William Poel

EDWARD M. MOORE

FT would be difficult to exaggerate the debt that all of Shake­ spearian owe to William Poel. It can easily be argued, as William Archer did, that scenic Shakespeare had reached

such extremes by the turn of the last century that a reaction Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/sq/article/23/1/21/5100337 by guest on 29 September 2021 was inevitable, and it is not difficult to find forces alive at the end of the century that would have ended the established vogue even if Poel had never lived and had never formed the Elizabethan Stage Society. It is also true that Poel's direct influence hardly spread beyond London. Nevertheless, the fact remains that it was Poel who first demonstrated that the whole conception behind the current methods of staging Shakespeare was radically wrong, demonstrated this fact not by criticism alone but by what Shaw later referred to as "desperate experiments".1 It is further true that the later producers who did finally overturn spectacular Shakespeare—from Gran- ville-Barker to Bridges-Adams and Nugent Monck—were directly indebted to him. As it turns out, Poel is actually a rather difficult person to come to terms with. Pie was so radically right in the main things he did, and so persevering against the forces of the theater that he opposed, that one hates to have to qualify one's praise. Moreover, he fought virtually single-handedly for the first twenty-five years of his professional career; Shaw's was almost the only im­ portant critical voice raised in his favor, and at the time Shaw's patronage was probably at least as much a handicap as a blessing. And yet, so eccentric and single-minded was Poel that, as much as one hates to admit it, there was a good bit of justification in Archer's charge (made, however, for all the wrong reasons) that Poel was a "non-scenic Beerbohm Tree".2 Unfortunately, Poel got worse as he went on, and his last productions, coming at a time when he was at last getting the recognition he deserved, were indeed little better than Beer­ bohm Tree's, if for different reasons. But we begin at least with his virtues, which can hardly be overestimated. He saw that something was radically wrong with the staging of Shakespeare's plays, and he devoted his whole life to reforming the principles behind current staging practices. Poel entered the theater relatively late in life, having had no professional training before he joined Charles Mathew's company in 1876 at die age of twenty-four. He seems to have entered the theater from the begin­ ning for the sole purpose of reforming it. Pie first saw Irving in 1873, and immediately detested what he saw; he found Irving's acting "unwholesome" in stirring up emotion with no resolution; the celebrated third act of The Bells,

1 In the "Forward" to Cymbeline Refinished (1937), Complete Plays with Prefaces (New York, 1963), IV, 781. 2 The Nation, 5 July 1913, pp. 535-536. 22 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY Mathias' death scene, seemed to him "false to art and to good sense".3 Of Irv- ing's Richard III in 1877, he wrote in his diary: He appears to aim at creating an effect by working his scene up to a strik­ ing picture upon which the curtain may fall. This is a modern practice that I much dislike as it is sensational and stagey.4 The impetus behind Poel's intended reform was rather awkwardly religious and utilitarian. Again from his diary, a year before:

Where would those large numbers that never enter a church get their in­ Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/sq/article/23/1/21/5100337 by guest on 29 September 2021 struction of what is right and wrong, of the misery of crime and the bless­ ings of virtue, if not from the stage?5 His dissatisfaction with the "sensational and stagey" soon led him to question the whole method of staging Shakespeare. He was, especially at first, primarily interested in seeing Shakespeare's text put on the stage: his early work did no more than attack the acting versions then current. In 1879 he founded The Elizabethans, a group of "professional ladies and gentlemen whose efforts are specially directed toward creating a more general taste for the study of Shake­ speare",6 and in 1881 he got F. J. Furnivall to assist him in arranging a per­ formance of the 1603 quarto of Hamlet, and to invite him (Poel) to give a talk to the New Shakspere Society on current acting editions of Hamlet? The Elizabethans had toured the provinces during the summer of 1879, giving costume recitals of scenes from various plays. But the Hamlet was to be a full production, in which Poel himself would play the Prince, and Maud Holt (later Lady Tree) would be engaged to play Ophelia. The rest of the cast were amateurs. The performance was given without scenery and without music; Poel did use a curtain (though there were no intervals), and did not attempt any kind of Elizabethan stage—he did not even use an upper or inner stage. As his lec­ ture to the New Shakspere Society and several letters to the press indicate, he was not at this time concerned with attempting to simulate Elizabethan stage conventions at all; he was only concerned with showing how radically wrong nineteenth-century acting versions were from a standpoint of text alone. For example, in the lecture he is led to such considerations as the following: The second scene [of act two] is called 'A Room in the Castle' both in the Globe and acting editions. Might it not be an exterior scene? It is true that Polonius remarks 'Here in the lobby,' but the line next to this in the first quarto suggests that he is pointing to some place off the scene, for lie adds 'There let Ophelia walk,' and Ophelia is on the stage. An exterior scene would, in my opinion, give more meaning to the words 'Will you walk out of the air, my lord?' and to Hamlet's speech, 'This most excellent canopy the air,' etc. The scene of a palace garden or cloister could be well intro­ duced in a play so full of interiors.8 Similarly, Poel has a good deal to say in favor of having an interval to show

3 Robert Spcaight, William Poel and the Elizabethan Revival (Cambridge, Mass., 1954), p. 20. 4 Spcaight, p. 32. 5 Spcaight, pp. 36-37. 6 Spcaight, p. 46. 7 Reprinted in Sha\espeare in the Theatre (London, 1913), pp. 156-176. 8 Shakespeare in the Theatre, pp. 161-162. WILLIAM POEL 23 that time has passed between some scenes, such as between the fourth and fifth scenes of Act Four "to allow of Laertes' return from France".9 Poel would later have known such considerations to be irrelevant to the Elizabethan stage, and, indeed, to be more in character coming from Irving's pen than his own. It seems rather strange, moreover, that Poel should perform the First Quarto of Hamlet to demonstrate his dissatisfaction with contemporary acting editions; certainly out of the corpus of Shakespeare's plays a better choice could have been made with which to begin his revolution in the production of Shakespeare, to say nothing of the Second Quarto or Folio versions of Hamlet Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/sq/article/23/1/21/5100337 by guest on 29 September 2021 itself. But Poel was convinced that the First Quarto was a pirated first draft of "*• Shakespeare's play, and, as he wrote in The Era a week after the production, he thought it represented "more truly his dramatic conception than either Quarto II or our stage versions."10 Furnivall shared this view, and not only did the production take place under his auspices, but it was Furnivall who arranged the text. The later text, they felt, was more "literary"—they could not deny the mutilation of the dialogue in the 1603 quarto—but less dramatic. Forty years later Poel was still of this same opinion; in 1922 he contributed a note to Notes and Queries maintaining that the First Quarto was a cut and rearranged version of the prompt-book made by an actor for touring perform­ ances.11 In his lecture, Poel argued for playing the Second Quarto, but for cut­ ting it down in accordance with the dramatic structure of Quarto One. For, as he later wrote, the Second Quarto "though more artistically suited as the framework of Hamlet's irregular mind, [is] too subtle and elaborate to be effective on the public stage".12 Poel was reacting against the sentimental Prince who usurped the play on stage, but his reaction led him to a great many eccentric opinions, and we shall see later what he did to the Second Quarto when he produced it in 1914. The performance was by no means a success. I know of no one who praised either the acting or the production; the former was amateurish, the latter crude. Though there was no scenery, Poel did attempt effects with lighting; the first scene was played in darkness, but at Horatio's "in russet mantle clad" the gas lights were suddenly turned up,13 producing what must have been a ludicrous effect. The performance became important later because it was Poel's first production, and marked the beginning of his attempt to restore Shake­ speare to an Elizabethan stage. Several important points were made, however, in the production. Besides the absence of scenery, the audience had a chance to see Hamlet in the action of the play, instead of seeing only the character Hamlet, and Poel played the Prince quite differently from the general nine­ teenth-century manner and more in accordance with Shakespeare's evident intent. He did not rail at Ophelia, he was not tender with his mother, he did not break up the play scene by jumping up in front of Claudius. The Dumb Show was retained, so that the conflict between Claudius and Hamlet was seen during the "Murder of Gonzago", and the King broke up the play rather than

9 Shakespeare in the Theatre, p. 170. 10 Quoted in Speaight, p. 52. 11NQ, XI (1922), 301-303. A recent restatement of this position can be found in the intro­ duction to Albert B. Weiner's edition of the 1603 quarto (Great Neck, New York, 1962). 12 Shakespeare in the Theatre, p. 54. 13 Saturday Review, 23 April 1881. SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY 24 being driven off by Hamlet. Hamlet also appeared differently after his return from England, though one might question Poel's having him dressed as a sailor.14 And Fortinbras was there, perhaps even unduly emphasized, as Poel speaks of him as appearing "like Richmond in Richard HI, as the hero who will restore peace and order to the distracted kingdom."15 One of the most interesting of Poel's innovations was his following the First Quarto's stage direction in Ophelia's mad scene by having Ophelia enter with a lute rather than the traditional flowers, using a feather she finds for the distribution of flowers. The effect seems to me legitimate, though one Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/sq/article/23/1/21/5100337 by guest on 29 September 2021 does balk at some of Poel's justification for it: "Ophelia has very little time al­ lowed her to' go anywhere, and certainly not beyond the palace precincts, where she might not find straws or daisies. ... it must be remembered that Ophelia was a court lady, more accustomed to handle the lute than to pick wild- flowers."18 It was many years before Poel was to produce any more Shakespeare. Fie managed the London Music Hall for a time, and toured with F. R. Benson for six months (doing no Shakespeare, however), and wrote and produced some very bad plays of his own. In 1887 he became the instructor of the Shakespeare Reading Society, an amateur group founded by students of Uni­ versity College, London, who gave one Shakespeare reading a year. Poel maintained his position with this group for ten years, rehearsing the students for three months before each performance. It was during the early years of this work that he became convinced that in the proper speaking of Shake­ speare's verse must reside the essence of any production of his plays. Any account by any amateur or professional Poel ever worked with emphasizes the arduous procedure he undertook to get the parts spoken properly. When he later produced for the Elizabethan Stage Society, the first three weeks of the four-week rehearsals were spent around a table reading the parts. Poel had very definite ideas of what timbre each voice should have—he compared Shakespeare's characters to musical instruments, cello, clarinet, bassoon, etc. —and cast the plays accordingly. He insisted that Shakespeare had to be spoken rapidly, "trippingly on the tongue", and correctly. The rapid delivery necessitated the proper emphasis on key words. The example he invariably used to demonstrate what he meant was the following from Macbeth:

Or why Upon this BLASTED heath, you stop our way With such prophetic greeting. (I. iii. 76-78)

The modern actor, he held, always emphasized the lines as marked, and Poel was particularly amused that the heath's being 'blasted' was so vigorously maintained. The correct reading is: Or why Upon this blasted heath, you stop our way With such prophetic greeting.

14 Speaight, pp. 52 ff. 15 Shakespeare in the Theatre, p. 157. 16 Shakespeare in the Theatre, p. 172. WILLIAM POEL 2K

Read like this the passage not only moves more rapidly, but the pattern of the verse can be maintained while the dramatic emphasis carries the meaning to the audience.17 In his own words: it is necessary to bear in mind that when dramatic dialogue is written in verse there are more words put into a sentence than are needed to convey the actual thought that is uppermost in the speaker's mind. The actor, therefore, by means of modulation and inflection of voice, should arrest the attention of the listener by the accentuation of those words which con­ vey the central idea or thought of the speech he is uttering, and should Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/sq/article/23/1/21/5100337 by guest on 29 September 2021 keep in the background the redundant words with which that thought is **• ornamented.18

Though one may well disagree with the assumption that some of the phras­ ing here implies—that Shakespeare's verse consists largely of ornamentation— Poel is certainly correct in the way he taught the actors to speak. It must also be mentioned, however, that Poel was apparently, as his biographer is forced to admit, "quite insensitive to the melodic line of a speech".19 Throughout his excellent book, Robert Speaight gives many examples demonstrating this in- sensitivity. I will give only one example here, a cut Pbel made in Troilus and Cressida worthy of Irving or Tree. When Cressida plights her troth (III. ii. 191-198) the italicized lines were omitted:

If I be false, or swerve a hair from truth, When time is old and hath forgot itself, When waterdrops have worn the stones of Troy, And blind oblivion swallowed cities up, And mighty states characterless are grated To dusty nothing, yet let memory, From false to false, among false maids in love Upbraid my falsehood!20

It was the experience with the Reading Society, along with his displeasure with Irving's Shakespeare, that led Poel to do extensive research into the Eliz­ abethan stage. From his studies he became convinced that Elizabethan drama was primarily a spoken drama. "The real object in going to a theatre in those days was not to see but to hear."21 His researches led Poel to a thoroughgoing rejection of all scenery and scenic embellishment, except costume, and a con­ sequent rejection of the picture-frame stage in favor of the platform, making an "intimacy" between actors and audience that was impossible from behind the proscenium arch and footlights. In some respects Pbel went overboard, as we shall see: he insisted that part of the audience—a "staged" part—sit on the stage throughout the play; this practice changed the whole focus of his pro­ ductions. But with no scenery, no footlights, and an open stage with no cur­ tain except for an occasional discovery on the inner stage, continuity of action was inevitably and naturally maintained.

17 Poel used this example in several letters to the press throughout his career. It can be found in Monthly Letters, ed. A. M. T[rethewy] (London, 1929), pp. 14-15. 18 Monthly Letters, p. 14. 19 Speaight, p. 198. 20 Speaight, p. 197. 21 From a MS. reply to Archer's criticisms, quoted by Speaight, p. 106. 26 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY In (893 Poel had his first opportunity to mount a play to demonstrate his theories. He had by this time directed seven amateur readings of plays for the Shakespeare Reading Society, readings which were poorly attended and seldom even mentioned in the press. But he had some admirers. Shaw several times interrupted his music columns for the Star and World to call attention to the fact that these readings were more Shakespearian than anything else being done in London, and Arthur Dillon made the production possible by a donation of one hundred pounds. Measure for Measure was duly produced at the Royalty Theatre, then under the management of Kate Stanley. Though Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/sq/article/23/1/21/5100337 by guest on 29 September 2021 comic opera was the mainstay of this theater, the Royalty was becoming an important cultural center: there was an annual season of French plays, and it was at the Royalty that J. T. Grein's Independent Theatre was to produce Ibsen's Ghosts for the first time in English in 1891, and Bernard Shaw's Widower's Houses the following year. For the Shakespeare Reading Society an attempt was made to convert the theater into a replica of the old Fortune theater. An apron was built out beyond the proscenium, a small proscenium constructed within the main one with a traverse curtain for an "inner stage", and a balcony constructed above it. The full resources of lighting were used, however;22 lighting was one ele­ ment of modern stagecraft that Poel never rejected. The most peculiar, and I think reprehensible, aspect of the performance was the surrounding of the stage with gentlemen in Elizabethan costumes who smoked long clay pipes during the one ten-minute interval.23 This was an attempt to simulate the at­ mosphere of an Elizabethan private performance, where spectators did sit on the stage. The effect sought after here, it seems to me, puts the whole effort of Poel in a different light, makes his productions appear as cultivated ana­ chronism rather than an attempt at the most effective way to perform Shake­ speare. For the audience was asked, in effect, to watch not Measure for Meas­ ure but a simulated audience watching Measure for Measure: Poel's production thus seems in some respects a by-product of the historical-accuracy school, an attempt to see by historical imagination the way Shakespeare was seen by his contemporaries rather than to produce his play in the best possible manner; to alter Dover Wilson's quip about Stoll's criticism, to present Shakespeare as an author for an age, not for all time. The anachronistic tendency of the performance is further brought out in the ridiculous lengths Poel went to in order to defend his opinion that Isabella should not be dressed as a nun. He marshalled a vast amount of evidence to prove that she did not have a habit because none "had as yet been prepared for her".24 "Thus she is still a secular, and still wears the costume of a lady of rank."25 Poel carries his conviction even further, holding that her sole object in being in a convent is "to escape from an uncongenial marriage, the youths of Vienna being notoriously corrupt"!26 This reasoning is specious in that it is

^ 22 Review in Times, 11 November 1893. 23 Times, 11 November 1893. Also A. C. Sprague, Shakespearean Players and Performers (Cambridge, Mass., 1953), pp. 140-141. 24Speaighr, p. 92. See also Monthly Letters, p. 89, and "Is Isabella a Novice?", a letter to the TLS, 16 July 1931. 25 Monthly Letters, p. 89. 20 From a letter to Bridges-Adams, 7 September 1931, quoted in Speaight, pp. 90-91.

_k. WILLIAM POEL 27 wholly outside the dramatic concern of the play, reminiscent of Charles Kcan's concern that he should be able to prove that the bear in The Winter's Tale was historically justifiable. By making Isabella a "secular", Poel was justified, he felt, in having her played with a great deal of passion without being irreverent. Consequently, Angelo could be played with a great deal of charm; Poel him­ self played Angelo, and very sympathetically. I am perhaps being too hard on Poel, but his own eccentricities did always get in his way, and he did some rather ridiculous things with this production. Although he saw the Duke as the center of the play and emphasized that his Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/sq/article/23/1/21/5100337 by guest on 29 September 2021 "overwatching" the action prevents "painful emotion" from being aroused in •*. the spectator, it does seem to be taking things a little too far to have the Duke give his speech on death (III. i. 5 ff.) "with ease and spirit . . . laughing to himself while he says the words."27 It is further unfortunate that Poel was such a proper Victorian that all bawdiness had to be cut from the text (why on earth, one asks, did he choose this play to perform?), meaning among other things the excision of almost all the low characters. Even as innocuous a remark as Lucio's "He hath got his friend with child" (I.iv. 29) had to be changed to "He will shortly be a father", and Angelo's "By yielding up thy body to my will" (II. iv. 164) to "By yielding up thy self to my will."28 This last change is particularly significant in that it plays havoc with the meter of the line and the rhythm of the whole passage, and substantiates Speaight's contention that Poel had a poor ear for verse, for all his well-taken emphasis on the proper speaking of it. In spite of its many faults, including the poor quality of most of the actors, the production was of the first importance. It was the first modern at­ tempt in England to perform a Shakespearian play under the conditions ap­ proximating those for which it was written, and the attempt proved enlighten­ ing to a small but distinguished number of people. Poel had seen Savit's King Lear at Munich in 1890, a production on a reconstructed Elizabethan stage, and this production apparently gave Poel much of his impetus. He did not like the settings, he says,29 presumably because Savits used painted dropcloths, which were, indeed, quite elaborate,30 but was impressed by the production as a whole. Heretofore he had only directed readings of the plays and the 1603 Hamlet twelve years previously. He now determined a serious attempt to revolutionize staging of Shakespeare in England. Thus Measure for Measure began his career; for out of this production came the founding of the Eliza­ bethan Stage Society the following year. Poel had attracted a distinguished following—Edmund Gosse, Israel Gollancz, and Sidney Lee, for example, were among the Society's original subscribers—and even the Times reviewer (pre­ sumably A. B. Walkley) had said that the production of Measure for Measure "proved at least that scenic accessories are by no means as indispensable to the enjoyment of a play as the manager supposes."31 With the Elizabethan Stage Society Poel in the next seventeen years produced as many of Shakespeare's

27 Speaight, pp. 90-91. 28 Speaight, pp. 99-101. 20 Monthly Letters, p. 92. 30 There is an illustration in Harley Granville-Barker, Prefaces to Sha\cspeare, illus. ed. (Princeton, 1963), II, plate 5. 31 II November 1893. 28 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY plays, as well as reviving such unheard of drama as Doctor Faustus, Edward II, The Alchemist, Everyman (his only financial success), Arden of Fevershatn, and Samson Agonistes, not to mention other less famous plays, both English and foreign. Through the Reading Society (which continued under his direction for three more years), he had begun to train a few amateurs of distinction, most notably Lillah McCarthy. He naturally drew on this group for the Stage So­ ciety productions, since for financial reasons he had to employ almost exclusively amateur actors. This fact, incidentally, was always Poel's greatest handicap, for Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/sq/article/23/1/21/5100337 by guest on 29 September 2021 the nature of his productions—no settings to distract the spectator, the empha­ sis on speaking and acting, and the intimacy between the actors and the audi­ ence—brought out all the more distinctly the deficiencies of the cast. The Stage Society's first production was Twelfth Night, performed at Burlington Hall 21 and 22 June 1895, and at St. George's Hall 29 June. The production was not without Poel's usual eccentricities, the most damaging of which was the excision of the prison scene.32 In all, two hundred and fifty lines were cut, only thirty for reasons of obscenity, the remainder, it seems, to keep the performance within the "two hours' traffic of our stage"—a factor Poel wished to demonstrate.33 One of the significant virtues of the production was the procuring of Arnold Dolmetsch to supervise the music; Dolmetsch continued as musical director of all the Society's productions until 1905. Consequently, Poel not only assured the proper music for the plays but also associated his revival with the valuable revival Dolmetsch was leading in the study and performance of English music of the period. The production of Twelfth Night had enough effect to cause the drawing up of sides and to keep Poel and his methods at the center of a controversy for the rest of his career. In the front rank of Poel's opponents was William Archer, who had the reputation of being an "advanced" critic, and who attacked brutally the production, the Elizabethan Stage Society, and Poel. As Archer epitomizes the most serious opposition to Poel's work, it is necessary to look at his strictures at some length. He said he found the lack of scenery distract­ ing, and the acting so bad that the production was offensive. He suggested that the program for the performance should read "Staged (more or less) after the manner of the Sixteenth Century; acted after the manner of the Nineteenth Century Amateur."34 Archer seems to me an overrated figure. Reading through his dramatic reviews one becomes increasingly conscious of his verbosity and triviality, along with his attempt to write with force and authority, which gives a final impression of smugness. He almost never has anything to say about anything except acting; in a five-page review of Tree's epoch-making Julius Caesar (1898), for example, he never once mentions the scenery, the cuts, rearrange­ ments, and interpolations in the text.35 He was of the school of those who believe that much of Shakespeare is beyond the capacity of the stage,36 while 'holding at the same time that

*- Spcaight, p. in. s:! The Theatrical World of 189; (London, 1896), p. 220. 34 The Theatrical World of 189s, p. 320. :i!i Study and Stage: A Year Boo/{ of Criticism (London, 1899), pp. 77-82. :,° Sec especially Theatrical World of 1893 (London, 1894), pp. xxvi-xxvii. WILLIAM POEL 29 We cannot go back to the old days of conventional and ludicrously inap­ propriate scenery, raw 'supers,' and haphazard stage-management. ... If Shakespeare, as some critics hold, is necessarily distorted and obscured by appropriate, and even richly appropriate, methods of decoration, why, so much the worse for Shakespeare.37

Though Archer is remembered primarily as one of the early Ibsenites, and as a close friend of Bernard Shaw, he constantly looked to Arthur Wing

Pinero and Henry Arthur Jones—and particularly to Pinero—as the saviors Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/sq/article/23/1/21/5100337 by guest on 29 September 2021 of the British stage,38 and never missed a chance to downgrade Shaw, both as author and playwright. One suspects he was jealous of Shaw. Though he did not like the absence of scenery in Poel's productions, he was especially incensed at the acting; it was actually the principle behind the acting, however, that he was out of touch with. Archer saw that Poel's art was one of declamation, and this for Archer was "a dead art". "Even if we could revive it in the letter", he said (and he was certain that "the mild and self- conscious recitation" of the Elizabethan Stage Society could not), "it would remain dead in spirit; for it would not be to our ears what it was to the ears of the Elizabethan public."39 This boils down to a rejection of what Poel was trying to do because it was antiquarian. Archer thought the theater had advanced during the last half of the nineteenth century, and that the major advance had been the death of the "rhetorical tradition", brought about primarily by "the growth of Lon­ don and the invention of stage realism" and helped along by the break in the patent theaters in 1843 and technical advances in lighting and machinery. He did not like Irving as an actor, but had no objection at all to scenic, realis­ tic Shakespeare; he admired Tree for all his doubts about spectacular Shake­ speare. The retirement of Macready in 1851 marked the end of the "old" Shakespeare, and Charles Kean had heralded the new.40 Consequently, almost the only praise he ever gave Poel and the Elizabethan Stage Society was for their production of Doctor Faustus (1896). "The methods of the E.S.S. are essentially antiquarian, and suited to curiosities of literature, not to living masterpieces." They should thus concern themselves solely with "plays which are impossible, and indeed undesirable, on the modern stage—such plays, in a word, as Doctor Faustus.'"11 But since Poel insisted on also performing "liv­ ing masterpieces" such as Twelfth Night, he was for Archer "the most ob­ stinately wrong-headed manager and stage-manager that ever chose a play or conducted a rehearsal."42 These were the usual charges leveled at Poel. The Elizabethan Stage So­ ciety was educational only; Shakespeare must be brought up to date—adapted to the contemporary stage—in order to be appreciated and enjoyed. Thus A. B. Walkley, probably the most widely read reviewer, held that "these efforts have their place in an educational curriculum, but none in a catalogue of pleas-

37 About the Theatre: Essays and Studies (London, 1886), p. 243. 38 See especially the Introduction to The Theatrical World of 1896 (London, 1897), pp. xvii ff. 39 The Theatrical World of 189;, p. 222. i0 Theatrical World of 189J (London, 1898), pp. 172 ff. 41 Theatrical World of 1896, pp. 204-205. 42 Study and Stage, p. 232. •20 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY ures."43 The inevitable quotation from the chorus of Henry V follows, "prov­ ing" that Shakespeare would have used scenery if he had had it, and that modern stage managers are simply doing what Shakespeare would do if he had been born in 1864 instead of 1564. Such arguments lead the dramatic critics into some amusing contradictions, aside from the obvious one of Archer that if Shakespeare's plays are too big for the stage anyway, then adaptation of them is particularly futile. Even Archer liked Poel's Comedy of Errors (1895), because, he said, of all Shakespeare's plays it "loses less and gains most in modern eyes by absence of scenery and Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/sq/article/23/1/21/5100337 by guest on 29 September 2021 conventionality of costume", and because "the plot is so unblushingly extrava­ gant that anything like illusion is from the outset impossible."44 Max Beerbohm repeated the same opinion of Poel's work (and went to few of his produc­ tions) : "To see them is instructive, but it is not, except for a few exceptionable persons, delightful." For moderns there must be scenery for the drama to be a living art. "They [the Elizabethan Stage Society] love darkness, and have a perfect right to disport themselves in it. But don't let us be awed into admit­ ting that they, not we, are the children of light."45 Compare with this pro­ nouncement the following comment he is led to make in a review of Lewis Waller's modern production of Romeo and Juliet. He is distinguishing the "poetic" parts of Shakespeare's plays from the "dramatic": It is part of the dramatic fabric that Romeo should remember an apothe­ cary—a neighboring apothecary—an apothecary who was poor, and who would be likely to sell poison if he were well paid for it. But it is not part of the dramatic fabric that Romeo should give a long description of the shop, working it up as minutely as ever a Dutch painter worked up an interior. That was simply Shakespeare, going off at a tangent, and for­ getting all about Romeo for the nonce. (II, 478) This passage only seems a "tangent" when Romeo delivers it and one then sees a faithful copy of the apothecary's shop. On an Elizabethan stage the speech not only is not redundant but serves to let the audience know where they are and, most importantly, to focus more attention on Romeo; the audience learn where they are through Romeo's emotions; the description has the effect of conditioning the response to Romeo and the state he is in after hearing of Juliet's death. But this effect is lost on a realistic stage, and the passage does seem, indeed, outside the dramatic fabric. Beerbohm here, in effect, proves the legitimacy of Poel's methods. Almost all of Archer's, Walkley's, and Beerbohm's arguments share the same fallacy. The fact of the matter is that Shakespeare's plays were written for a non-realistic and non-scenic stage, and they cannot come across without distortion on a realistic one. The argument that Shakespeare would have used scenery if he could have is totally irrelevant; he did not, and his plays are not meant to employ it, nor are they written so that it can be used effec­ tively. * Such was the counter-argument made by the leader—in fact, almost the only public spokesman—of Poel's supporters. Bernard Shaw admitted that in 43 Drama and Life (London, 1907) pp. 137-138. 44 Theatrical World of iSgs, p. 370. 45 Around Theatres (New York, 1930), II, 330-331. WILLIAM POEL 31 this production of Twelfth Night the acting was "for the most part bad acting, done by amateurs who were acutely conscious of themselves and of Shake­ speare, and very feebly conscious, indeed, of the reality and humanity of the characters they represented." But he insisted that the play came across as it never had before, that the dramatic illusion was more vivid and enjoyable than was possible with footlights and scenery, and, especially, that the relation between actor and audience was such that the difficulty in trying to get a delicate poetic drama across footlights "all but vanishes".46 It is not that all of Archer and company's strictures against Poel and the Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/sq/article/23/1/21/5100337 by guest on 29 September 2021 Elizabethan Stage Society were unfounded, or that Shaw ignored their faults. v* Certainly Archer's blast at what Poel did to Arden of Fever sham (1897) was justified; Poel mutilated the text as much as any West End manager could have done; the play was reduced by half, opened with the fourth scene of Act Three, went to the last scene of Act Two, then back to the middle of the first scene.47 And Shaw wavered somewhat in his admiration for the Society's Two Gentlemen of Verona (1896), stating that "It seems to me that Mr. Poel has now abandoned himself wholly to his fancy in dresses and equipments and stage business."48 For the costumes and props were eighteenth-century, and Valentine's exile, Sylvia's escape from the outlaws, and the Duke's chasing his daughter offstage were all made through the audience, and the attack of the outlaws on Valentine and the Duke was heard from the vestibule; all returned to the stage through the audience at their next entrances.49 But Shaw under­ stood and appreciated the significance of what Poel was doing as Archer never could. In their respective views of The Tempest (1897) Archer, attempt­ ing to criticize the production on Poel's own ground, found fault with the whole production and singled out for castigation the staging of the opening shipwreck; this scene Poel staged on a side balcony, thirty feet above the stage, while Miranda watched from the main stage.50 Shaw praised the methods of the Society, on the other hand, while commenting that "I do not commit myself to their identity with those of the Elizabethan stage", because their methods "leave to the poet the work of conjuring up the isle 'full of noise, sounds and sweet airs'" rather than distracting the audience with visual scenery less effective than Shakespeare's poetry.51 The Elizabethan Stage Society lasted until 1905. Most of their productions are difficult to judge because of the eccentricities that clouded the valuable work being accomplished. The Merchant of Venice in 1898 was directed as a conscious rejection of the current interpretation of Irving. Poel later suggested that the title-page of the original quarto—"With the extreme crueltie of Shy- locke the Jewe towards the sayd Merchant, in cutting a iust pound of his flesh: and the obtayining of Portia by the choyse of three chests"—should for modern productions be changed to "the extreme injustice of Portia towards the sayd Jewe in denying him the right to cut a just pound of the Merchant's flesh, together with the obtayning of the rich heiress by the prodigal Bas-

46 Our Theatres in the Nineties (London, 1932), I, 189-191. 47 Theatrical World of i8gy, pp. 228-230. 48 Our Theatres, II, 284. 49 Speaight, p. 120. 60 Theatrical World of i8gy, pp. 315-317. 51 Our Theatres, III, 241-242. ?2 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY sanio."52 Poel, however, playing Shylock himself and reviving the red wig, in­ evitably carried his reaction too far and took all the humanity out of the character. He correctly saw that Shylock's dominant passion is neither paternal love nor racial pride but avarice, and that while he is an outsider and isolated he is not essentially pathetic. But he considered the play as Shakespeare's "an­ swer" to Marlowe's "contemptible Christians" in The ]ew of Malta,5i and so far did he downgrade Shylock's character that at his exit in the trial scene with "I am not well" (IV. i. 396), he rushed out in a great rage.54 Certain it is, Poel wrote, "that only by Shylock being 'in a great rage' as he rushes off the stage, Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/sq/article/23/1/21/5100337 by guest on 29 September 2021 can the audience be greatly pleased, and in a fit humour to be interested in the further doings of Portia."55 There were some other odd things about the production. All three of the Casket Scenes were played; but when the curtain rose on the inner stage to display the caskets, a hermit and two soldiers were discovered. There were, further, a priest and four acolytes standing by while each choice was made, and the song during Bassanio's choice was sung by a choir with organ accompaniment.56 After the break-up of the Elizabethan Stage Society in 1905 Poel produced on his own. He had made some progress in training actors, and he began to recruit some professionals for his own productions: Louis Casson, Esme Percy, Lillah McCarthy, Edith Evans, and Basil Dean; he even rejected Sybil Thorndike as Isabella in 1908. He still had to depend primarily on amateurs, however, and began more and more to employ girls in men's parts, a prac­ tice he had frequently tried with the Elizabethan Stage Society. There is something paradoxical in this inversion of Elizabethan practice, but Poel had his peculiar reasons:

On the English stage, girls are needed to act the boy lovers. ... In the Englishman the necessary quality of voice is wanting to give physical expression to words of love. In real life his lovemaking is comic and hope­ lessly unromantic because unemotional. But there are no similar drawbacks in the Englishwoman, whose voice is capable of expressing delicate feeling, while at the same time it is flexible enough to delinate passion and to indi­ cate the masculine traits of emotion.57

One wishes he had said that he found girls' voices easier to train and more flexible and left it at that. His productions became more and more eccentric. Pie began to force some very peculiar interpretations and experiments onto the plays, indeed, enough to rival almost any of the twentieth century. In his Macbeth (1909) the Witches appeared in the first act as old, hunchbacked crones; but in the cauldron scene Hecate and her three attendants were dressed in masque costumes, the attendants representing the three Fates as they uttered the prophecies of the apparitions.58 In the Banquet Scene Poel had the ghost of Duncan enter for the

52 Shakespeare in the Theatre, p. 48. 53 Shakespeare in the Theatre, pp. 69-84. 64 Spcaight, p. 138. 5n Shakespeare in the Theatre, p. 132. s0 Spcaight, p. 140. 67 Monthly Letters, pp. 28-29. 68 Speaight, p. 185. WILLIAM POEL 2, second Ghost's appearance. Various editors had suggested this interpretation as early as i8o5,59 but, as Joseph Knight had pointed out in 1876, the Ghost enters each time only when Macbeth begins to speak of Banquo.60 Poel also added a realistic touch to the Sleepwalking Scene worthy of the Lyceum: he had Lady Macbeth seated at her dressing table, doing her hair and playing with her comb and brush during the first half of it.01 It was with Troilus and Cressida in 1912 and Hamlet in 1914, however, that Poel took such liberties with the plays that it has led his biographer to ask, "In the name of what principle did he censure Sir Henry Irving for cutting Shake­ Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/sq/article/23/1/21/5100337 by guest on 29 September 2021 speare?"62, and Bridges-Adams to declare that "Poel was more nearly akin to "*- Irving his adversary than Barker his disciple was to him."63 The revival of Troilus and Cressida was a notable event, for this important play had been staged but once (excluding Dryden's adaptation) since Shakespeare's time. There were also a great many admirable things about the production; for ex­ ample, the continuous action emphasizing the fore and after stages and dress­ ing it in Elizabethan rather than ancient costumes. But to have Pandarus and others smoking clay pipes and speaking in cockney dialect, and Thersites as a court jester with a Scot's accent seem somewhat eccentric.64 It was the cutting of the text, however, which is most distressing; the greater part of Cressida's plighting her troth (III. ii. 190 ff.) was omitted in order to emphasize the bore­ dom she showed at Troilus' protestations, the greater part of Ulysses' "Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back" (III. iii. 145 ff.) was not only cut but tran­ sposed, most of Troilus' "And suddenly, where injury of chance" (IV. iv. 35 ff.) was omitted, and the play ended with Hector's death.65 Poel was convinced that the play centered on Essex's leaving the court in 159800—Achil­ les sulking in his tent—and most of the cuts were made to emphasize this motif and to lessen the Troilus and Cressida love theme. Ulysses' speech to Achilles, however, was reduced because Poel felt that here Shakespeare "was letting the Essex motif run away with him"!67 But what he did to Troilus and Cressida—indeed, what he did to any play —pales beside what he did when he staged Hamlet in 1914. In view of the ad­ miration and respect we owe to Poel, one hates to have to record this produc­ tion. Poel was by this time obsessed with the Essex business, and Hamlet, as well as Troilus and Cressida, has impressed more than one scholar as being connected with Elizabeth's courtier. Poel opened his production with the sec­ ond scene, discovering (yes, discovering) the Queen enthroned at the center of the stage with Claudius below her at a table with councillors. To be certain the point was made that Gertrude represented Elizabeth, the queen was very old and Claudius about thirty.68 As Poel wanted to emphasize the political nature of the play, he cut out everything tending to emphasize the psychologi-

69 See the note in the Furness Variorum edition (Philadelphia, 1903), p. 210. 60 Theatrical Notes (London, 1893), pp. 162-163. 61 Speaight, p. 188. 02 Speaight, p. 198. 63 Quoted by Speight, p. 200. 8* Review in Nation, 14 December 1912. 65 Speaight, pp. 197-199. 66 Shakespeare in the Theatre, pp. 98-116. 07 Speaight, p. 197. 68 Review in Times, 28 January 1914. •2A SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY

cal as ruthlessly as Irving and Tree had cut out all but the psychological. Poel's cuts included all of the Ghost, the "To be or not to be" soliloquy, and the whole of the Gravedigger Scene. The King, consequently, became the central figure in the play.69 Poel's intention in this production, as he said, was to show "the kind of Hamlet that Shakespeare's own audience knew and recognized"; to accom­ plish this end it was necessary to take drastic steps to overcome the "subsequent sentimental, 'melancholy' Hamlet" by leaving out many of the well-known parts and playing all those scenes and passages normally omitted in stage Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/sq/article/23/1/21/5100337 by guest on 29 September 2021 versions.70 Thus the blatant arrangement of the opening scene to emphasize what Shakespeare's original audience would have known instinctively: that this play was about Elizabeth and her court; thus making Claudius the central character to emphasize the revenge motif never emphasized on the public stage. The reasoning here is specious, and is especially disheartening in that Poel seems to go back on all he had fought for during the previous thirty-five years. Irving and Tree (and anybody) could have justified their Hamlets on similar terms. Poel produced a few other Shakespearian plays after the war, all similar to what this Hamlet was. All's Well That Ends Well (1920) was made into a plea for the removal of class barriers, and the emancipation of women, and took its historical basis in Southampton's secret marriage (and subsequent imprisonment) to Elizabeth's maid of honor, Elizabeth Vernon, in 1598. He even went so far as to have the King of France in a bath-chair wheeled around by a nurse dressed in a V.A.D. uniform.71 When he was almost eighty (1931) he produced Coriolanus, reduced by half and with much of the verse paraphrased as prose. The citizens were seen as the ideal of democracy and Coriolanus understood to be Essex. Coriolanus appeared in the first scene in a leopard skin, afterwards in a full dress uniform of a colonel of the Hussars. The citizens wore costumes designed from French railway posters, the Trib­ unes were in cap and gown, Volumnia was dressed after a Gainsborough, and Virgilia as a pre-Raphaelite. All of Coriolanus' unmasking to Aufidius was cut, and the play ended as the murder of the hero was heard offstage immediately after he entered Corioli.72 W. J. Lawrence, an old friend and admirer, declared flatly that this production was a rejection of all Poel's principles. Poel de­ fended his cuts and rearrangements in terms that send us back to the tradi­ tion that he had helped destroy: "this and this alone made the play actable".73 It is sad to have to chronicle this end of Poel's career; for by this time he was something of a celebrated figure; his disciples—or at least people strongly under his influence—were directing the Old Vic, the Stratford Memorial Theatre, and the Maddermarket Theatre. In 1930 at the instigation of Shaw, Granville-Barker, Robert Speaight, Margaret Scudamore, and others, the Prime Minister offered Poel a knighthood; he declined the honor because, he wrote to Speaight, "it was inconceivable to me that my name could be added to the long list of theatrical Knights not one of whom was in sympathy with an

01 Stratford-upon-Avon Herald, 30 January 1914. 70 Stratford-upon-Avon Herald. 71 Speaight, p. 233. 72 Speaight, 255-261. 73 Quoted by Speaight, p. 263. WILLIAM POEL 35 Elizabethan method of presentation."74 Even before the war, in 19TO, Tree had invited him to do a production for his annual Shakespeare Festival at His Majesty's, and had the apron extended in front of the proscenium arch for him. In 1912 his work had been recognized and acknowledged by those who were, or were to become, the leading figures in British drama. On 1 December of tliat year a dinner was organized in his honor by a list of distinguished pa­ trons much too lengthy to reproduce here. There were several speeches, cli­ maxed by that of G. B. S., who was at his characteristic best. Poel, he said, had

revolutionized Shakespearian production simply by cultivating "the ridiculous Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/sq/article/23/1/21/5100337 by guest on 29 September 2021 habit of going to see what Shakespeare said."75 Many people had been enlight- -s. ened by Poel's work with the Elizabethan Stage Society; as early as 1902, for example, the Rev. Steward Headlam had founded the London Shakespeare League specifically in support of Poel and for the purpose of a yearly produc­ tion in the Elizabethan manner (tiie Society split in 1913).78 One comes away from Poel with many misgivings. Shaw, in an exchange with Poel and others on "A Standard Text" for Shakespeare in 1921, mentions that

As to Mr. Poel, there is no living enthusiast more firmly convinced than he that he knows the mind of Shakespeare; and this conviction has nerved him to do yeoman's service to his master. ... [If he edited a com­ plete Shakespeare] the liberties he would take with the text to square it with his own original and vivid conceptions of character, theatrical tech­ nique, and Elizabethan political and social structure would rouse a cry of controversy.77

In view of his productions one can hardly dispute this statement. Poel's criti­ cal writings (which deserve to be better known) show the same mixture of enlightenment and common sense with a not infrequent perfectly staggering absurdity. For example, he puts his finger exactly on one of the major things wrong with Gordon Craig's productions of Shakespeare by demonstrating that tlie properties used in an Elizabethan theater were suggestive of common objects, not remote ones; that Craig tries to evoke by his settings the unfamiliar rather than the familiar, and that there is a consequent lessening of the im­ portance of tiie characters and the language in favor of background and mood.78 But in speaking of Macbeth, he can make the following statement con­ cerning Duncan's coming to Inverness: There was something childish about Duncan's credulity in face of the treachery he had already experienced from the first Thane of Cawdor. In a monarch whose position was open to attack from the jealousy of his no­ bles, Duncan's conduct showed an almost incredible want of caution. In fact, it was his unguarded confidence which brought about his death.79 This passage seems a parody of much nineteenth-century criticism, as Poel's Hamlet seems a parody of nineteenth-century producing. But Poel's place in theatrical history is secure. In fact, he is one of those

74 Speaight, pp. 253-254. 75 Quoted by Speight, p. 192. 76 Speaight, p. 217. 77 TLS, 1 March 1921. 78 Shakespeare in the Theatre, pp. 222-223. 711 Shakespeare in the Theatre, pp. 62-63. ,5 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY whose influence was finally better than he was, who was remembered for doing better things than he did. When he finally began to get the recognition he deserved, his productions for the Elizabethan Stage Society were remem­ bered as having been textually intact; they never were, and there is something ironic about a producer's reputation resting on the claim of being a purist in the integrity of Shakespeare's texts when that producer had cut the final speech of Richard II (played by Harley Granville-Barker!) as follows:

I have been studying how I may compare Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/sq/article/23/1/21/5100337 by guest on 29 September 2021 This prison where I live unto the world; And for because the world is populous, And here is not a creature but myself, I cannot do it. [Music] Music do I hear?80 (Reduced from V. v. 1-41)

But in spite of such travesties Poel more than any other producer did establish the ideal of textual integrity in performing Shakespeare. Similarly, though he had, as Speaight says, a "defective ear for poetry"81 himself, he properly stres­ sed the "exaggerated naturalness" and "tuned tones" by which Shakespeare had to be delivered, along with his emphasis on the key word for rapidity and comprehension. Granville-Barker thought this emphasis on the verse the most important contribution Poel had made. No less important, certainly, was his attempt to simulate an Elizabethan stage; because of Poel the extension of the apron and the three playing areas became almost stock necessities for any Shakespearian production after the war. Even if the audience still had to look through the keyhole of the proscenium arch, there was a greater intimacy pos­ sible between actor and audience, the movements of the actors took on their proper perspective, and without scenery and a curtain the action was continu­ ous and non-visual in emphasis. Later directors handled all of these things bet­ ter, but Archer's claim that the reforms Poel advocated would have come any­ way, and that Poel had confused rather than helped them,82 is only a half-truth at best, and in any case irrelevant. For it was Poel who set the work afoot. Robert Speaight's assessment cannot be bettered:

Poel did not possess in a high degree the gift of communication. What he possessed was the gift of prophesy.83

Grinnell College

80 Shakespeare in the Theatre, p. 151. 81 Shakespeare in the Theatre, p. 197. 82 In a review of Poel's Shakespeare in the Theatre, in the Nation, 5 July 1913, pp. 535-536. 83 Speaight, p. 274.

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