a new and original setting’. Wingfield not only arranged the setting but re-arranged the play ‘in a manner so audacious that the company, headed by Arthur B., had struck work, and, the first night being advertised, I had to put in a tremendous lot of time to replace the scenes in a sequence familiar to Shakespeare and myself’. The opening then had to be postponed for four weeks as she went down with measles. But when it did open, she recalled that she was rewarded by a ‘warm reception’ by both press and public.61 It opened at the St James’s Theatre on Monday 24 February 1891, and was welcomed by The Theatre. ‘No Rosalind that has yet stepped the boards has ever quite satisfied us, but Mrs Langtry’s delineation of one of Shakespeare’s most charming and difficult characters may take rank among the best […] It was the embodiment of a consuming love, living on its own fire and taking fresh life from every verse and missive that Rosalind reads.’ Laurence Cautley as Orlando ‘was just such a romantic youth as the lovesick Orlando should be: he was picturesque in appearance, impassioned in his love scenes, and with just that spice of wonder at his own folly in wooing Ganymede that made the folly the more acceptable’. Arthur Bourchier, interpreting Jaques as ‘a light-hearted railing philosopher who mocked blithesomely at the follies of his fellows’, delivered the ‘Seven Ages’ speech with ‘excellent point’.62 Most reviews concurred in these favourable judgements of the acting. Unlike the reviews of the Kendals’ As You Like It, reviews of Mrs Langtry’s production concentrated almost entirely on the acting and the high society audience, paying scant attention to the settings. The Daily Telegraph (25 February 1890) noted merely: ‘The piece was produced under the direction of the Hon. Lewis Wingfield, and the scenery, which in the Forest Glade of Acts II, III and IV, formed a beautiful stage picture, was designed by Messrs Perkins and Bruce Smith.’ The Illustrated London News (3 March 1890) noted: ‘the tasteful costumes were designed by the Hon. Lewis Wingfield […] and a morris-dance and the orchestral accompaniments further contributed to the success of the brilliant revival.’ The Times (25 February 1890) said: ‘Mr. Lewis Wingfield has dressed and mounted the play with his customary taste and without attempting to assign a too definite period to the dreamlike and fantastic proceedings of the dramatis personae in the Forest of Arden’ and noted that the mise-en-scène was ‘by no means of a specially ornate description’. The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News (1 March 1890) similarly reported: ‘The mounting of the play under the safe artistic guidance of Mr. Lewis Wingfield is tasteful throughout, and quite as accurate as is necessary in dealing with the vague medieval romances of a Forest of Arden’, though remarking ‘No great advantage and something of a pantomimic drawback result from the re-introduction of Hymen’. All this suggests that for this production Wingfield had abandoned the innovations of the Kendal As You Like It and in consequence avoided controversy.


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But Wingfield returned to archaeological exactitude and critical controversy with his mounting of Mrs Langtry’s next production, Antony and Cleopatra, at the Princess’s Theatre. With backing from the Rothschilds, she staged a spectacular production ‘with its architectural scenes, purple galleys, Roman chariots and milk-white steeds, and so forth’. But retrospectively she expressed dissatisfaction with it: Though I was very anxious to play Cleopatra, the whole play when staged resolved itself into a number of scenes more or less disjointed, which flitted from Alexandria to Rome and elsewhere in rather a bewildering way for the audience […] We all know that Cleopatra was a great coquette and subjugator of men, but the love scenes in Antony and Cleopatra are very short, and contain a great deal of bickering, so that the moods of the Egyptian Queen […] were so foreign to my nature that I found them very difficult to portray. Coghlan’s Antony was a good performance; still without the scenic effects we now employ the play would not have been so acceptable.63 Antony and Cleopatra was one of the least popular and least performed of Shakespeare’s plays before the twentieth century. There are several reasons for this. The length and large cast of characters in the play is one reason. More serious is the fact that it was originally written for performance without a break on an unlocalised platform, but when the editors of Shakespeare divided the play into scenes based on its different locations, it came out as 42 scenes, a major deterrent in the age of scenery and literal realisation of locations. Godwin thought it could not be done with fewer than five full sets. But even more than this its content was generally not to the taste of Victorian audiences; in particular, as Margaret Lamb puts it, it dealt with and seemed to glorify ‘what used to be called illicit sexual passion – not to mention neglect of duty, betrayal of friends, political and personal doubledealing, and even arguably happy pagan suicides’.64 Between 1660 and 1759 it was not performed at all, as Dryden’s version of the same story, All for Love, held the stage. Garrick’s 1759 production was not popular. There were three London productions in the first half of the nineteenth century, John Philip Kemble’s 1813 production, Macready’s 1833 production and Phelps’ 1849 production, only the last of which was successful. One of the reasons for the 1849 success was Isabella Glyn’s Cleopatra.65 It was so successful and she became so associated with the part that she revived the play again in 1855 and 1867. The most sumptuous Victorian productions were in 1873 and 1890 and then at the end of the century, there was a clutch of performances, by Louis Calvert in 1897, by Frank Benson in 1898, 1900 and 1912 and Beerbohm Tree in 1906. There were two non-dramatic reasons for the nineteenth century interest in the play. One was the continuing phenomenon of Egyptomania, fuelled


by the archaeological discoveries from Belzoni (1816–19) onwards, the decipherment of hieroglyphs and the popularisation of Ancient Egypt through panoramas and dioramas, the Egyptian Court at the Crystal Palace (1853), the opening of the Suez Canal (1859–69) and the growth of Egyptian tourism. All of this signalled the possibilities for visual spectacle and archaeological authenticity, features of the Kemble, Macready and Phelps productions, which involved Egyptian costumes and artefacts, sea battles, funeral processions, marches and banquets. Such production values had become an article of faith by the second half of the nineteenth century. So F.B. Chatterton at Drury Lane, who put on the spectacular 1873 production of the play which bankrupted him, was quoted as saying ‘that a play to be acceptable to all classes in a large theatre must appeal to the eye and the senses as well as to the understanding; that the action must be accompanied by spectacle, and the play itself must be adapted to the dramatic fashion of the time in which we live’.66 In the imperial atmosphere of late Victorian and Edwardian England, which saw productions of the previously unpopular Julius Caesar and Coriolanus, the play took on a lesson for imperialists on what happened when you put private passion ahead of public duty. This may explain the clutch of productions at the end of the century. When Lillie Langtry decided to produce it, she followed the dictum of F.B. Chatterton and in her case, there was an unspoken and subordinate attraction: she was the former mistress of the Prince of Wales and that gave the plot of illicit sexual passion among ancient royalty a contemporary frisson. As the programme declared, ‘the play (was) produced under the direction of the Hon. Lewis Wingfield’. No expense was spared. The company consisted of 400 people, ‘gorgeous armour’ was ordered from Paris and Birmingham, prelude, ballets and incidental music were specially composed by Edward Jakobowski with the triumphal march contributed by W. Corri junior. The dances were arranged by leading choreographer John D’Auban. The sets were painted by William Perkins, Bruce Smith, Joseph Harker and Edward Banks. The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News (22 November 1890) said: ‘Save at the Lyceum, no such rich and beautiful scenic rendering of Shakespearean tragedy has for many years been attempted.’ Gladstone and his wife came to see it and Gladstone went backstage to give Lillie Langtry advice on line readings.67 The play, which opened on 18 November 1890, ran several months, but when audiences dropped off due to ‘a series of pea-soup fogs’, it was withdrawn at the end of February 1891. That it was not a play to the taste of Victorian theatregoers is evidenced by veteran Shakespeare watcher Richard Dickins, who wrote ‘Antony and Cleopatra may prove successful on the stage if produced as a series of beautiful pictures, but otherwise I think it unlikely to appeal to an average audience on account of the plot being unsympathetic […] we cannot take a keen interest in characters who have fallen so low as to fill us with feelings akin to disgust.


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The life depicted in Egypt is bestial in its gross animalism’.68 Or as one theatregoer legendarily said: ‘So unlike the home life of our own dear Queen.’ Press reaction mirrored the debate then raging about the role of spectacle in the theatre, with one faction complaining that it smothered the acting and another claiming it was merely the complete realisation of the author’s intentions, in bringing to life the past and in this case the ancient world. The Times (19 November 1890) took the former view and The Era the latter. The Times recorded: Of a performance which lasts from 8 o’clock in the evening till a quarter past midnight the spectator can carry away but one impression – a sense of boredom. No acting, no scenery, no processional pageants can successfully hold attention for over four hours at a stretch. The lesson is one that has frequently been taught to managers, but it has still to be learnt by Mrs. Langtry, whose great spectacular version of Antony and Cleopatra dragged its weary length along last night until the house was indifferent to all but its own exhaustion. When the chaotic mass of spectacle which has been thrown upon the stage of the Princess’s is reduced in bulk by one-third, or more, it may be possible to discern its artistic value and to appreciate the acting, which is now interrupted or suspended apparently with a sole eye to the convenience of the scene-shifters and the cohorts of supers directed by Mr. Lewis Wingfield. At present these endless interiors and exteriors of Egyptian palaces, these brilliant festivals, these marchings and counter-marchings of Roman legions exercise a bewildering effect, Shakespeare being merely the pretext, it would seem, for a huge Oriental pantomime. Mrs. Langtry does not do herself or her company justice. Her Cleopatra is at least a fine majestic figure, of queenly bearing, and in Mr. Coghlan she has secured an Antony who, if apt at times to lapse into a shambling gait, not at all suggestive of the Roman soldier, exerts, nevertheless, a manly force which is of distinct value to the play. The numerous company, too, are well drilled, and the text has not been too severely edited. But these advantages are in a great measure sacrificed to an irrelevant and offensive mass of pseudo-archaeological detail, even the mummy which is supposed to have presided at Egyptian feasts being ceremoniously introduced, while some necessary question of the play is in abeyance. The so-called allegorical interlude of ‘the conflict between day and night’, danced by swarthy slaves in the banqueting scene, is a purely conventional ballet which might appropriately be transferred to the stage of the Alhambra. The Era (22 November 1890) declared: all that thought, judgement, taste, liberal outlay, and hard and conscientious work could effect have been effected, and if for Antony and Cleopatra


this time prolonged success is not assured it will most certainly be the managerial misfortune and not the managerial fault. The Hon. Lewis Wingfield, under whose direction the revival has been prepared, in the necessary effort to bring the representation within reasonable limits, has shown even more reverence for the poet than some of his predecessors, and, while admitting that changes have been made in the relative positions of many of the scenes, guards himself from reproach with the assertion that nearly all the lines of Shakespeare are left to be spoken […] it may be admitted that there has been no interference with its poetic beauty, and that, indeed, this has been vastly heightened by the magnificence which most certainly will constitute the chief factor in securing the favour and the support of the public [...] More wondrously and completely than ever is placed before the admiring eyes of the spectator the picture drawn by the pen of the great master of the crowning glory of the most splendid of ancient civilizations. Clement Scott in the Daily Telegraph (19 November 1890) concluded, as he had of Mary Anderson’s Romeo and Juliet, ‘It is a panorama not a play; a pageant, not a poem’.69 It was Wingfield’s last hurrah, for he died on 12 November 1891 at his London residence, aged only 49 and, like Godwin, cut off in his prime. Despite the premature deaths of two of its most articulate and accomplished exponents, the Ruskinian doctrine of Shakespearian stage production which urged the combination of aesthetic and moral education as the dominant ideas continued to prevail until World War I in the spectacular and long-remembered productions of such actor-managers as Irving, Barrett and Tree.

8 Stage Beauty

Ruskin’s advice to young artists in the conclusion to Modern Painters I is key to the whole conception of Modern Painters and remained at the centre of his aesthetic and moral philosophy throughout his writing life: go to Nature in all singleness of heart, and walk with her laboriously and trustingly, having no other thoughts but how best to penetrate her meaning, and remember her instruction; rejecting nothing, selecting nothing, and rejoicing always in the truth (CW 3.624). Ruskin’s instruction to young artists is often cited as the direct inspiration for the Pre-Raphaelites, and the behest to ‘go to Nature’ frames the PreRaphaelite approach to subject choice, composition and colour. Ruskin’s art criticism of the 1830s and 1840s, with its challenge to the established conventions and hierarchies of academic art, was central to the mission of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. His support for the Pre-Raphaelites continued throughout the 1850s, although in a characteristically gruff and contrary way, if we are to read his letters to The Times and his essays and pamphlets on Pre-Raphaelitism as support. Denying that he had any acquaintance with the artists who called themselves Pre-Raphaelites – ‘I cannot compliment them on common sense in choice of a nom de guerre’ – Ruskin nevertheless stoutly defended their work: The mere labour bestowed on those works, and their fidelity to a certain order of truth, (labour and fidelity which are altogether indisputable), ought at once to have placed them above the level of mere contempt […] They intend to return to early days in this one point only – that, as far as in them lies, they will draw either what they see, or what they suppose might have been the actual facts of the scene they desire to represent, irrespective of any conventional rules of picture-making (CW 12.319–22). 209


In his letters to The Times, Ruskin frames the Pre-Raphaelites as paragons of his two great principles: the morality of seeing rightly and the necessity of work. Labour, too, is a moral, rather than economic question. The question of fit work, or ethical labour, remains with Ruskin in his later comments about ‘Art, Nature and the Pre-Raphaelite Principle’, the title of his prefatory essay in the pamphlet, Notes on the Pictures of Mr. Holman Hunt: men who are employed in the Arts […] as a body, they are not happy men. For which this seems to me the reason, – that they are expected […] to make their bread by being clever – not by steady or quiet work; […] and so living in an utterly false state of mind and action (CW 12.347). Ruskin goes on to explain the source of the artist’s unhappiness: No one expects honest or useful work of him; but every one expects him to be ingenious. Originality, dexterity, invention, imagination, everything is asked of him except what alone is to be had for the asking – honest and sound work, and the due discharge of his function as a painter (CW 12.348). As the painter’s religious function has disappeared, Ruskin argues, so nothing has taken its place: ‘The painter has no profession, no purpose’ (CW 12.348). Yet a new movement in art offers a release from this dilemma. Ruskin traces the impact of naturalism in aesthetic practice: The sudden and universal Naturalism, or inclination to copy ordinary natural objects, which manifested itself among the painters of Europe, at the moment when the invention of printing superseded their legendary labours, was no false instinct. […] That instinct was urging every painter in Europe at the same moment to his true duty – the faithful representation of all objects of historical interest, or of natural beauty existent at the period (CW 12.348). Ruskin pursued the question of proper work in his pamphlet on PreRaphaelitism, published after the controversy of their rough treatment by London critics had abated somewhat. Although this essay focussed principally on Turner, Ruskin opens with his by now characteristic link between art and work: It may be proved, with much certainty, that God intends no man to live in this world without working: but it seems to me no less evident that He intends every man to be happy in his work. […] no small misery is caused by over-worked and unhappy people, in the dark views which they necessarily take up themselves, and force upon others, of work itself. Were

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it not so, I believe the fact of their being unhappy is in itself a violation of divine law, and a sign of some kind of folly or sin in their way of life. Now in order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: They must be fit for it: They must not do too much of it: and they must have a sense of success in it – not a doubtful sense, such as needs some testimony of other people for its confirmation, but a sure sense, or rather knowledge, that so much work has been done well, and fruitfully done, whatever the world may say or think about it. So that in order that a man may be happy, it is necessary that he should not only be capable of his work, but a good judge of his work (CW 12.341). Ruskin’s historiography may be flawed, not least in its teleological aspect, but by his framing of Pre-Raphaelite art within an historical tradition which preserves the value of ‘labour and fidelity’, he places Pre-Raphaelitism at the centre of an extended and significant debate about representation in the mid-nineteenth century, and connects it with that other great Victorian theme, the gospel of work. Ruskin’s combination of the themes of truth and labour, through the right exercise of the imagination in both poetry and painting, characteristically mark out his aesthetic theory as moral and social theory as well. Seeing becomes, for Ruskin, the way to explain all other phenomena. Ruskin’s placement of sight, and the act of seeing, at the centre of his world view has some significant effects on the complex intertwining of poetry and painting of the Pre-Raphaelites, and the broader circulation of their imagery. Pre-Raphaelite imagery saturated the popular iconography of the late nineteenth century to the extent that it became the ‘normal’ or ‘natural’ way to represent many aspects of contemporary life. To say this is not to offer a startling original account of late nineteenth century visual culture. However, what has been almost completely overlooked is the role of the stage, and particularly of the actress, in the chain of influence from Ruskin through the Pre-Raphaelites, in the shaping of popular imagery. Indeed, what starts to emerge is a model of influence that has much to say about the ‘cultural work’ of a set of ideas – protean and unsystematic as is often the case with Ruskin – but bound together at the core by deep interest in the gospel of work and art as not only individual expression but also an expression of national culture. The primacy of seeing in Ruskin’s aesthetic and social theories leads him to a revival of previously discarded theories of ut pictura poesis. Ruskin, according to George Landow, ‘believes painting a form of language, and the greatest painting a form of poetry. At its simplest level, then, the pictorial arts function as a medium for conveying and making permanent truths which would otherwise be lost’.1 In defending the role of the artist as one who preserved serious truths, through the observation of Nature, Ruskin places the artist at the centre of a moral and historical universe. Elizabeth


Helsinger argues that Ruskin’s actions of ‘reading’ art are important in three ways: they enable ‘the imaginative participation of the romantic reader, scriptural exegesis, and historical philology’.2 However, for our purposes, what is significant in Ruskin’s revival of the principle of ut pictura poesis is the challenge to the separation of word and image instituted by academic theorists such as Gotthold Lessing and Sir Joshua Reynolds. He offers a complex explanation for the mingling of representational forms which academical critics had rigorously tried to separate throughout the eighteenth century, in what W.J.T. Mitchell calls ‘iconophobia’: the treatment of the image as ‘an object of both fear and contempt […] [and] a site of special power that must either be contained or exploited’.3 Ruskin’s focus instead on the ‘right reading’ of all kinds of art, and his mingling of the visual and the verbal in what Robert Hewison has called the ‘argument of the eye’,4 enables us to trace the connections between Ruskin’s aesthetic theory and his interest in the theatre and performance as a form of representation inviting both pleasure in beauty, and education through that beauty. Elsewhere, we have discussed Ruskin’s understanding of the performative element in Pre-Raphaelite painting in his commentary on Holman Hunt’s ‘The Awakening Conscience’.5 The painting catches a moment of crisis, in dramatic terms, the moment of anagnorisis, when a character realises a startling truth: I suppose that no one possessing the slightest knowledge of expression could remain untouched by the countenance of the lost girl, rent from its beauty into sudden horror; the lips half open, indistinct in their purple quivering; the teeth set hard; the eyes filled with the fearful light of futurity, and with tears of ancient days. […] There is not a single object in all that room – common, modern, vulgar […], but it becomes tragical, if rightly read (CW 12.334). Ruskin describes the narrative or plot of the painting in terms which represent it as a tableau of action. His resort to theatrical metaphor is not unusual for the period and reflects what Martin Meisel argues was a pervasive way of thinking and seeing in the nineteenth century through the use of stage metaphors.6 This use of metaphors of performance not only framed thinking about the other art forms of painting and the novel, but also offered a critical language and set of concepts for discussing the composition, structure and ‘structure of feelings’ of other genres and media. This is the case, for example, in examining the influence of PreRaphaelitism on popular representations of actresses, and the mass circulation of images of actresses, either in role as dramatic characters or in role as stage beauties. These visual documents, like other forms of discourse, are produced socially, and their meanings are understood through ideologically inflected semiotic codes. The spectator’s gaze on pictures of performers is

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never neutral, and neither are the pictures. Pictures of performers always arrive in the public domain carrying baggage. This is what Christopher Balme has called the ‘referential dilemma’ of theatre iconography.7 This, Balme explains, is the set of questions involved in moving from theatre iconography to iconology – that is, in the critical analysis of visual material made by a theatre historian which attempts to go beyond questions of authenticity and documentation of the theatrical event. Theatre historians have only recently begun to look at illustrations as more than literal or documentary records of performance, in order to see pictures of performers within networks of social meanings and practices. There are two issues which are important in the examination of popular stage iconography, which Ruskin’s theories of representation help to unpick. The first is Ruskin’s linking of truth and beauty, in relation to theatre discourses about the natural and naturalism, and the moral power of Ruskin’s truth/beauty ‘ideologem’. The second, and related, theme is the maintenance of a fragile and often fractured gender ideology which consistently attempts to control both the material conditions of existence of women and representations of the female body. Mary Poovey has discussed in detail the effects of the ‘uneven developments’ of Victorian gender ideology, and found within it fissures and ambiguities, arguing that ‘the middle-class ideology we most often associate with the Victorian period was both contested and always under construction; because it was always in the making, it was always open to revision, dispute, and the emergence of oppositional formulations’.8 Tracing the popularisation of Ruskin’s ideas through the Pre-Raphaelites to the commodified images of late nineteenth century actresses is another way of revealing this process of making. In examining the making of ideology, we are also alerted to the place of the theatre as a national space in which this was done. In addition, the implications and significance of that movement from the studio and exhibition culture of the Pre-Raphaelites, and their high aesthetic intentions, to the mass media of popular entertainment through the theatre is a further concern in this work. The theatre – literally the physical space of the public stage, as well as the practices of the theatre as an industry and profession – operated as a link between high culture and popular culture. As the studies in this book have shown, their separation is not so clear-cut as either the Victorians, or literary and cultural historians since, have assumed. Ruskin’s body of work about the origins of beauty in painting and architecture is matched by late nineteenth century debates over the creation of art in the human mind and body, inflected by the influence of the human sciences of vision and psychology. He exhorts artists to go to Nature, but in the second half of the nineteenth century, just what might be signified by ‘Nature’ was the subject of vigorous debate. Jonathan Smith identifies Ruskin and Darwin as representing two opposing views of the human relationship to the natural world, noting Ruskin’s engagement with Darwin,


but his vigorous resistance to Darwin’s mechanised version of human existence and development.9 In the debate between Darwin and Ruskin over the nature and origins of beauty, Smith argues, ‘the stakes could not have been higher’ for Ruskin, in rejecting a purely materialist version of beauty in Nature, although, as George Levine points out, Darwin’s and Ruskin’s differences were built upon their very similarities.10 The theatre was not isolated from these debates; indeed, there were active debates about Nature and naturalness on the stage, and stage beauty, throughout the nineteenth century. Alan Downer’s survey of acting in the nineteenth century shows that each successive generation of actors and critics renovated the techniques of the profession and, in doing so, each generation claimed an improved truth to Nature over the previous generation.11 What is interesting is what lies behind the claim to Nature and naturalness, mediated, of, course, by the now-pedestrian observation that the very label ‘natural’ has extraordinary cultural capital and authority. Smith points out that conventions of representation drawn from the theatre underpin significant scientific discussions of the human expression of emotion.12 By the late nineteenth century, ‘the natural’, ‘Nature’ and ‘Naturalism’ were terms brought together by a fascinating convergence of science and art, around the recurrence of a long-running debate over Diderot’s paradoxe. The debate resurfaced in an exchange between the Comédie Française actor, Constant Coquelin, who advocated Diderot’s approach to the technical virtuosity of the actor, and Henry Irving, who repudiated such a method. Irving wrote an introduction to a new translation of Diderot’s essay Paradoxe sur le comedién, arguing that Diderot ‘is sufficiently inaccurate in painting this. There is no necessity to follow him through all the variations of his theme’. Irving then endorses Talma’s famous statement on sensibility as ‘that faculty of exaltation which agitates an actor’, in contrast with Diderot’s emphasis on technical control.13 Elsewhere, Irving quotes more approvingly of Talma, particularly his description of tragic acting as ‘the union of grandeur without pomp, and nature without triviality’. The actor, by rehearsal and self-study, continues Irving (quoting Talma), ‘enters deeply into the emotions’ of the character he is to represent: This done, he goes to the theatre not only to give theatrical effect to his studies, but also to yield himself to the spontaneous flashes of his sensibility and all the emotions which it involuntarily produces in him.14 Put another way, Irving’s argument is that study and rehearsal, craft and technique, are the preparation for a transformation in the theatre, where the actor gives his mind and body to the role. Technique is the preparation for emotional truth in performance, even if the situation, character, and setting are fictional – a theory of acting with which we are now familiar through the writings and heritage of Stanislavski. Ironically, Stanislavski developed his

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system in response to what he saw as deficiencies in the very kind of playing that Irving and his colleagues represented. Coquelin’s rebuttal is to point out that acting is an art, akin to portrait painting: I hold this paradox to be literal truth; and I am convinced that one can only be a great actor on condition of complete self-mastery and ability to express feelings which are not experienced, which may never be experienced, which from the very nature of things can never be experienced. And this is the reason that our trade is an art, and this is the cause of our ability to create!15 In almost complete opposition to Irving, his defence of acting as an art is to remove the need for spontaneous genius or inspiration in the performance of a role, and also to limit the potential for grandeur or theatricality. For Coquelin, it is the ability beyond that of ordinary people, to create that which has not been experienced, which is the art of the actor. The debate was adjudicated by other commentators, prominent among them Tomasso Salvini. Salvini argued that ‘every great actor ought to be, and is, moved by the emotions he portrays; […] and that he must cultivate this susceptibility to emotion as carefully as he cultivates the development of his vocal organs, or the habit of moving and walking easily and gracefully’.16 But this could lead to difficulties in range, as he admits: That I am chiefly guided by feeling is probably the reason that I have never been able to play with satisfaction, either to my audience or myself, any part with which I have not full sympathy, and of late years I have not even attempted any such part.17 Salvini’s own work attracted Ruskin’s criticism (see Chapter 1). In a private letter to Jean Ingelow, Ruskin remarked that he had been: amused – or not destructively but stimulatingly irritated – by London absurdities – by bad watercolours yesterday and bad acting the day before. All the world about me was wildly applauding – or horror struck to silence. I went to sleep! – at Othello, having no interest in the merely physical power and animal passion of the man (Salvini) – and even Shakespeares [sic] purposes being unseen – or wilfully abandoned.18 Elsewhere, Ruskin complains about Salvini’s ‘false interpretation’ of Othello and, as noted earlier, remarks that Salvini showed the mere animal passion of the character (CW 20.445). In contrast, Ruskin demands of artists in Modern Painters III ‘that penetrating, possession-taking power of the imagination, which has long ago been defined as the very life of the man,


considered as a seeing creature’ (CW 5.177). Ruskin advocates ‘Nothing but the Truth’ – ‘But truth so presented that it will need the help of the imagination to make it real’ (CW 5.185). William Archer in Masks or Faces? On the Psychology of Acting and George Henry Lewes in On Actors and the Art of Acting both argued against Diderot, and for the Ruskinian aim of truth-telling through art which excites and stimulates the imagination. However, as Lewes argued in some detail, truth mediated through: expressions […] which, while they belong to the recognised symbols of our common nature, have also the peculiar individual impress of the character represented. […] in art, simplicity is economy, not meagreness: it is the absence of superfluities, not the suppression of essentials; it arises from an ideal generalisation of real and essential qualities, guided by an exquisite sense of proportion. […] If we once understand that naturalness in acting means truthful presentation of the character indicated by the author, and not the foisting of commonplace manner on the stage, there will be a ready recognition of each artist’s skill […] Naturalness being truthfulness.19 Lewes expands on this, his analysis of acting negotiating between the demands of more colloquial and ‘everyday’ plays, and the weight of a century’s rebellion against the fixed formal styles and conventions of eighteenth century acting, which Joseph Roach describes as Lewes’ ‘dual-aspect monism’.20 Lewes advocates naturalness within the parameters of social usage and aesthetic conventions, as is evident in his criticism of French actors who, he says, can be observed to take their pursuit of the natural reaction too far: It is the actor’s art to express in well-known symbols what an individual man may be supposed to feel, and we, the spectators recognising these expressions, are thrown into a state of sympathy. Unless the actor follows nature sufficiently to select symbols that are recognised as natural, he fails to touch us; but as to any minute fidelity in copying the actual manner of murderers, misers, avengers, broken-hearted fathers, &c., we really have had so little experience of such characters, that we cannot estimate the fidelity; hence the actor is forced to be as typical as the poet is. Neither pretends closely to copy nature, but only to represent nature sublimated into the ideal. The nearer the approach to every-day reality implied by the author in his characters and language […] the closer must be the actor’s imitation of every-day manner; but even then he must idealise, i.e. select and heighten – and it is for his tact to determine how much.21 Lewes’ case for the art of contemporary acting, and its aesthetic and uplifting effects, even when practised in plays of ‘every-day reality’, offers remarkable

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parallels with Ruskin’s defence and analysis of Pre-Raphaelitism. Lewes’ qualifications of the term ‘natural’ are interesting and might fruitfully be compared with Ruskin’s praise of the Pre-Raphaelites’ detailed Nature studies. Ruskin’s valorisation of Nature and the everyday in Pre-Raphaelite painting undertook to analyse Nature as truthfully represented, but was rendered in such a way as to lead to moral understanding and truth. The depiction of Nature and the natural was never to be simply literal, but animated by moral understanding and imagination. These theorists of acting take what might be seen as a typically British pragmatic view of the actor’s art, and a less dogmatic or theoretical approach to performance. For example, Irving asks ‘But what is nature?’ and, like Lewes, proceeds to argue that ‘natural acting’ might alter depending on the circumstances: Nature may be overdone by triviality in conditions that demand exaltation; for instance, Hamlet’s first address to the Ghost lifts his disposition to an altitude far beyond the ordinary reaches of our souls, and his manner of speech should be adapted to this sentiment. But such exaltation of utterance is wholly out of place in the purely colloquial scene with the Gravedigger.22 Elsewhere, critic Robert Buchanan commented on Irving’s ‘Realism’ and the ‘poetic sympathy’ that is at its core. ‘Mr. Irving has taught us that the best way to realize great poetry is to represent it with the literal truth and simplicity of actual everyday life.’ However, the tone of Buchanan’s critique changes subtly when he discusses Ellen Terry. She possesses ‘pure charm of genius’, ‘divine poetry of personality’ and ‘spiritual insight’. To look at and listen to Ellen Terry is to be conscious of all that is: best and subtlest and most beautiful in human personality, to feel a charm scarcely of earth, a sweetness as of Nature itself.23 The shift from Irving’s ‘greatness’ to Terry’s charm, sweetness and spirituality is a significant one, marked, as we argue below, by the contradictions of Victorian gender ideology which surround the professional actress of the period. Madge Kendal, with her inimitable certainty of utterance, expresses the pragmatism of the British art of acting more explicitly. Writing mostly about and to young women as actresses (the American edition is dedicated to her young daughters), she remarks in Dramatic Opinions: Of course, people will say that to be a great artist you should be able to put yourself and your feelings entirely on one side, and think only of the part. For instance, some people are very angry when one sheds real tears.


There have been a great many arguments on this point. They say you must make the audience feel, and yet not cry yourself; and there is no doubt one can overpower even one’s own power by shedding too many tears, and by allowing one’s feeling to overcome the more intellectual idea of the part. But it is a great blessing to a woman to have a good cry, and if some parts admit of it, where is the harm?24 Kendal’s airy assignation of Diderot and almost two centuries of theoretical debate about natural acting to ‘they say’ and ‘some people’ is a salutary example of a certain kind of resistance to theorising in the face of what Michael Baker argues is the late nineteenth century ‘desire to turn acting into a more exact science’.25 Her discussion of audience response to an actress producing real tears is of a piece with the consistently domestic character of her opinions, and her self-presentation as simultaneously as a domestic woman and an actress, the two identities indissoluble: Surely to see real tears in a situation where real tears would have sprung to the eyes must for the time give the audience the pleasure of feeling that the actress is at any rate in her part.26 Here, Kendal seems unconsciously to reflect Ruskin’s own theories of the special moral sensibility of women, and their particular empathetic effect, as he discusses it in Sesame and Lilies (see Chapter 2). Kendal’s notion of ‘natural acting’ blurs real life and art in a way that highlights the particular conventions for actresses. As we have seen, Kendal was at pains to maintain a consistency between her onstage and offstage lives and personae, invested as she was in linking the image of respectability with that of the public character of the actress through the discourse of professionalism.27 If the exercise of professional and artistic skills is affected by the actress’s private or personal character, then that, Mrs Kendal seems to argue, is an entirely appropriate recognition of the essentially feminine character of an actress’s craft. However, in terms of broader debates about female performance, as I argue below, such an acknowledgement of and, indeed, investment in this model of the professional actress is hedged by paradoxes of representation and expression. Ruskin and Lewes are careful to caution that the study of Nature in minute detail should be a form of training for the young artist. Neither critic advocates an unedited or photographic realism in their discussions of Nature and naturalism. For that matter, neither did Stanislavski over a decade later – he was very dismissive of the French Realist ‘slice of life’ styles of staging. In discussing the development of Stanislavski’s system, Rose Whyman traces the continental European debate after Diderot, noting that Alfred Binet, a French psychologist, interviewed actors who refuted Diderot’s argument about the actor’s distanciation of feeling. Unsurprisingly for one who theorised and

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practised acting as experiential, Stanislavski himself repudiated Diderot’s paradoxe, rejecting what he called ‘representational’ acting for acting based on experience and ‘affective memory’.28 In this discussion, unravelling what ‘natural’ and ‘truthful’ mean is of utmost importance – the terms are neither neutral nor fixed. In the fledgling growth of an historiography of acting, we are starting to see how theories of acting were a significant element of larger discussions about representation. In addition, theories of representation were shaped by ideological concepts of human character, all the more powerful because the certainties of gendered Nature and character to which the Victorians subscribed were felt to be threatened profoundly by scientific and mechanised notions of what it was to be human. The ideological basis of the representation of female roles, and the maintenance of sexual difference on the Victorian stage, is made blatantly clear in late nineteenth century British acting manuals (as opposed to the theoretical studies of acting by Archer and Lewes). Their discussions of acting employ culture-bound ideas about the representation of character and emotion, using a series of conventions of representation based on systems of difference, constructed as physiological and psychological, which repeatedly reinforce an ideological representation of femininity. Writing towards the end of the century, Henry Neville and Gustave Garcia are particularly interesting on the details of acting in the use of the eyes, eyebrows, hands, arms, feet and ankles. Garcia writes that ‘The eyebrows are positive indicators of a man’s character’ and immediately goes on to say that ‘Eyebrows softly arched are among the charms of a modest and simple young girl. […] When they form a straight and horizontal line, the eyebrows denote a firm and vigorous mind’, illustrated by a drawing of a mature male face.29 Henry Neville is even more overtly discriminating, although he tries to use a scientific approach to the different meanings of male and female faces: There is a difference between the eye of a man and the eye of a woman. The former possesses the epic, philosophical, and intellectual; the latter is formed for its softness and brilliancy, for the exercise of tender sentiments, characteristic delicacy, vitality, intelligence, and truth.30 What is interesting here is that Neville’s discussion is illustrated by male faces which are active, lined and somewhat distorted by the expression they represent, whereas the female faces achieve their expression through the relationship of the head to the neck, and the direction of the eyes, but are relatively featureless, and certainly not wrinkled or otherwise marked by expression. Neville’s pièce de resistance, however, is in his section on ‘Attitude’, which attempts to codify what we might see now as the developing ‘gentlemanly’ style of performance associated with endeavours to make theatre respectable. Using a series of female nude torsos to illustrate the importance of ‘the line of beauty’ in developing ‘harmonic poise’,


he writes: ‘Ladies should cultivate the expression of the ankle.’31 For all his codifying exactitude, Neville turns female acting into a performance explicitly designed to arouse charm and please the heterosexual male gaze, through the rationed and strategic disclosure of the signifiers of the forbidden. This delineation of gender difference, indicative of a series of paradoxes around sex and gender, is a constant throughout visual records of acting in the nineteenth century. If Diderot theorised that the paradox of the actor’s art was that the moment in which he seems most immersed in feeling and character is the moment at which he is actually most technical, then part of the ‘referential dilemma’ of the study of the visual records of the theatre is a similar paradox of representation. There is a high degree of codification, control and constraint in visual representations of performers in roles which, on the page and in descriptions of acting in reviews and memoirs, we know involved extremes of physical and emotional expression. Martin Meisel comments generally on the tendency of the ‘iconography of character and emotion’ to be expressed ‘through a conventionalized language of facial expression, pose, and gesture, sometimes remote from the gestures of contemporary life’.32 The paradox of representation is pronounced in the visual records of female performances. If the idea of what was ‘natural’ was highly contested territory in critics’ and actors’ discussion of the craft, for actresses it was even more so, given the instabilities of gender ideology within which they worked. One result of this was the development of a dominant iconography, through a series of tropes and a visual vocabulary of the actress in role, which showed her as still, controlled and apparently impassive, even when representing roles which we know from scripts and eyewitness accounts were highly physical and impassioned. In the iconography of the named actress and in more idealised representation of dramatic characters, the use of facial expression, the direction of the gaze, the arrangement of the head, torso, arms and feet all work to limit female movement and expressivity. Pictures of Ellen Terry and Mary Anderson – both ‘Ruskinian actresses’ – in iconic female roles show this control and constraint (see Figures 1 and 2). What they also show is the influence of the Pre-Raphaelite approach to both naturalness and the representation of women, particularly in the compositional patterning of portraiture which emerges from Rossetti’s many portraits. The stillness of the body, but paradoxically its expressiveness, is striking in these images. Expressiveness come from the eyes, the use of the actress’s gaze, and their pictorial representation as beauties. Of course, there are examples of illustration in which the extremes of emotion are registered visibly, and with less of the constraint evident in the Terry and Anderson portraits, which are also limited by the constraints of the studio photography of the original images. These images offer what might be expected from the received view of Victorian plays and acting: records of uninternalised, non-psychologised, unnatural, unreal,

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Figure 1

Ellen Terry as Ophelia

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Figure 2

Mary Anderson as Hermione

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extravagant expression. Popular press illustrations of scenes from sensation plays and novels hark back to the kind of expansive energetic movement of Mrs Siddons’ acting style of the late eighteenth century, which so influenced the acting of the early nineteenth century and was used by Henry Siddons as the model for his discussion of acting in his influential Practical Illustrations of Rhetorical Gesture and Action.33 In these illustrations, the female figure is shown in extended action, while the markers of femininity, such as small waist, feet and hands, are overpowered by stretched or active postures. Heroines are represented in moments of discovery, surprise or passion: the intensity of these moments is shown by the loss of control of a properly ‘feminine’ deportment or an unusually expressive face. These illustrations were common in illustrated newspapers and in the illustrations accompanying printed play texts of sensational melodramas such as adaptations of Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s novels (Lady Audley’s Secret and Aurora Floyd were favourites), adaptations of other popular novels with sensational scenes, such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and illustrations of Dion Boucicault’s sensation dramas such as The Octoroon and The Colleen Bawn. More generally, these illustrations, although usually claimed as representations of the live performance, were part of an earlier tradition of Victorian graphic and sensational narratives, focussing around George Cruikshank’s series, The Bottle and The Drunkard’s Children. Brian Maidment identifies a strong social commentary about women and suicide emerging from the last image of Cruikshank’s The Drunkard’s Children sequence: the image of a young woman, poverty stricken and sexually shamed, flinging herself from Westminster Bridge. This pervasive image of the fatal end of a passionate, active woman could, argues Maidment, be interpreted as a form of sexual spectacle, even as its moral narrative resists that reading.34 Maidment offers several interpretations of the female suicide narrative, but the overriding perception is that by 1870, this particular image had embedded itself into the Victorian visual imagination as the dominant popular image of a passionate woman. Given the power and ubiquity of this image, it is not surprising that it was deemed more desirable for public images of actual women to be more compositionally restrained and to represent the woman as apparently dispassionate. Victorian anxieties about female passion are well-trodden ground35 and contribute to the general difficulties attributed to the public position of the actress through which Victorian actresses needed to negotiate. However, what is more standard, even in the representation of roles which are powerful on the page or stage, is a much more dependent and relational image of femininity. There is a key visual trope in terms of the formal elements and ideological codings of women: the woman leaning against the man, her gaze directed up at him. It is seen in John Everett Millais’ The Black Brunswicker (1860) and George Elgar Hicks’ Woman’s Mission – Bad News (1863) (part of a triptych: Woman’s Mission – Companion to Mankind), and is reproduced over and over in popular engravings (see Figure 3 for

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Figure 3

Engraving of W.S. Herrick, Othello and Desdemona

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a typical example). In its arrangement of the man’s and woman’s bodies, these images set up a visual trope of physical and emotional dependency, a physical inferiority which can be read analogically as a sign of other types of female inferiority. The interesting contradiction here is that in this leaning dependent image, we are encouraged to see the woman in the more powerful roles of carer and supporter of her husband. There is a tension between these two ways of reading the painting which cannot be easily resolved – indeed, the physical visual relationship mirrors the contradiction at the heart of Victorian thinking about gender roles. The importance of this visual pattern as a political or ideological representation of femininity is made clear by various carefully managed images of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Margaret Homans discusses the care necessary in representing Queen Victoria, as images of her needed to ‘simultaneously creat[e] the appearance of limited female and monarchic power and expand […] the monarchy’s symbolic power and ideological influence’.36 Homans argues that these needs could be resolved through the representation of Victoria as a wife,37 and in paintings and photographs of Victoria and Albert we see the regular use of the compositional triangle, which places Albert as the dominant figure in the image. This compositional trope is used most famously in the much-reproduced Winterhalter family portrait, which is spectacularly stage-managed to offer the viewer a regal Queen Victoria who is, nevertheless, primarily a wife and mother. The portrayal of female performers and female dramatic characters as largely impassive or expressing carefully controlled emotion is perhaps one of the most striking impressions to be gained from a study of images of stage and dramatic heroines. Facial expression (or its absence), the direction of the gaze, the arrangement of the head, torso, arms and feet all worked to limit female movement and expressivity. The Graphic Gallery of Shakespeare’s Heroines (1888) is a case in point. This is a lavishly produced album of engravings of paintings of 19 heroines from Shakespeare, accompanied by an appropriate piece of text and a short commentary – a Victorian coffee table book. The marketing power of Shakespeare and engravings based on paintings from Academicians, trumps any sense of the anti-theatrical for this volume. Juliet, Isabella, Miranda, Olivia, Kate, Beatrice, Cressida, Mariana, Desdemona, Cleopatra, Ophelia, Cordelia and Portia are amongst those included, painted by artists including Philip Calderon, Sir Lawrence AlmaTadema, William Yeames, Frederic Leighton and Val Prinsep. However, there is a compelling sameness about all the images – they are almost all reduced to an iconic schemata of still, passive and often suffering femininity. Characteristically, they are portrayed in a half or three-quarter body length, torso turned to the viewer, but with the head in profile or threequarter pose. Portia, wife of Brutus, is shown by Alma-Tadema gazing out of a window, her body beside and almost obscured by a column; Miranda looks away from the viewer out onto her father’s tempest, and although the


lines quoted express her anxiety at the fate of the boats in the storm, her face is smooth and undistorted by evidence of feeling. Olivia looks straight at the viewer, but only as she lifts a veil from her face, while Cressida is shown emerging from some curtains, her gaze directed sideways past the spectator. Even Katharine the Shrew is depicted in three-quarter profile, looking sideways away from the viewer with no expression of passion distorting her features. Neither Cleopatra nor Portia is shown in exercise of her power or eloquence, and although Portia is shown dressed as a lawyer, she is not active in court. This album is not a record of specific performances or performers on stage, yet it seems to be significant that this lavish and beautifully produced volume of images of some of the best known and testing roles for women represents these characters divorced entirely from the trappings of the stage, and represents their bodies and faces in repose, not action. These characters are offered as representative ideals of female beauty and eloquence, yet the conditions under which this beauty and eloquence usually emerge – performance on a stage – is erased. Adrian Poole notes a very similar pattern, earlier in the century, with Charles Heath’s Shakespeare Gallery. He compares them with the highly influential Boydell’s Gallery from the eighteenth century: Heath’s [images] were of characters – and specifically of female characters – whose relation to the scene and play from which they were drawn is interestingly ambivalent. The great majority are young and pretty, and there is not a lot of difference between them. Enormous eyes, rosebud lips, large forehead and Roman nose: [...] They are mainly distinguished by costume and attitude, particularly the aspect of head and eyes […] It is important to recognize here in one of its starker forms a kind of drama with which nineteenth-century readers and artists were obsessed. […] It is a drama in which ‘character’ tries to free itself of circumstance, context, scene and plot, to realize itself as pure selfhood and essence.38 Working actresses, on the other hand, needed to become adept at a full range of passionate expression, within what Stanislavski was later to call the ‘given circumstances’ of scene, character and plot. Yet, as Gail Marshall so convincingly argues, they were under constant pressure to act as if by instinct and nature, not art. Marshall catalogues the ways in which actresses were considered as mimic performers, neither original nor creative professionals, in what she calls the ‘Galatea-aesthetic’,39 arguing that in the debate over whether the actress could be both artist and sculptor, what was at stake was a ‘question of agency, of creative self-determination and autonomy’.40 This debate begins in the eighteenth century, when actresses had to negotiate between celebrity related to the sense of exposure of femininity involved in stage performance, public images of actresses, both in and out of role, and the exercise of their professional skills in earning their livings.41 In the case

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of Elizabeth Inchbald, the struggle to resist the sexualisation and commodification of her femininity as an actress was one of the reasons for her move from performing to writing.42 As Shearer West argues, the ‘function of the theatrical portrait in the theatre-conscious society of the eighteenth century was not to preserve accurately an actor’s performance, but to suggest such a performance for largely commercial reasons. Theatrical portraits were saleable commodities’. West notes that the increasing market in theatrical portraits in the late eighteenth century corresponds with the ‘proliferation of public art exhibitions’ in this period.43 Commodification of the performer’s image was a feature of the period, but Inchbald’s career suggests that rather more was at stake for actresses in the commercial use of images. The control which Sarah Siddons and Elizabeth Inchbald tried to retain over images of themselves which circulated was not necessarily any easier in the nineteenth century. However, we have evidence of some actresses’ public negotiations with the commodification of their images. Those pre-eminently ‘Ruskinian’ actresses, Ellen Terry and Mary Anderson, seemed to have been acutely aware of their visual impact, although each had a different attitude to this part of her professional life. Michael Holroyd notes how much of Ellen Terry’s early life was spent amongst a variety of artists, as a model – for her first husband, the painter G.F. Watts, and the photographer Julia Margaret Cameron – and visiting studios, as well as working in the theatre. West notes how Terry ‘gave herself up to the photographer’s gaze’ from an early age, taking little notice of the viewer, in an ‘illusion of self-absorption’.44 In a magazine interview with Terry, the journalist tells us that she: has grown so accustomed to associating her portraits with the characters in which she posed for them that they have ceased to become anything else. Terry represents having her likeness taken as a professional necessity, scarcely a pleasure, and something which pleases others, but not herself: ‘I don’t like seeing myself about the place,’ she explained to a London magazine man who had come down to ‘write her up’. ‘I have a friend who gets every photo of me published, and puts them in her rooms. I haven’t been to see her for some time. It made me quite wretched when I last called; there was I “weeping” in her bedroom, “mad” in her dining room, while in the front parlor I was positively “dying” in three different positions.’45 Yet Terry was attuned to her visual presence on stage and its significance in the stage picture. In this same magazine interview, her fans are told that: Miss Terry designs her own stage gowns and spends much thought upon them, and often has to put aside her own private preferences for the sake


of individualizing the character. ‘I could have gone mad as Ophelia,’ she once quaintly remarked, ‘much more comfortably in black than in white.’46 The thwarting of her ‘private preferences’ in costuming for the sake of the overall look of the production might be seen as a case in miniature of one narrative of Terry’s career at the Lyceum. Indeed, the image which Terry endorses as closest to her aesthetic aspirations is ironically the one which was a portrait of Terry in character as Lady Macbeth, but not as she appeared on stage. This is a remarkable example of the divorce of ‘beauties’ from the trappings of performance, noted by Poole, although in this case the relationship between John Singer Sargent’s portrait and Terry’s performance is more complex than the idealised not-performances of Shakespearean characters. As Nina Auerbach notes, Sargent paints Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth in isolation from the stage and from Irving, presenting both Terry and Lady Macbeth in an attitude of triumph which ‘she could not act, though it encompassed all that she meant to do’.47 Ironically, it is this picture of Terry as Lady Macbeth which remains, as Michael Holroyd puts it, the ‘emblematic presence of the actress herself rather than the image from an actual scene’.48 The significant point here is the way that Sargent manages to coax Terry’s personal, covert artistic desire from her in the characterisation of Lady Macbeth he offers in the portrait. The visual impact of Lady Macbeth in this production had already been noted. In the view of one critic, she played Lady Macbeth as a ‘saga-heroine’. As Lady Macbeth, Terry’s characterisation was ‘Feminine […], wifely […], but powerful also’: The effect is greatly heightened by Miss Terry’s magnificent and appropriate make-up. Her hair in this part is of deep red, and it is worn in long, heavily-dependent, snake-like coils, tied spirally round with ribbons, and giving a strange, pre-Raffaellite [sic], Medea-like aspect of sorcery to her, in the midst of all her lively and practical domesticity. Her complexion corresponds with the hair; and she wears a series of most wonderful and admirable dresses – designed with judgment and invention amounting to genius – rich in colour and pattern, heavy in weight, not draperies merely veiling the figure, but very noble clothes. […] her sumptuous garments render to the best advantage in every situation the firm, noble, alert, vigorous physique and carriage of a woman distinctly of the time and society to which the Macbeths belonged – a woman such as may be seen in Ford Madox Brown’s pictures in the Manchester Town Hall – such as Rossetti may have painted if he could have imbibed the spirit of the Macbeth era – such a red-haired, splendid, fearless, stimulating, unscrupulous woman as must have lived in many a fancy in reading the stories of Norse times.49

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It seems that both the theatre critic and the painter read into Terry’s Lady Macbeth a power that could neither be wholly expressed in nor contained by the Lyceum production. Russell’s comparison of Terry’s presence as Lady Macbeth in the 1890s to both generic and specific Pre-Raphaelite paintings suggests the common currency of those images of women, at least in superficial details, such as hair and draperies. Responses to various Mary Anderson’s productions were also rich in their understanding of the visual effects Anderson sought. As noted in Chapter 7, Anderson worked closely with Lewis Wingfield to create a superb and detailed visual spectacle in her productions, particularly of Shakespearean classics, such as The Winter’s Tale and Romeo and Juliet (see Figure 4). In The Winter’s Tale, according to the critic of the Standard, there is: not much opportunity for magnificent display, but there is much for picturesqueness, and perhaps a more beautiful picture the pastoral scene, in which Florizel and Perdita appear, has never been put upon the stage.50 The picturesqueness of the setting of the ‘coast of Bohemia’ in The Winter’s Tale is contrasted with the sumptuousness of Leontes’ court. Anderson, however much critics disapproved of her playing both roles of Hermione and Perdita, made a notable visual impact with the freshness of her realisation of Perdita and the stateliness of her playing of Hermione: Round after round of applause greeted Miss Anderson, who wore as the Sicilian Queen a flowing kirtle of rich deep red, relieved by a massive necklace with numerous pendants of gold, and a purple mantle.51 Although mostly scathing of Anderson’s attempt to double the roles of mother and daughter, critics praised the visual impact of her acting: there were few and among the Lyceum audience who could fail to be moved by the mute eloquence of her movements and gestures when the news of the death of her son arouses her to a supreme effort ere she sinks fainting to the ground. Her mode of raising her draperies aloft till they reflect the pale light upon her horror-stricken features may be a trick, but it is a trick which few actresses could make so impressive.52 The conjunction of Russell’s and Sargent’s interpretations of Terry as Lady Macbeth also indicate that the Pre-Raphaelite influence worked at a more profound and unsettling level, which the apparent superficialities of hair and costume can only suggest to us now. Pre-Raphaelite images of women were read, as we have seen in Ruskin’s reading of ‘The Awakening Conscience’, for both the intensity of their surface meaning and their moral content. J.B. Bullen argues that Pre-Raphaelite paintings were made ‘in a

230

Figure 4

Mary Anderson as Juliet

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complex matrix of public and private crises about sexuality’.53 He identifies the ways in which the apparently decorative and ‘natural’ surfaces of PreRaphaelite paintings (principally those of Dante Gabriel Rossetti) were read by critics as highly coded challenges not only to academic aesthetic conventions, but also to Victorian ideologies of propriety and gender difference; the Pre-Raphaelites: violated the proprieties of subject and its treatment in ways which seemed to their early audiences to subvert values and attitudes which were not confined to the pictorial.54 With Bullen’s argument in mind, how might one, in Ruskin’s terms, ‘rightly read’ the images of Terry and Anderson reproduced here? They are popular reproductions – engravings of photographs and, as such, commodified images, created for commercial ends. On this note, Ruskin’s dismissal of photography as simply mechanical reproduction, and little more, could be invoked. However, this would be to miss the more complex relationship Ruskin had with photography55 and his requirement that artistic truth needs to actively engage the imagination. As images of actresses in role, they are linked to a broader network of imaginative work and are thus separated from simple advertising or publicity imagery such as the carte de visite. And in compositional terms, these images – and many more like them – align themselves with painting and, specifically, the focus on statuesque female beauty of Pre-Raphaelite paintings of women. These images are on the whole expressive, but their expression comes from the careful and harmonious arrangement of the body and architectural elements rather than the representation of action. Although they are studio images, they are clearly in role, unlike the Heath’s Beauties and the Graphic’s gallery of Shakespearean characters, and they both give the illusion of staging through the use of drapery, pose and gaze. That these are photographs of actresses in role suggests that they carry the freight of Terry’s and Anderson’s claims to art, however much those claims were limited by the Victorians’ emphasis on women’s acting as ‘natural’ rather than crafted or professional. To read such images ‘rightly’ would be to connect the actress, her reputation in role, the critical acclaim of her interpretation and the role she represents within a matrix of idealised femininity. Such a web of connections communicates a different kind of feminine power, which Ruskin points to in ‘Of Queens’ Gardens’ when he declares that ‘Shakespeare has no heroes – he has only heroines’ (CW 18.112). Visual representations of actresses in performance are not simply a matter of record – of theatrical reality – or only a matter of the medium, in that, of course, a drawing, an etching or a photograph cannot reproduce movement. Illustrators for the popular press (newspapers, engravers, photographers, publishers of books of ‘Beauties’ or scenes from Shakespeare) worked within


powerful codes of cultural production which reproduced some of the gender anxieties and contradictions of high Victorianism. The paradox is one of apparently powerful female agents caught within visual economies of constraint and diminution. The connections Ruskin constantly makes between truth to Nature, truth as a moral position, and beauty as an expression of both aesthetic and moral imperatives has always been understood within an implicit or explicit framework of high culture, but can also be read in relation to popular culture. And reading between high and popular culture enables a more powerful narrative of late Victorian culture to emerge – one which acknowledges the mainstream experience of British audiences for art and theatre, and the diverse routes by which aesthetic theory becomes artistic practice and even entertainment for a mass audience. This is the audience which Ruskin sought: those working men he addresses in Fors Clavigera, or the young women in whose education he was vitally interested, or the parents of young men and women addressed in Sesame and Lilies. The popular arts – the theatre, popular prints, and commercialised images – could serve as a mass pulpit for the inculcation of right-thinking about moral action, but also for beauty – fine language well spoken, performed in accurate and beautiful settings. That these artefacts also embody the ideological paradoxes of Victorian thinking about beauty – and, specifically, demonstrate the powerful influence of Ruskin’s work within Victorian ideology – indicates the complexity of popular culture of the late nineteenth century and the prescience of Ruskin in addressing this audience.

Endnotes Chapter 1: John Ruskin at the Theatre 1. On the Crystal Palace, see Cynthia Gamble (2006) ‘John Ruskin’s Conflicting Responses to Crystal Palace’ in Françoise Dassy and Catherine Hajdenko-Marshall (eds), Sociétés et conflit: enjeux et représentation (Paris: Harmattan), pp. 135–49. 2. Tim Hilton (1986) John Ruskin: The Early Years (New Haven and London: Yale University Press), p. 23. 3. Stephen Wildman (2001) ‘“A Legitimate Pantaloon”: Ruskin the Lecturer’, unpublished paper delivered to the BAVS Conference; Matthew Bevis (2000), ‘Lecturing Ruskin’ in Martin Hewitt (ed.), Platform Pulpit Rhetoric, Leeds Working Papers in Victorian Studies, Vol. 3, Trinity and All Saints/Leeds Centre for Victorian Studies, pp. 132–7. 4. G.W. Kitchen (1904) Ruskin in Oxford and Other Studies (London: John Murray), pp. 40–1. 5. John Ruskin’s 1830 Diary, 2 June 1830, transcript of mss. (unpaginated), Ruskin Library, Lancaster. I owe this reference to Dr James S. Dearden. 6. Tim Hilton (2000) Ruskin: The Later Years (New Haven and London: Yale University Press), p. 105. 7. W.G. Collingwood (1893) The Life and Work of John Ruskin, Vol. 2 (London: Methuen), p. 115. 8. Arthur Severn (1967) The Professor (London: George Allen & Unwin), p. 72. 9. John Stokes (2005) The French Actress and Her English Audience (Cambridge University Press). 10. Andrew Tate (2009) ‘The First Theatrical Pre-Raphaelite? Ruskin’s Molière’ in Anselm Heinrich, Katherine Newey and Jeffrey Richards (eds), Ruskin, the Theatre and Victorian Visual Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave), p. 120. 11. On Ruskin and Shakespeare, see Francis O’Gorman (2003) ‘“The Clue of Shakespearean Power Over Me”: Ruskin, Shakespeare and Influence’ in Gail Marshall and Adrian Poole (eds), Victorian Shakespeare, Vol. 2 (Basingstoke: Palgrave), pp. 203–18. 12. Severn, The Professor, p. 73. 13. Joseph Hatton (1884) Henry Irving’s Impressions of America (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington), p. 173. 14. W. Graham Robertson (1931) Time Was (London: Hamish Hamilton), pp. 55–6. 15. Laurence Irving (1951) Henry Irving: The Actor and His World (London: Faber), p. 346. 16. Irving, Henry Irving, pp. 348–9. 17. The full story of the Ruskin-Irving dispute is told in Jeffrey Richards (2005) Sir Henry Irving: A Victorian Actor and his World (London: Hambledon), pp. 432–6. 18. Marvin Rosenberg (1971) The Masks of Othello (Berkeley: University of California Press), p. 102. 19. W.G. Collingwood (1903) Ruskin Relics (London: Isbister & Co.), p. 156.

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20. Letter from Ruskin to Joan Severn, 27 October 1887, Ruskin Library, Lancaster. I owe this reference to Dr Rachel Dickinson. 21. Letter from Ruskin to Dr George Parsons, 11 February 1884, Armitt Library, Ambleside, ALMS 380. I owe this reference to Dr Gillian Mawby. 22. The Theatre, n.s. 1 (April 1883), p. 216. 23. The Theatre, n.s. 2 (November 1883), pp. 262–3. The Times review is quoted in Ann Thwaite (1991) Waiting for the Party: The Life of Frances Hodgson Burnett (Boston: Nonpareil Books), pp. 78–9. 24. Frank Archer (1912) An Actor’s Notebooks (London: Stanley Paul), p. 216. 25. Letter from Lily Severn to John Ruskin, undated, Ruskin Library, Lancaster. 26. George Allan Cate (ed.) (1982) The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin (Stanford: Stanford University Press), pp. 157–8; Joan Evans and John Howard Whitehouse (1956–9) The Diaries of John Ruskin, Vol. 2 (Oxford: Clarendon), p. 710 (19 January 1871). 27. M.H. Spielmann (1900) John Ruskin (London: Cassell), p. 54. 28. Such a form of address could simply indicate that Barrett was a member of the Guild of St George, but he seems not to have been. 29. Spielmann, John Ruskin, p. 41. 30. Letter from John Ruskin to Wilson Barrett, 20 February 1884, Wilson Barrett Collection, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Centre, University of Texas (Austin). 31. Richard Whittington-Egan and Geoffrey Smerdon (1960) The Quest of the Golden Boy (London: Unicorn Press), p. 103. 32. Letter from John Ruskin to Wilson Barrett, 15 October 1884, Wilson Barrett Collection, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Centre, University of Texas (Austin). 33. Letter from George Alexander to Joan Severn, 23 January 1900, Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. I owe this reference to Dr Gillian Mawby. 34. James Dearden (2006) ‘The Brantwood Books’, Friends of Ruskin’s Brantwood Newsletter (Autumn), p. 15. 35. Peggy Webling (1924) Peggy; The Story of One Score Years and Ten (London: Hutchinson), p. 38. 36. Her Brantwood memories are recorded in Webling, Peggy, pp. 45–65. See also Gillian Mawby, ‘Some Contemporary Reactions to the Death of Ruskin’, Lancaster University PhD Thesis, 2007. 37. Clifford Harrison (1893) Stray Records or Personal and Professional Notes (London: Richard Bentley and Sons), pp. 120–1. 38. Ibid., p. 122. On the cultural role and significance of recitation, see David Mayer (1999) ‘Parlour and Platform Melodrama’ in Michael Hays and Anastasia Nikolopolou (eds), Melodrama: The Cultural Emergence of a Genre (New York: St Martin’s Press), pp. 211–34. 39. Letters to John Ruskin from Arthur Severn, 13 December 1892; from Joan Severn, 5 February 1895, 18 March 1898, undated, 30 June 1896, undated, undated, Ruskin Library, Lancaster University. 40. Madge Kendal (1933) Dame Madge Kendal by Herself (London: John Murray), p. 271. 41. Letters to John Ruskin from Joan Severn, 7 November 1891, 28 June 1894, 14 March 1897, 29 November 1897, undated, 27 May 1893, 17 February 1894, 2 February 1895, undated, 10 July 1896, 11 July 1896, Ruskin Library, Lancaster University.

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Chapter 2: Ruskinian Influences 1. Matthew Arnold (1879) ‘The French Play in London’, The Nineteenth Century, 6, 238–43. 2. Anselm Heinrich (2009) ‘“Theatrical Representations are […] Highly Beneficial to the Character of a Nation” – John Ruskin and the National Theatre’ in Anselm Heinrich, Katherine Newey and Jeffrey Richards (eds), Ruskin, the Theatre and Victorian Visual Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave), pp. 97–113. 3. Cecil Y. Lang (ed.) (1996) Letters of Matthew Arnold, Vol. 1 (Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia), p. 177. 4. Theodore Martin (1900) Helena Faucit, Lady Martin (Edinburgh: Blackwood), p. 256. 5. Brander Matthews (ed.) (1919) Letters of an Old Playgoer (New York: Dramatic Museum of Columbia University). 6. Cecil Y. Lang (ed.) (2000) Letters of Matthew Arnold, Vol. 4 (Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia), p. 313. 7. Catherine Robson (2001) Men in Wonderland: The Lost Girlhood of the Victorian Gentleman (Princeton University Press). 8. Richard Foulkes (2005) Lewis Carroll and the Victorian Stage (Aldershot: Ashgate); Stephen Wildman (2002) ‘John Ruskin and Lewis Carroll’, Ruskin Programme Bulletin, 28 (January), 1–9. 9. On Gladstone’s theatregoing, see Jeffrey Richards (2005) Sir Henry Irving: A Victorian Actor and his World (London: Hambledon), pp. 77–80. 10. Victor Emeljanow (1987) Victorian Popular Dramatists (Boston: Twayne), p. 120. 11. George Bernard Shaw (1948) Our Theatres in the Nineties (London: Constable), p. 278. 12. Henry Arthur Jones (1895) The Renascence of the English Drama (London: Macmillan), pp. vii–viii. 13. Ibid., p. 4. 14. Ibid., p. 25. The quotation is from Ruskin’s Lectures on Art (CW 20.48–9). 15. Jones, Renascence of the English Drama, p. 28. 16. Ibid., p. 92. 17. Ibid., pp. 125–31. 18. Ibid., p. 146. 19. Ibid., p. 171. 20. Ibid., p. 184. 21. Ibid., p. 237. 22. Ibid., pp. 245–6. 23. A.B. Walkley (1892) Playhouse Impressions (London: T. Fisher Unwin), p. 114. 24. Jones, Renascence of the English Drama, p. 263. 25. Ibid., p. 305. 26. Ibid., pp. 299–300. 27. Augustin Filon (1897) The English Stage (London: John Milne), p. 167. 28. Henry Arthur Jones (1889) Wealth, Lord Chamberlain’s Collection of Plays, British Library, ff. 78–9. 29. Jones, Wealth, f. 82. 30. Emeljanow, Victorian Popular Dramatists, p. 137. 31. Doris Arthur Jones (1930) The Life and Letters of Henry Arthur Jones (London: Victor Gollancz), p. 108. 32. Richard A. Cordell (1932) Henry Arthur Jones and the Modern Drama (New York: Ray Long and Richard Smith), p. 55.

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33. William Archer (1897) ‘The Blight on the Drama’, Fortnightly Review, n.s. 61, pp. 21, 27, 29. 34. William Archer (1889) ‘A Plea for an Endowed Theatre’, Fortnightly Review, n.s. 45, p. 615. 35. Gill Cockram (2007) Ruskin and Social Reform (London: Tauris Academic), p. 183. 36. The Era, 18 November 1877. 37. F.G. Bettany (1926) Stewart Headlam: A Biography (London: John Murray), pp. 101–2. 38. John Richard Orens (2003) Stewart Headlam’s Radical Anglicanism (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press), p. 39. 39. Bettany, Stewart Headlam, p. 109. 40. Stewart Headlam (1889) The Function of the Stage (London: Frederick Verinder), p. 7. 41. Richard Foulkes (1997) Church and Stage in Victorian England (Cambridge University Press). 42. Jeffrey Richards (ed.) (1994) Sir Henry Irving: Theatre, Culture and Society (Keele University Press), pp. 81, 179, 101. 43. Ibid., p. 78. 44. Ibid., p. 218. 45. Ibid., p. 129. 46. Jones, The Life and Letters of Henry Arthur Jones, p. 124. 47. Wilson Barrett (1902) ‘The Moral Influence of the Drama’, St Paul’s Cathedral, Dunedin, 12 January, Wilson Barrett Collection, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Centre, University of Texas (Austin). 48. The Man of the World, 13 April 1889, n.p. 49. Deborah Pye (2003) ‘“Irreproachable Women and Patient Workers”: The Memoirs of Victorian Leading Ladies’, Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 45, 1 (Spring), 76–7. 50. Madge Kendal (1890) Dramatic Opinions (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company), pp. 79–80. 51. Ibid., pp. 167–8. 52. Rachel Dickinson (2009) ‘Ruskinian Moral Authority and Theatre’s Ideal Woman’ in Anselm Heinrich, Katherine Newey and Jeffrey Richards (eds), Ruskin, the Theatre and Victorian Visual Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave), pp. 59–60; and Sharon Aronofsky Weltman (2007) Performing the Victorian: John Ruskin and Identity in Theater, Science, and Education (Columbus: Ohio State University Press), Chapter 1. 53. David Mayer (2009) ‘Supernumeraries: decorating the late-Victorian stage with lots (& lots & lots) of live bodies’ in Anselm Heinrich, Katherine Newey and Jeffrey Richards (eds), Ruskin, the Theatre and Victorian Visual Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave), p. 164. 54. Weltman, Performing the Victorian, p. 20. 55. Madge Kendal (1884) The Drama. A Paper Read at the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, Birmingham, September, 1884 (London: David Bogue), p. 8. 56. Ibid., pp. 11, 14. 57. Kate Millet (1971) Sexual Politics (London: Rupert Hart-Davis), p. 89. 58. Jan Marsh (2002) ‘Of Sesame and Lilies: Education in a Humane Society’ in John Ruskin, Sesame and Lilies, edited and with an Introduction by Debra Epstein Nord (New Haven: Yale University Press), p. 160.

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59. Linda H. Peterson (2002) ‘The Feminist Origins of “Of Queens’ Gardens”’ in Dinah Birch and Francis O’Gorman (eds), Ruskin and Gender (Basingstoke: Palgrave), pp. 93–4. 60. Francis O’Gorman argues that there is a deep connection between Ruskin’s father and Shakespeare in Ruskin’s private writings. ‘“The Clue of Shakespearian Power Over Me”: Ruskin, Shakespeare and Influence’ in Gail Marshall and Adrian Poole (eds), Victorian Shakespeare, Vol. 2 (Basingstoke: Palgrave), p. 204. 61. Carol Jones Carlisle (2000) Helen Faucit: Fire and Ice on the Victorian Stage (London: Society for Theatre Research), pp. 246–52. 62. Helena Faucit [Martin] (1885) On Some of Shakespeare’s Female Characters (Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons), pp. 363–4. 63. Dinah Craik (1888) Concerning Men, and Other Papers (London: Macmillan), pp. 171–2. 64. Ibid., p. 166. 65. Ibid., p. 180. 66. Kendal, Dramatic Opinions, p. 39. 67. Ibid., p. 120. 68. See Jacky Bratton (2003) New Readings in Theatre History (Cambridge University Press), pp. 8–9 for the ways in which this notion is sustained and reproduced throughout the nineteenth century, even by those working within the theatre industry itself. 69. Foulkes, Church and Stage, p. 210.

Chapter 3: E.W. Godwin and Ruskinian Aesthetics 1. Oscar Wilde (1965) The Works of Oscar Wilde (London: Spring Books), p. 905. 2. W. Moelwyn Merchant (1959), Shakespeare and the Artist (London: Oxford University Press), p. 127. 3. Susan Weber Soros (ed.) (1999) E.W. Godwin: Aesthetic Movement Architect and Designer (New Haven and London: Yale University Press). See also John Stokes (1972), Resistible Theatres (London: Elek), pp. 31–68. 4. Aileen Reid (1999) ‘The Architectural Career of E.W. Godwin’ in Soros (ed.), E.W. Godwin, p. 139. 5. Juliet Kinchin and Paul Stirton (eds) (2005) Is Mr Ruskin Living Too Long?: Selected Writings of E.W. Godwin (Oxford: White Cockade), pp. 133, 347, 353. 6. Aileen Reid (2003) ‘“Theoria” in Practice: E.W. Godwin, Ruskin and ArtArchitecture’ in Rebecca Daniels and Geoff Brandwood (eds), Ruskin and Architecture (Reading: Spire Books), p. 286. 7. Dudley Harbron (1949) The Conscious Stone (London: Latimer House), p. 150. 8. Edward Gordon Craig (1957) Index to the Story of My Days (London: Hulton Press), p. 105. 9. Kinchin and Stirton, Is Mr Ruskin Living Too Long?, passim. 10. E.W. Godwin (1875) ‘Theatrical Jottings I’, Building News, 28 (19 March), 311–12. 11. British Architect, 13 (13 February 1880), p. 74. 12. Western Daily Press, 21 October 1862. 13. Western Daily Press, 21 January 1863. 14. Western Daily Press, 11 March 1863. 15. Western Daily Press, 8 December 1862. 16. Western Daily Press, 5 October 1864. 17. Western Daily Press, 19 September 1864.

238 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54.

55.

Endnotes Western Daily Press, 20 November 1862. Western Daily Press, 18 July 1864. Western Daily Press, 5 October 1864. Western Daily Press, 2 November 1864. Western Daily Press, 16 October 1862. Western Daily Press, 3 January 1863. Western Daily Press, 21 January 1863. Western Daily Press, 11 October 1864. British Architect, 12 (28 November 1879), p. 209. British Architect, 13 (13 February 1880), p. 77. The Theatre, n.s. 1 (April 1880), pp. 233–41. British Architect, 13 (19 March 1880), p. 134. British Architect, 13 (26 March 1880), p. 150. British Architect, 13 (23 April 1880), p. 196. British Architect, 13 (23 April 1880), p. 196. British Architect, 13 (21 May 1880), p. 24. British Architect, 13 (14 May 1880), p. 231. British Architect, 14 (15 October 1880), p. 176. British Architect, 13 (15 April 1881), pp. 192–3. British Architect, 13 (25 June 1880), p. 301. British Architect, 15 (14 January 1881), p. 16. British Architect, 15 (17 January, 1881), pp. 302–3. The lecture was reprinted in full in The Mask, Vol. 6 (1913–14), pp. 335–53. Ibid., p. 351. Kinchin and Stirton, Is Mr Ruskin Living Too Long?, pp. 316–18. On the Costume Society, see Fanny Baldwin, ‘Victorian Artists and Stage Design 1870–1905’, PhD Dissertation, Courtauld Institute, London 1991, pp. 531–4. Herbert Beerbohm Tree (1883) ‘The New Costume Society and the Stage’, The Theatre, n.s. 1 (February). The Architect, 13 (2 January 1875), pp. 2–3. The Architect, 13 (5 June 1875), pp. 328–9. The Architect, 13 (3 April 1875), pp. 196–7. E.W. Godwin (1885) ‘Archaeology on the Stage’ 1, Dramatic Review (8 February), pp. 19–20. E.W. Godwin (1885) ‘Archaeology on the Stage’ 6, Dramatic Review (10 October), p. 92. On Godwin and the Terrys at Bristol, see Kathleen Barker (1967–8) ‘The Terrys and Godwin in Bristol’, Theatre Notebook, 22, 27–43. Linda Rozmovits (1998) Shakespeare and the Politics of Culture in Late Victorian Britain (Baltimore and London; Johns Hopkins Press), p. 3. Squire and Marie Bancroft (1888) Mr and Mrs Bancroft On and Off the Stage, Vol. 2 (London: Bentley), p. 15. Rozmovits, Shakespeare and the Politics of Culture, p. 103. On the cult of Venice, see Tony Tanner (1992) Venice Desired (Oxford: Blackwell); John Pemble (1995) Venice Rediscovered (Oxford: Clarendon); Jeanne Clegg (1981) Ruskin and Venice (London: Junction). Pemble, Venice Rediscovered, pp. 176–7. On stage versions of Venice, see Richard Foulkes (2009) ‘“A Truer Peep at Old Venice”: The Merchant of Venice on the Victorian Stage’ in Anselm Heinrich, Katherine Newey and Jeffrey Richards (eds), Ruskin, the Theatre and Victorian Visual Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave), pp. 169–86.

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56. William Kleb (1975) ‘Shakespeare in Tottenham-Street: An “Aesthetic” Merchant of Venice’, Theatre Survey, 16, 90. 57. The Bancrofts (1911) Recollections of Sixty Years (London: Thomas Nelson), p. 238. 58. On the nature of Godwin’s contribution to The Merchant of Venice, see William Kleb (1976) ‘E.W. Godwin and the Bancrofts’, Theatre Notebook, 80, 122–32 and Edward Craig (1977) ‘E.W. Godwin and the Theatre’, Theatre Notebook, 81, 30–33. 59. W. Moelwyn Merchant (1971) ‘On Looking at The Merchant of Venice’ in Kenneth Richards and Peter Thomson (eds), Nineteenth Century British Theatre (London: Methuen), p. 173. 60. E.W. Godwin (1875) ‘The Merchant of Venice’, The Architect, 13 (3 April), p. 196. 61. The Bancrofts, Recollections of Sixty Years, p. 228. 62. Stokes, Resistible Theatres, p. 39. 63. The Bancrofts, Recollections of Sixty Years, p. 228. 64. James Spedding (1875) ‘The Merchant of Venice at the Prince of Wales’s Theatre’, Fraser’s Magazine, 92 (July), pp. 65–71. 65. Ibid., pp. 65, 66. 66. Dutton Cook (1883) Nights at the Play (London: Chatto & Windus), p. 282. 67. The Bancrofts, Recollections of Sixty Years, p. 229. 68. Joseph Knight of The Athenaeum expressed similar misgivings; see Knight (1893) Theatrical Notes (London: Lawrence and Bullen), pp. 26–9. 69. The Bancrofts, Recollections of Sixty Years, p. 229. 70. Cook, Nights at the Play, p. 281. 71. Ellen Terry (1908) The Story of My Life (London: Hutchinson), pp. 106–8. 72. E.W. Godwin (1876) ‘Henry V: An Archaeological Experience’, The Architect, 16 (9 September), pp. 142–3. 73. E.W. Godwin (1876) ‘Henry V: A Theatrical Experience’, The Architect, 16 (30 September), pp. 192–4. 74. Similar points were made by Joseph Knight, Theatrical Notes, pp. 145–8 and the Daily Telegraph, 18 September 1876. 75. John Coleman (1904) Fifty Years of an Actor’s Life, Vol. 2 (London: Hutchinson), pp. 649–55. 76. Soros, E.W. Godwin, p. 320. 77. British Architect, 13 (26 March 1880), p. 145. 78. British Architect, 14 (24 September 1880), p. 143. 79. Archie Nathan (1960) Costumes by Nathan (London: Newnes), p. 75. 80. The Theatre, 4 (1 December 1881), pp. 360–1. 81. Helena Modjeska (1910) Memories and Impressions (New York: Macmillan), pp. 440–1, 448. 82. Juana folder, E.W. Godwin Archive THM/31, Book 1, Theatre Museum. 83. E.W. Godwin (1885) ‘Archaeology on the Stage’ 6, Dramatic Review (10 October), pp. 92–3. 84. The Theatre, n.s. 4 (September 1884), pp. 158–60. 85. Alfred Austin (1884) ‘In the Forest of Arden’, National Review 4 (September), pp. 134–5. 86. Dramatic Review (6 June 1885), pp. 296–7. 87. Dramatic Review (1 August 1885), p. 4. See Fanny Baldwin on the play in Soros, E.W. Godwin, pp. 333–5. 88. Dramatic Review (18 July 1885), p. 394.

240

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89. The Theatre, 7 (1 June 1886), p. 332. 90. Harbron, The Conscious Stone, p. 181. There is a fuller discussion of Helena in Troas in Jeffrey Richards (2009) ‘Ruskin, the Olympian Painters, and the Amateur Stage’ in Anselm Heinrich, Katherine Newey, and Jeffrey Richards (eds), Ruskin, the Theatre and Victorian Visual Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave). 91. Dramatic Review (7 August 1886), pp. 13–14. 92. Herbert Beerbohm Tree (1915) Thoughts and Afterthoughts (London: Cassell), p. 44. 93. Edward Gordon Craig (1930) Henry Irving, London: J.M. Dent and Sons, p. 134.

Chapter 4: Toga Plays 1. David Mayer (1994) Playing Out the Empire (Oxford: Clarendon), pp. 2–20. Also on the toga play, see Jeffrey Richards (2009) The Ancient World on the Victorian and Edwardian Stage (Basingstoke: Palgrave). 2. Norman Vance (1997) The Victorians and Ancient Rome (Oxford: Blackwell), p. 197. 3. On the Victorians and Ancient Rome, see Vance, The Victorians and Ancient Rome and Catharine Edwards (ed.) (1999) Roman Presences: Receptions of Rome in European Culture, 1789–1945 (Cambridge University Press). 4. Charles Kingsley (1906) The Roman and the Teuton (London: Macmillan), pp. 17, 18, 19. 5. On these novels, see Royal Rhodes (1995) The Lion and the Cross: Early Christianity in Victorian Novels (Columbus: Ohio University Press). 6. Christopher Wood (1983) Olympian Dreamers (London: Constable), p. 16. 7. On Ruskin and myth, see Dinah Birch (1988) Ruskin’s Myths (Oxford: Clarendon); Sharon Aronofsky Weltman (1998) Ruskin’s Mythic Queen (Athens: Ohio University Press); and Raymond Fitch (1982) The Poison Sky: Myth and Apocalypse in Ruskin (Athens: Ohio University Press). 8. Joseph A. Kestner (1989) Mythology and Misogyny (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press), p. 16. 9. Ibid., p. 63. 10. Frederick Dolman (1899) ‘Illustrated Interviews 68: Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema’, Strand Magazine 18, p. 607. 11. Vern G. Swanson (1977) Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (London: Ash and Grant), p. 44. 12. Frank Benson (1930) My Memoirs (London: Ernest Benn), pp. 117, 134. 13. On this production, see Edith Hall and Fiona Macintosh (2005) Greek Tragedy and the British Theatre 1660–1914 (Oxford University ), pp. 451–4; and Jeffrey Richards (2009) ‘John Ruskin, the Olympian Painters and the Amateur Stage’ in Anselm Heinrich, Katherine Newey and Jeffrey Richards (eds), Ruskin, the Theatre and Victorian Visual Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave) pp. 19–41. 14. Percy Cross Standing (1905) Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (London: Cassell), p. 94. 15. The Theatre, n.s. 2 (August 1883), pp. 101–2. 16. Walter Crane (1907) An Artist’s Reminiscences (New York: Macmillan), pp. 284–5, 45, 57, 254, 445–47. 17. Henry Holiday (1914) Reminiscences of My Life (London: Heinemann), p. xix. 18. Louise Jopling (1925) Twenty Years of My Life (London: John Lane), pp. 289–90. 19. On this cycle of plays, see Hall and Macintosh, Greek Tragedy and the British Theatre, pp. 462–87 and Richards, ‘John Ruskin, the Olympian Painters and the Amateur Stage’.

Endnotes

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20. Alfred Darbyshire (1907) The Art of the Victorian Stage (Manchester: Sherratt and Hughes), pp. 1–2 21. William Archer (1882) English Dramatists of To-Day (London: Sampson Low), pp. 350–1. For a fuller discussion of the play, see Jeffrey Richards (2005) Sir Henry Irving: A Victorian Actor and his World (London: Hambledon), pp. 202–10. 22. For a cultural history of the myth, see Essaka Joshua (2001) Pygmalion and Galatea: The History of a Narrative in English Literature (Aldershot: Ashgate). 23. Richard Jenkyns (1991) Dignity and Decadence: Victorian Art and the Classical Inheritance (London: HarperCollins), p. 115. 24. Joshua, Pygmalion and Galatea, p. 85. 25. Gail Marshall (1998) Actresses on the Victorian Stage: Feminine Performance and the Galatea Myth (Cambridge University Press). 26. Ibid., p. 23. 27. Joshua, Pygmalion and Galatea, p. xvii. 28. Marshall, Actresses on the Victorian Stage, p. 10. 29. Jenkyns, Dignity and Decadence, pp. 81–142, 200. 30. Kestner, Mythology and Misogyny, p. 73. 31. Marshall, Actresses on the Victorian Stage, p. 39. 32. John Coleman (1888) Players and Playwrights I Have Known, Vol. 1 (London: Chatto & Windus), pp. 245–6, 255. 33. Dutton Cook (1883) Nights at the Play (London: Chatto & Windus), p. 138. 34. Jane Stedman (1996) W.S. Gilbert: A Classic Victorian and His Theatre (Oxford University Press), p. 93. 35. Joshua, Pygmalion and Galatea, p. 168. 36. Madge Kendal (1933) Dame Madge Kendal by Herself (London: John Murray), p. 169. 37. Marshall, Actresses on the Victorian Stage, p. 56. 38. William Winter (1886) The Stage Life of Mary Anderson (New York: George J. Coombes), pp. 102–3. 39. Mary Anderson (1896) A Few Memories (New York: Harper and Brothers), p. 148. 40. Ibid., p. 149. 41. J.H. Barnes (1914) Forty Years on the Stage (London: Chapman & Hall), p. 147. 42. The Theatre, n.s. 3 (January 1884), p. 53. 43. Joseph, Pygmalion and Galatea p. 106; Anderson, A Few Memories, pp. 148–9. 44. The Theatre, n.s. 3 (January 1884), p. 54. 45. Anderson, A Few Memories, p. 149. 46. Kendal, Dame Madge Kendal, pp. 154–5. 47. Kendal, Dame Madge Kendal, p. 171. 48. Mary Anderson (1936) A Few More Memories (London: Hutchinson), pp. 144–66. 49. Barnes, Forty Years on the Stage, pp. 146–7. 50. Anderson, A Few Memories, p. 228. 51. Jenkyns, Dignity and Decadence, p. 144. 52. J.L. Bradley and Ian Ousby (eds) (1987) The Correspondence of John Ruskin and Charles Eliot Norton (Cambridge University Press), p. 472. 53. Anderson, A Few Memories, p. 127. 54. Laura Beatty (1999) Lillie Langtry: Manners, Masks and Morals (London: Chatto & Windus), p. 36. 55. Lillie Langtry (1925) The Days I Knew (London: Hutchinson), p. 41. 56. W. Graham Robertson (1931) Time Was (London: Hamish Hamilton), pp. 68–71. 57. Beatty, Lillie Langtry, p. 138.

242 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64.

65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73.

74. 75. 76. 77. 78.

79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89.

Endnotes Hall and Macintosh, Greek Tragedy and the British Theatre, p. 484. Langtry, The Days I Knew, p. 151. Ibid., p. 175. Ibid., p. 69. Jenkyns, Dignity and Decadence, p. 214. The Theatre, n.s. 2 (September 1883), pp. 136–8. William Winter (1969) The Wallet of Time, Vol. 1 (Freeport, New York: Books for Libraries Press), pp. 576–8. The latest and fullest account of Langtry’s life is Beatty, Lillie Langtry: Manners, Masks and Morals, 1999, but there is more detail on her stage career in Ernest Dudley (1958) The Gilded Lily (London: Odhams). Stephen Orgel (2003) Imagining Shakespeare (London: Palgrave), p. 140. Anderson, A Few Memories, pp. 246–7. Johnston Forbes Robertson (1925) A Player Under Three Reigns (London: T. Fisher Unwin), p. 139. Dennis Bartholomeusz (1982) ‘The Winter’s Tale’ in Performance in England and America 1611–1976 (Cambridge University Press), pp. 116–22. J.B. Booth (1939) Life, Laughter and Brass Hats (London: T. Werner Laurie), p. 66. Percy Burton (1938) Adventures Among Immortals (London: Hutchinson), p. 54. Alex M. Thompson (1937) Here I Lie (London: Routledge), p. 286. Austin Brereton (1883) ‘Wilson Barrett’, The Theatre, n.s. 1 (January), pp. 33–41. James Thomas (1984) The Art of the Actor-Manager: Wilson Barrett and the Victorian Theatre (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press), p. 21; Burton, Adventures Among Immortals, p. 55. Oscar Wilde (1963) ‘The Truth of Masks’ in The Works of Oscar Wilde (London: Spring Books), pp. 905–6. The Theatre, n.s. 3 (January 1884), pp. 43–8. Morton N. Cohen (ed.) (1982) Selected Letters of Lewis Carroll (New York: Pantheon), pp. 132, 133, 135. Edward Wakeling (ed.) (2004) Lewis Carroll’s Diaries, Vol. 8 (Clifford: Herefordshire, the Lewis Carroll Society), pp. 80, 103, 108. See for example Henry Herman (1888) ‘The Stage as a School of Art and Archaeology’, Magazine of Art, 11, 332; John Coleman (1885) ‘The Social Status of the Actor’, National Review, 5, 22; G.W. Foote (1896) The Sign of the Cross: A Candid Criticism of Mr Wilson Barrett’s Play (London: R. Forder), p. 15; Freeman Wills (1898) W.G. Wills, Dramatist and Painter (London: Longmans, Green and Co.), p. 221; The Theatre, n.s. 4 (1884), p. 219. Letter from John Ruskin to Wilson Barrett, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Centre, University of Texas (Austin). Thomas, The Art of the Actor-Manager, pp. 70–1. Ibid., p. 79. John Coleman (1885) ‘Wilson Barrett and his Work’, Longmans Magazine 7, p. 75. The Theatre, n.s. 5 (April 1885), pp. 195–6. James Thomas, ‘Wilson Barrett: Actor-Manager-Playwright’, PhD Thesis, University of Texas (Austin), 1975, p. 252. The Theatre, n.s. 7 (June 1886), p. 339. Thomas, The Art of the Actor-Manager, p. 91. Ibid., p. 129. Jerome K. Jerome (1896) ‘The History of “The Sign of the Cross”’, The Idler, 9, p. 264. Ibid., p. 268.

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90. Thomas, The Art of the Actor-Manager, p. 134. 91. Jerome, ‘The History of “The Sign of the Cross”’, pp. 270–3. 92. William Archer (1897) The Theatrical ‘World’ of 1896 (London: Walter Scott), p. 9–11. 93. The Theatre, n.s. 27 (March 1896), p. 310. 94. Wilson Barrett (n.d.) The Sign of the Cross (London: Queensway Library), p. 9. 95. Letters to Wilson Barrett from the Archdeacon of Singapore, the Vicar of Rochdale and the Vicar of Belchamp St Paul, Wilson Barrett Collection, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Centre, University of Texas (Austin). 96. Frank Wilson Barrett, … And Give Me Yesterday, unpublished biography of Wilson Barrett by his grandson, c. 1965, Wilson Barrett Collection, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Centre, University of Texas (Austin), pp. 211, 212, 222. 97. Jerome, ‘The Story of “The Sign of the Cross”’, p. 276. 98. Bernard Shaw (1948) Our Theatre in the Nineties, Vol. 2 (London: Constable), pp. 12–13. 99. Martin Meisel (1984) Shaw and the Nineteenth Century Theatre (New York: Limelight Editions), p. 331. 100. Bernard Shaw (1934) Prefaces (London: Constable), p. 717.

Chapter 5: Melodrama 1. David Mayer (1994) Playing Out the Empire: Ben Hur and Other Toga Plays and Films, 1883–1908 (Oxford: Clarendon), p. 33. 2. Eric Bentley (1965) The Life of the Drama (London: Methuen), p. 205 (original emphasis). 3. Michael Booth (1965) English Melodrama (London: Herbert Jenkins), p. 14. 4. See Peter Brooks (1976) The Melodramatic Imagination: Balzac, James, and the Mode of Excess (New Haven: Yale University Press); Elaine Hadley (1995) Melodramatic Tactics: Theatricalized Dissent in the English Marketplace (Stanford: Stanford University Press); and Wylie Sypher (1948) ‘Aesthetic of Revolution: The Marxist Melodrama’, Kenyon Review, X, 3 (Summer). 5. Jacky Bratton (2003) New Readings in Theatre History (Cambridge University Press), p. 14. 6. Clive Barker (1971) ‘The Chartists, Theatre, Reform and Research’, Theatre Quarterly, October-December; Louis James (1963) Fiction for the Working Man, 1830–1850 (Oxford: Oxford University Press); and Martha Vicinus (1981) ‘“Helpless and Unfriended”: Nineteenth-Century Domestic Drama’, New Literary History, 13. 7. Frank Wilson Barrett, … And Give Me Yesterday, unpublished biography of Wilson Barrett by his grandson, c. 1965, Wilson Barrett Collection, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Centre, University of Texas (Austin), pp. 132–3. 8. Rachel Dickinson (2009) ‘Ruskinian Moral Authority and Theatre’s Ideal Woman’ in Anselm Heinrich, Katherine Newey and Jeffrey Richards (eds), Ruskin, the Theatre and Victorian Visual Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave) p. 62. See also Sharon Aronofsky Weltman (2007) Performing the Victorian: John Ruskin and Identity in Theater, Science, and Education (Columbus: Ohio State University Press), Chapter 1. 9. Dickinson, ‘Ruskinian Moral Authority and Theatre’s Ideal Woman’, p. 61. 10. David Mayer (2004) ‘Encountering Melodrama’ in Kerry Powell (ed.), Cambridge Companion to Victorian and Edwardian Theatre (Cambridge University Press), p. 159.

244

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11. Andreas Huyssen (1986) After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press) and Ann L. Ardis (2002) Modernism and Cultural Conflict, 1880–1922 (Cambridge University Press). 12. Jim Davis and Victor Emeljanow (2001) Reflecting the Audience: London Theatregoing, 1840–1880 (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press), Chapter 6. 13. Susan Torrey Barstow (2001) ‘“Hedda is All of Us”: Late-Victorian Women at the Matinee’, Victorian Studies, 43, 3 (Spring). 14. Gareth Stedman Jones (1983) Languages of Class (Cambridge University Press), p. 94. 15. Morag Shiach (2004) Modernism, Labour and Selfhood in British Literature and Culture, 1890–1930 (Cambridge University Press), pp. 41–2. 16. Margaret Spence (ed.) (1966) Dearest Mama Talbot: A Selection of Letters Written by John Ruskin to Mrs Fanny Talbot (London: George Allen & Unwin), letter dated 31 May 1886, from Brantwood, p. 148. 17. Letter to [ Joan] Severn, 5 November [18]84, addressed from the Royal Princess’s Theatre. Pierpont Morgan Library, Literary and Historical Manuscripts. 18. Francis O’Gorman (2001) Late Ruskin: New Contexts (Aldershot: Ashgate), p. 5. See also Chapter 4 on Fors Clavigera and Chapter 5 on Pre-Raphaelitism in the 1870s. 19. Matthew Arnold (1974) ‘At the Princess’s’ in R.H. Super (ed.), The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold, Vol. X, Philistinism in England and America (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press), p. 95. 20. Russell Jackson (1982) ‘Introduction’ in Plays by Henry Arthur Jones (Cambridge University Press,), p. 5. See also James Thomas, ‘Wilson Barrett: Actor-ManagerPlaywright’, PhD Thesis, University of Texas (Austin), 1975, p. 249; David Mayer (2004) ‘Encountering Melodrama’ in Kerry Powell (ed.), Cambridge Companion to Victorian and Edwardian Theatre (Cambridge University Press), p. 158. 21. ‘Drama’, Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, 23 November 1882, p. 258. 22. George Rowell (1978) Victorian Theatre, 1792–1914: A Survey, 2nd edn (Cambridge University Press), p. 118. 23. Mayer, Playing Out the Empire, p. 30. 24. Arnold, ‘At the Princess’s’, p. 96. 25. Ibid., pp. 95–6. 26. ‘The Silver King’, The Era, 18 November 1882, p. 8. 27. ‘The Theatres’, The Times, 20 November 1882, p. 10. 28. ‘Princess’s Theatre’, Daily Telegraph, 17 November 1882, p. 3. 29. Jackson, ‘Introduction’, p. 7. 30. ‘The Silver King’, The Era, 18 November 1882, p. 8. 31. ‘Drama’, Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, 23 November 1882, p. 258. 32. ‘The Theatres’, The Times, 20 November 1882, p. 10. 33. ‘Princess’s Theatre’, Daily Telegraph, 17 November 1882, p. 3. 34. Russell Jackson (ed.) (1989) Victorian Theatre (London: A&C Black), p. 334. 35. Ibid., p. 333. 36. Cited in Barrett, … And Give Me Yesterday, p. 169. 37. Cited in ibid., p. 66. 38. Henry Arthur Jones (1913) The Foundations of a National Drama (London: Chapman & Hall), p. 37. 39. Wilson Barrett, ‘Testimony to the Morality of the Theatre’, unpublished ts., Wilson Barrett Collection, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Centre, University of Texas (Austin), ff. 2–3.

Endnotes

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40. See Richard Foulkes’ discussion of this aspect of The Silver King in Foulkes (1997) Church and Stage in Victorian England (Cambridge University Press), p. 189ff. 41. Barrett, … And Give Me Yesterday, p. 81. 42. See correspondence in the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Centre, University of Texas (Austin), letters 39–51, Folder 9, August 1884. 43. Wilson Barrett (1902) ‘The Moral Influence of the Drama’, St Paul’s Cathedral, Dunedin, 12 January, Wilson Barrett Collection, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Centre, University of Texas (Austin). 44. Wilson Barrett, ‘Testimony to the Morality of the Theatre’, ff. 4–7. 45. Robert Harborough Sherard (1895) ‘Hall Caine: Story of his Life and Work, Derived from Conversations’, McClure’s Magazine, December, n.p. 46. Hall Caine (1908) My Story (London: William Heinemann), pp. 262–3. 47. (1882?) Brotherton Collection S/WD (Swinburne/Watts-Dunton), Special Collections, Brotherton Library, University of Leeds. 48. (1894?) Brotherton Collection S/WD (Swinburne/Watts-Dunton), Special Collections, Brotherton Library, University of Leeds. 49. Folger Shakespeare Library, Wilson Barrett Ms. Letters, Y.c. 90 (1–57). 50. Bexley Heath, Kent (1895?) Brotherton Collection S/WD (Swinburne/WattsDunton), Special Collections, Brotherton Library, University of Leeds. 51. Caine, My Story, p. 346. 52. Clement Scott (1895) ‘The Playhouses’, ILN, 23 November, p. 628. 53. Philip Cox (2000) Reading Adaptations (Manchester University Press), p. 5. 54. ‘Drama’, Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, 23 November 1895, p. 427. 55. Wilson Barrett (1894) The Manxman, BL LCP, 53555, Part F, August, f. 35. 56. Ibid., ff. 116–17. 57. Sara Ahmed (2004) The Cultural Politics of Emotion (London and New York: Routledge), p. 3. 58. William Archer (1896) ‘The Sign of the Cross’ in The Theatrical ‘World’ (London: Walter Scott), p. 9. 59. William Archer (1897) ‘The Daughters of Babylon’ in The Theatrical ‘World’ (London: Walter Scott), pp. 23–4. 60. Ibid., p. 25. 61. Fred Gardiner, 16 July 1900. Crain Collection, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Centre, University of Texas (Austin), Box 1, Folder 1. 62. Harry Oswald Nash, RN, 1 April 1900. Crain Collection, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Centre, University of Texas (Austin), Box 1, Folder 1. 63. J.S. Carter, n.d., Crain Collection, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Centre, University of Texas (Austin), Box 1, Folder 2. 64. Robert Sauley, 2 December 1896, Crain Collection, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Centre, University of Texas (Austin). 65. Addressed from Hills Co, Furniture Dealer, Waterloo Road, 27 September 1897, Crain Collection, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Centre, University of Texas (Austin), Box 1, Folder 2. 66. W.E. Gladstone, 8 August 1896, Crain Collection, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Centre, University of Texas (Austin), Box 1, Folder 2. 67. Peter Bailey (1998) ‘Theatres of Entertainment/Spaces of Modernity: Rethinking the British Popular Stage 1890–1914’, Nineteenth Century Theatre, 26, 1 (Summer), 5–24. 68. Katherine Newey (1997) ‘Attic Windows and Street Scenes: Victorian Images of the City on Stage’, Victorian Literature and Culture, 25, 2.

246

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69. David Mayer (2004) ‘Encountering Melodrama’ in Kerry Powell (ed.), Cambridge Companion to Victorian and Edwardian Theatre (Cambridge University Press), pp. 158–9. 70. William Blanchard Jerrold (1869) The Life of Douglas Jerrold (London: Bradbury & Evans), p. 123.

Chapter 6: Pantomime 1. David Mayer (1969) Harlequin in his Element (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press). 2. Diane Purkiss (2000) Troublesome Things (London: Allen Lane), p. 220. 3. Jack Zipes (ed.) (1987) Victorian Fairy Tales (London: Methuen), pp. xiii–xxix. 4. Ibid., p. xvii. 5. On Ruskin’s enduring influence, see Caroline Sumpter (2000) ‘Innocents and Epicures: The Child, the Fairy Tale and Avant Garde Debates in fin-de-siècle Little Magazines’, Nineteenth-Century Contexts 28, 225–241. 6. Michael Slater (ed.) (1998) Dickens’ Journalism, Vol. 3 (London: J.M. Dent), pp. 167–8. 7. G.K. Chesterton (2005) Orthodoxy (Stilwell, KS: Digireads), pp. 30, 31. 8. Catherine I. Dodd (1901) Introduction to the Herbartian Principles of Teaching (London: Swann Sonnenschein), p. 39. I owe this reference to Peter Yeandle. 9. Ibid., p. 44. 10. Richard D. Altick (1985) Paintings from Books (Columbus: Ohio University Press), p. 263. 11. Iain Zaczek (2001) Fairy Art (London: Starfire); Jane Martineau (ed.) (1997) Victorian Fairy Painting (London: Merrell Holberton). 12. Tracy C. Davis (2007) ‘What are Fairies for?’ in Tracy C. Davis and Peter Holland (eds), The Performing Century (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 32–3. 13. William Archer (1894) The Theatrical ‘World’ of 1893 (London: Walter Scott), p. xiii. 14. Richard Foulkes (2005) Lewis Carroll and the Victorian Stage (Aldershot: Ashgate), pp. 156–62. 15. Cecil Y. Lang (ed.) (1997) Letters of Matthew Arnold, Vol. 2 (Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia), p. 177 and H.G.C. Matthew (ed.) (1978) The Gladstone Diaries, Vol. 6 (Oxford: Clarendon), p. 175 (22 January 1863). 16. Clement Scott and Cecil Howard (eds) (1891) The Life and Reminiscences of E.L. Blanchard, Vol. 2 (London: Hutchinson), p. 599. 17. Ibid., p. 586. 18. Gerald Frow (1985) ‘Oh,Yes, It Is’ – A History of Pantomime (London: BBC Books), p. 124. 19. J.R. Planché (1872) Recollections and Reflections, Vol. 2 (London: Tinsley Brothers), p. 135. 20. A.E. Wilson (1946) Pantomime Pageant (London: Stanley Paul), pp. 57–8. 21. W. Davenport Adams (1882) ‘The Decline of Pantomime’, The Theatre, n.s. 5 (February), pp. 85–90. 22. Scott and Howard, Life and Reminiscences, Vol. 2, p. 528. 23. Ibid., pp. 541–2. 24. Ruskin’s diary for Friday 22 February 1867 records ‘At pantomime (Ali Baba) alone’ (EW 2.611).

Endnotes

247

25. John Rosenberg (1963) The Darkening Glass (London: Routledge), p. 168; Scott and Howard, Life and Reminiscences, Vol. 1, p. 335. 26. ‘Ruskin and the Drama’, The Galaxy 4 (May 1867), pp. 114–15. 27. George Allan Cate (ed.) (1982) The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin (Stanford: Stanford University Press), pp. 157–8. 28. Tim Hilton (2000) Ruskin: The Later Years (New Haven and London: Yale University Press), p. 485. 29. Tracy Davis (1986) ‘The Employment of Children in the Theatre’, New Theatre Quarterly, 2, p. 117. 30. Catherine Robson (2001) Men in Wonderland: The Lost Girlhood of the Victorian Gentleman (Princeton University Press), pp. 3–15, 94–128. 31. Sharon Aronofsky Weltman (2002) ‘Pantomime Truth and Gender Performance’ in Dinah Birch and Francis O’Gorman (eds), Ruskin and Gender (Basingstoke: Palgrave), pp. 159–76. A revised version, retitled ‘“Mechanical Sheep” and “Monstrous Powers”: John Ruskin’s Pantomime Reality’, appeared in Weltman (2007) Performing the Victorian: John Ruskin and Identity in Theater, Science, and Education (Columbus: Ohio State University Press), pp. 39–61. All quotations are taken from the later version. 32. Weltman, Performing the Victorian, pp. 21–2. 33. Ibid., p. 32. 34. Leopold Wagner (1881) The Pantomimes and All About Them (London: John Heywood), p. 9. 35. Charles Dickens Jr. (1896) ‘On the Decline of Pantomime’, The Theatre, 27 ( January), pp. 21–5. 36. T. Edgar Pemberton (1896) ‘The “Book” of the Pantomime’, The Theatre, 27 ( January), pp. 25–29. 37. Augustus Harris (1889) ‘Spectacle’, Magazine of Art, 12, 109–13. 38. James Glover (1911) Jimmy Glover: His Book (London: Methuen), pp. 158, 161.

Chapter 7: Ruskinian Shakespeare 1. Henry Herman (1888) ‘The Stage as a School of Art and Archaeology’, Magazine of Art, 11, pp. 332–7. 2. Oscar Wilde (1885) ‘Shakespeare and Scenery’, Dramatic Review, 14 March, reprinted in John Wyse Jackson (ed.) (1991) Aristotle at Afternoon Tea: The Rare Oscar Wilde (London: Fourth Estate), pp. 73–4. 3. Philip Beck (1883) ‘Realism’, The Theatre, n.s. 2 (September), pp. 127–31. 4. Percy Fitzgerald (1878) ‘Thoughts on Scenery’, The Theatre, n.s. 1 (October), pp. 201–4. See also Fitzgerald (1887) ‘On Scenic Illusion and Stage Appliances’, Journal of the Society of Arts, 35, 456–66. 5. The Era, 6 February 1904, p. 5. 6. See John Stokes (1972) Resistible Theatres (London: Paul Elek) and Sybil Rosenfeld (1973) A Short History of Scene Design in Great Britain (Oxford: Basil Blackwell). 7. Percy Fitzgerald (1908) Shakespearean Representation: Its Laws and Limits (London: Elliot Stock). 8. Herbert Beerbohm Tree (1900) ‘The Staging of Shakespeare – A Defence of Public Taste’, Fortnightly Review, 68, 52–65, reprinted in Tree (1915) Thoughts and AfterThoughts (London: Cassell), pp. 39–72. 9. Tree, Thoughts and After-Thoughts, pp. 40, 41, 46.

248 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

16. 17.

18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

23. 24. 25.

26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

32. 33. 34. 35.

Endnotes Ibid., p. 43. Ibid., p. 50. Ibid., pp. 53–4. Wilde, ‘Shakespeare and Scenery’, pp. 72–3. Sir Sidney Lee (1900) ‘Shakespeare and the Modern Stage’, The Nineteenth Century, 47, 146–56. Jeffrey Richards (2005) Sir Henry Irving: A Victorian Actor and his World (London: Hambledon and London), p. 123. On Irving’s Hamlet, see John A. Mills (1985) Hamlet on Stage: The Great Tradition (Westport, Connecticut: The Greenwood Press), pp. 153–72 and Alan Hughes (1981) Henry Irving, Shakespearean (Cambridge University Press), pp. 27–87. The Theatre, n.s. 4 (November 1884), p. 245. On Barrett’s Hamlet, see James Thomas (1984) The Art of the Actor-Manager: Wilson Barrett and the Victorian Theatre (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press), pp. 73–79. The Times, 21, 22, 23, 27, 30 October, 1, 7 November 1884. Clement Scott (1900) Some Notable Hamlets of the Present Time (London: Greening), pp. 102, 105. Mills, Hamlet on Stage, pp. 172–207. The Architect, 31 October 1874, pp. 224–5. For a detailed discussion of Godwin’s work on Hamlet, see Russell Jackson (1974) ‘Designer and Director: E.W. Godwin and Wilson Barrett’s Hamlet of 1884’, Shakespeare Jahrbuch, 186–200; James Thomas (1979) ‘Wilson Barrett’s Hamlet’, Theatre Journal, 31, 479–500; and Fanny Baldwin (1999) ‘E.W. Godwin and Design for the Theatre’ in Susan Weber Soros (ed.), E.W. Godwin: Aesthetic Movement Architect and Designer (New Haven: Yale University Press), pp. 332–9. Scott, Some Notable Hamlets, pp. 98–9. The newspaper quotes are all from the round-up of Hamlet reviews printed in The Era, 1 November 1884. Letters from John Ruskin to Wilson Barrett in the Wilson Barrett Collection, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Centre, University of Texas (Austin). Letter from Ruskin to Kate Greenaway in CW 37.498. Scott, Some Notable Hamlets, p. 85. Letter from John Ruskin to Wilson Barrett, Wilson Barrett Collection, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Centre, University of Texas (Austin). Matthew Arnold (1919) Letters of an Old Playgoer (Brander Matthews (ed.)) (New York: Dramatic Museum of Columbia University), pp. 49–54. Russell Jackson (1977) ‘The Shakespearean Productions of Lewis Wingfield’, Theatre Notebook, 31, 34. Clement Scott (1899) The Drama of Yesterday and To-Day, Vol. 2 (London: Macmillan), p. 292. Biographical details on Wingfield are from The Dictionary of National Biography, Compact Edition, p. 2301 and Russell Jackson, ‘The Shakespearean Productions of Lewis Wingfield’. Helena Modjeska (1910) Memories and Impressions (New York: Macmillan), pp. 414–15. Dutton Cook (1883) Nights at the Play (London: Chatto & Windus), pp. 416–17. Lewis Wingfield (1884) ‘Realism Behind the Footlights’, The Fortnightly Review 41 o.s./35 n.s., 472–81. Lewis Wingfield (1888) ‘Costume Designing’, Magazine of Art 11, 403–9.

Endnotes

249

36. William Winter (1886) The Stage Life of Mary Anderson (New York: George J. Coombes), p. 94. 37. John Ranken Towse (1916) Sixty Years of the Theater (New York: Funk and Wagnalls), pp. 214–21. 38. Mary Anderson (1896) A Few Memories (New York: Harper and Brothers), pp. 165–83. 39. Wingfield, ‘Costume Designing’, pp. 406–7. 40. Ibid., pp. 407–8. 41. Ibid., p. 406. 42. Jackson, ‘The Shakespearean Productions of Lewis Wingfield’, p. 31. 43. Merlin Holland and Rupert Hart-Davis (eds) (2000) The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde (London: Fourth Estate), p. 181. 44. Ibid., p. 203. 45. Anderson, A Few Memories, p. 170. 46. Ibid., pp. 170–1, 180, 183. The estimated cost was given in the Pall Mall Gazette, 24 October 1884. 47. The Theatre, 4 (December 1884), pp. 310–11. 48. William Winter (1915) Shakespeare on the Stage, second series (New York: Moffat, Yard and Company), pp. 176–7. 49. George Rowell (1986) ‘Mercutio as Romeo: William Terriss in Romeo and Juliet’ in Richard Foulkes (ed.), Shakespeare and the Victorian Stage (Cambridge University Press), pp. 87–96. 50. The Theatre, 4 (December 1884), p. 310. 51. Winter, The Stage Life of Mary Anderson, pp. 137–8. 52. Ibid., pp. 138–9. 53. The Earl of Lytton (1884) ‘Miss Anderson’s Juliet’, The Nineteenth Century 16, 879–900. 54. Holland and Hart-Davis, The Complete Letter of Wilde, p. 260. 55. Oscar Wilde (1963) ‘The Truth of Masks’ in Oscar Wilde, Complete Works (London: Spring Books), pp. 901, 902, 906–7, 907–8. 56. Dame Madge Kendal (1933) Dame Madge Kendal By Herself (London: John Murray), p. 152. 57. E.W. Godwin (1885) ‘Archaeology on the Stage III’, Dramatic Review (7 March), pp. 84–5. 58. Wilde, Complete Works, pp. 911–12. 59. Lillie Langtry (1925) The Days I Knew (London: Hutchinson), p. 151. 60. Ibid., p. 181. 61. Ibid., pp. 227–8. 62. The Theatre, 15 (April 1890), pp. 210–11. 63. Langtry, The Days I Knew, p. 233. 64. Margaret Lamb (1980) Antony and Cleopatra on the English Stage (London and Toronto: Associated University Presses), p. 24. 65. Richard Madelaine (ed.) (1998) Shakespeare in Production: Antony and Cleopatra (Cambridge University Press), p. 47. 66. Dutton Cook, Nights at the Play, p. 206. 67. Langtry, The Days I Knew, p. 234. 68. Richard Dickins (1907) Forty Years of Shakespeare on the English Stage (privately printed), pp. 66–7. 69. For a full account of the play, see Russell Jackson (1985) ‘Cleopatra “Lilyised”: Antony and Cleopatra at the Princess’s 1890’, Theatrephile, 2, 8, 37–40.

250

Endnotes

Chapter 8: Stage Beauty 1. George P. Landow (1971) The Aesthetic and Critical Theories of John Ruskin (Princeton: Princeton University Press), p. 61. 2. Elizabeth Helsinger (1982) Ruskin and the Art of the Beholder (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press), p. 168. 3. W.J.T. Mitchell (1986) Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), p. 151. 4. Robert Hewison (1976) The Argument of Eye (London: Thames & Hudson). 5. Katherine Newey (2009) ‘Speaking Pictures: The Victorian Stage and Visual Culture’ in Anselm Heinrich, Katherine Newey and Jeffrey Richards (eds), Ruskin, the Theatre and Victorian Visual Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave), pp. 1–2. 6. Martin Meisel (1983) Realizations. Narrative, Pictorial, and Theatrical Arts in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton University Press). 7. Christopher Balme (1997) ‘Interpreting the Pictorial Record: Theatre Iconography and the Referential Dilemma’, Theatre Research International, 22, 3, 190. 8. Mary Poovey (1989) Uneven Developments: The Ideological Work of Gender in Mid-Victorian Britain (London: Virago Press), p. 3. 9. Jonathan Smith (2006) Charles Darwin and Victorian Visual Culture (Cambridge University Press), p. 24. 10. Ibid., p. 136. George Levine (2008) ‘Ruskin, Darwin, and the Matter of Matter’, Nineteenth-Century Prose, 35, 1 (Spring), 223–247. 11. Alan Downer (1946) ‘Players and the Painted Stage: Nineteenth Century Acting’ Publications of the Modern Language Association (June), 61. 12. Smith, Charles Darwin and Victorian Visual Culture, pp. 228–9. 13. Denis Diderot (1883) The Paradox of Acting (London: Chatto & Windus), translated by Walter Herries Pollock, with a Preface by Henry Irving, pp. x–xi. 14. Henry Irving (1893) ‘The Art of Acting’ in The Drama: Addresses by Henry Irving (London: Heinemann), p. 40–1. 15. Constant Coquelin (1915) Art and the Actor, with an Introduction by Henry James (New York: Dramatic Museum of Columbia University), translated by Abby Langdon Alger, p. 56. 16. Folger Shakespeare Library, Scrapbook, B. 123.1, Tommaso Salvini, ‘Some Views on Acting’. 17. Ibid. 18. Folger Shakespeare Library, Mss., Letter 3: 1321: Corpus Christi College, Oxford, 25 April 1875, to Jean Ingelow. 19. G. H. Lewes (1875) On Actors and the Art of Acting (London: Smith, Elder, & Co.), pp. 115–16. 20. Joseph Roach (1985) The Player’s Passion (London & Toronto: Associated University Presses), p. 162. 21. Lewes, On Actors and the Art of Acting, pp. 124–5. 22. Irving, ‘The Art of Acting’, p. 53. 23. Robert Buchanan (1889) ‘The Modern Drama and Its Critics’, Contemporary Review, 56, 909 and 923. 24. Madge Kendal (1890) Dramatic Opinions (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company), pp. 86–7. 25. Michael Baker (1978) The Rise of the Victorian Actor (London: Croom Helm), p. 157. 26. Kendal, Dramatic Opinions, p. 87.

Endnotes

251

27. For a broader discussion of autobiographical performances by actresses, see Deborah Pye (2003) ‘“Irreproachable Women and Patient Workers”: The Memoirs of Victorian Leading Ladies’, Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 45, 1 (Spring), 73–91; and Mary Jean Corbett (1992) Representing Femininity: Middle-class Subjectivity in Victorian and Edwardian Women’s Autobiographies (Oxford University Press). 28. Rose Whyman (2008) The Stanislavsky System of Acting: Legacy and Influence in Modern Performance (Cambridge University Press), pp. 47–8. 29. Gustave Garcia (1882) The Actor’s Art (London: T. Pettitt & Co.), pp. 99–100. 30. R.F. Brewer, Hugh Campbell, and Henry Neville (1895) A Practical Handbook to the Elocutionary Art (London: Charles William Deacon & Co.), p. 147. 31. Ibid., p. 124. 32. Meisel, Realizations, p. 5 33. Henry Siddons (1968) Practical Illustrations of Rhetorical Gesture and Action (New York: Benjamin Blom). Siddons’ source is noted in Paul Ranger (1985) ‘I was Present at the Representation …’, Theatre Notebook, 39, 1, 19. 34. Brian Maidment (1996) Reading Popular Prints, 1790–1870 (Manchester University Press), p. 142. 35. See, for example, Sally Shuttleworth’s account of Victorian psychologies of female emotion in (1996) Charlotte Brontë and Victorian Psychology (Cambridge University Press). 36. Margaret Homans (1995) ‘Victoria’s Sovereign Obedience: Portraits of the Queen as Wife and Mother’ in Carol T. Christ and John O. Jordan (eds), Victorian Literature and the Visual Imagination (Berkeley: University of California Press), p. 171. 37. Homans, ‘Victoria’s Sovereign Obedience’, p. 170. 38. Adrian Poole (2004) Shakespeare and the Victorians (London: Arden Shakespeare), p. 53. 39. Gail Marshall (1998) Actresses on the Victorian Stage (Cambridge University Press), pp. 30–1. 40. Ibid., p. 65. 41. See Gill Perry (2007) Spectacular Flirtations (New Haven: Yale University Press), Chapter 1, ‘From Whores to Divines’, and Paula Backscheider (1993) Spectacular Politics: Theatrical Power and Mass Culture in Early Modern England (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press). 42. See Cecilia Macheski (1991) ‘Herself as Heroine: Portraits as Autobiography for Elizabeth Inchbald’ in Mary Anne Schofield and Cecilia Macheski (eds), Curtain Calls: British and American Women and the Theatre, 1660–1820 (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press) and Roger Manvell (1987) Elizabeth Inchbald: England’s Principal Woman Dramatist and Independent Woman of Letters in Eighteenth Century London (New York: Lanham). 43. Shearer West (1991) The Image of the Actor: Verbal and Visual Representation in the Age of Garrick and Kemble (London: Pinter), pp. 27–9. 44. Shearer West (2009) ‘The Photographic Portraiture of Ellen Terry and Henry Irving’ in Heinrich, Newey and Richards (eds), Ruskin, the Theatre and Victorian Visual Culture, p. 197. 45. Folger Shakespeare Library, Scrapbook B.34.1. Unidentified cutting, n.d., p. 347. 46. Folger Shakespeare Library, Scrapbook B.34.1. Unidentified cutting, n.d., p. 348. 47. Nina Auerbach (1997) Ellen Terry: Player in her Time (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press), pp. 261–3.

252

Endnotes

48. Michael Holroyd (2008) A Strange Eventful History (London: Chatto & Windus), p. 200. 49. Folger Shakespeare Library, Scrapbook B.34.1. Essay by Edward R. Russell, Liverpool Daily Post, reproduced in the programme for a Benefit Night for Ellen Terry, in Macbeth. Saturday, 29 June, n.d. 50. Folger Shakespeare Library, Scrapbook B.4.1, ‘Lyceum Theatre’, Standard, 12 September, 1887. 51. Folger Shakespeare Library, Scrapbook B.4.1, ‘Lyceum Theatre’, Morning Advertiser, 12 September 1887. 52. Folger Shakespeare Library, Scrapbook B.4.1, ‘Miss Mary Anderson at the Lyceum’, Daily News, 12 September 1887. 53. J.B. Bullen (1998) The Pre-Raphaelite Body: Fear and Desire in Painting, Poetry, and Criticism (Oxford: Clarendon), p. 108. 54. Ibid., p. 217. 55. See Lindsay Smith (1995) Victorian Photography: Painting and Poetry: The Enigma of Visibility in Ruskin, Morris and the Pre-Raphaelites (Cambridge University Press).

Index À Beckett, Gilbert, 157–8 Acting theory, 16, 32–3, 68, 94, 100, 117, 177, 185, 195, 201, 214–20, 250 Adams, W. Davenport, 102, 152, 246 Alexander, George, 14, 16, 18, 89, 173, 175, 234 Allingham, Helen, 145, 147 Alma-Tadema, Sir Lawrence, 60, 86–9, 92–3, 98–100, 111–12, 169, 171–2, 225 Anderson, Mary, 14, 22, 92, 94, 97, 98–100, 102–3, 175, 185, 189–90, 192–4, 197, 203, 207–8, 220, 222, 227, 229, 230, 231 Anti-theatrical prejudice, 37, 43, 127, 139, 225 Archaeology, 8, 25, 45, 47–9, 58–9, 61, 63, 65–6, 68–70, 72, 79, 87, 90–2, 96, 98–9, 106, 108, 126, 168, 170, 173, 177, 179–80, 181–2, 184, 187–8, 197–8, 201–3, 205–7 Archer, William, 26–7, 31, 35, 93, 104, 111, 113, 117, 125, 134–5, 149, 216, 219 Arnold, Matthew, 6, 16, 20–1, 26, 121–2, 149, 183 Austin, Alfred, 78, 171–2

The Daughters of Babylon, 112, 134 Junius, 107–8 performance style, 105, 126, 179, 135 Quo Vadis, 112 The Sign of the Cross, 18, 31, 110–11, 135–6 The Silver King, 120–3, 124, 133 Barrie, J.M., 111, 145 Bateman, Isabel, 56, 73 Bateman, Mrs Sidney, 56, 72, 73, 116 Beerbohm Tree, Herbert, 82, 87, 112, 130, 172–4, 179, 205 Benson, Sir Frank, 88, 205 Beverley, William Roxby, 52–4, 75, 108, 150–1, 154, 160, 165, 169, 170, 173, 181–2 Blanchard, Edward Leman, 149, 150–2, 154, 157, 159–60 Boucicault, Dion, 12, 82, 99, 167, 186, 223 Bourchier, Arthur and Mrs, 175, 203, 204 Buchanan, Robert, 11, 93, 217 Bulwer-Lytton, Edward, 64, 84, 107, 126 Burnand, Sir Frank, 10 Burne-Jones, Sir Edward, 11, 86, 88, 93, 94, 100, 203 Burne-Jones, Sir Philip, 171, 173

Bancroft, Squire and Marie née Wilton, 12, 13, 30, 37, 48, 64, 65–9, 82, 101, 170, 173–4, 186, 199, 203 Barnes, J.H., 98, 100 Barrett, Wilson, 14–15, 27, 32, 35–7, 57, 75–7, 82, 92, 104, 107, 110, 114–16, 119, 130, 134, 137, 170, 186, 208 as dramaturg, 128 as Hamlet, 21, 107, 175, 177–83 The Christian King, 112 Claudian, 17, 83, 105–6, 107, 168, 186, 199 Clito, 94, 108–9, 169

Caine, Thomas Hall, 129, 131 The Manxman, 130, 133 Calhoun, Eleanor, 76, 77 Campbell, Lady Archibald, 76, 79 Campbell, Mrs Patrick, 18 Carlyle, Thomas, 13, 20, 141, 159 Carroll, Lewis (Charles Dodgson), 8, 15, 20, 21, 29, 105, 142, 149 Child performers, 8, 15, 27, 28, 38–9, 141, 148, 149, 153, 155, 156–7, 161–2 Christy Minstrels, 11, 184 Church and stage, the Church and Stage Guild, 29, 30, 31, 35; see also Headlam, Reverend Stewart 253

254

Index

Clarke, J.S., 185, 188 Classicism, 14, 22, 46, 51, 59, 76, 84–9, 92, 94–6, 98, 101–2, 107, 111–12 Coghlan, Charles, 64, 67, 69, 205, 207 Coleman, John, 69, 71, 72, 95, 107 Collingwood, W.G., 5, 11 Cook, Dutton, 67, 69, 96, 185 Costume design, 10, 33, Chapter 3 passim, 89, 91, 94–5, 97, 102, 126, 173, 180, 182, 185, 187, 190, 192, 199, 202 Costume Society, 60, 61 Court Theatre, 57, 75 Covent Garden, Theatre Royal, 22, 51, 140, 151, 156, 158 Craig, Edward Gordon, 46, 64, 65, 82 Crane, Walter, 89, 90 Craven, Hawes, 54, 58, 104, 169, 171, 173, 191, 196 Cruikshank, George, 141, 142, 143, 144, 223 Crystal Palace, 3, 9, 10, 65, 180, 199, 206

Femininity, 39, 40, 43, 86, 99, 134, 142, 164, 218, 219, 223, 225–8, 231 Fitzgerald, Percy, 170, 173–4 Forbes Robertson, Johnston, 18, 29, 55, 56, 57, 75–6, 103, 132, 173, 175, 179, 194 French theatre, 5, 6, 10, 11, 13, 20–1, 22, 49, 117, 149, 216, 218

Daily Telegraph, 68, 73, 74, 75, 93, 105, 122, 123, 179, 181, 182, 184, 188, 201, 204, 208 ‘Decline of the drama’, 43, 115, 122, 148, 152, 167 Dickens, Charles, 82, 127, 141–2, 143, 144, 145 Dickens, Charles Jr., 165 Drury Lane, Theatre Royal, 9, 12, 13, 18, 22, 27, 28, 38, 50, 65, Chapter 6 passim, 191, 200, 206

Hall, Stafford, 75, 108, 111, 169, 181, 192 Hall, T.W., 88, 89 Hann, Walter, 53, 75, 104, 108, 109, 111, 169, 170, 171, 173, 181–2 Hare, Sir John, 18, 172, 173, 175, 199, 200–2 Harford, William, 65, 169, 201–2 Harker, Joseph, 88, 173, 206 Harris, Sir Augustus, 151–2, 157, 159, 165, 166–7, 170, 191, 200 Harris, Augustus, Senior, 151 Harrison, Clifford, 16, 56 Haymarket, Theatre Royal, 9, 10, 82, 96, 101, 175, 184, 199, 203 Headlam, Reverend Stewart, 20, 27–31 Herbart, Johann Frederick, 145 Herman, Henry, 105, 114, 120–1, 127, 168–9, 184 Holiday, Henry, 89–90

Education and the theatre, 1–3, 12, 19–20, 22, 25, 27, 29, 30, 32–3, 35, 38, 39, 43, 52, 67, 88, 92, 100, 118–19, 166–7, 168, 175, 177, 187, 198, 201, 208, 212 The Era, 9, 10, 17, 28, 67, 68, 75, 80, 90, 91, 92, 102, 103, 104, 107, 108, 109, 112, 122, 148, 158, 159, 160, 161, 173, 182, 190, 194, 196, 200, 207 Fairy tales, 141–5, 150, 152 Faucit, Helen (Lady Martin), 13, 15, 20, 21, 30, 39, 42–3, 50, 55, 94

Gaiety Theatre, 6, 28, 65, 184 Gilbert, W.S., Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, 46, 145 Pygmalion and Galatea, 93, 95, 97–8 Gladstone, W.E., 21–2, 88, 111, 136, 145, 150, 155, 206 Godwin, Edward William, Chapter 3 passim, 90–3, 96, 101, 105, 108–9, 128, 169, 174–5, 180–2, 185, 187, 193, 197, 202–3 Gordon, George, 65–7, 70, 171 Greenaway, Kate, 145, 147, 182 Grundy, Sydney, 108

Ibsen, Henrik, and Ibsenism, 104, 117, 120, 135, 149 Illustrated London News, 10, 132, 150, 160, 180, 204

Index

255

Irving, Sir Henry, 8, 14, 17, 21, 22, 28, 29–30, 31, 32–35, 48, 53–4, 58, 64, 82, 91, 93, 112, 117, 129, 132, 169, 171, 173, 174, 175–8, 186, 190, 193, 199, 214–15, 217

Morality and the theatre, 1, 7, 12, 19, 22, 27, 28, 29–31, 35–6, 39–40, 43, 46, 49, 64, 100, 105, 114, 116, 119, 123, 128, 137, 149, 155, 160, 186, 208, 229, 232

James, Henry, 8, 94 Jameson, Anna, 41, 42 Jones, Henry Arthur, 20, 23, 26–7, 31, 35, 114, 120–6, 138 The Masqueraders, 18 The Middleman, 26 Wealth, 25, 123

National theatre; national culture, 19, 20, 22, 31, 35, 43, 116, 124–5, 128, 137, 149, 211–13 Neilson, Adelaide, 9 Newton, Sir Charles, 89, 101

Kean, Charles, 22, 67, 72, 82, 102, 107, 148, 170, 177, 185, 188 Kemble, Fanny, 42, 184, 185 Kendal, Madge (Dame), 12, 13–14, 17, 20, 27, 29, 31, 37–9, 43, 98–9, 116–7, 185, 199, 200–1, 217–18 Kendal, W.H., 12, 96, 200, 202 Kingsley, Reverend Charles, 84, 85, 87, 142 Langtry, Lillie, 22, 94, 100, 102, 177, 185, 203–7 Le Gallienne, Richard, 14 Leighton, Frederic, 48, 69, 85, 87, 88–92, 94, 100–2, 203, 225 Litton, Marie, 55 Long, Edwin, 60, 177 Lyceum Theatre, 8, 22, 25, 50, 53, 58, 61, 64, 82, 92, 99, 102, 116, 151, 169, 177–8, 180, 186, 191, 195, 206, 228–9 Lytton, Robert, 1st Earl, son of Edward Bulwer Lytton, pseud ‘Owen Meredith’, 107, 126, 183, 197–8 Macready, William Charles, 7, 12, 16, 30, 107, 184, 205, 206 Masculinity, 39–40, 86, 103, 104, 118, 134, 164 Millais, John Everett, 88, 100–1, 203, 223 Modernity, 117–18, 120, 137, 173 Modjeska, Helena, 57, 75–6, 184–5 Molière, Jean-Baptiste, 6–7 Moore, Albert, 86, 88, 111

O’Connor, John, 10, 89, 96, 173, 191, 192, 194, 196 Olympic Theatre, 13, 72, 95, 140 Opera, 5, 13, 22, 65, 125, 151, 158 Pall Mall Gazette, 21, 67, 69, 96, 99, 106, 122, 156, 183, 190, 191, 193, 199 Pemberton, T. Edgar, 166 Phelps, Samuel, 8, 30, 50, 71, 82, 148, 177, 185, 188, 205 Pinero, Arthur Wing, 117, 172 Planché, J.R., 13, 72, 82, 95, 140, 151, 185 Popular entertainment, attitudes to, 23, 26, 36, 43, 81, 92, 109, 116, 120, 125, 134–5, 137, 168, 232 Poynter, Edward, 88, 90, 94, 100, 173, 203 Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, 7, 86, 186, Chapter 8 passim Princess’s Theatre, 22, 37, 52, 81, 83, 92, 107, 109, 119, 120, 122, 125, 168, 170, 178, 186, 205, 207 Rational recreation, 34, 35, 60, 118 Richmond, William, 88, 173 Roberts, David, 53 Robertson, Tom, 13, 64, 101, 170, 186, 203 Ruskin, John The Bible of Amiens, 85 The Eagle’s Nest, 11 Ethics of the Dust, 118 Fors Clavigera, 9, 30, 33, 38, 118, 152, 162, 191, 232 The King of the Golden River, 21, 141 Marcolini, 4

256

Index

Ruskin, John – continued Modern Painters, 7, 19, 24, 32, 33, 209, 215 Praeterita, 4, 7, 17, 18, 41, 110, 118, 164 Proserpina, 41, 86 Sesame and Lilies, 39, 118, 119, 218, 232 Seven Lamps of Architecture, 45 Stones of Venice, 2, 33, 45, 65, 85 The Storm Cloud of the Nineteenth Century, 14 St Mark’s Rest, 2, 8 Time and Tide, 10, 155 ‘Traffic’, 19 Unto This Last, 28, 39 Ruskin, John James, 3–5, 41 Ruskin, Margaret, 3–4 Salvini, Tomasso, 8–9, 22, 65, 72, 215 Sargent, John Singer, 228–9 Saxe-Meiningen Court Players, 58–9, 185, 188 Scott, Clement, 8, 43, 68, 73, 74, 93, 98, 105, 109, 132, 177, 179, 181, 182, 184, 194, 195, 201, 208 Scott, Sir Walter, 2, 6, 16, 45 Scott-Siddons, Mary Frances, 9, 72, 74, 75 Severn, Arthur, 5, 12 Severn, Joan née Agnew, 5, 13, 14, 17, 112 Shakespeare, William, 2, 7, 10, 22, 31, 40, 42, 61, 158, Chapter 7 passim, 225, 233 Antony and Cleopatra, 22 As You Like It, 7, 9, 55, 74, 101 Coriolanus, 2, 83, 87, 112 Hamlet, 9, 21, 50, 64, 72, 76, 107, 119 Henry IV, 71 Julius Caesar, 83 King John, 2, 7 Merchant of Venice, 8, 17, 48, 52, 62, 64, 67–9, 82 The Merry Wives of Windsor, 61 A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 145, 148–50 Much Ado About Nothing, 8, 21, 42

Othello, 4, 215 Pericles, 62 Romeo and Juliet, 4, 229 The Winter’s Tale, 102–3, 229 Shaw, George Bernard, 8, 23, 29, 79, 112, 125 Slade School of Fine Art, 16, 85, 88 Smith, Bruce, 191, 196, 204, 206 Spielmann, M.H., 14, 106 St James’s Hall, 11 St James’s Theatre, 6, 13, 16, 17, 18, 199, 201, 204 Stanfield, Clarkson, 53, 151, 173 Stanislavski, Konstantin, 126, 214, 218, 226 Taylor, Tom, 9–10, 12, 74, 80, 149, 180 Telbin, William, 50, 53, 58, 104, 108, 109, 169, 170, 173, 181–2 Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, 9, 16, 22, 78, 88, 89 The Cup, 58, 82, 92 Terry, Ellen, 8, 17, 21, 46, 64, 67–9, 82, 93, 149, 175, 217, 220, 227, 228, 231 Terry, Kate, 50, 55 Terry, Marion, 96 The Times, 10, 12, 66, 67, 68, 71, 74, 75, 80, 103, 108, 109, 111, 122, 123, 148, 153, 154, 159, 160, 162, 178, 184, 189, 190, 194, 196, 199, 204, 207, 209–10 Todhunter, John, 80, 90 Vaudeville Theatre, 11 Vestris, Madame, 95, 140, 148, 151, 165, 185 Vezin, Hermann, 55, 60–1, 72, 73, 77, 80, 200 Vokes family, 28, 149, 160, 165 Wagner, Leopold, 165 Wagner, Richard, 22, 175 Walkley, A.B., 25 Wallace, Lew, 84, 113 Warner, Charles, 73 Watts, G.F., 64, 89, 90, 93, 94, 99, 100, 203, 227 Watts-Dunton, Theodore, 69, 129–31

Index Webling family, 15–16 Whistler, James MacNeill, 46, 48, 76, 101, 203 Wilde, Oscar, 8, 27, 45–6, 60, 69, 76, 78, 83, 91, 101, 105, 142, 169, 176, 193, 197–9, 202–3

257

Wills, W.G., 54, 58, 60, 75–6, 79, 82, 105 Wilton, Marie, see Bancroft, Squire and Marie Wingfield, Lewis, 57, 60, 73, Chapter 7 passim, 229 Winter, William, 97, 102, 189, 195–6

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