Activity 3 - David Garrick

HAMLET Good my lord, will you see the players well bestowed? Do you hear, let them be well used; for they are the abstract and brief chronicles of the time: after your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live. [Hamlet, 2.ii]

No description of Shakespeare's rise to fame could be complete without mentioning the role played by the actor, and later manager of Drury Lane, David Garrick (1717-1779). Elizabeth Griffith dedicated her book on Shakespeare's morality to him, writing that his acting “has been a better comment on [Shakespeare's] text than all his Editors have been able to supply. You mark his beauties; they but clear his blots. You impress us with the living spirit; they only present us the dead letter.” Garrick's “spirit” has been preserved in a famous passage in Henry Fielding's Tom Jones (1749-50), where the hero, Mr Partridge, Mrs Miller and her daughter see the actor perform the role of Hamlet at Drury Lane.

Read the passage, beginning “In the first row then of the first gallery...” - Gutenberg (use ctrl+F to find it): http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/6593/pg6593.html

- Online first edition: http://archive.org/stream/historytomjones16fielgoog#page/n52/mode/2up

Tasks

- Try and describe Partridge's eccentric approach to the play, and how it changes during the chapter. How is this comic?

- What does the scene tell us about Garrick's acting style, and that of the actor playing Claudius?

- How much of Hamlet does Fielding present to us? Why do you think he skips over certain parts of the performance?

By the time that Tom Jones appeared in 1749-50, Garrick had successfully linked his fame to that of Shakespeare's, having made his theatrical début as Richard III and then playing Romeo, Benedick and other roles to great acclaim. Many paintings from the eighteenth century attest to the strong identification between Shakespeare and Garrick, including one by Gainsborough showing the actor leaning familiarly on a bust of the playwright (pictured, painted in 1766-9).

The culmination of Garrick's rise to fame and Shakespeare's occurred in 1769, when the actor organised the 'Stratford Jubilee', an event designed to celebrate Shakespeare in his birthplace of Stratford-upon-Avon. Despite torrential rain, a large part of London's upper classes journeyed to Stratford to watch processions and speeches in honour of Shakespeare; famously, though, not a single play by Shakespeare was performed there. Instead, Garrick read an ode of his own composition:

To what blest genius of the isle, Shall Gratitude her tribute pay,

Decree the festive day, Erect the statue, and devote the pile?

Do not your sympathetic hearts accord, To own the ‘bosom’s lord?’ ’Tis he! ’tis he!—that demi-god! Who Avon’s flow’ry margin trod, While sportive Fancy round him flew, Where Nature led him by the hand, Instructed him in all she knew, And gave him absolute command! ’Tis he! ’tis he! ‘The god of our idolatry!’ To him the song, the Edifice we raise, He merits all our wonder, all our praise! Yet ere impatient joy break forth, To tell his name, and speak his worth, And to your spell-bound minds impart Some faint idea of his magic art; Let awful silence still the air!

From the dark cloud, the hidden light Bursts tenfold bright! Prepare! prepare! prepare! Now swell at once the choral song, Roll the full tide of harmony along; Let Rapture sweep the trembling strings, And Fame expanding all her wings, With all her trumpet-tongues proclaim, The lov’d, rever’d, immortal name! SHAKESPEARE! SHAKESPEARE! SHAKESPEARE! Let th’ inchanting sound, From Avon’s shores rebound; Thro’ the Air, Let it bear, The precious freight the envious nations round!

[…] [Full text available to download here: http://seas3.elte.hu/coursematerial/RuttkayVeronika/David_Garrick_Jubilee_Ode.doc]

Tasks

- What are the main motifs and themes of this poem and how do they elevate Shakespeare? What role does patriotism play in the ode?

- Think about the original context of its performance, what features suggest that this is a text to be heard and not read?

- A recreation of the Stratford Jubilee has been proposed as part of the four-hundredth anniversary celebrations in 2016: what elements of this poem, if any, could be reused there?