Spectacle, Performance and New Femininities in the Plays of Suffrage Playwrights between 1907 and 1914 Enes Kavak Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds School of English December 2014 The candidate confirms that the work is his own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. The right of Enes Kavak to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. © 2014 The University of Leeds and Enes Kavak i Acknowledgements I would like to express my gratitude to the people who have helped me in the completion of this thesis. I have benefited hugely from the continual guidance and advice of my supervisor, Dr Katherine Mullin in the School of English, the University of Leeds. She has been a great source of inspiration and support, providing feedback and encouragement throughout the long writing process. I believe that my analytical and writing skills have been significantly improved by her invaluable advice. I am also indebted to the helpful staff of the Document Supply Department at the University of Leeds, who have helped me obtain most of the primary and secondary sources I have needed in the process of writing. In addition, I would like to thank to the staff at the manuscripts reading room at the British Library, London, and those working at Victoria and Albert Museum Theatre and Performance Collections as well as The Women’s Library at the London School of Economics, for all their assistance to me in accessing archival materials, texts and photos that have been used in this work. I am also thankful to Kelli Zezulka for proofreading and meticulous corrections and her help even at very short notice. Most importantly, I want to express my deep appreciation for my wife and best friend, Vildan Inci Kavak, for everything she has done so far. She has never given up supporting me even at the most difficult times and sometimes at the expense of her own career. I dedicate this work to her and I believe that it would surely never have been completed without her wholehearted and unwavering support. ii Abstract This thesis examines plays written by four playwrights in the context of Edwardian suffragism between 1907 and 1914. It aims to demonstrate that suffrage drama is much more versatile in its subjects, representations of women and dramatic strategies than previously thought. It argues that suffrage plays were not only an imitation of Edwardian social drama with a political message. Instead, it suggests that suffrage playwrights exploited a large variety of sources and strategies in the construction of their female characters and plots. To do so, they appropriated theatrical and dramatic strategies of popular theatre genres of the Edwardian age such as melodramas, musical comedies, tableaux vivants, history plays and farces. The method used in this thesis is first to look at the play structures and textual representations of femininities constructed in these plays. Second, the play is analysed through its text, photographs and illustrations produced about the production or in relation to the construction of female characters. Third, representational strategies used in the stage performances are examined whenever there is available information. Finally, the plays’ success is assessed by interpreting their critical and popular reception. This thesis is divided into four chapters. These chapters explore plays written by four dramatists: Elizabeth Robins, Cicely Hamilton, Christopher St John and George Bernard Shaw. In examining and identifying these playwrights’ strategies and representations of femininities, archival sources such as manuscripts, production bills, leaflets, photographs, newspaper articles and reviews published during Edwardian age have frequently been used as complementary and contextual materials. The principal collections, archival materials from which have been used in this study, are British Library Manuscripts and Ellen Terry Collection, Victoria & iii Albert Museum Theatre and Performance Collections, and The Women’s Library Collections in London. iv Table of Contents Author’s Declaration i Acknowledgements ii Abstract iii Table of Contents v List of Illustrations vii Introduction 1 Historical, Political and Literary Context 2 From New Women to Suffragists 5 A Reassessment of Critical Literature 7 The Rationale and Purpose of the Study 14 Chapter Summaries 17 Chapter 1. The Spectacular Performance on the Political Stage: Elizabeth Robins’s Votes For Women 26 1.1. Subversive Beginnings: The Actress as an Ibsenite 27 1.2. William Archer and Experimenting with the New Woman in Alan’s Wife 32 1.3. Votes for Women: Spectacularity and the New Femininity on Stage 38 1.4. Suffrage Performance as a Spectacular Event 58 1.5.Afterword 61 Chapter 2. Cicely Hamilton’s Women: From the Ordinary to the Exceptional 69 2.1. Diana of Dobson’s: An Ordinary Girl’s Adventure 70 2.2. How the Vote Was Won: Women United for Action 86 2.3. A Pageant of Great Women: Female Exceptionality Redefined 97 2.4. Afterword 118 Chapter 3. Fashioning the Actress in the Plays of Christopher St John 126 3.1. Introduction: St John, Her Circle and the Pioneer Players 126 3.2. St John’s Revision of the Working-class Musical Comedy Actress in The Wilson Trial 129 3.3. The Actress as the Pioneer in St John’s The First Actress 140 3.4. Championing the Female Commitment: the Representations of Medieval Nuns in Hrotsvit’s Paphnutius by the Pioneer Players 155 3.5. Afterword: The Resurrection of Ellen Terry as the Iconic Actress 164 v Chapter 4. Suffragettes Conquer George Bernard Shaw’s Stage 172 4.1. Introduction: The Rise of Suffragettes and Edwardian ‘Anti- suffragetism’ 172 4.2. Anti-suffragettes as a Parody of Militant Femininities in Press Cuttings 174 4.3. Creating Sympathy for Suffragettes in Fanny’s First Play 186 4.4. Afterword 198 Conclusion 203 Bibliography 213 Newspapers, Periodicals and Archival Sources 213 Primary and Secondary Sources 217 Appendices 237 vi List of Illustrations Figure 1: Votes For Women Programme, showing the matinee details and cast of the performances on 9–30 April and 3 May 1907. Figure 2: Votes For Women, Hyde Park Scene. Figure 3: Diana of Dobson’s production handbill, Kingsway Theatre, 1909. Figure 4: A photo of the dormitory scene from Diana of Dobson’s at the Kingsway Theatre, The Sketch magazine cover, 19 February 1908. Figure 5: The dormitory scene from Diana of Dobson's, The Sketch, 12 February 1908. Figure 6: The Thames scene from Diana of Dobson's, The Sketch, 12 February 1908. Figure 7: The finale of How the Vote Was Won, performed by the Women’s Freedom League, 1909. Figure 8: ‘A Suffragette’s Home: After a Hard Day’s Work’ by John Hassall, postcard, 1902. Figure 9: ‘The Shreking Sister’ by Bernard Partridge, Punch, 17 January 1906. Figure 10: ‘The Revolt of Women’, Pick-me-Up, 3 October 1903. Figure 11: A suffrage cartoon by W H Margetson featuring allegorical Womanhood, Prejudice and Justice. Figure 12: Scenes from A Pageant of Great Women at the Scala Theatre on 12 November 1909, Daily Mirror Cover, 13 November 1909. Figure 13: The Queens in A Pageant of Great Women, Daily Mirror, 1909. Figure 14: ‘Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, Osborne’, portrait, 26 July 1859. Figure 15: ‘Queen Victoria and Prince Albert at the Ball’, portrait, 1842. Figure 16: Cicely Hamilton as Christian Davis in A Pageant of Great Women. vii Figure 17: Woman’s Pageant playbill for the Albert Hall performance, 11 December 1909. Figure 18: ‘Chorus Girls’ in The Sunshine Girl, The Play Pictorial, December 1911. Figure 19: ‘A Living Wage’, The Vote, 16 November 1912. Figure 20: Nancy Price as Mrs Margaret Hughes in the first performance of The First Actress at the Kingsway Theatre, 8 May 1911. Figure 21: A photo of the first performance of The First Actress at the Kingsway Theatre, 8 May 1911. Figure 22: Lena Ashwell as an Actress of To-day and Auriol Lee as Madame Vestris in the first performance of The First Actress at the Kingsway Theatre, 8 May 1911. Figure 23: A photo of the monastery scene from Paphnutius by the Pioneer Players, titled ‘Miss Ellen Terry in a Play of 960 A.D.’, Nottingham Guardian, 6 January 1914. Figure 24: Three central characters in Paphnutius: Miriam Lewes as Thais, E Harcourt Williams as Paphnutius and Ellen Terry as the Abbess, Sphere, 17 January 1914. Figure 25: ‘“Sermons in Stones”’, Punch, 29 November 1911. Figure 26: Photos of Bernard Shaw and male characters in Press Cuttings from the performance on 9 July at the Court Theatre, London, Sketch, 21 July 1909. Figure 27: The Anti-Suffragettes scene in Press Cuttings from 9 July Performance at the Court Theatre, London, Sketch, 21 July 1909. Figure 28: The playbill of Fanny’s First Play at the Little Theatre, 21 April 1911. Figure 29: The scene in which Bobby learns that Margaret was in jail in Fanny’s First Play from The Play Pictorial, No: 114, Vol. XIX. viii Figure 30: The fight scene between Margaret and Bobby from ‘Fanny’s First Play’, The Play Pictorial, No: 114, Vol. XIX. ix Introduction In a search for anthologies of women’s literature written in the early twentieth century, it was rather unexpected to find that women’s literary efforts during this period have mostly been overlooked except in a few genres such as fiction and biographies.