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CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORThRIDGE

A DRAMATURG'S APPROACH TO STAGING

GRUACH AND KING LEAR'S WIFE

'A thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in

THEATRE

by

Barbara Ann Braun

May 1985 The Thesis of Barbara Ann Braun is approved:

Heinrich H. Falk

Nor~en C. Barnes,

California State University, Northridge

ii TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. INTRODUCTION ...... 1

2. GRUACH AND KING LEAR'S WIFE:

PLAYS FOR A "THEATRE OUTWORN" ...... 10

3. KING LEAR'S WIFB: A GEORGIAN CONTROVERSY ..• 30

4. GRUACH: A PRE-RAPHAELITE VISION ...... 43

5. STAGING KING LEAR'S WIFE AND GRUACH ...... 57

6. CONCLUSION ...... 98

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 101

iii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

The Damsel of the Sane Grael t1874)

by D. G. Rossetti ...... 52

Kin_9_ Lear Is vHfe: Set Design by Paul Nash . . . . 70

King Lear 1 s ~vife: Costume Design by Paul Nash . . 7 3

Gruach: Set Design by Paul Nash ...... • 78

iv ABSTkACT

A DRAAATURG'S APPROACH TO STAGING

GRUACH AND KING LEAR'S WIFE

by

Barbara Ann Braun

Master of Arts in Theatre

The job of the dramaturg may vary from theatre company to theatre company. This study is an exercise in performing the work of a dramaturg who has been assigned to assist with the staging of two one-act plays. The plays herein under consideration are King

Lear's Wife and Gruach by Gordon Bottomley.

King Lear's Wife was a product of the Georgian literary movement of 1911-1922, having first been published in the Georgian Poetry 1913-1915 anthology.

Gruach seems to have been primarily inspired by Bot­ tomley's identification with the nineteenth-century

v 0 .

Pre-Raphaelite movement. These perspectives help the

director and the dramaturg to grasp an overall literary and historical understanding of the plays, which is a primary step in determining their meaning.

Other responsibilities of the dramaturg include researching the playwright's career, his writings about tne drama and the theatre, and that portion of his personal background which may be pertinent to his work. In preparation for staging the plays the drama­ turg should also examine their stage history and per­ haps previous set and costume designs which may spark ideas for tne current production.

Although the dramaturg's job will vary from show to show depending upon the nature and demands of the play to be mounted, this study ultimately leads to the formulation of possible production images, character preparation, and suggested rehearsal techniques. In this way the dramaturg works from the point of view of the airector, the actor, and the rehearsal coach.

Vi 1. INTRODUCTION

Few would argue that the most significant change in theatre production over the past one hundred years has been the emergence of the director. His multiplic­ ity of skills are generally considered indispensable in staging an artistically unified production. Today yet another pioneer practitioner is becoming increas­ ingly important as more and more American companies are recosnizing the value of hiring a resident dramaturg.

webster's defines a dramaturg as a "specialist" in ''tne art and technique of dramatic composition and tneatrical .cepresentation. 11 first, this definition implies that to :Oecowe a dramaturg one must undergo specialized training. Second, it suggests that the dramaturg must be knowledgeable about both playwright­ ing and directing. And third, it indicates that the dramaturg must understand both the creativity and the discipline inherent in each of these fields.

In practice the business of the dramaturg defies universal explanation. The responsibilities behind the title vary from company to company. Within some organizations, the script reader may be labelled a

1 2

dramaturg. In other companies the dramaturg may advise

contemporary dramatists on the writing of their

scripts. And in some cases the dramaturg may perform

at a managerial level choosing plays for production

and promoting the major ideals of the company. This

study is concerned with the dramaturg who contributes

directly to the staging of the play, effectively com-

-municating as nearly as possible the playwright's

intentions so far as they can be ascertained.

Until recently the American director was expected

to function for the production as literary advisor,

historian, theoretician, and critic, in addition to his

nunterous other directorial duties. But many directors

lack the time, the inclination, and/or the talent to

develop a scholarly viewpoint which can be vital to

presenting productions of the highest quality. The

acceptance and utilization of a dramaturg in the

staging of a show is, in a sense, the discovery of the

missing link between theatre practitioners and theatre

scholars. His position in the theatre process may be

illustratea witn the following chart:

playwright > dramaturg > director > actors/designers >

audience

Here his talents bridge the gap between the playwright and the director. But the dramaturg may also open the

lines of communcation between the director and the 3

actors/designers or between the the actors/designers and the audience, so his position in the theatre

process might be rearranged as in the charts below: playwright > director > dramaturg > actors/designers >

audience

or playwright > director > actors/designers > drarnaturg >

audience

The dramaturg assigned to any given show may be required to work on the playscript, conduct research, or assist the actors.

It has already b~en noted that the job structure of the company for wnich he is employed will dictate the breadth of his responsibilities. If the company staffs a literary manager, an assistant director, or a renearsal, movement, or acting coach, then the drama­ turg's duties will probably be more limited than if these people were not available. In addition, the individual personalities of the director and the drama­ turg as well as their personal and working relation­ ships will affect the contributions each makes to show. The dramaturg's input will even vary from production to production depending upon the character­ istics of the play at hand. So while it is possible 4

to outline the potential duties which may be assigned to him, it must be kept in mind that the dramaturg's job is a flexible one. In practice there is no limit to the type of production problem which he 1nay be asked to solve or elucidate and his sources for material and inspiration are equally limitless. The point to remem­ ber is that the dramaturg does not compile a vast amount of information that is merely ''interesting." Instead his material is used, however directly or indirectly, in staging the best possible production.

The director must first of all understand the full implications of the script to the best of his anility before he can formulate his own production concept. The drarnaturg may or may not be involved in this initial research. It usually includes research­ ing tne playwrignt, his culture, and the dramatic and theatrical conventions wnich influenced the writing of the play. Any preface to the play, the playwright's comntents about his work, and critical writings about the drama are crucial to the director's art. Once he deterrnirles what he wants to emphasize and how he intends to stage his artistic vision of the play, the dramaturg may then pursue the avenues of research in greater detail in order to work out the production's finer points and help bring to fruition the director's ideas.

One of the dramaturg's principle jobs may be to 5

create the most functional script possible that is commensurate with the director•s needs. This may involve working directly with the playwright assisting him with revisions of the text. Or it may mean trans­ lating the play from another language, either in part or in its entirety. A comparative examination of several editions of the script may be required in order to collate the most effective passages. The dramaturg may also work with the director in cutting and/or rewriting portions of the play in the interest of performance time or clarity. Through research the drarnaturg clarifies as much as possible the intended meaning of any unfamiliar or ambiguous words or groups of words iri the playscript. This may be as simple as consulting a dictionary or as complex as researching an obscure historical allusion. Some archaic or forei~n expressions may need to be eliminated and replaced with comparable terms more familiar to most theatre-goers. Or it may be necessary to censor certain sections an audience might find offensive, or to de­ lete any parts which appear to be unmanageable by the actors. All of this must be accomplished without destroying the effectiveness of the structure, rhythm, imagery, perhaps poetry, and other literary values inherent in the script.

The dramaturg will also research the production 6

history of the play. Promptbooks, photographs, reviews, articles, and any other accounts of previous stagings and designs n1ay suggest possible solutions to produc­ tion problems or inspire new ideas for experimentation.

Understanding why certain productions failed may prove to be as valuable as learning how others were success­ fully staged. Furthermore, the research material may not necessarily be confined to the printed page but will be dictated by the demands of the play. It may, for example, take the form of an interview or a trip to a pertinent location where the useful information may be observed first-hand.

In addition to working on his own or in conjunction witl1 the playwright or the director, the dramaturg may also work with the cast as an acting or rehearsal coach.

He may lead them in exercises, improvisations, or thea­ tre games. Or he may employ other means to assist them with characterization or with the vocal and physical demands of the play. If it is a play from a pre­ modern period, then his work may train the actors to perform according to the dramatic conventions of per­ forming such a period play or he may help the actors to achieve something closer to historical realism, depending upon the preference of the direcor. The dramaturg may be called upon to familiarize the actors with the setting of the play and its social, economic and political climate. To achieve this objective a 7

dramaturg may present information in the form of a

lecture and suggest additional readings or research

for the actor to conduct on his own.

In some instances the dramaturg may write portions

of the program or publicity announcements, or he may

function as a resident critic. Because he is closely

involved with various phases of the production process

and is at the same time further removed artistically

from the show than the director, the dramaturg should

be able to provide insightful yet objective comments

concerning the progress of the show in light of tne

director's intentions.

Since the duties of the dramaturg are difficult

to define it is equally challenging to suggest an

appropriate training program. It has already been

noted that a dramaturg should understand the creativity

and discipline demanded of a playwright and a director.

And it has been suggested that the art of the actor

should be included in this perspective as well. The

following exercise was designed to elucidate the poten­ tial duties of the dramaturg assigned to work with the

staging of a particular play.

I have chosen for this study two one-act plays by

Gordon Bottomley, Gruach and King Lear's Wife. Written in the nineteen-teens these poetic dramas are prologues to Shakespeare's Macbeth and King Lear. They represent 8

Bottomley's efforts to revive the art of poetry in the contemporary theatre.

Chapter two is a brief introduction to the play­ wright. It examines the subject plays in relation to

Bottomley's life and career. Chapter three is a dis­ cussion of Kin~ Lear's Wif~ as a product of the Georgian literary movement. Chapter four suggests viewing the

_play, Gruach, from a painterly point of view since it seems to exemplify Bottomley's identification with the

Pre-~aphaelites. Finally, chapter five is a practical discussion dealing with the staging of the plays. It includes an expansion and application of much of the material suggested in chapters two through four.

Chapter five functions in part as an exercise in developing production images from the playscript.

Images are important tools for the playwright, the actor, and the designer but they are perhaps most important for the dramaturg and the director. They help the latter to interpret the playwright's inten­ tions, solidify his own thoughts about the play, and communicate his ideas to the other theatre artists.

This is therefore written from the director 1 s point of view. Chapter five is also an exercise in character work from the actors point of view. It includes a portrait of each character derived from close examina­ tion of the script, critical opinion written about the characters, and a cursory consideration of the Shakes- 9

pearian plays since they provided the inspiration for

Bottomley's characters and situations.

The director is of course the usual decision-maker in terms of applying· to tr1e production the material compiled by the dramaturg. However, chapter five will also illustrate the dramaturg's contribution to the production by suggesting methods by which he may work with the actors.

In the course of examining the function of the dralllaturg the stuay cannot help but offer a reassess- ntent of tl1e two Bottomley one-acts. It would seem that today he is a playwright who has either been forgotten or who is too casually dismissed as having written vague and essentially untheatrical plays. But perhaps with the right directorial approach his plays might today find the appreciative audience that was seldom found in his own lifetime. 2. GRUACH AND KING LEAR'S WIFE:

PLAYS FOR A "THEATRE OUTWORN"

In his last book entitled A Stage for Poetry: my

Purposes with rny Plays, published privately for him in the year of his death in 1948, Gordon Bottomley divides his plays into two groups--those for the Theatre Outworn and plays for a Theatre Unborn. Both Gruach and King

Lear's Wife belong to the first category of plays for the Theatre Outworn.

It is helpful to the director and the drarnaturg alike to understand the dramatist's artistic develop­ ment so as to most accurately interpret on stage the plays chosen for production. This may entail examining nis commentary about drama and the theatre, becoming familiar with his other creative writings, and, to some extent, researching his personal background.

Such an overview may not only illuminate the meaning of his plays, but it may also enable one to retrace the playwright's creative process in writing the plays.

This, in turn, may spark ideas for methods of recreating his drama on stage.

While he was still writing plays for what he

10 11

later termed the Theatre Outworn, Bottomley often

spoke out against the English theatres and advocated

many changes. First, he hoped to see both ·theatre managers and the public accept and appreciate a new

poetic drama. Second, he wanted to replace realistic

acting with more symbolic methods of staging. Third, he encouraged companies to hire designers with back-

grounds in art who could reform the physical theatre

in such a way as to make it more aesthetically condu-

cive to the performance of verse drama.

Bottomley sought to explore the timeless and

universal aspects of humankind as opposed to the tri- vial, everyday activities which are constantly changing.

"I,iy business has seemed to be to look for the essentials l of life, the part that does not change." Verse drama, he felt, was a form of communcation best suited to

expressing "the essentials" which seemed to elude mere words alone. "The poetic drama is not so much a representation of a theme as a meditation upon it or a 2 distillation from it." He used the following inter-

lude to express the purpose of poetic drama:

We tell of things that once were news,

such as the press now soils for its use;

But we look beyond the accident

Of a thing that happened for the thing it

meant. 12

To mimic the murder or the kiss

Tells us nothing of what it is

In the signifiance of the heart.

We need to meditate apart

From the imitation of something seen-­

To ask of deeds that once have been

What they were destined to come to mean

In the spirits of those who suffered and

did,

And in our spirits in which are hid

The same dim forces, which all inherit.

Which of us has seen a spirit?

W~ have no belief to bring us near it:

Yet in the world of poetry

We can admit such things may be,

And in the possiblity

Receive enlarged experience

Of beauty and the interior sense

Of man's most intimate dealing with man.

Here, moving in the little span

Of this loved stage, you shall not see

The day's externe reality.

Poetry wills that you shall hear

The implications of all fear,

All terror and joy, that shall express

In earnest grievous life no less 13

3 Than an inmost essence of loveliness.

It seems apparent that early on Bottomley favored a presentational style of acting as opposed to a re2resentational style. This preference eventually materialized with his later efforts in coordinating symbolic movements with oral recitation. He wrote,

In the greatest drama the murder, the suicide,

the kiss are not things of moment; it matters

little whether they are convincingly executed

or not; they may be signified by a formal

gesture . • . If we consider what a large pro-

portion of modern drama consists in the simple

execution of such acts, we have a measure of

the gulf that widens between poetry and the 4 theatre, dramatic poetry and modern drama.

For Bottomley poetry and action/movement were so closely integrated that they were at times one and the same:

Poetry differs from other uses of language

on the stage in being, in itself, action.

In poetic drama at its supreme moments words

are themselves a form of action; at such times

they do not even need to be reinforced by

movement, and drama at its highest reaches is 14 0 '

5 a sound in a stillness.

In his crusade to repopularize poetry on the

stage Bottomley recognized that "it must learn again to base itself upon contemporary speech-rhythms'' and not upon the speech of the Elizabethan, Jacobean or any other historical period when poetry was popular in 6 the theatre.

The efforts of Bottomley and others to revive the poetic drama were largely unsuccessful. In 1934 Pris- cilia Tnouless summarized the plight of the modern poetic playwright:

The writers of poetic drama in the twentieth

century are few in number, and their very

existence is almost unknown to the ordinary

playgoer. The plays of some of these writers

are occasionally performed by repertory com-

panies in small theatres, or by amateurs, but

the doors of the larger theatres are closed to 7 them.

Bottomley not only sought to change the modern drama but he also promoted a transformation within the technical field in order to make the stage more suit- able for the presentation of verse plays. In an article entitled Poetry and the Contemporary Theatre

Bottomley noted that the visual aspects of staging 15

took priority over the audial on the English stage even though "beautiful sound, finished diction, was the foundation of the greatest drama we know":

There has been a steady development of the

visual aspects of drama, furthered by the

recognition of marvellous possibilities in

electric lighting and complicated by the

incursion into the theatre of a new race of

pictorial artists who aspired to paint with

lights and built-up shapes and human bodies 8 instead of with brushes and pigments.

With so much emphasis being placed upon the visual qualities of the production, it seemed only logical to

Bottomley that the theatres hire the most qualified designers possible. Yet this 11 new race of pictorial artists" according to Bottomley were usurping the positions in the English theatres which should have been occupied by artists "more profoundly and variedly trained in the handling of color and form and design and willing to apply their knowledge in the local 9 conditions of the theatre."

Not many people have yet conceived that the

designer is deeply concerned in the ways in

which the players group and regroup themselves

in front of his setting, and in the movements 16

and shapes which they impart to his clothes

when they have put them on; while in too many

theatres the designer is a member of the rou-

tine staff, and there is no opening for the

man of genius who would serve the public 10 according to this own vision.

In an article published in Theatre Arts Monthly in

1924 Bottomley made an appeal to the contemporary theatres to hire for technical work artists like his painter-friend Paul Nash,

His models for two recent poetic dramas,

King Lear's Wife and Gruach, recently

seen in London at the Theatre Exhibition, are

felicitous instances of such fidelity and

sympathetic interpretation; nothing is omitted

that is necessary to ensure the representation

and appeal of the play, nothing is included

that would be without use or would destroy 11 its imaginative atmosphere.

Time and again Bottomley appealed to the those theatres interested in producing his plays to utilize Nash's 12 designs but they were never seen in production.

The following plays were all included in.Bottom- ley's drama for a Theatre Outworn: 'rhe Crier by

Night {1902), Midsummer Eve (1905), Laodice and Danae 17

tl906), Riding to Lithend (1909), King Lear's Wife

(1915), Britain's Daughter (1921) and Gruach {1921).

The subject matter of Bottomley's plays was usually borrowed from ancient myths, legends, sagas, folklore, or classical literature. This is no doubt largely due to the influence upon Bottomley of Rossetti and the

Pre-Raphaelites. In his book, The Pre-Raphaelite

Imagination 1848-1900, John Dixon Hunt explains that at times the Pre-Raphaelites "invoked actual events from chronicles or early literature and reworked them in such a way that they became myths or metaphors for a kind of life which they believed their own age could 13 not f~rovide." Such material seems to have been particularly appropriate to the universal themes of

~assion and violence which Bottomley sought to develop.

Furthermore, according to Hunt,

Many writers ..• found in earlier, 'primi-

tive' literatures not only romantic subjects

but more importantly a diction and imagery

which carried associations of great emotion

and resonant experience. Shakespeare, Dante,

ballads and romances, Scandinavian saga--all

seemed to provide a vocabulary which avoided 14 literary sophistication.

Ernest Reynolds, author of Modern English Drama, observes that: 18

The main force behind him [Bottomley] is not

Elizabethan literature, but the world of Celtic

and Northern legend and the world of a still

pagan ancient Britain . his is the world of

gloomy and fearful night. There is evil abroad

in the air of his dramas, unseen but constantly 15 sensed.

According to A. E. Morgan, Bottomley's first play

"blends the wistful pathos of ancient Ireland with the 16 harshness of Norse saga." 7he Crier by Night centers around the supernatural haunting of a Celtic water- spirit. There are only three characters in the play

(excluding the spirit): Thorgard, a Norse woman; Hialti, her husband; and their Irish thrall, Blandid, who appears in shackles. Thorgard overworks and abuses

Blandid and is jealous of the caring relationship which exists between her husband and the girl. Blandid makes an agreement with the water-spirit, or Crier, that she will go to her destruction in the lake if she may obtain Hialti for herself by his also being lured to the lake to die. The spirit takes Hialti but upon its return for Blandid, she changes her mind and begs

Thorgard for help. Thorgard refuses assistance and

Blandid exits into the night with the spirit.

Reynolds considers The Crier by Night to be Bot- 19

17 tomley's masterpiece. He summarizes the playwright's contribution to English drama by stating that:

Bottomley is both interesting and important.

He is interesting because his verse is of a

high standard . He is important because he

introduced to the English theatre what Yeats

introduced into Ireland, the world of Northern

twilit lengendry, with . its haunted 18 marshes and wind-borne voices.

In her book, Modern Poetic Drama, Priscilla

Thouless says of Bottomley's second play, Midsummer

J:<.;v~, that it is "the least dramatic of his plays, and

it gives one the impression that it suffers from the

fact that it is a play [rather than a poem] and that 19 therefore action must be introduced." She describes

the play as follows;

Some dairy-maids desire to see the shadows

of their future husbands, and they go out

into the night to look for them. Instead

of their shadows they see the "fetch"

[apparition] of one of their number, Nan,

and they think that it may be the herald of

her death. This leads to a discussion amongst

the girls about the strangeness and the value

of life, and death and birth. The mood of 20

meditation is broken in upon by the sudden

appearance of the "fetch" and the play ends 20 suddenly with the death of Nan.

In this play, the Pre-Raphaelite fascination with the supernatural, introspection, and psychic and hallucin- atory experience is particularly evident.

Thouless describes his Laodice and Danae as

"sadistic," adding that in all three early plays

"there is a certain thinness and vagueness, a lack of

1 vitality. ' This problem is alleviated, in her opinion, with his plays, Riding to Lithend, King Lear's Wife, 21 - -- and Gruach. These may be considered to be the middle period of Bottomley's artistic development.

Riaing to Lithend is an adaptation of an Icelandic legend. It is the tragic story of Gunnar, an outlaw, and his wife, Hallgerd, who longs for the passionate excitement of watching her husband battle in defense of his house. The play contains some challenging roles for performers but that of the heroine is a potentially outstanding one for a great tragic actress, according to Lascelles Abercrombie. He describes

Hallgerd in his play review published in Bibelot in

1910~

She is a sort of emotional salamander. She

stifles in calm, equable affairs. She loves

her husband Gunnar, but she refuses to give 21 (1 '

him any help in his last fight, in order that

she may see him fight better and fiercer.

At the supreme moment of the play, the

string of Gunnar's bow, his best weapon for

defending the house, is cut by one of his

enemies. He appeals to Hallgerd to make him

a new bowstring with the strands of her long

hair. She refuses; and Gunnar will not ask 22 twice.

He then quotes Hallgerd's words as Gunnar lies dying:

O, clear sweet laughter of my heart, flow out!

It is so mighty and beautiful and blithe 23 To watch a man dying--to hover and watch.

These lines contain something of the cruelty of the characters of Goneril and Lady Gruach to be found in

Bottomley's plays, King Lear's Wife and Gruach. In

Twentieth Century English Poetic Drama, A Revaluation

K. S. l"iisra colorfully summarizes the plot of King

Lear Is vHfe:

King Lear's vJife, a psychological reconstruc-

tion of the early life of King Lear and his

daughters, attempts to explain the wickedness

of the two daughters which leads to the old

Lear's tragedy in the play. In Bottomley's 22

reconstruction, the aged Lear, matched with his

equally aged queen Hygd, is shown as a wrong-

headed sensualist. He admits a vulgar wench

into his family as his mistress, to the deep

chagrin of the queen who dies of it. Her death

provokes the eldest daughter Goneril, a virtu-

ous virgin of cold chastity, to kill the hated

mistress of her father and adds to the bitter-

ness with which the play is heavily charged.

Against this sombre background we see young

Cordelia, beloved by Lear, but disliked by her 24 mother, flitting innocently and happily.

Gruach is the story of Macbeth's first meeting with Lady Gruach who later becomes his Lady Macbeth.

On a mission for the king he loses his way in the darkness and seeks direction from the house of Conan,

Thane of Fortingall. Here he meets the Lady Gruach on the eve of her wedding to her cousin Conan, a marriage which will reunite their lands under common rule. ~he Lady Gruach and Macbeth are so entranced by one another that she convinces him that they should run away together and be married.

Bottomley also chose Shakespearian themes for three sonnets, 'The Last Night' {1897), 'Romeo to

Rosaline' and 'Juliet to Rosaline' (1898), as well as one of his last plays entitled Crookback's Crown: a 23

25 tragi-comedy (1946). The story for this play was taken from The Historie and Chronicles of Scotland by

Robert Lindesay of Pitscottie. Lindsay (Bottomley re- vised his name for the play} appears as the storyteller in the prologue, the interlude, and the epilogue, each of which is written in prose. The rest of the play is in verse. It centers around the theft of Richard III's 26 crown on the eve of the Battle of Bosworth.

In 1893 at the age of nineteen Bottomley discovered the work of two men who came to be perhaps the most influential forces in his career: Dante Gabriel Rossetti and W. B. Yeats. In 1939, the year of Yeats's death,

Bottomley wrote a tribute to him for the Abbey Theatre's publication, Tne Arrow, in which he described his initiation to Yeats's work:

The first book by a contemporary poet that I

ever bought was the first edition of The

Land of Heart's Desir~: and pretty much the

first thing I did when I set foot in London

for the first time was to go to Clifford's

Inn and hear its author give an address on

Speaking to Musical Notes . Since I

bought that book in 1893 I think I have

never missed a book of new poetry by w. B.

Yeats; and since I heard that music of words

in 1903 [Yeats speech was supplemented with 24

performances by Florence Farr and Pamela

Colman Smith] . . • I have been increasingly

concerned in that re-exploration of the nature

and possibilities of spoken poetry which he 27 initiated then.

Bottomley's first book of poetry, The Mickle

Drede and other Verses, was published in 1896. It was immediately followed by several more editions:

Poe;<1S at White-Nights {1896), The Gate of Smaragdus tl904i, Chambers of Imagery, first series (1907), !2

Vision of Giorg·ione ( 1910 i , Chambers of Imagery, sec- ond series (1912), and Poems of Thirty Years (1925).

Because most of his work was published in very limited volumes, usually anywhere from 150 to 500 copies each, his work was not generally known by the public al- though he found favor with many critics and other contemporary poets. Eventually Bottomley concentrated his major efforts on the writing of poetic drama.

At first it seemed as though he took in stride the public's lack of appreciation for his work. But eventually he became somewhat bitter when efforts to reform the English stage seemed futile. On December

30, 1930 Bottomley wrote to Nash whose the~trical endeavors by then had also met with little success:

The theatre doesn't want the poets, either,

and all my thoughts are centered now on get- 25

ting poetry performed without the theatre's

mechanism--and also without the mechanism of

realistic acting. A bare platform, a semi-

circle of high screens, two moveable floods

and beautiful clothes and speaking--these give 28 me most of what I asked from the theatre.

Bottomley's later dramatic works were written specifically for oral recitation. He began writing

Scenes ~nd Plays (1929) for the Oxford Recitations.

Lyric Plays was published in 1932 and Choric Plays in

1939. He felt that,

The nature of things can be depicted and

attained on the stage without reconstructing

the appearance of their actuality--and also

that the power of their expression can be at

least cubed by the use of so unnatural a thing 29 as a chorus.

He compared the effect of spoken poetry to that of string-quartets and called such performances "chamber 30 drama." Eventually he became actively involved with the Scottish National Theatre, the Scottish Associa- tion for the Speaking of Verse, and other amateur speaking groups, primarily in Scotland. He felt that he could best identify with the Scottish culture and many of his later plays were based on Scottish themes. 26

During these years he was particularly influenced

by the work of Sturge Moore, Yeats, and the Japanese

No, incorporating stylized movement, dance, and masks

into the stagings. But he also experimented with new

ideas of his own. For example, he came to use his

11 chorus as a "living curtain :

In two of these pieces [the choric plays]

Mr. Yeats's fortunate invention of the

Curtain Bearing and Folding device for

setting the stage when there is no pros-

cenium or scenery has been adopted. In

others I have employed the previously unused

idea of a company of living people for the

same purpose--and, finding the people there,

have found in them also the possibility of a

chorus to be used and interwoven with the

action in a different way and with another 31 balance.

In his later work Bottomley had at last found an art-form through which he could increase ''the range and possibilities of drama especially in its spiritual 32 and psychological parts." 27

@ '

NOTES

1 Claude Colleer Abbott, intro. to Gordon

Bottomley, Poems and Plays (London: The Bodley Head

Limited, 1953), p. 12. 2 Gordon Bottomley, "Poetry And The Contemporary

Theatre," Essays and Studies by l"lembers of the English

Association, 19 {1934), p. 139. 3 Bottomley, "Poetry," p. 147. 4 Bottomley, "Poetry, II p. 139. 5 Bottomley, "Poetry, II p. 140. 6 Bottomley, "Poetry, II p. 141-2. 7 Priscilla Thouless, Modern Poetic Drama

(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1934), p. 1. 8 Bottomley, "Poetry," p. 138. 9 Gordon Bottomley, "The Theatre Work Of Paul

Nash," Theatre Arts Monthly, No. 8 (1924), p. 38. 10 Bottomley, "The Theatre Vvork, " p. 46. 11 Bottomley, 11 The Theatre Work, ll p. 48. 12 Claude Col leer Abbott and Anthony Bertram, eds., Poet and Painter (London: Oxford University

Press, 1955), p. 169. 13 John Dixon Hunt, 'The Pre-Raphaelite Imagina- tion 1848-1900 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd., 28

1968), p. 34. 14 Hunt, p. 44.

15 Ernest Reynolds, Modern English Drama {Great

Britain: George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd., 1949), p. 76. 16 A. E. Morgan, Tendencies of Modern English

Drama (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1924), p. 297. 17 Reynolds, pp. 78-9. 18 Reynolds, p. 79. 19 Thouless, p. 168. 20 Thouless, pp. 168-9. 21 Thouless, p. 169. 22 Lascelles Abercrombie, "The Riding to Lithend:

A Play in One Act,u Bibelot, No. 16 (1895-1914), pp. 69-70. 23 Abercrombie, p. 70. 24 K. s. Misra, Twentieth Century English Poetic

Drama, A Revaluation (New Delhi: Vikas Publishing

House PVT Ltd, 1981), p. 13. 25 Abbott, !?· 16. 26 Gordon Bottomley, Crookback's Crown. 27 "Gordon Bottomley, "His Legacy To The Theatre,"

The Arrow, Summer (1939), p. 11. 28 Abbott and Bertram, p. 204. 29 Bottomley, "Poetry," p. 144. 30 Gordon Bottomley, Scenes and Plays, (New York:

The MacMillan Company, 1929), p. 121. 31 Bottomley, Scenes, pp. 121-2. 29

32 Bottomley, Scenes, p. 122. 3. KING LEAR'S WIFE:

A GEORGIAN CONTROVERSY

King Lear's Wife was the subject of much heated debate among literary circles following its publication in the Georgia~ Poetry 1913-1915 anthology edited by

Edward Marsh. Marsh called special attention to Bot- tomley's play in his prefatory note to the book:

The alphabetical arrangement of the writers

has been modified in order to recognize the

honour which Mr. Gordon Bottomley has done

to the book by allowing his play to be first 1 published here.

In April of 1915 when Bottomley submitted his final manuscript to Marsh, the latter's enthusiasm for the play was immense. He wrote to a friend,

There is only one really great literary event

--Gordon Bottomley's play King Lear's Wife

• • the poetic drama is born again • . . It

is short, but the action, the character draw-

ing, and the verses are all the work of a 2 master.

30 31

Later, in a telegram to Bottomley, Marsh said that "I expected a great deal--but it surpassed all that I had 3 hoped or imagined." Bottomley agreed that his play would not be published elsewhere for at least three years and in return he was compensated with a double 4 share of the royalties. As it turned out the book enjoyed great popular success, selling over 13,000 5 copies. In this way it was primarily responsible for first introducing the public to Gordon Bottomley's work.

When the anthology carne out in November of 1915, it included works by the following poets: Ruperte

Brooke, William rl. Davies, Walter De La Mare, John

Drinkwater, Jaiaes Elroy Flecker, Wilfrid Wilson

Gibson, Ralph Hodgson, D. H. Lawrence, Francis Led- widge, John Masefield, Harold Monro, James Stephens, and Lascelles Abercrombie. King Lear's Wife, however, and Abercrombie's The End of the World, which was the final piece in the book, received the brunt of the critical protests directed toward the anthology as a whole. These plays seemed to be at the center of the larger controversy concerning the artistic validity of what came to be referred to as the Georgian movement.

Marsh and his Georgian poets frequently spoke up in defense of Bottomley's play (or their own work) and didn't hesitate to hurl insults back at the reviewers. 32

hBottomley assumed the mantle of artistic aloofness,n telling Marsh,

If you don't mind [such criticism] I truly

don't. I am as proud as ever of my play hav-

ing made its first appearance in G. P. and

under your care, and as content as ever too.

I never received so much misrepresentation and

injustice from critics before, but I find it 6 easy to support in such noble company.~~

In The Georgian Revolt 1910-1922 Robert H. Ross explains that the label "Georgian" was assigned to the contemporary poets by Edward !Yiarsh who wished to empha- size with his anthology the coming of a new poetic age; one that was essentially revolutionary, "putting on a 7 new strength and beauty." Ross begins his discussion by presenting a description of the literature of the preceding Edwardian era, a time in which the novelists and dramatists wrote in either a naturalistic or real- istic vein:

The novel and drama gave the Edwardian reader

precisely what he demanded •.. an essentially

literal representational art which made him

think but put no severe tax on his imagination;

he was getting an art which, in its themes and

subject matter, often reflected his own social, 33

political, and ethical liberalism. Above all,

he was getting a serious straight-forward art, 8 uncluttered by any aesthetic cant.

According to Ross the Edwardian period was an age of poetic apathy. It could claim but few poets of any consequence. But things began to change late in 1911 when a growing "anti-authoritarian spirit" in part repopularized the art of reading poetry. Ross calls this new poetic awareness the "Georgian revival." The attempts on the part of the poets "to change the nature 9 of poetry itself" he terms the "Georgian revolt."

Ross divides the poets of this era into two groups: the Centrists, with whom Bottomley would be associated, and the Leftists. The Centrists sought new_ways of preser1ting the more traditional subject matter and the 10 Leftists "sought novelty in both matter and manner."

He compares the Georgian ideals with those of the

Pre-kaphaelites of the nineteenth-century remarking that in both eras "the pictorial and literary arts 11 drew close together." He places the poetic revolt into perspective below:

It was part of the larger twentieth-century

revolt against Humanism; in the beginning

it was the poetic phase of a widespread revolt

against Academism among all the arts; and 34

specifically in the field of poetry, it was a

reaction against the dead hand of the Romantic-

Victorian tradition. Almost all the young

Georgian rebels . . . can be said in varying 12 degrees to exemplify these tendencies.

Ross contends that the drama was inherent in the art of most of the Georgian poets. "Almost all the

Georgians were intent upon restoring drama to poetry.

Several also attempted to restore poetry to the drama

. the Georgian temper was essentially dramatic.~~

They were in rebellion against the poetry of the

1890's which "as many Georgians thought, had been written too exclusively for the study; it had been 13 allowed to become too cerebrated, too nearly inert."

Ross quotes the poet-dramatist Lascelles Abercrombie with having said that the poetic drama is "the alcohol to which the human organism answers with an intoxica- tion of sense, mind, and emotion, bringing them into a 14 unity of triumphant and delighted self-consciousness."

KiDg Lear's Wife is a prime example of the

11 poetic realism" which Ross felt distinguished the first two Georgian anthologies from the three which followed. Poetic realism as defined by Ross meant~

Two qualities, the first a state of mind in

the poets themselves, the second a technique

of writing verse. As a state of mind .among 35

the Georgian poets, realism came to mean

primarily anti-sentimentalism. As a tech-

nique of verse writing it came to mean the

inclusion in poetry of details, however nasty,

which presumably possessed truth to reality 15 as it was perceived by the five senses.

King Lear's Wife is clearly an unsentimental play and its realism seems to have been particularly evi- dent to the reviewer for The Spectator who recapitu- lated the plot as follows:

King Lear, like the heroes of many squalid

dramas in real life, is represented as fal-

ling in love with his wife's nurse. Again,

as often happens in such cases, he has trouble

with his daughters and with the family 16 physician.

The epitome of the so-called "nasty" details alluded to by Ross was the controversial song of the corpsewasher:

A louse crept out of my lady's shift--

Ahurnm, Ahurnrn, Ahee--

Crying 11 0i! Oi! We are turned adrift;

The lady's bosom is cold and stiffed,

And her arm-pit's cold for me. 36

"The lady's linen's no longer neat;"--

Ahumm, Ahumm, Ahee--

"Her savour is neither warm nor sweet;

It's close for two in a winding-sheet,

And lice are too good for worms to eat;

So here's no place for me."

The louse made off unhappy and wet;--

Ahumm, Ahumm, Ah~e--

He's looking for us, the little pet,

So haste, for her chin's to tie up yet,

And let us be gone with what we can get--

Her ring for thee, her gown for Bet, 17 Her pocket turned out for me.

Arthur Waugh reviewed the poetry anthology in Quarterly

Review and called Bottomley's drama "a fine and living

piece of literature," but he added:

How, then, comes it that on the very last

page Mr. Bottomley should be willing to dis-

sipate the final effect of a powerful scene

by introducting into the death-chamber two

prattling beldames, who, coming to lay the

dead woman out, croon over her body a squalid

ballad about a louse, and plunge the episode 18 into a conclusion of intolerable bathos. 37

The opposition to the corpsewasher's song was a common

complaint among many reviewers regardless of whether

or not they liked the rest of the play. J. c. Squire,

in reviewing the anthology for The New Statesma~,

remarked about the Song of the Louse that:

Nobody but a good poet gone wrong could have

written it--it strikes me, like the Song of

the Flea in 'Faust,' as comic and not at all

grim. I do not hold up my hands in pro-

test against the morbidity of this or any such

stuff. The way it takes me is that I automat-

ically impose a rollicking tune to it and go

about singing it. The play as a whole affects 19 me in much the same manner.

He perceived the characters as shallow, and felt that their apparent lack of motivation interfered with Bot- tomley's development of a logically progressive plot:

The 'incidental beauties' are not sufficiently

numerous to veil the poverty of the main

conce~tion and the wrong-headedness of the

general treatment .... his characters have

no complexity, and one feels about the horror,

not that it is a natural and inevitable growth,

but that he is putting it there all the 20 time. 38

For some, like Squire, the play's "incidental beauties" could not obliterate its predominantly ugly nature. The Times Literary Supplement observed:

He (Bottomley] draws ugliness, as the Vic-

torians drew beauty, for the sake of the

ugliness, as if it were interesting in itself

. He [Lear] is merely and irretrievably

damned; and the whole play is a play of damned

souls, ending with the ugly song of the old 21 woman who comes to lay out King Lear's wife.

This publication insisted that the play was nothing more than a "mechanical reaction" against Victorian poetry. They condemned it for its 11 baseness" and its 22 "violence as conventional as the Victorian sweetness."

In 1916, Bottomley composed a dedicatory preface 23 to King Lear's VJife in which he paid tribute to his friend, poet and dramatist T. Sturge Moore. Bottomley states in his preface that for "twenty years and more;,

1 he has "been envious ' of Moore's talents both as a writer and an engraver, and that he has enjoyed read- ing Moore's verse in the Dial publication. He comments on Moore's poetic powers "to shew/Imagina- tion's quiet glow/That burns intenseliest at the core." Sturge Moore, like Bottomley, was influenced by the works of the painters Shannon and Ricketts, and 39

the sensuous elements of romantic painting and poetry.

Claude Colleer Abbott, who following Bottomley's death became his literary executor, observed that

even though King Lear's Wife may be categorized

alongside the works of the Georgian poets, Bottomley was essentially a Victorian poet with his roots in the 24 1890's. As a "Georgian" he was considerably more conservative than most of his contemporaries, particu-

larly in the form and structure of his poetry.

The Nation objected less to the quality of

Bottontley' s and Abercrombie's plays and more to their inclusion in the anthology. "Their poetic excellence

is not such as to warrant such a large grant of space, as they impair the unity of the volume." They also objected to Bottomley's plot within the poetic form:

Mr. Bottomley's 'King Lear's Wife' has a

certain distinction and felicity of phrasing.

But Lear's intrigue with the waiting woman

Gormflaith over his wife Hygd's deathbed,

and Goneril's murder of her do not fit the

essential dignity of poetic tragedy .••.

We firmly hold, besides, that the poetic

drama (that is to say, the heroic drama) 25 is only suited to the heroic ages.

Bottomley's play appears to have acquired more favorable criticism with the passage of time. It was 40

next published in 1920 in his own anthology of drama entitled King Lear's Wife and other Plays. In Some

Contemporary Poets (1920) Harold Ivlonro said that King

Lear's vVife was "daring but ingenious • . . his su- preme achievement in the representation of primitive 26 gloom." A. E. Morgan author of Tendencies of Modern

Bnglish Drama, published in 1924, commented about King

Lear's Wife that, "There can be no question as to the power of characterization which it shows, and unlike some of Mr. Bottomley's plays it does not lack move- 27 ment and intensity of human interest." By 1949

Ernest Reynolds praised the corpsewasher's song, writ- ing in tViodern English Drama that it was a "wonderfully 28 effective and gruesome dialogue." 41

NO'rES

1 Edward Marsh, ed. Georgian Poetry 1913-1915

(London: The Poetry Bookshop, 1915), n. pag. 2 Christopher Hassall, A Biography of Edward

Marsh (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1959), p. 277. 3 Hassall, p. 278. 4 Hassall, p. 279. 5 Hassall, p. 362. 6 Robert H. Ross, The Georgian Revolt 1910-1922

\Brattleboro; The Book Press, 1965), p. 135. 7 Edward Marsh, in Timothy Rogers, ed., Georgian

:i?oetry 1911--1922, The Critical_ Heritage (London: Rout- ledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., 1977}, p. 51. 8 Ross, p. 8-9. 9 Ross, p. 13. 10 Ross, p. 23. 11 Ross, p. 18. 12 Ross, p. 22. 13 Ross, p. 121 14 Ross, p. 122. 15 Ross, p. 125. 42

16 "Georgian Poetry, 1913-1915," The Spectator

(1916), in Rogers, p. 137-8. 17 Gordon Bottomley, Poems and Plays (London: The

Bodley Head, 1953), pp. 159, 160, 163. 18 Arthur V~augh, "The New Poetry, n Quarterly

Review (1916), in Rogers, p. 157. 19 J. C. Squire, "Books in General," The New

Statesman (1915), in Rogers, p. 134. 20 Squire, in Rogers, p. 134. 21 "The Young Poets," The Times Literary Supple- ment t1915), in Rogers, p. 124. 22 "'l'he Young Poets,n in Rogers, p. 124-5. 23 Gordon Bottomley, Poems of Thirty Years

(London: Constable & Company Limited, 1925), pp. 140-2. 24 Claude Colleer Abbott, intro. to Gordon bottomley, Poems and Plays, p. 16. 25 ----- "'l'he Georgians," The Nation (1915), in Rogers, p. 131. 26 Harold Monro, Some Contemporary Poets (1920)

(London: Leonard Parsons, 1920), pp. 117-8. 27 A. E. Morgan, Tendencies of Modern English

Drama (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1924), p. 299. 28 Ernest Reynolds, Modern English Drama (Great

Britain~ George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd., 1949), p. 79. 4. GRUACH:

A PRE-RAPHAELITE VISION

The initial impulse to write Gruach began with a casual off-the-cuff remark made by Bottomley follow-

ing the performance of King Lear's Wife in the Geor- gian matinee of May 1916. Bottomley described the inci- dent in a letter to Edward Marsh. Following the matinee

Marsh had called Bottomley "into a rococo withdrawing room" full of people wllere the playwright noticed a woman

''little and not quite young and dressed in misleadingly modest black. And she asked me in a gentle undertone whether I contemplated any more plays on Shakespearian subjects." Bottomley was so excited with having just seen King Lear's Wife on stage that he told the woman that he did plan to write more plays with Shakespearian themes. He then jokingly added that he was afraid that he might inspire some young men at Oxford to go so far as to write a play about Macbeth's mother-in- law. "I had never thought of it before," Bottomley wrote to Marsh, "and I should never have thought of it again, if I hadn't learned later from you that I had 1 been speaking to the Duchess of Rutland."

43 44

Gruach and Britain's Daughter were published in a

joint volume in 1921. Britain's Daughter had been

written in 1917 and Gruach in 1918. In the preface to

Gruach written in 1919, Bottomley dedicated the play

to the painters Charles Shannon and Charles Ricketts.

Like Bottomley both artists were greatly influenced

by the work of Rossetti. Jointly they controlled the

.vale Press, an artist-printers' firm, to which Bottom-

ley refers in his preface. In Modern Poetic Drama

Priscilla Thouless explains that Shannon, like Rosset-

ti, took the subjects for his paintings from myths and

legends. Bottomley's Poems at White Nights was a

series of poems inspired by the romantic pictures of

Shannon. Ricketts was well-known, not only for his

paintings, but for his stage designs as well. Thou-

less writes that "In the work of Shannon and Ricketts,

Gordon Bottomley found once again what he was seeking,

the revival of the past, the bodying of pictorial 2 romance." Both artists s11e describes as "literary

painters":

That is to say painters who depend more upon

the associations which their work can arouse

in the mind of the beholder than upon the rela- 3 tions of form and colour in the painting.

According to Thouless, Bottomley perceived painting

and poetry as "different sides of the same coin"; 45

To him they both bring into ordinary life

the world of romance and legend, and both

arts present visually, one in paint and the

other in words, the objects the painter and

poet sees in his mind. As a lyricist Gordon

Bottomley is essentially a pictorial poet, and

he is at his best when he uses this quality 4 of his of making a picture.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti was the poet-painter whose sense of passion most inspired Bottomley. Rossetti was born in London, England, but as the son of the

Italian-born poet Gabriele Rossetti he developed an affinity with Italian literature. He translated into

English works by Dante Aligheri and other Italian writers, borrowing from them many themes for his own 5 work. In the preface to Gruach Bottomley writes~

I think of him who from Italian seed

'Was born an English man, him who renewed

By moody English ways, at English tension,

For English unillumined hearts like mine,

'l'lle lost Italian vision, the passionate

Vitality of art more rich than life,

More real than the day's reality.

Bottomley contines in the preface that nBefore I knew 46

his name and his great acts • . I lived in the stale darkness of my kind.'' He attributes Rossetti with having shovm him "The power of loveliness, the power of truth,/And of imagination" adding that through rwssetti' s works "I learned to live."

With Rossetti's passing Bottomley turned to the comparable art of Shannon and Ricketts for consolation and inspiration;

And so, when I had turned the last bright

Page of that dead painter of a keener life,

And felt that the dark mirror of his vision

Was broken, and knew I should not see again

Any new shape of that mysterious beauty

(Which by a heart-ache still brings back my

youthi,

I kindled with more life because I came

on the same miracle of enhanced life

Continued and renewed in acts of yours.

In this passage Bottomley refers to "the last bright page" of Rossetti's works and the "shape of that mysterious beauty." Here he is probably referring to the emphasis of colour and form in Rossetti's work.

Bottomley then pays tribute to the inspirational periodical, the Dial, of which Shannon and Ricketts were co-editors. Through this vehicle the memory of

Rossetti and his literary and mythical subject matter 47

were kept alive. Bottomley's reference to Rossetti's creation of a "keener" or uenhanced life" is elucidated later in the preface when he says that through Rossetti he came to understand his own artistic aims,

I have understood that I desire from art

And from creation not repeated things

Of every day, not the mean content

Or discontent of average helpless souls,

Not passionate abstraction of loveliness,

But unmatched moments and exceptional deeds

And all that cannot happen every day

And rare experience of earth's chosen men

~n which I cannot, by my intermitting

And narrow powers, share unless they are

held

Sublimated and embodied in beauty.

Rossetti was a central figure in the Pre-Raphael- ite Brotherhood established in 1848. He and the other members, William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais,

William Michael Rossetti, Thomas Woolner, James Collin- son, and Frederic George Stephens banded together in this artistic group in rebellion against Victorian art and society. They mistrusted the Royal Academy schools which fostered what they interpreted to be 6 stereotyped, insincere and meaningless art. This 48

formality of art to which they objected derived in part from the influence of the High Renaissance artist,

Raphael; hence the title of the coterie and the move- ment which they popularized. In his book, The Pre­

Raphaelite Imagination 1848-1900, John Dixon Hunt centers his discussion around five traits which he feels are most typical of the Pre-Raphaelite ideals.

Each of these traits prevails in Bottomley's play,

Gruach.

The first trait, according to Hunt, is "the en~ tnusiasm for what was seen as the picturesque and inspiratory Middle Ages, to which most Pre-Raphaelites looked for subject matter and even technical know- 7 ledge.;! The story of Macbeth is taken from eleventh- ce11tury Scottish history. The principal source for

Shakespeare's Macbeth, which provided the inspiration for Bottomley's play, was Chronicles of England, Scot- land, and Ireland (l577i by the English historian, -----8 Raphael Holinshed.

According to history Macbeth's cousin, Gillecomgain, was burned in 1032 (the details are unknown). He left a widow, Gruach, and a son, Lulach. Macbeth, who was probably 20-30 years old at the time, married Gruach.

She was the grand-daughter of Kenneth, King of the southern regions of Scotland. In 1034 Duncan came to power in southern Scotland and Macbeth, who was ruler over the northern territories, joined forces with him 49

in fighting rebellions to the west and Scandinavian chieftans in the extreme North. By 1040, Duncan and

Macbeth were apparently at war and Macbeth defeated him in battle. Because Gruach was descended from

Kenneth, Macbeth then came to power over both the northern and southern parts of Scotland. After seven- teen hprosperous years" he was killed by Malcolm, 9 Duncan's son, in 1057. Although Bottomley eliminated

Lulach from his story, as did Shakespeare, the title cbaracter of his play and her background is consistent with the historical account.

The second of the Pre-Raphaelite traits, "growing out of these mediaeval interests," is "their introspec- tion and the fashion in which they chose to communicate their meditations and the shadowy depths of the 10 psyche ... The most significant example of psychic power is probably found in the young Kitchen-Girl who is endowed with the ability of second sight which enables her to foresee Gruach's future in which she is a queen with a red dagger. Lady Gruach's subconscious mind sur- faces in her sleepwalking episodes as she desperately searches for a way out of her entrapment into marriage to Conan. Bottomley also employs the dramatic device of the soliloquy to express the inner experiences of

Macbeth, Lady Gruach, and Conan.

Third of Hunt's Pre-Raphaelite traits is "their 50

celebration of the noumenous; the search for a dialect of symbolism subtle enough to convey their apprehension 11 of a meaningful world beyond exterior description."

Hunt explains that through symbols the Pre-Raphaelites found in an intangible world "a means of exploring depths of feeling which Victorian life seemed to deny 12 them":

The symbolist movement was based upon a

reaction against the rationalism of the

eighteenth-century and a further revulsion

from nineteenth-century materialism. They

welcomed it because it required the artist

to see past the mere phenomenon of life to a

world of the subconscious, of magic, of 13 suggestion, and of invisible essences.

Gruach was praised for its 11 profoundly symbolic 14 imagery." Priscilla Thouless points out, for example, that the snow outside the castle has a differ- ent symbolic meaning for each of the lovers. Macbeth views it as "softly closing gates" which will prevent their escape, while Gruach, in the words of Thouless,

"sees the snow as the symbol of the veil of her virgin- ity which is to be torn apart giving her entrance to 15 life."

Furthermore, according to Hunt "Pre-Raphaelite art displays an interest ••• in trance and dreams," as a 51

16 means of connecting with this metaphysical world. In

Gruach this is especially evident in the hypnotic and trance-like effect that Macbeth has over Lady

Gruach. After his initial exit to the stables Morag chastises Gruach for her behavior. According to the

stage directions:

GRUACH has remained standing motionlessly,

facing the place whence the Envoy spoke to

her, her eyes downcast, her face tranquil as

if she is inwardly absorbed in an entrancing 17 thought.

Later in the opening of scene two when Gruach sleep- walks into the main hall, she, in turn, imposes an hypnotic effect upon Macbeth. He remarks, NI to my- self am strange; I do not know/My voice, my stumbling 18 senses, or my will."

Fourth, Hunt discusses the "one specific symbol invoked by almost all the Pre-Raphaelites--the famous image of a woman with large, staring eyes and masses 19 of heavy hair." Rossetti in particular popularized this figure of the ideal beauty (see an illustration of his work on the next page). It has been suggested that he distorted the actual features of his many models in such a way that they would all conform to 20 this general conception. According to Hunt the 52

THE P.ANS~L ~ TH~ SANC GRAEL ( 1874 ) .

D. G. Rossetti

Mari11ier . p. 122. 53

figure usually has a long neck and sensuous lips, and

appears "oblivious of all external things"; an "agent 21 of trance and sleep." Walter Pater, like Rossetti, 22 thought of her as "clairvoyant." For the Pre-

Raphaelites she represented "an image of the poet's 23 introspection"

Bottomley's concept of Lady Gruach was probably

·inspired at least in part from this Pre-Raphaelite

image. He describes her in the opening scene of the 24 play as having "thick sleek yellow hair," and in the

second scene "she is in her night-clothes, and turn-

bled, tangled masses of hair that escape from her 25 night-cap fall about her like a golden shawl." Hunt

observes that in Rossetti's works the thick hair gives 26 a somewhat "claustrophobic effect." This is certainly

applicable to Gruach's feelings of both physical and

emotional entrapment at Fortingall.

Lastly, Hunt describes as the final Pre-Raphaelite

tendency,

Their attempt, often uneasy and hesitant,

to accommodate themselves to a modern world

of photography and scientific definition by

means of realistic description, frequently

of subject matter ignored by most other 27 Victorians.

By 11 realistic," this tendency refers to depicting the 54

0 '

more base, distasteful details of life. While this characteristic is more apparent in King Lear's Wife it may also be recognized in Gruach, particularly in

Bottomley's characterizations of the servants and in their abuse by Morag.

It is apparent that Gordon Bottomley perpetuated his attraction to the Pre-Raphaelite ideals with his

Gothic-like vision of Gruach. 55

NOTES

1 Christopher Hassall, A Biography of Edward

Marsh {New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1959),

p. 463. 2 Priscilla Thouless, Modern Poetic Drama

(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1934), p. 164. 3 Thouless, p. 164. 4 Thouless, p. 165. 5 Gordon Bottomley, Poems of Thirty Years

(London: Constable & Company Limited, 1925), pp. 126-9. 6 John Dixon Hunt, The Pre-Raphaelite Imagination

(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968), pp. 1-2. 7 Hunt, p. xi. 8 "Macbeth, 11 Funk & Wagnalls New Encyclopedia,

1972 ed. 9 John Masefield, A Macbeth Production (New York:

The Macmillan Company, 1946), pp. 4-6. 10 Hunt, p. xi-ii. 11 Hunt, p. xii. 12 Hunt, p. 126. 13 Hunt, pp. 121-2. 14 Lascelles Abercrombie, 'rhe Liverpool Daily 56

Post, in Gruach and Britain's Daughter (London:

Constable & Company Limited, 1922), p. 123. 15 Priscilla Thouless, Modern Poetic Drama

(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1934)' p. 176. 16 Hunt, p. 128. 17 Bottomley, Gruach, p. 24. 18 Bottomley, Gruach, p. 39. 19 Hunt, p. xii. 20 Hunt, p. 186. 21 Hunt, p. 185. 22 Hunt, p. 193. 23 Hunt, p. 177. 24 Bottomley, Gruach, p. 12. 25 Bottomley, Gruach, p. 37. 26 Hunt, p. 195. 27 Hunt, p. xii. 5. STAGING KING LEAR'S WIFE AND GRUACH

If King Lear's Wife is essentially a Georgian play and Gruach is a product of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, are they suitable for modern production? In

Outline History of British Drama published in 1982

Richard Courtney stated that "The verse dramas of

Gordon Bottomley (1874-1948) and his friend Lascelles

Abercrombie (1881-1938) were 'closet dramas,• remote 1 and untheatrical." Similarly, Allardyce Nicoll made the following comment in his book, English

Drama 1900-1930, published in 1973:

He [Bottomley] failed to take sufficiently

into account the sensibilities and interests

of possible spectators no matter how few in

number and how elite. • • • the primitively

Icelandic Riding to Lithend (1909), the

esoteric Midsummer Eve (1905), even the

later, and interestingly novel, Gruach and

Britains's Daughter (both 1921) ••••

must be regarded as too grim, too lacking in

variety, often too allusive, to make a strongly

favorable appeal even to dedicated repertory

57 58

2 playgoers.

Others, like A. E. Morgan, felt that Bottomley•s

plays were unjustly overlooked when planning the

theatres• upcoming seasons:

Mr. Bottomley•s work, even his plays which are

not notable for their dramatic strength, are

no less suitable for the stage than many plays

of Mr. Yeats. If there was in Dublin an au-

dience for the poetic drama of Mr. Yeats one

cannot say that Mr. Bottomley•s work is un- 3 suitable for production."

Bottomley felt strongly about the need for drama

to be staged. At the time when he wrote King Lear•s

Wife, he had never before seen a production of King

Lear. Some twenty years later, Bottomley wrote to

John Gielgud to praise his performance as Lear at The

Old Vic:

My wife and I saw King Lear for the first

time last night. I cannot believe we shall

ever see it more worthily done. I know we

shall never forget it. People used to say

1 Lear is for the study: it is too tremendous

for the mimicry of the stage.• What nonsense!

it only comes to its completest life on the 59

4 stage. It did that last night.

It has already been noted in the previous chapter that Bottomley may be perceived as a predominantly pictorial dramatist. Patricia Thouless said of Bottom- ley's pictorial ability as a playwright:

As a dramatist he is not interested primar-

ily in plot or in character • • • but he is

interested in the dramatic picture that is

written in his mind, and which he wishes to

project into a play and ultimately upon the 5 stage.

This notion suggests staging both King Lear's Wife and

Gruach on a picture frame or proscenium stage. This is not to say that the plays could not be mounted on other stages, but the use of a proscenium arch would help to promote the atmosphere of other worldliness which Bottomley seems to have achieved with his plays.

The more distinct the separation between spectators and actors, the more the characters will seem to be isolated within their own environment. These plays also seem to require a smaller, more intimate theatre rather than a large one. For while the characters should appear to be from a remote and distant world, the audience needs to be in close proximity to exper- ience the full effect of the plays. 60

In examining them together it is possible to

contrast the very different tone which pervades each

play. King Lear's Wife is a play closer to realism

while Gruach is a far more romantic play in spirit.

The characters in the former play are motivated from

within while the characters in the latter seem to be

controlled by external, supernatural forces. The

characters in Gruach exhibit little evidence of free

will; each seems fated to lead his life in accordance with destiny. J. C. Squire, in defending his negative

review of King Lear's Wife, insisted that Bottom-

ley's characters hweren't human." He felt that Bottom-

ley "merely wanted to write a play, and invented some 6 puppets to write it round." In point of fact, the

characters in King Lear's Wife do seem human (although we are shown a negative view of humanity), and the

puppet image may be more appropriately applied to the characters in Gruach who appear to be manipulated by

forces beyond their control.

In comparing Bottomley's plays with those of

Shakespeare's, certain parallels in plots and themes are evid~nt. The director must of course decide upon what he wishes to emphasize in the production of the one-acts.

Certainly death and decay are ideas imbedded in both King Lear and King Lear's Wife. Shakespeare's play opens with Lear's preparations for old age and 61

death, while in Bottomley's play it is the queen who is preoccupied with dying. Parental love, particularly its absence, is also a common thread; Cordelia as a child is rejected by Hygd in Bottomley's play, and later as a young woman she is exiled by Lear in Shake­ speare's play. The subjects of marriage and fidelity occur in both plays. Shakespeare opens his play with

Cordelia's impending marriage and in Bottomley's play it is Goneril's marriage that is discussed. The unfaithfullness in Bottomley's King Lear is mirrored in the wedded Goneril of Shakespeare. Themes concern­ ing ignorance and imperceptiveness, a kind of blind­ ness or death-in-life, pervade each play. The king eventually goes mad in Shakespeare's version, and in

Bottomley's play Hygd suffers from hallucinations on her deathbed. Shakespeare's Lear is unable to recog­ nize Cordelia's love and loyalty, and Bottomley's king is equally unable to perceive Gormflaith's insincerity.

These are to suggest but a few similarities.

In Gruach the themes of power, destruction, and human will vs. the supernatural are similar to Shake­ speare's treatment of the same subjects in Macbeth.

There is a preoccupation in both plays with class distinctions and social and political position. A struggle for power exists within the governments as well as in the households of each play. In addition, 62

the domination of Bottomley's Gruach over Macbeth is

consistent with Lady Macbeth's influence over her

husband in Shakespeare's version.

The following sections concerning the plays' early

stage histories, production images, and designs are

researched and written primarily with the intention of

serving the director. The character descriptions

which follow are of more concern to the actors. And

the character images togetner with rehearsal ideas

suggest a practical means of working with the actors

on the staging of the plays.

KING LEAR'S WIFE

Early Stage History

Prior to its publication in Georgian Poetry 1913-1915,

King Lear's Wife premiered at the Birmingham Repertory

Theatre. Opening on September 25, 1915 it ran for a 7 total of seven performances. Directed by John Drink- water it was presented as part of a "triple bill" which included The Battle __of the8 __ Pump_ by C. A. Castell

and The Lyar by Samuel Foote. Ion Swinley, who was

also playing King Lear in Bottomley's play, directed

The Battle of the Pump. It must have been well- received since it was twice revived for a total of 9 seventeen performances. The Lyar was also an appar- ent success. It had been previously staged, opening 63

on September 18, 1914 under the direction of Joseph

Dodd, and its revival with the Bottomley and Castell 10 plays made for a total of fourteen performances. 11 Bottomley's play was never revived. In fact, the production of King Lear's Wife "raised a storm of protest ..•. it was hailed by the critics as 'tragedy that prostitutes art,' 'a beastly play,' 'almost shock- ingly crude,• 'a gloomy play,' 'a drama of blood, lust, 12 and death. •" Thankfully not everyone was in agree- ment with the press, and there were conflicting opinions concerning the audience's reaction.

Bottomley and his poet-friends, Lascelles Aber- crombie and Wilfred Gibson, attended the premiere.

During this time Bottomley was suffering from ill- health due to tubercular haemorrhages which plagued 13 him off and on throughout his life. He had to be

"carried upstairs, planted in a box, supported by 14 bolsters with his feet resting on a purple cushion."

Allardyce Nicoll notes that the play "attracted meager and largely antagonistic audiences, and Aber- crornbie, present in the theatre, described the event: he did not hesitate to designate the piece as 'the high-water mark of modern drama'; he observed that the few specators 'loathed the play,' with the implication 15 that this fact proved its virtue." Drinkwater felt that the play "acted admirably generally, a little doubt- 64

fully in one or two places, and superbly at the great moments." He added,

That Gordon and Wilfrid were delighted there

is, I think, no doubt, and in work of this

kind it is the opinion of the two or three

that outweighs the world. But the world took

it well and applauded loud and long ..••

The papers today are brutal and obscure to

poet and play and players and instigator of

this event alike. No one escapes, though the

hardest fury falls on Gordon and Kathleen

• [Kathleen Drinkwater, John's wife, who played

Goneril]. Gordon himself laughs at them out

of his great beard and I console myself by

blaspheming in my loudest voice. The Censor

added to our gaity by sending horrified pro-

tests on Saturday about the louse and the

lady's shift, in a letter which I have given as 16 an heirloom for ever to the clan Bottomley.

Bottomley wrote to Edward Marsh shortly thereafter that the entire experience was "too comic to be upset about . I couldn't have minded the press notices while I was seeing how my play had built itself up into such a rich romantic thing under John's producing 17 hands." He felt that the actors all played "so finely, that I do not expect ever to see the play 65

18 better done or with so beautiful an ensemble."

Marsh proposed the play for production to both Granville 19 Barker and Basil Dean, but it seems that neither

proposal materialized.

The play was revived for a charity performance in

May of 1916 at the Haymarket Theatre under the manage-

rnent of Beerbohm Tree. Also on the program were

Wilfrid Gibson's Hoops and Ruperte Brooke's Lithuania.

The show was billed as a Georgian matinee. Edward

Marsh who organized the occasion invited Ivor Novello

to write the music. Novello, who later became a

successful composer, dramatist, and actor-manager, 20 made his debut with this music for King Lear's Wife.

Lady Tree, wife of Beerbohm Tree, played Hygd and 21 their daughter, Viola, portrayed Goneril. Bottomley wrote in August of that year to Paul Nash saying that he wished Nash could have seen Kathleen Drinkwater as

Hygd, "she was the real thing, and made the part into melody and steered superbly clear of Lady Tree's ir- 22 relevant realism." Several years later,.in 1922, he remembered that "Viola Tree • • • wanted me to have

the curtain at Lear's exit two lines after her own, and to cut out the finale of the corpse-washers; and when I wouldn't she cut out half of it all by her- 23 self." 66

Production Images

•rhe Times Literary Review Supplement suggested that "the world of this play is like the world which

Shakespeare's Lear sees in his madness and Edgar in his pretended madness." The review went on to say that Bottomley achieved "a cheap effect" through his exaggerated depiction of "unpleasant people and horrible 24 things." Nevertheless the idea of viewing the play as a "mad world 11 seems a perfectly valid one and one which could inspire an imaginatively staged production.

In a modern defense of King Lear's Wife, Christo- pher Hassall observes that,

Bottomley created a bleak, megalithic world

of his own. It is consistent and_it exists

imaginatively in its own right. Not all the

work of the Georgians enjoyed this kind of

advantage .••• King Lear's Wife was never

intended, one feels, as a comment on reality

but as a grandiloquent decoration of it. De

la Mare also created his own world, but it was

fashioned out of the dreams and nightmares of

common humanity, not of Bronze Age monoliths.

Yet Bottomley's ornamental world does exist

as a reality on a plane larger than life, and

must have its place among things of lasting 25 value. 67 Q .

Hassall's analogy of the play to a "bleak, megalithic world" "larger than life" inhabited by "Bronze Age monoliths" is supported by other critics as well as

Bottomley himself. Marguerite Wilkinson said:

The poem is stark, uncompromising, grim

. from beginning to end. But it is unforget-

table. Each character is like a heroic statue

rough-hewn from granite. • The expres- 26 sions on the stone faces are cruel.

such imagery seems in accordance with the play's themes of self-centeredness and cruelty. Bottomley's stone-like characters are cold, hard, insensitive and uncaring. They remain firm and steadfast in their own convictions and seem for the most part incapable of change. One can only imagine them solidifying through the years the personality traits which Bottomley has so effectively portrayed. In defending his choice of names for Queen Hygd, Bottomley stated,

I want it to be gaunt and Stonehengey and hard,

with a hint that if she had lived to be an old

woman she would have been something eager and 27 terrible, bony and fangy.

In keeping with the image of Bottomley as a pictorial dramatist, King Lear's Wife might be 68

conceived as a series of paintings, primarily static with a minimum of physical movement. If so, one must search for the period and style of painting which best communicates the desired effect. Or, perhaps more appropriate to the atmosphere of psychological realism, the play might be more clearly perceived as a collec- tion of photographs revealing the most intimate and telling details of the character's personalities and interrelationships. The Yale Review in its 1922 article made the following comparison of the play's language and characters to painting and tapestry work:

The speech of all the characters is overbur-

dened with adjectives. The are like the

touches of an artist's brush. They are not

like the natural gestures of the speakers'

thoughts ••.• Woven in this thread of words,

the figures of the lustful King, of Goneril,

the fierce young virgin, of Gormflaith, the

King's mistress, of the dying Queen, of the

child Cordeil, who is only a child's voice

and a child's hands, are the figures of an

old tapestry, angular, stiffly beautiful,

clothed in dim colors, fashioned with an

ancient cunning. Sometimes the colors blaze

as if a shaft of light had fallen across them 28 through a half-open door. 69

For a more statuesque 3-D effect, one might return to the image of the monoliths which was conveyed in the design work of Paul Nash.

Design

In planning a contemporary production it would be helpful to consider Paul Nash's 1921 costume and set designs for the play as well as the model of the set which he constructed (a drawing of his set design is reproduced on the following page). On December 16,

1921, Nash wrote to Bottomley:

I am made very happy by your delight over the

scene [design for King Lear's Wife] and

here is the photograph of it which you will

agree has not come out so badly? The bed in

the end was a great triumph--I made it out of

the rather indifferent Pre Raphaelite postcards

. but they were just the stiffness required

for bed making. In colour it was a greyish

pinky brown with curtains of an orange tint-­

looking very like leather and the posts and

sides painted with a pattern ~~A~~~~~Mo/~(/~

in vermillion. It looked devilish Norse. On

the outside backcloth I made an avenue of old

old orchard trees and the same sort of trees 70

KING LEAR'S \liFE · Set Design. Paul Na~h

Abbott and Bertram. p. 51. 71

29 seen thro' the windows.

The emphasis placed upon the size of the bed is impor-

tant; Bottomley replied several days later:

The bed is a triumph: it is more: it is IT.

• The proportion of the bed is perfect

for the model: it seems, though, that if it

were for a very wide stage, such as the Hay-

market, you would have to make it longer to

preserve the present significance--and that

might have the advantage of letting the side- 30 door be seen through the bed.

As for the over-all impression of Nash's design (see

illustation on the following page} Bottomley wrote,

The photograph is perfect, and I like the

model more than ever. It is not 'just what

I want,' it will not 'do beautifully'; it

is exactly what I mean, it is what my inward

eye saw ten years ago . . . I am enormously

pleased with the orchard avenue: nothing else

could have been as good, the feeling is 31 lovely.

Anthony Bertram describes the set in his book, Paul

Nash: The Portrait of an Artist. The following pas-

sage again reaffirms the image of a primitive world of 72

megaliths:

He [Nash] made it himself and he found great

stimulus in the skilful contrivance. The

character of the set depended on the lowness

of the massive stone walls and the height of

the pyramidal roof which appeared to bear down

oppressively on the room •.•• The costumes

had a barbaric and timeless character, so that

the figures could have appeared in the land- 32 scape of the megaliths without embarrassment.

Nash submitted costume designs for King Lear's

Wife and models for both King Lear's Wife and Gruach in The International Theatre Exhibition held in Amsterdam 33 in January and February of 1922. Gordon Craig praised the model for King Lear's Wife as the finest 34 and most interesting model in the exhibit. Later that year, from June 3rd to July 21, the exhibit was on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum in South 35 Kensington. Bottomley attended this exhibit and afterwards wrote to Nash,

When you repaired Mrs. Lear you set the King

rather more sideways, so that in a frontal

view (and especially in the catalogue block)

he looks more like a monolith than a man and 36 his lovely clothes don't tell as well. 73 ' .

r - ,~ ._; . . ! t- f_ . i;.

- { :-:,

KING ~EAR'S \liFE : Costume Design for Corpsewasher.

Paul Nash

Bottomley.

"The Theatre Hork . .. p. 39. 74

So while it seems that Bottomley would have approved of the application of a "Stonehengey" image

in order to suggest the appropriate tone for the play, he would not have wanted the comparison to be taken

too literally.

GRUACH

Early Stage History

Gruach was first performed by The Scottish

National Players at the Athenaeum in Glasgow on March 37 20, 1923. Catherine Fletcher played Gruach, Robbie

Wharrie was Macbeth, and Jean Taylor Smith portrayed 38 Fern. Th~ Scottish National Players had only just formed in 1921, and in 1922 they formed the Scottish

National Theatre Society ''with the avowed aim of 39 establishing a Scottish National 'l'heatre."

Alan Bold in Modern Scottish Literature records that the production "had an enormous impact; as astute an observer as George Blake wrote: 'I myself would select the first performance of Gordon Bottomley's

Gruach . as revealing to the young Scots play- 40 wright the larger possibilities of the native theme. 111

In The Scottish Tradition in Literature Kurt Wittig credits Bottomley's play and John Brandane's The Glen is Mine with having stimulated the emergence of a 75

national drama based upon Scottish history and cul- 41 ture.

Bottomley attended the premiere and reported his impressions in a letter to Paul Nash:

Gruach in Glasgow was a dream of delight, and

when she came down the stair in her golden gown

you could hear people catch their breaths, and

a rustle of pleasure went through the house •

. the Scotish voices are lovely, the Scot-

ish players act with the intensity of people

who are new to art and in a passion of love

with it, and they get inside the psychology of 42 my people as English players rarely do.

Several months later Bottomley wrote again, "I didn't write to you for Christmas because we have been in Scotland Gruaching for the greater part of December and didn't get home in time." The play was revived for performances in Glasgow and Edinburgh along with

Brandane's The Glen is Mine. Bottomley added,

Think of "Gruach"--that high-brow drama--

together with a Highland comedy, filling a

musical comedy theatre in Glasgow on the

Saturday night before Christmas! If you

heard the voices of the Scotish sirens you

wouldn't wonder at our unwillingness to come 76

horne so long as they were turning me into

celestial music nightly.

Practically the same cast was on hand for the revival 43 as had performed in the original production.

On January 20, 1924 Gruach opened in London

with Sybil Thorndike in the title role under the direc- 44 tion of Basil Dean. Bottomley was apprehensive

about this production from the start. "It will get 6

rehearsals, and poetry needs sixty; and then everybody 45 will say that poetic drama is dead." Four days

prior to the opening- Bottomley confessed to Nash, "It 46 is.the noble Sybil who reconciles me to the affair ...

He never saw this production but later he informed

Nash that,

People who were at 'Gruach' say that it was

the first success the Playbox has made: and

it even got some good notices. But I doubt

if it was what I wanted. Sybil clearly was

superb, but there seems to have been little

ensemble to give her a suitable setting: The

Dean was evidently doing his best • . . but

they can't afford to rehearse enough: that is

all right with Shakespeare by now, as each

play improves with each revival, and everybody

is used to Shakespeare's little ways; but that

puts them at sea with other people's verse when 77

47 they haven't time to explore it.

The other play on the bill was Phoenix, by Lascelles 48 Abercrombie.

Production Images

Bottomley has inserted several metaphorical images

-into the script, some of which could serve as inspira-

tion for the design and staging of Gruach. The Times

Literary Supplement observed that "the forces of na-

ture are functioning so intensely as to be in themselves 49 supernatural." This strong effect of nature upon

the characters could be heightened through the use of

technical effects to suggest an omniscient presence which appears to take control over the characters and

situations. The image of the castle as a prison from which Gruach struggles to escape might also be suggested

in the set and lighting designs. This idea is apparent

in the designs of Paul Nash.

Design

Nash sent Bottomley a sketch of his set design for Gruach in March of 1922 because he wanted to show the playwright "the alterations in architecture and to beg your approval .. (an illustration of his first design is found on the next page) : 78

GRUACH~ Set Design. Paul Nash

Abbott and Bertram. p. 161. 79 Q .

I cannot help feeling the break in the back

wall is very necessary as the feeling that

both the outside door & the staircase door

are in the same wall is uncomfortable and

another 'depth' is more dramatic.

He told Bottomley to "imagine everything twice as

exciting and the whole a finer harmony of propor- 50 tion." Upon seeing the design Bottomley replied to

Nash, "You've done it again, and I am delighted all

over. You go back to the spirit of a primitive life 51 in an unspoiled land in the very way I do myself ...

Nash told Bottomley in April that 11 The scene has

taken about six times as long as Mrs. Lear but I hope 52 in the end it may be about three times as good.''

Throughout the period of revisions and alterations,

Bottomley corresponded enthusiastically with Nash con- cerning the set designs, adding to Nash's conceptions

several ideas of his own. In particular, he noted:

The door (Rj to the servants' quarters I saw

as much lower than the other two, and flat-

topped with a great heavy square piece of ash-

lar: at present it is too competitive with the

others, and does not give the impression of

oppression which I want--a way into hutches and 53 styles for a lower order of beings. 80 Q .

Bottomley's notion of recreating an old order of life was stressed in the following comment:

The masonry lines (and the dog-tooth pattern

over the main door) come out white in the

print to such an extent as to destroy the

feeling of a black-stone castle--or at any

rate to disperse the necessary feeling of age

by the suggestion that as the mortar is so

white and sharp the castle must be only just 54 buil' .

Although Bottomley was anxious to see costume designs as well it appears that Nash never designed any for Gruach, other than the miniatures he devised for the figures in the model of his set. Concerning pictures of these Bottomley wrote, "I can't be sure if Mac isn't wearing a kilt. Do not let him wear a kilt, Paul: I couldn't bear a kilt, I should hear 55 bagpipes."

CHARACTERS AND REHEARSAL WORK

Because these one-acts are based on other plays, it is possible to turn to the original works as sources for character research and improvisation.

However, the directorial concept will primarily deter- mine what is or is not applicable to the Bottomley plays. For example there were many conflicting opinions 81

about whether or not the characters in King Lear's

Wife were accurate depictions of Shakespeare's work.

While some critics praised the Bottomley characters and situations as being consistent with those of Shake- speare other critics contended that the King Lear's

Wife characters bore little to no resemblance to

Shakespeare's. According to The Times Literary

Supplement:

The use of Shakespeare's characters may puzzle

and irritate the reader. But certainly his

Lear is not Shakespeare's, and no suffering

could change him into Shakespeare's. He is

merely a selfish and lustful brute • rigid

and unreal in his conventional baseness . • .

Goneril is a fiece huntress, cruel but not

base, and only cruel like a fine beast of

prey. . she is capable of growth one way

or another, though not of growth into Shake- 56 speare's Goneril.

The Spectator, however, was willing to accept Bottom- ley's Lear as Shakespeare's and, in fact, suggested to others the advantage of such a viewpoint:

Many readers will think that Mr. Bottomley's

King Lear is very unlike Shakespeare's, but if

we are to suppose that Lear really played in 82

early life the part assigned to him here, one

is quite pleased to think that he was punished 57 later on."

The Quarterly Review was also willing to concede the

applicability of Bottomley's characterizations to

those of the earlier play:

Here, in a strongly-knit, vigorous, dramatic

fragment, we are given a sort of prelude to

Shakespeare's tragedy, and that a prelude

which serves very reasonably to explain the

inhuman treatment meted out to their father

by Goneril and Regan at a later stage of 58 history."

In his article entitled "Some Poets of Today," S. P. B.

Mais observes that Bottomley's play illuminates the

puzzling relationships between Shakespeare's characters,

such as those existing between Cordelia and her older

sisters. He also points out that when Bottomley's

Goneril murders Lear's mistress she "obtains an ascend- 59 ancy over him which she never after loses."

Basic traits of the characters in each play will be outlined in the following sections, and images derived from the script or from critical commentary will be suggested for developing these characterizations. 83

But first a rehearsal technique which may benefit both

plays will be discussed.

In previous chapters Bottomley was described as a

"pictorial dramatist." It might be worthwhile to

attempt to "retrace'' his creative process, and examine

artwork by Rossetti, Ricketts, Shannon, Swinburne,

and others who were so influential to his work.

-Valentina Litvinoff maintains that art and sculpture

(perhaps of monolithic figures!) can be directly

applied to the rehearsal and performance of theatre.

In her article, "How The Human Being Becomes An Instru-

ment In The Theater," she describes her method of

training student actors in either naturalistic or 60 stylistic physicalizations.

First the students must assume the physical posi-

_ tions suggested by the artwork. The art need not

necessarily be a representation of the human form; it

may depict anything, or nothing but shapes and colors.

If it is a human form, however, the exercise may be

more easily adaptable to stage movement but this will

of course vary from actor to actor. When reproducing

a human pose, Litvinoff stresses the importance of

"physically sensing the nuances of the life in the 61 sculpture or the painting." Actors should be less

interested in creating a physical copy of the pose

than they are in understanding the significance of its

details. She explains that, 84

The obvious elements in an art work, the

position of arms and legs of a figure,

while they can be assumed readily, are

nevertheless usually not the first clue

to the life of the pose. The immediate 62 clue is in the torso.

The next step is to find the motivation which

led to the pose, and finally the movement that

proceeded out of the pose. Is the motivation "to sit weightily? To crouch lightly? Is it to reach or

stretch in a certain direction? Or to be twisted in 63 two directions at once?" In the course of imagining

and bringing to life the movement implied in a still,

inanimate artwork she says, "we are inevitably brought

to the era which generated each work of art, to the context within which the work was done, and the view- 64 point of the artist."

This is without a doubt a very connotative and

intuitive technique. Therefore the artwork must be carefully selected and the actors closely guided so as to achieve the desired results within the ensemble as a whole. This method of searching for a movement appropriate to the play and its characters seems par- ticularly relevant to recreating what Christopher

Hassall called Bottomley's "reality on a plane larger 85

than life" (see p. 68 above). In its book review of

Gruach, 'l'he Times Literary Supplement said that

Bottomley ~pursues truth intuitively as live beauty rather than arranges it morally or logically or 65 sententiously as fact." Perhaps this "intuitive" approach would be successful for the actors as well.

This is not to imply that the actors need no conscious and deliberate training. Bottomley was adamant that the actors should know how to speak verse. He commented that "poetry needs sixty" rehear- sals so that the actors can "explore it~ (see pp. 77-8 above). One idea might be to explore the playwright's poetic form both physically and vocally by using edi- tions of his poetry or other plays for exercise work.

They might be used for practicing projection, articu- lation, resonance, pitch changes and other purely vocal qualities. They might also be employed for experimenting with rhythm, tempo, or a give-and-take interaction between characters, for example. In addi- tion the actors could use these other works to prac- tice coordinating movement with poetic imagery.

If the words were taken away, how might the actors communicate the content of Bottomley's plays? Could they also express the poetic form through action alone?

Samples of artwork might again be introduced to assist the actors in identifying with ari historical period. As Lyn Oxenford points out in Playing Period 86 Q .

Plays,

The paintings help the actor to visualize the

scene of the time. Even if the subject of his

play is different from the picture there is

always a wealth of detail in the background

that can be studied to conjure up the life of 66 that day into instant reality.

The individual characterizations will be realized more fully through a thorough understanding of the character which the playwright has created.

King Lear's Wife:

Lear:

Lear projects the image of a miniature god. He conceives of himself as an emerald among the human race of common stones. He is superstitious in his belief of the power of his keepsake emerald and is always convinced that he is right all of the time about everything. In actuality he comes off most of the time as a glorified fool. His reasoning is nearly always faulty and his judgment unsound. He is consistently imperceptive of the people and situations around him. Everyone, including the physician/psycho- logist, is his servant. 87

Goneril:

Goneril, like her mother, is likened to a bird-of­

prey. She is a huntress who in the course of the play

graduates from the slaughter of animals to human murder. Prior to this action, she appears to be on the

cross-roads of trying to decide how to pattern her

life and who will be her role models. She has been

abused by Lear and has a certain respect for Hygd, but

she has learned the lesson in growing up in this household that human beings must remain tough so as to

survive the difficulties in life.

Gormflaith:

Gormflaith is a fortune-hunter; someone who seeks of

Lear his fortune, and probably more importantly, his power. She enjoys toying with Hygd as the queen lies dying, forcing her to exchange roles so that Gormflaith may assume the upper-hand.

Hygd:

Hygd is referred to as a "mute, wounded hawk, '1 implying that part of Goneril's personality has been formed by her mother. She perceives herself a martyr in her failed marriage with Lear. She tries to instill in

Goneril the importance of taking what pleasure she may while she is young, before she too is victimized. 88

Hygd is bitter about being "forced~ to die, yet she is not the fighter that Goneril turns out to be.

I~erryn:

Merryn is like an old, spoilt child. She is extremely jealous of Gormflaith's special treatment by Lear.

She is also a religious hypocrite who intends to be immortal, in contrast to all the death and death images around her.

Each of these brief sketches represents an extreme position of the characters. They might be introduced into the rehearsal situation to initiate discussion among the actors, and to serve as a basis for further exploration into the interraction between these charac­ ters which should form a major portion of the rehearsal process. The actors might be encouraged wherever possible to disprove these traits so as to make their characters appear more human.

Gruach:

Like King Lear's Wife this play, too, is almost devoid of emotional caring between characters, with the possible exceptions of Macbeth and Fern. Even the

"love" relationship between the Lady Gruach and t-'Iacbeth is more like a magical spell than a loving bond. 89

Gruach:

We are introduced to Gruach in the opening lines of the play through the other characters' dialogue.

Conan calls her "a most beautiful woman" while Morag scolds him for allowing her to "run wild," as if she were an untamed animal (i).

Morag recognizes that Gruach, who was born into the royal family of King Kenneth on her father's side, is "heiress of peril/But also of great chance" (i); both danger and opportunity. Gruach is both a political adversary and an antagonistic individual, but she is in possession of her mother's land which Morag is determined to regain by wedding her to Conan. But

Gruach resists; she is restless, moody, and independent.

She seeks refuge in the out-of-doors and identifies herself with the purple hellebore, a flower of sin, poison and death, according to Fern. To Gruach, the flower is made "beautiful by its fierceness"; "beautiful by its wickedness (i). It is during this exchange that

I"lorag says to Gruach, "Come, bride in the bud." This initiates the several "bud" allusions throughout the play which indicate many new beginnings.

The image of Gruach as an animal recurs time and again. Fern cries out "Soul of a wolf, 11 (i) as she and

Gruach fight for possession of the Envoy's flower. At 90

one point Gruach literally dons a wolf-cloak for pro­

tection from the cold. Like an animal she is even

prepared at first to travel through the snow barefoot

and without heavy clothing.

Gruach envisions herself as living the life of a

prisoner. Fern tells us that in her sleepwalking

episode Gruach pleaded;

I cannot think myself into your lives

Forever; I cannot breathe your little air.

Where is the door? There must be a way out;

Will you not shew it to me {i)?

N.orag:

JY1orag is actually a female a Thane of Fortingall," even though the title technically belongs to Conan.

She is the authoritarian, take-charge woman of the house; although she allows Gruach to assume the role of authority in the presence of the Envoy. She is conscious of order, tradition and social position.

Her opening lines immediately reveal her role as leader and her excessive frugality as she abuses the servants and refuses hospitality to the anticipated wedding guests.

She trusts no one and is not concerned with public opinion. She does not hesitate to suggest that the villagers contribute food to the wedding celebration.

Her only generous contributions to the feast are in 91

the slaughter of the young animals and fish.

It is clear from the start that she does not look forward to the wedding itself; it is not a cause for joy, but a "business" deal: "Whatever joy or sorrow the morrow stirs,/The day after to-morrow there will return/This old still life of duty (i). As far as she is concerned, Gruach is marrying everyone in the household and not Conan alone.

Morag might be thought of in terms of a drill sergeant (particularly in her dealings with the ser­ vants), or corporate president--completely absorbed in the business world with no emotional concern for people.

Fern:

Fern is the essentially romantic character of the piece. She is sensitive, caring, emotional, supersti­ tious, and the one person who is genuinely hospitable towards Macbeth. She is envious of Gruach's marriage and laments that she is not yet a bride. Even Gruach cannot resist feeling for her. She tells Fern after completion of the wedding dress that "It will be your love/That presses and nestles about me when I wear it" ( i) (and not Conan ' s) .

Fern is very much like her name-sake; she seems like a delicate fern amidst the stronger characters which trample over her. Yet she is very much aware of 92 her own state of affairs, and there is perhaps a hint of a strength beneath her fragil exterior. One can't help feeling that she will survive the abuse of the world and someday prevail. She describes herself to

Gruach:

I do what is asked of me each hour of life,

And you all take all I give, and never

notice

That I am ever the one who must stand aside;

And in their turn your children will assume

I am the one who foregoes, who does not

count:

I shall have nought of my own when I am

old (i).

The Envoy's flower over which she and Gruach argue is for her a symbol of what she believes she will never have, a lover to give her a romantic keepsake, a household of her own and a family. She has been denied any sense of self-esteem and cannot imagine a man showing sincere interest in her. Her position has always been one of a glorified servant-­ the way the servants perhaps should be treated but are not.

Conan:

Morag has great ambitious plans for Conan but it 93 • •

is clear that he is content to live life as it is.

She refers to her son as a "half-man" (i) because he does not lord over Gruach and tame her wild and rest­ less nature. He obeys Morag and is at times fright­ ened and intimated by Gruach's strong personality.

He is friendly, understanding and patient with her, but never romantic. He has inherited his mother's capacity for common sense and rational thought. He realizes the practicality of the marriage which will unite reunite their divided lands and also points out that this will afford a certain amount of protection to

Gruach from the present political rule.

Macbeth:

It is evident from the moment he enters with his purple flower in his cap that he is the match for Gruach. He is duty-oriented, kind, sensitive, and, like Conan, also dominated by Gruach. We can see in him the vulnerability to her which later becomes so evident in Shakespeare.

In Bottomley's play we tend to see all of his better qualities which Gruach's influence over time gradually wears down. 94 @ '

NOTES

1 Richard Courtney, Outline History of British

Drama (Totowa: Littlefield, Adams & Co., 1982), p. 182. 2 Allardyce Nicoll, English Drama 1900-1930

{London: Cambridge University Press, 1973), pp. 301-2. 3 A. E. Morgan, Tendencies of Modern En9lish

Drama (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1924), p. 297. 4 Harcourt Williams, Four Years at The Old Vic

(London: Edinburch Press, 1935), pp. 110-11. 5 Patricia Thouless, Modern Poetic Drama

(Oxford~ Basil Blackwell, 1934), p. 165. 6 Robert H. Ross, The Georgian Revolt 1910-1922

(Brattleboro: The Book Press, 1965), p. 136. 7 Bache Matthews, A History of the Birmingham

Repertory Theatre (London: Chatto & Windus, 1924), p. 204. 8 Matthews, p. 61. 9 Matthews, p. 204. 10 Matthews, p. 206. 11 Matthews, p. 204. 12 Matthews, pp. 61-2.

13 Claude Colleer Abbott, intro. to Gordon

Bottomley, Poems and Plays (London: The Bodley Head 95

Limited, 1953), p. 15. 14 Christopher Hassall, A Biography of Edward

Marsh (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1959), p. 368. 15 Nicoll, p. 12. 16 Hassall, p. 368. 17 Ross , p • 13 2 •

18 Claude Colleer Abbott and Anthony Bertram, eds., Poet and Painter (London: Oxford University

Press, 1955), p. 81, n. 19 Ross, p. 132. 20 Hassall, p. 376. 21 Abbott and Bertram, p. 81, n. 22 Abbott and Bertram, p. 87. 23 Abbott and Bertram, p. 133. 24 "The Young Poets," The Times Literary

Supplement (1915), in Timothy Rogers, ed., Georgian

Poetry 1911-1922 The Critical Heritage (London:

Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., 1977), p. 124. 25 Hassall, p. 378. 26 Marguerite Wilkinson, New Voices: An

Introduction to Contemporary Poetry, quoted in Gordon

Bottomley, King Lear's Wife and other Plays (London:

Constable & Company Limited, 1920), pp. 211-2. 27 Hassall, p. 368. 28 "New English Plays," The Yale Review, 11, No. 2

(1922), pp. 426-7. 96

29 Abbott and Bertram, p. 128. 30 Abbott and Bertram, p. 129. 31 Abbott and Bertram, p. 129. 32 Anthony Bertram, Paul Nash~ The Portrait of an

Artist (London: Faber and Faber, nd), p. 124. 33 Abbott and Bertram, p. 148, n. 34 Gordon Bottomley, "The Theatre Work of Paul

Nash, " Theatre Arts Monthly, No. 8 (1924), p. 48. 35 -- Abbott and Bertram, p. 148, n. 36 Abbott and Bertram, p. 149.

37 Alan Bold, Modern Scottish Literature (New

York: Longman Inc., 1983), p. 284. 38 Abbott and Bertram, p. 171, n. 39 Bold, p. 2 8 4. 40 Bo 1 d, p. 2 8 4. 41 Kurt Wittig, The Scottish Tradition in

Literature (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd Ltd., 1958, rpt. 1961), pp. 313-4. 42 Abbott and Bertram, p. 171. 43 Abbott and Bertram, p. 173. 44 Abbott and Bertram, p. 177, n. 45 Abbott and Bertram, p. 167. 46 Abbott and Bertram, p. 177. 47 Abbott and Bertram, p. 179.

48 Abbott and Bertram, p. 177, n. 49 The Times Literary Supplement, quoted in 97

Gordon Bottomley, Gruach and Britain's Daughter Two

Plays {London: Constable & Company Limited, 1922), p. 124. 50 Abbott and Bertram, p. 136. 51 Abbo·tt and Bertram, pp. 136-7. 52 Abbott and Bertram, p. 140. 53 Abbott and Bertram, p. 142. 54 Abbott and Bertram, p. 142. 55 Abbott and Bertram, p. 142. 56 "'l'he Young Poets, II in Rogers, pp. 123-4. 57 "Georgian Poetry, 1913-1915, " The Spectator

(1916), in Rogers, p. 138. 58 Arthur Waugh, "The New Poetry," Quarterly

Review (1916}, in Rogers, p. 156. 59 S. P. B. Mais, "Some Poets of Today," The

Nineteenth Century (1916), in Rogers, p. 164. 60 Valentina Litvinoff, "How The Human Being

Becomes An Instrument In The Theater," Journal of

Aesthetic Education, 9, No. 3 (1975), pp. 92-104. 61 Litvinoff, p. 101. 62. Litvinoff, p. 101. 63 Litvinoff, p. 101. 64 Litvinoff, p. 102. 65 "Romantic Drama," The Times Literary .

Supplement, 20 (1921), p. 812. 66 Lyn Oxenford, Playing Period Plays, (London;

J. Garnet Miller Ltd., n.d.), p. 9. 98

CONCLUSION

The preceding study was intended to illustrate a possible approach to working as a dramaturg assigned to productions of King Lear's Wife and Gruach. It falls short of covering the entire subject, but that is to be expected. No dramaturg could ever cover every available avenue of research for a production.

In this study King Lear's Wife was examined as a

Georgian poem, and Gruach as a Pre-Raphaelite artist's vision. A ·production of the former play based on this perspective would emphasize the spoken verse and the

"poetic realism'' that depicts the seedy side of life.

This "painterlyh perspective of Gruach would suggest a colorful production in which the inner mysticism of the characters and the external supernatural elements of the environment would predominate.

Bottomley's commentary concerning the early pro­ ductions of the plays exemplify his statements about the theatre and drama examined in chapter two. Poetic drama requires extra rehearsal time to mount success­ fully. The Birmingham Repertory Theatre chose for its repertoire plays which in their opinion demonstrated 99

literary values in addition to being stageworthy. Yet their rehearsal times were very short and did not allow the actors time to fully explore and develop pre­ viously unknown works.

Chapters three and four represent the drarnaturg in the following chart discussed in the introduction: playwright > dramaturg > director > actors/designers >

audience

In chapter five the dramaturg's position is reflected in the other two charts re-pictured below wherein the dramaturg works as a coordinator of sorts between the director and actors/designers and between the actors/ designers and the audience: playwright > director > dramaturg > actors/designers >

audience

and playwright > director > actors/designers > dramaturg >

audience

Numerous aspects of these productions were not explored. While Bottomley centers his stories around universal themes, some aspects of his language may need careful editing for a modern audience. His archaic phrases are appropriate to the medieval atmostphere which he seeks to recreate but they may have an 100 0 .

undesirable melodramatic effect.

In addition, although a limited attempt was made to suggest ideas for settings, possible lighting, costuming and make-up designs were not explored. Most often, this would be the job of the designer; but occasionally the dramaturg might become involved with this phase of the pre-production pocess.

In summary the dramaturg is a flexible employee whose job may overlap the work of other theatre artists and managers. He will also take into account the tastes and preferences of the audience. In short, he works in conjunction with nearly everyone for whom theatre exists, striving to improve the quality of modern stage productions. 101

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