"CYMBELINE" IN THE fllii^SLHi TI CENTURY Bennett Jackson Submitted in partial fulfilment for the de ree of uaster of Arts in the University of Birmingham. October 1971. University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. SYNOPSIS This thesis consists of an Introduction, followed by Part I (chapters 1-2) in which nineteenth- century criticism of the play is discussed, particular attention being paid to Helen Faucit's essay on Imogen, and its relationship to her playing of the role. In Part II the stags-history of Oymbcline in London is traced from 1785 to Irving's Lyceum production of 1896. Directions from promptbooks used by G-.P. Cooke, W.C. Macready, Helen Eaucit, and Samuel ±helps are transcribed and discussed, and in the last chapter the influence of Bernard Shaw on Ellen Terry's Imogen is considered in the light of their correspondence and the actress's rehearsal copies of the play. There are three appendices: a list of performances; transcriptions of two newspaper reviews (from 1843 and 1864) and one private diary (Gordon Crosse's notes on the Lyceum Gymbeline); and discussion of one of the promptbooks prepared for Charles Kean's projected production. The Bibliography lists unpublished MS material, newspaper and periodical reviews cited in Part II, and books cited in the thesis. By request of the Librarian of the Ellen Terry Memorial Museum, Smallhythe, no part of the manuscript material quoted in chapter twelve may be reproduced or published without prior consent of The national Trust and the author of this thesis. "Crowded theatres have applauded Imogen. There is a pleasing softness and delicacy in this agreeable character, that render it peculiarly interesting. Love is the ruling passion: out it is love ratified by wedlock, gentle, constant and refined." William Richardson, 1784. "The very crown and flower of all her father's daughters i do not speak here of her huiaan father, but her divine the woman above all Shakespeare's women is Imogen. AS in Uloopatra we found the incarnate sex, the woman everlasting, so in Imogen we find half glorified already the iuniortal godhead of womanhood." Algernon Charles Swinburne, 1380. "So swift are Imogen's changes of mood that the actress... has to work hard to make her a coviciotent character. Her heart has reasons that reason cannot understand." Sllen Terry, c.1911-1'j25 (Four Lectures on 3hakes'peare, 1932). C 0 N T E N T 3 Pag« No. INTRODUCTION i-vii PART ONE; "Cymbeline" and the Critics. CHAPTER ONE "Cymbeline" from Hazlitt to Strachey. 1 CHAPTER TWO Helen Faucit on the Character of Imogen. 25 PART TWO; "Cymbeline" on the London Stage, 1785-1896. CHAPTER THREE John Philip Kemble and Lucius Junius Booth, 38 1785-1817. CHAPTER FOUR Various Performers, 1823-1829. 55 CHAPTER FIVE W.C. Macready as lachimo and Posthumus, 69 1820-T_23. ChAl--'!-!^ SIX Helen Paucit and Macready, 1837-1843. 84 CHAPTER SFVEfr "Cymbeline" at Sadler's Veils, 101 1847-1860. CHAPTER EIGHT "Cymbeline" at the Royal Marylebone 130 Theatre, 1849. CHAPTER iqivE Helen j'aucit as Imogen - Drury Lane, 136 1864-1865. CHAPTER TEI^ "Cymbeline" at the Queen's Theatre, 1872. 157 ____do. A ^Lj '\Ti-I uinor Performances, 1878-1885. 166 x TWELVE :rvin:..»s "Cymbeline", 1896. 172 -lX 'A' 207 'o' 2 1 5 ^ 228 CPAI^^jjJ 251 l-j-IY 271 i. Introduction. Theatrical criticism of Cymbeline during the nineteenth century rarely brought forth any insights which diverged substantially from those offered by literary critics. It seldom failed to arouse discussion of the idea that certain of Shakespeare's works were unfitted for representation, not because of profanity or bad taste, but because they had an "un-dramatic l! form. Antony and Cleopatra and The Tempest were the most notoriously "un-dramatic", and the latter received so few performances in its unadulterated form before Macready, Lean and Phelps, that Macready was able to write with satisfaction concerning his production: It has given the public a play of Shakespeare which had never been seen before. 1 Cymbeline had been more frequently performed, but with the exception of relatively short periods in the fifties, sixties and nineties (after the production of thelps, Helen Faucit's Drury Lane appearances, and Irving's Lyceum staging) it was likely that most members of an audience at one of the revivals would not have had the opportunity to see the play. A manager might console himself with this reflection on a duty fulfilled to art, as he counted the receipts, for towards the end of the century the unprofit­ able nature of Shakespearean production was widely and frequently discussed. In 1864, vhen Helen Faucit appeared in the last "fashionable" production of the play before 1896, the Drury Lane management was "bein,: prair-ed for its stoic devotion to the performance of classics (a policy soon abandoned) and pessimists (with in some cases a vested interest akin to that of Alfred iiunn) were fiiiuint. comfort in the fulfilment of a prophecy made by 'Jibber: This voluptuous expedient ... of indulging the taste with several theatres, vill amount to much the same variety as that of a certain oeconomist, who, to enlarge his hospitality, ii. would have two puddings and two legs of mutton for the same dinner. To give this contention the lie, and to shame those critics who contended that the proliferation of fully-licenaed minor theatres would lead to the debasement of public taste, was the example of Sadler's Wells, raised from the depths by Samuel Ihelps. Among theatres to follow Phelpa's example were the Marylebone and, later, the Queen's, Long Acre. Reviews of productions at such enterprising theatres invariably include reflections on the nature of the audiences which they attracted, and on the nature of their repertoire: each of the three theatres named above attempted the rare, "literary" Cyiaoeline as part of a pro­ gramme whose aim was to bring back into currency what was patronizingly known as "sterling entilish drama" and "old plays". Audiences, no less than managers, were praised for their devotion and honest diligence - over against the rowdy decadence of the West-End theatregoers - but after Phelps the impetus of this revival in the Kast and the North seems to have been lost. Charles Jootli reflected in his Life and Labour of the People in London. (1889): Everywhere in England theatregoers are a special class. Those 'ho care, go often; the rest seldom or not at all. The regular East /nd theatregoer even finds his way westwards, and in the sixpenny seats of the little house in Pitfield Street I have heard a discussion of Irving's representation of .Faust at the Lyceu-i.* The reviewer of Helen Faucit's Imogen who was intrigued to find pure art levelling ranks in joint appreciation (see p.l'f'O) was similarly emancipated from the attitude which had enabled earlier reviewers of Jadler's Wells product­ ions to drav; lessons in the spiritual finesse of the lower orders from the nature of the audiences the'.?e.* Irving's Lyceum clientele were of a special nature: ill. they too were bound by devotion to art: This theatre has become a Mecca, the temple of a special cult, the promised land of countless tribes of devotees, who have filled it from floor to roof and who have felt again and again that by their presence there they have been assisting at a high festival. > In the proponents of an independent ariu a national theatre, Irving was to find critics who considered this an un­ healthy devotion not to drama (still less to Shakespeare) but to his own charisma and to his style of production. Irving'a Lyceum failed to fit into the terms of the dispute between a 'i'heatre of benevolent (and possibly subsidized) iheatrical Endeavour and the 3ad Theatre of Profits. Some managers, notably Hollingshead at the G-aiety, tried to solve the dilemma by offering fragments of the first at the expense of the second. .^either solution satisfied the Pabian Hhaw or the rationalist \rcher. in addition to these financial and ethical problems, the problem of finding a cast to perform Shakespeare beset those who wished to do so. In 1do6, Webster had testified before the .ouse oJ.' Commons Select Cojonittee on Theatrical licences and Regulations: ^uestion 5178: Take the School for Scandal, or the Rivals, or nay any of ohakespeare's comedies, in consequence of the nunber of theatres open you cannot get a good company to act all the minor parts, I suppose? - ho. 3179i You get two or three good ones, and the rest you are forced bo fill up t,,y well as you can? - Yes, because the freedom of t uie theatres has dispersed the talent. A ;-lan that should be playing a walking Gentleman at tie Haymarket or .Mn.ry Lane, Jan play Hamlet at ~i;he Jast aid, tjid he prefers that, au£ he ^ets a larger salary for it. 6 This, Webster agreed, was "in consequence of our having free trade in drama". iv. Actors, authors and other interested parties (includ­ ing audiences) had been decrying the low taste of the fashionable theatre for a long time - George Frederick Cooke hoped that posterity would not believe that The Castle Spectre had played to better audiences than Shakespeare's works'7 - but the Victorian theatre partook of its age's self-consciousness, and sought institutional respectability by earnestness and its scenic expression, historic!sin.