Poel, Granville Barker, Guthrie, Wanamaker: Great Shakespeareans Volume XV 9781441133724, 9781472555076, 9781472539502

Table of contents :
FC
Half title
Quote
Title
Copyright
Contents
Series Editors’ Preface
Peter Holland and Adrian Poole
Acknowledgements
Notes on Contributors
Introduction
Cary M. Mazer
Chapter 1 William Poel
Marion O’Connor
Chapter 2 H. Granville Barker
Cary M. Mazer
Chapter 3 Tyrone Guthrie
Robert Shaughnessy
Chapter 4 Sam Wanamaker
Paul Prescott
Endnotes
Selected Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Poel, Granville Barker, Guthrie, Wanamaker Great Shakespeareans Volume XV

Great Shakespeareans Each volume in the series provides a critical account and analysis of those figures who have had the greatest influence on the interpretation, understanding and cultural reception of Shakespeare, both nationally and around the world. General Series Editors: Peter Holland, University of Notre Dame, USA Adrian Poole, Trinity College Cambridge, UK Editorial Advisory Board: David Bevington (University of Chicago, USA), Michael Cordner (University of York, UK), Michael Dobson (Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, UK), Dominique Goy-Blanquet (University of Picardy, France), Barbara Hodgdon (University of Michigan, USA), Andreas Höfele (University of Munich, Germany), Tetsuo Kishi (Kyoto University, Japan), Russ McDonald (Goldsmith’s College, University of London, UK), Ruth Morse (University of Paris 7, Denis Diderot, France), Michael Neill (University of Auckland, New Zealand), Stephen Orgel (Stanford University, USA), Carol Rutter (University of Warwick, UK), Ann Thompson (King’s College, University of London, UK) and Paul Yachnin (McGill University, Canada). Great Shakespeareans: Set I Volume I: Dryden, Pope, Johnson, Malone, edited by Claude Rawson Volume II: Garrick, Kemble, Siddons, Kean, edited by Peter Holland Volume III: Voltaire, Goethe, Schlegel, Coleridge, edited by Roger Paulin Volume IV: Lamb, Hazlitt, Keats, edited by Adrian Poole Great Shakespeareans: Set II Volume V: Scott, Dickens, Eliot, Hardy, edited by Adrian Poole Volume VI: Macready, Booth, Irving, Terry, edited by Richard Schoch Volume VII: Jameson, Cowden Clarke, Kemble, Cushman, edited by Gail Marshall Volume VIII: James, Melville, Emerson, Berryman, edited by Peter Rawlings Volume IX: Bradley, Greg, Folger, edited by Cary DiPietro Great Shakespeareans: Set III Volume X: Marx and Freud, edited by Peter Holland and Adrian Poole Volume XI: Berlioz, Verdi, Wagner, Britten, edited by Daniel Albright Volume XII: Joyce, T. S. Eliot, Auden, Beckett, edited by Adrian Poole Volume XIII: Empson, Wilson Knight, Barber, Kott, edited by Hugh Grady Great Shakespeareans: Set IV Volume XIV: Hugo, Pasternak, Brecht, Césaire, edited by Ruth Morse Volume XV: Poel, Granville Barker, Guthrie, Wanamaker, edited by Cary Mazer Volume XVI: Gielgud, Olivier, Ashcroft, Dench, edited by Russell Jackson Volume XVII: Welles, Kozintsev, Kurosawa, Zefirelli, Mark Thornton Burnett, Kathy Howlett, Courtney Lehmann and Ramona Wray Volume XVIII: Hall, Brook, Ninagawa, Lepage, edited by Peter Holland

Poel, Granville Barker, Guthrie, Wanamaker Great Shakespeareans Volume XV

Edited by Cary M. Mazer

Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DP UK

1385 Broadway New York NY 10018 USA

www.bloomsbury.com Bloomsbury is a registered trade mark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc © Cary M. Mazer and Contributors 2013 Cary M. Mazer and the Contributors have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: 978-1-4725-3950-2 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Poel, Granville Barker, Guthrie, Wanamaker / edited by Cary Mazer. p. cm. -- (Great Shakespeareans ; volume XV) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4411-3372-4 1. Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616--Criticism and interpretation--History--20th century. 2. Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616--Stage history--20th century. 3. Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616--Appreciation. 4. Poel, William, 1852-1934-Criticism and interpretation. 5. Granville-Barker, Harley, 1877-1946--Criticism and interpretation. 6. Guthrie, Tyrone, 1900-1971--Criticism and interpretation. 7. Wanamaker, Sam, 1919-1993--Criticism and interpretation. I. Mazer, Cory editor of compilation. PR2970.P64 2013 792.0942--dc23 2013025903 Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN

Contents

Series Editors’ Preface vi Peter Holland and Adrian Poole Acknowledgements viii Notes on Contributors xi Introduction Cary M. Mazer

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Chapter 1 William Poel Marion O’Connor

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Chapter 2 H. Granville Barker Cary M. Mazer

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Chapter 3 Tyrone Guthrie Robert Shaughnessy

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Chapter 4 Sam Wanamaker Paul Prescott

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Endnotes 211 Selected Bibliography 234 Index 239

Series Editors’ Preface

What is a ‘Great Shakespearean’? Who are the ‘Great Shakespeareans’? This series is designed to explore those figures who have had the greatest influence on the interpretation, understanding and reception of Shakespeare, both nationally and internationally. Charting the effect of Shakespeare on cultures local, national and international is a never- ending task, as we continually modulate and understand differently the ways in which each culture is formed and altered. Great Shakespeareans uses as its focus individuals whose own cultural impact has been and continues to be powerful. One of its aims is to widen the sense of who constitute the most important figures in our understanding of Shakespeare’s afterlives. The list is therefore not restricted to, say, actors and scholars, as if the performance of and commentary on Shakespeare’s works were the only means by which his impact is remade or extended. There are actors aplenty (like Garrick, Irving and Olivier) and scholars too (Bradley, Greg and Empson) but our list deliberately includes as many novelists (Dickens, Melville, Joyce), poets (Keats, Eliot, Berryman), playwrights (Brecht, Beckett, Césaire) and composers (Berlioz, Verdi and Britten), as well as thinkers whose work seems impossible without Shakespeare and whose influence on our world has been profound, like Marx and Freud. Deciding who to include has been less difficult than deciding who to exclude. We have a long list of individuals for whom we would wish to have found a place but whose inclusion would have meant someone else’s exclusion. We took long and hard looks at the volumes as they were shaped by our own and our volume editors’ perceptions. We have numerous regrets over some outstanding figures who ended up just outside this project. There will, no doubt, be argument on this score. Some may find our choices too Anglophone, insufficiently global. Others may complain of the lack of contemporary scholars and critics. But this is not a project designed to establish a new canon, nor are our volumes intended to be encyclopedic in scope. The series is not entitled ‘The Greatest Shakespeareans’ nor is it ‘Some Great Shakespeareans’, but it will, we hope,



Series Editors’ Preface

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be seen as negotiating and occupying a space mid-way along the spectrum of inclusivity and arbitrariness. Our contributors have been asked to describe the double impact of Shakespeare on their particular figure and of their figure on the understanding, interpretation and appreciation of Shakespeare, as well as providing a sketch of their subject’s intellectual and professional biography and an account of the wider context within which her/his work might be understood. This ‘context’ will vary widely from case to case and, at times, a single ‘Great Shakespearean’ is asked to stand as a way of grasping a large domain. In the case of Britten, for example, he is the window through which other composers and works in the English musical tradition like Vaughan Williams, Walton and Tippett have a place. So, too, Dryden has been the means for considering the beginnings of critical analysis of the plays as well as of the ways in which Shakespeare’s plays influenced Dryden’s own practice. To enable our contributors to achieve what we have asked of them, we have taken the unusual step of enabling them to write at length. Our volumes do not contain brief entries of the kind that a Shakespeare Encyclopedia would include nor the standard article length of academic journals and Shakespeare Companions. With no more than four Great Shakespeareans per volume – and as few as two in the case of volume 10 – our contributors have space to present their figures more substantially and, we trust, more engagingly. Each volume has a brief introduction by the volume editor and a section of further reading. We hope the volumes will appeal to those who already know the accomplishment of a particular Great Shakespearean and to those trying to find a way into seeing how Shakespeare has affected a particular poet as well as how that poet has changed forever our appreciation of Shakespeare. Above all, we hope Great Shakespeareans will help our readers to think afresh about what Shakespeare has meant to our cultures, and about how and why, in such differing ways across the globe and across the last four centuries and more, they have changed what his writing has meant. Peter Holland and Adrian Poole

Acknowledgements

The cost of rights, permissions, illustrations, and publication was underwritten in part by a Research Opportunity Grant from the School of Arts and Sciences of the University of Pennsylvania, for which the editor is grateful. The writings of Granville Barker are quoted by permission of The Society of Authors.

Notes on Contributors

Cary M. Mazer is Associate Professor of Theatre Arts and English at the University of Pennsylvania, where for many years he chaired the undergraduate Theatre Arts Program. He is author of Shakespeare Refashioned: Elizabethan Plays on Edwardian Stages, and numerous articles on Victorian and Edwardian drama and theatre, Shakespeare performance history, dramaturgy, rehearsal, and twentieth- and twenty-first-century Shakespearean acting. He is also the author of an as-yet unpublished memoir about dramaturgy and adoption, Shylock’s Beard, and an as-yet unperformed play, Pinchas Vontz, a free adaptation of Ibsen’s Peer Gynt. Marion O’Connor is Reader in English at the University of Kent. She has published extensively in Shakespeare reception studies, with particular reference to theatrical reconstructions and dramatic revivals. Her publications also include editions, from manuscript, of Rachel Fane’s 1627 MayDay masque (in ELR, 2006) and of The Witch for The Collected Works of Thomas Middleton (Oxford University Press, 2007). Having edited The Court Beggar and The Queen’s Exchange for the online Collected Plays of Richard Brome (2010, at http://www.hrionline.ac.uk/brome), she is now editing A Woman Killed with Kindness and The Wise Woman of Hoxton for the Oxford University Press Collected Works of Thomas Heywood. A co-editor of Theatre Notebook from 1997 to 2009, she is currently General Editor of Society for Theatre Research Publications. Paul Prescott is Associate Professor of English at the University of Warwick, a trustee of the British Shakespeare Association and a teaching associate of the Royal Shakespeare Company. He is the author of Reviewing Shakespeare: Journalism and Performance from the Eighteenth Century to the Present (Cambridge 2013), Shakespeare Handbooks: Richard III (Palgrave 2006), and has co-edited and contributed to three collections dedicated to the theory and practice of Shakespearean theatre criticism, the latest of which is A Year of Shakespeare: Reliving the World Shakespeare Festival (Arden 2013). He has

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also published on Shakespeare and popular culture, pedagogy, the critical reception of the Globe, and the Shakespearean work of Rory Kinnear and of Cheek by Jowl. He is currently working on two books relating to the appropriation of Shakespeare in the 2012 Olympics and to Shakespeare’s cultural status in contemporary America. Robert Shaughnessy is Professor of Theatre at the University of Kent. He has published widely in the areas of early modern and contemporary drama and performance, and is the author of Representing Shakespeare: England, History and the RSC (1994), The Shakespeare Effect (2002) and The Routledge Guide to William Shakespeare (2011), editor of Shakespeare on Film (1998) and The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Popular Culture (2007), and co-editor of the volume on Margaret Woffington in the Lives of Shakespearean Actors series. He is currently writing a stage history of As You Like It.

Introduction Cary M. Mazer

The poster design for the 1999 season of the reconstructed Globe Theatre in Southwark – ‘Shakespeare’s Globe’, as the theatre and its resident theatre company are officially designated – features a collage of photographic elements (Figure 1). The main image of the poster, which fills the lower three-fifths, is a low-contrast monochrome photograph taken from the stage, looking through a group of actors out into the open-air auditorium. At the top of the poster, against a red circle (no doubt meant to evoke the ‘wooden O’ of the playhouse), is a slightly out-of-focus image of a cluster of actors in Elizabethan dress, standing stiffly in pumpkin pants, buttoned doublets and high-crowned brimless hats, their hirsute faces whitened. The largest lettering on the poster proclaims the anniversary being celebrated that season: ‘400 YEARS’. Underneath the banner ‘Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre’ are two dates – 1599 and 1999 – set one over the other with a line between them as though they formed a fraction, and the words ‘Anniversary Season’. On the one hand, the proclamation on the poster is accurate: it had been 400 years since the Globe Theatre was built (or rather rebuilt, from the timbers of The Theatre, which the company had dismantled in Shoreditch and carried across the river to Southwark). The first performance at the Globe that is mentioned in a contemporaneous document was a performance of Julius Caesar on 21 September 1599. To mark the date, Shakespeare’s Globe mounted a production of Julius Caesar, which received an anniversary performance during the season’s final week on 21 September. Of course, what the year 1999 was most decidedly not was the theatre’s 400th season. The Globe Theatre burned down in 1613 and was rebuilt, with a tiled roof in place of the flammable thatch, in 1614; the Second Globe was closed in 1642, along with all of the other professional theatres; and the building was razed in 1644. The émigré American actor Sam Wanamaker’s long-held dream of building a working reconstruction of the First Globe was not realised until 1996, three years after his death;

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Image has been removed

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and, after an initial experimental season on a temporary stage fitted into the playhouse’s open-air yard in the summer of 1996, the company did not present its first full season in the completed theatre until 1997. So the 1999 season, celebrating the 400th anniversary of the first recorded performance in the original Globe, was, by the most generous standards of calculation, not the theatre’s 400th season but its 46th season in three buildings, interrupted by a 354-year hiatus. I quibble, I admit. But what interests me most about the poster is not its accuracy but its imagery. The deliberate blurriness of the background image, the slightly out-of-focus photo of the actors, the low-contrast monochrome tones against a beige background, all give it the impression of an old sepia photograph; and the posture, hats and moustaches of the actors vaguely suggest Mack Sennett’s Keystone Cops. And so the overall image invokes early photography, and the image of the actors suggests early cinema. ‘We have been here longer than just three years’, the poster proclaims. And if more than three years, then why not 400? The poster offers the disingenuous and counter-factual suggestion that the photograph itself is 400 years old, notwithstanding that photography was not invented until the nineteenth century; and the poster further hints at the possibility that, for all we know, there exists in some unexamined cinematic archive several blurry hand-cranked silent one-reelers of Richard Tarleton and his cohorts in actual performance. The sepia tones and funny costumes suggest that things are both old and strange and quaint and at the same time somehow knowable, recoverable and documentable, that there are continuities that enable the past to be felt and re-experienced. Come to Shakespeare’s Globe, the poster seems to promise, and, like Buster Keaton in Sherlock, Jr., you too can step into the silent movie. Much can – and has – been said about the bogus historicity of the reconstructed ‘Shakespeare’s Globe’, not all of which should be laid at the feet of its founder Sam Wanamaker, as Paul Prescott demonstrates in his essay in this volume. But what is operating here, in this poster, is an assertion about the role of history in contemporary performance, about the dynamic relationship between old scripts and contemporary performance, about the theatregoer’s sense of historical continuity and difference, and the way theatregoers invest stage and auditorium architecture with both functionality and meaning. The four figures in this volume of the ‘Great Shakespeareans’ series all stand in complex relation to these issues, which lie at the centre of any new performance made from an old script. The obvious point in common among the four is their advocacy of ‘open’ stages: non-frontal playing spaces, with audiences on three or four sides of

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the playing area instead of being separated from it by the proscenium arch. William Poel (1852–1934) created scenic reproductions of early modern stages in order to stage the plays under original performance conditions, and staged Twelfth Night in 1897 in the great hall in Middle Temple, where it had originally been performed. H. Granville Barker (1877–1946) mounted three astonishing Shakespeare productions on an apron stage in 1912 and 1914. Tyrone Guthrie (1900–71), who first thrust a production out onto the open stage almost by accident, in the last decades of his long career installed open stages with permanent architectural features into the purposebuilt homes of the repertory theatres he created in two different cities. And Sam Wanamaker (1919–93) fought indefatigably to reconstruct the Globe on the South Bank, not as a museum but as a working theatre. All four of these theatre artist/polemicists have attained heroic stature in their advocacy of open stages, garnering homeric epithets and fomenting creation myths around their work: Poel for his putative impracticality and his quasimysticism; Barker for his infamous premature retirement from active theatre work; Guthrie for the famous incident in 1937 (interrogated by Robert Shaughnessy in his book, The Shakespeare Effect, and in his essay here) when his end-staged open-air production of Hamlet at Helsingor Castle, forced by torrential rains to move into a hotel ballroom, was hastily reworked as theatre-in-the-round; and Wanamaker, for his pilgrimage to the site of the original Globe in 1949 where, disappointed in finding only a soot-blackened plaque on the walls of a brewery, he found his true calling instead. Together, all four have been canonized as central figures in the great creation myth of ‘stage-centred’ Shakespearean scholarship and stage practice, especially now that the open stages of the Olivier (at the National Theatre), the Swan and the reconfigured Royal Shakespeare Theatre (both at Stratford-upon-Avon) have joined the Festival Theatre at Stratford Ontario (founded by Guthrie) and the Chichester Festival Theatre as functioning open-stage playhouses. Like the disingenuous ‘Anniversary Season’ poster for Shakespeare’s Globe, there is, in the advocacy of open stages by the four ‘Great Shakespeareans’ in this volume, the suggestion that centuries can be bridged, that the past can be made present. Stage a 400-year-old play on a stage that replicates the spatial dynamics, the staging conventions and the actor-audience relationship of the playhouse for which it was written, and something inherent to the play itself will be made manifest. The past can be recaptured, the distance of time can be bridged, that which is most evanescent about the play – the performance itself – can be re-experienced, if only glimpsed in intermittent flashes, much as we riffle through a pile of old sepia photographs or watch the flickering images of a silent movie.

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But something more complex is going on with all four figures. For starters, it is not a coincidence that all four of these Shakespeareans – even the antiquarian Poel, and Wanamaker, ever eager to exploit the British ‘heritage’ industry – were political progressives. The guild socialist Poel preferred to be viewed as a visionary rather than as a reactionary; when he was told that a fund had been created to have a portrait of him painted, he chose to be represented as the mystical and otherworldly defrocked priest, Keegan, in Shaw’s John Bull’s Other Island. Barker, long a Fabian Socialist and fellow-traveller of suffragists, spent more time in his years actively involved in the theatre producing the advanced post-Ibsenite ‘New Drama’ than in producing Shakespeare, and was a lifelong advocate of an endowed and subsidized National Theatre. Guthrie, after decades shuttling between the commercial West End theatres and Lilian Baylis’s Old Vic, spent the final decades of his life creating institutional theatres of his own. And Wanamaker, emigrating to England to avoid a subpoena to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee and his inevitable blacklisting, persistently invoked his leftist credentials, even in the face of Southwark residents fearing for the gentrification of their neighbourhood. Both Barker’s and Guthrie’s Shakespearean work was identified by contemporary critics as Modernist. And the case can be made for all four (more strenuously, perhaps, in the cases of Poel and Wanamaker) that the act of reconstructing early modern playhouse architecture – or at the very least replicating its essential qualities and performing Shakespeare’s plays according to early modern conventions of staging and acting – is a progressive act, not an act of recapturing the old (like the suggestion of nineteenth-century photography in the Shakespeare’s Globe poster) but a way of understanding how to create the new. To assert that the plays’ theatrical energies can best be unleashed by staging the plays according to the playwright’s theatrical vocabulary is to suggest that the act of theatre­ making itself is inseparable from the social function of theatregoing, from the material and institutions circumstances within which the theatre event takes place, and from the politics of theatrical spectatorship. Restore the theatrical dynamics of the plays and you can recapture – or, better yet, create anew, and in new ways – the communal act of performance and reception embedded in the playscript. Better yet, change the institutional and material conditions by which plays are written and theatre is made now and you can forge a new aesthetic, social and political relationship, within which the centuries-old plays can do the necessary work of the theatre today. Such a set of beliefs might be flawed, over-invested in a faith in the playwright’s authority and – however much it lifts the play out of the

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realm of literature and into the arena of theatrical contingency – too trusting of stable notions of a ‘text’. The ‘Shakespearean’ essence that each thought they were recapturing in their Shakespeare productions, stages and playhouses may be illusory, a 1999 photograph masquerading as a nineteenth-century daguerreotype pretending to be an image from the end of the sixteenth century. And their faith in institutions as the path to salvation might be chimerical, as the new theatres that are created to evade the hegemonic power of commerce run the risk of becoming instruments of cultural hegemony of their own. But their work is no any less political for being all that. Just as all four of these ‘Great Shakespeareans’ viewed the plays in performance as enmeshed in the social and historical dynamics of theatremaking and theatregoing, so too the four contributors to this volume view the four artist-advocatepolemicists – all ‘cultural entrepreneurs’, as Prescott labels Wanamaker – as enmeshed in the dynamics of their respective (if overlapping) historical moments. Like the 1999 Shakespeare’s Globe poster, which, while disingenuously creating a sense of unbroken continuity with 1599, ends up telling us more about 1999 instead, these four artists, in their works and their jeremiads, ultimately (and usefully) reveal more about themselves and the theatres of their time than they do about Shakespeare.

Chapter 1

William Poel Marion O’Connor

‘Throughout Robert Speaight’s fine biography of Poel’, writes one popular theatrical biographer, alluding to Speaight’s 1954 William Poel and the Elizabethan Revival,1 ‘the impression of the outsider, the solitary worker, the lonely revolutionary standing aside from the mainstream of accepted thought and practice, is endorsed.’2 Speaight got that impression directly from William Poel (1852–1934) himself, for whom the actor/biographer played Arruntius in Ben Jonson’s Sejanus in 1928 and then, in 1930, the title role in Coriolanus, Poel’s final Shakespearean production. Many others had received the same impression. From the beginning of his long career, Poel had entertained and imparted an image of himself as unique and solitary David battling against massed armies of Goliaths. On Saturday 17 July 1878, five days before his 26th birthday, he recorded his experience of an acting lesson, the second of four with Edward Stirling [Lambert] at the Drury Lane Theatre. Stirling had half a century of professional theatre behind him, but if his pupil’s account is accurate, the veteran had something to learn from this novice: Went to Mr. Stirling and read through Shylock with him. He evidently was not prepared for my conception of the part. His ideas being thoroughly conventional I don’t know whether he appreciated or despised my efforts though I think my passion impressed him. At any rate the truth was forced upon me that it is useless to communicate one’s ideas to professionals, but that one must fight resolutely against their sneers and trust alone to the decision of the public.3 The journal, which Poel kept from 1 February 1874 until 6 August 1878, is packed with such posturing. One entry, the diarist’s dialogue with himself, out-Hamlets Hamlet:

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Poel, Granville Barker, Guthrie, Wanamaker [Sunday] November 8th 1874. Last night I went to see “Hamlet” at the Lyceum with Mr Irving as the Prince of Denmark, but more of this another time. That’s right, leave till tomorrow what may be done today. Here is one of the many stones over which you must drag your weary body through life. Well, but today I have been reading the play over line for line, word for word. Oh, how pleasantly the hours slipped by. I felt as if I was away somewhere in some strange place, with everything new about. I was listening to people talking, and watching their movements, admiring and wondering.4

Hamlet without Horatio, Don Quixote sans Sancho Panza, the Lone Ranger on Tonto’s day off, Poel was a controversialist and a contrarian, defining himself and his projects by opposition to the status quo: whatever was, was wrong, and he was right. The conviction did not dim with age. In his 70th year, he wrote: My […] profession […] would hang me if they could, and nobody likes me because I am so uncompromising. This does not mean that I am a soured man, or a cynic, or an illnatured critic. But I was not born to live in a corrupt age, and when I see all those about me selling their immortal souls for the pure love of silver, I suppose I cannot conceal my disgust and that makes me unpopular.5 This self-characterization occurs in a letter written by Poel late in 1921 to his nephew Reginald Pole in America, who was trying to establish himself there as an actor, or perhaps, faute de mieux, a teacher of acting. He had adopted his uncle’s surname for professional use because They have got so ruined out here over the difference in spelling your name and mine, and I have got so tired explaining, that I have now let them keep the Poel on the programme, which they did at first by mistake; I promise you however I am not disgracing your name!6 Some of Uncle William’s response is lost because the letter communicating it has been torn across; but his rejection of the nominal change is evident in what remains, and it is anything but avuncular in tone. William Poel protested against the use of his surname on a programme for a play ‘with which I would not have associated my name however large [a] salary had been offered me’.7 He also vetoed Reginald’s plans to adopt that surname in order to set himself up as a teacher, ostensibly of his uncle’s methods



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but actually ‘to discuss subjects in lectures that do not come into my curriculum at all’. Whatever Reginald’s protestations, William Poel thought his name was being disgraced. Family history was repeating itself. William Poel had been christened with the name of his father, William Pole, a Victorian polymath. Successful as both a practitioner and a professor of civil engineering, William Pole Sr. was at least equally distinguished in his avocations – music (in which he earned two Oxford University degrees in his middle age) and whist (on which he published ten books). His third son, despite bearing his name, jumped off the career track on which the paternal hand had set him. After some amateur theatrical appearances in London, young William Pole abandoned employment in the engineering firm Lucas Bros. and adopted the stage as his profession. This redirection happened by fits and starts, but it was definitively signalled by a change of surname. The William Pole who in the winter of 1875–6 gave Shakespearean readings at a London parish hall near his parents’ home became the William Poel who was part of a small fit-up company touring Yorkshire two years later. His initial adoption of a stage name is usually ascribed to typographical error on a theatrical playbill, and his lifelong retention of the orthographical change is sometimes deemed to have been in deference to paternal feeling. No firm evidence has been found to confirm either causal explanation, but there is no doubt about the father’s opinion of his son’s profession. Near the conclusion of his memoirs, dated on his own eighty-third birthday, William Pole wrote: ‘Two of my sons have made for themselves useful positions in the world.’8 He then summarized the achievements of his eldest and second sons, George Henry (an engineer turned Anglican missionary) and Mark (a maths instructor turned schools inspector). Of his youngest son and namesake, now forty-five years old, nothing is noted, not even the fact of his existence, not at this point, nor anywhere else in the memoirs as published. The paternal silence is so complete that it can only signify contempt for the third son’s position in the world. Obituary, however, would soon fill in the gap in autobiography. The day after William Pole Sr. died, The Times concluded its account of his life with the following sentence: ‘Mr Pole’s son is well known under his stage name of Mr. William Poel in connexion with the Elizabethan Stage Society.’9 Throughout the very long career of Mr. William Poel, ‘Mr Pole’s son’ may have been trying to justify that career to his father – not so much to earn approval as an individual, but rather to win an argument about the usefulness of what he had chosen to do. This hypothesis is as unverifiable as any psychological explanation, but it goes

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some way to account for William Poel’s obsession with justifying his professional choices, his avoidance of admissions of error, his insistence upon having the last word, and his demands for brim-full credit. If ‘Mr Pole’s son’ was engaged in any such lifelong argument with his father, he lost one strand of it: William Poel was a failure as an actor. Near the end of his life, he consented to the painting of his portrait, provided that it showed him in his one unqualifiedly successful role – Peter Keegan in George Bernard Shaw’s John Bull’s Other Island (1904). Taking over the part from Harley Granville Barker for the Royal Court Theatre revival in 1906 (and again in 1909 and 1912), Poel had been instructed by Shaw that he must not ‘make any attempt to act Keegan’, and that he need not make up nor wear a wig nor even change his coat ‘(provided its a longish black one)’.10 The point of closest coincidence between performer and part was remarked by Henry Tonks, the painter of Poel’s portrait, who told his subject that he had found ‘the moment in the play when he [Keegan] seems to sum up his essentials and […] some of yours [Poel’s] – that is, when he is talking to the grasshopper’.11 That moment, Keegan’s first appearance in the play, was an apt choice, of which Poel readily approved. Thus the portrait, which is now in the National Portrait Gallery, London, represents Keegan/Poel in conversation with an invisible being, one that other characters (and the audience) may hear, but only he truly understands. Keegan spoke with Caloptenus spretus, Poel with William Shakespeare. Yet Poel did not work in solitude. Thirty years after his death he was still being remembered on his own terms as ‘the lonely figure of William Poel. Lonely, because he is impossible to place, save on the bleak eminence he chose.’12 Research in recent decades has made it quite possible to place Poel elsewhere – or rather, and more accurately, to illuminate the field in which he stands and to fill in some of the blank space around him. In this essay I am concerned to commit Poel with his peers, to reframe the lonely figure by altering the angle from which, and adjusting the focus through which, it is perceived. I will therefore be presenting Poel’s career in relation to the successive groups that sustained his work and circulated his ideas: the New Shakspere Society; the Shakespeare Reading Society; the Elizabethan Stage Society; the London Shakespeare League; and the Elizabethan Stage Circle. The memberships of these societies overlapped with each other to a great extent, and there was some continuity in the causes they promoted, one cause especially – the nation’s need for a national theatre. The form and content of this desideratum changed across time and differed from proponent to proponent; but that an English National Theatre would



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perforce give central place to performances of Shakespeare’s plays was an expectation articulated by Effingham Wilson in 1848, by Matthew Arnold in 1879, and by various successors for another century.13 Arnold’s proposal was made in the early years of Poel’s professional career, and Arnold’s influence upon Poel – among many others – is obvious. Writing at a time of expansion and gentrification for London theatre, Arnold noticed the return after two centuries of absence of the British middle class to the theatre, where, he complained, they were finding ‘no modern English drama at all except a fantastical one’.14 Arnold ascribed this dramatic deficiency to theatrical disorganization, to the laissez-faire economics of the stage once the 1843 Theatres Act had removed the monopoly held by ‘the patent theatres, with their exclusive privilege of acting Shakespeare’.15 Arnold’s essay is most often cited just for its final exhortation – ‘The theatre is irresistible; organise the theatre!’ – and the means of remedial organization that he recommended tend to be overlooked. By way of instructive contrast with the defects that he discerned in the West End, Arnold held up the recent (June/July 1879) visit to London of the Comédie Française: in six weeks at the Gaiety Theatre, the French company had presented forty-two plays, of which sixteen were by classical French dramatists while twenty-six were by modern ones. Moreover, although the company included Sarah Bernhardt, the French actors had dazzled as an ensemble. Presenting the organization of the Comédie Française as a model, Arnold imagined a permanent company of actors with a West End Theatre subsidized by a grant from the government, performing Shakespeare and plays from the standard repertoire, playing in repertory alongside of new plays, with an affiliated school and regional satellite companies. ‘So’, he wrote, ‘you will restore the English theatre. And then a modern drama of your own will also, probably, spring up amongst you.’16 Arnold did not live to see the return of the Comédie Française to London in June/July 1893, when they secured neither the audiences nor the acclaim of their earlier visit. This time the visitors played at the Drury Lane Theatre, where seating capacity was between two and three times that of the Gaiety. Bernhardt had left the Comédie Française, so the company lacked the star attraction of 1879, and the Drury Lane management required them to offer a more enticing and less demanding bill of fare: fewer plays (twenty-nine instead of forty-two), with a lower proportion of classical drama (21 per cent instead of 38 per cent). Poel used the occasion of the Comédie Française’s return visit to articulate his own version of Arnold’s call for a national theatre. Chiding the company for having

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entered into an arrangement that brought them down to the level of a London commercial playhouse, he wrote: [A] National Theatre cannot pay as a commercial concern. […] The theatre that is to be an institution for training the weak intellects and weak susceptibilities of its audience cannot flourish financially except with the assistance of a subvention or of voluntary contributions.17 That Poel assumed Arnold’s notions of high culture as a force for moral and intellectual improvement is evident, as are their shared convictions that since such culture was a matter of the common good, the provision of it was a collective responsibility. There were, however, differences between their respective models for a national theatre. Arnold proposed to give his national theatre a repertory of Shakespearean and other British drama in order to enable the writing of new English drama. For Poel, however, ‘the policy of a National Theatre should be conservative more than progressive, and ever watchful that the realistic does not supersede the poetical. […] The extravagance of realism […] is […] only perverse sentimentality […] in comparison with which the sentiment of Shakespeare is truly refreshing and inspiring.’ Poel’s national theatre was to be a dramatic museum, Arnold’s a dramatic nursery. The question of relative emphasis between old drama and new would recur in debates over the national theatre. On this topic, among others, Poel remained committed to the old drama, as long as it was staged according to his interpretation of the old theatre.

The New Shakspere Society The first society to give Poel a platform was the New Shakspere Society, one of a string of more or less learned groups established by Frederick J. Furnivall. According to Furnivall’s prospectus for the foundation of this society in 1874, its ‘main work [was to] be done as in ordinary Literary and Scientific Societies, by Meetings, Papers and Discussions: the papers being shorter, and the discussions much fuller, than in other bodies’.18 In October 1880 Furnivall received a letter asking whether a paper on acting editions of Shakespeare would be acceptable to the New Shakspere Society. The offer did not come from a member of the society but from William Poel. In the four and a half years since he had abandoned civil engineering for the theatre, Poel had not been over-employed in his new profession.



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His acting engagements had been infrequent and most of the time they had been far outside London. He had also had two short plays of his own – one an adaptation from the German and the other a dramatization of an English translation of Don Quixote – given a single private performance at a newly decommissioned theatre in the capital. He was now 28 years old. Poel’s letter to Furnivall, however, speaks with the assurance of a veteran claiming theatrical experience and textual intimacy with the mind of William Shakespeare: It has often occurred to me that it would be of some little advantage to our profession if some public notice was taken of the insufficiency of our acting editions. We have two editions in use now – Lacy’s and Cumberland’s. Both are inaccurate and in places misrepresent Shakespeare’s intention as shown by the text.19 His offer accepted, Poel read a paper on ‘Acting Editions of Shakespeare’s plays’ to the New Shakspere Society on 10 June 1881 and published it in The Era, the theatrical trade paper, on 2 July 1881. Before then, however, Poel had made, and Furnivall had accepted, another offer, one based upon the society’s own work. In addition to meetings, papers and discussions, the New Shakspere Society sustained an ambitious programme of publication, into which went the bulk of income from membership subscriptions.20 In 1880, with eight separate series already under way, the New Shakspere Society introduced another, its Shakspere-Quarto Facsimiles. The first two titles to appear in this relatively inexpensive series of photolithographic reproductions were the First and Second Quartos of Hamlet. Examination of these facsimiles gave Poel reason to write again to Furnivall on 1 February 1881: In preparing my paper on ‘Our Acting Editions of Shakespeare’ to be read to your Society in June next, I found it necessary, with the play of Hamlet, to examine the two quartos (1603 and 1604). Fortunately I was able to do this without difficulty owing to your most valuable publication of the Facsimiles. If to the literary student the Quarto of 1604 has the chief interest, I feel sure that to an actor the Quarto of 1603 has an equal interest, because however misrepresented the text may be, the actor cannot help recognising that the Editor has endeavoured to reproduce the play as he saw it represented and therefore in the arrangement of the scenes, the stage directions, the omissions, and the alterations, there is much to guide and instruct him in the stage representation of the play as

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it appeared in Shakespeare’s time. There was so much that was new and interesting to me, from a dramatic point of view, in the first Quarto, that I could not help thinking, if the printer’s blunders could be corrected, a performance of the [first] Quarto might be of some interest to students. […] My idea would be to have it played by amateurs so as to avoid much expense, and if it was thought the performance would excite any interest to make it a public one.21 The eventual performance was indeed a public one, given on 16 April 1881 at St George’s Hall near Oxford Circus, and it did excite considerable interest. The interest was at first literary rather than theatrical. Reviewers – and they were numerous – were preoccupied by the 1603 text, over which debate continued for some weeks. Poel’s mise-en-scène aroused rather less journalistic excitement at the time of the performance and occasioned no further debate in the press: the interest excited by it would be retrospective. Within twenty years, Poel was presenting his 1881 staging of the First Quarto of Hamlet as the terminus a quo in narratives of his own work, and theatre historians have taken their cues from his account.22 Poel’s promptbook, an interleaved copy of the New Shakspere Society facsimile of the First Quarto, is extant. Thanks to the abundance of reviews and the survival of the promptbook, which contains stage plans for three scenes, a fairly full reconstruction of the performance is possible. As regards Shakespearean production in late-nineteenth-century London, Poel’s relative innovations were: a virtually bare stage surrounded by screens that were covered in red curtains, with entrances/exits upstage, through an opening at the centre of the surround, and to either side, where the surround met the proscenium arch; Elizabethan costumes, some (such as the nightgown worn by the Ghost of Old Hamlet for his second appearance) cued by text; sound effects only as cued by text; and rapid delivery of lines (notably by Poel, whose rendition of the title role was almost unanimously condemned for vocal eccentricities). Its continuities with contemporary stage practice included: two intervals; raising/dropping of curtains for six changes of the minimal set; lighting effects (such as lowering the gas for the entrance of the Ghost and raising it for Horatio’s announcement of the approach of dawn); and textual cuts, made by Furnivall, apparently in accordance with Victorian decency. The performance of the First Quarto of Hamlet at St George’s Hall was unusual for the New Shakspere Society, whose collective taste in live entertainment ran to musical concerts. One of these annual events was memorably slated in The Dramatic Review by a New Shakspere Society



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member, George Bernard Shaw, who declared himself to have been appalled by the effect of letting loose a scratch trio of second- or third-rate ballad concert professionals once a year upon contemporary settings of Shakespear [sic] for the edification of a purely literary and antiquarian society. At the occasion in question, a madrigal by Weelkes, an unusually beautiful and interesting specimen of the music for which England was once famous, was murdered in an indescribable manner. However, it mattered but little. Shakespear, fortunately for himself, was dead; and the new Shakspereans revelled in the frightful cacophony which they innocently supposed to be XVI century quaintness. Their eyes sparkled with delight at mis-tuned dissonances that wrung groans from the writhing Dramatic Reviewer.23 After the experiment with the First Quarto of Hamlet in April 1881, Poel staged no further theatrical productions under the auspices of the New Shakspere Society; but he did join the society, his membership being announced at the meeting on Friday 11 November 1881.24 The society’s Transactions show Poel to have made his presence felt, and his opinions heard, across the 1880s. Regrettably, the record does not indicate whether he attended either the meeting in February 1884, when a paper written by Shaw on Troilus and Cressida was read out, or the meeting in November 1888, when Henry Wheatley spoke on the recent rediscovery of the so-called DeWitt drawing of the Swan Theatre as it had appeared to a German tourist in 1596. The New Shakspere Society lasted until 1894. Elected to the management committee of the society in January 1886, Poel gave papers and made responses to papers given by other members. From these it is clear that he never adopted the quasi-scientific mode of scholarship associated with the society, particularly in attribution studies. Where others tallied metrical endings, Poel invoked ‘rhythm’ and ‘dramatic interest’: throughout his life, these would be the litmus tests by which he recognized Shakespeare’s hand in a text and thereby justified his construing that text to have been informed by Shakespeare’s intention. In a literary society, moreover, Poel remained stage-centred, as he had been in his initial address to its members: the object of my paper on the 10th June [1881] is to try and enlist the sympathies of the New Shakspere Society to obtain a more faithful

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representation of Shakespeare’s plays upon the stage, which is the cause I have at heart.25 He secured long-term support for this cause from individual New Shakspere Society members, most notably Shaw, and these connections would work to his advantage. Poel does not, however, appear to have altered, nor even inflected, the society’s collective agenda. As Poel wrote in posthumous tribute, Furnivall ‘was not altogether in sympathy with my notions about Shaksperian representation, and I believe, in the bottom of his heart, he thought me rather a crank’.26 Poel later pointed to a fundamental incompatibility of opinion: ‘Furnivall hated make-believe, and all the art of the theatre consists of make-believe.’27 Nevertheless, Poel’s personal, and evidently mutual, loyalty to Furnivall endured until the elder man’s death in 1910. A further benefit that Poel got from the New Shakspere Society was an alternative education such as he would never have received at Oxford or Cambridge. He could not have studied Shakespeare’s work at either: although English literature was being studied in London at the rival metropolitan colleges (King’s in the Strand and University in Gower Street) and at various working-men’s institutions in the East End, it did not yet figure on the curricula of the ancient universities, where undergraduates were assumed to have assimilated it as part of their formation as gentlemen. Membership of the New Shakspere Society, however, put Poel at the cutting edge of serious engagement with Shakespearean and other early English drama: note the society’s publication of the news of the rediscovery of the DeWitt drawing. No longer inscribing his ideas about Shakespeare in a private journal, he addressed them to a learned group, one that included some formidable interlocutors. Poel went on to face wider audiences from at latest 1886, the year of his election to the Committee of the New Shakspere Society, when he chaired a debate before the Elizabethan Society, opened by William Archer on the question, ‘Is a State Theatre (or an Endowed Theatre) possible or desirable in England?’. Poel would be giving and chairing public lectures until the last years of his life. An intermittent source of a small income, lecturing enabled Poel to disseminate his ideas – both in person ‘on the night’ and then in lengthy press reports – and to court controversy. The gossip columnist in The Era sniffed at a point Poel made in an 1892 lecture and expressed the ‘hope that the Elizabethan Society, to whom Mr Poel made his assertion, did not allow it to pass unreproved’.28 The audience is noteworthy: the Elizabethan Society, founded in 1884, was a working-men’s



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reading group. Poel’s involvement with the New Shakspere Society had given him direct exposure to Furnivall’s notions of cultural democracy: ‘Furnivall,’ wrote Poel was the first man I knew who fought the battle for recognition of equality of brains, irrespective of those academic distinctions which only money can obtain. [John] Ruskin was upholding the same kind of doctrine in a superior kind of way […] and Henry Morley, in his efforts to popularize English literature […] did good service. […] [Furnivall’s] face was always turned towards those who had nothing to give, and his back to wealth and patronage. […] He taught me to be fearless and independent in my search after truth.29 Within months of making Furnivall’s acquaintance, Poel began work at the Royal Victorian Coffee Music Hall (the “Old Vic”), recently [re-]opened in the Waterloo Road by Emma Cons and a committee of philanthropists. By his own account, Poel went to Cons in search of an acting job but found himself hired to stage-manage. He was responsible for organizing entertainments that were intended to entice the working-class residents of Lambeth away from the alcoholic temptations of the regular music halls. Poel’s employment at the Old Vic lasted a little over two years and ended late in 1883 – fully thirty years before that theatre began giving place to those low-budget productions of Shakespeare which brought in higher-class audiences than those whom Cons had tried to distract from drink. Poel’s reasons for leaving the Old Vic after just over two years of employment are given in accounts written by him long after the event. From these it appears that his departure was motivated by social despair and professional frustration: experience convinced him that Cons’s temperance ambitions, which he shared, were doomed by economic factors beyond their control; and his recruitment of quality entertainers to the Old Vic stage was blocked by the entertainers’ agents, who objected to performances being given in the Waterloo Road for ticket prices that were 80 per cent below those charged on the other side of the Thames. After leaving the Old Vic, Poel went on the road with Frank Benson. Six years younger than Poel and also from a middle-class background, Benson, unlike Poel, enjoyed the further advantages both of an Oxford education and also of paternal support for – even direct subsidy of – his career choice. Poel, hired to stage-manage the touring company the elder Benson had bought for his son in 1883, remained with the company for only nine months from January 1884. In later years he would evince personal

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admiration for F. R. Benson’s persistence in keeping that company on the road with Shakespearean productions: Benson, wrote Poel in 1916, ‘for thirty years, through storm and stress, has never lowered his flag but has kept constant to his one object of presenting Shakespeare to the people’.30 However, Poel’s professional verdicts on Bensonian performances would be predominantly negative.31 In his speech for a 1919 dinner that he himself had organized to honour Benson, he reminded listeners that ‘for the last thirty years I have been screaming from the housetops […] that there is only one way in which to do justice to Shakespeare’s plays, and that is by acting them in the Elizabethan manner’, and claimed that if Benson had shared his aesthetic, ‘no manager would ever have opened its stage doors to a Benson performance. […] A debased theatrical style becomes familiar to the public from universal use, and a reversion to older and purer types throws managers out.’32

The Shakespeare Reading Society At the same time as he undertook management of the Old Vic in the Waterloo Road, Poel also set himself up as an educator of his own middleclass kind. His classroom was in the Quebec Institute in Portman Square, near the bottom of Baker Street. There, close to the family home in which he was still resident, on Monday afternoons from 7 November 1881, Poel offered a Class […] to study the acting of Shakspere’s Plays. The work of the first session will be confined to Twelfth Night and The Merchant of Venice. To enable Members of the Class to acquire versatility, each lady will be asked to study all the female characters in the two comedies and each gentleman most of the male characters, the rehearsals being continued till the parts have been alternated. This system, it is hoped, will also secure for every part a competent representation, and ensure for the comedies a good ensemble. In order to arrive, as nearly as possible, at the poet’s conception of the characters they will be studied directly from the text, not from any acting edition. […] It is proposed in the Spring of next year to give a performance of one of the Comedies. 33 This advertisement for Poel’s 1881 class bore endorsements from F.W. Burton, Director of the National Gallery; the Shakespearean biographer and scholar Edward Dowden; the novelist George Meredith; and Furnivall,



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who was to contribute to the first session of Poel’s class, as if to a New Shakspere Society meeting, by reading a paper on the set plays, ‘after which there will be a discussion on the criticisms of the best authorities’. The success of this pedagogic project is unknown, but there would be others like it across Poel’s career. One is particularly important because it provided the matrix for Poel’s Shakespearean activities for a decade from 1887. This was the Shakespeare Reading Society, founded in April 1875 by Phoebe Darton. Darton had been among the women whom Morley welcomed as students at University College London, and the society started by her was initially an all-women group. Henry Irving accepted presidency of the Shakespeare Reading Society in 1877, and from 1882 men were admitted to membership, but the society remained under the firm control of its founder and of her friend Sarah Marshall as Honourable Secretary. The activities of the Shakespeare Reading Society were of three kinds: debates and papers, the staple fare of literary societies; monthly readings, which were arranged by and for members; and an annual reading, which was professionally rehearsed across several months before being presented, to the public as well as to members. The usual venue for meetings and monthly readings was Bedford College for Women in York Place, at the north end of Baker Street, but a hall would be hired for the annual rehearsed reading. The third annual reading, in 1887, was rehearsed under the supervision of William Poel, whom Marshall had recruited, possibly after hearing him speak at a meeting of the New Shakspere Society.34 Across his years of activity in the Shakespeare Reading Society, Poel made some gratis contributions – including an appearance as Polonius in Hamlet at Bedford College on 2 May 1890, and supervision of King Lear at the Pioneer Club on 14 December 1893 – to the monthly arranged readings. His principal responsibility, however – the work for which he was paid – was the rehearsal of the annual readings: The Merchant of Venice (1887); Romeo and Juliet (1888); Twelfth Night (1889); Much Ado About Nothing (1890); King Henry V and Measure for Measure (1891); The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1892); Love’s Labour’s Lost (1893); King Richard II (1894); Romeo and Juliet again (1895); Julius Cæsar (1896); The Merchant of Venice again and The Tempest (1897). The list of titles invites pause: with the single exception of Love’s Labour’s Lost, every one of the eleven plays for which Poel rehearsed an annual reading by the Shakespeare Reading Society was one to which he later gave a full production. And over a very long professional career, Poel staged full productions of only fourteen of Shakespeare’s plays: The Comedy of Errors, Coriolanus, Hamlet, King Henry V, King Richard II, Macbeth, Measure for Measure, The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado About Nothing, Romeo and

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Juliet, The Tempest, Troilus and Cressida, Twelfth Night and The Two Gentlemen of Verona.35 His rehearsed readings for the Shakespeare Reading Society can therefore be regarded as early practices for most of Poel’s subsequent productions of Shakespearean plays. The activities of the Shakespeare Reading Society in its early decades are unevenly documented, but once Poel undertook the rehearsing of the annual readings, the records for some of them become increasingly full.36 In 1889, for example, Twelfth Night was the play chosen for the rehearsed reading, which was given on 20 February at the London Institution in Finsbury Circus, repeated on 25 February at St Mark’s Vestry Room in Battersea Rise, Clapham, and then repeated again on 25 March at the People’s Palace in Oxford Street. The promptbook from this reading does not survive, but Darton’s detailed account of it does, together with programmes from the first and third performances and press notices for the first. Paid eight guineas (£8.40) to conduct weekly rehearsals from October to February, Poel doubled the number of rehearsals (but not his own fee) because some reading members were unable to attend on the night of the week he had appointed for rehearsals.37 He recruited a professional actor, F. Rawson Buckley, to read Orsino, and another, Leonard Howard, to read Malvolio: thus co-opted as honorary members of the Shakespeare Reading Society, both performed without fee but accepted a tip of a guinea each. The rest of the cast were ordinary members of the society who had paid extra fees for the linked privileges of regular rehearsal with Poel and then performance before an audience. Darton thought all readers up to their respective tasks except the reader of Sebastian, ‘whose style of elocution had the errors peculiar to Ecclesiastics’, and this clerically afflicted woman was the only reader to be replaced when the reading was repeated at the People’s Palace. Musical accompaniment, which backed the reading, also changed from one performance to another. The harpist remained the same, but the pianist was replaced by an organist; and at the final venue, ‘the sounds of a violin playing in an adjacent Hall though not unpleasant, rather drowned the Harp’.38 Darton’s appraisals of her society’s readers are far more instructive, and less merciful, than the reviewers’ pronouncements, which, The Stage excepted, run to banalities. However, when one reviewer of the reading of Twelfth Night on 20 February 1889 turned his attention to the audience, he recorded a memorable vignette of some of the 600 people in attendance: the lecture theatre at the London Institution was glorious with flowers and “indispensable evening dress”. […] In the focus of the semicircle of



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readers sat Mr William Poel, the master spirit and conductor of the recital. On his right appeared the “Corno di Bassetto”, deep in Shaksperean thought, and looking every inch an Italian noble. On Poel’s left Mr. Frederick Wedmore made studies for his forthcoming monograph on Edmund Kean. At the back of the stage Dr J.T. [sic] Furnivall looked delightedly over Olivia’s head, and was confidently supposed by the foreigners present to be the divine William in person. The success of the reading showed how possible it is to enjoy a poetic drama without the intervention of the theatre proprietor and stage manager.39 Frederick Wedmore, at this time art critic for The Standard, would review Poel’s play Equality Jack in The Athenæum. ‘Corno di Bassetto’ is the pseudonym under which Shaw was writing music criticism for The Star in 1889. A year later, on the verge of moving to The World, Shaw sang the praises of Poel for ‘devoting himself to making ordinary people get up readings of Shakespear’: I have no doubt that the first-nighters who imagine that the way to be in everything in London is to keep outside everything will not condescend to encourage Mr Poel’s achievement, since the human material with which he works is necessarily rather green. The more reason for an ordinary person like myself to avow that from these simple recitals, without cuts, waits of scenery, and therefore without those departures from the conditions contemplated by the poet which are inevitable in a modern theatre, I learn a good deal about the plays which I could learn in no other way. What is more, I enjoy myself, which is not invariably my experience in the more commercial atmosphere of the West End theatre.40 The Shakespeare Reading Society gave Poel an ongoing series of fairly low-risk occasions to develop his skills, and build a reputation, as a producer of Shakespearean drama. The situation suited him perfectly, and by 1889 he had been designated a lifetime member of the Shakespeare Reading Society. The rehearsed readings amounted to an annual showcase, complete with sympathetic audiences to whom Poel demonstrated his ideas about Shakespearean performance and thereby earned himself a name in late-Victorian alternative theatre. This early attention to public readings of Shakespeare is of long-term significance for Poel: the aural dimension of performance preoccupied him throughout his long career. Even for the first of the annual readings that

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Poel rehearsed for the Shakespeare Reading Society, The Merchant of Venice in February 1887, he was reported to have selected his readers for voices that suited the size of the appointed venue in University College London.41 His prolific pronouncements upon acting often deploy terms that are musical metaphors – notably ‘tunes’, by which ‘most often he seems to have meant something like “inflections”’.42 An American newspaper reporter explained: Each character, as sketched by the dramatist, implies, to him [Poel] a particular type of voice. One may be nasal, another rumbling, and another verging towards falsetto. […] Having caught his actor with the special type of voice required, Mr. Poel […] gives him the “tune”. This is often literally a sing-song which the neophyte must imitate. This tune is to be the keynote for the whole music of the part. And each voice […] is selected not only with reference to the particular character to be played, but also with regard to its relation to the other voices. The play, to Mr. Poel, is above all a symphony of many blending tones.43 A specifically theatrical influence upon Poel’s rehearsal of Shakespeare Reading Society annual readings came from the recitationist Samuel Brandram, whose ‘remarkable memory, which enabled him to carry in his head the whole plays of Shakespeare, was aided by considerable histrionic talent and a well-modulated voice’.44 Brandram not only rattled off the full text of Macbeth (his favourite recitation piece despite being the one he found most difficult to remember) but so varied his intonation as to distinguish even among the voices of the three Witches.45 Brandram had turned to the stage in 1876. Poel, then beginning his own theatrical career, took notice of the older man’s solo recitations. Soon he set out to imitate them: in 1878 and 1879 Poel gave solo recitals, mainly but not solely of Shakespearean texts, in Derbyshire and Yorkshire. The playbill for one recital, a solo reading of ‘Shakspere’s Charming Comedy, The Merchant of Venice’ in April 1879, promises: In the reading of this play Mr Poel will endeavour to portray, orally, the author’s wonderful creations. The dramatic personages will be identified by a distinct voice, so as to define their personal qualities, and by making each character appear a living being, the scenes and incidents will be brought vividly before the mind.46 Even more than variety and vocal differentiation, however, what especially impressed Poel about Brandram was the speed of his delivery of lines. As he told the New Shakspere Society in 1881:



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I can quite understand [Shakespeare’s] long tragedies being played in two and a half hours. Mr Brandram’s excellent recitals have proved to me how much more effective Shakespeare’s lines become when spoken ‘trippingly on the tongue’, and how much more a successful representation of the play depends upon the appropriate rendering of the text than upon the scenic accessories.47 Recycling this paper decades later, Poel revised the estimate of playing time upwards – ‘I believe the longer plays could be acted in three hours’ – but did not modify his high praise of Brandram.48 Within two years of Poel’s employment by the Shakespeare Reading Society, Brandram became one of the society’s Vice-Presidents. Yet where Brandram shone as a solo virtuoso, what Poel sought for the Shakespeare Reading Society was ‘a good ensemble’, such as he had promised to potential students in 1881. For Poel an ensemble was a means to an ulterior, and more abstract, end – the ‘more faithful representation of Shakespeare’s plays upon the stage’. Such was the goal he had announced to the New Shakspere Society, and the Shakespeare Reading Society gave him ample occasion to pursue this relative fidelity. Almost from the time when, in the mid–1870s, he was first stage-struck, Poel had been critically attentive to actors; and in the 1880s, he blamed the textual abuse of Shakespearean drama on the acting practices of the time. As he wrote in 1889, ‘It is […] to the despotism of the actor, on the English stage, and consequently to the star system, that I attribute the mutilation of Shakespeare’s plays in their representation.’49 The star actor reshaped dramatic texts in order both to maximize his own role at the centre of performance and to accommodate theatrically impressive moments, often as the curtain came down. Of Irving’s performance in the title role of King Richard III, Poel noted in 1877: This last representation of Mr. Irving has pretty well satisfied my mind as to the extent of his power. He has a true artistic mind, a great love for completeness in details of scenery and costume and correctness in the small parts. […] He appears to aim at creating an effect by working his scene up to a striking picture upon which the curtain may fall. This is a modern practice that I much dislike as it is sensational and stagey.50 However sensational and stagey, star-centred pictures were one of the drawing cards of late-Victorian commercial West End theatre.

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The 1889 paper in which Poel blamed the mutilation of Shakespearean texts on ‘the despotism of the actor’ also identified another theatrical culprit in the stage carpenter: Shakespeare’s method of dramatic composition, that of uniting a series of short scenes with each other in one dramatic movement, will not bear the elaboration of heavy stage sets, and with the demand for carpentry comes in the necessity for mutilation.51 Along with performances by star actors, elaborate sets were among the principal attractions of late-Victorian commercial theatre. Needing large quantities of time, materials and skilled manpower to make and to manœuvre, such sets represented considerable investments and required efficient use. Older dramatic texts, written for more or less continuous playing on more or less bare stages, were reduced and reordered so as to minimize changes of scenery and maximize spectacle, culminating in memorable images at acts’ ends. Poel was himself responsible for precisely the sort of production that he condemned in his 1889 article. Whereas his condemnation addressed productions of Shakespearean plays, however, this production was of a play by one of Shakespeare’s contemporaries: John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi. Co-directed by Poel and P. M. Berton and performed on 21 and 25 October 1892 at the Opera Comique in the Strand, the production was presented under the auspices of the Independent Theatre, a play-producing society associated with the introduction of Henrik Ibsen’s plays to the London stage. Poel had approached Irving for use of the nearby Lyceum Theatre. Although Irving refused Poel’s request for the loan of this venue, the Lyceum storerooms did provide the decor and most of the dresses used for The Duchess of Malfi. Newspaper sketches suggest that costumes were all-purpose Italian Renaissance, indiscriminate about social status.52 The same sketches show almost nothing of setting, but promptbooks record Poel’s and Berton’s scenic intentions: four sets, representational and illusionistic rather than architectural and indicative. The last, for Act V, was to be: the garden of the Cardinal’s Palace at Milan. A High wall extending across the back of the Stage, with a door C[entre]. On the right of the stage is built a porch with steps leading into Palace. Over the porch a practical Balcony. On the left of the Stage is the cloister of an Abbey partly in ruins. A stone seat is placed under some Cypress trees, downstage l[eft]. Moonlight. The stained glass windows of the Palace are illuminated from inside.53



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As ‘rearranged for the stage by Mr William Poel’, Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi was reduced from nineteen scenes to six, while elaborate sound effects and business were added. For the first of two scenes in the final act, a ‘Choir [was to be] heard singing litany in a distant part of the palace throughout the scene’. The echo that Webster assigns to ten lines of that scene on the page proved in Poel’s promptbook to be just as persistent as the choric background; and in the final moments the echo even returned, cuing a stage picture to which Webster’s last dozen lines were to be sacrificed: Bosola at the sound of the echo gives a slight shudder, makes the sign of the cross. BOSOLA (to DELIO) Farewell. Mine is another voyage. As Bosola is going out guarded the figure of the Duchess is seen between the cypress trees at the back. She is looking sadly towards her son. Music. […] is heard in the distance as the curtain falls. Poel may not have had qualms about rewriting Webster, but at this stage of his career he thought otherwise about Shakespeare. Some Victorian theatre artists, such as the dramatist Henry Arthur Jones, argued that modern audiences and modern playing conditions necessitated rearranging Shakespeare’s dramatic texts: In certain respects Shakespeare’s plays, being written for such wholly different conditions, do need some slight rearrangement and curtailing before they can be made acceptable to a nineteenth-century audience – nay, before they can be presented at all. Will his blindest worshipper assert that, supposing Antony and Cleopatra were to be represented tomorrow, it would be more reverent to Shakespeare to play thirteen scenes in one act, with constant changes and interruptions, and constant noise of carpenters shifting the scenes and properties, than to prune and dovetail the act so that, without altering its drift and main design, the spectators might be allowed some repose and continuity of interest in what is set before them?54 The readings that Poel directed for the Shakespeare Reading Society gave him annual opportunities to demonstrate the counter case. Whether solo or ensemble, readings needed no stage sets at all. On early programmes for Shakespeare Reading Society performances, the list of dramatis personae includes ‘the Scene Shifter’. The scenes, of course, were to be shifted in

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audience imagination rather than anywhere onstage, and the role of the Scene Shifter was to give audible cues to the imagination. Thus in the 1889 rehearsed reading of Twelfth Night, the role of Scene Shifter was taken by a man who, in Darton’s opinion, ‘set an excellent example to all the members by reading with care their enters [sic] and exits’.55 After several years of rehearsing the Shakespeare Reading Society’s annual reading, Poel began to pay more attention to the visual possibilities of the occasion. The transition began in 1891. The rehearsed reading of King Henry V in April of that year was followed in November by a ‘costume recital’ of Measure for Measure, for which Elizabethan outfits were provided by Mays and wigs by Clarkson, leading costumier and perruquier, respectively, of late-Victorian theatre. Although this recital of Measure for Measure lacked material scenery, the role of imaginary Scene Shifter disappeared from the programme, there to be replaced by that of Stage Manager. An extant promptbook, apparently from this 1891 reading, includes positions as well as calls for the curtain to be rung down.56 One reviewer caught the drift: this ‘public “costume recital” [was] in reality a carefully prepared performance’.57 In March 1892 The Two Gentlemen of Verona was given at St James’s Hall as the Shakespeare Reading Society’s annual rehearsed reading; and then, in August, this ‘recital’ turned into a ‘pastoral play’ for presentation at Kingston on Thames in the grounds of the Albany Club. The scene of The Two Gentlemen of Verona outdoors at Kingston was described as ‘the Garden of the Duke’s palace at Milan’ – on which rain fell in a manner so English that the performance had to move indoors. In February 1893 Love’s Labour’s Lost was given at Steinway Hall, but this recital would be quite upstaged in November of that year by a full production of Measure for Measure. The performers for Measure for Measure in 1893 were veterans of the 1891 costume recital, now seconded by additional members of the Shakespeare Reading Society and of two other literary societies (the Sunday Shakespeare Society and the Elizabethan Society) in similar attire, complete with clay pipes. The venue, in Soho’s Dean Street, was a minor West End theatre, the Royalty, wherein the onstage scene was an Elizabethan theatre and the costumed, pipe-smoking supernumeraries were an Elizabethan audience. The approximations of Elizabethan costume were careful, and some were contentious (Figure 2). Thanks to a costuming decision which Poel would be defending to his last years, Isabella did not wear nun’s habit and veil; at her entrance into the play, she wore secular dress, to which a large rosary was added for her subsequent appearances. Angelo (played by Poel himself) and Escalus displayed chains of office over fur-trimmed judicial



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robes. Constable Elbow carried a blunt pitchfork – a ‘catchpole’ – because Poel and Dillon believed such an implement to be not just the epithet for a petty constable, but the equipment carried by one. Pompey wore a dunce’s cap and long coat, skirted like a Tudor schoolboy’s, because Poel discredited that character’s claims to be Mistress Overdone’s tapster and construed him as her domestic fool instead. (On the programme Pompey was listed as simply ‘Clowne’, the speech heading assigned him in the First Folio.58) The construction of Pompey as domestic fool served Poel’s overall interpretative purpose, which he ascribed to Shakespeare’s dramatic intention: ‘the object of the revival […] was to show that the play is a comedy, and that it was so purposed and constructed by Shakespeare.’59 The most conspicuous novelty of the production of Measure for Measure was the transformation of the Royalty’s proscenium stage, and the balconies immediately adjacent to it, into ‘as near a resemblance of the old Fortune Playhouse as a roofed theatre would admit of’.60 The transformation was achieved by means of a ‘fit-up’, a portable stage that could be disassembled into small pieces for storage. It also admitted some adjustment for different proscenium openings. The Royalty’s was only 24 feet wide, and in extant photographs of the production the stage looks to have been

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alarmingly overcrowded. The similarities between simulacrum stage and ‘the old Fortune Playhouse’ were mainly matters of decorative detail as set out in Peter Street’s January 1600 contract to build the (first) Fortune for Philip Henslowe and Edward Alleyn. The general resemblance of the fit-up was to the newly discovered drawing of the Swan Theatre. Moreover, the dimensions and proportions of the fit-up had been determined not by the Elizabethan builder’s contract, nor by the copy of a sketch of an Elizabethan theatre, but by the internal dimensions of the Victorian theatre for which the fit-up was first constructed, particularly the distances between the Royalty’s two tiers of boxes and the stage floor.61 Beginning with this production of Measure for Measure in November 1893 and continuing for a dozen years, Poel had photographs made of some of his work. The photographs were taken for him to use in lectures, which he now began to illustrate by means of slide lantern projections. As the illustrations were offered to prove points propounded by Poel, the photographs – which were evidently taken at photo calls or dress rehearsals – are wonderfully instructive about his staging practices. At a time when most theatrical photography was posed studio work, photographs from Poel’s productions between 1893 and 1905 show costumed actors positioned onstage and as if in performance of a particular dramatic moment. A few studio photographs, probably taken in order to illustrate points about costuming detail, also survive from these years. The visual record of Poel’s productions from 1893 to 1905 can, moreover, be supplemented by reference to a verbal record: the sale catalogue of the costumes and other stage properties that Poel amassed across those dozen years and then put up for auction in July 1905. Wherever a costume description in the catalogue can be matched to a figure in a photograph, the flat black-and-white image acquires texture and colour, sometimes startling: ‘Lot 219. Costume of domestic fool, made for Pompey in Measure for Measure, with yoke and cap, produced in scarlet and yellow.’62

The Elizabethan Stage Society Programmes for the 1893 production of Measure for Measure note that profits would go to the Samuel Brandram fund: the recitationist had died suddenly a year earlier, leaving a widow and six children under eighteen years of age. However, although the production attracted a great deal of press attention, its six performances did not draw large audiences and the production sustained a loss of £300.63 Part of this sum had come from the



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Shakespeare Reading Society and part from one of the society’s organizing committee members, Arthur Dillon, who had also produced a twenty-page leaflet to accompany the production.64 Apparently undaunted, Dillon now formed the Elizabethan Stage Society in order to present further productions along the lines of the one which had just cost him so dear. In Poel’s own words, ‘It was after this last performance [Measure for Measure at the Royalty Theatre] that Mr Dillon decided to found a Society that might become a permanent audience, whose subscriptions would enable two or more plays to be given annually after the manner of the recent revival.’65 Poel himself had the courtesy to ask the Elizabethan Society for permission to adopt and adapt their name.66 For several years after the formation of the Elizabethan Stage Society, Poel continued to rehearse the Shakespeare Reading Society annual readings. There is extensive overlap of personnel among the New Shakspere Society, the Shakespeare Reading Society and the Elizabethan Stage Society – particularly between the last two. On programmes for Elizabethan Stage Society productions, the cast lists show Shakespeare Reading Society performers, both professional and semi-professional actors (F. Rawson Buckley, Leonard Howard, Doré Lewin Mannering, Daniel McCarthy, Lillah McCarthy) and amateur enthusiasts (G. Blagrove, M. Dobie, Mrs. Massingberd). Moreover, much of the administrative work for the Elizabethan Stage Society was undertaken by veterans of the Shakespeare Reading Society: besides Dillon, for example, there was Cecil Jennings, whose ‘squeakiness of voice’ was deemed by one reviewer to have produced an ‘utterly absurd’ Andrew Aguecheek in the Shakespeare Reading Society’s 1889 rehearsed reading of Twelfth Night.67 Jennings served as secretary-treasurer throughout the Elizabethan Stage Society’s ten years of active existence. Where the New Shakspere Society had been a literary society and the Shakespeare Reading Society was essentially a class, its lessons culminating in a recital, the Elizabethan Stage Society was a play-producing society, a means of staging productions of non-commercial drama. Members of a play-producing society paid an annual subscription – in this case, a guinea – which entitled them to tickets for performances presented by the society in that membership year. Because their audiences were normally comprised of subscribing members and members’ guests, with no money taken at the door, these performances could be construed as private and thus outside the terms of the 1843 Theatres Act. Plays could be therefore be performed without the statutory licence from Her Majesty’s Examiner of Plays in the Lord Chamberlain’s Office. Devised in 1886 so

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that Furnivall’s newly formed Shelley Society could present The Cenci, this legal dodge in 1891 enabled the Independent Theatre, the first of the play-producing societies, to stage Ibsen’s Ghosts with impunity, albeit much notoriety. However, very few productions staged by the Elizabethan Stage Society would ever be in jeopardy from the Lord Chamberlain’s Office. The 1843 Act applied to productions of plays, or additions to plays, written after it became law; and anyhow Poel himself wielded a very prudish blue pencil over the Early Modern texts he staged. What mattered more for the Elizabethan Stage Society was subsidy. Membership subscriptions to a lateVictorian play-producing society raised funds for production costs: hiring temporary venues for rehearsals and performances; printing programmes and publicity; and making, storing and maintaining sets, stage furnishings, props and – the Elizabethan Stage Society’s chief expenditure – costumes. Under this mode of theatrical organization, society members provided backing as consumers, not investors: they signed up not for profit, but for the product. Some members of the Elizabethan Stage Society also directly helped to make the product by contributing their services as amateur performers, but the society did not constitute a theatrical company. The privileges of founder membership of the Elizabethan Stage Society entailed not just a pair of tickets for each of the five productions in the initial year (actually fifteen months) of the society, but also inclusion on the list of forty-one subscribers published in the programme for the first production, Twelfth Night, at Burlington Hall on 21 and 22 June 1895. This list can be amplified with the names of eight others whom Poel, in a pamphlet published in June 1898, ‘numbered among the first subscribers’ to the society.68 A third list, published in 1926 but self-described as ‘an early list’ of Elizabethan Stage Society subscribers, provides another two dozen names.69 All told, then, more than seventy early subscribers to the society can be identified. There may be some window-dressing, with ‘subscription’ amounting to the loan of one’s name in indication of support, but not extending to the payment of a guinea a year in order to attend performances. Being advertisements, after all, the lists were intended to impress – and they do. There is one deeply disreputable name, that of Thomas Wise: a Shelley Society member who had ushered at the performance of The Cenci, he was by profession a bookdealer, eventually exposed as a defacer, thief and forger. Otherwise, the list of Elizabethan Stage Society subscribers is a roll call of Victorian worthies. There are men of letters – Mackenzie Bell, Hall Caine, Edmund Gosse, ‘Marten Maartens’ (J. M. v.d.P. Schwartz), Shaw, John Todhunter, Wedmore – who were personally interested in the twinned causes of writing serious drama and/or effecting



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theatrical reforms that might enable such drama to be publicly staged, as was the barrister J. H. Leigh. There are women of letters – principally translators and editors: Dora Schmitz, Beatrice Tollemache, Anne Ritchie. There are people who worked to widen the provision of other modes of art: the landscape gardener Fanny Wilkinson, the sculptor Hamo Thornycroft, the artist Walter Crane and Rev. Stopford Brooke. Others sought to extend education to men whose class had effectively excluded them from it: Furnivall (who had been involved in the London Working Men’s College from its foundation in 1854), Walter Besant, Gregory Foster and Sidney Lee. Subscribers who worked for women’s education included Foster (who taught at Bedford College as well as University College London), Emily Henrietta Hickey, Sophie Bryant and John Wesley Hales. Emily Massingberd, an early suffragette, founded the Pioneer Club, a selfsupport group for middle-class women, and Besant set up the Women’s Central Bureau of Work, a sort of employment agency. Anna Swanwick, at 82 probably the Elizabethan Stage Society’s oldest subscriber, had perhaps seen most: having earned a reputation as an English translator of German Romantic drama, she was involved in schools for working-class children, colleges and institutes for working-class men, and finally the two London colleges for women – Queen’s and Bedford. Such were the supporters of a society founded ‘to give practical effect to the principle that Shakspere should be accorded the build of stage for which he designed his plays’ and/or ‘to illustrate and advance the principle that Shakspere’s plays should be accorded the conditions of playing for which they were written’.70 The way in which the principle was given practical effect, illustrated and advanced was through performances after the manner of the 1893 production of Measure for Measure at the Royalty Theatre. Sets were architectural, the architecture being variously: that representation of an Elizabethan stage which was the Fortune fit-up; the tapestry surround of a smaller fit-up, one which Poel introduced in 1900 for a production of The Alchemist in Apothecaries’ Hall; or the real architecture of the hall of a City company or an Inn of Court. These options were not mutually exclusive. For at least four Elizabethan Stage Society productions, Poel brought one or other of the fit-ups into an ancient hall, the lathe-and-plaster framework, painted canvas and imitation tapestry curtains of either fit-up incongruous alongside the wood panelling, carved screen and beamed ceiling of such a venue. Other productions moved from performance before a hall screen to performance, on the Fortune fit-up, in St George’s Hall. Basically a concert hall and relatively inexpensive to hire, St George’s was the venue to which Poel most often returned. Fully

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half of the Elizabethan Stage Society’s productions were given at least one performance there. With no representational scenery needing to be shifted, Elizabethan Stage Society performances went on without waits for changes of scenery. Playing was generally ‘unbroken’ in the sense that actors entering at the beginning of a scene would hurry onstage before actors exiting at the end of the preceding scene had cleared themselves off.71 Promptbooks from Elizabethan Stage Society productions nevertheless record rather a lot of opening and closing of the two traverse sets of tapestry curtains on the Fortune fit-up, evidently in accordance with alternation theory. Shakespeare’s plays were thus presented by the Elizabethan Stage Society without rearrangement of text, albeit with cuts and emendations. For example, when Twelfth Night was played in February 1897 – in Middle Temple Hall but on the Fortune fit-up – curtains opened/closed twelve times. Poel cut 96 lines; his Viola undertook to become Orsino’s ‘page’ rather than his ‘eunuch’; and for this production, moreover, he did without an interval.72 More often than not, however, Elizabethan Stage Society performances included intervals, even though programme notes drew attention both to the lack of act and scene breaks in quarto imprints and thus also to the possibility, which got repeated over and over from the programme for Measure for Measure at the Royalty in November 1893, ‘that in Shakespeare’s time no pause was made in acting his plays from beginning to end’. The ten-minute interval for that Shakespeare Reading Society production of Measure for Measure had been filled by a stage orchestra performance of what the programme designated as ‘music of the Elizabethan period, composed by William S. Vinning’. There was also, however, a solo rendition of ‘Take o take those lips away’ in the Victorian arrangement by Frederick Bridge of John Wilson’s setting of this song for its post-Shakespearean recycling in Rollo, or The Bloody Brother. Later Elizabethan Stage Society productions would benefit from the appropriately expert contributions of Arnold Dolmetsch, who rediscovered the instrumental music of Shakespeare’s time and reconstructed instruments on which to play it. Besides regularly employing Dolmetsch and his consort to perform in and around Elizabethan Stage Society productions, Poel occasionally sought specialist advice from antiquarians: A. W. Ward, historian of Early Modern English drama and literature; Alfred Hutton, swordsman and historian of early fencing; and John Seymour Lucas, genre painter and designer of historical costumes. The single most important contributor to Elizabethan Stage Society productions, however, was another genre painter, Jennie Moore, who was



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responsible for costuming many of them, and much of Poel’s later work as well. Her designs were based on period images, principally portraits, realized in sumptuous materials and executed with elaborately detailed work. Conspicuous against the architectural settings of Elizabethan Stage Society productions, the costumes attracted attention and comment, not always favourable – especially not when reviewers were unable to decode a particular significance. Poel’s insistence upon using Elizabethan/Jacobean costume for Shakespearean production was in part informed by his intentionalism: Assuming that Shakespeare drew his characters mainly from his observation of English life, those he draws will appear more lifelike in their own costume than in that of another period or of another country. To dress an Elizabethan nobleman, merchant or servant in a Greek, Roman, early Italian or even in an 18th-century costume […] may rob the character of part of its significance, because the distinction of costume between these three ranks may vary considerably in different countries and at different periods and, therefore, will not so clearly define the character in one age as in another. It is always to the costume of his day that Shakespeare alludes.73 For the 1893 production of Measure for Measure and the earliest productions of the Elizabethan Stage Society, Moore selected some costumes for hire from the stock of theatrical costumiers, but she also (and increasingly thereafter) designed other costumes herself, for professional manufacture and then retention by the society. By 1898 the Elizabethan Stage Society had amassed a sufficient stock of its own period costumes to be hiring them out. The longer-term result was, in the words of the 1905 auction catalogue, a VALUABLE AND ARTISTIC COLLECTION of Antique, Historical and Allegorical Theatrical costumes, in choice BROCADES, SILKS, VELVETS, PLUSH and TAPESTRY, designed and produced at very great cost, and historically correct in every detail. In adverting to the costliness of Elizabethan Stage Society costumes, the catalogue indirectly reminds the reader why they were being auctioned

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off. The society’s mode of production was far from cost-effective: expenses were greatly in excess of income. Paid-up memberships of the Elizabethan Stage Society may never have exceeded fifty at any one time, generating an annual subscription income of £52–50.74 Years later, Poel would estimate that the society’s average loss per production had been between £80 and £100.75 By the end of its third full season (1897–8), the Elizabethan Stage Society had given a total of twenty-three performances: Twelfth Night (six performances), The Comedy of Errors (four), Dr Faustus (two), The Two Gentlemen of Verona (three), Arden of Faversham and scenes from King Edward III (one), The Tempest (three), Beaumont and Fletcher’s The Coxcomb (two), Middleton and Rowley’s The Spanish Gypsy (one), Ford’s The Broken Heart (one) and Jonson’s The Sad Shepherd (one). Halfway through that third season, the society was running a deficit in excess of £900 – for which Poel, by now a married man with a household to maintain, was personally liable. Shaw wrote to him on 30 March 1898: I am perfectly paralysed by your balance sheet. […] your £910–16–7 takes my breath away. I have often wondered at the recklessly handsome way in which the E.S.S. dressed its performances, and where you had discovered the munificent patrons at whose expense I concluded it was being done. If I had thought that you were standing the racket yourself, I should certainly have remonstrated with you like a father. […] I see no prospect of rescue.76 By the end of 1900, the society’s rate of play-production had slowed to a halt. It restarted the following summer with Everyman, one of Poel’s ventures into pre-Shakespearean drama.77 This production proved to be the sole money-spinner of Poel’s career and he would revive it under various auspices for a dozen years, finally selling it in 1913. By that year, however, the Elizabethan Stage Society was merely a mailing list of Poel’s supporters. As The Stage Yearbook for 1914 put it: ‘The Society is not now a society in the strict sense of the word, but […] rather a voluntary association of those – numbering well over 1,000 – who are kept together by the interest and vitality of Mr Poel’s works.’78 Struggling for survival and staging plays far less frequently after 1900 than before that date, the Elizabethan Stage Society had ceased to exist as a play-producing society in 1905, when Poel disbanded it and sold off its properties. For the Elizabethan Stage Society’s last production, Romeo and Juliet in May 1905, Poel returned to the Royalty Theatre, the venue for the production of Measure for Measure that had spawned the society, and once



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again he used the Fortune fit-up, the stage that had been the most obviously remarkable feature of those 1893 performances. Across the dozen years between these two productions at the Royalty, the Fortune fit-up had seen a great deal of service, most often at St George’s Hall and mainly in the busy first half of the Elizabethan Stage Society’s decade of activity as a playproducing society. The stage was deployed in at least nine of the twenty-one new productions which Poel staged for the society between December 1895 and June 1900, the first five of its ten years’ existence as a play-producing society.79 Poel staged just eight new productions for the Elizabethan Stage Society between July 1900 and May 1905, and the only one for which he appears to have used the Fortune fit-up in its entirety was the last, Romeo and Juliet. The fit-up was also, however, used for some of the revivals of Elizabethan Stage Society productions during those final five years of activity. And when, in July 1905, the properties of the society were put up for auction, Lot No. 1 was ‘THE UNIQUE MODEL STAGE OF THE OLD FORTUNE PLAYHOUSE […] copied in actual dimensions from a contemporary Builder’s Contract and is correct in historical and other details […] The whole in excellent order and condition and in perfect working order.’80 The Fortune fit-up stage sold for £100, that sum being provided by Harriet Pole, the younger of Poel’s sisters and a lifelong backer. Other supporters had also made contributions, totalling just under £77, a sum that enabled the recovery of some of the costumes and liveries, and a trust was formed to keep these and the stage together and in use.81 Poel managed to recycle pieces of the stage for some years: a grainy newspaper photograph records what looks like its balcony being erected on the stage of His Majesty’s Theatre for a single performance of The Two Gentlemen of Verona there in April 1910.82 By then, however, use of the entirety of the fit-up stage within any licensed theatre in London had become illegal: new London County Council fire regulations required the safety curtain to descend at some point in the course of every performance, but the false proscenium around the Fortune fit-up obstructed such a descent. Poel appears to have been able to use the full structure in 1908 for performances of Measure for Measure at Manchester and at Stratford-upon-Avon, but for The Merchant of Venice in 1907 at the Fulham Theatre in suburban London, his use of the Fortune fit-up was restricted. ‘The regulations of the London County Council’, explained the programme for this production, ‘have made it impossible to put up the whole of the Elizabethan stage.’83 Beyond the legal constraints upon using the Fortune fit-up, there was a financial disincentive that increased across time, especially wartime: like

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most Victorian stagecraft, Poel’s Fortune fit-up was labour-intensive. Hopes of deploying it for a production in 1918, when labour was no longer abundantly and therefore cheaply available, would come to nothing.84

The London Shakespeare League The Fortune fit-up was anyhow merely a stage set designed for use in a Victorian proscenium theatre. Poel wanted something permanent and purpose-built. The programme for the first production of the Elizabethan Stage Society’s first production (Twelfth Night in Burlington Hall on 21 June 1895) evinced hopes for ‘a theatre specially built on the plan of the 16th century’. Even before their foundation of the Elizabethan Stage Society, Poel and Dillon had sought to embody ‘the more faithful representation of Shakespeare’s plays’ in a building. Late in 1894, just over a year after the first use of the Fortune fit-up, the gossip columnist for The Stage reported: I hear that Mr. Poel, conjointly with Mr Arthur Dillon, proposes erecting an Elizabethan playhouse, where Mr. Poel will continue his efforts to convince the British public that Shakespeare’s plays are independent of scenic effects. With a playhouse that does not need scenery, Mr Poel will, at least, have no difficulty in choosing for presentation Shakespeare’s practically untried plays. 85 A cross-section scale (1:24) model of what Poel and Dillon had in conjoint mind was displayed at a lecture, prepared by both men and delivered by Poel in 1895.86 Comparison of the single extant photograph of this model with the three photographs of the Fortune fit-up at its initial use for Measure for Measure in 1893 suggests a connection even closer than common ancestry in Street’s contract: the model looks to have been based upon the fit-up. In April 1897 Poel drew up plans for an identically scaled model of the Globe Theatre.87 Constructed, sometime during the next five years, at the expense of Frïda Lowenthal Mond, an Elizabethan Stage Society member, this Globe model was displayed in April 1902 at the foundation meeting of the London Shakespeare Commemoration League, the pressure group that would be the principal channel of Poel’s propaganda work until the mid-1920s. The League was begun by Thomas Fairman Ordish, a professional civil servant (in the Patent Office) and an amateur antiquarian. His preoccupation with Early Modern theatrical sites in London fuelled two books:



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Early London Theatres in the Fields in 1894 and Shakespeare’s London in 1897. Having exchanged opinions with Poel about the proposed reconstruction of an Elizabethan playhouse in London, in 1899 Ordish suggested that the Elizabethan Stage Society and his own London Topographical Society might co-operate in celebrating Shakespeare’s birthday in London and in campaigning for an Elizabethan playhouse there. London County Council might be approached about a site, perhaps in some metropolitan park, Battersea for preference. Ordish argued that the building would serve several purposes – ‘(1) a Memorial of Shakespeare in London […]; (2) an object lesson in dramatic criticism and study; (3) a home and centre of classical drama’ – and that therefore a ‘wide, national, patriotic’ appeal should be launched by a ‘thoroughly representative’ committee.88 Poel, Ordish, and Laurence Gomme (who was also an Elizabethan Stage Society member and a civil servant with antiquarian interests) were among the members of an ad hoc committee of seven tasked with pursuing the co-operative project. Gomme, being statistical officer to the London County Council, sought support among councillors. Their responses were encouraging enough to warrant the preparation and circulation of a petition – one copy of which bears the photograph of Poel’s scale model of the Fortune – begging the London County Council both ‘to grant a site for the erection of a suitable London memorial to William Shakespeare, and to give the suggestion that it should take the form of an Elizabethan Playhouse their earnest consideration’. What the councillors were invited to consider about that suggestion was the wide array of purposes to which an Elizabethan Playhouse might be put: In the event of such a building being erected it should be used as a Shakespearian Library and Museum. Elizabethan plays might also sometimes be acted there under the conditions that attended their original production, thus furthering the knowledge of Shakespeare’s time, while the interest attaching to such a building to visitors from America and the Colonies will be obvious.89 The petition does not contain any detailed discussion of how this factotum was to be financed. The Elizabethan Stage Society’s 1899 estimate of the cost of the building – on which ‘the roof would be glazed, thus permitting performances by night as well as by day’ – had been about £6,000.90 A decade later, Poel would reduce that estimate: ‘The cost of such a building would scarcely exceed five thousand pounds, and it would need only a

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small endowment, in addition to the gate-money, to allow of Shakespeare’s plays being acted there during the summer months.’91 The petitioners to London County Council, however, gave no estimate of overall expense; but whatever the sum they may have had in mind, they were confident of raising it: In the event of the Council being willing to grant the site, the cost of the building would be gladly borne by public subscription, donation, and bequest, in respect of which your memorialists have already been promised a sum of five hundred pounds, while working expenses would be met by annual subscriptions to the Library and Museum, and by charges for the use of the building for lectures, etc. The collection of signatures was interrupted by the declaration of war between Great Britain and the Orange Free State in October 1899, and the petition was set aside until the Boer War was all but over. The project was restarted on 29 March 1902 by a long letter to The Times over Ordish’s signature and then, on 23 April 1902, by a meeting in the hall of Clifford’s Inn. Convened by Ordish, the meeting was centred on Poel’s model of the Globe, which was on display in the middle of the hall. The meeting established a London Shakespeare Commemoration League to pursue three objects: ‘(1) to extend the recognition of the interest which London possesses as the scene of the lifework of William Shakespeare; (2) to organise an Annual Commemoration of the poet in London; and (3) to focus the movement for a Shakespeare Memorial in London’. As is obvious from the report of the meeting in The Times (24 April 1902), the proponents of the tripartite project – now including Hamilton Fyfe of the Daily Mirror and Israel Gollancz of King’s College London – were of very different minds as to whether or not the annual commemoration was to be a performance, and whether or not the memorial to Shakespeare was to be a theatre. The draft petition, it will have been noticed, had also fudged the second point. Such fundamental disagreements would beset, and split, the London Shakespeare Commemoration League across its decades of existence. Despite making a slight contraction of its name (to the London Shakespeare League), the League remained a very big umbrella under which just about every Londoner with any interest in Shakespeare was welcome to shelter. Poel, however, kept trying to collapse the umbrella and wield it as a sharply pointed weapon for promoting his own particular projects.



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The initial phase of the London Shakespeare Commemoration League lasted a dozen years, with Furnivall as its President for most of them. The League played a crucial role in the early stages – 1903 to 1908 – of the campaign for the establishment of what became known as a Shakespeare Memorial National Theatre. Otherwise, most of the activities of the League until 1913 served its second object – an annual London commemoration of Shakespeare. The means of commemoration were almost as various as the ambitions of the League, the one constant being a Birthday dinner on 23 April or thereabouts. In the first few years of the League, Poel’s own Shakespearean productions were at the centre of the commemoration, with performances of Twelfth Night in 1903, Much Ado About Nothing in 1904, and Romeo and Juliet in 1905. (The 1903 Twelfth Night was a revival of Poel’s 1897 production for the Elizabethan Stage Society, which was also involved in the other two productions. The 1904 Much Ado About Nothing had been initiated and funded by another moribund body, the London School Board.) After the demise of the Elizabethan Stage Society as a play-producing body, the London Shakespeare League’s commemorative performances soon dwindled, with Leigh in 1906 giving a reading of King Richard II, ‘condensed and arranged in three acts’, and Laura Smithson giving a recital in 1909. Other commemorative festivities included walking tours of Shakespeare’s London, which were led by Ordish, and Mansion House soirées, with dancing, folk songs and games, which were organized by the folklorist and League member Alice [Mrs. Laurence] Gomme. Beyond the Birthday, there were expeditions further afield (Dulwich College, Hampton Court, Stratford-upon-Avon), day conferences (‘Shakespeare and the Schools’ in 1906), joint meetings with like-minded societies on topics of shared interest (with the International Women Workers’ Association in 1909 to consider ‘What Shakespeare Thought of Women’), and open meetings on topics deemed to be of public interest (‘The Best Method of Producing Shakespeare’s Plays’ in 1905). Still, ‘after ten years of birthday feasting’, remembered Poel long after the events, ‘we seemed to be making no progress towards re-instating Shakespeare in the theatre.’92 By 1912 Ordish, founder of the League, had abandoned it in exasperation.93 Furnivall’s death in the summer of 1910 was followed by regime change and new policies for the London Shakespeare League. Gollancz served as its President for two years, succeeded in 1913 by Edward Brabrook, another civil servant, antiquarian and folklorist. Then Poel, by his own account, picked a public fight that split the membership along one of the League’s faultlines – academics versus theatre practitioners:

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I challenged Professor Israel Gollancz’s assertion that it was not the business of the League to attack the public theatres for their misrepresentations of Shakespeare’s plays on the London stage. The matter was brought to the vote, and Sir Israel Gollancz’s party was defeated. He and his supporters all resigned, and they have since formed the English Shakespeare Association, which holds its meetings at King’s College [London]. […] I asked Mr Headlam, to become President. I then suggested the objects of the League as they now exist, and I brought the Shakespeare Journal into existence.94 Presidency of the London Shakespeare League thus passed to one of Poel’s allies, the Rev. Stewart Headlam, who would refer to the English Shakespeare Association as ‘our little daughter’.95 With the nest emptied, parental raisons d’être were revised according to Poel’s suggestion. The revised Objects were proclaimed on the masthead of the League’s own new journal, where the League declared that it existed: 1. To advocate the recognition of Shakespeare’s Life-Work in London. 2. To honour Shakespeare as Poet, Dramatist, Actor and Man of the Theatre. 3. To insist that the stage representation of Shakespeare’s plays, without mutilation or distortion of the text, is vital to a full understanding of his work.96 The revision of the third Object indicates both Poel’s access of authority within the League after the secession of the academics, and also the diminished League’s distance from the Shakespeare Memorial National Theatre project, where Poel had little direct influence. Although he had been one of that project’s remote movers, he was never among its executive shakers. Increasingly critical of the Shakespeare Memorial National Theatre leadership, by 1909 Poel had even stopped paying his subscription to the scheme that supported the National Theatre project. He would later be equally awkward about the 1916 celebrations of the Tercentenary of Shakespeare’s death. Snubbing both the British Academy and the Society of West End Theatre Managers, the bastions of academia and of commercial theatre, Poel staged Jonson’s Poetaster in Apothecaries Hall, on the site of its original venue in the (second) Blackfriars Theatre. He also spent much of the Tercentary year out of the country, lecturing at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, restaging the production of Poetaster with students there, and touring it to Detroit and Chicago.



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Poel and Headlam had been acquainted since at latest the mid–1880s, and they had collaborated in 1904 over that year’s Elizabethan Stage Society production of Much Ado About Nothing, which played to Continuation Schools – i.e., adult education – audiences in borough halls all over greater London.97 Headlam chaired the Continuation Schools committee of the London School Board, and he was passionately and actively concerned about the extension of education, especially the study of Shakespeare, to those for whom acquaintance with English literature was not a birthright. The League project nearest Headlam’s heart was the funding by London County Council of schoolchildren’s visits to Shakespearean performances – notably at the Old Vic, where such performances were introduced in 1914 and where their survival was thanks to this indirect subsidy.98 Headlam brought many teachers into the League, and its membership, which had been about 130 in 1913/14, exceeded 700 in the years after World War I. Headlam’s priorities differed from those of Poel, to whom he nevertheless allowed a great deal of room for manœuvre. The published reports of the monthly meetings of the League’s council (its membership, like the League’s as a whole, much diminished in the period immediately after the departure of Gollancz and his supporters) are dominated by Poel’s contributions, which are frequently far from constructive. Poel successfully pushed the League to publish a monthly journal, in part as a record, and that record shows him to have been critical of the content of early issues. From July 1915 he even produced his own mini-journal – a Monthly Letter written for the Shakespeare League Journal by WILLIAM POEL for inclusion with the parent publication. The first few paragraphs of Poel’s first Monthly Letter undertook ‘to expose the evils of a system and a tradition which, so long as they continue, must deprive the League of many of its opportunities for usefulness’. Along with the theatrical system of the day and the tradition of Shakespearean performance it sustained, ‘the persistent way in which men of letters have disregarded [Shakespeare’s] achievements in the theatre’ was also put up for attack. Poel explicitly promised that the Monthly Letter would be unaccommodating: ‘there is no available space for entering into discussions with those who disagree with my opinions’. After two and a half years, and twenty-five Monthly Letters from Poel, the editor of the London Shakespeare League Journal resigned. Claiming to ‘prefer to stand aside and act as a candid critic’, Poel not only refused to assume editorial responsibility for the journal, but he detached his newsheet from it.99 From November 1916 the Monthly Letter (of which there would be another twenty-seven) was circulated separately and only to those members of the League who asked to receive it. Poel did, however, continue to contribute to the League’s journal.

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At least two of the League’s successful projects across the eleven years of Headlam’s presidency, moreover, were initiated by Poel: a memorial plaque for Richard Burbage in St Leonard’s Church, Shoreditch, in 1914; and a testimonial for Benson, presented in May 1919 after three years in the making. Poel has also been given credit for the memorial service held for John Heminge and Henry Condell in their parish church, St Mary’s Aldermanbury, in 1923, the tercentenary of the publication of the First Folio, but that event may have originated with the Actors’ Association.100 Among the unsuccessful projects that Poel promoted through the London Shakespeare League were attempts to secure: the addition of ‘a screw-on tablet of dark, untarnishable metal […] bearing the words: “Here rests William Shakespeare./ Player, Poet, Playmaker./ 1564 – April 23 – 1616” ’101 to the tombstone in the churchyard of Holy Trinity Church, Stratfordupon-Avon, that is believed to mark Shakespeare’s grave; publication of a single-volume national text of Shakespeare’s plays; construction of a purpose-built Elizabethan playhouse in London or conversion of an extant building into something of the sort; and performance of Shakespearean drama only on a platform stage – i.e., an ‘auditorium stage’ displacing the stalls. The original occasion of the League’s formation was, of course, the campaign for an Elizabethan playhouse, and such a building continued to be the Holy Grail towards which Poel persistently sought to direct the London Shakespeare League. As that ultimate goal receded into implausibility, the promotion of platform-stage performance came to dominate Poel’s Shakespearean ambitions. Opportunities to practise what he preached, however, were not numerous. The London Shakespeare League paid a great deal of lip service to Poel’s productions over the years: it advertised them, reviewed them, and often reiterated hopes that he might stage one per year under League auspices. It secured special ticketing arrangements for League members and, in a few instances, additional performances for them. Further financial support from the League, however, was irregular and limited. The London Shakespeare League was, after all, a pressure group, not a play-producing society such as the Elizabethan Stage Society had been. After the demise of that society in 1905, Poel’s Shakespearean performances, which were infrequent, went on under assorted auspices: The Merchant of Venice at the Fulham Theatre, one of the suburban theatres controlled by Robert Arthur (1907); Measure for Measure as the opening production of Annie Horniman’s Company at the Gaiety Theatre, Manchester, with two further performances at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon



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(1908); Macbeth, again at the Fulham Theatre (1909); The Two Gentlemen of Verona at His Majesty’s Theatre for Beerbohm Tree’s London Shakespeare Festival, a showcase cued in part by the London Shakespeare League (1910); Troilus and Cressida for the amateur Streatham Shakespeare Players, among them a young milliner’s assistant, Edith Evans, at the King’s Hall, Covent Garden, with a further performance the following spring in the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon (1912–13); Hamlet for Esmé Percy’s and Kirsteen Graeme’s Company at the Little Theatre (1914); The Comedy of Errors acted by children of South Hackney Central School at Apothecaries’ Hall, Blackfriars (1919); a costume recital of All’s Well That Ends Well at the Ethical Church, Bayswater (1920); and then Fratricide Punished (translated from Der bestrafte Brüdermord, a seventeenthcentury German derivative of Hamlet) at Poel’s own expense in 1924, for Sybil Thorndike later that year, and yet again, in 1926, for the Fellowship of Players. The last-named was a Sunday society, one of the 1920s successors to fin-de-siècle play-producing societies, as was the Renaissance Theatre, for whom Poel staged Arden of Faversham in 1925. Poel’s development of a combination of platform stage and multiple staging can be glimpsed across these productions. The development is by no means a steady progression: by Poel’s own explicit account, for example, the production of Fratricide Punished in 1924 was ‘not an Elizabethan one’.102 At first he used the Fortune fit-up – only part of it for The Merchant of Venice at the Fulham Theatre in 1907 but apparently all of it in 1908 for Measure for Measure at the Manchester Gaiety and then the Stratford-upon-Avon Shakespeare Memorial Theatre. The 1909 production of Macbeth, again at the Fulham Theatre, was advertised as being ‘produced as it was given during the poet’s lifetime – that is to say, on a platform stage and in Elizabethan costume’; but what the penultimate prepositional phrase designates is not known for certain.103 Most likely, the legally permissible portions of the Fortune fit-up were deployed with an apron extension over the orchestra pit: such an extension, which would not necessarily obstruct the fall of a safety curtain, had been built both for the original use of the entire fit-up for Measure for Measure at the Royalty Theatre in 1893 and again also in 1908 for the Stratfordupon-Avon (but not the Manchester) performances of that production.104 In 1910, when Poel put part of the Fortune fit-up well upstage in His Majesty’s Theatre for The Two Gentlemen of Verona, the sense of ‘platform stage’ becomes clear: he now built a forestage over the stalls to a depth of 15 feet or thereabouts (estimates vary widely).105 In 1912, for Troilus and Cressida at the King’s Hall, Covent Garden, Poel reshaped a concert

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hall stage into a tiered platform, and his use of it appears to have been moving towards multiple staging. The lower level extended out into the auditorium, with entrances constructed, out of black-blue velvet curtains, at either side of the proscenium. The upper level, which was behind the proscenium, was three steps higher than the lower and, with its own set of curtains, served for tableaux.106 The arrangement gave Poel the zones of his old Fortune fit-up: outer stage, inner stage, and balcony, all separable from one another by curtains. The introduction of a further distinction in height, however, may have been cued by his recent experience of staging Greek tragedy – Alcestis in the winter of 1911/12 at the Little Theatre and The Bacchae late in 1908 at the Court Theatre. For these, Poel, following what Granville Barker had previously done for productions of Euripidean drama at the Court Theatre, filled the stage with an ascending series of risers.107 All’s Well That Ends Well in 1920 was presented at a venue in which platform, tiering and adjacent playing spaces were architectural givens. An interior photograph of the Ethical Church, Bayswater in 1913 (Figure 3) shows a broad rostrum, perhaps six feet high and eight feet wide, flanked to either side by a curved double flight of six or seven stairs; a recess, high and curtained, beyond the rostrum; immediately in front of the rostrum, a small and low platform that lifts an elaborately carved armchair some six inches above an expanse of wooden floor. Two curved balconies, the lower projecting further than the higher and each supported by slender pillars, are visible along the side wall. The points of architectural suitability for Poel’s late-career staging practices are obvious: the floor gave him a platform stage surrounded by audience, both on the same level and in the balconies above; while the rostrum, the recess, and possibly some portion of a balcony gave him several locations for multiple staging at different levels. The extant prompt books, however, indicate nothing of how the space was used, and the few accounts of the three performances are impressionistic, describing effects upon the writer rather more than Poel’s means thereto.108 One letter of appreciation does, however, suggest that the recess behind and above the rostrum had served as a secondary acting area in which a tableau (charmingly lit) was discovered. The letter also hints that the staging was somewhat static: The lighting, grouping, poses and coloring were delightful beyond expression. As for the costumes you simply excelled yourself (I can use no stronger terms of appreciation) and the lighting of the little inset group simply charmed me. The acting too was particularly good. […]



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Your own scenes [as Parolles] too were a triumph considering you were handicapped with the book I had never realized they were so funny. Taken on the whole I must cofess [sic] I thought the cleverness you had bestowed upon it was worthy of a better play. Some of the long speeches were very tedious. It seems to need more action and brightening in parts to afford relief.109

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The vocal recital of All’s Well That Ends Well instantiates the financial constraints under which Poel was now operating. In the spring of 1919 he proposed to present the play at his own expense, whereupon London Shakespeare League members were invited to make donations protecting him against loss. The guarantee fund reached £147; but the production was delayed, most likely on account of a personal financial crisis that had hit Poel by midsummer of 1919. What was presented the following year was not a fully staged production of All’s Well That Ends Well, but rather, to quote the programme, a ‘vocal recital given in Elizabethan costume’ – in other words, a fancy-dress reading like his 1891 Measure for Measure for the Shakespeare Reading Society.110 Evidently this 1920 reading was punctuated, in a low-budget version of the Victorian manner, by background music.111 The 1920 recital of All’s Well That Ends Well was, moreover, given under the auspices of a School of Dramatic Art that Poel was trying to start that year, with the Ethical Church as its temporary address.112 The wheel of his career was coming full circle. After Headlam’s death late in 1924, Poel himself became President of the London Shakespeare League. He undertook the office for only a single year, by the end of which he had secured a further revision of its objectives to match his own. At the Annual General Meeting held in March 1926 the London Shakespeare League resolved that it existed 1. To honour Shakespeare as a Man of the Theatre rather than of the study, and to insist that the stage representation of his plays, with a minimum of pause and without mutilation or distortion of the text, is vital to their full understanding 2. To advocate in London the erection of a building with a platform stage of such dimensions as to be suitable for acting the whole of the play within the auditorium113 Nearly twenty-five years on from the formation of the London Shakespeare Commemoration League, Poel had finally managed to make it into a megaphone for his message. Before the year 1926 was out, however, publication of the journal had been suspended, its latest editor having resigned in the interests of his incipient acting career. (The decision was probably prudent: one of the League’s less endearing practices, urged by Poel, was to badger theatrical producers with letters chiding them for use of scenery, and consequent excision/rearrangement of text, in Shakespearean productions. A template of epistolary reproach was even drawn up.114) A more alarming departure was announced in the final issue: ‘Mr William Poel



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has resigned his membership of the London Shakespeare League, and will cease to be a contributor to its journal.’115 The League was in financial difficulties; membership was sinking; and the offices of Treasurer and President were both vacant. Poel’s exit was thus untimely, but it may not have been final.116 The League survived with Lady Gomme as President and Poel as patron saint if not presiding deity: an inside account written by the critic S. R. Littlewood invokes Poel’s name 21 times in 16 pages. The concluding paragraph reads: The London Shakespeare League looks forward […] to giving Mr Poel’s personal genius further scope as well as to ensuring continued support for his now-accepted creed as a Shakespearian producer. In any other country Mr Poel would long ago have been honoured as something more than the great stage-reformer he so undoubtedly is. The London Shakespeare League can at least do something to make up for the omission.117 The League, moreover, had done something crucially important for Poel in its first years of existence. It had been League members who had enabled Poel to recover the Fortune fit-up, the smaller fit-up stage and numerous costumes from the 1905 auction of Elizabethan Stage Society properties.118 These were, as he pointed out to a friend a few months before the auction, a professional necessity: My burden lies in having to make and keep a large quantity [of] costumes and property which, so long as I have plays, I cannot do without, which are my workmen’s tools, which cost me some two hundred [pounds] a year to keep intact and which the profits, out of the performances I give, are never able to pay for, because, with one exception, there have never been any profits only losses over my performances.119 Thanks to the London Shakespeare League, Poel held onto his ‘workmen’s tools’ from the Elizabethan Stage Society for fifteen years; and he gradually augmented the collection with costumes from productions, such as Jacob and Esau and Poetaster, that post-dated the 1905 dissolution of that society and the auction of its properties that year. In 1920, however, Poel had to offload his set of ‘workmen’s tools’. Struggling with the aftermath of a financial disaster within his extended family, he had considered such drastic measures as moving abroad or teaching at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He had moved house: the new address, just around the

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corner from the old, may have been short on storage space. He was almost certainly unable to pay commercial storage charges for any ‘quantity [of] costumes and property’. Headlam, wringing his own hands at the prospect of their departure, expressed hope that the League might find some means to take them off Poel’s but keep them in the country. Such help, however, was not forthcoming.120 The torch, as it were, was passed to Thomas Wood Stevens at the Carnegie Institute. The costumes (including some sixty Elizabethan outfits, with accessories), several sets of curtains (including the tapestry ones from the Fortune fit-up), the smaller fit-up stage, and various properties were sold to the Carnegie Institute and shipped off to Pittsburgh in September of 1920. (The outfits for Poetaster had been there and back in 1916, so it is probable that some costumes in this shipment were crossing the Atlantic for the third time.) The last of Poel’s own Shakespearean performances to deploy the Elizabethan Stage Society costumes was thus the recital of All’s Well That Ends Well in May and early June of that year.

The Elizabethan Stage Circle The London Shakespeare League was never fully fit for purpose as perceived by Poel. He used it to preach the doctrine that dominated the last decades of his life: the desirability of an Elizabethan theatre to accommodate both a platform stage and an academy to train actors for such a stage. Only a few other members of the League were equally committed to the pursuit of this package; and while their efforts did not go for nothing, neither did they collectively achieve what he particularly sought. His presidential address at the Birthday celebrations in April 1925 articulated frustration: We are not so much in contact with failure as we are with perversity. No one will accept defeat when his convictions assure him that he is in the right. I know very well that I have only to act a play of Shakespeare’s on a platform in the middle of the room and then to act that same play with the same company behind a proscenium arch at the ned [sic] of the hall, and that not a child in the hall will hesitate to decide which way it likes best. And as long as I think this I can’t give up. I realise that I am standing on the edge of the Rubicon and that I must make the plunge; whether the members of the League will follow after me I don’t know. For I am of the opinion that the building of an Elizabethan Playhouse has become a necessity.121



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Poel leapt into the Rubicon – or started frying other fish – as soon as his year as President of the London Shakespeare League came to an end. Chance brought further inducement to change tack. On 6 March 1926, the day after the Annual General Meeting at which the London Shakespeare League undertook to campaign for a platform stage in the metropolis, the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon burnt down to a shell. Its destruction opened the notional possibility that any replacement for the building might include a platform stage. To this end one member of the League opened a campaign with which Poel was in sympathy but which he regarded as futile.122 He, for his metropolitan part, rechannelled his efforts for a platform stage in London. By his own account, dated 10 December 1926, I have now retired from the London Shakespeare League in order to re-established [sic] the E[lizabethan] S[tage] S[society] chiefly that it may be a help as propaganda to carry on the agitation for the building of an E[lizabethan] P[layhouse], say in one of the London Parks, where the building could be built and endowed by the L[ondon] C[ounty] C[ouncil] and used specially for training actors to get used to speaking Shakespeare without the scenic background. We made a similar application to the LCC Board in 1897 [sic], but then there had not been enough interest aroused on the subject to obtain a following. I believe there would be a better chance now. Do you know of any big public man who could be induced to become our President?123 Evidently nobody was found to fill that bill, and in reality no one but Poel was needed to preside. Anyone else in charge of the group might have diluted or diverted the purpose for which he re-established it. In 1930, Poel would say that it ‘was not a proper society. It had no President or council. What he [Poel] was afraid of was a minority, who might swamp the society. He recalled the earlier days of the [London Shakespeare] League when Headlam and his successors wanted to rule the League.’124 Poel initially intended to resurrect even the name of the long-dead Elizabethan Stage Society, but the group became known as the Elizabethan Stage Circle.125 Lacking the organizational features that Poel thought necessary for ‘a proper society’, it is not very well documented beyond the record of productions presented under its auspices. From that record, however, it is clear that the Elizabethan Stage Circle was a Sunday society – in practical effect a mailing list, but in legal fiction a private group, of supporters of special-interest drama. As with the play-producing societies

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of the 1890s, legal fiction enabled dispensation from legal requirements. Membership in a Sunday society conferred the right to purchase tickets to performances given, under the auspices of that society, at times and/or in places not covered by theatrical licences for ‘the public performance of stage plays’ as required by the 1843 Act. Since the membership package in a Sunday society did not include tickets to a season’s-worth of performances but merely the right to buy tickets to performances, it was cheaper to join a Sunday society of the 1920s than it had been to join a play-producing society in the 1890s. At only half-a-crown, the annual subscription for membership in the Elizabethan Stage Circle was much less than the guinea for the Elizabethan Stage Society. On the other hand, since subscriptions did not provide advance capital, Sunday societies were dependent upon ticket sales and upon good will – including lessees’ willingness to provide venues at cost or less on their theatres’ dark nights and actors’ willingness to perform for little or nothing on their nights off. The Elizabethan Stage Circle thus provided Poel with an audience base for the last productions of his long career. He staged seven productions in its name: Samuel Rowley’s When You See Me, You Know Me, at the Holborn Empire (July 1927);126 Jonson’s Sejanus at the same venue (February 1928); John Fletcher’s Bonduca (retitled Britain, with verses by Alfred Tennyson by way of prologue and by William Cowper by way of epilogue) at the King’s Hall, Covent Garden (January 1929); an amalgamation of George Chapman’s The Conspiracy of Charles, Duke of Byron and his Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron at the Royalty Theatre (July 1929); Chapman’s Cæsar and Pompey, patchworked with bits of Shakespeare’s Julius Cæsar, plus some Keats and Macaulay, into Julius Cæsar the Dictator at the Globe, Shaftesbury Avenue (July 1930); Coriolanus at the Chelsea Palace Theatre (May 1931);127 and George Peele’s David and Bethsabe at the Mary Ward Settlement in Bloomsbury (November 1932). The performance at the Royalty of the amalgamation of Chapman’s Byron plays was followed three months later, at the Little Theatre, by a one-off recital of scenes from those plays, plus an interlude, written by Poel, about their original Jacobean performance. With that partial exception, each Elizabethan Stage Circle production was given only a single performance. Most of the Elizabethan Stage Circle productions featured a platform stage. That much is clear from extant promptbooks, programmes and advertising leaflets. Just what was designated by the phrase ‘platform stage’, however, is likely to have varied from one venue to another, depending on how well and how far internal architecture could accommodate an extension of stage into the auditorium. Poel’s principal desideratum was the 43-foot width by



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27-foot depth of the Fortune Theatre as specified in Street’s 1600 contract. So wide an extension was easier to achieve in buildings that had been originally intended for the performance of music before audiences rather than for the enactment of plays on box sets behind proscenium arches. Crucial here were the size of the proscenium opening and the dimensions of the area of seating at ground level of the auditorium. The point at which, and the angle from which, the ground level was overhung by the next level up were also important. The Holborn Empire was an Edwardian refitting of a mid-Victorian music hall, and its expansive ground floor could accommodate Poel’s construction of a platform stage over half of its stalls for When You See Me, You Know Me in 1927 and for Sejanus in 1928. The Chelsea Palace, venue for Coriolanus in 1931, was another varieties theatre, and here, too, Poel built a large platform downstage. He also built a platform stage for Bonduca in 1929: its venue, the King’s Hall in Covent Garden, was the concert hall where Poel had already, in 1912 for Troilus and Cressida, built a platform stage out past the proscenium. The Mary Ward settlement, venue for David and Bethsabe in 1932, afforded Poel a simple auditorium on the top floor of an Arts and Crafts building. It would have been too small for a platform on the scale preferred by Poel.128 However, the promptbooks and programme for the occasion indicate that here, too, Poel deployed both a platform extension of the stage and, upstage of the proscenium line, at least one raised and curtained level.129 The Globe Theatre and the Royalty Theatre, on the other hand, had been built (and the Royalty rebuilt) for dramatic performances upstage of their proscenium arches. In each, ground floor seating covered a relatively small area, more than half of it overhung by the balcony. It is not certain that Poel made any use of a platform stage for Julius Cæsar the Dictator at the Globe in 1931. Publicity, programme and reviews from this production make no mention of one, and the promptbooks are ambiguous on this point, although one of them is annotated with abundant instructions for the movement of curtains. In his autobiography, Donald Wolfit, who played Cato, recollected: ‘The stalls were largely covered by the platform stage which was built over them, so that one was half-way to the circle if one stood out on the front.’130 That description, however, so closely matches the testimony of reviews and promptbooks from the 1927 and 1928 platform performances at the Holborn Empire that it seems possible that the actor’s decades-later memory confused productions.131 The promptbooks for the Byron plays suggest that Poel originally intended for them to be staged – perhaps at the Holborn Empire – with a platform but then had to modify plans for performance at the Royalty, which was

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far too narrow to accommodate a full platform stage. An advertising leaflet for the occasion promised ‘a Tableau Stage representation’, but what the programme eventually offered was ‘a demonstration performance […] on a Tableau Platform’.132 One reviewer’s comment that ‘at one moment the stage seemed uncomfortably crowded’ suggests that the performance of the Byron plays was crammed onto the small (24 feet by 24 feet) proscenium stage of that theatre.133 When the Byron plays were given a second performance, at the Little Theatre, it was as a recital staged on rostra or risers, which were not extensions of the proscenium stage but graduated elevations of it. Such an arrangement suited relatively static performance; and Poel, as noted above, had already used it in the Little Theatre for Alcestis in 1912 and in 1908 for The Bacchae at the Court Theatre. Most of Poel’s Elizabethan Stage Circle productions, then, served to advertise his notion of a platform stage – and, by extension, the necessity of a playhouse to accommodate such a stage. The programmes for When You See Me, You Know Me in 1927, Sejanus in 1928, and the Byron plays in July 1929 all define their respective occasions as ‘demonstration performance[s]’; and in a programme note for the earliest of these, Poel explained what was being demonstrated: ‘It is hoped that this production will shew, to some extent, that a performance on a platform stage is different in its effect to one given either upon an apron stage or behind a proscenium. W.P.’134 More precisely, according to an advance report on the same production, ‘Mr Poel hopes to show not only that the platform stage afforded actors opportunity to speak their lines with an intimacy of relation to the audience impossible in the proscenium-arch theatre, but also that an Elizabethan stage can provide effects which cannot otherwise be created.’135 Eloquent testimony to his realization of both these hopes is given in a letter to Poel from one of Jonson’s twentieth-century editors. Writing to Poel from Oxford, Percy Simpson recorded what had impressed him about the production of Sejanus at the Holborn Empire: The spaciousness of the stage struck me most, and the freedom of movement that it gave the actors. To take a point of the merest detail: asides could be spoken more naturally to the audience than if the actor was cut off from them in the enclosure of the ordinary stage. For large scenes such as the gathering of the Senate the wide stage was admirable. […] Further, it gave a greater reality to the indoor scenes in Sejanus’ house. The effect of contrast was very suggestive.136 Yet Poel’s platform stage performances also demonstrated the economic impracticability of this way of playing. With the partial exception of Byron



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in 1929, none of his productions under Elizabethan Stage Circle auspices was performed more than once. Most performances, moreover, were ‘closed’ ones for which tickets were notionally available only to members of the Elizabethan Stage Circle – either because the venue was not licensed for performance of stage plays or because the performance was given on Sunday. Both one-off performances and closed ones were usual for Sunday societies. The problem peculiar to Elizabethan Stage Circle performances was their raison d’etre: a platform stage, the very feature which most of them were advertising, severely reduced the seating capacity of any auditorium in which it was constructed. Covering over expensive seats at ground level, a platform stage also necessitated the temporary decommissioning of many – indeed, most – seats at higher levels, from which it was more or less invisible. This had happened before, when Poel staged The Two Gentlemen of Verona at His Majesty’s Theatre in 1910 and built a platform over part of the stalls. Occupants of seats in what was left of those stalls and in the dress circle could see the performers out in front of the proscenium line, but sightlines from the gallery and upper circle were so obstructed that they had to be closed, and 53 per cent of the house was out of use for the performance. Similar exclusion zones were necessary for the platform productions of Poel’s last years. The single Monday afternoon performance of the Byron plays at the Royalty in 1929 was an open one as regards ticket sales, but the upper circle and the pit were closed. Even at the Holborn Empire, where the stalls area well accommodated a big platform stage, that stage was visible only from the back of the stalls (‘pit stalls’) under the balcony, from the front row of the balcony, and from the front row of the upper balcony – a total of 300 seats, or less than 20 per cent of normal capacity.137 Ticket prices at the Holborn Empire were inflated for Poel’s first platform production there, but even so, the sum raised by ticket sales was insufficient to cover production costs. Elizabethan Stage Circle subscribers were sent a preliminary notice seeking donations towards the second platform production: the appeal listed contributions already promised by the lessee of the theatre as well as by Granville Barker and Poel himself.138 Poel wanted a stage that could never be cost-effective within the architectural givens of the commercial theatre of his time. Its space would have to be purpose-built: A platform stage […] of the same proportions as those used a few days ago at the Holborn Empire, could easily and inexpensively be put up, having around it a tiered semicircular auditorium, the seats rising a few inches for each row and topped by a tier of private boxes. This

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arrangement would give facilities for concerts, ballets and the presentation of classic drama which, together, should ensure its usefulness in the metropolis and repay the cost of the building.139 Poel here could be describing the Albert Hall – on the construction of which he is said to have worked in earliest adulthood, before he abandoned engineering for acting.140 Indeed, in the aftermath of the Holborn Empire performance of When You See Me, You Know Me, Poel corresponded with the impresario C. B. Cochran about presenting a fortnight’s run of the production in the Albert Hall, the London venue best suited to accommodate his platform stage.141 The notion, however, came to nothing. Elizabethan Stage Circle performances demonstrated that a platform stage was desirably different, but the demonstrations of desirable difference did not secure what Poel sought. An Elizabethan playhouse in which to place such a stage, plus an academy for instruction in verse-speaking, remained beyond his reach. He died in December 1934. The reader of this essay may well conclude that, as Edward Garnett wrote in 1913, when William Poel appeared to have retired from staging plays, ‘So much depends on the guiding spirit of the man, and so little can we count on any Society’s programme!’.142 Yet in order to guide anything (sometimes too spiritedly), the man was dependent upon societies. The New Shakspere Society, the Shakespeare Reading Society, the Elizabethan Stage Society, the London Shakespeare League and the Elizabethan Stage Circle all enabled Poel to define, display and develop his understanding of ‘a more faithful representation of Shakespeare’s plays upon the stage’. Neither they, nor he, could do much more. The societies in which Poel was involved were not just fractious and, for the most part, evanescent: they were also marginal. Poel recognized that the order of theatre (and, indeed, culture) he wanted could not happen without institutional changes for which he repeatedly called – but was himself incapable of effecting.

Chapter 2

H. Granville Barker Cary M. Mazer

The Old Drama and the New Theatre ‘It’s no good’, Granville Barker recalls Bernard Shaw telling him in 1903, when he read the prospectus that Barker and William Archer had prepared on behalf of a committee rallying support for a National Theatre. ‘[N]o one’, Shaw explained, ‘with youth and energy to get such a theatre started would do a hand’s turn for the sake of such a musty line of plays as you put down. The new drama may serve you, but old-fashioned drama’s the devil.’1 The idea of an English national theatre – an endowed and nationally chartered theatre, modelled on the Comédie Française and the burg- and staats-theaters of the German-speaking countries – had been proposed in 1848 and 1879, and to many theatrical innovators in 1903 the time now seemed right to make that idea a reality. No candidates seemed better suited to spearhead the project than Archer and Barker. Archer, then 47, was well established as a theatre critic, translator of Ibsen, and a long-time advocate of what had come to be called the ‘New Drama’. Barker, only 26, had already begun to make an impression in progressive theatre circles in Britain, and had abundant supplies of the ‘youth and energy’ that Shaw felt were the prerequisites for founding and running a national theatre, should the benefactors come forward to establish its endowment. As a young actor touring the provinces in the 1890s, Barker had co-authored several unproduced plays. His first solo play, The Marrying of Ann Leete (a proto-feminist political comedy that points forwards to a dawning century, set when another century was dawning one hundred years earlier), was produced in 1902 by The Stage Society, one of several progressive theatre organizations that gave limited-run performances of plays that had not yet obtained professional productions, or had been denied licences by the Lord Chamberlain’s examiner of plays and could not be performed publicly. As an actor, he played the title role in Shakespeare’s Richard II for William

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Poel’s Elizabethan Stage Society in 1899, just shy of his 22nd birthday, and in 1903 had just played Marlowe’s Edward II for him. For the Stage Society he appeared in Ibsen’s The League of Youth and Hauptmann’s The Coming of Peace, and, most notably, as Eugene Marchbanks, the neuraesthenic young poet in Shaw’s Candida, and as the ne’er-do-well Frank Gardner in private members-only performances of Shaw’s censored ‘unpleasant’ play, Mrs Warren’s Profession. And he was already coming to be known as something of a rabble-rouser about the social, economic and political structures of the theatre industry, having spearheaded a successful, if short-lived, effort to transform the Actors’ Association, which had been headed by the leading actor-managers of the day, into a trade union representing labour rather than management. Now friends with Bernard Shaw (who, like Archer, was 21 years his senior), he would soon follow Shaw’s example and become a committed vegetarian and Fabian socialist. Archer and Barker’s prospectus, A National Theatre: Schemes and Estimate, was privately printed in 1903, with an endorsement from the actormanagers Henry Irving, Squire Bancroft and John Hare, manager Helen D’Oyly Carte, and playwrights Arthur Wing Pinero, Henry Arthur Jones and J. M. Barrie. Nicknamed the ‘Blue Book’ (after the standard format of parliamentary committee reports), it was comprehensive in its scope and exacting in its details, featuring sample by-laws, a detailed budget and a roster of employees. And, to illustrate how one of the proposed theatre’s key features would work – a standing company performing in plays presented in true alternating repertory – the Blue Book included a list of plays (most of them real plays, along with some with invented titles, as place-holders for the plays that would be receiving their premieres with the company), complete cast lists, and a roster of hypothetical actors, collating the roles they would play and the number of performances they would appear in over the course of the season. The repertoire included many plays from across the history of English drama – the devilish old-fashioned drama to which Shaw was referring: comedies by Jonson, Congreve and Sheridan; nineteenth-century chestnuts by Bulwer Lytton, T. W. Robertson and W. S. Gilbert; and late-Victorian comedies by W. E. Henley and Robert Louis Stevenson, Haddon Chambers, Sidney Grundy, R. C. Carton and Oscar Wilde, as well as plays by the Blue Book endorsers Jones (The Liars) and Pinero (both the nostalgic Trelawny of the Wells and the more forwardlooking The Benefit of the Doubt). But by ‘old-fashioned dramatists’ Shaw might actually have been referring to his bête noire, Shakespeare. Indeed, the plays of Shakespeare feature prominently in Archer and Barker’s hypothetical repertoire for



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the national theatre. Of the 34 full-length plays in the first year’s repertory, nine are by Shakespeare (including a complete second history tetralogy, to strike a ‘national note’).2 These nine plays represent 124 of the 363 performances of the theatre’s hypothetical season first season. Shaw’s criticism of the proposed repertoire was in essence a challenge to his young friend Barker: do you want to be associated with Shakespeare – even as part of a reformist agenda, in a subsidized theatre, eschewing the actor-manager star system, in rotating repertory, without elaborate pictorially illustrative scenery – or do you want to be a champion of the post-Ibsenite New Drama, the drama that you are performing in as a young actor with the private societies, and that you are yourself starting to write? Make your choice, as you almost certainly cannot do both. Even as Shaw was levelling his challenge, Barker had accepted an offer to direct a production of The Two Gentlemen of Verona at the Court Theatre (a then somewhat forlorn smaller theatre off the beaten path in Chelsea), which J. H. Leigh had secured as a showcase for his wife, Thyrza Norman. Barker cast himself as Speed, and later played Romeo opposite Norman’s Juliet in the balcony scene for a single performance at a special matinee. If we were to judge Barker by this one decision, we would not be wrong to conclude that he had made his choice to be a Shakespearean. When Shakespeare scholars, historians of Shakespeare in performance, and historians of Shakespearean criticism consider H. Granville Barker (or, as readers of his Shakespeare criticism know him, Harley Granville-Barker), they think of him quintessentially as a Shakespearean. He was, famously, the producer and stage director of three path-breaking productions over the course of two seasons at the Savoy Theatre – The Winter’s Tale and Twelfth Night in the autumn and winter of 1912, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the winter and spring of 1914 and on tour to America – which featured non-representational decor, an apron stage, fluid scene transitions, nearly uncut texts, and swift speaking, departing in virtually every way from the prevailing pseudo-traditions of heavily cut scripts and pictorially representational scenery. And, once he retired from active work in the theatre after the Great War, he was the author of numerous essays and lectures on Shakespeare, most notably the series of Prefaces to Shakespeare, which analysed the plays in the context of their dramatic structure and theatrical strategies, both in their original performances and as they could potentially be restaged in the contemporary theatre. But in 1903, when the Blue Book was privately published, Barker was not conspicuously a Shakespearean. Aside from his two appearances for William Poel, his Shakespearean roles were unremarkable. He undoubtedly played

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his share of Shakespearean roles as a teenage member of Sarah Thorne’s company in Margate (a frequent training ground, in the days before acting schools, for aspirant actors like Barker); touring with Ben Greet’s company (yet another common venue for on-the-job training) in 1895, he played Paris, to the Juliet of his future wife, Lillah McCarthy; and he was hired by Johnston Forbes-Robertson in 1902 to play Osric in a remounting of his 1897 production of Hamlet – all in all not an unusual resume for a jobbing young actor at the time, but nothing that would label him as a budding Shakespeare specialist. Despite appearances, if Barker was indeed making a choice in 1903, it was not to become a Shakespearean. For even when Barker accepted Leigh’s invitation to direct The Two Gentlemen of Verona – just as the Blue Book was being circulated, with its endorsement of Shakespeare as the centerpiece of the National Theatre’s repertoire – he was acting on another theatrical agenda that had nothing to do with Shakespeare. That one Shakespeare production at the Court Theatre was simply a means to an end: in exchange for directing that vanity production for Leigh’s wife, he exacted permission from Leigh to use the theatre (in partnership with the Court’s business manager, J. E. Vedrenne) for a series of special matinees of Shaw’s Candida. Candida soon moved to an evening bill, and was replaced in the special matinees by other plays in repertory; Vedrenne and Barker assumed Leigh’s lease of the theatre; and a new management dedicated to the New Drama was launched, one that would last for three seasons at the Court, and then move to other theatres and managements (at the Savoy, the St James’s, the Duke of York’s, and the Kingsway) over the ensuing ten years, producing plays by Ibsen, Shaw, John Galsworthy, St John Hankin, John Masefield, numerous pioneering women playwrights, and several plays by Barker himself. The only plays that predate the late nineteenth century were not by Shakespeare but by Euripides, newly translated by Barker’s friend, the Oxford Classics professor Gilbert Murray. This had been Barker’s plan for the Court all along, as he framed it in a letter to Archer after Leigh extended his invitation: ‘a stock season of the uncommercial Drama: Hauptmann – Sudermann – Ibsen – Maeterlinck – Schnitzler – Shaw – Brieux, etc.’3 It had nothing to do with Shakespeare; in many ways (as we shall see) it was important that it not be Shakespeare. Even as Shaw was forcing him to choose between the old drama and the New, Barker evidently had already opted for the New. And so it was with the Blue Book as well. Schemes and Estimates was a very real proposal, and Barker was quite serious in his unfailing lifelong commitment to establishing a National Theatre. But the actual repertoire



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of the theatre he and Archer secretly wished to bring into being was not the one put forward in the privately printed version of the Blue Book. ‘IT IS NOT AN “ADVANCED” THEATRE THAT WE ARE DESIGNING’,4 they write, in emphatic small caps, in the Blue Book, and explain that ‘for this reason the names of Tolstoy, Gorky, Ibsen, Björnson, Hauptmann, D’Annunzio, and Bernard Shaw do not figure in our list of authors’.5 Notwithstanding, when the Blue Book was published three years later, Barker admitted that that statement had been a bald-faced lie. For an ‘“advanced” theatre’ was precisely what they had in mind all along. ‘[I]n those far-off days’, he writes, in a new preface (in the form of an open letter to Archer), ‘as Ibsen’s sponsor you were under more suspicion as a dangerous theatrical revolutionary.’6 It was for this reason that they had deliberately omitted from their sample repertory any artistically advanced contemporary plays (aside from a single play by Maurice Maeterlinck and a full-length and a one-act play William Butler Yeats). In 1903, they needed to prove that a National Theatre ‘could be brought into being under a management which need have no distressing gospel to preach, which need not even possess settled artistic convictions’.7 Shakespeare would and should be the foundational canonical playwright of a National Theatre. Shakespeare was, above all, safe – a way of proving to the numerous antiIbsenites in the theatrical establishment (like the Blue Book endorser Jones) that a National Theatre hadn’t been taken over by socialists and bluestockings; to avoid controversy, Barker even suppressed his belief ‘that Shakespeare should be played without scenery’ in the pages of the Blue Book. What Barker really wanted the National Theatre to be was a theatre very much like the one he would soon create at the Court: one freed (in this case by its endowment) from the need to turn a financial profit, and thereby free to present plays that weren’t sufficiently commercial to amortize their costs by playing for long runs. If a National Theatre couldn’t do it, then the Court Theatre would: ‘Without a doubt the National Theatre will come,’ he wrote to Archer as he was formulating his Court Theatre management, ‘but as Ibsen has leavened the whole English Theatre during the past fifteen years, so we ought to be getting some more leaven ready for the National Theatre when it does come.’8 With both the Court and the proposed National Theatre, Barker wanted to create a new financial and institutional structure for a theatre, so that the theatre could afford to produce a very different type of play. He was creating a ‘New Theatre’ for the New Drama. Shakespeare, despite his prominence in the initial repertoire of the proposed National Theatre,

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had nothing to do with it; and for the next decade – arguably his most active and influential years as an actor, playwright and activist theatre manager – Barker in turn had nothing to do with Shakespeare. Until the Savoy productions, Barker staged no Shakespeare at any of the theatres he managed. His single performance of the balcony scene at the Court was his last public appearance as an actor in a Shakespearean role.

The Challenge of the Hyphen The challenge of understanding the role of Shakespeare in Barker’s career, and to understanding his reputation as a Shakespearean in the twentiethand twenty-first-century scholarly imagination – how, in short, a theatrical practitioner and visionary who scrupulously avoided Shakespeare for close to a decade could become one of the most significant Shakespeareans of his generation – can best be described as the challenge of the hyphen: not the hyphen that he added to his name at the bequest of his second wife, transforming himself from H. Granville Barker to Harley Granville-Barker (about which more later), but the hyphen that describes the many facets of his career as a theatre practitioner and writer. For one needs multiple hyphens to describe his career as a non-Shakespearean theatrical practitioner and visionary: an actor-director-reformer-manager-playwright. His accomplishments in any one of these functions would have been sufficient to establish his reputation among his contemporaries and in the eyes of subsequent historians. As an actor, he was best known for his roles in the plays of Shaw: in addition to Marchbanks and Frank he played He in How He Lied to her Husband, Capt. Kearny in Captain Brassbound’s Conversion, Napoleon in The Man of Destiny, Tanner in Man and Superman, Valentine in You Never Can Tell, Keegan in John Bull’s Other Island, Cusins in Major Barbara, Dubedat in The Doctor’s Dilemma, both Burgoyne and Dick in The Devil’s Disciple, Sergius in Arms and the Man, and Shakespeare in The Dark Lady of the Sonnets. He was one of several directors of the era – ‘producers’, in British parlance of the time – who articulated the role of the director in new ways and realigned the chain of authority in the theatre process. He was a relentless theatrical reformer: in addition to experimenting with alternative managerial structures and the repertory system, he was an outspoken opponent of theatrical censorship (to which his finest play, the 1907 tragedy Waste, fell victim); he helped launch the regional repertory theatre movement in England, directly inspiring theatres in Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester led by his former associates; and in his later



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years he was a patron of the burgeoning amateur Community Theatre movement in Great Britain. In addition to championing the plays of Shaw and his contemporaries, he was a major playwright in his own right, now considered by many the premier dramatist writing in English of his era, in many ways exceeding, in his psychological techniques and his writing for the actor, his great older contemporary, friend and associate, Bernard Shaw. And, as a dramaturg avant la lettre, he was one of the first to articulate the position of the ‘literary manager’ (a term he coined) in the Englishlanguage theatre.9 Barker’s reputation as a Shakespearean similarly depends upon a hyphen: the hyphenate term ‘scholar-practitioner’. For although Barker’s Savoy productions were significant in and of themselves, and his Prefaces, considered as isolated works, offer a significantly new and different approach to Shakespearean criticism and analysis, it is Barker’s status as pre-war practitioner that makes his post-war scholarly Prefaces at all interesting. One cannot not consider the Barker of the Savoy Shakespeare productions when examining the Granville-Barker of the Prefaces; for the thing that makes the Prefaces truly remarkable (and that can begin to explain why they have been in print continually on both sides of the Atlantic since they first appeared) is the fact that they come from the sensibility of someone who has been a professional practitioner, who has been in the trenches with scripts, dirtying his hands with designers and actors and technicians, faced with myriad practical decisions, such as how to cast the plays, how to costume the actors, and where to place the interval (while knowing full well that the plays were probably originally played without them). Without the provenance of the rehearsal room (or the imagination of a practitioner who was indelibly marked, like the dyer’s hand, by the enormous amount of time he spent in them), the Prefaces might, from our historical distance, read as little more than quaint and somewhat belaboured readings of the plays, based on dated historical assumptions about acting, dramatic character, theatres and audiences, and largely discredited reconstructions of the Elizabethan stage, with little to distinguish them from A. C. Bradley’s lectures on Shakespeare’s tragedies (1904), or John Dover Wilson’s What Happens in Hamlet (1935), with which Barker grappled in his footnotes to his 1937 Preface on that play. Barker’s hyphenated status as a scholar-practitioner is also key to his exalted status in the history of Shakespeare in performance and Shakespearein-Performance studies. For the succès d’estime of the Savoy Shakespeare productions, the pioneering ‘stage-centred’-ness of the Prefaces, and their origin in a single individual and sensibility, have served as a key chapter in

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a master narrative we have constructed about Shakespeare production and Shakespearean scholarship, once ‘Shakespeare in Performance’ became a distinct category of Shakespeare studies in the 1960s and 70s. There are two complementary strands to this narrative, which J. L. Styan, in 1977, famously called ‘The Shakespeare Revolution’. Stage practitioners since the dawn of the twentieth century, Styan asserts, have become more scholarly – more appreciative of the architectural features of Shakespeare’s stage and the ways that the conventions of that stage are embedded in the plays’ dramaturgical structures, and more certain that the job of the director of a Shakespeare play is to unleash the theatrical energies buried in the playscript. And scholars since the dawn of the twentieth century have become more theatrical – recognizing that the texts are scripts designed for (or vestiges of) live performance, and that the job of the scholar is to understand and explicate the performance energies encoded in the script, and to document how theatrical performances through history (and in the present) have grappled (or are grappling) with, and have channelled (or are channelling), these energies. For Styan, these two historical vectors do not fully converge until the 1970s (specifically, with Peter Brook’s 1970 A Midsummer Night’s Dream). But both vectors – the rise of the scholarly practitioner and the rise of the stage-centred scholar – originate in the two Granville Barkers. The Barker of the Savoy productions and the Granville-Barker of the Prefaces are the not-so-missing links in the evolutionary process, and Barker stands pre-eminently as the patron saint of stage-centredness, the movement’s principal philosopher and aphorist. As Granville-Barker writes, in his general introduction to the series of volumes, The Players’ Shakespeare, in which several of the Prefaces first appeared, and (as quoted here) at the end of the revised general introduction to the revised and additional Prefaces that appeared from 1927 to 1947: Lastly, for a golden rule, whether staging or costuming or cutting is in question, and a comprehensive creed, a producer might well pin this on his wall: Gain Shakespeare’s effects by Shakespeare’s means while you can; for, plainly, this will be the better way. But gain Shakespeare’s effects; and it is your business to discern them.10 One can use this ‘golden rule’ to read backwards from the Prefaces to the Savoy productions, with their invocation of Elizabethan staging principals (if not the relatively slavish Elizabethanism of William Poel), their return to the full text, their use of non-representational scenery, and their use of



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an apron (if not a truly open) stage. For in these productions, Barker does indeed appear to have been seeking to gain Shakespeare’s effects, and to gain them largely by Shakespeare’s own means. But there are historiographic problems with Styan’s master narrative, as James C. Bulman and others have persuasively argued.11 And, if we take Barker’s golden rule at face value, there are, moreover, theoretical problems with the implied ‘intentional fallacy’: that Shakespeare’s intentions (as least as they are manifest in his ‘effects’ and the ‘means’ by which they are created) exist, that they can be discerned by the modern practitioner, that they can be put into effect in today’s theatre, and that it would be desirable to do so. Accounting for Barker’s intentional fallacy is, in fact, the key to understanding Barker’s work as a Shakespearean and as a non-Shakespearean. For Barker’s faith in the discernibility of the author’s intentions can be explained (if not excused) by his understanding of how theatre is put together and by whom; the relative authority of the dramatist, the director, the actor, the manager, and the dramaturg; the social and political function of theatregoing; and the role of theatre and drama in the national culture. Barker, in both his pre-war theatre practice and in his pre- and post-war writings, weighs in on virtually every one of these topics. One can’t understand how Barker wanted Shakespeare to be staged, either in his actual productions or in his stage-centred scholarly writing, without understanding his larger theatrical theories and practices, even – especially – his non-Shakespearean ones. But Barker himself doesn’t make it easy for us to bridge the hyphens that yoke together the different aspects of his career. For, both in the ways that he presented himself and the ways his contemporaries came to understand him, it sometimes seems as if Barker himself had deliberately given posterity the tools to pigeonhole his various roles and to segregate his different professional activities. For one thing, there is the matter of the other hyphen – the hyphen that turned him from H. Granville Barker, the actor-director-reformer-managerplaywright-manager, into the hyphenated Harley Granville-Barker, D.Phil. Hon. That hyphen has largely been blamed on his snobbish second wife, the wealthy, twice-divorced American, Helen Huntington, whom he married after a messy divorce (costing him, among other things, his friendship with Shaw) from his first wife Lillah McCarthy, with whom he had acted (she played Anne Whitefield to his John Tanner and Jennifer to his Dubedat), whom he directed (in plays by Shaw, Masefield, and Anatole France among others, and as Hermione, Viola and Helena), and whose own ventures

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into New Theatre management he had supported. His post-war marriage to Helen (who reputedly hated the theatre, and personally loathed Shaw, who had allegedly intervened on McCarthy’s behalf during the divorce) was accompanied by a move from London to a country house (and, later, to Paris), the addition of the hyphen, an official demurral of active work in the theatre (aside from a few guest director gigs, and occasional attempts to persuade his former colleagues and associates to produce his new and newly revised plays), and a refocusing of his energies towards scholarly writing and (in collaboration with Helen) translating modern Spanish plays. Many of Barker’s associates and disciples in the theatre profession – both the ones who worked with him, and others who founded or managed repertory theatres in the provinces following his example – have added to the sense of discontinuity in Barker/Granville-Barker’s professional identities. For them, Barker’s perceived abandonment of the theatre was a betrayal, a general’s retreat from the field before the battle, let alone the war, had been won. They adopted the image (from Browning) of ‘The Lost Leader’ (which W. Bridges-Adams took as the title for a 1953 radio address about Barker); and every time Barker published a new play or revision, or another book-length scheme for the National Theatre, and every time he ventured back into the rehearsal room (with his country-gentleman’s bowler hat and tightly furled bumbershoot), they took it either as evidence of larger missed opportunities, or as a sign of his squirely condescension. As Lewis Casson writes, in his foreword to the first comprehensive theatrical biography of Barker by C. B. Purdom, His death was a heavy loss in Shakespeare criticism and to the drama; but to us in the theatre, and especially to those of us who worked with him and for him, and who learnt from him what the theatre meant and drew inspiration from his dazzling imagination and intelligence, the blow fell thirty years earlier when he gave up the struggle, threw off the dust of battle, and became a mere professor.12 Barker himself has added to our sense of his divided career: as he wrote, in 1923, to St John Ervine, ‘I had made up my mind […] to give up acting when I was 30 and producing when I was 40’.13 Nor do Barker’s own plays help: how can one not read the title of his 1916 one-act play Farewell to the Theatre autobiographically (though, admittedly, the female main character is not autobiographical, and the play is, ultimately, about broader issues than the theatre)? Virtually all of Barker’s full-length solo-authored plays



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place the central characters in the position to choose between getting their hands dirty in the workaday worlds of business or politics and making a grand departure for higher principles – what many analysts of Barker’s plays have called (after Dante) il gran rifiuto. An increasing number of the characters over Barker’s years as an active playwright choose, by the final curtain, to abandon the arena of action, most dramatically the central character of the first full-length play after his remarriage, The Secret Life, whose principal character – a visionary politician – plans his comeback, only to abandon it for personal reasons at the last minute. But as much as Barker might invite us to follow his autobiographical clues and compartmentalize the facets and phases of his career, his work, both on paper and on the stage, came out of a single sensibility. And – more significantly – the aspects of the theatre he sought to reform were interconnected. A new type of drama could not be created within existing financial models, and so depended upon the creation of different managerial models that were relatively free from the pressures of the marketplace. The new drama drew upon fresh models of psychology and behaviour, and therefore required a new aesthetic of acting. Actors needed opportunities to play in this new aesthetic to master it sufficiently to play the new leading roles, and the arc of their careers needed a different shape – different systems of training and different forms of employment – to learn it and master it. And the new plays and the new acting methods needed to be coordinated by a different way of organizing artistic authority in the theatre, retooling the balance between playwright and actor – hence Barker’s interest in defining a new dynamic for the director in the management structure and in the rehearsal room, and in creating a new authoritative function for the person within the management of the proposed National Theatre who would have the title literary manager. Barker’s work on the other side of the non-Shakespearean-Shakespearean hyphen is similarly of a piece with his work as an actor-director-reformermanager-playwright, and comes out of the same sensibility. In both his productions of Shakespeare and his writings about the plays, he draws the same connections between the different aspects of dramatic writing and theatrical practice. According to Barker, Shakespeare’s stagecraft cannot be separated from the architecture and stage conventions of the theatres for which the plays were written; and the way he structured the events of his plays changed over the course of his career, as did his interest in dramatic character and his changing perceptions of what his fellow-actors could and could not do. When modern theatre artists stage the plays, Barker recognized, both in the Savoy productions and in the Prefaces, all of these aspects of the plays’

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original conception, composition and performance are in dynamic tension with the architecture, stage conventions, audience expectations, notions of dramatic character, and technologies of acting of their own time. In that tension lies the greatest paradox of Barker’s career: for the reforms that Barker fought so hard for as an actor, director, reformer, manager and playwright arguably widen, rather than shrink, the gap between the theatre for which Shakespeare’s plays were written and the contemporary theatre in which the plays are to be restaged. The miracle of the Savoy productions is not, as Styan would have it, that he rediscovered the Elizabethan Shakespeare in the modern theatre, but rather that he could accommodate what he learned from Poel about the Elizabethan Shakespeare while remaining a modernist as a playwright, actor, and producer of the contemporary New Drama. And the miracle of the Prefaces is that, even in his withdrawal from active work in the theatre, and his arguably misplaced ambition to be welcomed, as an uncredentialled independent scholar, into the stuffy community of academy-based Shakespeare scholarship, he retained his sensibilities as a theatrical modernist.14 It is in that gap between the Elizabethan Shakespeare and the contemporary progressive theatre that Barker, the non-Shakespearean-Shakespearean lived, created, thought, and wrote. Shakespeare, Barker writes at the beginning of his preface to Hamlet, learned his playwright’s trade ‘amid the comradely give-and-take of the common theatre workshop […] he was the genius of the workshop. What he learned there’, Barker continues, ‘was to think directly in terms of the medium on which he worked; in the movement of the scene, in the humanity of the actors and their acting.’15 Without necessarily applying the term ‘genius’ to him, the same can be said of Barker: he developed his ideas and honed his aesthetic from plying his trade in the workshop of the rehearsal room and in the pages of the managerial ledger book. The workshop where his art was forged was, for many years, not a place where Shakespeare was rehearsed; but his work there shaped how and when he chose to produce Shakespeare: how he staged the plays, how he came to understand their structure, and above all how he understood the art of the actor who aspired to embody Shakespeare’s roles. The hyphen of Barker-Granville-Barker’s career as a non-Shakespearean-Shakespearean is not so much a challenge as an invitation, a way of understanding how, as a ‘genius of the workshop’, his work evolved – as Barker wrote of Shakespeare – according to ‘such principles as the growth of a tree shows. It is not haphazard merely because it is not formal.’16



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Irresistible Shakespeare The need to create new organizational models for the theatre – the pressing need to create a New Theatre in order to foster a New Drama – was arguably what prevented Barker from directing or presenting Shakespeare for nine of his most active years as a theatre producer, from the founding of his management of the Court Theatre in 1903 until the first of his Savoy Shakespeare productions, The Winter’s Tale, in the autumn of 1912. Shaw had told him he needed to choose between the old drama and the New, and he evidently did. Ironically, it was the pressure of creating a New Theatre – not the experimental managements that he brought into being in lieu of a National Theatre, but the National Theatre itself – that ultimately made him break his near-decade-long Shakespearean silence. No doubt Shakespeare occupied a place, if a low-priority one, on Barker’s reformist agenda all along. He certainly did not approve of the way Shakespeare was being staged in the mainstream commercial theatres. He viewed the ‘upholstered’ productions of H. Beerbohm Tree, and the lower-budget but equally pictorial and textually edited and transposed Shakespeare productions of Frank Benson, Lewis Waller, Oscar Asche, Arthur Bourchier and others, as exemplars of a false tradition; as he confessed in the preface to the revised Blue Book, had he chosen to launch his campaign to transform the contemporary theatre with Shakespeare, he undoubtedly would have endorsed some non-pictorially representational, more Elizabethan mode of performance. But the cultural and professional stakes may have made a campaign on behalf of a new aesthetic of Shakespearean production too high. Shakespeare was the property of actor-managers – star performers whose professional status and income depended upon being the lessees of their own theatre, lavishing funds on the physical productions and large casts, and giving the productions extended runs to amortize their costs and turn a profit. Shakespeare was key to the professional status of these actor-managers, who took weekly ‘calling card’ ads in The Era and the other trade newspapers, which were listed in order of professional prominence, the Shakespearean actors like Henry Irving and Beerbohm Tree over modern-dress creased-trousered actor-managers such as W. H. Kendall, Squire Bancroft, Charles Wyndham, George Alexander and John Hare. Barker had long opposed the institution of actor-management. His successful campaign to expel actor-managers from membership of the Actors’ Association may have been short-lived, but it left no doubt about

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his view that there was a contradiction between the artistic and economic functions of management and acting: either the Actors’ Association could be a professional organization representing management, or it could be a trade union recognizing actors as cultural labourers. The Blue Book’s draft bylaws for the National Theatre specify that ‘the director shall in no cases be an actor’.17 And Barker concurred with Shaw in systematically refusing to allow actors at the Court to hold a financial stake in productions in which they appeared, as Kate Rourke offered to do when she was engaged to play Candida. Dorothy, the actress-manager contemplating retirement in Barker’s play Farewell to the Theatre, bewails the pressures that force her to commodify her own personality to sustain the brand of her management, and that prevent her from balancing her books when she presents new plays that fail to exploit her status as a star. And, as a playwright, Barker chose not to follow the example of the pre-Court Theatre Shaw, who was willing to write star vehicles for actor-managers such as Irving, Forbes-Robertson and Alexander, bending but not breaking the dramatic conventions of the signature dramatic genres of each management.18 The New Drama could not afford to wait for the creation of a National Theatre (as Barker explained to Archer, when he was contemplating taking on the Court management), but, given the virtual monopoly in which high-profile Shakespeare was held, institutionally and culturally, by the actor-manager establishment, a reformist theatre for Shakespeare could. An unanticipated sequence of events in the planning of the National Theatre in 1908 changed everything. In 1903 and 1904, millionaire Richard Badger made the initial contribution to establish a fund towards the creation of a lasting memorial to Shakespeare, and a committee (which included several actor-managers) was formed in 1905 to decide on the form the memorial would take. The committee issued its report in 1908, proposing a statue to be erected in Portland Place. The theatrical community responded immediately and vociferously, deeming the committee’s statue proposal (and its proposed location outside of ‘Theatreland’) an insult to the profession. Barker’s cadre of theatre reformers, seizing what they saw as an historic opportunity, jumped into the fray, proposing instead that the most appropriate and lasting memorial to England’s greatest playwright would be a National Theatre. And so the Shakespeare Memorial initiative and the newly energized National Theatre movement merged, and a new advisory committee (which included Archer, Shaw and Barker) for what was now called the Shakespeare Memorial National Theatre (SMNT) was formed, charged with establishing and funding a National Theatre by 1916, in time to mark the tercentenary of Shakespeare’s death.



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When Archer and Barker first proposed a National Theatre in the Blue Book, Shakespeare was only one part (though obviously a significant one) of the repertoire of a theatre dedicated to sustaining the library of world drama and (covertly, perhaps) to encouraging new progressive dramatic writing. Now, through the merger of the National Theatre and Shakespeare Memorial committees, Shakespeare was the National Theatre’s official raison d’être. And as such, it set the National Theatre into direct confrontation with the interests of the actor-managers, despite – or perhaps even because of – the participation of individual actor-managers on the SMNT planning committee. Not surprisingly, the actor-managers exploited their membership on the SMNT committee, and manoeuvred to protect their interests. Beerbohm Tree, who had inherited Irving’s mantle as the premier Shakespearean actor-manager, had the most to lose. He had been a member of the initial Shakespeare Memorial committee in 1908, and, behind the scenes, was responsible for tabling a proposal for a National Theatre instead of the statue proposal. Now he was a member of the SMNT committee, and though he was obliged to support the idea of a National Theatre in public, in the privacy of the committee room he tried to co-opt the enterprise and commandeer its endowment into his own service, with the hopes of bypassing Archer and Barker’s blueprint and instead transforming his own theatre, His Majesty’s, into the National Theatre with himself as its artistic director. As though to demonstrate what such a theatre would look like, he initiated, in the spring of 1908, a Shakespeare Festival at His Majesty’s, and in 1909 he expanded the festival to include productions by other managements. Early in 1910, through the committee member Arthur Bourchier, his fellow actor-manager and sometime supporting actor, he offered to make that year’s festival an official presentation of the SMNT. Barker and his cohorts saw through Tree and Bourchier’s stratagem and, at a special meeting of the SMNT committee, put through a motion that officially forced Tree to publicly dissociate the festival from the National Theatre movement. Tree complied, but, notwithstanding, he used the 1910 festival to host productions by Bourchier, H. B. Irving, Benson and Waller, as well as a revival of a recent high-design production of King Lear by Herbert Trench’s experimental Haymarket Theatre company, and a new production of The Two Gentlemen of Verona by William Poel, which featured an apron stage built out over the theatre’s orchestra pit. The following year, after the opening night performance of the 1911 festival, Tree, no longer constrained by the SMNT committee’s 1910 resolution, spoke from

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the stage, opining that the aggregate of Shakespearean activity in London constituted a de facto National Theatre. And by the spring of 1912 he even proposed (in the privacy of the committee room) that the SMNT purchase the lease of His Majesty’s Theatre and turn it into the home of the National Theatre, no doubt with himself as the official or unofficial artistic director.19 As a member of the SMNT committee, Barker was a witness to all of these machinations. In 1903, when he launched his management of the Court Theatre, Shakespeare had been too complicated, too fraught a cultural commodity for the New Theatre movement; and it was not worth jeopardizing the New Drama movement on its behalf. But now, Shakespeare had become the battleground between the old theatre and the new. Were he to yield the battlefield of Shakespeare to the actor-managers, Barker would run the risk of losing the National Theatre, and all that it had come to stand for as a potential home for the New Drama. The need to produce Shakespeare had become (as Matthew Arnold had said in 1879, about the idea of a National Theatre) irresistible. It was in this context that he took advantage of the availability of the young actor Henry Ainley – who had toured with Benson and performed in London with Tree and Asche, but had also started to appear in more progressive new drama – and announced a season of Shakespeare at the Savoy for the following autumn.

A Single Superb Gesture In his 1953 radio address, W. Bridges-Adams recalled the first of Barker’s Shakespeare productions at the Savoy: I have never seen an audience more mentally alive, but that was partly because we were wondering all the time what Barker was going to do next. It was as though he knew there could be no half-measures; the public must be taken by storm or not at all – which I believe was the precise fact. Even the fantastic draperies, that took the place of Tree’s front cloths and Poel’s traverse curtains, came down with a defiant flop, as if Barker himself had hurled them at us from the flies, saying ‘There! What d’you think of that?’20 Barker was aiming to ‘out-Poel Poel, and out-Tree Tree, in a single superb gesture’, Bridges-Adams concludes, admittedly with forty years of hindsight. Barker certainly used the visual language of his productions as



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stunning gestures of defiance: Bridges-Adams singles out (as did contemporary critics) the huge umbrella that accompanied Lillah McCarthy’s Hermione for her first entrance in The Winter’s Tale, and the audience’s gasp (one that served the dramatic moment) when Ainley, as Malvolio in his yellow stockings, turned upstage, revealing the geometrical pattern of his cape. The sets and costumes (by Norman Wilkinson and Albert Rothenstein) were the vehicle for Barker’s defiant gesture of astonishment, but the astonishing thing he created was not just an ostensibly new way of staging Shakespeare, but a whole new theatre for seeing Shakespeare: Shakespeare performed without an actor-manager in the starring role, produced without actor-management. For better or for worse, the decor – the defiant flop of the draperies – monopolized critical attention. Reviewers compared the settings to Edward Gordon Craig, to Max Reinhardt, to the orientalist mime play Sûmûrun, to Italian Futurism, and to Leon Bakst’s designs for the Ballets Russes; the conical trees of Olivia’s Garden were likened to a child’s Noah’s ark and to a display in a sweet-shop; the automaton-like gold-faced fairies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream were likened to clockwork, to ormolu bric-abrac, and to gilded Cambodian or Indian idols.21 But for Barker the scenic idiom was not of the first importance: it was, rather, a relatively simple solution to an admittedly complex problem that followed directly from a set of clear artistic decisions. Barker knew, from his work with Poel and his familiarity with his many productions, that he wanted a stage without visual localization (or, at least, a stage that could be localized only when the action required it), which relied upon its own architecture to allow the actors to create the reality of place and situation through the reality of their belief in their characters. But what architecture? Even Poel’s reconstructed Elizabethan stages (built on the cheap and designed to be ‘fit-up’ into existing proscenium theatre spaces when Poel could scrape together the money for a performance) were cut-out pieces of cloth painted to resemble architecture – the same painterly scenic technologies of the pictorially representational stage Barker was rejecting. The key to the visual design of Barker’s Savoy Shakespeare productions lies in a simple distinction he makes at the conclusion to the essay (the first of his ‘prefaces’) that accompanied the acting edition of The Winter’s Tale available for purchase in the theatre lobby: ‘As to scenery, as scenery is mostly understood – canvas, realistically painted – I would have none of it. Decoration? – Yes. The difference is better seen than talked of, so I leave Norman Wilkinson’s to be seen.’22 What Barker required was something akin to the architectural fixity and flexibility of the Elizabethan

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stage without an Elizabethan stage: a defined space (or set of spaces), which could encompass the full stage, the middle stage and apron, or just the apron; without a pictorial vista; a playing space that could be taken to represent a specific location if need be, or could be no place at all. Absent the permanent architecture of a reconstructed playhouse, what was needed was not scenery but decoration – a visual, if not architectural, way of defining space. (Nor was precise localization important: as Barker later wrote, in the general introduction to The Players’ Shakespeare, ‘If [audiences] stopped to ask themselves where such and such a character, under their eyes at the minute, was supposed to be, “On the stage” might well have served for an immediate answer.’23) ‘A new convention has to be found’, he wrote to the Play Pictorial, after Twelfth Night opened – what he called ‘a new hieroglyphic language of scenery’. ‘Realistic scenery won’t do’, he explained, ‘if only because it’s never realistic.’ What are the conditions? We must have a background. What sort? Any sort? But if we have our choice? Well, we want something that will reflect light and suggest space; if it’s to be a background permanent for a play, (this, for many reasons, it should be), something that will not tie us too rigidly indoor or out. Sky-blue then will look too like sky; patterns suggest walls. Tapestry curtains hung round? Well, tapestry is apt to be stuffy and – archaeological. […] But what about a play’s demand for houses, with their doors and balconies, gardens and hedges, a forest with trees? Here is the problem. I state it; its solution does not lie in words, but it is an attempt at a solution that we have been making at the Savoy Theatre.24 Barker already had a model at hand for this type of setting in the designs for his stagings of Euripides. Ever since his years at the Court Theatre, Euripides had given Barker what he needed from Shakespeare without the heavy weight of cultural authority, without the putative traditions of acting and pictorial scenery, and without the inescapable associations of actor-management. He could treat Euripides’ plays as though they were world premieres of new scripts … as they arguably were, in Murray’s new translations. All that was needed to stage Euripides was (with variations in each play) a facade, a doorway, and a shrine or altar; and all that he had needed to create the facade was a set of pillars with curtains between them. Just before the Savoy Shakespeare productions, Barker had returned to his collaboration with Murray, restaging some of the plays he had already done and adding some new ones; and he started working in outdoor



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spaces, with more open stages, producing Iphigenia in Tauris at the replica Greek Theatre in Bradfield College with designs by Wilkinson, and later in football stadiums of American universities. Only a few months before The Winter’s Tale opened, Barker brought Iphigenia to Tree’s 1912 spring festival at His Majesty’s Theatre (which continued to feature invited artists and productions, but was not limited to Shakespeare that year); Barker almost certainly used the apron stage that Poel had built over the theatre’s orchestra pit for The Two Gentlemen of Verona in 1910, which Tree had retained for his own long-running traditional production of Henry VIII the following year. These productions of Greek tragedies gave Barker the scenic vocabulary he needed for Shakespeare at the Savoy, especially with the apron he added to the theatre’s stage. For spaces that were themselves architectural – Leontes’s palace, Theseus’s palace – he used the same solution that had served him for the palaces and temples of Euripides’ plays: a structural colonnade with curtains between them. For less localized, more temporary spaces, curtaining alone across the mid-stage would do: not unlike the front-cloths of Victorian ‘front’ or ‘cross-over’ scenes – which played while heavier ‘built-up’ scenes were being reset noisily behind them – but without their traditional painterly representational vistas (Figure 4). These cloths might have abstract designs – a triangular grid for Orsino’s palace, a leaf pattern for Leontes’s court in mourning in the final act, an elaborate black and silver pattern of plaid and crosses for Paulina’s art gallery – or simplified suggestions of place – the sea-coast of Bohemia; Titania’s bower, with decorated curtains curving around a gently sloping mound midstage (Figure 5). But even here the curtains were shirred, and swayed from the breezes of the onstage action; and Wilkinson made a special point that the cloths were dyed and not painted: the cloths thereby remained decorative, not scenic. Architectural spaces could be more precisely defined by simple architectural features (a grate for the cell in which Malvolio is confined, a gateway in a wall for the final scene in Twelfth Night) or with curtaining (a boxed-in alcove for the scene of Toby and Andrew’s nocturnal revels, traditionally represented as a ‘kitchen’ but here a music room with a virginal). Some important scenes were more three-dimensional: the sheep-shearing scene in Bohemia in The Winter’s Tale, which featured a short woven fence with the Shepherd’s three-dimensional cottage behind it (though one could argue that it is not absolutely necessary for the cottage to be either visually present or practical); and Olivia’s garden in Twelfth Night, with a pink symmetrically columned pavilion, and bright green textured satin cones, as if topiary box-trees.

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Though Barker clearly sought and achieved an Elizabethan fluidity of staging, enabling him to present the plays swiftly and virtually uncut, reconstructing the Elizabethan stage was not his goal. As Barker wrote more and more about Shakespeare’s stage, in the Prefaces and elsewhere, after the war, he increasingly viewed Shakespeare’s plays as less dependent on specific architecture and more on general staging principles; after all, he notes, in his own time Shakespeare became less dependent upon the specific architectural features of specific playhouses, as the King’s Men learned to perform at the Globe, the Blackfriars, and at Court.25 What became increasingly important to Barker, in both his Savoy productions and in the Prefaces, was not a rigid set of architectural features but a set of principles: a visual language shared by dramatist and audience, that marked the beginning, rather than the end point, of the dramatist’s art. ‘There is no escape from convention in the theatre’, he wrote in his introduction to the Prefaces, ‘and all conventions can be made acceptable, though they cannot all be used indiscriminately, for they are founded in the physical condition of the stage of their origin, and are often interdependent one with another.’26



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‘[T]he advantage of an accepted convention’, he writes, is that ‘it provides common ground on which dramatist and audience are mutually at ease. Without knowing what he is about to do they know within a little how he is about to do it, and their attention can be concentrated on the “what” with much of the “how” taken for granted.’27

The Producer’s Test What ultimately becomes more important in Barker’s Savoy productions, then, is not the ‘how’ of Barker’s solution to the problems of the production’s decor, but the ‘what’ of the story being enacted. Barker’s primary focus was not on decor at all, but on discovering a play’s organizing principles, an understanding of how the playwright chose to tell the story in theatrical terms, the ways that the dramatist chose which events to dramatize and how he chose to dramatize them. But basing one’s theatrical choices on the dramatist’s purported intentions is a dangerous game, then as now; and it can be wielded by practitioners of any aesthetic orientation: Beerbohm Tree, after all, cited the Chorus to Henry V as proof that Shakespeare would have employed representational

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scenery had it been available to him.28 But Barker’s evident belief that a dramatist’s intentions are discernible – the principle he would later articulate in his introduction to the Prefaces as ‘Gain Shakespeare’s effects by Shakespeare’s means while you can’ – had its origins in the theatrical and aesthetic practices of the early twentieth century and, more specifically, in Barker’s own principal non-Shakespearean professional activities in the decade leading up to the Savoy productions: as a playwright, as the director of his own plays, and as the midwife and director to new plays by his contemporaries. Barker respected Shakespeare as a craftsman because Barker was himself a dramatic craftsman, a playwright in an era that was identifying the revolution in the theatre as originating with the playwright.29 Throughout his career Barker defined the function of the director in relation to the playwright: as the playwright’s deputy, surrogate and advocate. The theatre artists that directors of Barker’s generation identified as the first directors in England were playwrights overseeing rehearsals of their own work, starting in the 1860s with T. W. Robertson, and soon after W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Wing Pinero – the subjects of an essay by Barker for the Royal Society of Literature.30 Barker directed all of his own plays at the Court and subsequent managements before the Great War, and though he was nominally listed as producer (i.e. director) of Shaw’s plays, he yielded the hands-on direction of these plays to the playwright. For Barker directing his own work, or directing new plays by his friends and contemporaries, directing was a dialogue, identifying intent and fine-tuning the means to realize the playwright’s design. (And the discoveries made in staging the plays were then incorporated into the published script: as with Shaw’s plays, the precise blocking of the elaborate stage directions followed from, rather than preceded, rehearsals of the play’s initial production.) Barker took his responsibilities towards serving as directorial and institutional midwife to the New Drama extremely seriously, and it shaped both the ways he viewed his own role as a director and the increasing authority that he gave the dramaturg in his revision of the Blue Book in 1930, A National Theatre.31 As Mary Luckhurst observes in her history of the dramaturg, Barker vested the literary manager of the proposed National Theatre with even more authority than the artistic director in the selection of the repertoire and the casting of the productions; and in A National Theatre, he gave the literary manager several assistants in charge of playreading, expressly to give the literary manager the time and energy to work one-on-one with playwrights. This is precisely how one can view Barker’s relation with Shakespeare, both as a director in the rehearsal room



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preparing the Savoy productions and in the imaginary rehearsal room of the Prefaces: it is as though Barker is sitting across the table, querying the dramatist about his strategies, and suggesting alternatives. In a letter to Thomas Hardy responding to the draft of his 1923 play, The Famous Tragedy of the Queen of Cornwall, Barker warned him that these were ‘producer’s [i.e. director’s] notes only … And if in this preface I seem sometimes to argue with you – well, I would have argued with W.S., if I could have got at him.’32 ‘The working together of the theatre is a fine thing’, Barker observed, near the conclusion of his preface to the acting edition of Twelfth Night, prepared while the production was still in rehearsal: ‘Daily, as we rehearse together, I learn more what is and should be.’33 There is, throughout Barker’s directing of Shakespeare and non-Shakespearean plays, ample evidence of his discovering through experimentation, of his setting the conditions for the actors to discover for themselves their characters’ situations and relationships. For example, he placed a table that could seat a dinner party of 14 on the tiny stage of the Court Theatre for Acts 2, 3 and 5 of his own play, The Voysey Inheritance, knowing that the actors would have to find their own way of moving around it, as they would have to do in life; and Cathleen Nesbitt, playing Perdita in The Winter’s Tale, recalls Barker pushing her and Florizel (Dennis Neilson-Terry) from the wings on opening night, so that they literally tumble on the stage like frolicking lambs.34 (There are, admittedly, counter-examples: though Barker became known for the organic realism of his crowd scenes in plays like Elizabeth Robins’s Votes for Women! and Galsworthy’s Strife, he was also known to over-choreograph similar scenes in other plays, privately printing instructions to tell the numbered actors in the crowd when to gesture and what to murmur for the Coronation Gala performance of the forum scene from Julius Caesar at His Majesty’s Theatre in 1911, admittedly prepared with minimal rehearsal time; and a pseudonymous article purportedly by an actor in the Savoy company complained that Barker controlled his actors as though they were animated gramophones.35) As a playwright, Barker was an incessant reviser, preparing two (and arguably three) distinct versions of the final scene of The Voysey Inheritance before the war, making substantial revisions to that play (including a completely reorchestrated final scene) in 1934, revising The Madras House (1910) in 1925 (including a major revision of the final dialogue), and undertaking a complete rewrite of Waste (1907) in 1926, in which the sequence of several events (including a major onstage encounter in Act 3) is changed, and virtually every line of dialogue in the play has been rewritten as if from scratch. It is no wonder, then, that Barker saw Shakespeare as a

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dramatic craftsman, grappling with the dramatic challenges of his material, changing his mind as he went along, and returning to similar subject matter and dramaturgical challenges from one play to the next. Throughout the Prefaces, he repeatedly identifies instances where the dramatist appears to be grappling with his source material (as in the cases of Romeo and Juliet and The Merchant of Venice), either struggling to make the material more dramatic or surrendering to its limitations. He cites evidence of instances where characters get out of control, or take on different qualities than he had anticipated, forcing him to modify his original scheme for the play: his examples of this include the sudden introduction of Fabian in Twelfth Night to participate in the gulling scene, shortly after Feste begins to develop new tones and resonances in his scene at Orsino’s court; or when he changes his mind about when and how Brutus learns about Portia’s death. ‘The fairies are the producer’s [i.e. the director’s] test’, writes Barker in the preface to the 1914 acting edition of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. ‘Let me confess’, he adds, ‘that, though mainly love of the play, yet partly, too, a hope of passing that test has inspired the present production.’36 Barker is not just referring to the challenge of breaking with the Victorian false traditions of ballet tutus and women playing Oberon (a tradition that Tree perpetuated in his 1900 production), the inability of contemporary childactors to replicate the qualities that Shakespeare might have been seeking if indeed he used children in the roles, nor the eclecticism of the fairies’ otherness in the play (‘Oberon and Titania are romantic creations: sprung from Huron of Bordeaux, etc., say the commentators; come from the farthest steppe of India, says Shakespeare. But Puck is English Folklore’37). Barker’s solution to those issues in performance was to include among the sylph-like fairies in the entourage several small actors dressed as wizened old men, to make Oberon and Titania vaguely orientalized, to radically defamiliarize the fairies with their gold-plated faces and robotic movements, and to present Puck in doublet and pumpkin pants, with berries in his Struwwelpeter-like shock of orange hair. But in a broader sense, ‘the producer’s test’ refers to the challenges posed to a director when the playwright’s intentions are evident but not readily discernible. ‘If a play written for the stage cannot be put on the stage the playwright, it seems to me, has failed. Had Shakespeare failed’, he asks, ‘or need the producer only pray for a little genius, too?’38 When he revised the acting-edition essay for The Players’ Shakespeare (a preface he chose not to include in the collected Prefaces to Shakespeare), the challenge of the fairies had become emblematic of the larger challenge of staging Shakespeare in the twentieth century. ‘Shakespeare’s stagecraft’,



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he declares in the first sentence of the preface to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, ‘is at issue with the mechanism of the modern theatre.’39 He is referring here specifically to scenic conventions, but the implications of his simple statement are far larger. ‘[I]n three hundred years even the theatre has seen changes. Shakespeare stands at one end of a road that has many turnings, and we at the other. How far’, he asks, ‘will the new thing supplement the old, how far does it nullify it – that, roughly, is what one has to discover.’ He continues: In this play, for instance, he asks attention for his verse, for a little music, and allows for the eye only some simple costumed action and a little dancing upon a palpable stage. With these materials, within these bounds, his faculties at full stretch, he produces his play. Using these materials, within these bounds, and stretching our faculties of interpretation and appreciation to their full, we still – it is barely possible – may not be able to compass his vision and achieve his purpose, limited as they were. Change the materials, enlarge the bounds, and shall we not lose rather than gain?40 The Savoy productions lay at what was for Barker the intersection of two competing feelings: on the one hand, a resignation about the aesthetic distance between Shakespeare’s dramatic and theatrical sensibilities and the theatre of Barker’s contemporaries and the impossibility of bridging that distance and recapturing the plays’ original energies (‘The very advantages of the modern theatre’, he writes, ‘make it a round hole into which the square peg of Shakespeare’s plays will not fit’41); and on the other, a nostalgic desire to transport the theatre, and theatre audiences, back to a time and into a theatre where they can be truly receptive. On the one hand, he eschewed the pictorial antiquarianism of Poel’s Elizabethanism: ‘We shall not save our souls by being Elizabethan’, he wrote to the Play Pictorial for their issue on the Savoy productions.42 But at the same time he secretly entertained the fantasy that a modern audience can somehow attune itself not just to the conventional compact of Elizabethan stagecraft and the obscurities of early modern language, but to the flavour of the period. He hired the folklorist and musicologist Cecil Sharp to prepare the music and dances for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in part because he believed that there was, through archaic music, ‘an opportunity for leading an audience back, and all unconsciously, into that medium of sound, of emotion even, in which the play was first meant to make it effect’.43 He did not endorse a return to the casting of women’s roles with young men, but, he warned in

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the introduction to the Prefaces, ‘Let the usurping actress remember that her sex is a liability, not an asset’;44 and though he didn’t endorse period dress, he continually feared that lines such as Cleopatra’s instructions for Charmian to cut her lace ran the risk of undercutting what he continued to maintain was the principal goal of theatrical illusion, to maintain ‘the constant credibility of the actor’.45 ‘The producer’s test’, then, was the challenge of reconciling Barker’s sensibilities as a dramatic and theatrical modernist, and his increasing obsession with understanding the theatrical strategies and dramaturgical mechanisms of a playwright whose work was fundamentally alien to modern sensibilities. The goal of the Savoy productions, he wrote in a letter to the Daily Mail after the opening of The Winter’s Tale, was to treat Shakespeare as a ‘A still living playwright’.46 And that remained the goal in the Prefaces: one director’s notes, by a director who, as Barker wrote to Hardy, ‘would have argued with W.S., if I could have got at him’.

The Secret in the Poet’s Heart In the spring of 1914, Barker headed to Moscow to see Constantin Stanislavski and the Moscow Art Theatre at work, stopping in Berlin on the way to see several productions by Max Reinhardt. Berlin was a disappointment; but ‘Moscow is nearer to me now than Berlin will ever be’, he concluded, after he returned to London.47 Reinhardt had complained to him that his actors had become too bourgeois to play Shakespeare with sufficient muscularity; Stanislavski, by contrast, boasted that he was training his actors to be good citizens, expert at ‘the expression of life; and of life at its normal not less than at its moments of crisis’. Barker came away impressed with the theatre’s discipline, with their policy of rehearsing a play as long as they felt was necessary, and with their freedom from caring about commercial returns. What impressed Barker most were the productions he saw of Chekhov’s The Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard. He admired the first for its orchestration of dramatic, theatrical and histrionic effects, and the fact that he could not distinguish whether these could be credited to the playwriting, the acting, or the directing. But what astonished him completely was Olga Knipper as Mme. Ranevskaya in The Cherry Orchard, in particular the actor’s intensely expressive stillness at the end of the third act, while Lopakhin is revelling over having purchased the estate; only later that night, after consulting the script, did Barker realize that she had achieved this without having a single line of dialogue to speak.48



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Barker returned to that performance again and again in his post-war writings as the epitome of modern acting, and it speaks to a special kinship that Barker undoubtedly sensed between that moment and his own goals and techniques. Though Barker’s dramatic techniques as a playwright are often rightly compared to Chekhov’s (for the seemingly random plotting, and for the ways his deeply psychologized characters often speak obliquely and manifest their emotions indirectly), he claimed no special kinship with Chekhov, whose plays were known but not widely produced in England before the war and did not galvanize a movement in Britain as Ibsen’s had a generation earlier. But he recognized in Knipper’s performance a new form of acting suited to the new drama and the new theatre he still hoped to create. One could argue that all of Barker’s professional identities as a theatre practitioner before the Great War – as actor, playwright, director, champion of the New Drama, advocate of the National Theatre, even theatre manager – were linked to his desire to create a new generation of actors, an actor who could play Ibsen, Chekhov, and, of course, Barker. This would require, Barker would himself argue, a very different set of skills than what would be required to play Shakespeare. The resulting tension – between a new aesthetic of acting and the histrionic demands of Shakespeare’s scripts – is the same tension behind the ‘producer’s test’ of the fairies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream: how to reconcile the old and the new, the historically specific demands of an old script and the new dramatic and theatrical sensibilities that he had invested all his professional energies in bringing about. This is, indeed, the same tension we see between Barker the non-Shakespearean and Barker the Shakespearean, and between H. Granville Barker the modernist director-playwright and Harley Granville-Barker the historically minded director and Shakespeare scholar. ‘A play is material for acting’, Barker states axiomatically, in his essay ‘The Heritage of the Actor’, originally drafted as a preface to his 1923 play The Secret Life, but then expanded into a free-standing essay as Barker began to obsess more and more about actors and acting; ‘It may be far more; but it must be that to begin with.’49 Playwrights, Barker maintained throughout his career, write for the actors they know, who understand the psychological parameters of character as these were understood at the time, and who know how to embody the emotions of their characters in the theatre according to the histrionic conventions and the material conditions of the playhouses of the time. What Barker celebrated most about the post-Ibsenite New Drama was a particular way of thinking about dramatic character that called upon a new and different set of actor skills:

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a new emphasis on psychology and biography, and a new relationship between action and character and language, between what would soon be called ‘text’ and ‘subtext’. In his post-war scholarly writings, Barker keeps returning to the 1870s and 80s, before and after the advent, in English, of Ibsen’s social-realist prose plays.50 The pioneering social-realist playwrights in England – T. W. Robertson, and, in the next generation, the farceurturned-pseudo-Ibsenite, Arthur Wing Pinero – could not approach either the seriousness or the depth of Ibsen; nor could English dramatic writing keep pace with the advances in the contemporary novel, particular George Meredith (whom Barker frequently claimed as his model for balancing character, psychology and language, and whose fragmentary play, The Sentimentalists, he adapted for the stage and directed at the Duke of York’s repertory in 1910). But the actor who can play Robertson and Pinero, he argues, is better equipped to tackle Ibsen than the actors of only a generation before would have been. And once actors begin to see how Ibsen can be performed, a new generation will be inspired, as Barker himself was as a young actor, to master the skills needed to play his roles, and to cry out for English playwrights, following Ibsen’s example, to write new roles for them. A National Theatre – and, failing that, managements like the Court – are needed in order to create this new actor. When he first told Archer about his scheme for the Court Theatre in 1904, he noted that ‘Our actors – and worse still our actresses – are becoming demoralised by lack of intellectual work’;51 and he despaired, when none of his subsequent theatre managements became permanent institutions, that the historic opportunity of creating a new cadre of actors might be lost, and that the revolution in the New Drama might consequently have to wait another generation. When Barker drafted The Secret Life in 1923, his friend William Archer, on reading the play in manuscript, recognized that ‘it was written for the next generation, if not for the next again’, and saw that there was in the play a relationship between text and subtext, between outer action and inner thought, which he, as a member of ‘the last generation’, could not immediately comprehend.52 Much of Archer’s issues with the play concerned the relation of character to plot; and much of Archer’s detailed analysis of the play, and Barker’s responses, in their subsequent correspondence, focus on how much of the play’s action remains independent of the characters and the unspoken needs and desires, how the events of the plot do or do not provoke the characters or reveal their inner workings to the spectator. As we will see, the relationship of plot to character – the subject of one of the most provocative and unsettling sections of Aristotle’s Poetics – was one of



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Barker’s perennial obsessions, and much of the analysis of Shakespeare’s plays in Prefaces is spent on precisely this dynamic. One of Archer’s principal concerns on reading The Secret Life was whether the play could be acted. Barker’s response was unequivocal: I protest I never have – I cannot – write an unactable play; it would be against nature, against second nature, anyhow; I act it as I write it. But there is no English company of actors so trained to interpret thought and the less crude emotions, nor, as a consequence, any selected audience interested in watching and listening to such things.53 Certainly ‘The Heritage of the Actor’ was an attempt to answer Archer. But Barker did recognize the gap that existed between the acting that his plays called for and the skill set of the actors at his disposal. It is telling that Barker did not seem to have any problems in acting out every part himself; for Barker’s efforts to create a community of actors suited to the New Drama, in his sequence of managements before the Great War, can be seen as an effort to find actors who, through the prism of their own personalities, could replicate his own skills and qualities as an actor. The role that first garnered Barker serious attention among the advocates of the New Drama and the New Theatre was Marchbanks, the young Shelleyan poet in Shaw’s Candida, who, on his final exit, never reveals, either to the other characters or to the audience, ‘the secret in the poet’s heart’. The much-quoted anecdote about Barker the director instructing an actor ‘I want you to come on like a man whose brother has a chicken farm in Gloucestershire’, though parodic and apocryphal, speaks to his desire to have actors create a biography and inner life for their characters that exceed what the play gives them a chance to reveal.54 Of Barker’s colleagues and collaborators, the one who recognized, but was least in sympathy with, his new approach to actors and acting was Shaw, who, in an obituary reminiscence about his younger colleague, observed that ‘his style and taste were as different from mine as Debussy’s from Verdi’s’55; ‘Keep your worms for your own plays’, Shaw harangued him, in 1908 ‘and leave me the drunken, stagey, brassbowelled barnstormers my plays are written for.’56 Barker undoubtedly brought his ‘worm’-like qualities to the roles he played for Shaw – appropriately so in the cases of Cusins and Dubedat; and though Barker did act in several of his own plays – as Edward in The Voysey Inheritance (though he quickly handed over the role to other actors), and as Trebell in Waste (in a hastily put together copyright reading, with other

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Court Theatre playwrights including Shaw in the cast) – he was cultivating a cadre of young actors (Denis Eadie, Harcourt Williams, Lewis Casson, Ben Webster, Arthur Wontner and others) who could serve, in effect, as his on-stage doubles, in both the plays of Shaw and in his own. One such actor was Henry Ainley, who embodies the challenges that Barker faced in assembling a company for Shakespeare in 1912. A young romantic actor of the older school, he had acted in the barnstorming Shakespearean touring company of Frank Benson, and brought his matinee-idol good looks to playing Orlando for Oscar Asche and Otho Stuart’s As You Like It at the Adelphi Theatre in 1907 (a company filled with Asche and Stuart’s fellow ‘Old Bensonians’), but he was also getting cast by Barker in roles that Barker himself had played years before (such as Valentine in Shaw’s You Never Can Tell). The actors Barker hired at the Savoy reflected this same mix: old Bensonians (Arthur Whitby as Antigonus, Sir Toby and Quince; H. O. Nicholson as the Old Shepherd, Fabian and Starveling; Baliol Holloway as Theseus), Court veterans (Arthur Wonter as Orsino; Lillah McCarthy as Hermione, Viola and Helena), and rising young actors (Cathleen Nesbitt as Perdita, Leon Quartermaine as the Young Shepherd, Sir Andrew and Flute; Dennis Neilson-Terry as Florizel, Sebastian and Oberon). But clearly the presence of Ainley, and his on-stage partnering of McCarthy, made plays like The Winter’s Tale possible; and his sudden lack of availability for the 1913–1914 season undoubtedly dictated the decision to postpone the planned productions of Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra in favour of the less leading-actor-dependent A Midsummer Night’s Dream.57 In ‘The Heritage of the Actor’, and in his subsequent books, essays and prefaces, Barker returns again and again to the relation between the characters the playwright has created and the contribution of the actors for whom the playwright created them. ‘[I]n plays which picture human intercourse in accustomed terms’, Barker observes in ‘The Heritage of the Actor’, ‘if [the actor] did not do something more than repeat its words with such understanding and emotion as they immediately suggested to him, the result would be unbearably flat and uninteresting. What, then’, he asks, ‘is the “something more” he is expected to contribute?’ His answer his quite simple: ‘His personality.’58 This is, ironically, the word most often associated with the star actor-managers, who exploit the on-stage (and off-stage) persona they have crafted as marketable commodities; and Barker fully admits this, praising, among other performances, the mysterious ‘something more’ that Henry Irving brought to his portrayal of Mathias in The Bells, which far exceeded the role as written. But Barker



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certainly means much more than this; he seems almost obsessed with the mysteries of how the actors bring their own selves to the roles they are playing, and how some third entity gets created in the process. He elaborates upon this in The Exemplary Theatre, his 1922 book-length argument for the role of theatre and performance in education and the larger culture: ‘No play should move in an efficient straight line between first rehearsal and performance’, he writes, ‘for it is during rehearsal’ – a ‘time of survey and discovery’ – that the first tendons are being formed which will come to unite the actor’s personality with the crescent figure of the character itself. Here is the mystery; the gestation of this new being is not the actor’s consistent self though partaking of it; that is not the character worn as a disguise; individual, but with no existence at all, a relative being only, and now related to the actor as to the play. It will be slow in coming to birth: the more unconscious the process the better, for it does not work alike with everyone, never at the same pace, never to the same measure.59 ‘[L]et the actor surrender himself wholly to the idea of his part as it forms itself to his apprehension under the spell of his generous study’, he writes, ‘and there will, by his Muse’s grace, be added unto him, as fruit of the personal surrender, this mysterious second personality, which will not be himself and yet will be a part of himself.’60 Barker believes that the actor must, above all, be in control; but, notwithstanding, ‘Once you have learnt the secret; then, as you act a part so studied, while you may still choose what to do, you can feel assured that whatever you may do will be characteristically right. […] Through the sensitive channel which the interpreter has now become will flow unchecked the thoughts and emotions generated in the part’s studying.’61 The ultimate goal, then, is a way of defining the presence of the actor in the role as a state of being rather than an action. In ‘The Heritage of the Actor’, he even envisions a play – to be written, in desperate defiance of Aristotle – from which doing would be eliminated altogether, in which nothing but being would be left. The task set the actors of it would be to interest their audience in what the characters were, quite apart from anything they might do; to set up, that is to say, the relationships by which all important human intimacies exist. If the art of the theatre could achieve this it would stand alone in a great achievement.62

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He cites an instance of just such a dramatic moment in which being exceeds doing, in a lengthy footnote in The Exemplary Theatre: Knipper’s performance of Ranevskaya in The Cherry Orchard, which had left him so awed and speechless in Moscow. ‘No other plays known to the writer ask, as Tchekov’s do, for the collaboration of actor’, he writes; ‘one finds in them an example of the length to which the method of unsustained and inconsecutive dialogue can be carried.’63 But surely if, as Barker repeatedly insists, playwrights write for the actors they know and demand of them the psychology and the forms of expression of the theatre and culture of their times, then the qualities that Barker identifies in Chekhov – the qualities that Barker’s own plays demanded of the actor – were distinct from what Shakespeare expected of his actors, and from what would be required of an actor playing Shakespeare today. ‘The interpreters’, Barker writes in The Exemplary Theatre, ‘must follow the lines the creators have travelled.’ If Shakespeare wrote rhetorically, wove his effects out of strands of unrepressed individual emotion, if Sheridan cared greatly for the set of his prose, Robertson for sentiment, Pinero in his farces for well-bitten comic sentiment, if the work of Ibsen is strongly marked by the involute process of revelation of character, that of Tchekov by the way in which his men and women are made to seem less like independent human beings than reflections of the depths of the circumstances of his plays – these traits of each dramatist mould and pervade his work and should dictate a related method for its interpretation.64 This inextricable bond between a play’s dramaturgy and the aesthetics of acting for which it was written and which it persists in demanding of its actors lies at the heart of the paradox faced by Barker, as a producer, one-time actor and Shakespeare scholar, contemplating contemporary productions of Shakespeare’s 300-year-old scripts. In his introduction to The Players’ Shakespeare, he muses: [C]ould we confront Burbage or Alleyn with The Wild Duck and The Cherry Orchard, what would they say? Would they appreciate the opportunity these plays give the actor to create the very illusion of life, their freedom from the rhetorical exposition of what may be delicately expressed by a sigh or a silence, their leisurely development of plot, their as leisurely unfolding of character, all the significance that the focusing of the footlights can give to insignificant things? Or would Burbage,



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admiring it all, yet exclaim in the very accents of the ‘grieved Moor’ that as far as he was concerned his occupation was gone? Are we, at any rate, too dogmatic if, conversely, we assert that actors whose natural bent it is to take advantages of these qualities in a play, will need to readjust their art very considerably if they are to fulfill the demand of the play as written, not only in ignorance of a theatre with such resources, but written, in effect, in very defiance of them? And, a fortiori, what can this scenic equipment do for drama whose virtue it was to be independent of it? One need not perhaps jump to a conclusion that it can do nothing at all. But the gifts of the Greeks must at least be cautiously taken.65 Even as Barker acknowledges the distances between the Elizabethan and modern drama’s respective demands on the actor and understandings of motivation, behaviour and psychology, when he talks about how Shakespeare’s actors transformed themselves into the characters the dramatist had created, his description of the process begins to resemble much of what he had said about the demands of the playwrights of the New Drama. Had Shakespeare merely wanted to write literature in dramatic form (he writes in the Preface to Hamlet, the essay he gave pride of place when he collected the Prefaces) he would have written for Lyly’s boys or Marlowe’s heroic actors, whom Barker compares to Japanese Bunraku puppets, manipulated by their puppeteers in full view of the audience.66 But Shakespeare, learning his craft from his fellow workers in the playhouse, recognized that the instinct of the actor is to identify himself with the character he plays, and this instinct Shakespeare the actor would naturally encourage Shakespeare the dramatist to gratify. […] With the actors forgetting themselves in their characters the spectators the more easily forget their own world for the world of the play. The illusion so created, we should note, is lodged in the actors and characters alone.67 This phenomenon, more than a desire for continuous action, was arguably Barker’s motivation for employing an apron stage in his Shakespeare productions at the Savoy – a way of showcasing the actor’s person-ness and ‘personality’, of enabling the character to be as well as to do, which Barker believed was the case on the Elizabethan platform stage: Set him in our midst, make him one of ourselves, fix our attention wholly on him, and we shall come to feel so at one with him that not only will

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the barriers between our actual world and his imagined world the more easily vanish, but the innermost of the character he plays will be just what it will be easiest for him to reveal and for us to respond to. ‘All illusion upon the platform stage’, he concludes, ‘inevitably centred on the actor.’68 What Barker discovered on the apron stage at the Savoy, and what he continued to write about in the Prefaces, is that the three-dimensional reality of the actor on the platform stage creates a sense of identity between the character and the actor’s personality – that same sense of personality that he identifies, in ‘The Heritage of the Actor’, as the actor’s principal contribution to the theatre event. And Shakespeare’s greatest advances as a dramatist lay in his developing sense of how to transmute the personality of the actor into the material of a new kind of dramatic character. For the minor characters in Shakespeare, the ‘Characterless characters’, the utilitarian, economically underwritten roles, ‘the individuality of the actors lend them individuality enough’.69 The actors’ personality is even more important in the case of the clowns, who address the audience directly as though in the actors’ own personae: ‘It is not merely or mainly by being funny that the clown captures and holds the audience, but by personal appeal’, i.e. by the palpable presence of the actor beneath the dramatis persona.70 The freedom that the actor’s personality gives the clown, Barker maintains, became the basis for Shakespeare creating deeper, more psychologized characters, starting with the clown-like ‘comic and semicomic’ figures – the Nurse, Shylock, Falstaff – who, for the first time, appear to break free from the world of the more conventional characters around them and take on a living, breathing existence of their own. And so it is with Hamlet: In whatever guise we see him he is Hamlet, yet the appeal is so genuine as if the man before us were making it in his own person. But the actor does not lose himself in the character he plays. On the contrary. He not only presents it under his own aspect, he lends it his own emotion, too, and he must repass for thoughts of which it is built through the sieve of his own mind. He dissects it and then reconstructs it in terms of his own personality. He realizes himself in Hamlet. And if he did not his performance would be lifeless. The thing is as true of Falstaff. If the humor is no more a part of the actor than the padding is, our laughter would be empty.71



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Hamlet and Hamlet are Barker’s test case, the richest, most masterful, and most problematic instance of Shakespeare grappling with Barker’s own obsession: the representation of character through action; and the possibility of creating a character more akin to what we have seen was his stated goal for modern drama, the possibility of a play written ‘in desperate defiance of Aristotle – from which doing would be eliminated altogether, in which nothing but being would be left’.72 In a 1925 lecture to the British Academy, ‘From Henry V to Hamlet’, Barker tracks the development of Shakespearean character from Romeo, Richard II, Shylock, Hal and Falstaff, through his first experiments in internalized, introspective characters – Jaques, Brutus – until he gets to Hamlet. The comedies, with their dismissive titles (As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing, What you Will), he writes (echoing Shaw, who puts similar words into the mouth of Shakespeare – played by Barker – in his 1910 one-act play, The Dark Lady of the Sonnets, written as a National Theatre fund-raiser), are ‘bones thrown to the dogs of the audience’; ‘Shakespeare meanwhile is doing what he will, and what he can do as no one else can, creating character, revealing character.’73 Throughout the Prefaces, Barker observes the dramatist struggling with his source materials (Brooke, Cinthio, Plutarch, the ur-Hamlet), creating characters that chafe against the narrative framework of the dramatic and non-dramatic sources from which Shakespeare drew. In Hamlet, this tension becomes the subject of the play – the character’s inability to jive with the machinery of plot: ‘Shakespeare has to reconcile the creature of his imagination with the figure of the borrowed story; the Hamlet we have is the tragic product of his very failure to do so.’74 The play ‘stands the test of performance’ – how could it not, coming from the genius of the workshop? But on subjecting the character to analysis, he observes, Shakespeare has not – paradox though this may seem – finally dramatized Hamlet. Here is the character, at which he had more than one immature and fragmentary try, fully and vividly imagined at last – what character has ever been more so? But he does not submit to the final discipline which would make it an integral part of the play. […] The play, when he has finished with it, may be a masterpiece of the workshop, but with Hamlet himself he is pioneering a new world of drama.75 Shakespeare, Barker maintains, never again makes the mistake of failing to integrate his principal character into the overall architecture of the play, or of failing to transform his source material in a way that makes the

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play better suit the needs of character. And his Prefaces that deal with these later plays – Othello, King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, Cymbeline – attempt, in various ways, to relate structure to character, whether (as in Cymbeline) the playwright is experimenting with the extremities of narrative structure (‘art, which deliberately displays its art’),76 or (as in Coriolanus) creating a character ‘not inwardly evolved, as the greater tragic characters are, but seen from without’.77 But it is this ‘new world of drama’ that interest Barker most, a world in which character, embodied by the actor, transcends action and plot, in which the character is rather than does.78 There is, of course, another dimension to Hamlet (and to Othello, Lear and Cleopatra) that transcends mere character and acting, and Barker doesn’t shy away from talking about this dimension: Shakespeare ‘is a poet, predominantly that’, and as such he wouldn’t think ‘of impoverishing the theatre and its actors by depriving them altogether of the enhancing magic of poetic speech’.79 But even here Barker relates Shakespeare’s dramatic poetry to what he has learned from the actor. Shakespeare’s development of poetic speech ‘follows from the identifying of actor and character, from the dramatist’s sense that he is collaborating with the actor, and from the fact that the dramatist, in his case, was a poet who had learned to think in terms of drama’. With what, then, can [the actor’s] collaborator the dramatist best provide him, apart from what is called for by the sheer action of the play? – and this will be little; for the thing to be done in drama is better done than talked of, if the talk has no other end. With what can he best provide him with self-expression? It follows, if the actor can fulfill in himself that greater part of what we may call the ‘physics’ of the character, that the dramatist will devote himself more and more to its ‘metaphysics’. And when the dramatist is such a poet as was Shakespeare, these ‘metaphysics’ will be of the kind with which poetry is most concerned, the world of the imagination and the things of the spirit; they will, it is not too fantastic to say, begin to give the character something very like an immortal soul. This is the development which leads to Hamlet.80 This above all is one of the great mysteries of acting that Barker returns to again, both in his writings about Shakespeare, in his analysis of contemporary theatre, and in his own plays: how the physics of acting can lead to something larger, whether the metaphysics of poetry and philosophy, or in the sheer wonder generated by merging of acting and character into something else. He addresses this mystery in The Exemplary Theatre:



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In any fine playing of a part – of Imogen, shall we say? – there is a power not the player’s own, and a beauty which certainly does not accompany her off stage. Nor can the complete effect be accounted for by adding together the words of Shakespeare, the woman’s looks and voice, the theatre’s lights and scenery. Pick the whole thing to pieces, and you’ll no more find out the secret than you’ll find the soul in the body’s anatomy. If it does not lie in the surrendered self, and the possession for the time of the obedient body by the changeling idea, then where?81 How, then, does an actor playing a Shakespearean role attend to the ‘physics’ of the role – the merging of his or her personality with the dramatist’s character – and become a channel for the metaphysics of the role, the world of the imagination and the things of the spirit, which, in the case of Shakespeare, lies to a great extent in his dramatic poetry? This was Barker’s challenge when, with the Savoy productions starting in 1912, he finally directed Shakespeare. ‘There is’, Barker declared in 1912, ‘no Shakespearean tradition in acting.’82 The tradition of robust versespeaking in the theatre, he argues, began in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the tradition of poetic recitation began even later.83 At the Savoy, Barker trusted to the sheer speed of the verse-speaking to carry the performers in the metaphysics of their roles; for The Winter’s Tale, he even argued that much of Leontes’s language in his fits of jealousy need not – and in some cases simply cannot – make syntactical sense. King Lear provided an even greater challenge, which Barker pondered at some length in his 1927 preface to the play. The characters, he writes, are not just individuals speaking in verse: ‘All method of expression apart, they are poetically conceived; they exist in those dimensions, in that freedom, and are endowed with that poetic power. They are dramatic poetry incarnate.’84 The actor playing the title role, he insists, ‘can no longer bring it within the realistic limits of his personality’: He may – obtusely – try to decompose it into a realism of impersonation, decorated by ‘poetic’ speech. It is such a treatment of Lear which produces Lamb’s old man with a walkingstick, and, for Bradley, dissipates the poetic atmosphere. But what Shakespeare asks of his actor is to surrender as much of himself as he can – much must remain; all that is physical – to this metaphysical power.85 In 1940, Barker was invited by Lewis Casson to direct John Gielgud in King Lear at the Old Vic; Barker accepted, limiting his hands-on presence

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in the rehearsal room to a single week, after Casson laid out the basic blocking. The production raised several challenges, including tailoring the conception of the role to what Barker perceived to be the essential qualities of Gielgud’s personality: ‘Lear is an Oak. You are an ash’, Barker told him after they read through the play together for the first time; ‘We must see how this will serve you.’86 Beyond even that, the production put to the test Barker’s theories about the physics and metaphysics of actor, character and verse that he had begun to formulate at the Savoy and that he articulated more fully in his post-war writings. Years later, Gielgud recalled how Barker’s technical notes on the verse-speaking were never divorced from the actor’s emotional expressions of the moment: I remember rehearsing the last scene of Lear one night very late and he stopped me every two words to give me inflections and tones. And I thought that at any moment he would say ‘Now don’t act any more, we’ll work it out technically.’ But he never did. So I thought I had better stick it out and keep going if I could with full emotion. By the time I looked at my watch we had been at it for forty-five minutes and I had never stopped weeping and ranting.87 Nowhere is the challenge greater than in the central storm scenes (Figure 6). Christine Dymkowski analyzes this sequence at length in her book on Barker the Shakespearean,88 based in part on actor Hallam Fordham’s eye-witness account of rehearsals. By all accounts, Barker and Gielgud were ultimately unable to strike a balance in the storm scenes between metaphysics and psychologized character, between poetic speech and the harsh conditions of the material world, and between realistic sound effects and audibility.89 And certainly, here, in Lear’s storm scenes, perhaps more than anywhere else in Barker’s hands-on theatrical work on Shakespeare’s scripts in performance, he was faced with the challenge of striking a balance between psychology and metaphysics, between rhetoric and realism, between the character-based origins of passions and the transcendent poetry of their expression. But if the production did not succeed in these scenes, the reason might ultimately lie not, as Dymkowski (following Fordham and Gielgud himself) suggests, in issues of stage technology or the exigencies of an abbreviated rehearsal period, but rather in the tensions within Barker’s own sensibilities as a director and writer: between the man of the theatre and the would-be scholar; between the hands-on practitioner and a man who no longer had to face the workaday world of material contingencies and



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theatrical practicalities, a man who now preferred to do his theatrical work in a rehearsal room of the mind.

The Genius of the Imaginary Workshop After the prefaces that appeared in the opening-night ‘acting editions’ of the Savoy Shakespeare productions, the next series of prefaces, starting in 1923, were written for The Players’ Shakespeare, a series of individual volumes, published in large format using Folio texts prepared under Barker’s supervision, with illustrations by artists selected by Albert Rutherston (as Rothenstein was now known). Four hundred and fifty copies (with fifty copies set aside in reserve) were published in grey boards on quarter oatmeal linen, and a hundred copies (six not for sale) on hand-made paper bound in vellum and oasis morocco leather. The contradiction is obvious: these were volumes intended, according to the title, primarily for actors (note the plural possessive), but designed, priced and packaged for the collector. Barker was evidently aware of this contradiction. In his Players’ Shakespeare preface to A Midsummer Night’s Dream – a substantial revision of the 1914 preface, though (with his Players’ Shakespeare preface to Macbeth) not further revised for inclusion in the collected Prefaces to Shakespeare – he writes: ‘in this preface we shall be concerned only with the play as Shakespeare’s theatre might have staged it. The rest of the adventure, if it must be made, is a man’s own affair.’90 The ‘rest of the adventure’ is, of course, what takes place in the rehearsal room, the ultimate test of the theatre practitioner’s sensibilities, the place where the script is turned into a work of art, however temporal, compromised, and ultimately provisional. ‘[L]et us be clear’, he declares in The Exemplary Theatre, ‘that upon the last three generations at least the power of Shakespeare the playwright has never been proved.’91 That power can only be proved – i.e. put to proof, put to the test – in the theatre. For Shakespeare to be effectively played, ‘a tradition of their acting, generally accepted in their essentials, must first be created’.92 But that tradition can only be created in the theatre if a theatre exists under conditions favourable to their creation. The Exemplary Theatre begins with a platonic dialogue between the Minister of Education and The Man of the Theatre, and like Socrates in Plato’s own dialogues (and like theatrical polemics that take that form, such as Gordon Craig’s On the Art of the Theatre), the authorial stand-in always gets the last word. The



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Minister of Education eagerly suggests ‘that something ought to be done for Shakespeare’, adding that, even if he doesn’t often get a chance to see them in performance, he enjoys reading them. The Man of the Theatre responds, somewhat callously: About as many people can get at Shakespeare’s plays by reading them as can appreciate Beethoven’s Symphonies by fingering them out on the piano. However, your admission, banal though it be, is enough. For once admit you should care for Shakespeare’s plays and you’re landed with some responsibility towards the actors of them, and towards the actor’s art in general, and so towards other plays … the inheritance of the future. How you discharge the responsibility is a minor matter. There are a hundred right ways of doing it to be found; and then there’ll be the interest of finding the hundred-and-first. Provide me my artists somehow with the machinery for giving … that is all I ask. They are, the most of them, so anxious to give if only the machinery were there.93 The Man of the Theatre – good socialist that he is – notes: ‘For every art and for most industries to-day the common problem is to devise machinery for their conversion to public use that will not impoverish the product.’94 It is useful to remember how much Barker put his energies into reforming the theatre as he knew it, whether he was agitating for actors’ working conditions and unionization, initiating new forms of theatre management, formulating hypothetical repertoires and cast lists for a National Theatre, or testifying to the Select Parliamentary Committee on Censorship. Without a New Theatre, neither a New Drama nor a new art of the theatre could come into existence. A member of the Fabian Society like Shaw (who nominated him for membership), Barker knew that the new order would more likely come into existence by evolution and not by revolution. And he knew that creating institutions and structures, even without material support adequate to ensure their longevity, might embarrass people with power and money to put these new institutions on a more permanent footing. But even provisional solutions require energy and labour; and the laboriousness of the world’s work had long been a subject of interest for Barker. In The Voysey Inheritance (1906), the central character, Edward Voysey discovers that his father had embezzled the principal of virtually all of the clients of the family’s solicitors firm, and after his father’s death must decide whether to expose the crime and surrender to the police, or to continue the speculating with his clients’ principal, with the hope of

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restoring the nest eggs of the smaller investors. His fiancée Alice Maitland persuades him to do the latter for, she explains, ‘the world must be put tidy’. And Philip Madras, the central character of The Madras House (1910), has sold off his share in the family haute couture fashion business to run for a seat on the London County Council and try to solve problems of drainage, as he renegotiates the terms of his own marriage. The work of the world – Barker, like his characters, knew – must be done; the theatre world, like the world at large, must be put tidy. But Barker also knew, better than many, that the work was exhausting. ‘I made up my mind sometime before 1910’, he wrote to St John Ervine in 1923, ‘that it was futile to plough the sand, i.e. in this connection, to make a production and then disperse it, the play to semi-oblivion, the actors to demoralisation.’95 And so Barker’s withdrawal from active work in theatre may not have been due to his own social ambitions or those of his socialclimbing new wife, nor to a grand philosophical principle, but to sheer fatigue, to a frustration with the ephemerality of the theatre event, and to his dismay over his failure to create more permanent institutions that could create more effective and more meaningful art. Barker’s withdrawal, then, represents the same contradiction as the mis-titled and mis-marketed The Players’ Shakespeare. A theatre person who believed that the only proof of a play was performance, he was to spend the rest of his life without engaging in performance (at least not to the extent that he had before the war), an experimental scientist who no longer went into the laboratory. The Prefaces, his lasting legacy, still in print, epitomize this contradiction. And the storm scenes in the 1940 Old Vic King Lear, when viewed through the prism of the Prefaces, might be symptomatic of the very different relationship that Barker had with plays in rehearsal after his departure from active work in the theatre. ‘Daily, as we rehearse together, I learn more what is and should be’, he had written in his preface to the acting edition of Twelfth Night in 1912, while the play was still in preparation at the Savoy.96 After Barker had become what Casson called ‘a mere professor’, he wrote about the plays in Prefaces with the same sense of exploration and discovery that he had brought into the rehearsal room. But this was a rehearsal room of the mind. And so, when he dropped in for rehearsals of King Lear at the Old Vic, even though he was making significant modifications from the schema he had established in the 1927 preface to the play (as Dymkowski amply illustrates), he was fine-tuning what he had already discovered and put into print, rather than being actively engaged in the act of discovery.



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Exhausted and demoralized from a decade and a half of ‘ploughing the sands’, he chose to be a genius of the imaginary, rather than the actual, workshop. ‘The rest of the adventure’ of staging Shakespeare’s plays, like the task of making the world tidy, was to be left to others.

Chapter 3

Tyrone Guthrie Robert Shaughnessy

An Inspiration In May 2007, the veteran theatre director Peter Brook granted the Guardian newspaper a rare interview. Reflecting on a lifetime as an innovator, iconoclast and radical experimenter in theatre, he was asked about his ‘inspirations’. For a director long regarded as the magus both of classical theatre and of the avant-garde, the majority of these (Shakespeare, Beckett, Genet, The Living Theatre) would have come as no surprise to most readers of the interview; rather more unexpectedly, however, the figure routinely acknowledged as the twentieth century’s Director’s Director, who had long been associated with the likes of Grotowski, and who has acted as a key intermediary between the avant-garde, non-Western performance idioms and traditions, and the contemporary European theatre, nominated Tyrone Guthrie as the director who had had the most influence on him.1 In the interview, Brook remembered Guthrie for two things for which he was renowned during his lifetime – his handling of large groups, and the relentless pace of his productions: ‘rehearsing a crowd scene of 80 people’ at a production at Covent Garden,2 ‘he gave every member a tiny personal thing to do so they weren’t just a block’; prior to this (at the New Theatre in 1944), he ‘cast the dancer Robert Helpmann as Hamlet who, as he had no time to analyse the text as great actors did, played it at a tremendous pace’, with the result that ‘Suddenly Hamlet was the most exciting play’. In his autobiography, Brook goes further: when he began his career in theatre in the mid–1940s, Guthrie was ‘the only stage director whose work I admired almost to idolatry’, one with ‘an extraordinary vitality’, whose ‘excitement pulsed through every detail, bringing the player of even the tiniest role into a state of passionate involvement’.3 Testifying to the electrifying force of Guthrie’s personality in the rehearsal room, Brook echoes the accounts of many of the actors who worked



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with him, among them the leading classical performers of the twentieth century.4 Yet what neither Brook nor many other professional performers seem particularly concerned with is what historians of Shakespearean performance, in particular, have generally agreed to be his most significant contribution to the development of the twentieth-century theatre – his pivotal role in the move towards ‘open’ stages, as pioneered in Stratford, Ontario, and in Minneapolis, and as replicated across the anglophone world.5 Six years after his death, Guthrie was identified, in J. L. Styan’s hugely influential account, as one of the fomenters of a ‘revolution’ in Shakespearean stagecraft and critical attitudes, whereby the plays came to be recognized first and foremost as material for performance, and wherein performance, freed from proscenium frontality and from pictorial realism, is understood to have returned to ‘the spirit of Elizabethan ritual roleplaying’ and to ‘Shakespeare’s essential theatricality’.6 Though subsequent history has proved Styan’s optimism about the non-illusionistic future of performance somewhat misplaced, the apparent revolution in sensibility has hardened into an orthodoxy that has survived a succession of attempts to dislodge it.7 For Styan, Guthrie bridges the gap between Poel, Granville Barker and, tendentiously, Brook’s own ‘revolutionary’ white-box A Midsummer Night’s Dream of 1970. For Brook, however, the open stages with which his mentor became obsessed were for a long time of little interest. He eventually came round to the view that ‘having the performers share one space intimately with the audience offers an experience infinitely richer than dividing the space into what one can call two rooms’.8 But Brook would be the first to recognize that it is not the simple fact of the open stage, so much as what the director does with and on it, that ultimately matters the most for the history and traditions of Shakespeare in performance. Surviving as a name attached to spaces, Guthrie is remembered as the progenitor of a style of stage design and theatre architecture, and in the process what has been forgotten has been what Brook and others valued the most about his work, and his example. As I shall aim to demonstrate in the following pages, it is in the gap between aspiration and achievement that the real significance of Guthrie’s contribution to the afterlife of Shakespeare’s plays lies.

First Season at the Old Vic, 1933–4 For all his already extensive experience in the theatrical outlands of Cambridge and Scotland and on the London commercial stage, and as a

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producer for the BBC in Belfast and for the Canadian National Railways radio network, the Guthrie that Lilian Baylis appointed as Producer for the 1933–4 Old Vic-Sadler’s Wells season (to direct Twelfth Night, Henry VIII, The Tempest, Measure for Measure, Macbeth, The Cherry Orchard, The Importance of Being Earnest and The Rivals, which in the event gave way to Love for Love) had little track record as a Shakespearean director. He had directed The Merry Wives of Windsor during his period of tenure at the Festival Theatre, Cambridge in 1930, and had guested at the recently reopened Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in April 1933 with Richard II (The Times praised the ‘quiet beauty’ of Guthrie’s stagecraft).9 More auspiciously, his 1931–2 season at the Westminster Theatre had ended with a threeweek run of his acclaimed Love’s Labour’s Lost. Under the broad-minded management of Anmer Hall, he had shown his imaginative way with scant resources, his talent for creative improvisation, and his skill in handling modern, large-cast plays and difficult actors. Guthrie had also secured a long-running hit for J. B. Priestley’s first play, Dangerous Corner, at the Lyric, Hammersmith. Shakespeare was at this stage not part of the plan, but according to Guthrie, Love’s Labours Lost was a production conjured out of the ether, a last-minute substitution for ‘a play about Disraeli’ that had little to recommend it other than being ‘a marvellous vehicle for the particular talents and qualities of Ernest Milton’, who was to play the lead. When Milton was unexpectedly hospitalized, Love’s Labours Lost was put in its place as a play answering to the needs of the company ‘to the extent that there was an actor for each part and a part for each actor’,10 and on it went. In his autobiography, Guthrie was rather offhand about what posterity might consider as a momentous turn to Shakespeare, characterizing it as an improvised, pragmatic (and perhaps even slightly cynical) decision rather than a consequence of premeditation or reflection, and he self-deprecatingly attributes ‘most of the good ideas’ in the production to Nugent Monck’s recent amateur staging at the Maddermarket, Norwich.11 But it was an artful move. Of all of the Shakespearean comedies that he could have chosen, Love’s Labours Lost was one of the least known to the London commercial stage (the Old Vic had presented it only three times since 1918; it had last been seen in Stratford in 1925); it allowed its cast to shine, as in a new play, in parts that had yet to become stale with familiarity; and, more to the point, its reputation as a tedious, obscure and unloved text afforded its director the licence to edit and shape it into a marvellous vehicle for the ‘particular talents and qualities’ of Tyrone Guthrie. Reducing the play to a brisk ninety minutes, Guthrie was ‘wise’, wrote one reviewer, ‘to use his blue pencil freely’ (though he ‘could personally wish



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he had used it with even greater freedom’);12 the effect, wrote another, was a ‘gossamer pageant’ that was as ‘lovely and brittle as delicate china […] we are continuously pleased, enchanted as by a beautiful dance’.13 Guthrie’s attitude to the play in rehearsal (‘They won’t understand it anyway, so pace! – rhythm – pace!’)14 cannily anticipated his audience’s response. Herbert Farjeon, for one, saw through this and disapproved: ‘Mr Guthrie’s treatment […] insists on rhythm at the expense of words […] In going all out for an artificial lilting cadence, he has too often obliterated the sense.’15 A schematic mise en scène helped to map the production’s contrasts and oppositions: as Gordon Crosse noted, a single setting consisted of ‘the king’s pavilion draped in red on one side and the Princess’s in green on the other, each group of characters dressed in the corresponding colour and keeping strictly to its own side in all entrances and exits’. It was ‘a ballet or masque rather than a play’.16 Not for the last time, Guthrie seized upon a second-rate text in order to showcase his directorial gifts. The production caught the attention of Baylis, who was on the lookout for a successor to Harcourt Williams, whose four years as producer at the Old Vic were drawing to a close. Williams came to the production, found that he had ‘cut it unmercifully, but what a gay thing he made of it’,17 and urged Baylis to see it. A meeting followed, and at the end of January 1933 Guthrie was offered the post of producer for the 1933–4 season, though he had few of the qualities or qualifications that had recommended his more notable predecessors to the position. He was an outsider in relation to the Vic ‘family’, and unlike Williams, Ben Greet, Robert Atkins and Andrew Leigh (or, indeed, any notable English Shakespearean producer to date), he had no significant professional experience (or indeed aptitude) as an actor. Nor, for all his flair as a director, did he have a particularly reliable instinct for a hit (though this would not have been so much of a concern for Baylis). What he did have was audacity, and vision, and in this respect he differed from his well-intentioned predecessor. Williams had done what he could to move the theatre work of the Vic forward in the face of the organization’s long-entrenched constraints of time and finances, and he had scored some success in his first season by persuading rising star John Gielgud (at that point known more for his work in modern plays) to lead, resulting in the actor’s first attempt at Hamlet, a role he would make his own for the next two decades. The most memorable achievement of Williams’s period of tenure was his and Gielgud’s co-directed Merchant of Venice in December 1932, with décor by design team Motley, Malcolm Keen as Shylock and Peggy Ashcroft as Portia; according to Guthrie himself, it was ‘elegant and

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witty, light as a feather, and so gaily sophisticated that beside it Maugham and Coward seemed like two Nonconformist pastors from the Midlands’.18 The successes that were achieved at the Vic under Williams’s direction happened in the context of struggle not only with the existing constraints but with new challenges generated by the opening of the refurbished Sadler’s Wells in January 1931. In particular, Baylis’s insistence that, according to the terms of the Vic-Wells charter, drama, ballet and opera must be offered on a rotating basis in both theatres created immense logistical problems (‘the playgoers never knew where we were playing’, Williams recalled, ‘Even the habitués of the parent theatre became confused’).19 As Williams well knew, the Vic could not carry on like this, and as he quit, he reflected: ‘I am crossing the Old Vic stage. It is littered with new scenery in the making […] Why the dickens didn’t I try a demand for everything new?’20 Williams was not, by temperament, the man to make such a demand. Tyrone Guthrie was, and now was the time to make it. In the autumn of 1933, it seemed that it was time for a fresh chapter in English Shakespearean theatre. The new Shakespeare Memorial Theatre had just ended a sold-out season that, in addition to Guthrie’s Richard II, included Theodore Komisarjevsky’s powerful, Constructivist-influenced Macbeth and baroque, fantasticated Merchant; Robert Atkins had launched the first open-air season in Regent’s Park; in June, Max Reinhardt had created a stir with his open-air Dream with the Oxford University Dramatic Society. Immediately prior to the opening of the Vic season, an editorial in The Times took stock of the contemporary Shakespearean scene, approvingly noted Guthrie’s appointment, and expressed the hope that ‘his direction […] will give a truly modern interpretation of Shakespeare without freakishness’.21 The Times’s leader-writer also commented on the strong cast that Guthrie had assembled for the season: it was led by Charles Laughton (supported by his wife and on-screen partner Elsa Lanchester) and Flora Robson, with whom Guthrie had worked closely at Cambridge and at the Westminster. Neither had much experience in Shakespeare. Baylis was especially suspicious of Laughton, whose starry presence was at odds with the Vic’s low-budget, ensemble principles, and became even more resentful when the actor and producer succeeded in securing substantial funding from the Pilgrim Trust, to be spent on new costumes. To balance this outlay with savings elsewhere, Guthrie opted to present all of the planned Shakespeare productions on a single permanent setting. He justified this in an announcement in the September-October issue of The Old Vic and Sadler’s Wells Magazine:



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all the Shakespeare plays at the Old Vic will be acted in a permanent setting designed by a modern architect. The set is an attempt to utilize the convention of the Elizabethan stage in a form that can be fitted into the Rococco [sic] framework of the Vic, and also reflects contemporary taste in its austere simplicity of line and surface.22 As for the locations of the plays’ action, ‘to translate them into terms of paint and canvas is not to assist but to clog the imagination’. This was not the first time that the Old Vic had turned to quasi-Elizabethanism in order to combine scenic economy with the attempt to bring actors and audiences into closer contact: in 1920, Atkins had marked his arrival in office by establishing a permanent setting that, he hoped, conformed to ‘the groundplan of the Elizabethan theatre’, and, with its tiny forestage, ‘created a certain intimacy with the entire auditorium’ and assured ‘continuity of action’.23 What distinguished the 1933 setting was its uncompromising modernism. Designed not by a theatre artist but by the architect Wells Coates (much influenced by Japanese interior design, an associate of Walter Gropius and a devotee of Le Courbusier machine à habiter principles, his mantra was ‘the past is not always behind us, but more often in front, blocking the way’),24 it consisted of ‘two curving staircases, two formidable pillars with a balcony between them, and a central entrance under the balcony’. This was, for the opening of the first production of the season, ‘a scene of the utmost austerity, massive, stony, bare, satisfactory as an arrangement of architectural forms’, but, unsurprisingly, ‘not in all things pleasing as a design for Twelfth Night.’25 Guthrie’s reservations were stronger: the set was, he immediately recognized, a serious mistake, ‘wildly obtrusive […] a powerful, stridently irrelevant competitor for the audience’s attention’. Guthrie joked that, ‘[p]ainted pinky-grey for Twelfth Night’, it ‘suggested not Illyria but a fancy dress ball on a pink battleship’,26 but to my eye this is an understatement: with its monstrous columns enclosing a speaker’s balcony and flanked by sweeping staircases, it would not have disgraced Hitler’s Nuremberg (Figure 7). Equally distracting, for many reviewers, was the casting of the Sadler’s Wells prima ballerina Lydia Lopokova as Olivia, whose ‘Russian accent’ and ‘habit of illustrating her emotions with expressive hand gestures had proved baffling’.27 Obtrusiveness, whether design-related or directorial, was, Guthrie knew, of particular concern both to himself and to the Vic audiences. In his Vic-Wells magazine article, he stated that ‘the best production is generally the most unobtrusive’, and that ‘[a] good producer’s work shows only when poor actors seem to be playing well,

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when good actors seem better than ever, when a fine play seems even finer’.28 This was somewhat disingenuous with respect to Guthrie’s work to date (Love’s Labour’s Lost and Six Characters had, directorially speaking, been anything but unobtrusive), and as the statement of a position it was considerably more self-effacing than Guthrie’s precocious manifesto for the English stage, Theatre Prospect, which had been published by the leftleaning Wishart and Company as part of its ‘Adelphi Quartos’ series the year before. In this short book, Guthrie predicted the impending demise of bourgeois civilization, pronounced the death of naturalism, and looked forward to a new avant-garde founded on ‘material of unexceptionable quality – the classics’.29 But the Vic-Wells magazine declaration, at once tactful and tactical, was more in tune with the settled expectations of the Vic’s regular audience (if not of those of the patrons that Guthrie and Laughton hoped to draw to the theatre from the West End). For a time, it worked; Twelfth Night went well, and was followed by The Cherry Orchard, a production that, opening on 9 October, managed an unprecedented run of forty-three performances.



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The November issue of the Vic-Wells magazine noted with some satisfaction that popular success was also artistically beneficial, in that the delayed Sadler’s Wells opening of Henry VIII, postponed from October to 7 November, meant that ‘the company which has earned all this popularity gets a month’s rehearsal for the next new show’, an unprecedented luxury for the Vic, and ‘a very precious gift to those who are tasting the rigours of repertory for the first time’.30 Additional rehearsal time was not the only advantage enjoyed by the production; flatly contradicting the declaration of scenic principle with which he had opened the season, Guthrie borrowed from Lewis Casson and Sybil Thorndike the lavish paint-and-canvas settings (designed by Charles Ricketts) from their legendary staging of 1926, as well as the costumes from Alexander Korda’s biopic The Private Life of Henry VIII, in which Laughton played the title role, and which received its London premiere the week before Henry VIII opened at Sadler’s Wells. The timing was hardly coincidental; indeed, the principal interest of a Henry VIII starring Laughton lay in its cross-media appeal. Then, as now, Henry VIII was a play that few held in high critical regard, and there is no evidence that Guthrie saw the production as an opportunity to rehabilitate it as a misunderstood or unjustly neglected work. Rather, he saw in it not just a ready vehicle for Laughton, but a part that was well within the compass of a performer who regarded the season as his opportunity to ‘learn how to speak’.31 The reviewers approached Laughton’s stage Henry via its screen double: The Times thought that the play’s prologue, with its references to a ‘merry bawdy play’ and ‘a fellow / In a long motley coat guarded with yellow’ defined ‘the precise difference between the two versions of Henry in this play and in the film in which Mr Laughton plays the same king’.32 The production also featured at least one instance of the type of fourthwall breaching that has since become routine, even mandatory, but which at the time seemed odd, or even faintly presumptuous: describing Nicholas Hannen’s handling of Buckingham’s oration on the way to execution, James Agate felt that he was ‘much handicapped’ by the staging of the scene, ‘which deprived him of the crowd the author prescribed […] so he addressed the audience directly’. Measure for Measure followed in December, and by now the stars were in their element, although friction within the company was growing. Guthrie and Laughton disagreed over verse-speaking. The actor, who believed that ‘following the exact rhythm of the verse suppressed its meaning’ and made it ‘incomprehensible’, chose ‘to break the lines up into the rhythms of normal speech, extracting the sense from them’. His director, contrarily, was ‘all for beat-counting and musicality’.33 At the same time, Guthrie despised traditional,

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sing-song delivery; responding to criticism of Flora Robson’s Katherine in Henry VIII, he declared that ‘Shakespeare [sic] blank verse enables the speaker to slip imperceptibly from prose-speaking to verse-speaking and therefore a naturalistic method of verse-speaking is indicated’.34 Guthrie’s attitude to delivery polarized opinion throughout his directing career. Norman Marshall thought that under his direction ‘the standard of verse speaking at the Vic was abominable’, and that though he believed in ‘verse being spoken speedily’, he was unable to implement this ‘without spoiling the verse’.35 Anthony Quayle, who played the King of France in the Westminster Love’s Labour’s Lost and the title role in Guthrie’s 1949 Shakespeare Memorial Theatre Henry VIII (and no soft touch when it came to verse-speaking), offered a more nuanced view: He was keenly aware of rhythms – the overall rhythm of a scene rather than the clear carving of syllables. So there were often passages where he didn’t care if the audience heard exactly what was said. He aimed for a general impression; the clarity of dialogue was comparatively unimportant […] there’d be a great impression of brouhaha, confusion, noise, embattled opinion, out of which one vital line would emerge – bang! – like that, and hit you with a wallop. He’d throw away twenty lines to achieve one which would slam you in the face.36 In Measure, Robson played Isabella, as Laughton played Angelo, on a ‘realistic, curiously modern note’,37 and the production as a whole displayed Guthrie’s gift for large-scale orchestration and potent image-making. At the end of Angelo’s soliloquy in 2.2, Laughton turned his back, and, ‘like the wings of a great, sinister raven, the long sleeves of his gown are flapped into control’.38 On this occasion, Laughton’s naturalism seemed to work: as his biographer Simon Callow comments, ‘Angelo’s utterances are so tortured and tortuous, the line – and the syntax – is so broken up by emotional and mental twistings and turnings, that it is sometimes hardly verse at all.’39 Ranks of extras, walk-ons and supernumeraries had swelled Henry VIII, a play with thirty-two speaking parts, to a cast of seventy; Measure was afforded a twenty-strong all-female chorus of nuns and prostitutes. Yet neither Laughton’s pulling power nor Guthrie’s ingenuity appealed, and the production played to poor houses. As Harcourt Williams grumbled, the production was ‘finely acted, ingeniously produced, and a joy alike to eye, ear and mind; and yet how few of the “smart intellectuals”, or for that matter the self-styled lovers of Shakespeare, took the trouble to see it’.40 The Tempest, in the new year, was a disaster. Laughton, an actor born to play Caliban, was out of his depth as Prospero, and the production as



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a whole was eccentrically designed, perversely cast, and misdirected. A ‘galumphing and uninteresting’41 Importance of Being Earnest followed, and then Congreve’s Love for Love, which attracted the censure of the Vic’s governors but played to capacity audiences. Baylis gave her producer her backing, but the relationship between them was rapidly deteriorating. Baylis was already at odds with Laughton over the Pilgrim Trust funds, and with her use of the profits accrued from the drama season (over £6000 by January) to offset the losses incurred by the opera and ballet; Guthrie’s innovations, meanwhile, had provoked ‘a spate of vitriolic letters from the diehards, and Lilian chose to show the most poisonous of these to its subject’.42 A month before Macbeth, the final production of the season, opened, it was announced that, ‘for family reasons’, Guthrie would not be returning for 1934–5. ‘This may be clever but it’s not our Shakespeare’ was Guthrie’s summation of the prevailing attitude,43 and before he left he presented his antagonists with one last piece of cleverness to chew over. In his producer’s notes on Macbeth, printed both in the programme and in the Vic-Wells magazine, Guthrie offered a rationalist’s mandate for his decision to cut the first scene altogether: referring to the ‘overwhelming evidence’ against its ‘authenticity’, he argued that by ‘making the three weird Sisters open the play, one cannot avoid the implication that they are a governing influence of the tragedy […] inspiring its motives and bringing about its catastrophe’. Guthrie does offer a counter-interpretation, taken from A. C. Bradley and Harley Granville Barker (‘Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are ruined by precisely those qualities that make them great’),44 but one wonders whether the ‘weird sisters’, whose ‘control of events’ he is so keen to dislodge, bore at least an unconscious relation to the spiteful and narrow-minded cadre of old women that had plotted his own departure – a group led by Miss Kate Pilgrim, who, as John Gielgud recalled, ‘responded to Guthrie’s work by embarking on an energetic gathering of autographs at the stage door’ and then slyly attached them to ‘a letter demanding Guthrie’s resignation’.45 The production had some superb moments of physical acting: the spectacular faint that was contrived for Flora Robson after the discovery of Duncan’s murder, where, ‘to emphasize the genuineness of her collapse’, she ‘fell down a flight of stairs, to be caught by thanes below’ (Guthrie liked the stunt so much that he recycled it for Dorothy Dix’s Gertrude in his first Hamlet, three years later); her ‘working agonizedly at her hands as it they were sticky with resin’ in the sleepwalking scene, unforgettably evoking ‘murder sticking to her hands’;46 Laughton reacting to the sight of Banquo’s ghost by ‘bounding away […] and landing

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half-way up the staircase like an indiarubber cat’.47 But both were heavily criticized for being prosaic and overly psychologized. Laughton was not helped by Baylis’s behaviour on the first night, when she marched into the star’s dressing-room, slapped him on the shoulder, and delivered the coup de grâce: ‘Never mind, dear … I’m sure you did your best. And I’m sure that one day you may be quite a good Macbeth.’48 He never played the part again.

Producer, Director, General Manager Guthrie again launched himself into the commercial theatre, and steered clear of Shakespeare. At the end of May 1934, he directed Viceroy Sarah, a costume drama with a formidable Edith Evans in the lead, which played for five performances at the Arts and then reopened at the Whitehall, where it ran for three months before transferring for a further month at the Phoenix. It was the first of a series of Guthrie productions centred on strong female personalities (and relying on the talents of charismatic female leads to carry indifferent scripts). Guthrie had also caught the attention of the West End’s most important backers, the director of the management company Moss Empires, Hugh (‘Binkie’) Beaumont, who offered him the direction of the sentimental illegitimacy drama Sweet Aloes at the Arts. In November, as Gielgud began his record-breaking stint as Hamlet at the New, Guthrie directed Flora Robson, leading a cast of forty, in the swashbuckling epic Mary Read. By the start of 1935, joined by Mrs Nobby Clark at the Comedy and Hervey House at His Majesty’s, Guthrie had three shows running simultaneously in the West End, though success was short-lived: Mary Read closed in March; it was followed by a short run for Mrs Nobby Clark at the Comedy and, in May, the decisive failure of Hervey House at His Majesty’s. The beginning of 1936 saw two forays onto Broadway: Dodie Smith’s Call it a Day at the Morosco Theatre, which ran for six months and 194 performances, and a misjudged revival of Sweet Aloes, which managed only twenty-four performances and closed in less than a month. None of these ventures laid claim to the status of ‘art’, though Guthrie assuaged his creative (and perhaps political) conscience by directing W. H. Auden’s The Dance of Death for a short season of avant-garde work at the Westminster towards the end of 1935. In all, Guthrie’s experience on and off the commercial stage between 1934 and 1936 confirmed for him that a show’s success or failure bore no predictable relation to the quality of the script.



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In the meantime, the Vic-Wells mounted two undistinguished seasons, led by Maurice Evans and under the direction of Henry Cass, which tended to confirm that, for all the conflicts that it had generated, the course that Guthrie had attempted to plot during his first season was, at least, looking to the future. When the call came for him to return as producer for the 1936–7 season, Guthrie was in a far stronger position than he had been three years earlier. Anecdotal evidence indicates that Guthrie had in the interim recognized that the balance of power between actor, manager and producer was shifting. The occasion in question was a rehearsal at the Queen’s Theatre in 1935 of Robert Morley’s boulevard drama Short Story, a vehicle for one of the London stage’s most notorious divas, Marie Tempest. As Georgina Leigh, a semi-retired darling of theatreland with a talent for bon mots and waspish one-liners, Miss Tempest was, as one reviewer put it, the sort of performer who ‘has everyone at her feet the moment she walks on to the stage’.49 According to Sybil Thorndike, who was in the cast, Tempest was an actor who ‘would try to make you her slave and if you gave way she despised you and treated you like dirt’, and following one especially extreme display of bad behaviour, Guthrie ‘suddenly snapped his fingers and we all stopped’: He came striding down the auditorium […] while we all waited. Then, in a loud voice, he said, ‘Miss Tempest! Why are you being such a bitch?’ There was an awful silence, and we all thought, ‘Poor young man! Such a promising producer and that’s the end of it.’50 Such a challenge from a mere producer was an act of professionally suicidal recklessness. Perhaps Guthrie’s patience with his leading ladies was beginning to wear thin, and no doubt the self-confidence of the officer class into which he had been born and bred helped a little (as did the benefit of a private income; as T. C. Worsley observes of this incident, ‘a less independent director might not have been able to afford the risk’).51 But it was Miss Tempest who blinked (after a long silence, ‘she said very sweetly, “Very well, Mr Guthrie, shall we go on with the rehearsal?”’),52 and while the incident is probably more personally revealing than it is historically exemplary, it signals a change in the cultural weather. Tempest was without question the production’s chief selling-point, but Guthrie’s star was in the ascendant – as both initiator and beneficiary of a more widespread shift of artistic and managerial authority away from the actor and towards the figure who would retain the double nomenclature of producer and director until the 1950s. By this time, Dan Rebellato notes, ‘the director’s

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status could be very high; Tyrone Guthrie and Peter Brook were often as well-known as their leading actors’.53 Guthrie was already in the mid–1930s seeing his name appear prominently on the billing and in newspaper listings.54 He was not alone; up in Stratford, the playbills for the 1937 Shakespeare Memorial Theatre season, Carol Chillington Rutter points out, carried ‘one very significant addition, in very small print. For the first time, productions were identified by directors.’55 Following the example of Komisarjevsky, Guthrie was establishing himself as a producer-director who inscribed his own unmistakeable, and occasionally idiosyncratic, signature upon his productions; occupying a unique position within the professional English theatre of the time, he took the opportunity of his return to the Vic to assume extensive powers over the company organization and repertory system. He was also careful to safeguard his autonomy and his freedom to carry on working in the commercial sector. Whereas in 1933 his contract had explicitly stated that as ‘an annual servant’, his ‘whole time belongs to the Vic, and no outside work can be undertaken without our permission – even in the summer months when the theatre is closed’,56 the 1936–7 season saw him combine his direction of five of the seven Vic shows with productions of Thornton Wilder’s Love and How to Cure It for Tennent’s at the Globe and of Paganini at the Lyceum. In November 1937, he left Michel Saint-Denis to direct Laurence Olivier in Macbeth while he divided his time between location shooting for the Laughton film Vessel of Wrath and directing John Gielgud’s star-studded School of Scandal at the Queen’s; the following year, he spent the first week of October rehearsing both the ‘modern-dress’ Hamlet at the Vic and Robert Morley’s comedy Goodness, How Sad! at the Vaudeville. Guthrie also introduced the logic of commercial scheduling, as announced in an editorial in the Vic-Wells magazine (though couched in the third person, the prose style is unmistakeably his): The Old Vic spent some seventeen years bemoaning the fact that it had a permanent dramatic, but no permanent operatic company. In 1931, with Sadler’s Wells, it realised its ambition. Now, in 1936, it throws overboard, for a time at least, the idea of a stock Shakespearean company and prepares to adopt Tyrone Guthrie’s new policy […] Plays to run as long as they attract but not longer than eight weeks; the best available cast for each new production; these are the producer’s innovations. He realises, quite as well as the management, that awful crises will probably occur […] luckily he is the quiet imperturbable sort of artist who, the Manager believes, will infallibly rise to the occasion.57



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‘And thus’, Guthrie writes, evidently enjoying himself, ‘the whirligig of Time brings in his revenges.’ With neither the Pilgrim Trust nor Miss Pilgrim’s mistrust to contend with, Guthrie, it appeared, was now in charge. In the event, the longest run during the season at the Vic was of the final production, Henry V, at six weeks, but this was still double the norm. In the 1933–4 season Guthrie had grappled with the logistics of transferring shows between the Vic and the Wells; from now on, he insisted, drama stayed put at the one and the opera and ballet at the other, even though this entailed the rewriting of the Vic-Wells charter. The ‘best available cast’ meant shorter and more flexible engagements at all levels; and it meant building the season around the pulling power of two big-name actors with solid classical credentials: Laurence Olivier and Edith Evans, with strong support from American star Ruth Gordon. Evans and Gordon led the first half of the season. The Country Wife, with designs by Oliver Messel, co-production backing from Broadway impresario Gilbert Miller, Gordon as Mrs Pinchwife and Evans as Lady Fidget, enjoyed a five-week run through October to early November, before transferring, with Gordon supported by a new American cast, to Broadway. Then, in a sign that giveand-take operated both ways, there was a change of plan that signalled Guthrie’s command of the repertoire was not quite as total as he might have hoped. At the start of September, it had been announced that the productions that would follow The Country Wife would be chosen from a group consisting of Ibsen’s Ghosts, Othello, Much Ado, Macbeth, Hamlet and Dekker’s Witch of Edmonton; but Ghosts failed to materialize and Hamlet (which had been agreed with Olivier in the summer) was preceded by As You Like It and followed by Twelfth Night; the season concluded with Henry V.58 As You Like It was the result of Evans’s wish to play Rosalind, the part she had first made her own at the Vic ten years earlier. Guthrie refused to direct (Edith, aged 46, was ‘too old’ and he ‘wasn’t going to be party to a fiasco’),59 and Esmé Church, drafted in from the Old Vic Theatre School, took over. Guthrie was then forced to eat his words when the show proved enough of a success to transfer to the New for a month’s run in February 1937. Meanwhile, Olivier led the second half of the season, beginning in January with Hamlet, and following with Sir Toby in Twelfth Night, and Henry V. Guthrie started, as he put it, ‘very quietly’60 with a Love’s Labour’s Lost that toned down the attention-catching flamboyance of his earlier production in favour of a visual scheme, designed by Molly McArthur, that ‘softened’ the picture with ‘costumes in pastel shades […] against a delicate scene which comprised only a fountain, two tents on either side of the stage, and

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a wrought iron gate, topped by an arc of fresh leaves’;61 it was ‘costumed with the delicacy and fragility of a Fragonard painting’, with the ladies in ‘exquisite shades of green’, and the gentlemen in ‘varying hues of red’.62 Some of the formalism of the previous production was retained: the ‘artificiality of the play’, wrote one reviewer, ‘was made yet more obvious by symmetrical grouping of the actors and by many airs and graces’; miraculously, what on the page seemed a bewildering ‘maze of language and allusion’ became ‘exquisite and easy’.63 As this reviewer half-recognized, Guthrie had rendered the play as a modernist artwork ‘curiously like the compositions of the younger poets of today, who seem to use incongruities for their own sake and deliberately conceal the connexions between their episodes or thoughts’. Something along these lines was also intuited by the Shakespearean scholar John Dover Wilson, who thought that Guthrie’s choreography revealed the play as ‘a first-rate comedy of the pattern kind’, and whose ‘abiding impression’ was ‘of a ballet-like speed, tip-toe delicacy, and kaleidoscopic shifts of colour […] culminating in the grim shock of the entry of a messenger of Death, clad in black from head to foot’.64 Guthrie, the former champion of the ‘unobtrusive’ production, was now willing to demonstrate his ‘cleverness’ and, with Olivier, to venture into new theatrical territory. For Twelfth Night, Guthrie hit upon the wheeze of casting Jessica Tandy as both Viola and Sebastian (listed in the programme as played by ‘E. Richman’, a ruse that fooled nobody), thus enabling him to orchestrate some ingenious theatrical legerdemain in the final scene, with ‘an interchangeable double flit[ting] about the stage under cover of masking gentlemen in cloaks’.65 The production, which loudly proclaimed Olivier’s star billing on the publicity, gave him the opportunity to indulge in one of his bouts of prosthetic transformation in the shape of a ‘bubukled and whelked and knobbed’ Sir Toby fabricated out of padding and whiskers, whom he ‘delightedly overplayed […] like a veteran Skye terrier, ears pricked for mischief’.66 This was an outrageously externalized performance for the actor who ‘wanted to be completely different in every performance’.67 Hamlet, by contrast, presented an opportunity for a study in complex, conflicted interiority whose secrets could be unlocked through the application of a critical and therapeutic method previously unknown to the English Shakespearean rehearsal room: psychoanalysis. A keen student of Freud, Guthrie knew Ernest Jones’s 1923 essay ‘Hamlet and Oedipus’ (which had argued that the Prince’s delay is the symptom of the archetypal Oedipal scenario), and he and Olivier accordingly paid Jones a visit. Jones’s views on the play were a gift to Olivier, who found in them confirmation



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of his own self-identification with the Prince: ‘spectacular mood swings, cruel treatment of his love, and above all a hopeless inability to pursue the course required of him’, together with a ‘weakness for dramatics’ which ‘would be reasonable if the dramatics spurred him to action, but unfortunately they help him to delay it’.68 In performance, the reviewers were universally unaware of the production’s Oedipal dynamics, and much more impressed by Olivier’s astounding athleticism, vigour and masculinity. For reasons that are discussed in the next section, Guthrie’s first attempt at Hamlet would, as a consequence of its visit to the courtyard of Kronborg Castle, Denmark, later in the year, assume a retrospective significance that was not at all connected (at least not consciously) with its directorial conception. It did, however, establish the Freudian and architectonic foundations for Olivier’s own film of the play, released just over a decade later, particularly in its patterns of ascent and descent, its use of staircases, ramps, platforms and levels, and its treatment of the protagonist. The legacy of Guthrie’s Old Vic Shakespeare of the 1930s also survives in Olivier’s 1944 film of Henry V, which also borrowed some of its mannerisms (and some cast members, including Harcourt Williams, Leo Genn and Ivy St Helier) from the final production of the 1936–7 season. Olivier’s sendingup of the Bishops during the Salic Law sequence was initiated here; A. C. Sprague wrote that the Archbishop’s speech was ‘spoken infuriatingly […] as semi-burlesque’, though he conceded that the production ‘holds the memory more than Olivier’s later film’.69 Possibly this was because of the simplicity of its means and effects: Williamson praised the staging of the scene before Harfleur – ‘with only a handful of actors, a shifting light and no visible scenery Guthrie suggested a whole body of men on the move’.70 Guthrie directed a further half-dozen Shakespeare productions before the outbreak of the Second World War. In 1937–8 these were Measure for Measure, Richard III, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Othello; in 1938–9 a revival of the previous year’s Dream and The Taming of the Shrew. For Othello, with Richardson and Olivier in the leads, Guthrie continued his psychoanalytically inclined pursuit of what he later called ‘hidden motives’ in Shakespeare by agreeing with Olivier that Iago was ‘subconsciously in love with Othello’;71 but since there was no possibility of convincing Ralph Richardson to entertain this reading, the pair concealed the scheme from their colleague, and the result was ‘a ghastly, boring hash’.72 The 1938 Hamlet, with Alec Guinness in the lead, opened towards the end of September, and created controversy for what was advertised as a ‘modern dress’ setting – actually a mix of the Ruritanian (greatcoats and evening dress) and the contemporary (umbrellas at Ophelia’s funeral); despite

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Guthrie’s conviction that Guinness was ‘much better in the part than Larry’,73 audiences stayed away. In March 1939 Guthrie directed the Shrew, his last Shakespeare for several years, with Ursula Jeans and Roger Livesey as Katherine and Petruccio. The biggest surprise of these seasons, for those familiar with Guthrie’s work and reputation as an iconoclast, was the Christmas 1938 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in which Guthrie’s directing skills joined forces with luscious settings and costumes by Messel and Motley, Mendelssohn’s incidental music, a fairy corps de ballet flown in on wires from the Sadler’s Wells, choreography by Ninette de Valois, Robert Helpmann balletic as Oberon and Vivien Leigh gorgeous as Titania, to create an exuberant pastiche of Victorian pictorial Shakespeare. If Guthrie’s direction was conducted with his tongue wedged somewhere in his cheek, it mattered little to the audiences who flocked to a rare and much-needed Old Vic hit; as the Times critic observed when the production was revived with a new cast the following year, the effect was ‘not mockery or patronage, but a particular kind of loveliness conducive to the enchantment which springs from Mr Guthrie’s exquisitely sympathetic ordering of the stage’.74 Along with Mary Read, this was the closest that Guthrie ever came to the production of Peter Pan (a play he described as ‘a version of the Oedipus legend the more horrifying because it is coated with rose-pink, poisoned icing-sugar’)75 that, sadly, he never got round to directing. It was also a strongly conceptual production, as Guthrie explained in the programme. The ‘early Victorian’ style, he wrote, ‘has not been arranged merely to be amusing’, but ‘one more attempt to make a union between the words of Shakespeare, the music of Mendelssohn and the architecture of the Old Vic’: I need not remind critics that the stage of Shakespeare’s day was not constructed like ours to frame a ‘picture’; the plays were written for a stage that gave less of visual illusion and more of physical contact between the actors and the audience. Any Shakespearean production on a picture frame stage […] must be a compromise between what archaeologists can tell us of the theatrical methods of Shakespeare’s day and those of our own […] the difficult marriage between modern stage and classical play is still further complicated by Mendelssohn’s music – a classic in its own right – but inescapably early Victorian, redolent of crimson and gold opera houses, of operatic fairies in white muslin, flying through groves of emerald canvas.76



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Guthrie’s talk of compromise registers the dissatisfaction with the pictureframe stage that, he claimed, had been confirmed by his experience of the 1930s. But if he is attempting to dispel the magic of Victorian picturemaking here, he is not doing so very convincingly; moreover, the show itself provided compelling evidence that this allegedly clapped-out apparatus was nonetheless capable of eliciting his most beguiling and seductive work. This was a show packed with wonders: ‘white-skirted fairies, soaring and alighting like winged thistledown’, and bearing lit tapers in the final scene, the copper-lit, garlanded pillars of Theseus’s palace and gauze screens on which were traced ‘the calyxes of giant bell-flowers’, Robert Helpmann’s ‘shimmering stag beetle’ Oberon, Hermia (Alexis France) made up as a miniature Queen Victoria, and Quince (Frank Tickle) as Mr Pickwick; in the midst of which, Farjeon thought, ‘no comedian now dame-ing it at the Adelphi or the Lyceum or the Prince’s succeeds in being half as funny as Mr Ralph Richardson in the part of Bottom’.77 At the time, with war in Europe now looking inevitable, audiences needed all the magic they could get.

Wartime Lilian Baylis’s sudden death just before the delayed opening night of Macbeth in November 1937 had resulted in Guthrie’s assumption of overall executive and artistic direction of the Vic-Wells organization, a position he retained until 1945. At the start of 1939 this became official when he was appointed as Director of both theatres, while in the background the Governors stepped up negotiations with the Shakespeare Memorial National Theatre Committee over plans for the National Theatre that, it was hoped, the Old Vic company would become. Towards the end of August the company travelled to Buxton, Derbyshire for its second summer season, with the intention of returning to the Old Vic in the autumn. The declaration of war on 3 September and, amid fears of imminent aerial bombardment, the closure of the London theatres put paid to that, and the Vic stayed dark for six months. It briefly reopened in April 1940 for John Gielgud’s Lear (co-directed by Lewis Casson and Harley Granville Barker), which was followed by George Devine and Marius Goring’s The Tempest at the end of May, but closed on 22 June, ‘the day France fell’, as George Rowell notes, and ‘the Old Vic Company left the Waterloo Road for a decade’.78 Sadler’s Wells, where Guthrie was now based, stayed open for a time, with opera and ballet drawing in unexpectedly healthy audiences,

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but within months, with the phoney war over and the Blitz now under way, it too was dark, its final performance on 7 September 1940, aptly enough, being Faust: ‘while Mephistopheles dragged Faust to Hell on the stage, on the theatre’s roof Guthrie and others watched the real inferno of the first big fire-raid on the City of London.’79 Eight months later, on 10 May 1941, the Luftwaffe’s bombs claimed the Old Vic itself as a casualty, causing extensive (but, to the Governors’ regret, not irreparable) damage, but by then the organization had relocated 200 miles north to the Victoria Theatre in Burnley, Lancashire. This provided the base from which the Vic-Wells conducted its operations for the next three years, as a provider of morale-boosting, populist high art and as a prototypical national theatre of the regions, taking pared-down opera, ballet and drama productions to a variety of found, improvised and non-theatrical venues across the Midlands, the North, Scotland and Wales. With the bulk of his energies given to management and administration, Guthrie directed little during this period: The Marriage of Figaro, staged with chamber orchestra, no chorus and, as The Times reported when it was briefly seen in London early in 1941, ‘a bare minimum of scenery (an arrangement of screens)’,80 The Cherry Orchard at the New Theatre in August of the same year, and King John, co-directed with Lewis Casson and taken on tour throughout 1941. Staged ‘with no concession to realism, in heraldic curtains and sweeping banners’, and, in the first instance of a caricature tradition that became associated with the play during the post-war era, with King John (Ernest Milton) ‘in a stylised red wig’ and a ‘whimsical use of comic bouncing hobby-horses before the walls of Angiers’,81 this was a satirical and – inevitably – sharply topical production; catching a performance in Kendal, Punch’s reviewer found that the ‘English and French kings, in their dealing with Angiers, remind one sadly and strangely of Hitler and Stalin discussing the fate of a buffer state’.82 King John was paired with Casson’s equally vigorous and topical Macbeth, ‘a tight little portable production which fires the great story at the public with the speed and certainty of expert gun-fire’, and which ‘demonstrates how gangsters taking the sword will perish thereby after withering amid the hatred of the just’.83 Both productions were the product of a wartime cultural initiative that was to prove of immense significance not only to the Vic-Wells but to the British wartime and post-war performing arts generally. Within months of the start of the war, the secretary of the Pilgrim Trust, Thomas Jones had come forward with an offer of support for educational touring activities; the Government agreed to match funding up to £50,000; and in January the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the



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Arts (CEMA) was born. Initially envisaged as an umbrella organization supportive of a wide range of amateur and professional activities and operating under an ‘Art for the People’ mandate, CEMA soon narrowed its remit to the funding of professional work alone, and by early 1942, when John Maynard Keynes assumed chairmanship of the body, the Vic-Wells was one of its chief beneficiaries. Keynes was far more concerned with excellence than with accessibility, and by the time CEMA had mutated into the Arts Council in 1945, building-based, high-quality professional performance work disseminated through a London-dominated metropolitan network was at the core of its cultural mission, reflecting ‘the tendency of arts subsidy through the forties’, as Rebellato puts it, ‘towards the accumulation and centralisation of cultural capital’.84 Where are we to place Guthrie and Casson’s touring Shakespeares within this dispensation? On the face of it, playing Macbeth and King John to audiences of miners in village halls and fleapit cinemas seems a product of the same idealizing energies that produced Olivier’s film Henry V, a manifestation of left-populist bardolatry conducted under the relatively benign gaze of the state, one of those instances whereby, as Simon Shepherd and Peter Womack see it, ‘the Elizabethan theatre’ (and Shakespeare in particular) ‘takes on the character of a compensatory projection, a place which managed, as we somehow fail, to practice high and low culture at the same time’.85 Yet the work also offers a glimpse of one of the liveliest of the various types of Shakespeare on offer during the bleakest period of the war: makeshift, egalitarian, irreverent and immediate, it appears to have genuinely connected with popular audiences in a way that has rarely, if ever, been matched since. In the bomb-ridden London of 1941 and 1942, there was little Shakespeare to go round. The Open Air theatre in Regent’s Park, under the direction of Robert Atkins, bravely continued to mount diminished seasons during the summer months, but the main custodian of the Shakespearean stage tradition during this time was Donald Wolfit, whose unashamedly self-centred productions at the Strand (subsequently at St James’s and the Scala), with himself cast invariably in the lead and supported by casts specially selected so as not to steal his limelight, represented the egocentric, bombastic, hierarchical tradition that was King John’s antithesis. Wolfit scorned the principle of subsidy. By contrast, the producer Binkie Beaumont discovered in CEMA, and in Shakespeare, an opportunity to harness state support to his own commercial interests. The occasion was Gielgud’s Macbeth, ‘initially presented by H. M. Tennent in the provinces as a straightforward commercial venture in 1941, that made some kind

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of history by being the first “West End” production to take a wartime subsidy’.86 Seizing upon a loophole in the exemption from Entertainment Tax granted to work of an educational or charitable nature, Beaumont brought Macbeth to the Piccadilly in July 1942 under the auspices of the non-profit-sharing Tennent Plays Ltd. It achieved a run of more than a hundred performances over three months, demonstrating that the company’s ‘charitable concerns for the artistic well-being of London were making embarrassingly large profits’.87 By the end of 1942 – mindful that in this changing theatrical marketplace the Vic’s role as a commercial enterprise, as a presence at the heart of the capital’s and the nation’s theatrical culture, and as a potential national theatre, also needed to change – Guthrie was joined on the Vic-Wells team by the manager of the New Theatre, Bronson Albery, who took the lead on business matters while Guthrie attempted to concentrate on the company’s artistic development. The New became the base for the drama company until 1950, and, following a mixed ‘Salute to the Allies’ season in 1943, Guthrie succeeded in getting Olivier and Ralph Richardson released from war service to lead the company for a 1944–5 season that opened with Peer Gynt, Arms and the Man and Richard III. By now he was quite sure about how the Old Vic needed to reposition itself, telling the Governors in January 1945 that ‘the theatres’ most valuable contribution could now be made in high artistic standard, not in cheap seats as a form of social service’.88

Two Open Stages: Hamlet at Helsingør, and The Three Estates at Edinburgh When Guthrie did return to Shakespeare in 1944, it was to co-direct Hamlet with Michael Benthall, with Helpmann in the lead. These were trying times. Audiences were warned in the programme that smoking in the auditorium was no longer permitted and that they would be ‘notified from the Stage if any Air Raid Warning has been sounded during the performance’; the production ‘opened in a blitz to the sound of gunfire and falling shrapnel, and police regulations forced the cutting of the play to ensure that the performance ended at 9.30’.89 This was the production that Peter Brook remembered for making Hamlet so exciting, though critical reaction was mixed. It might, just, have reminded Guthrie of another Hamlet staged under comparably challenging circumstances, in June 1937, when the Old Vic company took his first production of the play to perform in the courtyard of Kronborg Castle, Helsingør, an event that,



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as he subsequently saw it, set him on the course that would reshape the post-war Shakespearean stage. The circumstances that, according to Guthrie’s own account, confirmed his disillusion with the proscenium stage are documented in detail in his autobiography, and have been discussed by a number of commentators.90 Invited by the Danish Tourist Board to present the play in what was to be the first of a series of annual open-air productions of Hamlet in the precincts of Kronborg Castle, Guthrie went with Baylis, cast and crew, and a large press corps, and began rehearsals on a scaled-up reconstruction of the Old Vic set that sat at one end of the central courtyard before audience seating of 2,500. Supported by a large cast of local officer cadets, rehearsing through the night since the castle was open to visitors by daytime, Guthrie had three days to mount a revamped version of a spectacle that was planned to open before an audience that included members of the Danish royal family; and on the day of the first performance, the rains started. Cancellation was out of the question; an alternative venue was sought out and identified in the form of the ballroom of the nearby Marienlyst Hotel, and the show was rapidly re-blocked under Olivier’s direction while Guthrie corralled reporters and hotel staff into arranging chairs around the walls of the room. Introduced by the director as ‘the strangest performance of Hamlet that could ever have been given by a professional company’,91 the performance went ahead an hour behind schedule. ‘In some of the scenes’, the Daily Telegraph reported, ‘the actors made their entrances and exits through the audience, and in others they had to go through the rain to reach the stage. The lighting consisted of a spotlight which had been hastily contrived.’92 For most of the reviewers, the impromptu first night had a novelty value as a ‘plucky gesture’, and ‘a very gallant and much appreciated act’, but not much more; The Times declared that ‘it would be absurd to offer a serious criticism of the performance’.93 Within months, however, Annette Prevost wrote in the Old Vic and Sadler’s Wells Magazine of ‘our now practically world famous performances [sic] in the hotel ballroom, which put the whole of Denmark at our feet’, which saw Hamlet ‘performed in a theatre as intimate as that for which Shakespeare wrote’. Forty years later, J. C. Trewin remembered the Marienlyst showing as ‘the most exciting performance of Hamlet I’ve ever seen’, but was careful to point out that ‘we knew this Hamlet was special, yet I don’t feel any man there would have said, hand on heart, “This is going to be the future of theatre” ’.94 Olivier, likewise, played down the significance of the event, recalling that ‘it happened and there it was, and I saw it could be done and it was quite good. But I didn’t think it was

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going to transform the shape of the theatre or anything’ – though he also ruefully notes how it had retrospectively become the theatrical equivalent of the Beatles’ debut gig at the Cavern Club: ‘it is amazing how many people now think they were there’.95 Guthrie, nonetheless, maintained that, for all its shortcomings (the ‘finale was a shambles, but not quite in the way the author intended’), the performance strengthened in me a conviction, which had been growing with each production at the Vic, that for Shakespeare the proscenium stage is unsatisfactory […] at its best moments that performance in the ballroom related the audience to a Shakespeare play in a different, and, I thought, more logical, satisfactory and effective way than can ever be achieved in a theatre of what is still regarded as orthodox design.96 Determining the truth of what happened at the Marienlyst Hotel on 2 June 1937 is impossible, and to a certain extent beside the point; the discrepancy between what it might have felt like at the time and what it subsequently came to signify is largely due to the performance’s status as a myth of origin. But the force of the example also derives, in part, from its (entirely unconscious) articulation of a cultural contradiction as a physical problem, and one that appears, accordingly, amenable to a physical solution. Unhappy as he may have been with the Vic’s picture frame, Guthrie could not have imagined that dissatisfaction and disappointment were the inevitable consequences of his (and, indeed, our) theatre culture’s attempts to conjoin the high and the popular; as a ‘compensatory projection’, Shakespeare can never be truly at home in the modern theatre, whatever its architecture. The pivotal position that Guthrie’s record of the performance occupies in his autobiography (at nearly five pages, it is the second only to the account of Stratford, Ontario in length and detail) is unsurprising, given its importance as a foundational moment for him, but one of its effects is to suggest that his dissatisfaction with the proscenium stage developed more or less independently of innovations and explorations that had been taking place, albeit sporadically, in the English theatre for some time. Elizabeth Schafer has shown that Guthrie’s narrative minimizes the very important part played in it by Baylis, by ignoring her ‘contribution to the crucial decision-making process’ (that is, identifying the Marienlyst ballroom as a potential site for performance).97 In his discussion of his spell at the Festival Theatre, Cambridge from 1929 to 1930, Richard Cave also notes Guthrie’s reluctance to credit others, at least where the open stage was



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concerned; observing that the chapter dealing with it in A Life in the Theatre ‘seems loath to admit how deep an influence the Festival was’, he argues that ‘[a]ll the theatres whose building Guthrie inspired or supervised […] reproduce the essential features and layout of the Festival as he knew it’.98 When the next opportunity presented itself to him to experiment with open staging, he opted for a play that was ‘absolutely unplayable on a proscenium stage’ and that was ‘almost meaningless in terms of “dramatic illusion”’.99 The choice was in part circumstantial. At the start of 1948, the organizing committee of the second Edinburgh International Festival met to plan the programme for August. The first year’s event had generally been judged a success but for one aspect: it had caused considerable offence by featuring absolutely no Scottish theatre. As Jen Harvie points out, the Festival was envisaged as an internationalist, primarily European, enterprise, designed ‘to bolster a badly damaged sense of European identity by supporting the post-war revival of European arts and culture’ and to provide ‘the opportunity for Europeans to begin again to perform and witness themselves through extensive artistic performance practice’.100 Scotland, at the time best represented by the Citizens’ in Glasgow, was not recognized as a contributor to this high-cultural mission, and the programme consisted of orchestral and chamber music, dance and opera, with two theatre companies presenting work in English and French: the Old Vic company, with The Taming of the Shrew and Richard II, and Parisian Compagnie Jouvet de Théâtre de l’Athenée, with Molière’s L’Ecole des femmes and Giradoux’s Ondine, performed at the Edinburgh Lyceum. Once it had been agreed that the second season was to include ‘a Scots play in the vernacular’, James Bridie, whose Anatomist had provided Guthrie with the sole commercial success of his 1931–2 Westminster season, was persuaded to approach the director with a shortlist of three plays that might be considered as ‘classics of the Scottish drama’.101 Set alongside the classically dominated programme of the first and second festivals, none could lay claim to canonical status, but it was the earliest and apparently most unpromising of the three that caught Guthrie’s attention. Unperformed, with good reason, since 1554, Sir David Lyndsay’s Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaits is a seven-hour long Morality drama that divides its dramatis personae between the Estates of Spiritualitie, Temporalitie and Merchants, whose dialogue, punctuated by extensive stretches of monologue, is in early sixteenth-century Scots. On the positive side, the play was populist, teeming with vigorous action, bawdy and, capable of delivering a good dose of centre-left old-time religion in its satirical approach to political and ecclesiastical chicanery.

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The first task was to reduce the text to manageable length, which was achieved with the help of Robert Kemp; the second to find a venue, as all of the regular theatre spaces were already booked, and none in any case would have been appropriate for the kind of show that Guthrie had in mind. He eventually settled on the Assembly Hall of the Kirk of Scotland, a mid-nineteenth-century galleried amphitheatre with a seating capacity of over a thousand, at the centre of which stood the immovable fixture of the Moderator’s Throne, the spot upon which Guthrie attempted his ‘first sketch for the sort of Elizabethan stage I had long hoped, somehow and somewhere, to establish’.102 Ivor Brown describes it thus: Guthrie had arranged a platform of twenty-five feet by fifteen. It was lower than the Elizabethan platform-stage, being reached from the auditorium by a few easy steps: it was also approachable in a way that Shakespeare’s loftier stage was not. The characters could enter down the aisles and through the rows of spectators and go off in the same way. The platform was backed by a curtained recess and a gallery very much in the Elizabethan manner.103 With this construction, Guthrie established the spatial logic that would not only dominate the post-war open stage movement but which was also particularly apposite to the developing performance cultures of the Edinburgh Festival, and, more importantly, the Festival Fringe. The platform with its three-sided audience backed by a gallery had been prototyped by Poel, Atkins and others; what is new, and distinctive, is the importance attached to access to the stage through the audience and auditorium. It involves a blurring of performer and spectator space that anticipates the evolution of the Edinburgh Festival into a civic phenomenon in which the streets that surround and interlink its official sites of performance have become as pervasively theatricalized as the sites themselves. It is also, crucially, a ‘first sketch’ Elizabethanism that does not claim to be historically ‘authoritative’; indeed, for Guthrie, the Assembly Hall’s potential lay in the disjunction between play and setting: the general air of solid, smug, well-fed respectability, the sage-green upholstery, the stained glass, the corridors lined with sanitary tiling, the strong odour of sanctity, and the faint odour of gas; all were so sharply opposed to the whole spirit and feeling of the play, so gloriously wrong, that, perversely, I was convinced of their rightness.104



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Brown’s remark that the stage was ‘approachable in a way that Shakespeare’s loftier stage was not’, setting high and low in opposition, also contains an important qualifier: it is the practical accessibility of the stage, and of the events it accommodates, and not their theoretical authenticity, that matters. The show was an immediate hit, was revived the following year, and twice in the 1950s; the play was revived again in 1973, 1984 and 1985, and 1991. Its success, of course, had everything to do with Guthrie’s direction: described by Alan Schneider as ‘a marvellously counterpointed blend of Henry V and the Marx Brothers’,105 it was played all-out as caricature, sending up the play’s Virtues as much as its Vices, so that Gude Counsel, Chastitie and Veritie became ‘a lovable but completely futile schoolmaster of at least a hundred years old and two formidably vigorous spinster aunts: Chastitie, in a white starched dress, was like the matron of a very old-fashioned hospital; Veritie delivered tracts and suggested a Salvation Army lass or a female Jehovah’s Witness’.106 Propelled by what was left of the spirit of radical optimism that had swept Labour to a landslide election victory three years earlier, the play’s social conscience was emphasized: adding a fourth estate to Lindsay’s three, in the form of the common people that thronged the edges of the stage platform, the steps, gangway and galleries, the production presented John the Commonweal as, according to the programme, a ‘symbolic figure of the Embattled Worker’ whose presentation with a ‘gay garment’ on his elevation to Parliament is ‘a sort of Labour peerage’. At the time, few would have known, and still fewer would have cared, about the liberties that Guthrie was taking with the text (though when it was published as a special edition of the Scots Review in 1949 it was claimed to have sold 14,000 copies).107 Introducing the 1949 acting text, Kemp defined his task as ‘making an old Scottish classic actable by modern actors and comprehensible to a modern audience, while doing the least possible violence to it’. Overall, this meant cutting the forty-plus dramatis personae by two-thirds, eliminating repetition as well as some of the lengthier discursive passages, and removing some of the franker scatological episodes; and modernizing ‘only when an archaic word befogged the sense of a whole passage’.108 In some ways, it also mattered little what language the play was in: among the half-dozen or so European languages spoken and sung at the festival in 1948, sixteenth-century Scots, modernized or not, was no less (and probably a great deal more) inaccessible than the French that was spoken by Jean-Louis Barrault in André Gide’s translation of Hamlet, performed at the Lyceum during September; and the premium that was placed on visual stagecraft marks the production

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as a notable early example of internationalist festival performance, whose primary register is kinaesthetic and gestural rather than verbal and literary. As James Bridie’s biographer noted, ‘the glowing patterns of Mr Guthrie’s action, the vigorous, stylish playing of the actors’ were ‘so eloquent of meaning’ that ‘foreigners had no difficulty in understanding the general idea’.109

Back to the Vic: The 1950s The Three Estates was one of the freelance projects that Guthrie took on in the period following his departure from the Old Vic in October 1945, when his misgivings about the direction that the organization was taking under the joint leadership of the ‘Triumvirate’ of Olivier, Richardson and John Burrell were confirmed by Olivier’s insistence that Guthrie’s planned production of Sophocles’ Oedipus would be presented as a double bill with Sheridan’s The Critic, in which the star would play the King and Mr Puff. ‘Over my dead body’, was Guthrie’s response;110 the productions turned out to be one of the Vic’s more conspicuous successes of the time, running for seventy-six performances. The next five years saw him directing Oedipus on his own terms in Tel Aviv, Helsinki and New York, and his first serious forays into opera, with Peter Grimes and La Traviata at Covent Garden in 1947, and The Beggar’s Opera, Carmen and Falstaff at Sadler’s Wells between 1948 and 1950. By the middle of 1951, however, following a series of crises that began in 1948 with the summary sacking of the Triumvirate, and culminated in the resignations of joint directors George Devine, Glen Byam Shaw and Michel Saint-Denis, he was back as Administrator of the Old Vic. He began with a move that was as rash as it was imaginative, engaging the legendary relic of the actor-manager tradition, Donald Wolfit, to lead in the opening production, Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great, in Garrick and Coleman’s The Clandestine Marriage, in Timon of Athens and, in his signature role, in King Lear. As discussed in more detail below, the first of these was an acclaimed and extraordinary production, but Wolfit’s constitutional inability to ‘take his allotted place in an ensemble’ soon led to trouble; by the time the production visited the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in October, he was ‘play[ing] the tyrant on and off the stage’ and, following a showdown with Guthrie, bided his time until the run of The Clandestine Marriage had ended, then walked out.111 Guthrie was left to fill the void with a Dream and with André Morell leading the first Old Vic production of Timon of Athens since 1922. The first



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of these, in December, overturned memories of his 1938 triumph: designed by Tanya Moiseiwitsch for ‘classical simplicity’, with the forest conveyed by the ‘spareness and elegance of twisted bamboo lightly decorated with flowers of silver hue’, the effect was ‘not enchanting’ but ‘charming and amusing in a rather mundane way’.112 Timon, he wrote in the programme, was ‘not a tragedy but a satire, directed against the Deceitfulness of Riches’; its protagonist was ‘not of heroic stature’ but ‘peevish, hysterical’, and the moral of the play was that ‘a corrupt materialism […] can only be purged by violent action’. As a director ‘who excels at dealing with “difficult” plays’, as The Times put it, Guthrie appeared better placed than most to make at least a partial success of it, and in the first half, at least, he managed to deliver ‘a great deal of clever comedy’.113 But Guthrie’s gift for unearthing theatrical gold from unpromising material seemed, for once, to have deserted him; the general consensus was that Timon remained a flawed and problematic text. It was ‘only on hearing his epitaph spoken’, concluded The Times, ‘do we realize that Timon is dead. It is perhaps a reflection as much on the play as on the performance.’ Like Timon’s, Guthrie’s exit from the Vic was an oddly muted one. At the end of June 1952, following a ‘clarification’ in the press that stated that ‘[t]hough it was not generally known at the time […] when he was appointed Mr Guthrie agreed to direct the Old Vic for a year’,114 he handed over to Hugh Hunt (though his preference was for Michael Benthall, who did succeed Hunt at the end of 1953). ‘Whether he had been sacked […] or chosen to go voluntarily’, Michael Langham later recalled, ‘no one quite knew’, adding that the ‘truth’ was that ‘he’d been displaced by the superior political footwork of a colleague who wanted to “rescue the Vic”’.115 Guthrie was not done with the Old Vic just yet. On 6 February 1952, King George VI, whose coronation the Vic and Guthrie had marked with Olivier’s Henry V fifteen years earlier, died and his daughter Elizabeth was proclaimed Queen Regnant, a title she carried for the next sixteen months. In the meantime, there was more than enough time to plan its Coronation Year programme, which, inevitably in the circumstances, ended with Henry VIII. Guthrie’s production, essentially a reworking of his Stratford staging of 1949 (see below, pp. 143–6), opened at the start of May, and ran for nearly two months to the end of June. The opening night was especially notable as an instance where two very different social worlds came briefly into contact, as a Gala performance at which the soon-to-be-crowned Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh were present. It was no doubt the presence of the Great and the Good in the Old Vic’s auditorium that accounts for an unusual, none-too-subtle pitch for support in the production programme:

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The Old Vic is a ‘subsidised’ theatre in the sense that it receives an annual grant from the Arts Council of Great Britain, but the work of this theatre is also subsidised by the acting profession, whose members come cheerfully to work in the Waterloo Road for much less reward than they might often obtain elsewhere. It is also subsidised by the untiring efforts of those who work for its direction and maintenance, and last, but by no means least, it is subsidised by the support of the theatregoers who regularly attend its performances, sometimes to praise, sometimes to blame, but always to encourage by their enthusiasm the work of this characteristically British institution. The 1950s Old Vic was still, in the words of one seasoned theatregoer, a ‘spit and sawdust – wooden seats type’ place,116 but the Gala performance was outward-facing, an occasion for it to showcase itself and its work not to a wider theatregoing community than its regular audience, but to a more powerful, more moneyed, and better-connected one. Had he thought about it, the show’s director might have appreciated the Pirandellian mise en abyme of the head of the House of Windsor (an institution whose prestige, it has been pointed out, largely derives from a bogus tradition of invented ancient ceremony),117 the not-at-all direct descendent of her namesake, witnessing a drama that culminates in a fictionally proleptic but historically retrospective encomium to an Elizabethan age that many in the popular media wanted to believe was about to be reborn. But he had other things on his mind: in his autobiography, Guthrie records that the dress rehearsal was interrupted by a transatlantic telegram containing the news that the project that is the subject of the next section, the Shakespeare Festival and its new theatre in Stratford, Ontario, had entered a critical new phase; accordingly, the event only figures in his autobiography as ‘a large production of Henry VIII at the Old Vic’.118 On the rain-sodden day of the Coronation (2 June 1953), Guthrie was in Canada, beginning rehearsals for Richard III and All’s Well that Ends Well, as the tone was set for perhaps the most culturally conservative decade in twentieth-century British history. Guthrie’s final production at the Vic during the 1950s, Troilus and Cressida, is not mentioned at all in his autobiography, although it was one of his more warmly received, and was sufficiently successful to be taken on tour to the United States. Envisaging the play (performed at the Vic for the first time in thirty years, as part of Benthall’s five-year First Folio marathon) as ‘a struggle between Ruritania and a coalition of the Central European Powers […] about 1913’, and incidentally instigating a programme credit



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that is unique for Old Vic Shakespeare in the 1950s (‘Virginia cigarettes by Abdullah’), Guthrie and designer Frederick Crooke put the Trojans ‘in yellow, with plumed brass helmets and heliograph-winking breastplates’ that made them look like ‘musical-comedy dragoons’, and the Greeks ‘in spiked helmets and bristly moustaches’.119 The tone was comic-satirical: with ‘any amount of square bashing and saluting’, the war was ‘made to look tremendously ceremonious and abysmally silly’;120 the setting was both jokey and sumptuous, creating ‘toy soldier pomp and chivalry among the fluttering flags’;121 and the Greek and Trojan military were equipped with cameras, cannons and stretchers. Pandarus (Paul Rogers) was a dapper aristocrat sporting binoculars and a top hat; Thersites (Clifford Williams) was dressed in George Bernard Shaw tweeds. Helen (played by Wendy Hiller at the Vic, and Coral Browne on tour, as ‘the sort of Edwardian actress who sips champagne from her dancing shoe’)122 carried a ‘cocktail in one hand and cigarette holder in the other’ and lived in a bijou apartment comprised of ‘poles and vines, with […] piano, tables and chairs’.123 Among the critics, it was Kenneth Tynan of the Observer who best caught the flavour of the production: the Trojans, he wrote, ‘are glass-smashing cavalry officers who might pass for British were it not for the freedom with which they mention Helen’s name in the mess’.124 A month later, in May 1956, Tynan hailed the arrival of a new era in English theatre in his review of John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger at the Royal Court; on both occasions, the assault upon the values of a post-Imperial nation in terminal decline seemed tailor-made for what he regarded as the theatre’s new audience: the ‘roughly 6,733,00’ people in Britain ‘between the ages of twenty and thirty’ who were hungry for a theatre that would embrace ‘the drift towards anarchy, the instinctive leftishness, the automatic rejection of “official” attitudes, the surrealist sense of humour […] the casual promiscuity’ and ‘the sense of lacking a crusade worth fighting for’.125 But for all its anti-militarist spirit, Guthrie’s Troilus and Cressida was not on the side of the young, and, like Osborne’s play (and the output of the 1950s ‘Angries’ in general), was conservative in its sexual politics: in the pre-feminist mid–1950s, the director and his reviewers were content to endorse rather than interrogate misogyny and gender stereotyping. Cressida (Rosemary Harris) was presented as an ‘artful bitch’, already involved in ‘an erotic liaison with her manservant before she seduces Troilus’,126 and for the Greek camp scene she was costumed in ‘flamecoloured tea gown, slit to the knee, with black stockings and the highest of high heels on which she tripped and minced across the stage’.127 The production demonstrated Guthrie’s characteristic disregard for love

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interest, with the result, wrote Richard David in Shakespeare Survey, that the lovers’ story was that of ‘thoughtless undergraduate seduced by bitch’. David complained of how an ‘expressionist trick’ undercut the eavesdropping scene, as well as stripping Troilus (Richard Neville) of his last vestige of dignity: ‘tittering at the elegant game of blind man’s buff played, in full light, by Cressida, her wooer, and the two parties of eavesdroppers’, spectators ‘could hardly spare a serious thought for Troilus’s passion’.128 This, presumably, was precisely Guthrie’s intention.

Tamburlaine the Great Troilus and Cressida was one of a number of complex, large-scale projects undertaken by Guthrie in the mid-1950s; in addition to the work at Stratford, Ontario that is discussed in the next section, there were Thornton Wilder’s The Matchmaker in Edinburgh, London and New York (1954–5), and, in 1955, the same author’s A Life in the Sun, the first new play to be commissioned for the Assembly Hall, and Sean O’Casey’s The Bishop’s Bonfire at the Abbey, Dublin; he revived Six Characters on Broadway, and was involved in an unsuccessful collaboration with Leonard Bernstein and Lillian Hellman in an adaptation of Candide. At the start of 1956, there was also Tamburlaine. Led by Anthony Quayle and cast from the Stratford (Ontario) company, it opened in Toronto, transferred to New York, and flopped. Describing it as ‘overblown melodrama’, John Gassner wrote that it was ‘as ingenious as Belasco and Cecil de Mille would have made it’, and wondered whether ‘Guthrie might have been better advised to reduce the spectacularity, and with this the costliness, of the production’, so that ‘we might have been able to concentrate more on listening to it’.129 In actuality, Guthrie had exercised a degree of creative thrift by reusing many of the staging strategies that he had devised for the Wolfit-led production of 1951. At the outset, the partnership between two titanic personalities on either side of the proscenium line seemed more than a match for Marlowe’s sprawling, violent and verbose two-part epic, and they accordingly approached the project with Tamburlaine-like ruthlessness. For the 1951 production with Wolfit, the first professional production of the plays since they were written, as Guthrie had done with The Three Estates, the duo reached for the scissors. To reduce the narrative to a single evening’s performance, they cut Marlowe’s text by half, eradicating dozens of minor characters, and cutting or repositioning lines, speeches and entire scenes (Part 2 was more boldly edited than Part 1, losing ten



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of its twenty-one scenes). In the 1951 published version of the acting text, Guthrie and Wolfit defined their views of the plays. For Guthrie, the works were Marlowe’s ‘orgy of sadism by the light of meteors’, which were well suited to ‘an epoch familiar with the picture of Belsen and of Dachau; to the epoch that wrought the destruction of Warsaw and Hiroshima’.130 Wolfit, meanwhile, relished his role’s ‘great gaiety’ and ‘laughing zest for battle and childish delight in cruelty’.131 The effect of the abridgments was both to maximize the opportunities for Wolfit the actor and to enable the set-piece big moments for Guthrie the director, and to an extent the considerable power and impact of the production derived from the interplay – and the tensions – between the two stars’ creative energies. A performer accustomed to ‘directing’ himself in productions whose casting and staging flatly contradicted Guthrie’s co-ordinated approach to actor, text and mise en scène, Wolfit seems to have acknowledged his place in Guthrie’s production with surprisingly good grace, though there was general agreement that ‘it is, of course, Mr Wolfit’s evening and he makes a great deal of it’.132 The actor, understandably, commanded the reviews; yet many of the plaudits were finely balanced with a sense that Tamburlaine was less tragedian than thug, and that the plays’ extremities verged on the preposterous. W. A. Darlington wrote that the protagonist was ‘a bestial savage, a mere gangster with, so to speak, knobs on’;133 The Times added a racist inflection to the picture of ‘a vibrant figure of pure theatrical flamboyance’ by invoking the ‘rough grandeur’ that gave the ‘base-born’ tyrant ‘a street-arab delight in cruelty’. J. C. Trewin went further, managing to reconcile his admiration for Wolfit’s performance with deep scepticism: ‘we should be grateful for acting of this range and force’, he declared, but as a character, Tamburlaine is ‘never […] fully alive’. And yet: Wolfit shows once more his gift for gesture: I shall not forget how, in the first scene with Theridamus, he points the last words of ‘I hold the Fates bound fast in iron chains, and with my hand turn Fortune’s wheel about.’ He can strike terror from lines that, in the text, are the merest fee-fi-fo-fum.134 The point (as so often with Guthrie’s most successful productions) is again clear: the theatrical achievement owes little or nothing to the quality of the script. The New Statesman’s T. C. Worsley made the point that while the production ‘certainly proves that literary critics are wrong when they

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argue that Tamburlaine is unplayable’, it did not ‘prove them wrong when they have argued that the play is hardly worth playing’.135 The objection is as much ethical as aesthetic. Even those hardened souls who had been amused when, at the ‘cheerful close’ of The Three Estates, Falsehood and Deceit were hauled to the gallows to be ‘very thoroughly hanged’136 might have balked just a little at the gleefulness of Tamburlaine’s atrocity exhibition. Worsley compared the protagonist to Mussolini, the Scotsman’s reviewer invoked Hitler (though, compared to Wolfit’s Tamburlaine, the Führer was ‘was a lamb of mildness’), and J. C. Trewin, reflecting on the uneasy possibility that, within painfully immediate memory of the liberation of the death camps, this was all in rather questionable taste, pondered the production’s relation to contemporary events: ‘We have supped full with horrors in our own day’, he wrote in one of his five reviews in various publications, ‘horrors compared with which these Marlovian barbarities are shapes in the mist’; in another review, he suggested that ‘We may recoil from certain cruelties, Belsen horrors; but these are as much of the period as the thundering lines, the chariot wheels of conquest’.137 Others were less sanguine: this ‘staggering pageant of bestiality’, reported the Daily Graphic, ‘left the audience gasping with horror’.138 The majority of reviewers, however, were happy to be so terrorized, and hugely impressed by direction that combined characteristically fluent choreography (of a cast of fifty) with stunning coups de théâtre. Among them was the opening. Kenneth Griffith (who played Mycetes, the King of Persia, and who was experiencing difficulties in rehearsal finding his character) recalled a conversation with the director in which Guthrie set out his vision of the first moments of the play: When the audience come into the Vic and sit in their seats when the lights are up, the curtain will be up. And they will see in the foreground an enormous Perseean [sic] tent of war […] and behind that, other Perseean tents of war. And indeed […] these Perseean tents of war seem to stretch away into the far distances of Aseea [sic] […] Through these tents coming down to the hole we have where the orchestra used to be […] will be a path of light. ‘Then from the OP side, from the prompt side’, Guthrie continued, ‘you begin to see in little light enormous figures of generals and court officials emerging. Enormous figures in golden armour, glorious costume, the Court, heads of state. And then they all turn ceremoniously to the OP side […] At that moment from the prompt side comes the little rat-like



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figure of the King and sits on the throne.’ Griffith commented: ‘all my problems were solved.’139 There was the killing of the Governor of Babylon, who ‘swung from chains while, by some fiendish technical trick, his body appears to be riddled with arrows’.140 Above all, there was Tamburlaine’s death scene. In the text, Tamburlaine calls for, and is brought, a map. In the production, brilliantly and unforgettably, the unobtrusive stage direction (‘One brings a map’ [5.3.125]) cued the unfurling of a colossal map of the world, covering most of the stage, across which Wolfit magnificently swayed and staggered, literally marking out the territories of his conquests: ‘[a]nd so’, writes Emrys Jones, remembering the moment nearly sixty years later, ‘in recalling his life’s achievements – endless conquests and journeys – he makes gesturally visible both what he has done and what he would still long to do: “And shall I die, and this unconquered?” […] The line, repeated, becomes a bitterly dejected refrain as he points to this or that place on the map that remains “unconquered”.’141 The beginning and ending of Tamburlaine demonstrated Guthrie’s genius for orchestrating character and image – and character as image – as spectacular physical action, and the latter in particular offered the kind of opportunity that most actors would seize with both hands. It was not enough, however, to keep Wolfit in the Old Vic company, with consequences that have already been documented. Guthrie, however, was not one to let a good production go to waste (indeed, in his autobiography, he claimed it as his ‘best’).142 At the start of 1956 he resuscitated it in Toronto for two weeks with Anthony Quayle in the lead and with a company drawn from the Canadian Stratford festival. This was followed by what was planned as an eight-week run at New York’s Winter Garden, alongside Six Characters at the Phoenix and The Matchmaker at the Royale. The Toronto run went well, but it was clear from the start that the transfer was a disastrous misjudgement, and the production closed after two weeks. In retrospect, one seriously wonders what Guthrie and his backers thought they were doing: with a Canadian cast, led by an English actor and directed by an Anglo-Irish director, an Elizabethan text that had never been professionally produced in the United States, and an author most New York theatregoers had probably never heard of, there could not have been better ingredients for a flop. Quayle was widely praised, but Guthrie’s direction was not, and he subsequently wrote that he had ‘never read notices which, while praising the performance and the performers really handsomely, yet contrived to convey so clearly […] that the evening was a great, thundering, cavernous bore’.143 Guthrie put a reasonably brave face on it, claiming that ‘I have never been associated with so helpful a flop […] Enough of the right people

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came to see it, and liked what they saw.’144 But lessons had been learned. Tamburlaine’s perhaps not surprising failure was followed, less predictably, by those of the Guthrie-Hellman-Bernstein Candide at the end of 1956 and of Norman Ginsbery’s The First Gentleman early in 1957. These experiences, which confirmed his perception that the commercial environment of American theatre was inimical to the development of serious and sustained work, contributed to his decision to lend his energies to the campaign for an American Repertory Theatre. This emerged into public visibility in April 1959, in the form of a lengthy polemical article by Guthrie in the New York Times. In this piece, Guthrie declared that the true value of a repertory theatre lay in its potential to foster a genuine spirit of community: ‘this loyalty, this sense of belonging to something collectively larger than the sum of its individuals, is one of the central points of their lives.’145 It was followed in September by calls in the same newspaper for expressions of interest. The outcome, four years on, was the opening of the brand-new Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, the first American non-profit repertory theatre. Dedicated to the production of a classical repertoire (centred on Shakespeare) presented by a permanent residential company, and also committed to the fostering of new writing, the Guthrie was some respects a privately funded, regional version of the metropolitan, state-supported National Theatre that was finally achieving realization in Britain at the same time. On 7 May 1963, under Guthrie’s artistic directorship, the Guthrie Theater opened with his fourth and final Hamlet; on 22 October, the National Theatre opened at the Old Vic with its Artistic Director Laurence Olivier’s production of the same play. The British National Theatre, which Guthrie once might have led, had taken more than a hundred years to achieve realization (but still lacked its own building, which would take a further fourteen years to complete); the Guthrie Theater took less than six.

Festival and Repertory: Stratford, Ontario and Minneapolis In 1951, Canada’s Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters, and Sciences (or the Massey Commission, after its Chair, Vincent Massey) delivered its four-hundred-page report, the result of four years of investigation and deliberation, on the future of the nation’s arts. Stating that ‘Canadian achievement in every field depends mainly on the quality of the Canadian mind and spirit’, and that this was cultivated in citizens by ‘the books they read, the pictures they see and the programmes they hear’, it found that a government-supported national theatre for Canada



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was a priority, since ‘drama has been in the past, and may be again, not only the most striking symbol of a nation’s culture, but the central structure enshrining much that is finest in a nation’s spiritual and artistic greatness’.146 The report, which shared with many of the British National Theatre’s supporters a concern for the cultural distinctiveness that was under threat from ‘American invasion by film, radio, and periodical’, was accompanied by a ‘Special Study’ authored by the ex-actor, journalist, playwright and novelist Robertson Davies, which presented, in the form of a dialogue, the case for making the (non-Canadian) classics central to the Canadian national theatre repertoire – or, more precisely, for making Shakespeare central to it. Complaining that ‘we are a nation of ignoramuses’ as far as Shakespeare was concerned, Davies called for the ‘Shakespearean drama’ to be ‘experienced […] in its proper form’, rhetorically wondering: ‘Who attempts to explain the works of Beethoven if he has never heard an orchestra play them?’147 This would have been music to Guthrie’s ears. Davies and he were already established friends and colleagues: the Canadian polymath had worked under Guthrie at the Old Vic in the late 1930s and had remained in close contact since (Davies cited the Vic as the example that the Canadian national theatre should emulate). The initial invitation to Guthrie to participate in the venture that became the Stratford Shakespeare Festival came, however, from a group engaged in what was initially a regional, even parochial, initiative (albeit one that rapidly attracted national and international media attention) that owed its existence to private investment rather than government funding. The story has numerous times been told of how the festival came about, to the extent, Margaret Groome points out, that it has been ‘long since elevated to the status of Canadian folklore’.148 Early in the 1950s, Tom Patterson, a businessman based in the small Ontario city of Stratford, saw the potential for his hometown, which was already blessed with a river Avon and ‘wards and schools with such names as Hamlet, Falstaff, Romeo and Juliet’,149 to capitalize upon its Shakespearean associations; according to the received narrative, Patterson ‘was determined, on the one hand, to enrich the lives’ of his neighbours ‘with a stimulating and well-respected arts enterprise’, and, ‘on the other, to relieve the town’s economic plight’.150 In Guthrie’s autobiography, the invitation comes out of the blue: at home in Ireland at Annagh-ma-Kerrig with ‘some time at my disposal’, he takes a telephone call from Patterson who asks him to ‘come to Canada and give advice’ on his planned Shakespeare festival: ‘Naturally, I said yes […] It would be fun to have another look at Canada after all these years’ (Guthrie refers here to his experience in 1930–31 of producing the

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radio serial The Romance of Canada for the Canadian National Railroad network). ‘I did not’, he adds, ‘take the advice part or the Shakespeare festival very seriously.’151 This is, to put it mildly, disingenuous. As Guthrie’s biographer documents, Guthrie paid a visit to Canada at the end of 1945, staying with Robertson Davies, and the topic of a Canadian national theatre, and of Guthrie’s possible contribution to it, had been extensively discussed; the same year, he was in correspondence with the Irish-Canadian playwright John Coulter on the same subject; and in 1951, Guthrie met first with Coulter and then with Davies in London, where again the question of his involvement was raised.152 By the time Patterson made his phone call on 8 July 1952, Guthrie had been pursued in person by Coulter, who turned up in London at the start of May, and by telegram by another ex-Vic actor, cousin of James Bridie and leading light since the 1930s of the pro-amateur Canadian Shakespearean scene, Dora Mavor Moore. He had already started to negotiate the terms of his engagement, in the meantime disentangling himself from the Old Vic. The focus on Patterson serves the purposes of Stratford Festival mythology by streamlining the complex and contradictory cultural politics of its genesis, ‘a set of reactionary ideals’, as Denis Salter describes them, ‘designed to ensure that an essentializing “Canadian-ness” – no matter how it might be defined in colonial, postcolonial, national, postnational, or […] global terms of reference – could never be expressed at Stratford, no matter how diligently Canadian actors might work to achieve it’.153 It also strengthens Guthrie’s own targeted emphasis, in the autobiography, on the practicalities of building and using the festival stage, which is isolated, as far as possible, from the economic, cultural and discursive contexts that shaped it. There is no evidence that the festival’s planners initially envisaged the performance conditions that had yet to be built when they made their approach to Guthrie in anything other than conventional terms. He, however, recognized an unprecedented opportunity, one that was clearly more advantageous than those that might have been offered by the plethora of post-war international Shakespeare and theatre festivals of which Stratford, Ontario was only one of many. Pointing out that the post-war festival movement was kick-started in 1947 in Edinburgh and Avignon, simultaneously, with productions of Richard II, Dennis Kennedy notes that the first season at Stratford, Ontario was followed by the first New York Shakespeare Festival in 1954, and the Stratford, Connecticut Festival in 1955, and suggests that the ‘Elizabethanism’ of these enterprises is one of the ways in which they ‘clearly marked themselves as separate from the



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regular commercial theatre by virtue of their locations, their financing, and their repertory’.154 Having experimented with Mollie MacEwan’s stage at the Assembly Hall, and with the enlarged forestage of Tanya Moiseiwitsch’s permanent set for the 1949 Stratford Henry VIII (discussed below, pp. 143–6), Guthrie had continued to promote the case for compromise between theatrical modernism and neo-Elizabethanism. Addressing the Shakespeare Stage Society early in 1952, he spoke of the need to ‘return to certain basic conditions of the Shakespeare stage’; this did not mean a Globe replica, but a theatre in which ‘contact between the players and audience’ could be ‘as intimate as possible’. What was needed was a theatre ‘large enough to pay its way, but small enough for the actors to be heard without speaking too loudly and slowing down their delivery’, and a move away from realism that did not sever the connection with the real, the aim being ‘to give something larger than life and yet to provide a comment on life’.155 Whether the prospect of Stratford’s 1,477-seat venue – certainly large enough to pay its way, far less obviously as intimate as possible a performance space for Shakespeare – was the answer to these prayers Guthrie alone could guess; but he sought from the outset to legitimize his insistence upon an arena-stage configuration by repeatedly stressing its practical utility. Writing to Dora Mavor Moore in June, he diplomatically suggested that, on the assumption that the stage and auditorium were as yet unbuilt, ‘if I could influence their design, I would be very happy to do so’;156 in the autobiography, he records how, when discussing the projected theatre building with the Festival planning committee ‘from a strictly practical point of view’, he was merely suggesting that the best practical results would be got from a stage which closely conformed to what is known of the stage for which Shakespeare wrote, and by relating the audience to that stage in a manner which approximated to the Elizabethan manner.157 These are, seemingly, the words of a man of experience and action, not one obsessed by theory or driven by dogma; but, beneath the veneer of affability and reasonableness, the consistency and firmness of purpose is evident. In his letter to Dora Mavor Moore, Guthrie had, faux-humorously, warned her to avoid entrusting the design of the theatre ‘to the local Borough Surveyor, or a landscape gardener, or – worst of all – to a committee’, and notice was taken; by the end of the year, Tanya Moiseiwitsch was on the team as the co-designer of the two opening season productions and, with Guthrie and Toronto-based architect Robert Fairfield, of the stage itself.

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The product of their collaboration was, like a great deal else associated with the festival, a hybrid. Determined to eschew the clichés of ‘Ye Olde’, Guthrie and Moiseiwitsch sought a stage that, ‘while conforming to the conventions of the Elizabethan theatre in practicalities […] should not present a pseudo-Elizabethan appearance’.158 The result was a performance space that is at best only approximately ‘Elizabethan’ in configuration: at the centre, a fourteen- by eighteen-foot polygonal platform, flanked by three narrow, tiered levels descending to ground level; a balcony, supported by nine slender pillars (reduced to five when Michael Langham remodelled the stage for the 1962 season), projecting like an arrow-head over the stage, and flanked by two staircases linking it to the stage floor; entrances on either side of the balcony, and, through vomitoria, to the forestage; the whole surrounded by sixteen rows of seating arranged in a Greek-style arc (under canvas for the first seasons, the stage and auditorium were walled in and roofed over in 1957). As much set as stage, it is a palimpsest of many of those that Guthrie and Moisewitsch worked on and dreamed about: Shakespeare’s Globe, the theatre at Epidaurus, Terence Gray’s Festival Theatre in Cambridge, the Assembly Hall in Edinburgh, Moiseiwitsch’s designs for Guthrie’s Stratford and Old Vic Henry VIII, and even, distantly, Wells Coates’s permanent setting for the Old Vic in 1933. As a space for Shakespeare (or, for that matter, anything else), it is everywhere and nowhere, neither past nor present, and yet somehow pertaining to both. Being so, it strangely mirrored the contradictory Canadian-ness of the Stratford Festival: stranded between Old and New worlds, a populist, commercial stage that also aspired to be a temple of high art, nominally affiliated to an anglophone cultural identity that was uneasily shadowed by its francophone other, it materialized the contradictions of the festival’s attempt to appropriate Shakespeare as a means of representing the nation to itself and to others. None of these considerations was evident in the critical response to the opening productions, which was generally supportive and enthusiastic, and occasionally ecstatic, all the more so because the enterprise was mounted amidst anxiety, scepticism and resistance. Guthrie records that he was repeatedly warned that ‘Canadians just hate Shakespeare’,159 and the voice of this allegedly majority constituency is heard in the words of one self-styled plain-speaking correspondent for a Toronto newspaper, who confessed that Shakespeare, for him, was ‘a dismal business of long incomprehensible speeches in a kind of Never-never language, orated from a distant stage’ – a view he quoted as shared with a fellow visitor to the festival, who admitted that ‘“I can’t stand Shakespeare myself … I know



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I ought to like it … but I don’t, really”’. Yet by the end of the shows, ‘the entire audience was on its feet, shouting and clapping until our hands hurt. Including me, and my friend who couldn’t stand Shakespeare’.160 The idea spread that the five-week festival consisting of some twenty performances each of two plays was not just a matter of regional and national pride, but an event of international theatrical significance. Large claims were made on its behalf by its participants: three weeks into the festival, Robertson Davies wrote that this was the ‘theatre of the future’, manifesting itself ‘just at the time when Canadian theatre is most ready for a break with the dead past and a leap into the future’, and an article in the festival programme indicated that the world should learn from its example, as ‘the blueprint for Shakespearean and perhaps other classical production’.161 In all, as Margaret Groome summarizes, the Festival was defined by its supporters in the press as ‘the nation’s long-hoped-for triumph on the international arts scene – one that pointed the way for Canada to be a significant voice in cultural matters’.162 Guthrie, for his part, concurred, suggesting that by finding its voice through Shakespeare, the Canadian nation might also discover the means to ‘fulfil its destiny’. Canada, he paternalistically declared, ‘must not in the councils of the world use the cracked brash accents of millionaire adolescence, but […] speak with maturity’.163 The plays performed in the opening season of 1953 were Richard III, with Alec Guinness leading, and the lesser-known, critically undervalued, and risky All’s Well that Ends Well, with Helena played by Irene Worth, described by Time magazine as ‘a Nebraska girl who went to England a decade ago and came back […] sounding more English than Edith Sitwell’.164 The casting was precautionary, but not universally welcomed, since it initiated ‘a three-decade tradition of dependency on “hired hands”: British and American actors and directors’.165 The productions, which offered a bravura display of Guthrie’s trademarks and mannerisms – swirling colours, flags and weaponry, bodies sweeping from every corner of the auditorium, through the audience, on and off and across the stage, lots of business, rapid delivery – are of consequence largely as the inaugurators of the festival’s characteristically spectacular house style. In Richard III, opening on 14 July, Guthrie and Moiseiwitsch ‘made use of every opportunity of the new stage, clearly breaking in the machine’;166 fluidly choreographed and ceremonial, it was an extravagant medieval-period spectacle, sumptuously costumed, coloured red, black and gold, festooned with banners, halberds and giant crucifixes, and punctuated by armies charging through the aisles and ghosts springing from trapdoors (Figure 8). Unaccustomed to the task of performing to an audience on three sides, the actors were blocked both

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individually and in groups to keep on the move, often in circular patterns, since ‘it is the producer’s duty’, Guthrie asserted, ‘to see that all parts of the house get fair do’s – that if Mr X faced East at one important moment, he must face West at the next’.167 This worked well for action scenes, and the tiered platform partially alleviated the problems of masking by enabling actors to move up and down as well as on and off centre, but, as Kennedy points out, the ‘restless quality’ of the movement was less productive in the ‘quiet or intense moments’168 that Guthrie in most cases dispensed with as rapidly as possible. It generated particular problems when it came to soliloquy, and Guinness later articulated his strong dislike of it: a theatre ‘where, when stillness is called for, the actor must rotate through 180 degrees to reach most spectators as well as other actors’ was ‘not so much a theatre as a circus’.169 Guinness’s own performance as Richard was generally praised, but, as another early symptom of what Salter has characterized as the festival stage’s encouragement of ‘a low-key, methodical and psychologically nuanced kind of modernity […] grafted onto a gesturally and vocally heightened, externalizing quasi-Elizabethan kind of theatricality’,170 it was to some extent at odds with the production’s melodramatic and ritualistic style. ‘The production traps Alec Guinness like Houdini in his water tank’, wrote one reviewer, ‘he is apt to be subtly ironic where Richard must be grandly hypocritical, mildly unpleasant where he should be heroically evil.’171 The partnering of Richard III with All’s Well balanced a male-dominated drama with a woman-centred one, as well as indicating that the period ‘authenticity’ would not be the festival stage’s sole idiom. Invoking the Ruritanian milieu of Guthrie’s 1938 Hamlet and 1956 Troilus, the setting was a composite of ‘the fin de siècle of Edwardian England, the Kaiser’s Germany and Merry Widow Paris’,172 a world in which the Court hierarchy and codes of manners, like the text itself, ‘lent themselves to the devices of dance’,173 a place where young ladies in Vogue-style ballgowns exchanged favours with young men in starched shirts and tails, and where the King of France (Guinness) was wheeled on an antique bathchair. Richard III had ‘solid, colourful masses of pageantry and solemn impressive processions’; All’s Well boasted ‘graceful, weaving ballet-like movements with elegant groupings’, which perfectly complemented the ‘graceful, slender columns of the stage’, as ‘the costumes of the ladies give the comedy a bewitching, never a bewildering, note of variety’.174 It also had Worth’s ‘enchanting’ Helena: a ‘strong-willed young lady’ who ‘could have been devised by Bernard Shaw’; ‘only a cad’, continued the reviewer, ‘would stand in the way of Miss Worth’s getting exactly what she wants exactly when she wants



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it’.175 For once, Guthrie had assigned his energies to a marginalized text that was worthy of them. Guthrie continued as Artistic Director of the festival until 1955, directing The Taming of the Shrew and Oedipus Rex in 1954, Oedipus, again, and The Merchant of Venice the following year. He returned to Stratford in 1957, at the invitation of his successor, Michael Langham, to direct Twelfth Night. It was, Langham remembered, ‘wholly relaxed’: there was ‘no passion to prove a point, to be clever, to be brilliant – in short, to show off […] It was the first really mature work I’d seen him do.’176 It was his last production for the festival, for, as indicated in the previous section, he had found a new mission in the campaign for an American Repertory Theatre. The story of its foundation is to some extent similar to that of the Stratford Festival, in that both were attempts to establish a niche for classical theatre within a commercial culture largely unsympathetic to it, but there are important differences. There was, for a start, no American

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equivalent of the Massey Report to provide the context and impetus for the project, which was largely a reaction to the short-termism of the New York theatre scene on the part of Guthrie, Broadway stage manager Peter Zeisler and producer Oliver Rea. It was also, as Guthrie’s own account in A New Theatre (1964) makes clear, a venture characterized by financial uncertainty, bitter arguments and, ultimately, unhappy compromise. The Stratford adventure in A Life in the Theatre is, for the most part, goodnatured, idealistic and, on occasions, rather whimsical; Guthrie’s narrative of the planning and building of the theatre in Minneapolis is pragmatic, jaundiced, and brutally honest. The campaign began in 1959, with Brooks Atkinson’s New York Times piece calling for bids to host the new theatre, stepping up a gear when Guthrie, Zeisler and Rea went on a whistle-stop tour of the seven cities that responded; by the start of 1960 (while Guthrie was in Ireland recovering from a massive heart attack that nearly killed him) the options had narrowed to Minneapolis/St Paul, and to the bid led by Professor Frank Whiting, director of the theatre department at the University of Minnesota. Whiting secured the backing not only of the university and various local businesses, but also of the Walker Foundation, which committed $400,000; the expectation was that a further $900,000 would be raised from voluntary donations. Ralph Rapson, Dean of the university’s School of Architecture, was commissioned to design the building; by the time the first set of plans were presented, it was clear that there was a shortfall of $700,000 (the eventual cost was $2.2 million). This time, the practical arguments in favour of the open stage were underpinned by economic considerations: Preliminary budgets had shown us that, if the theatre were to achieve the sort of standard at which we were aiming, it could only pay its way if the capacity were around fifteen hundred persons. Fifteen hundred cannot be intimately accommodated in a proscenium theatre […] If you are going to offer the sort of programme which demands the serious concentration of the audience, then it is essential that actor and audience be brought into the closest possible mutual contact.177 It was this kind of hard-headed logic, rather than polemics about the proscenium stage being ‘the fortress wherein are beleaguered the reactionary forces of realism’,178 that proved persuasive. Tanya Moiseiwitsch was to design the stage, which she and Guthrie envisaged as a reworking of the Stratford space; but, to their displeasure, Rapson had other ideas. Taken on a visit to Stratford, he was unimpressed by the productions, the



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stage and the auditorium, which he found ‘claustrophobic’. Guthrie’s desire for intimacy was at odds with the economic imperative of seating capacity, though in the end Rapson was persuaded to take out two entire rows, reducing the theatre’s capacity from a planned 1800 to 1441.179 The Guthrie Theater stage retained some of the features introduced at Stratford, with its arc of seating on three sides of an asymmetrical polygonal platform, set slightly askew, but it also had a removable back wall through which scenic pieces could be trucked on and off. Unlike the Stratford stage (in its early years), it was not a theatre exclusively, or even primarily, for Shakespeare. In the first season, Guthrie’s Hamlet was presented in rotating repertoire with Molière, Chekhov and Arthur Miller; subsequently, Shakespeare (and, very occasionally, Jonson, Dekker and Webster) shared the stage with Sophocles, Brecht, Pinter and others. This was no place for neo-Elizabethanism, whether dogmatic or romantic; nor was it a theatre that anyone particularly cared to claim as distinctively ‘American’ in the way that Stratford had been represented as ‘Canadian’. Indeed, Guthrie’s disappointment with the building was deepened by doubts as to whether the actors commanded sufficient technique to make a success of it, which was, he felt, an effect of the conformist and reactionary cultural context in which it, and they, had to operate: ‘in current American life it is considered not only unimportant but unacceptable to speak “well”. It is thought to be un-American, undemocratic and unmanly.’180 The contrast with the optimism and goodwill exhibited at the end of the Canadian section of the autobiography is striking. The opening night of Hamlet, a marathon performance in extreme heat before a bored celebrity audience, was, Guthrie recorded, ‘miserable’.181 The production included the experienced classical performers Jessica Tandy as Gertrude and Hume Cronyn as Claudius, and Guthrie had managed to smuggle Zoe Caldwell into the country under the nose of American Equity to play Ophelia; in the lead was George Grizzard, an actor with no previous Shakespearean experience, whom Guthrie had spotted in the original Broadway production of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? the previous year. Grizzard’s notices were mixed, and Guthrie was less than effusive in his assessment, describing him as ‘intelligent, witty […] modest’, and the possessor of a voice that was ‘small and of limited range’, although ‘evidently the instrument of a lively and interesting personality’.182 Grizzard was the personable, contemporary centre of an eclectically modern-dress staging. ‘Mr Guthrie doesn’t care about time’, wrote Walter Kerr; lasting over four hours (‘and seems so’), the production ‘also uses candles and flashlights in the very same castle, just as

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it uses rapiers in one scene and revolvers in the next’.183 The Toronto Globe and Mail reported that ‘the uniforms are splendidly Teutonic, the ladies’ travelling clothes quite Edwardian, but Claudius and Gertrude are impeccable in evening dress, Laertes rebellious in a trench coat’.184 Although one critic, at least, acclaimed it as ‘the most remarkable production of Hamlet the contemporary theatre is likely to see’,185 there was nothing challenging or innovative about it, and Guthrie was content to recycle elements of his previous productions of this and other plays (such as the umbrellas at Ophelia’s funeral). In 1953, Guthrie had predicted that the open stage would lead to ‘a theatre of ritual in which participants could purge [their] minds of triviality, and […] live for an instant at [their] highest imaginative peak’,186 but the most admired moments in this production were ones where psychological nuance was revealed in close-up: ‘Gertrude […] enters in the wedding finery in Act One. She looks at Hamlet; Hamlet looks back; his eyes drop; her eyes drop. The situation is revealed as it could not be on the picture frame stage.’187 Guthrie stayed as Artistic Director in Minneapolis until 1966, directing Henry V in 1964 and Richard III in 1965; elsewhere, there were Coriolanus as the opening production at the Nottingham Playhouse in 1963, Measure for Measure at the Bristol Old Vic in 1966, and All’s Well that Ends Well in Melbourne in 1970. But the most successful, as well as the most heartfelt, of the productions that he directed during the final decade of his life were not of Shakespeare, but of Chekhov (Three Sisters [1963], The Cherry Orchard [1965], and Uncle Vanya [1969]), and Aeschylus (The House of Atreus, adapted from The Oresteia [1967 and 1968]), all staged at the Guthrie Theater. Michael Langham, who succeeded his mentor as Artistic Director at Stratford from 1956 to 1967, and again as Director of the Guthrie from 1971 to 1977, reflected that, second time around, ‘[i]t wasn’t as if a great man had come to Minneapolis and made something fantastic happen, which is what I’d felt at Stratford […] I didn’t think much of any of the Shakespeare productions he did during the Guthrie Theater years’.188 Guthrie was certainly overworked, in poor health, drained of energy and fresh ideas, and probably bored with Shakespeare; but perhaps the real reason for the declining quality of his later work was that the open stage had always been far more alluring as dream than as reality. As realized in the dozens of arena spaces that sprang up in the wake of Stratford and Minneapolis, ranging from the Chichester Festival Theatre and the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles (both opened in 1962) to the reconstructed Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, which reopened in



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2010, the case for the open stage had been made, accepted, and institutionalized as an orthodoxy that has now dominated theatre design for more than half a century (whether this has been in the best interests of the theatre, and of Shakespearean performance in particular, is a question that is beyond the scope of this narrative). In the meantime, the quest for Shakespeare’s Globe went on, but Guthrie was no longer part of it.

Two Stratford Productions: Henry VIII and All’s Well that Ends Well By the time the Guthrie Theater was in operation, its namesake had convinced himself and a fair number of others that ‘the open stage makes the presentation of Shakespeare easier for the actors and a more vivid experience for the audience, and that […] the return to the sort of stage which Shakespeare had in mind when he wrote his plays is a most important advance in Shakespearean interpretation’.189 If, as we have seen, its practice had not exactly vindicated the claims that had been made for the open stage in theory, there was another sense in which Guthrie’s argument that picture-frame staging was almost always unsatisfactory was counterintuitive, or even perverse: it contradicted the evidence of much of his own production work. Others had little doubt that his best Shakespearean work was made not in Stratford, Ontario, nor in Minneapolis, but at the Old Vic and on the stage of the ‘dreadfully old-fashioned’ Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, where, as Guthrie saw it, the ‘insuperable problems posed by the architecture’ meant that the most that could be hoped for was a ‘[p]ageant […] mounted to the accompaniment of a Shakespearian text’.190 For Peter Brook, Guthrie’s peak achievement was the 1944 Hamlet; for Gielgud, it was the 1938 production of the same play; for Trewin, Troilus and Cressida; for Audrey Williamson, the 1938 Dream. For Michael Langham, it was the production of Henry VIII which he directed at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1949, revived the following year, and reworked for the Old Vic in 1953 (see above, pp. 125–6): typifying his ability to create ‘an enormous canvas, fascinatingly peopled’, this was ‘a teeming, sweaty vision of a period of history, of its characters and personalities, of its political intrigues, of its seaminess and its smell’. Robert Hardy, who played Griffith in 1949–50 and the Lord Chamberlain in 1953, concurred: describing Guthrie’s production as ‘a thoroughly political piece’, it was the work of a director who ‘had an extraordinary comprehension of power politics’ and who ‘made all the political scenes […] absolutely electric’.191 On both occasions, Guthrie’s staging both exploited to the full the

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resources and possibilities of the proscenium stage and found brilliantly productive ways of dealing with its liabilities. Entering the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre auditorium for Henry VIII, the Stratford audiences of 1949 might well have wondered what Guthrie had up his sleeve. There was no curtain, and on full display were the light oak timbers of Tanya Moiseiwitsch’s permanent setting, a non-representational composite of platforms, steps and a gallery that was augmented by a substantial, asymmetrical forestage projecting some fifteen feet into the auditorium and over the orchestra pit, to which it was linked by a curved staircase. Changes of scene were effected through minimal lighting shifts and the setting and striking of stools and tables by the fifty-plus cast, its ranks further swelled by fourteen members of the Royal Warwickshire regiment, whose drill skills greatly enhanced the pageant-display of the final scene, and who doubled as clerics and choirboys.192 Muriel St Clare Byrne, in a thoughtful, detailed account of the production to Shakespeare Survey in 1950, admired the clarity of the storytelling and thought that it produced its best effects by ‘trusting the author and playing the whole of his text simply and sincerely’.193 Guthrie, however, started from a rather different position, announcing before the production opened that the play was ‘primarily a pageant’, and that it had ‘some good scenes and notable passages of rhetoric – but little psychological or narrative development. Its theme […] is the evanescent nature of worldly power’.194 As always, Guthrie’s direction was in its element in the large-scale scenes, in the arrangement and movement of groups of performers that he was always loth to call ‘crowds’; as the Scotsman reported (invoking Guthrie’s Edinburgh triumph of the previous year), with its soldiers and banners, ‘in this respect it is The Estates again’.195 Awash with colour, the production was full of life, and reflected Guthrie’s trademark habit of introducing quirks, idiosyncrasies and bits of business that ensured that no one onstage, no matter how ‘minor’ his or her role, was denied the opportunity for at least a moment of glory; the production was characterized by an abundance, even a surfeit, of (often gratuitous) detail. The New Statesman’s T. C. Worsley saw this and was mightily irritated by it. Characterizing Guthrie as a director with a split personality, he complained that he consistently undermined his own direction by indulging puerile triviality. For example, Wouldn’t it be fun if, when Cranmer is making the great prophecy speech on one side of the stage, the nurse carrying the infant Princess Elizabeth on the other side, should have a fit of sneezing? […] Wouldn’t



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it be fun if, in the Court scene, our attention should be distracted from the speeches by the noise of the scriveners driving their quills over the parchment? And then couldn’t Henry come ponderously down from his throne and push a clerk off his stool? And couldn’t someone else imitate him and do it again?196 Quite a few reviewers objected to the sneeze, and it disappeared after the first night, though Guthrie’s trick of dividing the focus (or, as Worsley saw it, of introducing distractions and irrelevancies) sometimes served not to rob the stars of their big moments but to strengthen them. Overall, the production provided a robust framework for solid, conventional performances from Diana Wynyard (Katherine), Anthony Quayle (Henry), Harry Andrews (Wolsey) and Andrew Cruickshank (Buckingham); it was also notable for its amplification of a number of minor parts into fairly substantial ones, in ways that strengthened narrative cohesion and continuity. With Michael Bates combining the part of Lord Sands with the Third Gentleman who appears to comment on the Coronation and the Christening, Guthrie made the Gentlemen an odd-couple running double act who acted as comic intermediaries between the play-world and the auditorium, occupying the forestage as amused observers of the rise and fall of the great ones passing across the stage (or, for Buckingham and Wolsey’s valedictory scenes, into the bowels of the orchestra pit). Sands was introduced to the audience, during the scene at Wolsey’s ball, as a comedy lecher who, having groped the Old Lady’s ass, pulled one of Anne’s ladies-in-waiting onto his knee and managed, just too late, to acknowledge the Cardinal’s arrival. Paired with George Rose’s worldlywise First Gentleman, Sands was the male counterpart of the production’s unofficial bawdy Chorus, Wynne Clark’s Old Lady. She was a front-cloth figure very much at home on the forestage, the confidante both of the audience and of Anne Bullen (Kathleen Michael). Assigned the prologue and epilogue, she indicated the ‘very persons of our noble story’ as, upstage, spots picked out the Dukes of Norfolk, Suffolk and others, motionless in tableau; at the close, she emerged from the mass of revelling bodies to make the final voice of this production a female one, and to remind the women in the audience that it was ‘ill hap’ if their escorts were to ‘hold, when their ladies bid them clap’ (Epilogue, 13–14). Privileged with a manoeuvrability that placed her at once inside and outside the fiction, Clark’s Old Lady encapsulated the double consciousness of the production as a whole: a celebration of pageantry and an amused, sceptical debunking of it, Henry VIII participated in the play’s traditions

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of picture-frame spectacle while also drawing attention to the frame itself. But her recurrent presence also connected with some of the production’s (albeit understated) darker undercurrents. In particular, her silent companionship with Anne facilitated several subtle and, for those who cared to look for them, intriguing extra-textual moments. One of these substituted for the scene of the Coronation procession (4.1), which Guthrie cut completely. In its place was a one-minute scene the promptbook entitles ‘Mime’, in which Anne skipped onstage, playfully tried out the throne for size, and then paused, struck with a sudden, inexplicable sadness. Byrne wrote that she was ‘more moved by Miss Michael’s brief moment, the gaiety and then the proud carriage of the slight figure and that thrown-back head’, than she had ‘ever been by the famous “show” ’.197 What is equally of interest is the interplay between Anne and the Old Lady, the play-acting that mingles excitement with apprehension, and that introduces, however briefly, a note of foreboding amid the celebration. Even more ominous, as evidence that the production was not heedless of the bloody history that Shakespeare and Fletcher’s play seems determined to forget, was a premonitory moment, earlier in the play (2.3), when the Lord Chamberlain (William Squire) paid a visit to Anne (in the company of the Old Lady) to pay court on Henry’s behalf. On ‘the king’s majesty / Commends his good opinion of you’ (2.3.60–1), Squire presented Anne with a bouquet, from which a pearl necklace slipped and fell to the floor. In the charged silence that followed, Clark gave a discreet cough, and Michael accepted the necklace; in the subsequent pause that lingered between the Old Lady urging Anne to ‘have your mouth fill’d up / Before you open it’ and she conceding that ‘This is strange to me’ (87–8), Anne raised her hand and, as if with an unconscious premonition of her eventual fate, touched her throat. The production was enough of a success to be revived, recast, in 1950, and again at the Old Vic in 1953. For those who saw Guthrie’s career in terms of an evolutionary and inevitable progression towards the open stage, the production might be accounted a compromise between proscenium and platform, as well as, in broader perspective, one of numerous, only partially successful, attempts to overcome the limitations of the Stratford theatre. But its achievement can be defined rather differently: it was precisely the transitional, liminal nature of a production that occupied both sides of the proscenium line that made it so appealing, as well as so unexpectedly rich. Similar considerations apply to Guthrie’s last production at Stratfordupon-Avon ten years later, and the second of the two plays which had launched the festival in Stratford, Ontario in 1953, All’s Well that Ends



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Well. Here, on the face of it, was another occasion for compromise: a play directed by Guthrie on the open stage, now repeated within the confines of a theatre which he affected to despise, and in the context of an institution that, in its ‘one hundredth anniversary season’, might have seemed the antithesis of the theatrical enterprise located in its municipal counterpart three-and-a-half thousand miles across the Atlantic. In actuality, by placing the play back within the magic box of the picture frame stage, Guthrie succeeded in releasing the potential that had previously only been halfrealized. In various ways, the 1959 production repeated key elements of the 1953 one: redesigned by Moiseiwitsch, it occupied much the same predominantly fin de siècle but chronologically eclectic world in which a woman of no importance might go searching for an ideal husband, in which the Merry Widow danced with the shades of Ibsen, Shaw, P. G. Wodehouse and Evelyn Waugh, and in which the army scenes in Act 3 took place in the middle of the North African campaign of 1942–3, complete with an ill-assorted squad of Desert Rats equipped with black berets, baggy shorts and bottled beer (Figure 9). Once again, Guthrie and Moiseiwitsch conjured forth a world of evening dress, stiff collars and ballgowns, with ‘saloon bar blowhard’198 Parolles (Cyril Luckham) vulgarly conspicuous at Court in lounge suit and tan shoes; again, the King of France (Robert Hardy) was wheeled on in an antique bathchair. The reviewers unanimously agreed that the production was dominated by its female leads: Edith Evans, as the Countess, radiated authority and tradition (she had first appeared at Stratford in 1913, and ‘[t]o listen to her’, wrote Trewin, ‘gives the sense of walking through the woods late on an October afternoon’);199 and Zoe Caldwell, making her debut in a major Shakespearean part, captivated the critics by ‘nicely combin[ing] yearning with cunning and pathos with presumption’, so that ‘by the end she had transformed Helena into one of the most moving of Shakespeare’s heroines’.200 Yet, as the Glasgow Herald concluded, ‘scenes rather than persons emerge as memorable from the production’.201 What had, in Canada, been suggested by costumes and columns was here realized in three-dimensional detail: a vast, candelabra-lit ballroom with a frescoed ceiling for the Court of France; camouflage netting shrouding the ruins of a viaduct for the desert scenes; the parlour-cum-boudoir inhabited by the Widow and Diana, with its tasselled lampshade, chintz, crockery ornaments and chaise longue; a tumbledown, leaf-strewn arbour, suffused with Chekhovian, autumnal melancholy, for the estate at Roussillon. Just as Henry VIII had thrived on its positioning within, across and beyond the picture frame, Guthrie’s All’s Well drew its energies from locating itself

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between realism and fairy tale, and between ‘Shakespeare’ and a range of popular performance idioms, from comic operetta to variety, pantomime and television sitcom. In this, it was both the harbinger of the future of Shakespearean production at Stratford, and a production whose fin de siècle feel reflected a deeper sense of the close of an era. The 1959 season was one of the starriest for some years, opening on 7 April with Tony Richardson’s Othello, which brought Mary Ure as Desdemona, Sam Wanamaker as Iago and Paul Robeson in the title role, followed by All’s Well, and closing at the end of August with Glen Byam Shaw’s King Lear, with Charles Laughton as the King; Laurence Olivier’s Coriolanus starred in a production directed by Peter Hall, who also directed Laughton as Bottom in June’s Dream. But with Hall poised to take charge and to institute the far-reaching changes that transformed the Stratford Festival into the Royal Shakespeare Company, the epoch of the permanent, director-led ensemble was close at hand. The Shakespearean tradition carried by the generation that included Guthrie, Byam Shaw, Evans and Olivier (and Wolfit) was at the turn of the decade passing to



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Hall, Richardson, Caldwell and the young actors that theatregoers would have found towards the bottom of the cast lists in their programmes: promising newcomers Albert Finney (Cassio, Edgar and Lysander), Ian Holm (Fool, Puck, and Aufidius’s third servant) and Vanessa Redgrave (Helena, Valeria, and various unnamed parts in Othello and All’s Well, which put her in anonymous company with one Diana Rigg). At this moment, it appeared that the wind of change that was blowing through Stratford might even shake the fabric of the Memorial Theatre itself. Whereas in 1949 Guthrie’s demand that Quayle should ‘[p]ush it into the Avon’202 had gone unheeded, Hall in 1958 stated his hope that Stratford would ‘prosper so that they will be able to pull down this theatre and build a new one which I as a director would be very happy to work in’; in 1961, he continued to express his conviction that ‘this type of stage’ (that is, the Guthrie-style thrust) ‘is essential if Shakespeare is to be produced properly […] the plays have been boxed in for too long’.203 Hall soon changed his mind, declaring that ‘complex thoughts and closepacked imagery cannot be communicated by an actor continually on the move’, and that it was nonsense to attempt ‘the explicit and still communication’ of, for example, Hamlet’s soliloquies ‘with your back to half the audience’.204 The stage of what was renamed the Royal Shakespeare Theatre was one of the few things that remained largely unchanged during the years of Hall’s tenure; and though there were a number of subsequent attempts to radically remodel it as something approximating to a thrust or arena space (during the seasons of 1976 and 1982, for example), it took fifty years for Guthrie’s dream to be realized. This was not necessarily a bad thing. As the Guardian theatre critic Michael Billington wrote in a piece that gently mourned the passing of the old RST in 2007, a lifetime of theatregoing that had begun in Stratford in the 1950s had convinced him what truly mattered was less ‘the structural shape of the stage […] than the imaginative shape of the mind of the person using it’; at the head of his list of memories of the theatre’s greatest successes was Guthrie’s All’s Well, a show that provided lasting, compelling evidence that ‘[w]ith confidence and daring, actors and directors could turn it into a prodigiously exciting space’.205

Legacies It is overstating the case to suggest that the wrong lessons were learned in Denmark in June 1937 and put into practice in Edinburgh, Stratford

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and Minneapolis (by Guthrie), and in dozens of other places since; but it is not unreasonable to conclude that the apparent simplicity of Guthrie’s solution to the problems of modern Shakespearean staging masks a deeper and possibly intractable set of contradictions that are cultural as well as theatrical in nature. The story of the open stage is far more than that of an accidental circumstance of performance solidified as architectural and institutional form; but Guthrie’s part in it seems to reveal the ironies inherent in the attempt to recapture a set of unique, contingent and unrepeatable playing conditions, in buildings of a scale that makes them financially viable, but also utterly inimical to the task of enabling or sustaining the actor-audience relationships that would make them worthwhile. Despite the hopes invested in it at its inception, the theatre at Stratford, Ontario, in the more than half a century that it has been in operation, has generated few, if any, productions that have had a fraction of the impact of the acknowledged landmarks of the modern Shakespearean theatre mounted in theatres of what Guthrie would call ‘the more conventional type’. None of Guthrie’s really memorable Shakespearean work was achieved on the open stage. The productions that did work, triumphantly, in this context – Three Estates in Edinburgh, Oedipus at Stratford, The House of Atreus in Minneapolis – were of plays that, as Guthrie put it, were ‘absolutely unplayable on a proscenium stage’ and ‘almost meaningless in terms of “dramatic illusion”’. For a drama where the play of surfaces is all, the open stage may be ideal. But what might be suitable for Attic tragedy and medieval Morality drama is not equally so, as Guthrie was the first to recognize, for Shakespeare. Whether or not Hamlet does have that within which ‘passeth show’, actors and audiences will persist in looking for it, and a theatre that privileges relentless movement over stillness remains far from the best place to find it. Guthrie was obsessed with Hamlet throughout his career, and directed it five times, and yet none of these productions were anywhere near as original or mould-breaking as his two attempts at All’s Well and Love’s Labour’s Lost, or his three tries at Henry VIII. He was at his best with the neglected, the under-appreciated and the actually or allegedly secondrate, not because he discovered within it the greatness that had been unaccountably overlooked, but because of the freedom that it allowed him as interpretative artist, and because of the scope it afforded for intervention, reinvention, play, and risk. It is for that that he should be remembered.

Chapter 4

Sam Wanamaker Paul Prescott

Modern man has been condemned to look elsewhere, everywhere, for his authenticity, to see if he can catch a glimpse of it reflected in the simplicity, poverty, chastity or purity of others.1 (Dean MacCannell, The Tourist) Sam Wanamaker (1919–93) was a Jewish-American actor and director of stage and screen whose lasting contribution to our understanding and enjoyment of the works of Shakespeare resides in his epic, ultimately successful campaign to build on the South Bank of the river Thames a simulacrum of the Globe Theatre. If you enter the theatre complex through the box office on New Globe Walk, you might notice, perched above the information desk, a small bust of Wanamaker; if you skirt the riverside edge of the complex, you pass on the Thames-facing wall a blue plaque devoted to the ‘Visionary who recreated Shakespeare’s Globe’, a plaque ‘Voted [for] by the People’; as you walk across the piazza you might spot beneath you paving stones dedicated not only to Sam but also to his wife Charlotte and two of his three daughters, Abby and the eminent actress Zoë Wanamaker. These material markers act as rather modest reminders of a remarkable achievement: few theatrical spaces in the world owe so much to the vision, vitality and perseverance of one person. To seek the origins of Wanamaker’s desire to build the Globe is to start to trace the outlines of a biography. In one of the last sets of files he sent to the Gotlieb Archive at Boston University before his death in 1993, Wanamaker included an official programme from the Cleveland Great Lakes Festival of 1936. (This was an anomalous inclusion: all the other documents dated from the early 1990s.) On its faded cover Wanamaker had attached a Post-it note with the handwritten exclamation ‘The Beginning!’. As a seventeenyear-old, he had spent a happy summer playing small parts for the ‘New Globe Players’ on a replica Elizabethan stage at the Great Lakes Festival.

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Almost six decades later, with two bays of the new Globe erected and seen from the perspective of a man who knew he was nearing the end of his life, the encounter with the Cleveland programme must have felt moving and satisfying, a reassurance that finales evolve from first acts, that a chaotic, peripatetic life had succumbed to some narrative logic after all. But ‘The Beginning’ was a movable moment and would depend on which version of the genesis story Wanamaker happened to be telling. Did the idea of rebuilding the Globe first occur to the fifteen-year-old workingclass Chicago boy taken by his father to their city’s Century of Progress World’s Fair in 1934, where, amid steel-and-glass futuristic attractions, he was struck by the beauty of a reconstructed Globe, one of a dozen or so ersatz landmarks comprising the English Village? Or was the seed planted through spectatorship and specifically the experience of watching Maurice Evans starring as Richard II, ‘direct from Broadway’ – the first major Shakespeare production he had seen, and which he later recalled was ‘perhaps one of the most profoundly decisive moments of my life’?2 (He would later act with Evans’s company in Hawaii in 1945 on his way back from the war in the Pacific.) Perhaps it was indeed his own first professional engagement as a fledgling actor, playing bit parts in one-hour ‘tabloid’ Shakespeare adaptations on that replica Globe stage at the Great Lakes Festival in Cleveland in 1936. Or then again, perhaps the theatrical mission had a cinematic stimulus; some years after Cleveland and now a successful radio actor living and working in New York City, Wanamaker watched Olivier’s movie of Henry V. Having cut my teeth playing Shakespeare in a fairground Globe Theatre in Cleveland, Ohio, the film was an overwhelming experience […] I have no doubt, seeing the film again recently, that it was the direct inspiration for my ‘obsession’, as some call it, to reconstruct Shakespeare’s Globe on its original Bankside site in London.3 Or perhaps the obsession really took hold in the early summer of 1949, when Wanamaker first came to England as a film actor to star in Give Us This Day – made by Edward Dmytryk, one of the ‘Hollywood Ten’ persecuted by the anti-communist witch-hunts that would shortly force Wanamaker himself to flee his homeland. It was during this trip that the thirty-year-old made a pilgrimage to the site of the Globe in Southwark only to discover that the sacred theatre – versions of which had entertained audiences in Chicago, Cleveland and elsewhere – was remembered here by little more than a blackened plaque on a brewery wall.



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Wherever one locates the spark that lit the visionary fire, the received wisdom – encouraged in part by his own self-mythologizing – holds that there was something inevitable about Sam Wanamaker becoming the founder of the third Globe. Charles Marowitz’s Dictionary of National Biography entry recycles the origin myth: It is quite possible that his stage début as a teenager in a plywood and paper replica of the Globe at the Chicago World Fair in 1934 was the cathartic experience which inspired his lifelong devotion to the Bard and brought into being the Shakespeare Globe Theatre on London’s South Bank.4 Marowitz confuses Chicago with Cleveland; Wanamaker made his stage debut at the latter’s festival. But even a cursory glance at Wanamaker’s career reveals the stark fact that most of it had nothing whatsoever to do with Shakespeare. Indeed, his ‘lifelong devotion’ to Shakespeare only really surfaced when he was about to turn fifty, and little or nothing in the first two-thirds of his life and career prepared the world for the fact that Sam Wanamaker would spend the last third campaigning for the Globe. Much in his life was adventitious and unpredictable; the founding of the Globe was no exception. This ‘Great Shakespeareans’ series takes an inherently individualist approach to cultural production, an approach that each subject as an extraordinary individual more or less vindicates. But more than most, Wanamaker’s career and achievements are inseparable from the historical contexts that formed him: his individuality was intensely political, an existence twice estranged by history, doubly cheated of a home. In 1910 his parents had fled the Czarist pogroms in the Ukraine and resettled in Chicago. Decades later, he would reverse their journey, fleeing from the New World back to the Old when it became clear that McCarthyism would make incompatible a happy life and a successful career. His was thus a life inextricable from History (with a capital ‘H’), a conjugation of which he was painfully aware. In 1991 he appeared as a shrewd amoral attorney in Guilty by Suspicion, a movie of great personal interest as it traced, through the rise and fall of a fictional film director, the real impact of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) on Hollywood lives in the early 1950s. Robert De Niro’s protagonist spends most of the movie wrestling with his conscience before the uplifting (if identikit) courtroom finale in which he refuses to name names and reaffirms the right to freedom of thought and speech to a spluttering row of judges and a cheering public

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gallery. Something of the film’s primary-coloured depiction of the conflict between the Individual and History inspired Wanamaker to begin to sketch a cinematic treatment of his own autobiography: BACKGROUND AS CHILD. The Victim/Hero: first Generation American, born of Working Class Immigrant Refugees from Czarist pogroms; A Childhood of poverty and struggle for survival; street and schoolyard fights against taunts of ‘Kike!’ and ‘Christ Killer!’; the 1929 Wall Street Crash; the thirties Depression, unemployment and breadlines; father’s battle of the sweatshops for better pay and protection against Exploiters of impoverished LABOUR; popular songs like ‘Brother Can you Spare A Dime’; The hope of Roosevelt’s New Deal. AS TEENAGER: the rise of Hitler and NAZISM, MUSSOLINI and fascism, Franco and GUERNICA in Spain; anti-semitism and APARTHEID in the land of democracy and EQUAL RIGHTS. AS ADULT: A YOUNG ACTOR/DIRECTOR; MARRIAGE, CAREER, A CHILD, the 2nd World War, Pearl Harbour, Service on IWO JIMA, Japanese Americans Herded into American Concentration Camps, the 2nd front, OUR ALLIES, THE RUSSIANS, THE COMMON ENEMY, Soviet-American Friendship Societies. RED ARMY BATTLE SONGS. POSTWAR TRIUMPHS ON BROADWAY, in Hollywood, in ENGLAND. AN AMERICAN SUCCESS STORY. NOT QUITE.5 Wanamaker saw his whole life as determined and irreparably scarred by the ensuing witch-hunt for communist sympathizers and the nightmare of McCarthyism. For all its kitsch biopic potential, it cannot be ignored that the impetus for much of what Wanamaker did was psychologically determined by a need to belong. Throughout his life, he sought for some kind of grounding, a permanent home, and the Globe project was, on many levels, intended to fulfil this psychological need. If, in Wanamaker’s formulation, the victim is inseparable from the hero, if victimhood is indeed a precondition of heroism, then the existence of Shakespeare’s Globe is unthinkable without the decisive arrival on the American political landscape of Senator Joseph McCarthy. This chapter offers the first sustained analysis to date of Wanamaker’s career. It draws on a wealth of documents in Wanamaker’s personal archive at Boston University and at Shakespeare’s Globe in London. I should announce at the outset that this account has very little to say about Shakespeare’s Globe as a working theatre. Wanamaker died in 1993, two



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years before its official opening season. This piece, therefore, will not judge Wanamaker’s significance as a Shakespearean by current practice at the Globe or anything post mortem that cannot be directly traced to his directives or wishes. Nor will I seek to offer a blow-by-blow account of How the Globe Was Built, of every false dawn, setback and volte face, or every squabble about materials, measurements, planning applications, and so on, that beset the arduous struggle toward completion. Much (and possibly all that matters) of this is already on the record in books such as This Wooden ‘O’ (Day, 1996), Shakespeare’s Globe Rebuilt (Mulryne and Shewring, 1997), Shakespeare’s Globe: A Theatrical Experiment (Carson and Karim-Cooper, 2008). My main emphasis will fall on Wanamaker’s contribution to the idea of the Globe as a cultural and artistic institution: how did Wanamaker market and publicise it in the ’70s and ’80s? What did the embryonic seasons he oversaw in the early ’70s say about his vision for the theatre? How did his personal background and multiple identities determine the kind of place it would become? But we run before our horse to market. Wanamaker founded the Globe Trust at the age of fifty; from the varied, even picaresque, career that preceded that moment, I select four episodes. Three of these – his experiences of Shakespeare at the World’s Fairs in Chicago and Cleveland, as Iago in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1959, and as Macbeth in Chicago in 1964 – are Shakespearean. The fourth episode focuses on his artistic directorship in the late 1950s of the New Shakespeare Theatre, Liverpool. Despite the strong encouragement offered by its name, the theatre produced no Shakespeare during Wanamaker’s tenure. But this tenure is of great interest for a number of reasons, not least because it was the only occasion on which he operated a working theatre. In the first half of this chapter, then, I am interested in what kind of Shakespearean Wanamaker was before the turning point in his life when he began to devote his considerable energies to the Globe. In the third diktat of his ‘manifesto’ for the study of Cultural Mobility, Stephen Greenblatt writes that ‘mobility studies should identify and analyze the “contact zones” where cultural goods are exchanged’. Such intercultural zones depend on the work of a ‘specialized group of “mobilizers” – agents, gobetweens, translators, intermediaries […] and this group, along with the institutions that they serve, should form a key part of the analysis’.6 Wanamaker’s first experiences of Shakespeare took place in two such ‘contact zones’. He then went on to forge a career based on highly skilled cultural entrepreneurship: he brought American drama to London and Liverpool; he foisted Brecht on the West End; he submerged

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Stratford-upon-Avon in the Method; and, finally, he bequeathed to Bankside a brand new theatre. He was an intermediary and inter-medial: a very fine actor, an accomplished director of film, television, theatre and opera, an impresario, fundraiser, campaigner and catalyst. He was, in short, a twentieth-century Johannes Factotum.

The Beginning There was so much to see and do. We watched Coca-Cola being bottled and Philadelphia Cream Cheeses wrapped and we saw France and Spain and Belgium […] Neither of us was interested in Little Old World New York or the Winter Wonderland, despite its contingent of penguins brought back from Antarctica by Admiral Byrd. And we both could do without Merrie England.7 (E. L. Doctorow, World’s Fair) Sam Wanamaker’s first recorded encounter with William Shakespeare took place in a theme park. The year was 1934, the theme was ‘a century of progress’, and the park lay by the shores of Lake Michigan on the east side of Chicago, the city of Wanamaker’s birth. Chicago had celebrated its centennial the year before with a World’s Fair so successful that, with the vocal support of President Roosevelt, it was revived and expanded the following year. In order to lure repeat visitors to what was known as the ‘second edition’ of the fair, new attractions were added, most prominently perhaps an international zone in which multiple nations were represented by lavishly picturesque ‘villages’ that offered Old World nostalgia as a charming low-rise counterpoint to the soaring American progress that remained the fair’s chief raison d’être. This conglomeration of fake habitats allowed the visitor to enjoy the illusion of global travel in a matter of hours. In Chicago, just over the road from the Irish and Midget Villages, and perhaps aptly sandwiched between the American Colonial Village and the first-ever Ripley’s Believe It or Not ‘Odditorium’, Merrie England spread itself over two acres at an estimated cost of $200,000. The English Village comprised impossible feats of chronology and proximity: beneath a scale replica of the Tower of London crouched Stoke Poges church (site of Thomas Gray’s famous elegy) and Fleet Street’s Cheshire Cheese Inn. Robert Burns’s cottage had somehow drifted south across the border and found itself cheek by jowl with Charles Dickens’s Old Curiosity Shop. The village was designed by the British government’s Board of Overseas



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Trade, which had sponsored displays of Britain and, as significantly, British colonies at foreign fairs throughout the inter-war years.8 This construction of Britishness was overwhelmingly literary – Dickens, Gray, Burns, Shakespeare – and in the midst of all this, a replica of the Globe Theatre was open for business, presenting fifty-minute ‘tabloid’ versions of Shakespeare’s plays. ‘Tabloid’ had a greater range of connotations in the mid–1930s than it does today. The still current sense of ‘a compressed or concentrated version of something, in later use esp. with implication of a sensationalist, populist, or reductive approach resembling that of tabloid journalism’ (OED 2) coexisted with the more technical description of any small medicinal pill (OED 1b), the link between the two being concentration. Here, in the middle of the international village, a tabloid version of the world, stood a tabloid version of the great Globe itself. And here it was, some time between May and October 1934, that Maurice Wanamaker took his son for a day out. Reflecting on the great exhibitions of the nineteenth century, Walter Benjamin described these fairs as: places of pilgrimage to the commodity fetish. World exhibitions glorify the exchange value of the commodity. They create a framework in which its use value recedes into the background. They open a phantasmagoria which a person enters in order to be distracted.9 In early 1930s Chicago there was much to be distracted from, not least the long-term aftermath of the Great Depression. Throughout his project to rebuild the Globe in Southwark, Wanamaker was castigated – from Left and Right – for what some perceived as the attempted Disneyfication of high culture. Critics of the third Globe enterprise might, therefore, see it as entirely apt that Wanamaker’s first encounter with Shakespeare took place in a ‘phantasmagoria’ of self-congratulatory commercialism, of ersatz and airbrushed history, of wilful nostalgia for the pre-industrial masking naked economic bottom lines. Nearly 100 million Americans visited the six fairs of the 1930s. As Robert W. Rydell has shown, the fairs in Chicago, San Diego, Dallas, Cleveland, San Francisco and New York were: designed to restore popular faith in the vitality of the nation’s economic and political system and, more specifically, in the ability of government, business, scientific, and intellectual leaders to lead the country out of the depression to a new, racially exclusive, promised land of material abundance.10

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Primitive races and cultures were exhibited to illustrate the vast distances travelled from savagery to civilization; families queued to be eugenically measured in the sinister competition to find ‘Fitter Families for Future Firesides’. As Rydell and others have argued, the medium of the World’s Fair was predicated on and designed to perpetuate structural inequalities; in Umberto Eco’s words, the World’s Fair was the ‘Missa Solemnis of capitalist culture’.11 It might have appeared quite otherwise not only to the fifteen-year-old Sam but also to his father, a ‘labor party social Democrat’ whose socialist principles and union activism had cost him his job.12 For him, perhaps, the fair represented an example of civic collectivism; for many working-class Chicagoans, it was ‘the employment provided by the fair, not government programs, that put bread on the table during the depression’.13 The fair was noteworthy for being the first international fair in American history to have paid for itself through a multi-million-dollar bonds and membership scheme. As one piece of publicity boasted:

Without Cost to the Taxpayer Here in the making, through years of financial crisis, was a several million dollar public enterprise going forward steadily along lines not experienced in the history of our national expositions. A Century of Progress was completed without one cent of taxation being imposed upon an already heavily burdened citizenry. Other world expositions have greatly depended upon subsidies.14 This, then, was an ambitious model of civic entertainment and education – distraction to be sure, but also instruction – financed without government subsidy and wholly dependent both on variable means-related support from big business and a cross-section of the public, and on a ready and willing supply of native and tourist visitors. A constant refrain of the leadership of Shakespeare’s Globe is that the theatre’s successes and financial solvency have been achieved without one penny of government subsidy or taxpayers’ money. The educational remit of the fairs would have made a keen impression on the young Wanamaker, whose school curriculum, like that of millions of other Americans in the 1930s, would have been partly tailored to fair exhibits; but he might also have internalized the message that, when times are hard and subsidy scarce, it is necessary to go out, get one’s hands dirty, and persuade people to invest



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real money in an abstract, even improbable idea. Chicago was the crucible in which Wanamaker’s temperament was forged. The sheer grandeur and excitement of the World’s Fair represented a miraculous regeneration of his native city and there can be no doubt that decades later, when Wanamaker sketched some of his more grandiose visions for the redevelopment of Bankside, he was more or less consciously inspired by this formative example of urban metamorphosis. The Chicago World’s Fairs of 1933–4 marked the centenary of the city’s incorporation. When Cleveland celebrated the same anniversary in 1936, one of the features it imported wholesale from Chicago was a replica Globe and a gruelling schedule of tourist- and family-friendly adaptations of Shakespeare (Figure 10). The company Wanamaker had seen in Chicago had been phenomenally popular and had given more than ‘2500 performances before 1.5 million spectators’15 – an average audience of six hundred or so for each of the performances. The original company that played at the Chicago World’s Fair had been split in three groups, each of which formed the nucleus for new companies in fairs at Dallas, San

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Diego and Cleveland. Wanamaker joined the last of these as a teenager during his summer vacation. As the Cleveland Festival Souvenir Guide explained: Fourteen of the famous dramatist’s plays are presented in tabloid, yet lose nothing in form or substance. Edited down and with the presentation speeded through the use of a triple stage and other modern developments of the theater, one entire play is presented in less than an hour.16 A typical day’s schedule might offer seven performances, tightly packed between 2.00 and 10.30 p.m. Over the course of the fair, the company gave more than eight hundred performances of fourteen plays. In one week alone (13–20 July 1936), Wanamaker played Second Citizen (Julius Caesar), Biondello (Shrew), Attendant (Comedy of Errors), Corin (As You Like It), Philostrate (Dream), and Gardiner (Henry VIII) (Figure 11). Thomas Wood Stevens directed most of the productions, although several were ‘arranged’ by either Theodore Veihman or Ben Iden Payne. It is through Stevens and Payne that the genealogically minded might trace the most direct line of descent from William Poel to Sam Wanamaker, thus forging an ancestral link between the subjects of the first and last chapters of this book, and between the neo-Elizabethan movement of the late nineteenth century and the logical, if delayed, fruition of that movement a century later: the opening of the third Globe Theatre. The degrees of separation are few. Poel directed Measure for Measure for Iden Payne in Manchester at the Gaiety Theatre in 1908. Payne later relocated to the US where he developed a friendship with Stevens, head of the first academic drama department in the US at Carnegie Tech (something of Wanamaker’s perseverance and chutzpah must have been required to persuade the dour Andrew Carnegie that his technical college needed a drama wing). Poel visited Stevens at Carnegie in the spring of 1916. Both Payne and Stevens thus had formative and inspirational encounters with Poel. In 1925, Stevens left Carnegie to manage the Goodman Memorial Theater in Chicago (coincidentally, the future training ground of Wanamaker). Payne would become head of department at Carnegie, where he developed his ‘modified Elizabethan method’ before heading back to England to run the Memorial Theatre in Stratford in 1935–42. As manager of the Goodman Theater, Stevens directed the Globe Theater Players (featuring Payne as a visiting lead actor in the company) at the Chicago World’s Fair. He then oversaw their subsequent seasons in Dallas,



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San Diego and Cleveland, the last of which hosted the professional stage debut of one Sam Wanamaker. As seductive as such genealogies might be, there is a world – or perhaps an ocean – of difference between Poel’s antiquarianism and Wanamaker’s experience as a young bit-part actor over the course of the summer of 1936. The atmosphere surrounding many of Poel’s productions was recherché. Max Beerbohm, admittedly no fan, thought them owlish, nocturnal, ‘implying a certain rather morbid and inhuman solemnity and a detachment from the light of day’.17 Tabloid Shakespeare was something else altogether. Stevens’s ‘modified Elizabethan method’ – adapted from Poel – would, I suspect, have made less of an impression on Wanamaker than the more vivid idea, first fully experienced in Cleveland, that Shakespeare might serve as the locus and alibi for a joyous civic and communal experience. The populist, up-tempo style of playing and the presentational style would also have been directly at odds with the Stanislavskian training he had

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begun to receive at the Goodman. The energy of these performances was well caught by the Cleveland press. W. Ward Marsh saw something contemporary amid the trappings of authenticity: I feel the speed of the day as well as the swift flicker of the movie have left a kind of imprint upon these lively and interesting tabloid versions of Shakespeare, all of which retain the meat of the original if at times omitting the dessert of well turned phrases and longer dissertations […] His plays moved with a speed which would astound the so-called ‘old Shakespearean actors.’ Gone are pomp and awe and reverence. The bard is presented as he intended his plays to be given – for entertainment only.18 Most reviewers agreed that these productions were well designed to change ordinary people’s opinions of Shakespeare, to rescue him from a reputation that was ‘forbiddingly synonymous with the obscure, the labored, the stilted, the rhetorical, the ponderous’. One critic argued that ‘The literati has [sic] carried on a campaign of refined ballyhoo, that has stuck the Bard up on a pedestal far from the common people’, but concluded that the net effect of this accessible irreverence was that ‘a considerable number of adults seem to enjoy taking their Shakespeare for its own sake rather than spend their time and money throwing baseballs at dolls’. Another found that the medicinal tabloid of high culture was easily swallowed; this Shakespeare was democratic but also authentic: ‘Here’s comedy with true burlesque flavor.  It’s lusty, ribald, pants-kicking comedy. And it’s played as Shakespeare wrote and directed it’.19 It is often assumed that replica theatres and the performances they host are inherently bardolatrous and reverential; the responses to the Cleveland Globe point in exactly the opposite direction. But however profound the impression this made on the teenage actor, it would be another twenty-three years before Wanamaker returned to Shakespeare, as Iago at Stratford-upon-Avon.

The Method, the Party, the Exile Following the summer season in Cleveland, Wanamaker won a scholarship to the Fine Arts Department at Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa, but dropped out after only three months of study. He subsequently secured another scholarship to train at the Goodman Memorial Theater of the Chicago Art Institute, from which he graduated in 1938 with highest



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honours. By this point he was already enjoying professional success acting in radio dramas. In 1940 he married Charlotte Holland, another radio actor whom he had met at the Goodman, and the two moved to New York City. There he studied with Robert Lewis (formerly of The Group Theatre), Lee Strasberg and Elia Kazan, in whose Broadway directorial debut – Café Crown (1941) – he made his own first New York stage appearance. War interrupted a promising Broadway career; in 1943 Wanamaker entered the Army and was ‘shipped off to the South Pacific. I was in the Ground Forces and participated in the Landings on Iwo Jima, and remained there for nearly a year as part of the occupation force’.20 He was honourably discharged in the spring of 1946. All the time he was in the Army, Wanamaker was also a member of the Communist Party: this short, largely inactive membership would have profound repercussions for the course of his life, and, by extension, for the future of Shakespearean theatre. His motives for joining the party were mixed. Despite his parents being ‘violently anti-Soviet’ and his grandparents having ‘lost everything they owned at the hands of the Communists in the early twenties’, Wanamaker nevertheless admired the heroism of the Russian people in the face of Hitler’s onslaught.21 The entertainment industry and media of the day were full of positive representations of the Russian ally, and so he jumped at the chance to play a Russian soldier in Counter-Attack, a play extolling the bravery of a group of Soviet comrades under Nazi siege in the cellar of a bombed house. Fifteen years after playing this role, Wanamaker would cite his Stanislavskian preparation for the part as crucial: It was out of the necessity of playing this young Russian soldier, and the inventive detail and factual information which my method of working on a part insists on (it is based on the so-called ‘Method’ […]) that I learned in detail of the Russian-Soviet life.22 These details included ‘the poverty and the misery of the people of Russia before the revolution’, the basic principles of socialism, the accomplishments of collective farming, and so on: At the end of the run I was so emotionally and psychologically involved with the character I was playing that I was ripe to become a Communist merely as a gesture of friendship with our Soviet allies.23 He left the party in June 1947 but continued to be actively involved in a number of more or less related social movements and associations. Here

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were the makings of a poster-boy of the progressive Left: Wanamaker was handsome, talented, smart, successful and – at this point – unafraid to be outspoken. In the autumn of 1947, he joined Gene Kelly, Danny Kaye, Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart and others in their dramatically coordinated attendance of HUAC’s hearings on ‘subversive activity in Motion Pictures’. He was also unafraid to work with incriminated artists. His first trip to England in the summer of 1949 was to make Christ in Concrete (or Give Us This Day) directed by Edward Dmytryk, one of the Hollywood Ten, a story set in New York but filmed entirely in London because the indicted director, producer and writer were unable to raise the funds in the US. On this trip he made a pilgrimage to the site of the Globe, only to discover the obscure plaque on a brewery wall. ‘Our stay in England was ecstatically happy. We loved the people, the country, and their way of life and work.’ While in London, he saw and admired the work of the Old Vic company and, on return to the US, he helped initiate the Festival Theatre of New York, which was ‘intended to be an American Version of a repertory company modelled on the Old Vic of London, which I had seen and wanted to emulate in the United States’. Although barely out of his twenties, he already displayed a strong streak of cultural entrepreneurship, the will to translate and import across cultures. But there was no space for Shakespeare in the opening season of this repertory experiment on Broadway: ‘The Festival Theatre presented four plays on Broadway in repertory style […] classic plays by Ibsen, Strindberg, Brieux and one modern play by Lynn Riggs’.24 Wanamaker’s burgeoning reputation for a dynamic stage presence that was quintessentially modern, edgy and American – ‘the most brilliant expositor on our stage of highly integrated, inhibited dramatic characters’25 – led to further offers to return to England. Laurence Olivier had previously invited him to play opposite Vivien Leigh in the London production of Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire, but Wanamaker had been unavailable; undeterred, Olivier repeated the invitation in 1952, this time to direct and star in Clifford Odets’s The Country Girl (renamed Winter Journey for English audiences), with Michael Redgrave and Googie Withers. Redgrave and Wanamaker were both synonymous with naturalistic acting, but this production allowed London audiences to enjoy their strongly contrasting styles – the opening scene of the production, ‘conducted under a working light on a bare stage, may be ranked among the peaks of post-war acting’.26 Notoriously, the two had regular and heated debates offstage about the application of the Method. Wanamaker (as director) demanded that Redgrave write out his character’s full life story before rehearsals



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began, just as Wanamaker (as actor) had done for his own character (and would do, as we shall see, when he played Iago). Redgrave, however, believed in a less methodological, more instinctive Stanislavskianism and refused. The quarrels continued throughout the run and must have given an extra competitive frisson to the scene that they nightly improvised anew. In more tranquil retrospect, Redgrave would admit: ‘Not the least of personal influences on my work has been Sam Wanamaker. A great quarrel, like a great love affair, sharpens the intelligence.’27 Throughout the six-month run of Winter Journey Wanamaker was aware that he was about to be summoned to testify in front of HUAC and at this point he decided to resettle permanently in England. As he recounted in the third-person, autobiographical screenplay treatment: With a subpoena waiting to be served on him the moment he landed in America, the Hero/Victim is confronted with The Moral Dilemma: To appear before the Committee and to face the demand to betray and inform on others whose only crime, as his own, had been their dedication as loyal citizens of their country in espousing causes based on democratic American ideals […] To refuse to Name them, to refuse to be a FINK, a SQUEALER, an informer, a JUDAS, meant the destruction of his burgeoning and successful CAREER, with all its ramifications for his family. […] He chooses to remain in exile, a refugee from America – an ironic REVERSAL OF HISTORY!28 But his official version for consumption by the US Embassy was that he had chosen to relocate because he liked England and England liked him, and ‘there was no one in the theatre in England who could correctly and honestly interpret American plays for the British people’. In the affidavit prepared to justify his continuing residency in the UK (and so avoid repatriation to America), he quoted the eminent theatre critic Brooks Atkinson’s opinion that the cultural divide between the US and Britain required middle-men: ‘To conduct our affairs harmoniously, all we need is a staff of interpreters, fluent in both the English and American languages’.29 Had it ever been required, the success of the affidavit depended on the reader being persuaded that America and Britain’s interests were best served not by repatriation and subpoena, but by allowing Wanamaker to stay in London as a cultural go-between. Wanamaker’s correspondence with the young Charles Marowitz in July 1957 confirms that this was increasingly how he viewed his function. Marowitz introduced himself as Director of the American Club Theatre

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(which existed only as a letterhead), and set about his adopted homeland like a superannuated Holden Caulfield: Of one or two things I am unshakeably convinced. For instance: that British theatre is fundamentally phony and shallow; that the British audiences appreciate the vitality of American writing and American acting because vitality is the one quality they never really had and cannot instinctively produce.30 Wanamaker agreed with this diagnosis. (Nothing concrete came of this correspondence in the late 1950s, but Wanamaker would go on to appreciate and admire Marowitz’s Shakespeare collages and would invite his countryman to work in the ‘Tent’ seasons at the Globe in the early 1970s). A year later, Wanamaker told a young Israeli theatre director seeking advice on where he should train that he should go to France, Germany or the US: ‘In theatrical respects I believe the British theatre is essentially reactionary and old fashioned’.31 British theatre needed a kick in the pants, a transfusion of American vitality. Wanamaker never saw this kick coming from productions of the national playwright. It would come either from the New World or from East Berlin and Brecht. Wanamaker’s 1955 production of The Threepenny Opera (Royal Court, 1955) was hailed by Harold Hobson as ‘one of the most exciting things seen in London for some time […] Brecht has invented a theatrical technique which is, in a double sense, revolutionary; and, at the Court Theatre, we are seeing it in action for the first time on a West End professional stage’.32 As Wanamaker subsequently wrote to Brecht: ‘There is no question of the fact that we have opened a wedge through the wall which will permit the “Brecht Plays” to be produced. Already one critic is arranging to organize an anti-Brecht club in fear that too many of your plays will be done now’.33 Wanamaker had no significant involvement with Shakespeare or classical drama at all throughout this period. His one intervention might have come as a producer. When he saw Glen Byam Shaw’s 1954 production of Troilus and Cressida at the Stratford Memorial Theatre, he brainstormed on the back of his programme a plan to make TV films of Stratford and Old Vic productions. The entire production would be filmed, then edited down to sixty or ninety minutes, ‘a faithful and aesthetically satisfying reproduction of the play on film’ – or put another way, a tabloid version – initially to be broadcast on American TV before distribution to ‘art house’ cinemas, student organizations, film libraries ‘and groups anywhere in the world for whom such a film would be of interest and instruction’. Alas, Artistic



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Director Anthony Quayle wrote back that he and Glen Byam Shaw were not interested.34 Had this plan come off, Wanamaker would have served as a two-way transatlantic conduit, bringing American new writing to English audiences while channelling English classical theatre to a mass US audience. Nevertheless, by the late 1950s he could cite his cultural entrepreneurship as an example of patriotism: Since I have been in England, I have committed no act and taken part in no activity that could in any way be construed as hostile to the interests of my country. I have, on the contrary, supported my country in every way and have endeavoured in my professional life to advance the interests of the American theatre and to put before a wider public American ideals and the American way of life.35 On 25 March 1957, Sam and Charlotte Wanamaker were granted permission for indefinite stay in the United Kingdom.

A People’s Palace of Culture: Liverpool, 1957–9 The NEW [underlined twice] Shakespeare ‘THE MOST BEAUTIFUL THEATRE IN BRITAIN’ SIR JOHN GUIELGUD [sic] ‘THE MOST COMFORTABLE THEATRE IN BRITAIN’ LORD HAREWOOD ‘THE BEST ENTERTAINMENT IN BRITAIN’ a promise from SAM WANAMAKER36 In the winter of 1957, Wanamaker acted in a production of Michael V. Gazzo’s A Hatful of Rain that toured venues throughout England including, in February, the Pigalle Theatre (formerly The Shakespeare) of Fraser Street, Liverpool. For most of its 70-year history, the theatre had served as a venue for variety shows but had recently refashioned itself as a club theatre. Wanamaker was bowled over by the crimson, gilt and crystal décor, the plush corridors, the oil paintings adorning the foyer, and above all, by the intimate 1888 auditorium, the most beautiful he had ever seen. A few weeks later, the Pigalle Theatre Club was liquidated and Wanamaker set about acquiring the lease, an ambition underwritten by the wealth of Anna Deere Wiman, daughter of Broadway impresario Dwight Deere Wiman and heiress to a farming-implements fortune. By April 1957, Deere

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Wiman was chairman and Wanamaker managing director of the theatre. Wanamaker told a press conference in October 1957 that the theatre would not be run for profit, that its eclectic repertoire would combine plays banned by the Lord Chamberlain with family-friendly musicals, and that its success rested entirely on the goodwill and active support of the Liverpudlian general public. Only members and associate members would be allowed to see unlicensed plays; the rest of the repertoire would be open to all. Wanamaker habitually referred to the building as the New Shakespeare Cultural Centre. The innovation lay in keeping the space open to visitors for as many hours per day as possible. Its aim, more or less unprecedented at the time, was ‘to put into effect a concept for the use of a theatre building as a social and arts centre, first as a means of reviving interest in the living theatre and secondly to fill the gap in the social and cultural life of a large and thriving community’.37 In addition to the beautiful main house, the centre comprised an art gallery (open from 11 a.m. until 30 minutes after the evening performance); a library and TV room; a top-class restaurant including a smorgasbord (on, it was claimed, the only revolving table of its kind in the world). It was recognized that not every Liverpudlian playgoer could stretch to 14s. 6d. for a four-course dinner, so a separate café offered ‘hot Shakespeares’ – a species of frankfurter – and beer. It attracted a great deal of national interest and approbation; reviewing the opening production of Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge, Kenneth Tynan wrote in The Observer that: ‘For sheer visual beauty, inside and out, it has no peer in Britain […] not since Donizetti have the arts wooed Liverpool so fervently’.38 When the New Shakespeare opened in October 1957, Wanamaker saw it as a personally momentous event. Liverpool, he felt, had put an end to his wandering: ‘I will have a home, a sense of security. No artist can work in an atmosphere of fear and insecurity.’ As he explained in the first edition of Prompt, the theatre’s quarterly magazine, the moment of acquisition felt like a culmination: Here, at last, in tangible and exquisite bricks and mortar, was a ‘home’, a place of beauty in which beauty could be created. A place where all the ideas stored up in the little pockets of the brain and in the fantasies of the imagination could be dusted off and tried. And in Liverpool – a city whose vitality was strong and pulsating, a tough, tender city like the one in which I was born and raised – Chicago. A city of ships and docks and water, of slums and cathedrals, of factories and countryside, of negro



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and Chinese, merchant families and aristocracy, Scots, Irish, Welsh peppering the blood of the native Lancastrians. A city that supported a fine Art Gallery, a University, a College of Art, a Philharmonia Orchestra, and once boasted a dozen theatres.39 As he told the Theatre’s board in March 1958: For myself, the theatre represents the fulfillment of an all consuming desire for a theatrical home, to which I am prepared to devote the maximum of my time and energies for the rest of my life.40 When Sir John Gielgud sent best wishes for the theatre’s opening night, Wanamaker responded: ‘This theatrical enterprise is the most thrilling in my career, because for once I feel my own selfish interests merge with a noble and high objective’.41 There was some tension in the ways Wanamaker conceptualized the project. On the one hand, this was to be an aspirational, even elite space. Flyers announced the New Shakespeare as ‘the theatrical Glyndebourne of Great Britain’. In a letter to Colin Grant of the Pigalle, Wanamaker wrote: Our plan is to make the theatre special and unique in keeping with its superb appointments and aristocratic décor. A theatre for the BEST elements in Liverpool (and everyone strives to be the best) – a theatre which will bring to Liverpool and Manchester and the surrounding areas plays, productions and entertainment which are not normally seen in the community.42 On the other hand, the plans for the New Shakespeare represented a progressive ‘social ideal’: ‘it must be understood that our vision of a cultural community centre was realised without the guidance of past example or precedent anywhere in the world’.43 The New Shakespeare was predicated – as the Globe would later be – on inclusivity and community outreach. This, it should be remembered, was some years before the Labour Government’s White Paper of 1965, A Policy for the Arts, in which the arts centre concept was hailed as ‘the perfect instrument for the democratization of the arts’, a small, flexible and local space in which, as the White Paper put it, an ‘agreeable environment and a jealous regard for the maintenance of standards are not incompatible’. This would be part of the ‘new architecture of leisure’, in which enlightened plans to improve the quality of life were coupled with social policy.44 In Liverpool, Wanamaker schmoozed

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with MPs, industrialists, the great and the good, but he also took pains to offer the widest possible access to the centre. Trades union officials on Merseyside formed a special committee to encourage the 200,000 trade unionists in the area to become group members of the New Shakespeare Theatre Club. The Liverpool Education Committee approved a recommendation that children should be allowed, about twice a year, to attend the theatre on Friday afternoons during school hours at a nominal charge. Labour’s Merseyside Voice saw the potential for a creative centre ‘like the theatre for which Shakespeare wrote’, attracting ‘not only the lords but the groundlings, not only Liverpool’s merchant princes but her dockers, her engineers, her poor girls’. The paper approved of the choice of A View from the Bridge as the opening production; a show about immigrant Italian dockers in New York was ‘magnificently designed to bring in a working class audience’ and would speak to a city in which ‘for a century Irish immigrants have carried the buck in our docks’.45 Labour’s Merseyside Voice was not alone in seeing the political potential of the enterprise and of Wanamaker’s work. MI5 and Home Office documents released in September 2009 revealed that Wanamaker was under surveillance throughout the 1950s. He came to the notice of the Metropolitan Police in December 1954 for his strong associations with Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop, ‘a dramatic society with communist connections, which he described as “the most exciting theatre group I have ever seen”’. (Redgrave and Wanamaker had seen the company rehearsing in Manchester and went on jointly – but under Redgrave’s name – to present the company’s first London appearance.) An MI5 memo of the previous month had recommended Wanamaker for internment ‘in the event of an emergency’. One communiqué of 17 September 1956 noted that Wanamaker had ‘not come to our notice as being in contact with other Communists in this country since February 1955’, but cautioned that ‘WANAMAKER is extremely conscious of the need to avoid open association with Communist Party activities until such time as he is established in this country’. Following his naturalization a year later, it would have been expected that Wanamaker might become more open. On 15 October 1957, Special Branch reported that ‘information has come to hand regarding the formation of a NEW SHAKESPEARE THEATRE CLUB to function at Fraser Street, Liverpool […] There is little doubt that this Theatre and Club is intended to be a vehicle for disseminating extreme left wing political propaganda under the guise of culture and progressive education, and if successful, will be a great asset to the Communist Party’. Memos also revealed that in conversation Wanamaker had claimed that if



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the New Shakespeare proved to be a success, he would be strongly interested in opening similar ventures in Cardiff and New York City.46 But what role would Shakespeare play in this innovative and, to some, suspicious space? One of Wanamaker’s first tasks was to rebrand the venue; he did this by asking the readers of the Liverpool Daily Echo and Post to suggest a new name. This attracted over 1200 entries, many of which (‘Wanaspeare’, ‘New American Shakespeare’, ‘Uncle Sam’s Cabin’, ‘Amerispeare’) jokily referenced the venue’s transatlantic hybridity. Fiftyeight Liverpudlians suggested ‘The Globe’. The ‘New Shakespeare’ was finally chosen, although the archives reveal there was probably a miscount and some variation of ‘The Wanamaker Theatre’ actually received the most votes from the Liverpool public. That public appeared to have two expectations: that the theatre would be synonymous with Shakespearean drama and that its fortunes would depend on its charismatic American leader. The first expectation would be short-lived. Not a word of live Shakespeare was heard in the lifetime of the New Shakespeare (although contemporary Shakespearean films by Kozintsev, Welles and Kurosawa were screened). The theatrical repertoire consisted almost entirely of new writing, much of it American. It started as it meant to go on, with A View from the Bridge (with Wanamaker both directing and playing Mr Alfieri), followed by Robert Anderson’s Tea and Sympathy – both plays were under the Lord Chamberlain’s ban for fully public performance, so were given members-only performances. A programme note for Tea and Sympathy, presumably written by Wanamaker, advised the audience that the play was written ‘after the wave of mass hysteria associated with McCarthyism and Senate Committees’, and while it ‘deals frankly with the problems of homosexuality’ is actually about victimization more generally. Two more populist productions followed, both of post-war hits first staged in New York – Finian’s Rainbow (1947) and The Rainmaker (1954) – and thus the eclectic if balanced pattern of the repertoire was set. If Wanamaker had produced Shakespeare during his tenure in Liverpool, there are strong grounds for thinking it would have been very different from what we might now describe as Globe Shakespeare. At this point in his career, Wanamaker had no interest in original practices. In an interview in Encore in late 1957, he claimed that contemporary accounts of any classic text should be informed by everything we have learnt as a culture since that text was first performed: ‘today we understand more because we have a better understanding of psychological and sociological influence, and a more scientific approach to society and to the individual’; or, to paraphrase the Chicago World’s Fair tagline, we have made centuries of progress since

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Shakespeare wrote. By way of current example, he pointed to Michael Benthall’s production of Hamlet at the Old Vic, ‘as near a definitive production of Hamlet as anyone’s ever likely to get and the key is Freudian. Look at the bedroom scene with his mother, for example.’ The interviewer countered that such a reading is reductive and only explained the play on one level, ‘like saying that a contour map is the only way of picturing a mountain range’. ‘True,’ responded Wanamaker, ‘but we can only produce Shakespeare the way we understand him today. We can’t know what was in his mind and we can’t produce him the way he was produced in his time because we don’t know and it wouldn’t mean anything if we did. We are different people’.47 With the work of contemporary playwrights, by contrast, there was always the possibility of accessing intentions and striving for the most authentic production possible. When Harold Hobson panned Wanamaker’s direction of Tennessee Williams’s The Rose Tattoo, Wanamaker wrote directly to the author: ‘I realize how terribly busy you must be, but I believe it is extremely important for me at any rate to know whether I have correctly or wrongly interpreted what I found in your text.’48 In a letter of complaint to Hobson, Wanamaker insisted that ‘rather than misinterpreting the author […] I submit that I, as a director, have been faithful to his intentions by producing the play as a comedy and indeed, in certain moments, bordering on farce’ (a description which seems to echo Chekhov’s rebuke to Stanislavski’s oversolemn approach to The Cherry Orchard).49 Equally, Wanamaker was very keen to produce The Threepenny Opera in as authentically Brechtian fashion as possible. In autumn 1955 he spent eight days in East Berlin and ‘nearly every waking moment of that time at the Shiffbauerdamm [sic] Theatre with Brecht and Neher’: I had decided that to do this production full justice it had to be presented as the author intended which demanded as full an understanding of his technique as possible and more: a conviction that these techniques were right for this play.50 With Shakespeare, however, this striving for authenticity struck Wanamaker as both futile and regressive. A second contrast between Wanamaker’s tenure at the New Shakespeare and the theatrical dynamics, forty years later, of Shakespeare’s Globe concerned the management’s attitude to audience behaviour. The Globe has, of course, experimented with audience participation since its inception. But while the New Shakespeare sought to be culturally inclusive



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and diverse, Wanamaker introduced a hard line on audience discipline. Towards the end of the theatre’s short lifespan, The Times reflected: When that theatrical adventure, the New Shakespeare Theatre Club, opened here 15 months ago someone dubbed it the puritan theatre for daring to demand a high standard of audience discipline. New members were instructed that it was not intended that plays should be upset by such theatrical vices as the rustle of chocolate wrappings, smoking, or late-coming.51 Soon after the theatre’s opening, Wanamaker had reasoned with his public: ‘You don’t smoke in church, in court, or at the opera, so why in the theatre?’ (There was something puritanical, too, in Wanamaker’s policy that the film club would screen no movies of ‘violence, horror, science fiction or exaggerated sex’.) This was all too much for libertarians such as A. Livesey from Roxton, Bedfordshire, who complained of Wanamaker’s ‘unpleasant display of arrogance’. Mr Livesey himself did not indulge in chocolate, but declared: I shall not hesitate, if the mood takes me, to consume up to a total of two pounds of soft-centred chocolates an act. If he finds this behaviour unpleasantly reminiscent of the groundlings at the Globe Theatre, he might do well to reflect that the Globe proved a highly successful enterprise.52 Wanamaker might indeed have come to reflect on the success of other theatrical enterprises. From its opening, the Shakespeare Theatre was beset by budgetary concerns, many of which appear to have evolved from financial mismanagement, which Wanamaker blamed on inefficient administration and some dismal failures of accountancy. In his statement to the Board, he was especially reproachful of his business partner, Anna Deere Wiman: The Managing Director [SW] was constantly being harassed and thwarted by the unpredictable and irresponsible behaviour of his chief fellow director, Miss Wiman, preventing the formation of a long range programme and the control over expenditure.53 In January 1959, the Liverpool Daily Post reported on ‘the remarkable spectacle of some 200 theatre lovers, congregated on a Sunday afternoon,

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vieing [sic] to give money away in defence of what has quickly become a cultural institution on Merseyside’; £5 notes were flung across the footlights and hundreds of pounds raised in hours. But despite the kind of last-gasp fundraising drive that would become such a feature of the Globe campaign, despite the urgent telegrams to Sir Kenneth Clark, then Chairman of the Arts Council, stressing that this closure would ‘DAMAGE CAUSE OF WHOLE PROVINCIAL THEATRE’, the New Shakespeare experiment came to an unhappy end in February 1959. A few months previously, Wanamaker had agreed to play Iago in Stratford-upon-Avon as a brief sabbatical from Liverpool. With the demise of the New Shakespeare and the loss of what he had hoped would be his artistic home for many years, what Wanamaker would do when the Stratford season came to a close was worryingly unclear.

Iago: Stratford-upon-Avon, 1959 That, in the shadow of this giant [Paul Robeson as Othello], Sam Wanamaker’s nasal crew-cut Iago should not only have survived but shone is to the eternal glory of Mr W., the United States, and the Method. (Robert Wraight, The Star, 8 April 1959)54 Wanamaker made his Shakespearean debut as part of the celebrations of Cleveland’s centennial in 1936. It was typical of his Zelig-like knack of coinciding with History that his second appearance, as Iago in 1959, would also coincide with a centenary. It was eighty years since the first festival at the Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, but 1959–60 marked the institution’s hundredth season (in 1910–32, there were two seasons most years). The centenary was celebrated by assembling a starry company – Dame Edith Evans, Sir Laurence Olivier, Charles Laughton and Paul Robeson – supported by such rising talent as Robert Hardy, Albert Finney, Ian Holm, Julian Glover and Zoe Caldwell, under the direction of Tyrone Guthrie, Glen Byam Shaw, Peter Hall and Tony Richardson. It was Richardson – a hip, unconventional young Royal Court director – who was charged with producing an Othello that would bring Paul Robeson back to the UK for the first time since 1950, and that would feature another estranged left-wing American – Wanamaker – opposite him as Iago (Figure 12). This was by some distance the most illustrious and challenging Shakespearean stage role of Wanamaker’s career. The fifty performances



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scheduled for the first eighteen weeks of the festival sold so well in advance that the Birmingham Mail described this Othello as a ‘Shakespearean “My Fair Lady” ’, the classical theatre’s answer to the musical that had played to packed houses at Drury Lane for a year already. It says much about the public interest provoked by the production (as well as the health and centrality of newsprint) that over fifty national and regional newspapers sent critics to cover the opening night. Alan Dent spoke for many when he wondered if Wanamaker, ‘so alert and bantam-cock-like in nervous American parts’, would ‘be able to cope with the complexities of Iago’ (News Chronicle, 8.4.59). Much was made of the fact that, more than any other actor in the season or the country, Wanamaker was synonymous with the Method, and indeed his personal archive contains a number of scraps of paper relating to his preparation for the role. His manuscript notes on the part begin with a list of names of acquaintances, each of whom in some way struck him as ‘Variations on the Theme of Iago’. To this unflattering club belonged Cecil Tennant, Jose Ferrer, Hannah Weinstein and Binkie Beaumont. Revealing also is the set of notes he made in which one can overhear him thinking his way through the back-story of the character. Psychological factors: He’s age 28 – might have been a bastard. Since the age of 12 a galley boy on a ship Then a young (16) mercenary [?] in the army of another state Returned to Venice at 19 an experienced soldier (MAN) – campaigns behind him – battle – killing – death – women – syphilis – wounded Mother dead Relatives couldn’t care less Venice full of [courtesans – the very rich – the very poor – ugly and déclassé.] He wanted respectability – marry – and seeking ‘to better himself’ – buy a better position in the army – Emilia – was a small merchant’s daughter. Respectable, Naïve – not terribly attractive but sexually frustrated They met somehow – he got her pregnant – they married against her father’s wishes – the child died at birth – His temporary interest in his wife (having [something] her – and her dowry – and thus having moved up in social scale) soon abated, and after the loss of the child, and the danger of health and after miscarriages – he never bothers much with any sex life with her – and sought sexual fulfillment elsewhere + got it –

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He “used” her the way he used all human beings – to get something – to make use of them – never for themselves as friends, or out of kindness or concern, or love, not to “give” anything of himself.55



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There was perhaps an autobiographical dimension to his interpretation of Iago both as a scarred and rootless individual and as a manipulative egoist who uses others merely as instruments; at his lowest points, he would apologize to Charlotte for the fact that he was cursed with self-absorption, ‘my fears, my needs, my desires, my gratification’. In the same letter, he described the difficulties they were having in their sexual life as deriving from his growing up with ‘a street concept of sex as being dirty and immoral, that real sexual gratification was perversion – that fucking (a Dirty word) was something you did with dirty loose women – like in the movies’.56 When he wrote short sketches of the main characters in Othello, he linked the two long-suffering women: ‘Emilia: Needing love and affection and not getting it from her husband – willing to do anything to get it from him – debasing herself – Charlotte maybe.’ Several sheets survive which detail the way in which he translated this psychological work into concrete moment-by-moment action. Each of Iago’s first three scenes is broken down under the following subheadings: TIME / PLACE / CHARACTERS / OBJECTIVE / CONDITIONS / PHYSICAL ACTION / COSTUMES AND PROPS / PRECEDING IMPROVISATION. The scene is then subdivided into a number of SECTIONS (or beats). So, for example, the opening scene of the play: PART ONE: 1.1: “I HATE THE MOOR” ABDUCTION TIME: MIDNIGHT PLACE: A VENETIAN STREET – BEFORE BRABANTIO’S HOUSE CHARACTERS: RODERIGO BRABANTIO OTHERS OBJECTIVE: POISON HIS (OTHELLO’S) DELIGHTS “THOUGH THAT HIS JOY BE JOY – YET THROW SUCH CHANGES OF VEXATION ON’T AS IT MAY LOSE SOME COLOUR” CONDITIONS: EVERYONE’S ASLEEP – DARKNESS TO DEAL WITH RODERIGO’S ANGER – HE’S LOUD BEFORE BRABANTIO’S HOUSE PHYSICAL ACTION: TO MANEOUVRE [sic] RODERIGO INTO THE VICINITY OF B’S HOUSE COMING FROM PUB – USUAL RENDEZVOUS

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COSTUMES AND PROPS: OFF DUTY UNIFORM SWORD DAGGER – NO HELMET. (HAT?) GLOVES? EQUIVALENT OF HIP FLASK? PLACE FOR MONEY PRECEDING IMPROVISATION: A MEETING WAS ARRANGED AT THE INN TO GO ON TO BRABANTIO’S HOUSE AND SERENADE DESDEMONA OR BRIBE A SERVANT TO TAKE A BILLET DOUX TO HER. IAGO HAD BEEN INSTRUCTED TO ARRANGE SOME ROOMS AT THE SAGITTARY FOR THE MOOR – HE ARRIVED WITH DESDEMONA, WINKED AT IAGO AND WENT IN WITH HER. ONE OF HIS GUARDS TOLD HIM [IAGO] OF THE MARRIAGE. HE THEN HAD TO MEET RODERIGO AND TELL HIM WHAT HAD HAPPENED. SECTION 1: RODERIGO AND IAGO (URGENT AND SINCERE) “S’BLOOD BUT YOU WILL NOT HEAR ME” TO MAKE RODERIGO BELIEVE THAT HE HATES THE MOOR AND DID NOT KNOW OF THE ROMANCE. SECTION II: THE ALARUM – BRABANTIO’S AWAKENING MALICIOUS “YOUR DAUGHTER AND THE MOOR ARE NOW MAKING THE BEAST WITH TWO BACKS” (FUN) TO PANIC BRABANTIO AND CREATE (TO HIDE) A HORRIFIC PICTURE OF HIS DAUGHTER’S PLIGHT SECTION III: RODERIGO AND IAGO “FAREWELL, I MUST LEAVE THEE” TO GET OUT OF THE WAY QUICKLY AND BE WITH OTHELLO WHEN THE “POISONING OF HIS DELIGHT” BEGINS Sense of accomplishment, pleasure, fun, exciting This unit-by-unit approach was complemented by a minute, sometimes eccentric attention to detail in terms of the shaping and phrasing of Iago’s speeches: When the blood is made dull with the act of sport, there should be again to inflame it and give satiety a fresh appetite, loveliness [sic] in favour, sympathy in years, manners and beauties; all which the Moor is defective



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in: now, for want of these requir’d conveniences, her delicate tenderness will find itself abus’d, begin to heave the gorge, disrelish and abhor the Moor; very nature will instruct her to it, and compel her to some second choice.57 M. St Clare Byrne would complain of the monotony of Wanamaker’s delivery, of words being bitten off and spat out ‘with a detached and equal emphasis that becomes extraordinarily irritating when every preposition was ranked with nouns and verbs for value’.58 The production opened to very mixed reviews. Wanamaker’s performance appears to have fruitfully, if confusingly, seesawed between introversion and extroversion, between the most obvious symptoms of the Method to something more akin to the presentational style he might have learnt in Cleveland, but which was now more readily associated with either Brecht or Olivier. Philip Hope-Wallace thought the performance ‘loaded down with a great deal of tiresome naturalistic detail and a positively flamboyant display of “relaxation”. At times he seemed to be modeling himself on Sir Laurence Olivier’s Richard III’ (The Guardian, 8.4.59). Alan Brien: ‘He behaves like a Method Actor who has been told by Lee Strasberg – “Now imagine you are inside Laurence Olivier” ’ (The Spectator, 10.4.59). Other reviewers felt the influence of the music hall: ‘His most effective moments are those in which he comes down to the footlights and makes a clean breast of his intentions’ (The Times, 8.4.59); here he ranged the audience ‘with the speculative eye of a Max Miller [and] delivered his soliloquies sometimes with infuriating casualness, sometimes like an East End wide boy selling stolen calico’ (Evening News, Felix Barker 8.4.59). M. St Clare Byrne was struck by the sheer plausibility of the seduction: I do not think I have ever known this scene more quietly, naturally and credibly presented. The concerted playing of Mr. Robeson and of Sam Wanamaker as Iago was perfect in its timing […] and I have never found it so extraordinarily gripping.59 Critics complained of the gimmickry of the direction and the design, of the four enormous Great Danes led across the stage for Brabantio’s pursuit of Othello, of Ian Holm’s asthmatic, crippled Duke, of the almost permanently tenebrous lighting, of the setting of the last act on a perilously elevated platform. On the evidence of interviews, Wanamaker fully supported Richardson’s approach to Shakespeare: ‘His direction emphasizes a much more direct and communicable quality in Shakespeare; a

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naturalistic approach which makes the drama easily understandable by the public in terms of to-day, rather than according to the classic conceptions’ (Liverpool Daily Post, 13.4.59). In what was perhaps an attempt to get his retaliation in first before press night, Wanamaker riffed on his impatience with ‘traditionalists’, the keepers of the flame ‘who walk around Stratford as if it were hallowed ground and throw up their arms in horror when one suggests some new approach to Shakespeare’. As an American, he found British respect for tradition and heritage quaintly endearing, but: The past is only useful in terms of the present. It’s no good listening to Shakespeare and hearing marvellous modulations of sounds. Things have changed since Shakespeare’s time. But human feelings, fears, hopes, ambitions, are the same. They have to be presented in a modern manner.60 In his preparatory notes, Wanamaker had asked himself why Othello should be considered a tragedy. After several pages, he arrived at the conclusion: [The play is] a warning of the destructive force around us of cynicism, hate + bitterness in our fellow man – and in ourselves. A degree of realistic cynicism is necessary – a recognition of reality without loss of ideals and high aims – (a realistic view of the world in order not to be destroyed in the process of building towards an ideal society).61 There is a Soviet whiff about the need for Art to furnish some optimistic message: Othello is an educative warning rather than a decadent chronicle of unalterable fate and suffering. Nevertheless, the process of building towards an ideal society continued to engage Wanamaker. In the light of Harold Macmillan’s visit to the Soviet Union and Khrushchev’s to the US, and continuously inspired by the cross-cultural ambassadorship of Robeson, Wanamaker wrote to N. A. Mikhailov, Minister of Culture in Moscow, suggesting an Anglo-American-Soviet movie: The theme of our film is to be based on your own slogan: Peace and Firendship [sic]. […] The film can be treated in many ways from comedy to drama, farce to melodrama, satire to adventure. Whatever the treatment of the final story it must set down an American or Englishman or both into some part of the Soviet Union, bringing with them all the typical attitudes formulated during the post war period. In the process of their contact with the Soviet people and their country, adjustments are



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made, attitudes gradually change and a new understanding grows which holds a promise of friendship. We envision a sequel to be made with the above circumstances more or less reversed.62 As with many of his projects, this one would break down or fade away to be replaced by others. But by the age of forty, Wanamaker could already reflect on some signal achievements of cultural entrepreneurship: he had brought Brecht to the West End, US drama to London and Liverpool, and the Method to Stratford. And, although he now had designs on the AngloAmerican-Soviet axis, his next Shakespearean project would be to take the Old World back to the New.

Macbeth: Chicago, 1964 In mid–1964, Wanamaker accepted an invitation to return to his alma mater, the Goodman Memorial Theater and School of Drama, Chicago, to direct and star in a limited three-week run of Macbeth. This would be the last time in his life that Wanamaker directed or acted in a production of Shakespeare. A very limited rehearsal time, a constrained budget, and the inclusion of many student actors in the cast should have conspired to create a minimalist production. Indeed, in the months leading up to the production, Wanamaker received a series of very strong steers from John Reich of the Goodman Theater: My friendly advice as I told you is to forget the projection system. I think the reason beside the money will be clear to you after you have studied the rehearsal schedule. Maronek is an excellent designer who can say a lot with very little onstage. Please make it an actor’s, not a designer’s play. Everybody in the U.S. is now greatly influenced by the bare stages at Minneapolis, Stratford, Ontario and Chichester. And we do have some actors who really can speak.63 Reich later pleaded with Wanamaker ‘to avoid scene shifts as much as possible’ and to make the action continuous with only one intermission; ‘please’, he added, ‘think of working with as small a cast as possible’.64 Wanamaker had other ideas. The two men could at least agree on a broad interpretation. The action would be set in a primitive epoch of furs, broadswords and abundant facial hair; the programme carried the portentous announcement ‘Time:

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In a Barbaric Age’. This historical distancing would seek paradoxically to unleash the full contemporary turbulence of what Reich described as ‘the basic emotion of our time: FEAR’. In the introduction to the edition he used for his promptbook, Wanamaker underlined the observation: ‘When no man can trust himself, or anyone else, all are in a sense “traitors”, no matter what they do.’ This was Macbeth read through the lens of the Cold War. (Had Wanamaker been aware of the extent to which he had been the subject of surveillance in preceding years, he would no doubt have heavily inflected Macbeth’s confession that ‘there’s not one but in his house / I keep a servant fee’d’ [3.4.130–1].) But it is typical of the caution Wanamaker exercised on his return trips to the US that he does not seem to have entertained the idea of an overtly political production of the play, nor, apparently, was this subtext of fear and treachery extroverted into any concrete theatrical moment that forced the audience to draw parallels between Shakespeare’s script and contemporary America. Most of his energy was devoted to crafting a boldly theatrical experience in which the faux-barbarism of the costumes would be counterpointed by the technical sophistication of the staging. Here as elsewhere, Wanamaker’s artistic attitude to authentic staging was heavily pragmatic. His edition of the play featured an appendix on ‘Shakespeare and his Theatre’ and here Wanamaker underscored most of the following paragraph in red: For performances the stage would be hung with banners and tapestries, or, for a tragedy, with black. The actors were gorgeously and expensively costumed, and they used elaborate properties, not only ‘hand-props’ like weapons and torches, but portable thrones, altars, and the like. They made frequent use of sound effects for thunder or the noise of battle. Music, a widely cultivated art at the time, was important. In Shakespeare’s plays it was an essential element of his theatrical ‘orchestration.’ He used it to change the mood, to stress a rhythm, or to punctuate the movement of the story. It is clear that this passage held some kind of authority for Wanamaker. Even if he chose to skim over the words about expensive costumes, he took the emphasis on the acoustic world of Shakespeare’s stage as a cue to create a complicated and busy sound design. This was literal in places (owl shriek), but mostly non-diegetic: his working book records that ‘Dagger sounds’ preceded Macbeth’s words ‘Is this a dagger…?’ and ‘Abstract sounds of high winds, turbulence, earthquakes, bird’s clamour’ filled the air to mark the end of 2.3. At other moments, the auditorium was suffused with an eerie musique concrète.65



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Despite Reich’s earlier pleas to keep it simple and to create an actor’s rather than designer’s production, Wanamaker insisted on a revolve stage, a dangerously complex multi-level staging, and expensive projections (Figure 13). He ignored the proffered examples of the open stages of Minneapolis, Stratford (Ontario) and Chichester. The ‘small cast’ demanded by Reich ultimately numbered no fewer than thirty-four. Critical reception was ambivalent. This was ‘visually exciting […] a “Macbeth” that looks like no other “Macbeth” […] Shakespeare sculpted and chisled [sic] out of steel – a fine piece of abstract modern art’ (Syse), a ‘pipe-fitter’s nightmare of rods, ramps, steps, screens and projecting platforms’ (Christiansen) which a sub-gymnastic cast navigated with barely concealed trepidation. The evening was ‘frenetic with invention’, ‘by Chicago standards, far-out’, a ‘“Macbeth” with imagination, gaudy, daring, and a European willingness to put aside the clichés of tradition in search of heightened dramatic expression’.66 However enthusiastic some critics were about the exotic and inventive aspects of Wanamaker’s direction, this was not on the whole a happy experience for the homecoming prodigal. The student ensemble proved less than professional: co-director Patrick Henry wrote a letter to the cast

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in which he complained of ‘amateurism and sloppiness’ and ‘a dismal debacle of dullness and self-indulgence’ in one performance. Wanamaker and he had ‘outlined reactions’ for the ensemble that had been ignored: ‘Ray Sezegho climbs the ladder in the course of his excitement [after discovery of Duncan’s murder]; upon reaching the top, he freezes – hand outstretched – for nearly 45 seconds until his next reaction which is to climb down the ladder’.67 Wanamaker’s own performance seems to have been curiously underpowered (Figure 14). At least two critics felt that he had the ‘outline of a powerful characterization’ but that the performance lacked nuance and indeed was at times so ‘strangulated with acting emotion’ that the words were hard to decipher.68 It would have been understandable, given the opportunities and amount of money on offer elsewhere, if at this stage in his career Sam Wanamaker had parted company with William Shakespeare. The 1960s were generally a decade of personal and professional crisis. He had little idea what to do or where his real forte lay; he was taking work in film, TV, theatre and opera, throwing himself at any door that showed any sign of opening (thus the perpetual jet-lag and the exhausting white-knuckled rides of directing in various media and genres for the first time). He might easily have enjoyed a successful and lucrative career working a few months each year in American TV studios; his work of the mid–1960s (including Defenders, Hawks and Coronet Blue) was intelligent, powerful and relatively popular. As Wicking and Vahimagi observe: ‘Being assigned the pilots of Lancer and Legend of Custer would have helped anyone’s career take off – but being Wanamaker, he took off instead, perhaps starved of cultural relevance’.69 He was spending much of his life in the US, away from his wife and daughters; as he wrote to Charlotte: Why did I come here? I came to earn money which I was not doing in London. To open up possibilities to be employed here and in London – to clean up the blacklist problems – so that I could work in U.S. films in London and Europe.70 American work – whether on stage or especially screen – paid so much better than that in the UK. In 1961, for example, he was offered $1,000 per week (‘or about £350 in our money’) to star on Broadway in A Far Country, a play about Freud (by Henry Denker). As Iago, two years previously, he had been paid £10 per week for rehearsals and £50 per week during the season. Even adjusting for a small amount of inflation, Broadway paid almost seven times better than Stratford. As a jobbing filmmaker in 1967,



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he was on a studio contract of $1,750 per week (working or not). But the majority of the work he undertook failed to satisfy him artistically or politically. He was earning excellent money but spending too long away from London and his family. He briefly considered refashioning himself

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primarily as an opera director, but as he wrote to his wife: ‘I cannot divert myself into opera at this stage of my life – it’s the last push for me – and I mustn’t dissipate my energies any more’.71

The Last Push and the Search for Home, 1970– F. Scott Fitzgerald claimed that there are no second acts in American lives. But perhaps Anglo-American lives are exempt from this grim curtailment: it was the third and final act of Wanamaker’s life, the ‘last push’, which eventually led to the construction of what is now known as Shakespeare’s Globe. In 1969, he learned that the Greater London Council was considering a major project of urban renewal on the South Bank, including the Borough of Southwark. Energized by the opportunity, he set about drafting his own grandiose proposals. A year later, he founded the Globe Trust, and for the next quarter-century his work in film, theatre, opera and television helped finance the many unpaid weeks, months, years he spent in Globe-related activities. Although Wanamaker died before the theatre itself was fully completed, from the moment he founded the Trust in 1970, the Globe could be said to exist in two important senses. First, it became a powerful if abstract idea, a charged metaphysical concept to be queried, defended and fought over; these skirmishes are perforce political, largely recorded in newspaper columns, press releases and even the pages of Hansard. Second, long before the physical completion of the current theatre, the Globe also existed as the sponsor of a very concrete range of educational and artistic events in locations that would act as atmospheric – if not architectural – simulations of the type of cultural centre Wanamaker envisaged. My interest here is in unpacking some of the dynamics of these two existences and in trying to capture Wanamaker’s role in determining what the Globe stood for and what it achieved in his lifetime. Before doing so, it is important to understand that the Globe was intended to have more in common with the New Shakespeare Theatre, Liverpool than it was to mimic the successes of other replica Globes, whether in the US, Germany or Japan. The third Globe was also designed to put a conclusive end to Wanamaker’s wanderings. In 1972 he reflected: The curious thing about my career is that I have always had this need to be identified with something permanent, always had the feeling of insecurity, staggering from one thing to another without any sense of building something in a world where you are only as good as the last



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thing you did. That is why I ran the Liverpool theatre from 1957 to 1960 [sic]. I have a need to make a home and more than just the narrow thing of doing plays, making it part of the fabric of the community, with activities from morning to night.72 As with Liverpool, Wanamaker’s ‘selfish interests’ – the long-standing urge to put down roots, to merge art and work in one locus – would combine with ‘a noble and high objective’ of transforming the place of the arts within a specific community. Central to this integration with the community would be education. Of the Trust’s nine founding purposes, three addressed education. Doubtless there were strategic reasons for making education so central to the enterprise. It was pointed out to Wanamaker at an early stage that American funders would be more sympathetic to a project with an obviously educative, even philanthropic mission. But, as Barry Day notes, this was hardly news to Wanamaker: ‘for him, the study and understanding of Shakespeare had always been almost as important as actual performance’. Even in the bleakest years when the theatre-building project stagnated, the education work continued with a steady stream of school students passing through the Bear Gardens Museum and an ad hoc programmes of lectures and workshops: ‘Education was the visible and indisputable tip of the Globe iceberg. Uniquely, education preceded the actual theatre’.73 Tens of thousands of students had some experience of Globe Education before the ground was broken on the construction of the theatre; by 1996/7, the year of the official opening, some 25,000 people a year were attending lectures, workshops or courses.74 Even if the theatre had never been built – and for much of its history this was more probable than not – Globe Education would stand as a concrete achievement, inspired by Wanamaker and delivered by a generation of educators to students of all ages and backgrounds.

The Tent Seasons: Southwark, 1972–5 4 To produce the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries in the third Globe Playhouse and elsewhere, with the highest standards of creativity and professionalism. (‘Declaration of Purpose’) The 1964 Chicago Macbeth was the last Shakespeare in which Wanamaker had a direct hand as either an actor or director. Over the next thirty years he would work across a range of media – film, TV, opera and theatre

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– often with great commercial and sometimes with artistic success. Having very little previous experience in the medium, he was an unlikely choice to direct the opening production (Prokofiev’s War and Peace) at the Sydney Opera House in 1973, but such surprising engagements were not uncommon in his maverick career. I have not been able to discover why Wanamaker never acted or directed Shakespeare again after Chicago. Shakespeare is even absent from his credits as an opera director: if he was asked and willing to direct Verdi’s Aïda, why not his Otello? If entrusted with a post-war British opera, such as Michael Tippett’s King Priam, why not Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream? Most probably he judged it unwise to direct anything Shakespeare-related himself lest the production was poorly received and might thus damage the prospects and reputation of the Globe project. (As a point of comparison – and one that perhaps retrospectively vindicated Wanamaker’s decision – one could cite the response to Mark Rylance’s 1995 Hare Krishna/Waco-inspired production of Macbeth at the Greenwich Theatre, in which many critics saw the ‘perversity’ of the production as an ominous indication of the fate of the Globe under Rylance’s imminent artistic directorship.) If, then, Wanamaker was not directly involved in Shakespearean production, one must look to his work as an artistic director and curator of the work of others for some clues to his tastes and his ambitions for the Globe as a working theatre. The Globe Playhouse Trust Limited was incorporated in 1971. Its principal object was ‘the encouragement of the dramatic art in all its forms and generally to cultivate and improve public taste in such art as a memorial to William Shakespeare’. The long-term objective was of course to build a Globe – something Wanamaker expected to achieve by the mid–1970s – but in the shorter term a programme of events and projects was planned on Bankside ‘in order to demonstrate what was capable of being accomplished’.75 These ‘Tent’ seasons therefore represent the nearest thing we have to a repertoire and an artistic policy for Bankside as curated by Wanamaker himself, a demonstration of what he thought it worthwhile to accomplish. The first ‘Tent’ season was planned for the summer of 1971; in January the South London Press announced that ‘Sir Tyrone Guthrie has been invited to produce the first production, which would be a Shakespeare play of his choice. And John Neville, director of St. George’s Elizabethan Theatre, has agreed to join the company’.76 But as with so many of Wanamaker’s press-released ambitions, this would come to naught and it was not until the summer of 1972 that a temporary working theatre was erected on the Bankside plot. The ‘Tent’ would host full theatrical



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productions, while a range of events – including community discos, public art, street theatre and a season of sixty-three films relating to Shakespeare and his works – played out in adjacent buildings and communal spaces (Figure 15). The season opened with Dekker’s The Shoemaker’s Holiday by the Crucible Theatre Sheffield, followed by The Cornish Passion Play from the Northcott Theatre, Exeter, and the National Theatre’s mobile production of Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s A Whore with Diana Rigg. The centrepiece was the Globe Playhouse’s own company’s production of Hamlet starring Keith Michell, with Ron Moody as Polonius, directed by Peter Coe. This was a modern-dress Hamlet set in a contemporary, mittel-European state. The programme notes quoted Jan Kott on the need for actors in the play to have ‘modern faces. Otherwise they would perform a costume piece instead of “Hamlet”.’ The 1972 season was, then, a remarkable piece of programming, an unofficial festival of regional theatre with a predominance of relatively obscure non-Shakespearean drama in a run-down borough in the heart of London. J. C. Trewin spoke for the most enthusiastic when he allowed his imagination to be fired by the locale, when he enjoyed the breadth – regional and stylistic – of the programming and when he expressed

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optimistic thanks: ‘The present retrospect is no time for the drawnthreadwork of drama criticism. It is a time for gratitude: thanks for the future as well as the past. I would like to think that the Burbages might have had some foreknowledge of it when they were laboriously bringing their “timber and woode” to the South Bank’.77 The 1973 season again featured four main productions, three of which were now described as ‘A Bankside Globe Playhouse production’. The season began with Jonathan Miller’s Nottingham Playhouse production of Marston’s The Malcontent, followed by Globe productions of Twelfth Night, Ionesco’s Macbett (directed by Charles Marowitz in a co-production with Coventry Belgrade), and climaxed with Vanessa Redgrave and Julian Glover in an Antony and Cleopatra directed by Tony Richardson, who had fourteen years earlier directed Wanamaker as Iago in Stratford. When Miller’s Malcontent had opened in Nottingham, Robert Brustein’s review had described Marston as ‘the most innovative and experimental’ of Shakespeare’s contemporaries and applauded the ways in which Miller’s production approached ‘this tragic-comedy of deception in an entirely unexpected manner – as a kind of slap-stick Jacobean Goon Show, complete with pratfalls’. There are shades here of the rough-andtumble, populist style of the World’s Fair Globe companies, and it perhaps significant that Wanamaker approvingly underlined these lines in his copy of the review. Following a period (1920s) Twelfth Night, the remaining two productions confirmed the venue and festival’s growing reputation for a brand of spiky irreverence. Richardson’s Antony and Cleopatra – a moderndress affair that evoked contemporary America (Hollywood, the military, even Pompey played as Castro) – was widely condemned for its antiheroic, even satirical exposé of the protagonists. John Barber described this ‘modern stunt that degrades Shakespeare’ as ‘exciting, impudent and wholly unpardonable’ (Daily Telegraph, 10.8.73). Herbert Kretzmer’s review carried the rhetorical headline: ‘Queen of the Nile – or one of those trendy freaks?’ (Daily Express, 10.8.73). Irving Wardle was more sympathetic to what he quipped was ‘Shakespeare set in ye modern time […] The style is unfashionable, but no sneer is intended […] it seems that heroic tragedy on this scale is out of our range. But something honest can be extracted from it even on the level of a political thriller’ (The Times, 10.8.73). The Ubu-esque Macbett starred popular TV actors Terry Scott and Harry H. Corbett, and was enjoyed by Michael Billington at least as a ‘joyously funny, anarchic Shakespearean pantomime […] Marowitz’s exuberant production parodies RSC pomp [and is played] in a style pitched half way between Palladium panto and the Old Vic’ (Guardian,



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10.8.73). Here and in other responses to the Tent seasons, one can see a company identity emerging with the Globe cast as enfant terrible, a naughty nephew to the ‘official’ Shakespeare served up by the Royal Shakespeare Company. As would become common in responses to Shakespeare’s Globe from the mid-1990s onwards, reviewers in the early ’70s noted the company’s debt to popular theatre: under the headline ‘Summer Panto’, Frank Marcus wrote in the Sunday Telegraph (19.7.73) that: ‘In keeping with the makeshift environment of the Bankside Globe Playhouse, the actors opt for an improvisational, barnstorming style, with much ranting and eye-rolling.’ As it would in the 1990s, this conflation of high and low culture bred anxiety.78 An editorial in The Stage spoke for many: if the Globe is to be rebuilt, it argued, there must be some movement towards the primary aim; to produce the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries … with the highest standards of creativity and professionalism. The disconcerting thing is that the Globe productions themselves so blatantly disregard the serious intentions of the whole enterprise. Productions such as those seen in the 1973 season were ‘a kind of betrayal of the Globe’s ideals’ (The Stage, 26.7.73). Already, a strong cultural reflex was in place, with the clear implication that modern-dress, demotic or otherwise ‘inauthentic’ productions were categorically inappropriate and somehow desecrated the site. But when Wanamaker speculated at this time about the eventual opening of the Globe, he made it clear that what the theatre now calls ‘original practices’ productions would be the exception and certainly not the rule or its raison d’être: ‘What I would like to see is one Shakespeare play a year produced authentically as in his time, but the other Shakespearian works given modern productions.’79 By modern, I think he can only have meant the kinds of shows that played in the Tent seasons. In the following year, a meeting with actors and scholars was reported in The Times: Summing up the day’s deliberations, Mr. Wanamaker said the proposed authentic and painstakingly researched reconstruction of the original theatre would be interesting as a model or a museum and of immense value to scholars, students and the curious. But it did not seem to be workable as a living theatre. He said: ‘My own strong hope is for an authentic façade with even authentic Elizabethan furniture for the audience, but a more flexible stage for the actors. However, I have

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received no encouragement from the architects today to believe that this is possible.’ (The Times, 15.1.73) Undeterred by either press criticism or the possible constraints placed on his future theatre by architectural considerations, Wanamaker continued to plan for interim seasons that would make good his commitment to ‘modern’ productions. He let it be known to the press that ‘possibilities’ for the 1974 season would repeat the recipe of rollicking non-Shakespearean work – a new version of Bartholomew Fair adapted by John Wells and directed by Joan Littlewood; Peter Barnes’s reworking of Eastward Ho!; Anthony Quinn to star in the first production of Henry Fielding’s Don Quixote in England – bolstered by some heavyweight and contemporary Shakespeare: a production of Othello played by Paul Scofield with Nicol Williamson as Iago, and Charles Marowitz’s contemporary treatment of Timon of Athens. But, partly owing to the devastation wrought on the Tent by torrential rain, the 1973 season had ended with a huge loss and in December the Globe Trust wound up. There was only a half-hearted fringe season in 1974 (featuring none of the exciting productions promised above) and an only slightly more encouraging 1975 summer season featuring Marowitz’s Hamlet Collage. After this short demonstration of the type of programming that might be possible in the rebuilt Globe, these experimental seasons ground to a halt and Wanamaker and the project in general entered what would come to be seen as wilderness years. By the mid–1970s, Wanamaker’s artistic identity and legacy still hung in the balance. In 1958 Harold Hobson had entitled his review of the Liverpool production of The Rose Tattoo ‘Wanamaker vs. Wanamaker’, alluding to the absorbing but ultimately detrimental dynamics that ensue when director and lead actor are the same person. (Wanamaker, fearless as ever in his dealings with critics, wrote a four-page response entitled ‘Wanamaker vs. Hobson’.) In 1975, Times critic Charles Lewsen returned to the theme with relish, now identifying a third alter ego: What an unruly, disparate lot these Wanamakers are; I mean the Sams. Remember Sam the director with his beautifully modulated productions of contemporary American plays (this was back in the Fifties), and how the only man who looked out of place in them was Sam the actor? He (the actor) had such dynamism, such musicality, such pantherine grace; five minutes of his electric presence in Hatful of Rain quite sabotaged the work of his meticulous friend […] Then there’s Sam the entrepreneur, whose plans for the Bankside Globe suggest that he wants to be both the



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Bernard Delfont [the eminent theatrical impresario] of entertainment and chairman of the GLC [General London Council]. Now that he’s posh, he’s not speaking to the others; though either of them, without the other, would be an asset to any theatre, even his. Maybe he lost patience with their bickering. […] The split in the ranks of the Sams is as sharp as ever; and the only remedy is to give entrepreneur and theorist a golden handshake, and set up actor and director in separate theatres where, I am convinced, each has his contribution to make. (The Times, 21.8.75) The oil crisis and global recession of the mid–1970s, along with both financial mismanagement and bad luck on the part of the Globe Trust, conspired to give Sam the entrepreneur a golden handshake of sorts for the next few years. Certainly a less driven person might have abandoned the Globe, permanently changed tack and perhaps resigned himself to a settled, middle-age profile as either actor or director. But he braved out the dog years and by the early ’80s, following a series of new agreements between the Globe Trust, Southwark Borough Council and Derno Estates (the property company that owned the tract of land), prospects for the development of the site once again looked good: ‘After years of back-breaking (mine) work and head-bashing (also mine) against brick walls and bouncing off the soft underbelly of British bureaurocracy [sic], it-is-finally-going-to-happen’, he wrote in January 1982.80 A little later, Wanamaker believed that the Globe would be ready for its inaugural performance and dedication on 23 April 1985, and as he communicated in a confidential document to Buckingham Palace: It was a profound hope that Her Majesty and Prince Philip would personally dedicate this new National Monument on that day; And that if this were possible, that the approach should be made on the Thames by Royal Barge; And that the day be declared a national holiday.81 And yet conditions in the early 1980s were hardly as propitious as this implied. A contemporary editorial in The Stage, ‘Empty Seats in the West End’, lamented the current crisis in the unsubsidized theatre: twelve out of forty-five theatres were dark; ticket prices were lagging behind inflation while production costs spiralled; the theatres themselves were shoddy and cramped and poorly equipped to resist the great competition increasingly offered by television. In fine, the 45 West End theatres represented ‘a hopeless degree of over-capacity’. 82 So what was the case for a new theatre in this bleak climate? Wanamaker, as was his wont, scribbled it in the margins of the press cutting; in contrast to the West End’s failing theatres:

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The Globe production costs are minimal / without scenery, only props and costumes / Many fewer stage hands – no scene-building shops / no large storage warehouses / No massive changes of scenery / Daylight performances / No costly electricity bills for light and heat. What appears to begin as ‘notes to self’ soon hits its stride and the marginalia morph into a press release: The complex will be in use 12 to 14 hours a day: classes, tour groups, multi-theatre performances, cinema programs, audio-visual programs, concerts, poetry, etc. The Globe will be an attraction as a museum exhibit, as a tourist attraction, as a centre for students and schools, and a unique theatre complex of two [i.e. the Globe and the indoor Inigo Jones theatre] historic and delightful performance spaces. It is typical of the way in which the project was publicly discussed throughout the ’80s that the emphasis tended to fall on the multiple functions of the complex or on the exact architectural authenticity or otherwise of the performance spaces rather than on the types of performance and performers that would fill those spaces once completed. But, as with the programming of the Tent seasons in the early 1970s, one can deduce some sense of Wanamaker’s taste from the range of informal invitations he sent out in the last years of his life, when the new Globe was finally nearing completion. According to his correspondence with actors, he envisaged the Globe’s first seasons featuring: Albert Finney’s Lear, Paul Eddington’s Malvolio and Nicol Williamson’s Coriolanus; he wanted anything from Fiona Shaw, Mark Rylance, Jonathan Pryce (‘one of the best Hamlets this century’) or Robert Lindsay (‘I’m sure you are being offered your choice of roles by the Royal National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company. May I get in the queue on behalf of Shakespeare’s Globe when we get it up in 1994?’). As for directors, informal invitations were offered to Yukio Ninagawa (to direct Lear), David Thacker, Steven Berkoff and Yvonne Brewster and her Talawa Theatre Company, whose 1991 Antony and Cleopatra Wanamaker had much admired. Above all, Wanamaker wanted Berkoff to make his mark on the space: ‘I’m more convinced than ever that you are Born Great. You must create productions for the Globe’.83 These private invitations sat uneasily with his more official pronouncements, geared as the latter were to promoting the virtues of an early modern and, by implication, director-less theatre. In a speech he gave often in the last decade of his life, Wanamaker distanced himself from directorial excesses



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in Shakespearean production: ‘This word “theme” has become very important. Directors consider their mission is to discover some formula to reduce the baffling to the comprehensible. And to this end, the fashion in recent years has been to set the plays in one of [three] basic formats’, these being (i) modern dress; (ii) ‘a decorative romantic style sometimes related to a well known epoch’; and (iii) a Craigian ‘non-definable and symbolic setting’. These modern-dress, period or symbolic interpretations might represent honest attempts to illuminate a play and bring it closer to the audience, but Wanamaker feared that they ‘more often rather [serve] the clever and superficial egotist, out to prove his brilliance’.84 As we have seen, however, throughout his career these kinds of thematic productions had greatly impressed Wanamaker, whether as a spectator (of Michael Benthall’s Hamlet at the Old Vic in 1957), actor (in Richardson’s Othello) or as the artistic director of the Globe’s own Tent seasons. They were also the kinds of production of which he was capable as a director (as with his ‘tendentious’, Brecht-inspired version of Verdi’s La Forza del Destino at Covent Garden in 1962, which provoked booing and open hostility from the first-night audience). Off the record, at least, he seemed to want to unleash exactly these types of interesting, assertive directors on the Globe stage and audiences in the first years of its existence.

Guilty by Suspicion: Fundraising As much as Wanamaker might have fantasized about, even begun to plan the kinds of performances that would fill the third Globe, the vast majority of his labour on the project was focused on realizing the first three of the Trust’s declared purposes: 1  To reclaim Southwark’s Thames bank, universally recognised as an historic area of international interest, particularly because of its association with Shakespeare and the Elizabethan theatre. 2  To propose a redevelopment plan, bounded by Blackfriars and London Bridges, and the river Thames and Southwark Street, to become an area of culture, education and entertainment with related amenities in a harmonious relationship of housing, offices and hotels. 3  To construct a third Globe Playhouse on or near the original site within a comprehensive development concept appropriate for the area; the form, size and character of the building to be decided by consulting scholars, theatre professionals and architects.

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When the Globe Trust was formed, none of what we see today on Bankside – the Thames-spanning footbridge to St Paul’s, the redeployment of the looming power station as Tate Modern, the atmosphere of leisured affluence, yea, the great Globe itself – none of this was in any way inevitable. In the early 1970s it was clear that development would take place: the derelict wharfs and factories would have to give way to some version of postmodernity – probably offices and hotels, perhaps housing (affordable or otherwise) – but there was no inevitable compulsion to make space for the provision of culture. After all, at the beginning of the 1970s the South Bank already boasted the Royal Festival Hall, the Hayward Gallery and, before long, the brand new National Theatre, a building that many saw as obviating the need for any further spaces devoted to classical theatre. The challenge, then, was immense and the struggle would exact great sacrifices, personal, professional and financial, from Wanamaker and many others. There is a nice sketch of Wanamaker at work at his desk in the early 1970s, with St Paul’s behind him and a small model Globe beside him, a landline telephone in each hand (Figure 16). The caption reads ‘Keeping the Balloons in the Air’. The campaign required from him a wide range of skills. He needed to charm, cajole, convince, inveigle and bully. He taught himself the lexicons of planning permissions, architecture and law. Week in, week out, he hobnobbed, called in favours, forced introductions, worked angles. The texture and weight of such mundane labour is hard to capture, yet it was exactly this labour that earned Wanamaker his position in history and in this volume. In order, then, to give the material some shape, I will organize the remaining pages around the themes of accusation and suspicion. These twin spectres haunted the third act of his life, and an analysis of the suspicion in which the project and Wanamaker personally were held by journalists, politicians and academics will give a pungent flavour of the cultural arenas in which this labour took place. We begin, in medias res, with the dramatic moment in 1986 when Wanamaker stood up in court and, in the case of the International Shakespeare Globe Centre v the London Borough of Southwark, and Derno, opened his testimony with the words: I, SAM WANAMAKER, of The Bear Gardens, Bankside, Liberty of the Clink, London, SE1, will say: before proceeding to read a sixty-eight-page statement, an historical account of the events that had led to a three-way impasse between the centre’s desires and those of the commercial and political partners on



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whose support the whole project depended. It was a key moment both in the history of the project to build a third Globe and in Wanamaker’s own turbulent life. He had almost played this courtroom scene twice before – once in front of the House of Un-American Activities Committee, once before the British judge Wanamaker feared would have him extradited in the late 1950s. Neither of those trials had taken place, but each must have haunted him so much that he would have rehearsed his speeches of defence or defiance, waking and sleeping, for decades. Six years after the real court case in Southwark, he found himself finally inhabiting the primal scene of a HUAC hearing, but now on a film set and on the wrong side, as an amoral attorney to Robert De Niro’s principled hero in Guilty by Suspicion (1991). The five-day trial in Southwark reads as a symbolic episode in which local and national politics collided with ‘heritage’ and the arts. In this instance, Wanamaker was peculiarly unlucky to find himself at odds both with the political Right and Left, with the free market and big business

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as represented by Derno, the property group who owned most of the contested tract of land, and with the Left as represented by the North Southwark Community Development Group (NSCDG), who had come to power in the 1982 local council elections in the borough. With the reconstitution of the local council, opposition to the Globe development became official policy and the site was in due course redesignated exclusively for housing and open space, ‘thus ignoring the detailed planning permissions which were already in existence in relation to the site’.85 For its part, Derno had grown increasingly hesitant to make significant progress, playing for time in order to minimize the financial risk involved in the undertaking, a risk exacerbated by a thoroughly depressed property market. Both the NSCDG and Derno, then, wanted to renege on agreements of 1981 and 1982 that would, in effect, have seen construction of the theatre complex go ahead in the near future. Wanamaker’s testimony wished a plague on both their houses. As far as the NSCDG were concerned: I regard it as profoundly wrong that the efforts over so many years of so many people with the best kind of motives involved in the Globe Project for the benefit of the community, for London and Britain, should be nullified for what I can only take to be reasons of political dogma and prejudice.86 Derno, on the other hand, he accused of being purely profit-driven and not interested in the educational and social aims of the project ‘except insofar as it could be exploited as a means of securing office planning permission and possibly as a means of attracting a user’.87 Wanamaker’s testimony had begun with an account of his life, just one of numerous occasions on which the Method actor would feel obliged to authenticate his motivations via autobiography. A decade earlier he had drafted an internal memo that began: ‘The hostile attitudes about the Globe Project which still persist in some quarters are based on the following [nine] perceptions.’ One of these was that the ‘Globe’s Trust’s Board and Trustees were all establishment, the rich and powerful – and worse, royalty and that Sam Wanamaker founder of the project was an actor, an American, and a self seeking outsider’. By way of response to the personal charge, Wanamaker wrote the following, subsequently published in a pamphlet ‘The Southwark Globe Project: Myths and Facts’: Sam Wanamaker has been a British resident for 34 years and a Southwark rate-payer for thirteen years, moving to Chaucer Ward to be nearer the



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Project. Mr. Wanamaker was forced to leave the United States during the McCarthy witch-hunts because of his commitment to ‘unpopular’ causes such as anti-racism, his vocal opposition to fascism and Nazism, his support for the Soviet Union’s struggle against Hitlerism, his fight for workers’ rights […] He was a close friend and colleague of Paul Robeson. He was born and raised in a Chicago slum of working class parents. His father was a trade union organiser. […] In the late fifties, Wanamaker moved to Liverpool where he pioneered the establishment of the first ‘people’s palace of culture’ in Britain at the New Shakespeare Theatre. That Wanamaker was required so frequently to rehearse his life story is symptomatic of the way in which highly personalized cultural politics shadowed every aspect of the Globe campaign. Much of the animus against the Globe was based on caricature and depended on a tribal – and somewhat theatrical – worldview. Granted, many of the participants in the drama appeared to have arrived directly from agitprop central casting: here were the fat-cat property developers, the martyred road-sweepers, the swivel-eyed Loony Left politicians and, at the heart of it all, the thrusting Yank, cast in a role not unlike the one Wanamaker played in Superman IV (1987), where as tycoon David Warfield he purchases The Planet (= Globe?) newspaper and sacrifices everything that is good and noble about that institution on the altar of profitability. Indeed, many of his opponents assumed that the profit motive fuelled Wanamaker’s work. (Here, as elsewhere, it is hard to gauge the exact proportions of anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism and simple anti-Samism that combined to produce animosity towards him.) Wanamaker had the ability to separate people from their cash in the name of Shakespeare, to coax money from their purses and put it in the Globe’s. None of the obvious British funding bodies – Southwark Council, the Greater London Council, the Arts Council nor the Government itself – was willing and/or able to provide the kinds of sums required, so for most of the quarter-century of the project’s duration it seemed inconceivable that the Globe could be built without a major influx of private money, and specifically a deluge of corporate or inherited dollars. In depending on American money, Wanamaker habitually pointed out, the Globe would be no different from the Royal Shakespeare Theatre or, he might have added, the Swan Theatre in Stratford.88 He had to go to some strange places for money, although few were stranger than his request for an anti-Stratfordian donation from Elizabeth Sears, President of the Shakespeare Oxford Society, Boxford,

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MA. In 1991, Sears had popped in to the Bear Gardens Museum, so, with typical alacrity, Wanamaker immediately wrote to suggest that the Oxford Society become one of the founding members of the ‘£5000 club […] as it is my intention to give some space in the Globe Centre to your Society and its cause, it would seem an appropriate gesture’.89 He was constantly on the lookout for effective tactics: he contributed to an event for the homeless in 1991; the charity in question subsequently wrote back to him that it had received 257 cheques after carpet-mailing 1100 of those listed in Debrett’s People of Today. Wanamaker excitedly scribbled ‘Good idea! 24% Return!’ in the margin of the letter.90 His brain whirred with schemes. In this he was abetted by royalty: in the early 1980s, Prince Philip seems to have suggested a system of voluntary taxation whereby North American Shakespeare festival companies would pay a certain annual fee for the privilege of performing the works of a non-indigenous playwright, all of which monies would go directly to the Globe building fund. No theatrical representation without taxation. Of course, such stunts, compounded by his association with royalty, corporate barons and the super-rich did little to endear Wanamaker to some. As he recognized in 1986: The elitism of which the Project has been often accused resulted in part because of a function of the fundraising aspect of the Project. The only way in which we could raise the sort of money which was needed to build the Globe complex was by organizing an international fundraising campaign which had as its foundation a group of wealthy and distinguished people acting both as donors and as active supporters.91 The hand of little employment hath the daintier sense, and some of his highminded critics found it inconceivable that someone working this circuit would not himself be actuated by greed and the desire for personal financial profit. So insistent was this line of innuendo that in the summer of 1976 Wanamaker asked Sidney Brown, Southwark’s Deputy Borough Treasurer, to inspect all the accounts and documents relating both to the Globe Trust and Wanamaker’s own finances. A year later, Brown reported that in the first seven years of the project Wanamaker had directly donated £17,720 of his own money, that he had claimed no payment or expenses, and that the devotion of long periods of time to the project had involved him in the loss of income he could reasonably have expected to earn during that time. Brown concluded that Wanamaker had been ‘dedicated to the idea of a Shakespearian Theatre on Bankside and that he has steadfastly pursued that idea to the detriment of



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his personal financial position’.92 By 1986, he had contributed approximately £50,000. Allowing for various levels of inflation, this would, in 2013, be somewhere between a quarter and a third of a million pounds.

Guilty by Suspicion: The Press For twenty-five years Wanamaker ran an exhaustive public relations campaign on behalf of the Globe. While this might entail black-tie affairs in Los Angeles, charity polo matches in Houston or speech-giving at Buckingham Palace, it was for the most part his willingness to engage with many different constituencies that distinguished Wanamaker as a major cultural entrepreneur and underscored his supreme commitment. His critics might have pointed to his apparently cosy relationships with establishment figures, but leading the campaign to rebuild the Globe more often meant that Wanamaker would be judging the Carnival Queen at the Children’s Week, St John’s Church, East Dulwich, or addressing the Newington Ward Conservative Association or the Southwark Tenant’s Association or the Penge Rotary Club, or campaigning in 1973 for a children’s theatre to be built in the river on stilts at Bankside in order to preserve part of the riverside ‘for the people instead of rich newcomers’.93 The Globe archive is strewn with free-floating yellow Post-its with internal memos such as: ‘If Sam goes to USA (or flies anywhere) can he give a talk to Douay Martyrs School (near Heathrow [airport]) on way?’ Much of this public relations campaign took place between the covers of newspapers and magazines. Wanamaker would note every media reference to the project and immediately fire back should the coverage even imply criticism. From the outset, the Globe project was dogged by suspicion. The following column from 1971 by ‘Skinflint’ in the right-wing Spectator compactly expresses some of the key themes that recurred throughout the print media’s coverage of the campaign: An American actor, a Mr Sam Wanamaker, is interested in going into profitable property development though the name his game goes under is Art. We are told this through a deluge of organised public relations releases about the property scheme he has in mind – a giant complex of shops, flats and more excitingly, offices on the south bank of the Thames – which has as its main platform, to overcome enfeebled planning authority opposition, some fanciful idea about recreating Shakespeare’s Globe theatre. […] The cost of a small theatre is a minor price for Mr

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Wanamaker’s backers to pay. It earns headlines and as an exercise is of obvious help in beguiling the more unsuspecting of those at the GLC.94 Three weeks later, the column carried a small apology, but the damage was done. More investigative and elaborate critiques would follow. In Time Out (15–21 September 1972), Crispin Aubrey wrote a long would-be-exposé of how the four-and-a-half miles of riverside from Blackfriars to Tower Bridge was being ‘hived off’ for private enterprise to become a concrete jungle of offices, hotels and luxury flats. As in ‘Skinflint’s’ account, the Globe featured as little more than either a fig-leaf or Trojan horse for rapacious capitalists; it would be a ‘cultural desert-within-a-desert’ in a borough that had ‘countless social problems and a housing list of almost 8,000’. The article quoted locals as either antagonistic or antipathetic to the artistic proposals: ‘The only good thing about what he’s doing is the pub, although some of the prices are 2p over what you’d pay elsewhere. But we don’t want to go and see Shakespeare. I might sit through one of the films, but I wouldn’t understand it.’ In a previous interview, Wanamaker had praised the ‘marvellous community spirit’ of Southwark, but Aubrey claimed the community was reacting unfavourably to Wanamaker and cited a local graffito: ‘Go home Yankee, get out of SE1’. The lack of planned provision for affordable housing and the apparent indifference to the demolition of doss and halfway houses led Aubrey to conclude: ‘So the working class suffers, directly. So does the out-of-working class. Southwark is traditionally an area where people sleep rough and where men with an addiction problem, and/or with no money go to find a cheap bed for the night.’ Wanamaker’s letter of response, printed in the 29 September–5 October issue, points out that the Globe project was not about Shakespeare per se and that only one Shakespeare (Hamlet) had featured in the recent Tent season, and that the ‘Yankee go home’ graffito was a hoax perpetrated by ‘one of our own assistant stage managers [who] took bets that journalists would draw profound conclusions from it’. The letter, however, had been severely curtailed; according to the Editor, it had ‘used condescension and sarcasm surpassing the level of acceptability’ and had done nothing to dissuade the magazine that ‘whatever its charitable gestures, [the Globe Trust] exists to propagate fashionable, even gimmicky art. In our view, building a model of the Globe Playhouse and setting it in the middle of a mock Elizabethan context has little to do with theatre or with Shakespeare’ – a point not made in the original article. This was typical of the asymmetrical warfare waged from sections of the London and national media.



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The press suspicion of the project as a whole, and of Wanamaker ad hominem, is a constant. In September 1974, Wanamaker was forced to write to the South London Press to point out that the Globe Playhouse Trust had always ‘sought to work with members of the local community’, and furthermore that his own motives were considerably purer than the paper habitually represented them: I believe it is unfair and entirely unjustified to associate my efforts to build a Globe with the image of a property speculator. I have never styled myself as a ‘theatre developer.’ I am simply a theatre professional and, as a socialist I believe the arts are as necessary to the people, as are homes and jobs. But the newspaper – then a powerful presence south of the Thames – refused to retract and continued to typecast Wanamaker throughout the course of the decade. In April 1979 it pounced on the 415th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth to publish a denigrating article on ‘Mr Wanamaker’s nine-year dream’. Wanamaker wrote (on 11 May 1979): ‘you are trying mischievously to give your readers the impression I am an eccentric American millionaire’ seeking to swell his fortune: ‘In addition you continue to exploit prejudices (in the manner of the National Front) by your repeated references to me as “Yank” and “American” in spite of my being a resident and taxpayer in this country for 28 years.’ The reference to the National Front is telling. Writing in the immediate aftermath of the murder of anti-fascist demonstrator Blair Peach, Wanamaker hoped that, by drawing attention to the common wellsprings of xenophobia that he believed united his armchair critics with thugs on the far Right, he might shame the press out of its belligerence.

Culture Wars The discussions of the Globe and of Wanamaker in The Shakespeare Myth, a collection of academic essays published in 1988, are very much the product of this schismatic cultural moment. The volume is important because it captured and consolidated a dominant tone within some academic circles (but especially among Cultural Materialists) of distrust towards the Globe project and condescension towards Wanamaker himself. This critique of Wanamaker’s political motivations has never, to the best of my knowledge, been fully answered and I would here like to dwell on the episode in some

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detail for what it reveals about the range of resistance, antagonism and suspicion Wanamaker faced. The book featured a rich interview between Wanamaker and Graham Holderness. Even if the two are talking at cross purposes, there is nevertheless a sympathetic interplay between Holderness’s probing scepticism and Wanamaker’s passionate and politically informed defence of the Globe project. But this dialogue is followed, somewhat unfairly, by John Drakakis’s clever, trenchant and tendentious piece to which Wanamaker apparently had no right of reply. Drakakis sought to demonstrate the ways in which the parcel of land next to the Thames had become a site of ideological struggle between, on the one hand, a self-appointed custodian of high culture (Wanamaker) allied with a profit-driven commercial enterprise, and, on the other, the ‘democratically-elected local authority’ and the ordinary citizens it represented.95 The argument thus framed, it was unsurprising that Drakakis should have come down so firmly on the side of the oppressed citizenry of Southwark. Central to his argument was the notion that the Globe project enjoyed very little support among the local community and what support it did have had been manufactured in a sinister fashion (the operations of which he refrained from describing) in order to be ‘opportunistically exploited’. There is little evidence for either of these claims. The voices of South Londoners, as recorded in the letters pages or op-eds of the local newspapers, show a spectrum of positions and a wide variety of emotions. Some residents, depressed and angry at the state of the borough, welcomed anything that might raise the quality of life: We have too many drug addicts, alcoholics, halfway houses and charitable organisations. What decent respectable people are asking for is a clean-up of their borough. Bring in private development and get things moving and if this present soft, incompetent mess don’t like it they can leave.96 Such sentiments were not shared by the Bishop of Southwark, Dr Mervyn Stockwood. As a self-described socialist, he would have preferred the land to be publicly owned, but he had to concede that ‘we are not a Socialist country’: The fact is – and it needs to be rubbed in – in a capitalist society we are dependent upon private developers. And no matter how enlightened some of them may be, no matter how much they may be anxious to co-operate with the local authority, in the last resort they will not



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spend millions of pounds on a project unless they can be assured of a reasonable return.97 Barry Day records that, when local people were systematically canvassed for their opinion, an overwhelming majority of the registered voters in Cathedral Ward expressed their support for the project.98 And for much of the history of the campaign, Southwark Council had been on board; Wanamaker remembered an initially cool response to his presentation of a model and various drawings to the Council in 1971 and he suspected that some members of the Council ‘found my manner and my nationality alien to them’.99 But relations warmed, trust was established, and as a consequence a succession of councils (no less democratically elected than that of 1982) had supported the campaign throughout the 1970s. As Gabriel Egan noted in 2007: Drakakis and Hawkes rightly claim that many supporters of the project are motivated by an urge not to historicize Shakespeare but to glorify him. But this objection is poor historicism if it glosses over the remarkable tensions between and contradictions within the various groups and forces which aligned to make Wanamaker’s intentions viable.100 In general, cultural materialist critics could not reconcile their instinctive aversion to the bardolatrous Globe project with the possibility that Wanamaker – and the project overall – might have genuinely progressive motives and outcomes. When Drakakis paused to consider Wanamaker’s and the Trust’s motives, he could only imagine two possible explanations: either Wanamaker meant well (with his ‘background in radical theatre’) in his attempt to create a unifying cultural centre, but was naïve to assume that the original Globes housed just such a ‘universal democratic instinct’; or the motive of the whole operation was to ‘bring culture within the sphere of administration’ (cf. Adorno), a strategy of overwhelming the local community with the forces of a cultural hegemony ‘consisting of a power elite supported by an influential right-wing press’.101 It is easy to see what Drakakis thought was really going on in Southwark, but harder to know why such a nuanced, multilayered and over-determined situation could be reduced to such a stark diagnosis. (In addition, Wanamaker must have been surprised to hear that he had the support of ‘an influential rightwing press’.) Finally, the essay fundamentally misrepresented the point of the construction. Wanamaker repeatedly made it clear that he was only interested in the new Globe as a working theatre, a round-the-clock hub for

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a range of activities. When Drakakis briefly reflected on any positive gains from all this inquiry, the best he could come up with was that ‘recovery of the precise physical dimensions of the original Globe Theatre – itself a literally “derivative” building – would unquestionably be of value to the theatre historian’ (but why not to directors, actors, audience members, communities?). Yet in the next sentence he returned to a gloomy default setting: ‘The erection of a monument, such as that proposed by The Shakespeare Globe Trust, and now sanctioned by the force of law, is, however, a different matter involving a history constructed around bardolatrous practice’.102 Perhaps if he had reflected a little more on Wanamaker’s ‘background in radical theatre’, Drakakis might have begun to see the political potential of ‘modern’ productions on a replica stage – productions that, rather than effacing history and offering unthinking celebrations of a transcendent bard, might instead have forced actors and audiences alike into a kind of critical and practical presentism. Not everyone on the Left shared the suspicions held by either the cultural materialists or the NSCDG. On 17 August 1985, a committee of Labour Party Merseyside writers (including Eric Heffer and Stan Thorne MPs) wrote to the Leader of Southwark Borough Council in a vain attempt at fraternal (‘Dear Comrade’) reasoning. Pointing to their own experience of Wanamaker’s cultural entrepreneurship in Liverpool in the late ’50s, they wrote: ‘In Merseyside too we were aware from the start that with his political background the New Shakespeare would never be an elitist enterprise. We welcomed its opening by making the front page of Labour’s Merseyside Voice a call for Trade Union support.’ In terms of party politics, it is noticeable that the Labour and Liberal parties showed most support for Wanamaker and the Globe Project. The issue of the Globe was raised in the House of Commons at regular intervals over the years. As Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Government neared the end of its second term in office in March 1987, a debate was tabled by the Minister for the Arts with the motion that ‘this House congratulates the Government on the success of its arts policy’. For many who cared about the arts, the motion would have seemed absurd, if not offensive, as the Thatcher governments had instigated a range of ideologically driven spending cuts in the Arts budget. Nevertheless, Hansard records a string of Conservative MPs rising to trumpet a range of successes. Perversely included in this roll call was the then far-from-complete Globe Theatre, for which, averred Robert Banks MP, ‘Mr. Sam Wanamaker […] deserves the greatest praise’. After an hour or so of similar complacency, Norman Buchan, Labour MP, rose to speak:



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We have heard about the arts tonight and we have, in effect, wandered along the south bank. People express themselves through the arts. That is what the arts are fundamentally about […] I remember Sam Wanamaker not only because of his work in the Globe theatre and the extra grace that it will bring to London but, because of McCarthyism, he was expelled from America because he wanted the arts to say something. That has been missing here [in this debate].103 Wanamaker’s view of the arts as integral and necessary to any healthy democracy is here tellingly contrasted with the instrumentalist philistinism associated with the free market. Six years later, in 1993, the Globe was still a parliamentary litmus test for where one stood on the question of private and public subsidy. At this point, the Globe was very near completion but still needed several million pounds. Two veteran supporters of the project – Labour’s Tony Banks, and Simon Hughes, the Liberal Democrat MP in whose constituency the theatre stood – made speeches in support of government subsidy of the final stages. These notwithstanding, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for (what was now called) National Heritage, Iain Sproat, concluded: The Government have warmly endorsed the efforts of Mr. Wanamaker and his distinguished colleagues, but have been unable to provide the financial support they have been seeking. Having listened intently to what my Hon. Friend has said this evening, I have to tell him that I have not yet been persuaded of the need for any change in that response.104 Most of Wanamaker’s fundraising took place under the shadow of four consecutive Conservative governments, each more or less intent on cutting subsidies to the arts. This partly explains why Wanamaker was loth to express any party political affiliation, as his apparent neutrality might keep alive the dim prospect that he could influence a Tory near the purse-strings of government. (Sproat described how Wanamaker ‘has long stalked the corridors of Whitehall seeking Government support for the scheme’.) The caution he displayed in the 1950s was perhaps ingrained. When approached in the spring of 1991 by Jack Cunningham MP, Labour’s Campaign Coordinator, to attend a Labour fundraising event, he wrote back that he was out of the country, but even so: I am also constrained by my role in The Shakespeare Globe Trust, and as a resident alien, from being seen publicly supporting a political party – whatever my own proclivities may be. These, you may rest assured, from

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the book I am enclosing as an auction item and from my well-publicised past affiliations, should be quite clear. The book was an account of the HUAC hearings and its added value resided in the fact that it was ex libris Cecil B. de Mille, ‘one of the most extreme right notables of the film industry’.105 Wanamaker was more than capable of understanding objections to the enterprise. He simply could not understand why such objections should stand in the way of creating a new cultural complex that – as he saw it – would, on balance, bring intellectual, social and economic benefits to the community. Holderness et al. could only see the plans for the Globe as part of the Shakespeare industry (and myth), and indeed it would be impossible for any plan to reconstruct the Globe not to partake of the dynamics and problematics of bardolatry. But other, non-disciplinary contexts are more relevant, not least that of the history of arts centres in the UK (spurred by the idealism of the 1944 Education Act), of the theatre-in-education movement, of the inspirational model of the Living Theatre, and so on. In their rush to associate Wanamaker with the most sinister aspects of capitalism, most of his critics on the Left overlooked the experiment in Liverpool and the evidence of the Tent seasons. Those experiments not only proved that Wanamaker was not motivated by money (he might have been more careful with the budgets if he had been), but was rather striving for the place of the arts, as widely conceived, not merely in the form of Shakespeare, in the community. In this, he was an idealist in the socially progressive tradition described in John Lane’s Arts Centres: Every Town Should Have One (1978), a tradition that draws on the thought of Rabindranath Tagore and Ivan Illich, especially the latter’s notion of the convivial society: As an alternative to technocratic disaster, I propose the vision of a convivial society. A convivial society would be the result of social arrangements that guarantee for each member the most ample and free access to the tools of the community and limit this freedom only in favor of another member’s equal freedom.106 So committed was Wanamaker to this convivial society that he wanted to place himself at its centre, to live, work, breathe and sleep it. For four months of his tenure in Liverpool he slept in the theatre itself rather than the luxury hotel to which his contract entitled him. And his commitment to the Southwark community was nowhere more eloquently expressed than in his decision to



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sell his very comfortable Highgate home, partly in order to relieve the Trust of some debts but just as much in order to relocate to what was then one of the most deprived areas of London. Drakakis described it as ‘the third poorest borough in England’ in 1988 in order to highlight the obscenity of it being forced to house a useless objet d’art, the Globe; but it would only have been fair to point out that Wanamaker had chosen to live in a community with which many of his critics had at best merely a passing acquaintance.

Something More Permanent In an interview of 1957, Wanamaker sought to explain his approach to acting and directing: I’d say that what I’m after is a blend of Brecht and Stanislavsky, of detachment and intuition, sympathy with the individual, and why he is the way he is, coupled with judicial detachment through seeing him in the round in relation to the world, and seeing where he’s right and where he’s wrong.107 In this attempt to explain why Wanamaker was the way he was, and what lay behind his Shakespearean ambitions and achievements, I have perhaps erred too much towards a Stanislavskian, sympathetic account of this individual at the expense of dwelling judiciously on those moments when he may have been ‘wrong’. Any one of the hundreds of people with whom Wanamaker crossed paths or swords would have some opinion as to his managerial style, the effect of his presence on a room, his abilities as a public speaker, and to what degree (as one journalist put it) he belonged to ‘the iron fist in the iron glove’ school of administration and organization.108 As with most energetically driven individuals, he inspired envy and distrust, but more often admiration and loyalty – and sometimes all of the foregoing emotions. But of all the words written about him – pro and contra – the following passage from a 1973 article by Philip Purser seems to me to be as near the Truth as one could wish: For the old left-winger money is unimportant except as a means to an end. For the once acclaimed actor, fame is irrelevant. His work as a director is still important to him but increasingly, he has confided to his friends, he has hungered to achieve something more permanent, something that was not over the moment he stopped opening and

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shutting his mouth. Now he takes his place among that strange, select high priesthood, the impresarios of the subsidized [sic] arts. Their job, to put it bluntly, is to spend someone else’s money to best advantage. Their reward is to leave something that was not there before.109 I began this profile by writing that nothing that happened post mortem would influence my account, but found it impossible after spending weeks with files of business and personal effects (weeks, that is, Methodically identifying with the subject) not to admire the verve, tenacity, intelligence and chutzpah of Sam Wanamaker (Figure 17). As a consequence, when I then revisit the Globe and see the schoolchildren, local and international – see the packed houses – see the productions; great, bad, indifferent – I find it impossible not to feel gratitude that he, for whatever reason, devoted the last third of his remarkable and improbable life to building a new theatre devoted to the performance of Shakespeare and his contemporaries.110

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Endnotes

Chapter 1 London: William Heinemann for the Society for Theatre Research. Ronald Harwood, Sir Donald Wolfit CBE: His Life and Work in the Unfashionable Theatre (London: Secker & Warburg, 1971), 104.   3 Transcript of diary entry dated 11 July 1878 in Allan Gomme (ed.), W. Poel 1852–1934, Vol I: A Bibliography, unpublished typescript in the William Poel Collection of the Theatre & Performance Department, Victoria & Albert Museum (hereafter TMVA). Copies of the bibliography are housed at the National Art Library in the V&A at pressmark Z 8699.4.   4 Ibid., 17.   5 William Poel, fragment of autograph letter, Geraldine Womack and Norman D. Philbrick Library of Dramatic Arts and Theatre History, Special Collections, Honnold/Mudd Library, Claremont University Consortium, California.   6 Ibid. William Poel here quotes from a letter (now lost) dated 29 July [1920] which he has received from Reginald Pole.   7 Ibid.   8 William Pole, Some Short Reminiscences of Events in my Life and Work (privately printed, 1898), 28.   9 The Times, 31 December 1900, 8.  10 Shaw to Poel, 14 August 1906, in Bernard Shaw: Collected Letters 1898–1910, ed. Dan H. Laurence (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1972), 641–2.  11 Henry Tonks to Poel, 31 March 1932, quoted in Speaight (1954), 265.  12 Walter Bridges-Adams, ‘Theatre’, in Simon Nowell-Smith (ed.), Edwardian England 1901–1914 (London: Oxford University Press, 1964), 403.  13 For a broad survey of the National Theatre movement in England, see John Elsom and Nicholas Tomalin, The History of the National Theatre (London: Jonathan Cape, 1978). For late-nineteenth-century proposals concerning such a theatre, see Tracy C. Davis, The Economics of the British Stage 1800–1914 (Cambridge University Press, 2000), 233–4. For an insider’s detailed account of National Theatre developments in the first half of the twentieth century, see Geoffrey Whitworth, The Making of a National Theatre (London: Faber & Faber, 1961).  14 ‘The French Play in London’, The Nineteenth Century, VI (August 1879), reprinted in The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold, IX: English Literature and Irish Politics, ed. R. H. Super (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1973), 81.   1   2

212 Endnotes Ibid., 83. Ibid., 84–5.  17 William Poel, ‘The Functions of a National Theatre’, The Theatre, n.s.4, XXII (1 September 1893), 164–5.  18 Founder’s Prospectus for New Shakspere Society, 76.  19 Transcript of Poel’s letter to Furnivall dated 23 October 1880 at 9 Stanhope Place, Connaught Square, London, in Gomme Bibliography, 1.  20 See the income and expenditure for years ending 31 December 1878 and 31 December 1879, in Transactions of the New Shakspere Society 1877–9, Pt. III (London: Trubner for the Society [1879]), xli and xlii.  21 Transcript of Poel’s letter to Furnivall dated 1 February 1881 in Gomme Bibliography, 2. Emphasis in the original.  22 William Poel, An Account of the Elizabethan Stage Society (London: Elizabethan Stage Society, 1898, 3). Subsequent narratives of the 1881 staging of the first quarto of Hamlet include: Speaight (1954), 47–57; J. L. Styan, ‘Mr Poel’s Hamlet’, The Shakespeare Revolution (Cambridge University Press, 1977), 47–63; Rinda F. Lundstrom, William Poel’s Hamlets: the Director as Critic (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1984); and Marion O’Connor, William Poel and the Elizabethan Stage Society (Cambridge: Chadwyck Healey, 1987), 19–22.  23 ‘Choral Notes’, The Dramatic Review, 16 May 1885, reprinted in Shaw’s Music, I: 1876–1890, ed. Dan H. Laurence (London: Max Reinhardt, 1981), 252.  24 Transactions of the New Shakspere Society 1880–86 ([London:] Trubner for the Society [1886]), 5.  25 Transcript of Poel’s letter to Furnivall dated 2 May 1881 in Gomme Bibliography, 8.  26 Frederick James Furnivall: A Volume of Personal Record, [ed. &] introd. James Munro (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1911), 144.  27 ‘Shakespeare Birthday Dinner […] Mr William Poel’s Speech’, London Shakespeare League Journal, XI.ii (June–Aug 1925), 10. The words ‘London’ and ‘League’ had been dropped from the title of this journal in the autumn of 1922. Volume numbering did not change, however, and to avoid confusion, the unabbreviated title has been used for all citations of the journal.  28 The Era, 22 October 1892, 10.  29 Frederick James Furnivall: A Volume of Personal Record, [ed. &] introd. James Munro (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1911), 145–6.  30 ‘The Shakespeare Tercentenary’, Monthly Letter, No. 8 (February 1916).  31 ‘Do Actors Study Shakespeare?’, London Shakespeare League Journal, I.vii (April 1915), 27; and ‘Sir Frank Benson’, Monthly Letter, No. 17 (November 1916), 1.  32 ‘Sir Frank Benson – An Unspoken Speech’, Monthly Letter, No. 47 (May 1919), 2. See also ‘The Benson Tribute’, London Shakespeare League Journal, V.vi (July 1919), 22–3.  33 Advertisement in TMVA (THM 40/5/3).  34 Norman Tozer, programme note for ‘Celebrating Poel’, 14 December 2004. (Programme in author’s possession.)  35 In 1915, a table of ‘Shakespeare in the English Theatre’ shows Poel as having staged The Taming of the Shrew (London Shakespeare League Journal, I.xii [September 1915], 47). It gives the same credit to John Martin Harvey,  15  16

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whose 1913 The Taming of the Shrew at the Prince of Wales’s Theatre is the only production of that play in which Poel is known to have had any involvement, as assistant producer. Poel, however, disavowed any responsibility for that production: see ‘Martin Harvey’s Elizabethan Way’, Monthly Letter, No. 15 (September 1916).  36 I am grateful to Frances Hughes, former Secretary of the society and author of A Brief History of the Shakespeare Reading Society (1875–2000), for giving me access to this material in the Shakespeare Reading Society’s uncatalogued archive (hereafter SRS).  37 Statement of Accounts 1890–1 (SRS).  38 Notebook 1888–1890 (SRS).  39 The Star, 21 February 1889, clipping in Notebook 1888–1890 (SRS).  40 ‘On the Subject of Fiddling’, The Star, 28 Feb 1890, reprinted in Shaw’s Music, Dan H. Laurence (ed.) (the Bodley Head GBS), I: 1876–1890 (London: Max Reinhardt, 1981), 939.  41 ‘University College Shakespeare Reading Society’, University College Gazette, 28 February 1897, 104.  42 Stephen C. Schultz ‘Two Notes on William Poel’s Sources’, Nineteenth-Century Theatre Research, 2 (1974), 90.  43 H. K. M., ‘Poel, Pittsburgh and “The Poetaster” ’, Boston Evening Transcript, 4 November 1916, reprinted in Poel’s Monthly Letter, 19 (January 1917).  44 Obituary, The Times, 8 November 1892.  45 Obituary, Illustrated London News, 19 November 1892, 647.  46 Poster advertising Poel’s reading in the National School-Room, Chapel-en-leFrith, 14 April 1879, in TMVA (THM/40/5/9).  47 William Poel, ‘Acting Editions of Shakespeare’s Plays’, paper read to the New Shakspere Society, 10 June 1881, published in The Era, 2 July 1881, 7.  48 William Poel, ‘Hamlet’, in Shakespeare in The Theatre (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1913), 166.  49 William Poel, ‘The Stage Version of Romeo & Juliet’, paper delivered to the New Shakspere Society, 12 April 1889, published in New Shakspere Society Transactions 1887–92, 227–46, 243; revised version in Poel (1913), 154.  50 Transcript of diary entry dated 23 February 1877 in Gomme Bibliography, 26.  51 Poel (1889, 1913), 150.  52 See The Daily Graphic, 22 October 1892, 8.  53 Two complete promptscripts for The Duchess of Malfi survive in TMVA (S.1184– 1983). Like all of the Poel promptscripts in TMVA, they are housed in the National Art Library at the V&A. All have been reproduced in microfiche facsimile: Prompt Books and Actor’s Copies: Theatre Museum, V&A, London (London: Ormonde Publishing Ltd., 1983).  54 Henry Arthur Jones, ‘Dr Pearson on the Modern Drama’, Nineteenth-Century Review (October 1893), reprinted in Jones’s The Renascence of the English drama (London: Macmillan, 1895), 137.  55 Notebook 1888–1890 (SRS).  56 TMVA (S668–19820).  57 ‘The Stage’, The Academy, No. 1024 (19 December 1891), 569.  58 TMVA (THM 40/1/8).

214 Endnotes William Poel, ‘Measure for Measure at the Old Vic’, letter to The Times, 19 December 1933, 8.  60 William Poel, An Account of the Elizabethan Stage Society (1898), 4; [Arthur Dillon,] The Playhouse of the Sixteenth Century (London: printed for the Elizabethan Stage Society, 1905), reissue Folcroft Library Editions, 1973, 27.  61 See Arthur Harris, ‘William Poel’s Elizabethan Stage: The First Experiment’, Theatre Notebook, No. XVII (1963), 111–14; and O’Connor (1987), 26–32.  62 Boreham & Co. printed catalogue for Elizabethan Stage Society auction 5 July 1905, 21.  63 Poel (1898), 12.  64 The Stage of the Sixteenth Century (London: privately printed, 1893).  65 Poel (1898), 5.  66 Frederick Rogers, Labour, Life and Literature (London, 1913; reprint Brighton: Harvester, 1973), 169.  67 The Stage, 27 March 1889.  68 Poel (1898), 5.  69 The third list appears on a membership form for the Elizabethan Stage Society (‘Re-established December 1926’) in the Geraldine Womack and Norman D. Philbrick Library of Dramatic Arts and Theatre History, Special Collections, Honnold/Mudd Library, University Consortium, California.  70 Programme for Twelfth Night at Burlington Hall, 21 and 22 June 1895 (THM 40/1/11), and programme for The Comedy of Errors in Gray’s Inn Hall on 6, 7 and 9 December 1895 (THM 40/1/2).  71 See ‘Nugent Monck worked with William Poel’, Plays and Players, I.6 (March 1954), 8.  72 Promptscript for Twelfth Night, TMVA.  73 William Poel, ‘Shakespeare on the Stage in the Elizabethan Manner’, letter dated 28 May 1905, Times Literary Supplement, 2 June 1905, 178.  74 In July 1899, at the Elizabethan Stage Society’s Annual General Meeting, the society’s treasurer reported that they could ‘only count on 40 or 50 subscribers’ (The Times, 11 July 1899, 7).  75 William Poel, ‘The Elizabethan Stage Circle’ in TMVA (THM/40/3/1/63), 3–4.  76 G. B. Shaw, autograph letter dated 30 March 1898 at 29 Fitzroy Square, TMVA (THM/40/3/2/6/39). I am grateful to the Society of Authors for granting, on behalf of the Bernard Shaw estate, permission to quote from this letter.  77 Poel’s initial production of Everyman was a double bill with The Sacrifice of Isaac, the Barbers’ and Wax-Chandlers’ pageant in the Chester Cycle.  78 L. Carson, The Stage Yearbook (London: The Stage, 1914), 124.  79 Marlowe’s Dr Faustus at St George’s Hall in November 1896; Twelfth Night at Middle Temple Hall in February 1897; Arden of Faversham (plus scenes from Edward III) at St George’s Hall in July 1897; Beaumont and Fletcher’s The Coxcomb at Inner Temple Hall in February 1898; Ford’s The Broken Heart at St George’s Hall in June 1898; The Merchant of Venice at St George’s Hall in November 1898; Swinburne’s Locrine at St George’s Hall in March 1899; Molière’s Don Juan at Lincoln’s Inn Hall in December 1899; and Hamlet at Carpenters’ Hall in February 1900.  80 Boreham & Co. printed catalogue for Elizabethan Stage Society auction 5 July 1905, 5.  59

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Donors’ names and donations are recorded in ‘Elizabethan Stage Trust’, Third Annual Report of the London Shakespeare League (1906), 9–10. The Era, which considered the sums realized at the auction to have been ‘comparatively low’ (8 July 1905, 12), named the trustees of the Elizabethan Stage Trust (14 October 1905, 14).  82 See unattributed photograph in the Daily Mirror, 21 April 1910, 5, discussed in O’Connor (1987), 92–3.  83 Programme for The Merchant of Venice at the Fulham Theatre in June 1907 (TMVA: THM40/1/8).  84 London Shakespeare League Journal, IV.iv & IV.v (April and May 1918), 13, 17–18.  85 The Stage, 13 December 1894, 14.  86 The Era, 12 April 1895, 7.  87 Having survived in the Theatre Collection of the University of Bristol, the Globe plans are discussed and reproduced in: Martin White, ‘William Poel’s Globe’, Theatre Notebook, LIII (1999), 146–62.  88 Letter from Ordish to Poel, published in the Elizabethan Stage Society Annual report for 1899 and quoted thence in London Shakespeare League Journal, XI.i (April–May 1925), 4.  89 TMVA has two different copies of the petition (THM/40/5/7). I quote from the illustrated one.  90 Elizabethan Stage Society Annual report for 1899, as quoted in London Shakespeare League Journal, XI.i (April–May 1925), 4.  91 Open ‘Letter from Mr William Poel’ dated July 1909 and circulated after his production of Macbeth at the Fulham Theatre, 22–26 June 1909. I quote from a copy of the leaflet in the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust Library, Stratfordupon-Avon. There is also a copy in TMVA (THM 40/1/8).  92 London Shakespeare League Journal, XI.ii (June–August 1925), 10.  93 See letter dated 16 July 1912 from Ordish to Poel in the University of Kansas Library (MS 31A: 169/4).  94 William Poel, letter dated 16 January 1925, to the Editor, London Shakespeare League Journal, X.x (February 1925), 73.  95 Stewart Headlam, ‘Our Objects’, London Shakespeare League Journal, III.vii (April 1917), 25–6. See also IX.vi (October, 1923), 41.  96 London Shakespeare League Journal, I.i (October 1914), 1.  97 Poel lectured to Headlam’s Church and Stage Guild in 1884 and 1887: see F. G. Bettany, Stewart Headlam: A Biography (London: John Murray, 1926), 105. For their collaboration on Much Ado About Nothing, see Richard Foulkes, ‘Adult Education and the Theatre’, Studies in Adult Education, XI.i (Apr 1979), 30–41.  98 The scheme enabled 365,000 attendances at Shakespearean performances, but was discontinued when its funding by the London County Council was deemed by the Lord Chief Justice to be an illegal expenditure. See London Shakespeare League Journal, VIII.i (April 1922), 1.  99 London Shakespeare League Journal, III.x (November 1917), 41, 44. 100 S. R. Littlewood, The London Shakespeare Commemoration League 1899–1929 (London: printed for the League, 1928), 11; and Alfred Lugg, General Secretary of the Actors’ Association, ‘Heminge and Condell: the Folio Tercentenary’, letter dated 20 January 1923 to the Editor of The Stage, 1 February 1923, reprinted in London Shakespeare League Journal VIII.ix (March 1923), 68.  81

216 Endnotes W. Baley Kempling, `Commemoration’, Fortnightly Review, reprinted in London Shakespeare League Journal, IX.v (September 1923), 36. 102 ‘Fratricide Punished: Mr William Poel’s Introductory Remarks’ [to the audience at the New Oxford Theatre on 11 October 1924], London Shakespeare League Journal, X.vii (November 1923), 52. 103 Elizabethan Stage Season at the Fulham Theatre, 22–26 June 1909, advertising poster in TMVA (TH40/5/9). 104 See Richard Foulkes, ‘ “Measure Still for Measure”: Miss Horniman and Mr. Poel at the Gaiety’, Theatre Quarterly, X, whole No. 39 (Spring–Summer 1981), 45. 105 Newspaper reviewers’ estimates of the extent of the stage into the stalls ranged from ‘ten feet or more’ (The Morning Post) through ‘some 18 feet’ (The Daily Chronicle) to ‘about 20 feet beyond the proscenium line’ (The Stage). 106 Promptbooks from this production survive in TMVA. See O’Connor (1987), 96–101. 107 See O’Connor (1987), 86–9, 93–6. 108 TMVA (S660–1982) has copies of two promptbooks: Dicks’ Standard Plays No. 226, one lightly marked (in Poel’s hand) with music cues and the other with cuts. 109 Arthur Hands, typescript signed letter dated 20 May 1920 to Poel, University of Kansas Library (MS 31:A: 101). 110 Programme in TMVA (THM 40/1/1). 111 Promptbooks in TMVA (S660–1982). 112 Notice of another such recital, given earlier in the year, explains: ‘Vocal Recitals in costume of Classical Plays are given on Sunday afternoons at the Ethical Church, Queen’s Road, Bayswater, under the direction of Mr William Poel. […] The artists appear by permission of their respective managers. The object of the Recital[s] is to arouse interest in a School of Dramatic where Mr Poel’s methods of teaching can be studied.’ (‘Notes on Members’, London Shakespeare League Journal, VI.ii [April 1920], 7). 113 London Shakespeare League Journal, XI.viii (April 1926), 55. 114 London Shakespeare League Journal, VI.iii (May 1920), 10. 115 London Shakespeare League Journal, XII.iii (Christmas 1926), 22. 116 It had taken Poel at least two attempts to make an exit from the League’s Council. He resigned from it in February 1919, but his fellow councillors’ response to his letter of resignation was simply to vote him back onto the council, ‘hoping that he would attend when possible, but that he would at least give the council the value of his name’ (London Shakespeare League Journal, V.ii [March 1919], 2). He appears to have been more successful four years later, when the Council temporized over another letter of resignation from Poel, whose name did soon disappear from the list of Council members on the masthead of the journal (London Shakespeare League Journal, VIII.x [February 1923] and IX.i [April 1923].) 117 S. R. Littlewood, The London Shakespeare Commemoration League 1899–1929 (London: printed for the League, 1928), 15. 118 For a list of ‘subscriptions [… ] received by the [League] Secretary for the purpose of buying back part of the properties’, see ‘Elizabethan Stage Trust’, 3rd Report of the London Shakespeare League, 9–10. 101

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Poel, holograph letter to [Allan] Gomme, 1 [or 7?] February 1905, in TMVA (THM 40/3/2/4/5). 120 London Shakespeare League Journal, VI.v (July 1920), 20; and see VI.vi (Aug–Sept 1920), 22, and VI.vii (October 1920), 26. 121 London Shakespeare League Journal, XI.ii (June–August 1925), 9–10. 122 See Poel’s July 1926 correspondence with Richard Green-Armytage: a letter dated 24 July 1926 is published in Michael Anderson, ‘William Poel in 1926’, New Theatre Magazine, VIII.i (Autumn 1968), 21; and original letters dated 28 and 29 July 1926 are in the Geraldine Womack and Norman D. Philbrick Library of Dramatic Arts and Theatre History, Special Collections, Honnold/ Mudd Library, Claremont University Consortium, California. 123 William Poel, letter to Mr [Richard] Green-Armytage, dated at Putney 10 December 1926, in Anderson (1968), 21. 124 The Platform Stage: the Journal of the London Shakespeare League X.i (May 1930), 2. 125 Membership form for the Elizabethan Stage Society, in the Geraldine Womack and Norman D. Philbrick Library of Dramatic Arts and Theatre History, Special Collections, Honnold/Mudd Library, Claremont University Consortium, California. 126 See J. A. B. Somerset, ‘William Poel’s First Full Platform Stage’, Theatre Notebook, XX (1966), 118–21. 127 See Lucy Munro, ‘Coriolanus and the [in]authenticities of William Poel’s platform stage’, in Christine Dymkowski and Christie Carson (eds), Shakespeare in Stages: New Theatre Histories (Cambridge University Press, 2010), 37–56. 128 A ground plan given to the author on site shows the present-day dimensions of the hall in the Mary Ward Settlement as 38 feet wide by 61 feet long, with, at one end, a stage 25 feet wide by 17 feet deep. 129 Both of the two typed promptscripts for David and Bethsabe in TMVA (S1180– 1983) bear manuscript annotations for placements ‘on platform’. 130 Donald Wolfit, First Interval (London: Odhams Press, 1954), 142. 131 Compare, in particular, Ivor Brown, ‘Salute to William Poel’, The Saturday Review, 16 July 1927: ‘The stage at the Fortune was so large that, if it is reproduced at the Holborn Empire, it uses all the floor-space up to the point where the dress-circle overhangs the ground-floor.’ 132 Leaflet and programme for The Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron, Royalty Theatre, 15 July 1929, in TMVA (THM40/1/2). 133 The Era, 17 July 1929, 6. 134 Programme for When You See Me, You Know Me, Holborn Empire, 10 July 1927, in TMVA (THM40/1/11). 135 ‘An Elizabethan Stage’, Daily Telegraph, 7 July 1927. 136 Holograph letter dated 20 March 1930 from Percy Simpson to William Poel, University of Kansas Library (MS 31A: 201:3). 137 Advertising flyer for When You See Me, You Know Me, Holborn Empire, 10 July 1927, in TMVA (THM40/1/11). 138 A copy of this preliminary notice for Sejanus is tucked into one of the promptbooks for Julius Cæsar the Dictator that survive in TMVA (S1194–1983). 139 William Poel, ‘The Elizabethan Stage’, letter to the editor of The Saturday Review, No. 3743 (23 July 1927), 129. 119

218 Endnotes Speaight (1954), 17. Typescript signed letter dated 25 August 1927 from Cochran to Poel, with incomplete draft of Poel’s holograph reply dated 2 September [1927] on verso, University of Kansas Library (MS 31A: 47). 142 Edward Garnett, ‘Mr. Poel and the Theatre’, The English Review, XIV (July 1913), 594. 140 141

Chapter 2 Harley Granville-Barker, The Exemplary Theatre (1922; rpt. Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1970), vii.  2 William Archer and H. Granville Barker, A National Theatre: Schemes & Estimates (London: Duckworth, 1907), 37.  3 Letter to William Archer, 21 April 1903, in Eric Salmon (ed.), Granville Barker and His Correspondents (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1986), 41.  4 Schemes and Estimates, 36.  5 Schemes and Estimates, 44.  6 Schemes and Estimates, x.  7 Schemes and Estimates, x–xi.  8 Granville Barker and his Correspondents, 42.  9 See Mary Luckhurst, Dramaturgy: A Revolution in Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 10 Harley Granville-Barker, Prefaces to Shakespeare (rev. 1946–7, Princeton University Press, rpt. in four volumes, 1963), v. I, p. 23. (All quotations from the Prefaces are from this edition.) 11 See James C. Bulman, ‘Introduction: Shakespeare and Performance Theory’, in Bulman, Shakespeare, Theory, and Performance (London: Routledge, 1996). 12 In C. B. Purdom, Harley Granville Barker: Man of the Theatre, Dramatist and Scholar (London: Rockliff, 1955), viii. 13 Letter to St John Ervine, 2 November 1923, in Granville Barker and his Correspondents, 500. 14 For Barker in relation to the larger issues of literary and theatrical modernism, see Cary DiPietro, Shakespeare and Modernism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 152–67. 15 ‘Preface to Hamlet’, Prefaces to Shakespeare (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1946), I, 25. 16 Introduction, Prefaces to Shakespeare, I, 6. 17 Schemes and Estimates, 129. 18 For Shaw’s practice of tailoring plays to the generic conventions of particular managements, and the roles played by particular actor-managers, see Martin Meisel, Shaw and the Nineteenth Century Theater (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963). 19 For a full account of the SMNT Committee, see Cary M. Mazer, ‘Treasons, Stratagems, and Spoils: Edwardian Actor-Managers and the Shakespeare Memorial National Theatre’, Theatre Survey 24 (1983), 1–33.  1

Endnotes

219

W. Bridges-Adams, ‘The Lost Leader,’ in The Bridges-Adams Letter Book, ed. Robert Speaight (London: The Society for Theatre Research, 1971), 91. 21 For a synthesis of critical response, see Dennis Kennedy, Granville Barker and the Dream of Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); J. L. Styan, The Shakespeare Revolution: Criticism and Performance in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977); Mazer, Shakespeare Refashioned: Elizabethan Plays on Edwardian Stages (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1981); and Christine Dymkowski, Harley Granville Barker: A Preface to Modern Shakespeare (Cranbury: Associated University Presses, 1986). 22 ‘Preface to The Winter’s Tale’, rpt. in More Prefaces to Shakespeare, ed. Edward M. Moore (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), 24–5. 23 Introduction to The Player’s Shakespeare, rpt. in More Prefaces to Shakespeare, ed. Edward M. Moore, 50. Barker makes a similar observation in ‘Shakespeare and Modern Stagecraft’, Yale Review 15 (1926), 714. 24 Letter to Play Pictorial, November 1912, rpt. in Granville Barker and his Correspondents, 530. 25 As he added new prefaces and revised earlier ones, his own hypotheses of the plays’ original stagings became less dependent upon the above and what scholars then called the ‘inner stage’; scenes were played, he increasingly believed, in relation to these spaces, rather than in them. See Prefaces to Shakespeare, II, 215 note. 26 Prefaces to Shakespeare, I, 16. 27 On Dramatic Method (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1931), 159. 28 For a discussion of Tree’s reading of Henry V in relation to the larger issue of Shakespeare and theatrical intentionality, see Cary M. Mazer, ‘Intentionality, the Theatre Artist, and the Performance Historian’, Style 44 (2010), 404–11. 29 Joe Falocco, in Reimagining Shakespeare’s Playhouse: Early Modern Staging Conventions in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2010), cites Barker’s credo (‘Gain Shakespeare’s effects …’) as evidence of a pernicious literary bias, an investment in the authority of authorial text over contingencies of performance, according to W. B. Worthen’s definitions of authority in Shakespeare and the Authority of Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), and not as evidence in a faith in theatrical process, as I take it to be. 30 ’Exit Planché – Enter Gilbert’, The Eighteen-Sixties, ed. John Drinkwater (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932), 102–48. 31 London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1930. 32 Letter to Thomas Hardy, 6 July 1923, in Granville Barker and His Correpondents, 374, Barker’s emphasis. 33 Rpt. in More Prefaces to Shakespeare, 32. 34 Cathleen Nesbitt, A Little Love and Good Company (London: Faber, 1975), 62. 35 An Actor, ‘Mr. Granville Barker’s Gramophones’, The New Age 12 (9 January 1913), 225–6. For a discussion of this article in relation to other evidence of Barker’s directing, see Cary M. Mazer, ‘Actors of Gramophones: The Paradoxes of Granville Barker’, Theatre Journal 36 (1984), 5–24. 36 Rpt. in More Prefaces to Shakespeare, 35. 37 Ibid., 38. 20

220 Endnotes Ibid., 35. Ibid., 94. 40 Ibid., 96–7. 41 ‘Introduction to the Players’ Shakespeare’, rpt. in More Prefaces to Shakespeare, 47. 42 Rpt. in Granville Barker and His Correspondents, 530. 43 Preface to A Midsummer Night’s Dream in The Players’ Shakespeare, rpt. in More Prefaces to Shakespeare, 106–7. Barker continued to endorse Sharp’s arrangements and choreography to correspondents considering producing the play, such as W. Bridges-Adams (see his letter, 20 August 1919, in Granville Barker and His Correspondents, 438). 44 Prefaces, I, 15. 45 ‘Shakespeare and Modern Stagecraft’, 708. 46 26 September 1912, rpt. in Granville Barker and His Correspondents, 528. 47 ‘At the Moscow Art Theatre’, Seven Arts 19 (1917), 659. 48 Barker describes this moment, not in his essay ‘At the Moscow Art Theatre’, but in a lengthy note in The Exemplary Theatre, 246–7. 49 ‘The Heritage of the Actor’, Quarterly Review 240, no. 476 (1923), 53 50 See ‘The Coming of Ibsen’, in The Eighteen-Eighties, ed. Walter de la Mare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1930), 159–96, and ‘Tennyson, Swinburne, Meredith and the Theatre’, in The Eighteen-Seventies, ed. Harley Granville-Barker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1929), 161–91. 51 Letter to Archer, 21 April 1903, in Granville Barker and His Correspondents, 42. 52 Letter to Barker, 11 June 1923, in Granville Barker and His Correspondents, 86. 53 Letter to Archer, 22 September 1923, Granville Barker and His Correspondents, 96; emphasis in the original. 54 W. Bridges-Adams attributes this quotation to J. M. Barrie, in his radio address, ‘The Lost Leader’, 1953, rpt. in A Bridges-Adams Letter Book, ed. Robert Speaight (London: The Society for Theatre Research, 1971), 88. 55 ‘Granville-Barker: Some Particulars’, Drama n.s. no. 3 (1946), rpt. in Shaw on Theatre, E. J. West (ed.) (New York: Hill & Wang, 1958), 266. 56 Letter to Barker, 19 Jan. 1908, in Bernard Shaw’s Letters to Granville Barker, ed. C. B. Purdom (New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1957), 115. Tellingly, when Barker describes the sorts of plays that might be suitable for scene-study classes for actors in The Exemplary Theatre, he includes, unsurprisingly, The Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard and specifically excludes plays ‘whose characters were unresponsive to analysis’, and plays ‘making early demands for its realization upon sheer rhetoric or external graces’, singling out play by Shaw such as The Doctor’s Dilemma, Major Barbara and Man and Superman, which call for ‘interpretive collaboration of a sort so clearly defined in the text as to scarcely susceptible to argument at all’ (The Exemplary Theatre, 133–4). He does advocate several other Shaw plays – Candida, John Bull’s Other Island and Getting Married – all of which feature moments in which characters face the ineffable. 57 A Midsummer Night’s Dream is on Barker’s list of plays unsuited to scene-study classes in The Exemplary Theatre, precisely because the characters would not ‘repay much analysis’ (225). 58 ‘The Heritage of the Actor’, 54. 59 The Exemplary Theatre, 232 38 39

Endnotes 62 63

221

Ibid., 243. Ibid., 244–5. ‘The Heritage of the Actor’, 70. The Exemplary Theatre, 140–1. This indirect relationship of character to utterance is precisely what Barker feels Shaw missed in his ‘fantasia in the Russian manner’, Heartbreak House, observing that ‘while Tchekov’s plays inappropriately acted are quite unintelligible, Shaw’s need never, at least, be misunderstood’ (135). 64 Ibid., 93. 65 Introduction to The Players’ Shakespeare, rpt. in More Prefaces to Shakespeare, 48. 66 Prefaces to Shakespeare, I, 25. 67 Ibid. 68 ‘Shakespeare’s Dramatic Art’, in Companion to Shakespeare Studies, ed. Harley Granville-Barker and G. B. Harrison (1934, rpt. New York: Anchor, 1960), 68. 69 Prefaces to Shakespeare, I, 197. 70 Prefaces to Shakespeare, I, 25. 71 Prefaces to Shakespeare, I, 26. 72 ‘The Heritage of the Actor’, 70. 73 ‘From Henry V to Hamlet’, rpt. in More Prefaces to Shakespeare, 147. 74 Prefaces to Shakespeare, I, 231. 75 Prefaces to Shakespeare, I, 32 (Barker’s emphasis). 76 Prefaces to Shakespeare, II, 83. 77 Prefaces to Shakespeare, III, 107. 78 There is evidence of Barker’s own struggle with the tension between structure and character in his own post-war dramatic writing: if The Secret Life (1923) does not have enough plot in relation to Barker’s evident interest in the unspoken recesses of character, the political melodrama, His Majesty (1923–4), about a central European monarch returning from exile to engage in the political machinations of various factions and armies, has arguably too much. 79 Prefaces to Shakespeare, I, 28. 80 Prefaces to Shakespeare, I, 29. 81 The Exemplary Theatre, 244. 82 Letter to Daily Mail, 26 September 1912, in Granville Barker and His Correspondents, 528. 83 The Exemplary Theatre, 145. 84 Prefaces to Shakespeare, II, 6. 85 Prefaces to Shakespeare, II, 9. 86 John Gielgud, Stage Directions (New York: Capricorn Books, 1963), 51. 87 John Gielgud, An Actor in His Time (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1979), 134. 88 Dymkowski draws both from Gielgud’s numerous memoirs, and from Hallam Fordham’s manuscript eye-witness account of rehearsals – perhaps the best documented of Barker in rehearsal, albeit late in his career. 89 See Dymkowski, 180–4, and 194–5. 90 ‘Preface to A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, in More Prefaces to Shakespeare, 98. 91 The Exemplary Theatre, 278. 92 Ibid. 93 The Exemplary Theatre, 32. Ellipsis in the original. 60 61

222 Endnotes Ibid., 33. Letter to St John Ervine, 2 October 1923, in Granville Barker and His Correspondents, 499–500. 96 ‘Preface to Twelfth Night’, in More Prefaces to Shakespeare, 32. 94 95

Chapter 3 Nicholas Wroe, ‘The Magus’, Guardian, 12 May 2007. The production was La Traviata, which opened on 6 April 1948; Brook was Director of Production.   3 Peter Brook, Threads of Time: A Memoir (London: Methuen, 1998), 29.   4 See the collection of interviews conducted by Alfred Rossi, Astonish Us in the Morning: Tyrone Guthrie Remembered (London: Hutchinson, 1977).   5 See J. L. Styan, The Shakespeare Revolution: Criticism and Performance in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977); Joe Falacco, Reimagining Shakespeare’s Playhouse: Early Modern Staging Conventions in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2010). Guthrie’s own biography, A Life in the Theatre (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1959), foregrounds the work at Stratford; see also James Forsyth, Tyrone Guthrie: A Life (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1976). For a counter-reading, see Robert Shaughnessy, The Shakespeare Effect: A History of Twentieth-Century Performance (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002).   6 Styan, Revolution, 234.   7 See the essays in James C. Bulman (ed.), Shakespeare, theory, and performance (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), and W. B. Worthen, Shakespeare and the Force of Modern Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).   8 Brook, Threads, 41.   9 The Times, 22 April 1933.  10 Guthrie, Life, 75.  11 Ibid.  12 Punch, 13 July 1932.  13 J. T. Grein, ‘The World of the Theatre’, Illustrated London News, 23 July 1932.  14 Forsyth, Guthrie, 116.  15 Herbert Farjeon, The Shakespearean Scene: Dramatic Criticisms (London: Hutchinson, 1949), 38.  16 Gordon Crosse, Fifty Years of Shakespearean Playgoing, 1890–1952 (London: A. R. Mowbray, 1953), 94.  17 Harcourt Williams, Four Years at the Old Vic, 1929–1933 (London: Putnam, 1935), 175.  18 Guthrie, Life, 83.  19 Harcourt Williams, Old Vic Saga (London: Winchester Publications, 1949), 100.  20 Williams, Four Years, 242.  21 ‘The Old Vic Company’, The Times, 16 September 1933.  22 ‘To Introduce Myself’, Old Vic and Sadler’s Wells Magazine, September–October 1933, 3.   1   2

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Robert Atkins, Robert Atkins: An Unfinished Autobiography, ed. George Rowell (London: Society for Theatre Research, 1994), 104.  24 Sherban Cantacuzino, Wells Coates: A Monograph (London: Gordon Fraser, 1978), 37.  25 The Times, 19 September 1933.  26 Guthrie, Life, 109.  27 Simon Callow, Charles Laughton: A Difficult Actor (London: Methuen, 1987), 65. For a nuanced discussion of Lopokova’s Olivia in the context of a ‘lesbian genealogy’ of the Old Vic, see Elizabeth Schafer, ‘ “Not our Olivia”: Lydia Lopokova and Twelfth Night’, in Shakespeare in Stages: New Theatre Histories, ed. Christine Dymkowski and Christie Carson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 144–63. Schafer points out that Guthrie completely eradicates Lopokova from his account of the production, and also that Guthrie’s first two directorial choices were ‘family plays’.  28 ‘To Introduce Myself’, 3.  29 Tyrone Guthrie, Theatre Prospect (London: Wishart, 1932), 49.  30 Old Vic and Sadler’ Wells Magazine, November 1933.  31 Callow, Laughton, 67.  32 The Times, 8 November 1933.  33 Charles Higham, Charles Laughton: An Intimate Biography (London: W. H. Allen, 1976), 48.  34 Forsyth, Guthrie, 132.  35 Norman Marshall, The Other Theatre (London: John Lehmann, 1947), 131.  36 Rossi, Astonish Us, 19.  37 The Times, 5 December 1933.  38 New Statesman and Nation, 16 December 1933.  39 Guthrie, Life, 70–71.  40 Williams, Four Years, 138.  41 Guthrie, Life, 114.  42 George Rowell, The Old Vic: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 123.  43 Guthrie, Life, 115.  44 ‘… he by the imagination and the intellectual honesty which enable him to perceive his own loss of integrity and to realize the fullest implications of the loss; she by the relentless driving-force and iron self-control that would, in different circumstances, have made her so great a queen; both by their genuine love for one another.’ Producer’s Note’, Old Vic Programme for Macbeth, 1934.  45 Elizabeth Schafer, Lilian Baylis: A Biography (Hatfield: University of Hertfordshire Press, 2006), 149, citing a 1963 radio broadcast, ‘Farewell to the Vic’. Callow reports that Pilgrim, who loathed Laughton even more than she did Guthrie, sabotaged his performance in Love for Love; she ‘worked out his comic timing, and fiendishly killed every laugh by guffawing mirthlessly just before the end of the line’ (Laughton, 80).  46 Marvin Rosenberg, The Masks of Macbeth (Newark, NJ: University of Delaware Press, 1978), 376, 578.  47 James Agate, Brief Chronicles: A Survey of the Plays of Shakespeare and the Elizabethans in Actual Performance (London: Jonathan Cape, 1943), 232.  23

224 Endnotes Guthrie, Life, 115. Play Pictorial, December 1935.  50 Quoted in Forsyth, Guthrie, 143  51 T. C. Worsley, ‘An iconoclast in the wings’, Times Literary Supplement, 10 December 1975. Worsley also suggests that Guthrie’s fiscal self-sufficiency was ‘a great advantage to someone who was to devote his life to classical theatre’, which, when one considers the actual balance between Guthrie’s direction of classics and his commercial work, seems a little overstated.  52 Forsyth, Guthrie, 143.  53 Dan Rebellato, 1956 And All That: The Making of Modern British Drama (London: Routledge, 1999), 86.  54 From an early stage, Guthrie cultivated a public persona in the popular prints no less glamorous than those of the actors he directed: the two-page spread of performer publicity shots included in the January 1937 Old Vic season souvenir issue of Play Pictorial, for example, features a beautiful chiaroscuro portrait of Guthrie (credited to Howard Coster) alongside Olivier, Evans and Redgrave. The image of ‘The Author in Rehearsal’ included in A Life in the Theatre (credited to K. Hutton) is an even more artful example of self-fashioning: backlit by footlights and staring intently through (or into) the cloud of smoke that coils from the cigarette poised just before his lip, his thumb resting pensively in his cheek, and his face illuminated by the glow of an unseen scene of performance, Guthrie is something more than a watcher and witness: he is a seer, a dreamer of his theatre dreams – and of ours.  55 Carol Chillington Rutter, ‘Shakespeare’s popular face: from the playbill to the poster’, in The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Popular Culture, ed. Robert Shaughnessy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 248–71, 259.  56 Forsyth, Guthrie, 124.  57 Old Vic and Sadler Wells Magazine, September–October 1936.  58 ‘Reopening of the Old Vic’, The Times, 10 September 1936.  59 Forsyth, Guthrie, 153.  60 Old Vic and Sadler’s Wells Magazine, September–October 1936, front matter.  61 Audrey Williamson, Old Vic Drama: A Twelve Years’ Study of Plays and Players (London: Rockliff, 1948), 58.  62 Dorothy Drake, ‘The Old Vic 1936/1937 Season’, Play Pictorial, January 1937.  63 The Times, 15 September 1936.  64 John Dover Wilson, Shakespeare’s Happy Comedies (London: Faber and Faber, 1962), 64.  65 The Times, 24 February 1937.  66 Sunday Times, 28 February 1937; J. C. Trewin, Shakespeare on the English Stage 1900–1964 (London: Barrie and Rockliff, 1964), 164.  67 Laurence Olivier, On Acting (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1986), 57.  68 Laurence Olivier, Confessions of an Actor (London: Weidenfield and Nicolson, 1982), 79.  69 A. C. Sprague, Shakespeare’s Plays Today: Some Customs and Conventions of the Stage (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1970), 46, 120.  70 Williamson, Old Vic Drama, 90.  48  49

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Tyrone Guthrie, In Various Directions: A View of Theatre (London: Michael Joseph, 1965); Olivier, Confessions, 82.  72 Guthrie, Life, 173.  73 Forsyth, Guthrie, 168.  74 The Times, 27 December 1938.  75 Guthrie, Life, 6.  76 ‘Producer’s Note’, Old Vic Programme for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, December 1938.  77 Williamson, Old Vic Drama, 78–9; Trewin, Shakespeare, 147; Farjeon, Scene, 47.  78 Rowell, Old Vic, 131.  79 Dennis Arundell, The Story of Sadler’s Wells (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1965), 217.  80 The Times, 18 February 1941.  81 Trewin, Shakespeare, 188.  82 Ivor Brown, Punch, 11 June 1941.  83 Ivor Brown, Punch, 19 February 1941.  84 Rebellato, 1956, 52.  85 Simon Shepherd and Peter Womack, English Drama: A Cultural History (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), 118.  86 John Pick, The West End: Mismanagement and Snobbery (Eastbourne, John Offord, 1983), 143.  87 Ibid., 154.  88 Rowell, Old Vic, 135.  89 Williamson, Old Vic Drama, 165.  90 See Guthrie, Life, 168–72; Forsyth, Guthrie, 158–9; Rossi, Astonish Us, 33–4; Shaughnessy, Effect, 108–20.  91 Harold Conway, Daily Mail, 3 June 1937.  92 George W. Bishop, Daily Telegraph, 3 June 1937.  93 Conway, Daily Mail; The Times, 3 June 1937.  94 Rossi, Astonish Us, 34.  95 Ibid., 96.  96 Guthrie, Life, 171–2.  97 Schafer, Lilian Baylis, 248.  98 Richard Cave, Terence Gray and the Cambridge Festival Theatre (Cambridge: Chadwyck-Healey, 1980), 71–2.  99 Guthrie, Life, 275. 100 Jen Harvie, ‘Cultural Effects of the Edinburgh International Festival: Elitism, Identities, Industries’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 13 (2003), 12–26: 14. 101 Guthrie, Life, 274. 102 Ibid., 275. 103 Ivor Brown, ‘Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaits at the Edinburgh Festival’, in Sir David Lindsay, Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaits, ed. James Kinsley (London: Cassell, 1954), 29. 104 Guthrie, ‘Introduction’, Sir David Lindsay and Robert Kemp, The Satire of the Three Estates (London: Heinemann, 1951), x. 105 Alfred Rossi, Minneapolis Rehearsals: Tyrone Guthrie Directs Hamlet (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1970), vii–viii.  71

226 Endnotes Guthrie, Life, 278. Sir David Lindsay, The Satire of the Three Estates, Acting Version by Robert Kemp (Edinburgh: the Scots Review, 1949), cover copy. 108 Robert Kemp, ‘Introduction’ The Satire of the Three Estates, i, vi. 109 Winifred Bannister, James Bridie and his Theatre (London: Rockliff, 1955), 237. 110 Forsyth, Guthrie, 193. 111 Rowell, Old Vic, 144. 112 The Times, 27 December 1951. 113 The Times, 29 May 1952. 114 ‘Mr Guthrie to leave the Old Vic’, The Times, 9 April 1952. 115 Rossi, Astonish Us, 279. 116 Philip Bramley, interviewed on 10 November 2006, The British Library Theatre Archive Project, http://www.bl.uk/projects/theatrearchive/bramley.html [accessed 22 August 2011]. 117 See Tom Nairn, The Enchanted Glass: Britain and its Monarchy (London: Vintage, 1994). Guthrie, Life, 292. 118 Ibid., 292. 119 Trewin, Shakespeare, 228. 120 W. A. Darlington, Daily Telegraph, 4 April 1956. 121 Plays and Players, May 1956. 122 The Times, 4 April 1956. 123 Frances A. Shirley, Shakespeare in Production: Troilus and Cressida (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 33, 34. 124 Observer, 8 April 1956. 125 Observer, 13 May 1956, rpt. in Tynan on Theatre (Harmondsworth: Pelican Books, 1964), 42. 126 Claire M. Tylee, ‘The Text of Cressida and Every Ticklish Reader: Troilus and Cressida, the Greek Camp Scene’, Shakespeare Survey 41 (1989), 63–76: 67. 127 Roger Wood and Mary Clarke, Shakespeare at the Old Vic (London: Hamish Hamilton for the Vic-Wells Association, 1956), n.p. 128 Richard David, ‘Drams of Eale: A Review of Recent Productions’, Shakespeare Survey, 10 (1957), 126–34: 131. 129 John Gassner, ‘Broadway in Review’, Educational Theatre Journal 8 (1956), 120–8: 127. 130 Tyrone Guthrie, ‘Introduction’, Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine the Great, An Acting Version prepared and introduced by Tyrone Guthrie and Donald Wolfit (London: Heinneman, 1951), ix–xi. 131 Donald Wolfit, ‘Introduction’, in ibid., xiii. 132 The Times, 25 September 1951. 133 Daily Telegraph, 25 September 1951. 134 J. C. Trewin. Illustrated London News, 13 October 1951. 135 T. C. Worsley, New Statesman, 29 September 1952. 136 The Times, 26 April 1948; Punch, 22 Setember 1968. 137 John O’London’s Weekly, 12 October 1951; The Sketch, 10 October 1951. 138 Daily Graphic, 24 September 1951. 139 Rossi, Astonish Us, 161–2. 140 Cecil Wilson, Daily Mail, 25 September 1951. 106 107

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Emrys Jones, ‘ “A World of Ground”: Terrestrial Space in Marlowe’s Tamburlaine Plays’, Yearbook of English Studies 38 (2008), 168–82: 168–9. 142 Guthrie, Life, 215. 143 Ibid. 144 Ibid. 145 Tyrone Guthrie, ‘Repertory Theatre: Ideal or Deception?’, New York Times, 26 April 1959. 146 Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters and Sciences, Report: Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters and Sciences, 1949–1951 (Ottawa, ON: Edmond Cloutier, 1951), 271, 193. 147 Robertson Davies, ‘The Theatre: A Dialogue on the State of the Theatre in Canada’, in ibid., 374, 373. 148 Margaret Groome, ‘Stratford and the Aspirations for a Canadian National Theatre’, in Shakespeare in Canada: A World Elsewhere?, ed. Diana Byrdon and Irena R. Makaryk (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 2002), 108–36: 122. 149 Tom Patterson and Allan Gould, First Stage: The Making of the Stratford Festival (Toronto, ON: McClelland and Stewart, 1987), 26. 150 Groome, ‘Canadian National Theatre’, 123. 151 Guthrie, Life, 281. 152 Forsyth, Guthrie, 196, 214–15. 153 Denis Salter, ‘Acting Shakespeare in Postcolonial Space’, in Shakespeare, Theory, and Performance, Bulman (ed.), 113–32: 120. 154 Dennis Kennedy, ‘Shakespeare and Cultural Tourism’, Theatre Journal 50 (1998), 175–88: 177. 155 The Times, 28 April 1952. 156 Forsyth, Guthrie, 221. 157 Guthrie, Life, 284. 158 Ibid., 286. 159 Ibid., 288. 160 V. Fremlin, Farmer’s Advocate and Canadian Countryman, 25 July 1953. 161 Davies, ‘Through Ritual to Romance’, Saturday Night, 1 August 1953; Cecil Clarke, ‘The Stratford Festival Theatre’, Stratford Festival Souvenir Programme 1953, both cited in Groome, ‘Canadian National Theatre’, 127, 128. 162 Ibid., 127. 163 Guthrie, Life, 299. 164 ‘The Theater: New Shakespeare in Canada’, Time, 27 July 1953. 165 Irene R. Makaryk, ‘Introduction’, Shakespeare in Canada, 3–41: 24. 166 Dennis Kennedy, Looking at Shakespeare: A Visual History of Twentieth-Century Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 160. 167 Tyrone Guthrie, ‘Shakespeare at Stratford, Ontario’, Shakespeare Survey, 8 (1955), 127–32: 129. 168 Kennedy, Looking, 161. 169 Alec Guinness, Blessings in Disguise (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1997), 73–4. 170 Salter, ‘Acting Shakespeare’, 122. 171 Time, 27 July 1953. 172 J. L. Styan, Shakespeare in Performance: All’s Well that Ends Well (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984), 7. 141

228 Endnotes Styan, Revolution, 197. Montreal Star, 18 July 1953. 175 Boston Herald, 2 August 1953; New York Herald Tribune, 15 July 1953. 176 Rossi, Astonish Us, 283. 177 Tyrone Guthrie, A New Theatre (New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1964), 69. 178 Guthrie, Life, 181. 179 Guthrie, New Theatre, 70–3. 180 Ibid., 84. 181 Ibid., 110. 182 Ibid., 88–9. 183 New York Herald Tribune, 9 May 1963, rpt. in Rossi, Minneapolis, 82–5: 83. 184 Globe and Mail, 9 May 1963, rpt. in ibid., 79–81: 79. 185 Kevin Kelly, Boston Globe, 9 May 1963, rpt. in ibid., 85–6; 86. 186 Tyrone Guthrie, ‘First Shakespeare Festival at Stratford, Ontario’, in Guthrie, Robertson Davies and Grant MacDonald, Renown at Stratford: A Record of the Shakespeare Festival in Canada 1953 (Toronto, ON: Clarke, Irwin and Company, 1953), 120. 187 Dan Sullivan, Minneapolis Tribune, 8 May 1963; rpt. in Rossi, Minneapolis, 77–8: 78. 188 Rossi, Astonish Us, 284. 189 Guthrie, In Various Directions, 71. 190 Rossi, Astonish Us, 26; Guthrie, Life, 192. 191 Astonish Us, 284, 138. 192 These are not identified in the programme but the ‘Men at Arms & Secretaries Plot’ preserved in the production records names Corporal Rowland and Privates McNulty, Tebbutt, Black, Jarman, Pollard, Asher, Hodgkins, Smith, Wilson, Goodwin, Neale and Woodburn. 193 Muriel St Clare Byrne, ‘A Stratford Production: Henry VIII’, Shakespeare Survey, 3 (1950), 120–7: 125. 194 Quoted in the Warwick Advertiser, 15 August 1949. 195 Scotsman, 28 July 1949. 196 T. C. Worsley, New Statesman, 23 July 1949. 197 Byrne, ‘A Stratford Production’, 127. 198 J. C. Trewin, Illustrated London News, 2 May 1959. 199 J. C. Trewin, The Lady, 7 May 1959. 200 Cecil Wilson, Daily Mail, 22 April 1959; A. Alvarez, New Statesman, 25 April 1959. 201 Our London Drama Critic, Glasgow Herald, 23 April 1959. 202 Rossi, Astonish Us, 26. 203 Coventry Evening Telegraph, 15 November 1958; entry for 21 April, Shakespeare Memorial Theatre Minute Book, 4 (1961); both quoted in Marion J. Pringle, The Theatres of Stratford-upon-Avon 1872–1992: An Architectural History (Stratfordupon-Avon: Stratford-upon-Avon Society, 1994), 53. 204 Quoted in Trewin, Shakespeare, 249. 205 Michael Billington, ‘The Final Curtain’, Guardian, 28 February 2007. 173 174

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Chapter 4 Dean MacCannell, The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class [1976] (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 41.   2 ‘The Toast to Literature at the Annual Dinner of the Association of London Chief Librarians’, speech delivered 25.2.1972 at Café Royal, London. MS. Shakespeare’s Globe Archive. Box: ‘SW1 Personal Correspondence 1972–1993’.   3 ‘Muse of Fire’, speech delivered 17.3.1992 at Queen Mary and Westfield (and elsewhere). MS. Shakespeare’s Globe Archive. Box: ‘S.W. Speeches’.   4 Charles Marowitz, ‘Wanamaker, Samuel (1919–1993)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004). http://www.oxforddnb. com/view/article/53414 [accessed 30 August 2011].   5 ‘Variations on a Theme by Irvin Winkler’. MS. Howard Gotlieb Archive. Box 24.   6 Stephen Greenblatt et al. (eds), Cultural Mobility: A Manifesto (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 251.   7 E. L. Doctorow, World’s Fair (London: Random House, 1985), 243, 248.   8 Robert W. Rydall, World of Fairs: The Century-of-Progress Exhibitions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 66.   9 Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 7.  10 Rydell, World of Fairs, 9.  11 Quoted in ibid., 15.  12 ‘Affidavit’, 16. MS. Howard Gotlieb Archive. Box 30.  13 Rydell, World of Fairs, 1–2.  14 Official Guide Book of the Fair, 1933. Excerpts reprinted at: http://www.cityclicker. net/chicfair/ [accessed 26 April 2011].  15 The Cleveland Press, ‘Globe Players May Visit Expo’, 27.3.36.  16 Cleveland Festival Souvenir Guide, 34.  17 Max Beerbohm, Around Theatres (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1953), 258.  18 W. Ward Marsh, The Plain Dealer, 28.6.36.  19 ‘Shakespeare Streamlined’, Editorial, The Plain Dealer, 18.6.36; Arthur Spaeth, ‘About Some Players Who Give Us Shakespeare Just As We Like It’, The Cleveland News, 2.6.36.  20 ‘Affidavit’, 20.  21 Ibid., 16.  22 Ibid., 18.  23 Ibid., 19.  24 Ibid., 24–5.  25 Letter from Harold Conway to SW. 21.1.59. MS. Howard Gotlieb Archive. Box 13.  26 Richard Findlater, Michael Redgrave: Actor (London: Heinemann, 1956), 114.  27 Ibid., 116.  28 ‘Variations on a Theme by Irvin Winkler.’ MS 5–6. Howard Gotlieb Archive. Box 24.  29 ‘Affidavit’, 27.  30 Letter from Charles Marowitz to SW, July 1957. MS. Howard Gotlieb Archive. Box 15.   1

230 Endnotes Letter from SW to Arnon Fischmann, 19.7.58. MS. Howard Gotlieb Archive. Box 14.  32 Hobson’s review of Threepenny Opera; article undated in folder. Howard Gotlieb Archive. Box 11.  33 Letter from SW to Bertolt Brecht, 10.3.56. MS. Howard Gotlieb Archive. Box 11.  34 Annotated Troilus and Cressida programme. Howard Gotlieb Archive. Box 16.  35 ‘Affidavit’, 5.  36 Draft promotional material. Howard Gotlieb Archive. Box 13.  37 Prompt, Spring 1958, 3.  38 Kenneth Tynan, ‘A World Elsewhere’, Observer, 3.11.57.  39 Prompt, Spring 1958, 2.  40 Wanamaker’s report to the Board on 21.3.58. MS. Howard Gotlieb Archive. Box 16.  41 Letter from SW to John Gielgud, 8.11.57. MS. Howard Gotlieb Archive. Box 19.  42 Letter from SW to Colin Grant, 3.6.57. MS. Howard Gotlieb Archive. Box 16.  43 Prompt, Summer 1958. Emphasis in the original.  44 John Lane, Arts Centres: Every Town Should Have One (London: Paul Elek, 1978), 8.  45 ‘Something New Hits Liverpool’, Labour’s Merseyside Voice, 5.11.1957.  46 Sam and Charlotte Wanamaker’s security files can be found in The National Archives, Reference KV 2/3106 for materials from April 1951–September 1957 and KV 2/3107 for materials detailing the time in Liverpool from October 1957–September 1958.  47 Encore 11, November–December 1957. Unpaginated cutting. Howard Gotlieb Archive. Box 29.  48 Letter from SW to Tennessee Williams, 26.1.59. MS. Howard Gotlieb Archive. Box 5.  49 ‘Wanamaker vs Hobson’ MS. Howard Gotlieb Archive. Box 13.  50 ‘The Brecht Revolution’, MS, 12. Howard Gotlieb Archive. Box 3. Later published in International Theatre Annual No.1, ed. Harold Hobson (London: Calder, 1956).  51 The Times, ‘Liverpool’s Bid to Keep the New Shakespeare Open,’ 19.1.1959.  52 Quotes respectively from unpaginated press cuttings from: Peterborough Daily Telegraph, 30.10.57, Bristol Evening Post, 30.1.58, and The Times, 17.7.57.  53 Wanamaker’s ‘Statement with Reference to Statement of Affairs of W.W. Productions Ltd. (in Liquidation)’ of 12.2.59. MS. Howard Gotlieb Archive. Box 11.  54 All newspaper reviews cited in this section can be conveniently consulted in the cuttings book at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust archive, Stratford-upon-Avon. In each case, I will give author, publication and date in parenthesis.  55 Notes on Iago. MS. Howard Gotlieb Archive. Box 24.  56 Letter from SW to Charlotte Wanamaker, 16.1.65. MS. Howard Gotlieb Archive. Box 31.  57 Wanamaker’s copy of the text. Howard Gotlieb Archive. Box 20.  58 M. St Clare Byrne, Shakespeare Quarterly, 10.4 (1959), 545–67: 553.  59 Ibid., 553.  60 Interview in Reynold’s News, 12.4.59.  31

Endnotes

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Notes on Othello. MS. Howard Gotlieb Archive. Box 24. Letter from SW to N. A. Mikhailov, undated. MS. Howard Gotlieb Archive. Box 19.  63 Letter from John Reich to SW, 19.5.64. Goodman Theater Archive.  64 Letter from John Reich to SW, 3.6.64. Goodman Theater Archive.  65 Wanamaker’s edition and sound cues. MS. Howard Gotlieb Archive. Box 3.  66 Quotes from press cuttings in the Goodman Archive; only Christiansen’s is sourced and dated: Chicago Daily News, 2.12.64.  67 Letter from Patrick Henry to cast of Macbeth, 8.12.1964. MS. Goodman Theatre Archive.  68 See note 66.  69 Christopher Wicking and Tise Vahimagi, The American Vein: Directors and Directions in Television (London: Talisman Books, 1979), 218.  70 Letter from SW to Charlotte Wanamaker, 25.1.1961. MS. Howard Gotlieb Archive. Box 31.  71 Letter from SW to Charlotte Wanamaker, 12.11.1966. MS. Howard Gotlieb Archive. Box 31.  72 ‘A Season in Southwark’, Ronald Hastings, Plays and Players, undated cutting in Shakespeare’s Globe Archive. Box: Press Cuttings 1970–1980.  73 Barry Day, This Wooden ‘O’: Shakespeare’s Globe Reborn (London: Oberon Books, 1996), 162, 167.  74 See Day, This Wooden ‘O’, 285.  75 ‘Testimony’, 8. MS. Shakespeare’s Globe Archive. Box: ‘S.W. Speeches’.  76 ‘The Celebrated Mr. S. – in a Circus Tent’, South London News, 26.1.1971.  77 ‘High Wind on Bankside,’ Contemporary Review, June 1973, 320.  78 See Paul Prescott, ‘Inheriting the Globe: the Reception of Shakespearean Space and Audience in Contemporary Reviewing’, in A Companion to Shakespeare and Performance, Barbara Hodgdon and W. B. Worthen (eds), (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), 359–75.  79 James Green, ‘Sam’s Dream is to Bring Shakespeare Back to Bankside’, Evening News, 7.4.1972.  80 Letter from SW to Peter Marsh, 23.1.1982. MS. Shakespeare’s Globe Archive. Box: ‘Ad 6 Correspondence General 1982–86’.  81 Letter from SW to ‘Nicholas’, 9.1.1982. MS. Shakespeare’s Globe Archive. Box: ‘Ad 6 Correspondence General 1982–86’.  82 Cutting in Shakespeare’s Globe Archive. Filed in Box: ‘Press Cuttings 1970–1980’, but probably dating from 1983.  83 Letter from SW to Steven Berkoff, 11.6.92. Shakespeare’s Globe Archive. Box: ‘SW1 Personal Correspondence 1972–93’.  84 ‘Muse of Fire’.  85 ‘Testimony’, 49.  86 Ibid., 55–6.  87 Ibid., 56.  88 The Shakespeare Memorial Theatre (as it was known before the foundation of the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1961) was rebuilt after a fire in 1926 and part of the fundraising for the new theatre took place in the US; the construction of the Swan Theatre in the mid–1980s was funded by Frederick R.  61  62

232 Endnotes Koch, the most artistically inclined of the notorious quartet of ‘Koch brothers’, two of whom – Charles G. and David H. Koch – exert a strong influence on contemporary right-wing politics in America.  89 Letter from SW to Elizabeth Sears, 10.6.1991. MS. Shakespeare’s Globe Archive. Box: ‘SW1 Personal Correspondence 1972–93’.  90 Letter from Victor E. Waldron to SW, November 1991. MS. Shakespeare’s Globe Archive. Box: ‘SW1 Personal Correspondence 1972–93’.  91 ‘Testimony’, 52.  92 MS. Shakespeare’s Globe Archive. Box ‘Ad 6; Admin Sam Wanamaker APS (119) a)’.  93 ‘Sam’s Plan for the People’, West Norwood and Dulwich News, 8.5.1973.  94 ‘Skinflint’s City Diary’, Spectator, 6.2.1971.  95 John Drakakis, ‘Ideology and Institution: Shakespeare and the roadsweepers’ in The Shakespeare Myth, ed. Graham Holderness (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), 24–41, 27.  96 ‘Readers’ Viewpoints’, South London Press, 23.11.1974.  97 ‘Bishop says Southwark’s new riverside depends on private developers’, South London Press, 9.2.1973.  98 Day, This Wooden ‘O’, 178.  99 ‘Testimony’, 12. 100 ‘Reconstructions of the Globe: A Retrospective’, Shakespeare Survey, 2007: 15. 101 Drakakis, ‘Ideology and Institution’, 31. 102 Ibid., 39. 103 Hansard, 12.3.1987: http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1987/ mar/12/the-arts [accessed 1 March 2013]. 104 Hansard, 19.7.1993: http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1993/ jul/19/globe-theatre-project [accessed 1 March 2013]. 105 Letter from SW to Jack Cunningham, 9.4.1991. MS. Shakespeare’s Globe Archive. Box: ‘SW1 Personal Correspondence 1972–93’. 106 Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality (New York: Harper and Row, 1973). Extracts at: http://clevercycles.com/tools_for_conviviality/#conrec [accessed 1 March 2013]. 107 Encore 11, November–December 1957. Unpaginated cutting. Howard Gotlieb Archive. Box 29. 108 ‘Wanna Build a Brave New Globe’, Liverpool Daily Star, 27.4.1974. 109 This cutting can be found in the Globe archive’s press cuttings for 1973 but unfortunately the extract does not identify the title or date of publication. 110 Acknowledgments: In researching this piece, I have often depended on the kindness of strangers. Historian and playwright David Hansen was exceptionally generous in sharing his knowledge of the Cleveland Great Lakes Centennial Exposition. Jennifer Wintczak and Jeffrey Fauver at the Goodman Theater, Chicago were remarkably forthcoming in digging up images and press cuttings relating to Wanamaker’s Macbeth. Mareike Doleschal and Helen Hargest of the Shakespeare Centre Library and Archive were similarly obliging in sourcing materials relating to Wanamaker’s performance as Iago. Jennifer Pino, Archivist at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University, was a model of care and efficiency during the fortnight I spent in that very welcoming

Endnotes

233

institution. Closer to home, I am very grateful to Rob Jeffcoate and to Ann Holliday for sharing with me their memories of Liverpool in the late 1950s and to all those at Shakespeare’s Globe who have helped at various stages of this research: to Victoria Northwood, Jordan Landes and Ruth Frendo in the Archive for their expertise and unstintingly warm hospitality; to Patrick Spottiswode and Farah Karim-Cooper for sharing their thoughts and first-hand experiences. Friends and colleagues have read drafts of this along the way and provided invaluable feedback and advice: warm thanks to Tom Cornford, Paul Edmondson, Tony Howard and Peter Smith. And I am very grateful for the expert editorial eyes of Mary Stewart Burgher and Lydia Wanstall. Final thanks are due to this volume’s editor Cary Mazer for his patience, insight and unwavering encouragement.

Selected Bibliography

Anderson, Michael. ‘William Poel in 1926’. New Theatre Magazine 3.1 (Autumn 1968), 20–28. Begbie, Harold. ‘William Poel: Reformer – a Character Sketch’, Daily Chronicle, 3 September 1913, 6. Bridges-Adams, W. ‘The Lost Leader’, in A Bridges-Adams Letter Book, ed. Robert Speaight (London: Society for Theatre Research, 1971), 87–93. Brydon, Diana and Irena R. Makaryk (eds). Shakespeare in Canada: A World Elsewhere? Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002. Bulman, James C. (ed.). Shakespeare, Theory, and Performance. London and New York: Routledge, 1996. Byrne, Muriel St Clare. ‘A Stratford Production: Henry VIII’. Shakespeare Survey 3 (1950), 120–27. Carson, Christie and Farah Karim-Cooper (eds). Shakespeare’s Globe: A Theatrical Experiment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Casson, Lewis. ‘William Poel and Modern Theatre’. Broadcast on BBC Third Programme, 31 December 1951, The Listener, 10 January 1952, 56–8. Conkie, Rob. The Globe Theatre Project: Shakespeare and Authenticity. Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2006. Davies, Robertson, Tyrone Guthrie, Boyd Neel and Tanya Moisewitsch. Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew’d: A Record of the Stratford Shakespearean Festival in Canada, 1955. Toronto: Clarke, Irwin and Company, 1955. Day, Barry. This Wooden ‘O’: Shakespeare’s Globe Reborn. London: Oberon Books, 1996. Dillon, Arthur. The Stage of the Sixteenth Century. London: privately printed, 1893. DiPietro, Cary. Shakespeare and Modernism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Drakakis, John. ‘Ideology and Institution: Shakespeare and the roadsweepers’, in The Shakespeare Myth, Graham Holderness (ed.). Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988, 24–41. Dymkowski, Christine. Harley Granville Barker: A Preface to Modern Shakespeare. Washington, DC: Folger Press, 1986. Egan, Gabriel. ‘Reconstructions of the Globe: A Retrospective’. Shakespeare Survey 52 (1999), 56–8. Falocco, Joe. Reimagining Shakespeare’s Playhouse: Early Modern Staging Conventions in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2010. Foulkes, Richard. ‘Adult Education and the Theatre’. Studies in Adult Education 11.1 (April 1979), 1–16.



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—‘ “Measure Still for Measure”: Miss Horniman and Mr. Poel at the Gaeity’. Theatre Quarterly 39 (v. 10, 1981), 43–46. Forsyth, James. Tyrone Guthrie: A Life. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1976. Garnett, Edward. ‘Mr. Poel and the Theatre’, The English Review 14 (July 1913), 589–95. Grady, Hugh. The Modernist Shakespeare: Critical Texts in a Material World. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991. Granville-Barker, Harley. ‘At the Moscow Art Theatre’, Seven Arts 19 (1917), 659–61. —‘The Coming of Ibsen’. The Eighteen-Eighties, Essays by Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature, Walter de la Mare (ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1930, 159–96. —The Exemplary Theatre. London: Chatto & Windus, 1922. —‘Exit Planché—Enter Gilbert’. The Eighteen-Sixties, Essays by Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature, John Drinkwater (ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932, 102–48. —‘The Heritage of the Actor’. Quarterly Review 240 no. 476 (July, 1923), 53–73. —More Prefaces to Shakespeare, E. M. Moore (ed.). Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974. —A National Theatre: Schemes and Estimates. London: Duckworth, 1907. —Prefaces to Shakespeare, rev. edn. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1948; American edition, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1946. —‘Shakespeare and Modern Stagecraft’. Yale Review 15 (1926), 703–24. —‘Shakespeare’s Dramatic Art.’ Companion to Shakespeare Studies, ed. Harley Granville-Barker and G. B. Harrison. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1934, 45–87. —‘Tennyson, Swinburne, Meredith and the Theatre’. The Eighteen-Seventies, Essays by Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature, Harley Granville-Barker (ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Pess, 1929. Gurr, Andrew, with John Orrell. Rebuilding Shakespeare’s Globe. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989. Guthrie, Tyrone. In Various Directions: A View of Theatre. London: Michael Joseph, 1965. —‘Introduction’, Sir David Lindsay and Robert Kemp, The Satire of the Three Estates. London: Heinemann, 1951. —A Life in the Theatre. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1959. —A New Theatre. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1964. —‘Shakespeare at Stratford, Ontario’. Shakespeare Survey 8 (1955), 127–31. —Theatre Prospect. London: Wishart, 1932. —Tyrone Guthrie on Acting. London: Studio Vista, 1971. —Robertson Davies and Grant MacDonald. Renown at Stratford: A Record of the Shakespeare Festival in Canada 1953. Toronto: Clarke, Irwin and Company, 1953. —Robertson Davies and Grant McDonald. Twice Have the Trumpets Sounded: A Record of the Stratford Shakespearean Festival, 1954. Toronto: Clarke, Irwin and Company, 1954. Harris, Arthur. ‘William Poel’s Elizabethan Stage: The First Experiment’, Theatre Notebook no. 17 (1963), 111–14.

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Hodges, C. Walter, S. Schoenbaum and Leonard Leane (eds). The Third Globe: Symposium for the Reconstruction of the Globe Playhouse. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1981. Holderness, Graham. ‘Sam Wanamaker interviewed by Graham Holderness’, in The Shakespeare Myth, Graham Holderness (ed.). Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988, 16–23. Kegl, Rosemary. ‘ “[W]rapping togas over Elizabethan garb”: Tabloid Shakespeare and the 1934 Chicago World’s Fair’. Renaissance Drama new series 28 (1997): 73–104. Kennedy, Dennis. Granville Barker and the Dream of Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. —Looking at Shakespeare: A Visual History of Twentieth-Century Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Levenson, Jill L. ‘The Recovery of the Elizabethan Stage’, in The Elizabethan Theatre 9, ed. G. R. Hibbard. Port Credit, Ontario: P. D. Meany, 1986, 205–9. Lindsay, Sir David. The Satire of the Three Estates, Acting Version by Robert Kemp. Edinburgh: the Scots Review, 1949. Luckhurst, Mary. Dramturgy: A Revolution in Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Lundstrom, Rinda F. William Poel’s Hamlets: The Director as Critic. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1984. Marlowe, Christopher. Tamburlaine the Great, An Acting Version prepared and introduced by Tyrone Guthrie and Donald Wolfit. London: Heinneman, 1951. Marshall, Norman. The Other Theatre. London: John Lehmann, 1947. Mazer, Cary M. ‘Actors of Gramophones: The Paradoxes of Granville Barker’. Theatre Journal 36 (1984), 5–23. —Shakespeare Refashioned: Elizabethan Plays on Edwardian Stages. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1991. —‘Treasons, Stratagem and Spoils: Edwardian Actor-Managers and the Shakespeare Memorial National Theatre’. Theatre Survey 24 (1983), 1–33. Montague, C. W. ‘The Art of Mr Poel’, in Dramatic Values. London: Methuen, 1911, 225–46. Moore, Edward. ‘William Poel’, Shakespeare Quarterly 23 (1972), 21–36. Mulryne, J. R. and Margaret Shewring (eds). Shakespeare’s Globe Rebuilt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Munro, Lucy. ‘Coriolanus and the [in]authenticity of William Poel’s platform stage’, in Shakespeare in Stages: New Theatre Histories, Christine Dymkowski and Christie Carson (eds). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010, 37–56. O’Connor, Marion. ‘Reconstructive Shakespeare: Reproducing Elizabethan and Jacobean Stages’, in The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Stage, Stanley Wells and Sarah Stanton (eds). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, 76–97. —‘ “Useful in the Year 1999”: William Poel and Shakespeare’s “Build of Stage” ’, Shakespeare Survey 52 (1999), 17–32. —William Poel and the Elizabethan Stage Society. Cambridge: Chadwyck Healy, 1987. —‘William Poel to George Bernard Shaw’, Theatre Notebook 54 (2000), 162–756. —‘William Poel’s Letters on Tour in Yorkshire, 1977/8’, Theatre Notebook 59 (2005), 62–90.



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Patterson, Tom and Allan Gould. First Stage: The Making of the Stratford Festival. Toronto, ON: McClelland and Stewart, 1987. Paul Prescott. ‘Inheriting the Globe: the Reception of Shakespearian Space and Audience in Contemporary Reviewing’, in The Blackwell Companion to Shakespeare and Performance, Barbara Hodgdon and W. B. Worthen (eds). Malden, MA: Blackwell Press, 2005, 359–75. Poel, William. An Account of the Elizabethan Stage Society. London: Elizabethan Stage Society, 1898. —Acting Shakespeare in Schools. London: London Schools Musical and Dramatic Association, 1912. —‘Acting Editions of Shakespeare’s Plays’, paper read to the New Shakspere Society 10 June 1881, The Era, 2 July 1881, 7. —Monthly Letters, (ed.) A.M.T. London: T. Werner Laurie, 1929. —The Playhouse of the Sixteenth Century. London: Elizabethan Stage Society, 1905; reissued Folcroft, PA: Folcroft Library Editions, 1973. —Shakespeare in the The Theatre. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1913. —‘The Stage Version of Romeo and Juliet’, paper delivered to the New Shakspere Society 12 April 1889, The New Shakspere Society Transactions 1887–92, 227–46; revised version in William Poel, Shakespeare in The Theatre. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1913, 133–56. Pole, William. Some Short Reminiscences of Events in my Life and Work. Privately printed, 1898. Purdom, C. B. Harley Granville Barker: Man of the Theatre, Dramatist and Scholar. London: Rockliff, 1955. Rossi, Alfred. Astonish Us in the Morning: Tyrone Guthrie Remembered. London: Hutchinson, 1977. —Minneapolis Rehearsals: Tyrone Guthrie Directs Hamlet. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970. Rowell, George. The Old Vic Theatre: A History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Salmon, Eric. Granville Barker: A Secret Life. Exeter, NH: Heinemann Educational Books, 1983. —Granville Barker and his Correspondents: a selection of letters by him and to him. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1986. Schormann, Vanessa. Shakespeares Globe: Repliken, Rekonstruktionen und Bespielbarkeit. Heidelberg: C. Winter, 2002. Schultz, Stephen C. ‘Two Notes on William Poel’s Sources’, Nineteenth Century Theatre Research 2 (1974), 85–90. —‘William Poel on the Speaking of Shakespearean Verse: a Re-evaluation’, Shakespeare Quarterly 28 (1977), 334–50. Shaughnessy, Robert. The Shakespeare Effect: A History of Twentieth-Century Performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002. Somerset, J. A. B. ‘William Poel’s First Full Platform Stage’, Theatre Notebook 20 (1966), 118–21. Speaight, Robert. William Poel and the Elizabethan Revival. London: Heinemann, 1954. Styan, J. L. The Shakespeare Revolution: Criticism and Performance in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977.

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Thomson, Peter. ‘William Poel’, in The Routledge Companion to Directors’ Shakespeare, J. R. Brown (ed.). London: Routledge, 2008, 356–73. White, Martin. ‘William Poel’s Globe’, Theatre Notebook 53 (1999), 146–62. Williams, Harcourt. Four Years at the Old Vic, 1929–1933. London: Putnam, 1935. —Old Vic Saga. London: Winchester Publications, 1949. Williamson, Audrey. Old Vic Drama: A Twelve Years’ Study of Plays and Players. London: Rockliff, 1948. Woodfield, James. English Theatre in Transition 1881–1914. London: Croom Helm, 1984. Worthen, W. B. ‘Reconstructing the Globe, Constructing Ourselves’. Shakespeare Survey 52 (1999), 33–45. —Shakespeare and the Force of Modern Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Index

Page references in bold denote an illustration. Actors’ Association 55, 68 Aeschylus 141 Aida 188 Ainley, Henry 70, 71, 84 Albany Club 26 Alcestis 44 Alchemist, The 31 Alexander, George 67, 68 Alleyn, Edward 28, 86 All’s Well that Ends Well Productions (1920) 44, 46, 48 (1953) 126, 137, 138, 142 (1959) 146–9, 148 American Club Theatre 165 Anatomist, The 121 Anderson, Robert 171 Andrews, Harry 144 Antony and Cleopatra 25, 77, 80, 84, 90 Productions (1973) 190, 194 Apothecaries’ Hall 31, 40, 43 Archer, William 16, 55, 56, 58, 59, 68, 69, 82, 83 Arden of Faversham 34 Aristotle 82, 85, 89 Arms and the Man 60, 118 Arnold, Matthew 10–12, 70 Arthur, Robert 42 Arts Centres: Every Town Should Have One 208 As You Like It 89 Productions (1907) 84 (1934) 111 (1936) 160 Asche, Oscar 67, 70, 84

Ashcroft, Peggy 101 Assembly Hall, Edinburgh 122, 128, 135, 136 Atkins, Robert 101, 102, 103, 117, 122 Atkinson, Brooks 140, 165 Aubrey, Crispin 202 Auden, W. H. 108 Avignon Festival 134 Bacall, Lauren 164 Bacchae, The 44, 52 Badger, Richard 68 Bakst, Leon 71 Bancroft, Squire 56, 67 Banks, Robert 206 Banks, Tony 207 Barber, John 190 Barker, Felix 179 Barker, H. Granville 4, 5, 6, 10, 53, 55–97, 99, 107, 115 Barnes, Peter 192 Barrault, Jean-Louis 122 Barrie, J. M. 56 Bartholomew Fair 192 Bates, Michael 145 Bayliss, Lillian 5, 100, 101, 102, 107, 108, 115, 119, 120 Bear Gardens Museum 187 Beaumont, Francis 34 Beaumont, Hugh ‘Binkie’ 108, 117, 118, 175 Beckett, Samuel 98 Beggar’s Opera, The 124 Belgrade Theatre, Coventry 190 Bell, Mackenzie 30

240 Index Bells, The 77 Benefit of the Doubt, The 56 Benjamin, Walter 157 Benson, Frank 17–18, 42, 67, 69, 70, 84 Benthall, Michael 118, 125, 126, 172, 195 Berkoff, Steven 194 Bernhardt, Sarah 11 Bernstein, Leonard 128, 132 Besant, Walter 31 Billington, Michael 149, 190 Bishop’s Bonfire, The 128 Blackfriars Theatre 40, 43, 74 Blagrove, G. 29 Bogart, Humphrey 164 Bonduca 50, 51 Bourchier, Arthur 67, 69 Brabrook, Edward 39 Bradfield College 73 Bradley, A. C. 61, 91, 107 Brandram, Samuel 22–3, 28 Brecht, Bertolt 141, 155, 156, 172, 179, 181, 195, 209 Brewster, Yvonne 194 Bridge, Frederick 32 Bridges-Adams, W. 64, 70, 71 Bridie, James 121, 124, 134 Brien, Alan 179 Brieux, Eugene 58, 164 Bristol Old Vic 141 British Academy 40, Britten, Benjamin 188 Broken Heart, The 34 Brook, Peter 62, 98, 99, 110, 118, 143 Brooke, Arthur 89 Brooke, Rev. Stopford 31 Brown, Sidney 200 Browne, Coral 127 Brustein, Robert 190 Bryant, Sophie 31 Buchan, Norman 206–7 Buckley, F. Rawson 20, 29 Bulman, James C. 63 Bulwer Lytton, Edward 56 Burbage, Richard 42, 86, 190 Burlington Hall 30, 36 Burns, Robert 156, 157

Burrell, John 124 Burton F. W. 18 Byrne, Muriel St Clare 144, 146, 179 Caesar and Pompey 5 Café Crown 163 Caine, Hall 30 Caldwell, Zoe 141, 147, 149, 174 Call it a Day 108 Callow, Simon 106 Candida 56, 58, 60, 68, 83 Candide 128, 132 Captain Brassbound’s Conversion 60 Carmen 124 Carnegie, Andrew 160 Carnegie Institute of Technology 40, 48, 160 Carson, Christie 155 Carton, R. C. 56 Cass, Henry 109 Casson, Lewis 64, 84, 91, 92, 96, 105, 115, 116, 117 Cave, Richard 120 CEMA 116–18 Cenci, The 30 Century of Progress, see Chicago World’s Fair Chambers, Haddon 56 Chapman, George 50 Chekhov, Anton 80, 81, 86, 141, 142, 147, 172, 221n. 63 Chelsea Palace Theatre 50, 51 Cherry Orchard, The 80, 86, 100, 104, 116, 142, 172, 220n. 56 Chicago World’s Fair 152, 153, 155–9 Chichester Festival Theatre 4, 142, 181, 183 Christ in Concrete 164 Church, Esmé 111 Cinthio, Giraldi 89 Citizen’s Theatre, Glasgow 121 Clandestine Marriage, The 124 Clark, Wynne 145, 146 Coates, Wells 103, 136 Cochran, C. B. 54 Coe, Peter 189 Coleman, George 124

Index Comédie Française 11, 55 Comedy Theatre 108 Comedy of Errors, The 19 productions (1897–8) 34 (1919) 43 (1936) 160, 161 Coming of Peace, The 56 Compagnie Jouvet de Théâtre de l’Athenée 121 Congreve, William 56, 107 Cons, Emma 17 Conspiracy of Charles, Duke of Byron, The 50, 52, 53 Corbett, Harry H. 190 Coriolanus 19, 90, 148, 194 productions (1931) 50, 51 (1963) 142 Cornish Passion Play 189 ‘Corno di Bassetto’ 21 see Shaw, G. Bernard Coronet Blue 184 Coulter, John 134 Counter Attack 163 Country Girl, The 164–5 Country Wife, The 111 Court Theatre 10, 44, 52, 57–60, 67, 72, 77, 82, 127, 166, 174 Covent Garden 98, 124, 195 Cowper, William 50 Coxcomb, The 34 Craig, Edward Gordon 71, 94, 195 Crane, Walter 31 Critic, The 124 Cronyn, Hume 141 Crooke, Frederick 127 Crosse, Gordon 101 Crucible Theatre, Sheffield 189 Cruickshank, Andrew 144 Cultural Mobility 155 Cunningham, Jack 207 Cymbeline 90 Dance of Death 108 Dangerous Corner 100 Dark Lady of the Sonnets, The 60, 89

Darlington, W. A. 129 Darton, Phoebe 19, 20, 26 David, Richard 128 David and Bathsheba 50, 51 Davies, Robertson 133, 134, 137 Day, Barry 155, 187, 205 De Mille, Cecil B. 208 Debussy, Claude 83 Defenders 184 Dekker, Thomas 111, 141, 189 Delfont, Bernard 193 Denker, Henry 184 Derno Estates 193, 196, 198 Devil’s Disciple, The 60 Devine, George 115, 124 Dickens, Charles 156, 157 Dillon, Arthur 27, 29, 36 Dix, Dorothy 107 Dmytryk, Edward 152, 174 Dobie, M. 29 Doctor’s Dilemma, The 60, 220n. 56 Doctorow, E. L. 156 Dolmetsch, Arnold 32 Don Quixote 13 Don Quixote in England 192 Dowden, Edward 18 D’Oyly Carte, Helen 56 Dr Faustus 34 Drakakis, John 204–6, 209 Drake University 162 Duchess of Malfi, The 24–5 Duke Of York’s Theatre 48, 82 Dulwich College 39 Dymkowski, Christine 92, 96 Eadie, Denis 84 Eastward Ho! 192 Eco, Umberto 158 L’Ecole des femmes 121 Eddington, Paul 194 Edinburgh International Festival 121–2, 134, 136, 144, 149, 150 Edward III 34 Egan, Gabriel 205 Elizabethan Society 16, 17, 26 Elizabethan Stage Circle 10, 48–54

241

242 Index Elizabethan Stage Society 9, 10, 28–36, 39, 41, 42, 47, 49, 50, 54, 56 Equality Jack 21 Ervine, St. John 64, 96 Ethical Church, Bayswater 43, 44, 45 Euripides 44, 58, 72, 73 Evans, Edith 43, 108, 111, 147, 148, 174 Evans, Maurice 109, 152 Exemplary Theatre, The 84, 86, 90, 94 Fabian Society 5, 56, 95 Fairfield, Robert 135 Falstaff 88 Falstaff 124 Famous Tragedy of the Queen of Cornwall, The 77 Far Country, A 184 Farewell to the Theatre 64, 68 Farjeon, Herbert 101, 115 Faust 116 Ferrer, Jose 175 Festival Theatre, Cambridge 100, 120, 136 Fielding, Henry 192 Finian’s Rainbow 171 Finny, Albert 149, 174, 194 First Gentleman, The 132 Fitzgerald, F. Scott 186 Fletcher, John 34, 50, 146 Forbes-Robertson, Johnston 58, 68 Ford, John 34 Fordham, Hallam 92 Fortune fit-up 27, 28, 31, 32, 35, 36, 43, 44, 47, 48, 71 Forza del Destino, La 195 Foster, Gregory 31 France, Alexis 115 France, Anatole 63 Fratricide Punished 43 Fulham Theatre 35, 42, 43 Furnivall, Frederick J. 12–18, 21, 30, 31, 39 Fyfe, Hamilton 37 Gaiety Theatre, Manchester 42, 43, 60, 160 Galsworthy, John 58, 77

Garnett, Edward 54 Garrick, David 124 Gassner, John 128 Gazzo, Michael V. 167 Genet, Jean 98 Genn, Leo 113 Getting Married 220n. 56 Ghosts 30, 111 Gide, André 122 Gielgud, John 101, 107, 110, 115, 143, 167, 169 roles Hamlet 101, 108 King Lear 91, 92, 93 Macbeth 117 Gilbert, W. S. 56, 76 Ginsbery, Norman 132 Giradoux, Jean 121 Give Us This Day 152, 174 Globe Theatre, reconstruction see Shakespeare’s Globe Globe Theatre (West End) 50, 51, 110 Glover, Julian 174, 190 Gollancz, Israel 38, 39, 40, 41 Gomme, Alice 39, 47 Gomme, Laurence 37 Goodman Theatre 160, 162–3, 181–4, 183, 185 Goodness, How Sad! 110 Gordon, Ruth 111 Goring, Marius 115 Gosse, Edmund 30 Gotlieb Archive 151 Grant, Colin 169 Granville-Barker, Harley see Barker, H. Granville Gray, Terence 136 Gray, Thomas 156, 157 Great Lakes Festival, Cleveland 151, 152, 153, 155, 157, 159, 159, 160, 161, 174, 179 Greater London Council (GLC) 186, 193, 199, 202 Greenblatt, Stephen 155 Greet, Philip Ben 58, 101 Griffith, Kenneth 130, 131 Grizzard, George 141

Index Groome, Margaret 133, 137 Gropius, Walter 103 Grotowski, Jerzy 98 Grundy, Sidney 56 Guilty by Suspicion 153, 197 Guinness, Alec, roles Hamlet 113–14 Richard III 137–9, 139 Guthrie Theatre 132, 140–3, 150, 181, 183 Guthrie, Tyrone 4, 5, 6, 98–150 Hales, John Wesley 31 Hall, Anmer 100 Hall, Peter 148, 149, 174, Hamlet 12–13, 88–90, 149, 150, 194 productions (1874) 8 (1881; First Quarto) 14, 15 (1890) 19; (1897) 58 (1900) 214n. 79 (1914) 43 (1931) 101 (1934) 108 (1937) 110 (1937) 4, 107, 111, 112–13, 118–20 (1938) 113–14, 142 (1944) 143 (1948) 123 (1957) 172, 195 (1963) 132, 141–2 (1972) 189, 202 ‘Hamlet and Oedipus’ 112 Hamlet Collage 192 Hampton Court 39 Hankin, St John 58 Hannen, Nicholas Hardy, Robert 143, 147, 174 Hardy, Thomas 77, 80 Hare, John 56, 67 Harris, Rosemary 127 Harron, Donald 139 Harvie, Jen 121 Hatful of Rain, A 167, 192 Hauptmann, Gerhardt 56, 58, 59 Hawkes, Terence 205 Hawks 184

243

Haymarket Theatre 69 Hayward Gallery 196 Headlam, Rev. Stuart 40, 41, 42, 46, 48, 49 Heartbreak House 221n. 63 Heffer, Eric 206 Hellman, Lillian 128, 132 Helpmann, Robert 98, 114, 115, 118 Helsingor Castle 4, 118–20 Henley, W. E. 56 Henry, Patrick 183 Henry V 76, 123 productions (1891) 19, 26 (1934) 111, 125 (1944 film) 113, 117, 148, 152 (1964) 142 Henry VIII 160 productions (1910) 73 (1934) 100, 105–6, 150 (1949) 143–6, 147, 150 (1952) 125–6, 150 Henslowe, Philip 28 ‘Heritage of the Actor, The’ 77, 81, 83, 84, 85, 88 Hervey House 108 Hickey, Emily Henrietta 31 Hiller, Wendy 127 His Majesty 221n. 78 His Majesty’s Theatre 35, 43, 53, 69–70, 73, 77, 108 H. M. Tennent 110, 117–18 Hobson, Harold 166, 172, 192 Holborn Empire 50, 51, 52, 53, 54 Holderness, Graham 204, 208 Holloway, Baliol 84 Holm, Ian 149, 174, 179 Hope-Wallace, Philip 179 Horniman, Annie 42 Howard, Leonard 20, 29 House of Atreus, The 141, 150 House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) 5, 153, 164, 167, 197, 208 How He Lied to Her Husband 60 Hughes, Simon 207

244 Index Hunt, Hugh 125 Huntington, Helen 63, 64 Hutt, William 139 Hutton, Alfred 32 Ibsen, Henrik 24, 30, 55, 56, 58, 59, 81, 82, 86, 111, 147, 164 Illich, Ivan 208 Importance of Being Earnest, The 100, 107 International Women Workers’ Association 39 Ionesco, Eugene 190 Iphigenia in Taurus 72, 73 Irving, Henry 8, 19, 23, 24, 56, 67, 68, 69, 84 Irving, H. B. 69 Jeans, Ursula 114 Jennings, Cecil 29 John Bull’s Other Island 5, 10, 60, 220n. 56 Jones, Emrys 131 Jones, Ernest 112 Jones, Henry Arthur 25, 56, 59 Jones, Thomas 116 Jonson, Ben 7, 34, 40, 50, 52, 56, 141 Julius Caesar 1, 77, 78, 160 productions (1896) 19 (1911) 77 (1931) 50, 51 Karim-Cooper, Farah 155 Kaye, Danny 164 Kazan, Elia 163 Keaton, Buster 3 Keats, John 50 Keegan, Peter 5, 10, 60 Keen, Malcolm 101 Kelly, Gene 164 Kemp, Robert 122, 123 Kendall, W. H. 67 Kennedy, Dennis 134, 138 Kerr, Walter 141 Keynes, John Maynard 117 Keystone Kops 3 King John, productions (1941) 116–17

King Lear 90, 91, 194 productions (1893) 19 (1910) 69 (1940) 90–2, 93, 96, 115 (1951) 124 (1959) 148 King Priam 188 King’s Hall 43, 50 Kingsway Theatre 58 Knipper, Olga 80, 81, 86 Koch brothers (Charles G., David H., Frederick R.) 231–2n. 88 Komisarjevsky, Theodore 102, 110 Korda, Alexander 105 Kott, Jan 189 Kozintsev, Grigori 171 Kretzmer, Herbert 190 Kronborg Castle 4, 118–20 Kurosawa, Akira 171 Lancer 184 Lanchester, Elsa 102 Lane, John 208 Langham, Michael 124, 136, 139, 142, 143 Laughton, Charles 102, 104, 106, 110 roles Angelo 104, 105–7 Henry VIII 105–6 King Lear 148 Macbeth 107–8 Prospero 106 Le Corbusier 103 League of Youth, The 56 Lee, Sidney 31 Legend of Custer 184 Leigh, Andrew 101 Leigh, J. H. 31, 39, 57, 58 Leigh, Vivien 114, 164 Lewis, Robert 163 Lewsen, Charles 192 Liars, The 56 Life in the Sun, A 128 Life in the Theatre, A 121, 140 Lindsay, Robert 194 Little Theatre 44, 52

Index Littlewood, Joan 169, 192 Littlewood, S. R. 47 Livesey, A. 173 Livesey, Roger 114 Living Theatre, The 98, 208 London County Council (LCC) 49 London Institution 20 London School Board 39, 41 London Shakespeare League 10, 36–48, 54 London Topographical Society 37 Look Back in Anger 127 Lopokova, Lydia 103 Love and How to Cure It 110 Love for Love 100, 107 Love’s Labour’s Lost productions (1893) 19, 26 (1932) 100, 104, 150 (1933) 111, 150 (1949) 106 Lucas, John Seymour 32 Luckham, Cyril 147 Luckhurst, Mary 76 Lyceum, Edinburgh 121, 122 Lyly, John 87 Lyndsay, Sir David 121 Lyric, Hammersmith 100 Maartens, Marten (J. M. v.d.p. Schwartz) 30 Macaulay, Thomas 150 Macbeth 19, 22, 84, 100, 111 productions (1909) 42–3 (1933) 102 (1934) 107–8 (1937) 110, 115 (1940–2) 116, 117, 118 (1964) 115, 181–5, 183, 185, 187 (1995) 188 Macbett 190 MacCannell, Dean 151 MacEwan, Molly 135 Maddermarket, Norwich 100 Madras House, The 77, 96 Maeterlinck, Maurice 58, 59

245

Major Barbara 60, 220n. 56 Malcontent, The 190 Man and Superman 60 Man of Destiny, The 60 Mannering, Doré Lewin 29, 58, 63, 64, 71, 84 Mansion House 39 Marcus, Frank 191 Marienlyst Hotel 4, 118–20 Mark Taper Forum 142 Marlowe, Christopher 56, 87, 124, 128, 129 Maronek, James 181 Marowitz, Charles 153, 165, 166, 190, 192 Marriage of Figaro, The 116 Marrying of Ann Leete, The 55 Marsh, W. Ward 162 Marshall, Norman 106 Marshall, Sarah 19 Marston, John 190 Mary Read 108, 114 Mary Ward Settlement 50, 51 Masefield, John 58, 63 Massey, Vincent 132 Massey Commission 132, 140 Massingberd, Emily 29, 31 Matchmaker, The 128 McArthur, Molly 111 McCarthy, Daniel 29 McCarthy, Joseph (McCarthyism) 153, 154, 171, 199, 207 McCarthy, Lillah 29, 58, 71, 84 Measure for Measure 19 productions (1891) 19, 26, 46 (1893) 26, 26–9, 27, 31, 32, 33, 34, 36, 43 (1908) 35, 42, 43, 160 (1934) 100, 104, 105–6 (1937) 113 (1963) 142 Mendelssohn, Felix 114 Merchant of Venice, The 18, 78 productions (1887) 19, 22 (1897) 19

246 Index (1898) 214n. 79 (1907) 35, 42, 43 (1932) 101 (1933) 102 (1955) 139 Meredith, George 18, 82 Messel, Oliver 111, 114 ‘Method’ acting 156, 162–4, 174, 175, 179, 181, 198, 210 Michael, Kathleen 145, 146 Michell, Keith 189 Middle Temple Hall 4, 32 Middleton, Thomas 34 Midsummer Night’s Dream, A 220n. 57 productions (1914) 57, 71, 75, 78, 79, 81, 84, 94 (1937–8) 113 (1938) 114, 143 (1959) 148 (1970) 62, 99 Midsummer Night’s Dream, A (Britten) 188 Mikhailov, N. A. 180 Miller, Arthur 140, 168 Miller, Gilbert 111 Miller, Jonathan 190 Miller, Max 179 Milton, Ernest 100, 116 Moiseiwitsch, Tanya 125, 135–7, 140, 144, 147 Molière 121, 141 Monck, Nugent 100 Mond, Frïda Lowenthal 36 Monthly Letter 41 Moody, Ron 189 Moore, Dora Mavor 134, 135 Moore, Jennie 32–3 Morell André 124 Morly, Robert 109, 110 Morosco Theatre 108 Moscow Art Theatre 80, 86 Motley 101, 114 Mrs Nobby Clark 108 Mrs Warren’s Profession 56 Much Ado About Nothing 89, 111 productions

(1890) 19 (1904) 39, 41 Mulryne, Ronald 155 Murray, Gilbert 58, 72 National Theatre (movement) 5, 10–12, 55–60, 65, 68–70, 81 National Theatre (organization and building) 4, 132, 133, 189, 194, 196 National Theatre, A (1930) 76 National Theatre: Schemes and Estimates, A (‘The Blue Book’) 56, 57, 58, 59, 67, 68, 69, 76 Neher, Caspar 172 Neilson-Terry, Dennis 77, 84 New Globe Players 151 New Shakespere Society 10, 12–18, 23, 29, 54 New Shakespeare Theatre, Liverpool 167–74, 181, 186, 187, 192, 199, 206, 208 New Theatre, A 140 New Theatre 98, 108, 116 New York Shakespeare Festival 134 Nesbitt, Catheleen 77, 84 Neville, John 188 Neville, Richard 128 Nicholson, H. O. 84 Ninagawa, Yukio 194 Niro, Robert de 153, 197 Norman, Thyrza 57 North Southwark Community Development Group (NSCDG) 198, 206 Northcott Theatre, Exeter 189 Nottingham Playhouse 142, 190 Nurse 88 O’Casey, Sean 128 Odets, Clifford 164 Oedipus 124, 139, 150 Old Vic 5, 17, 18, 41, 90–2, 96, 99–108, 112–15, 116, 118, 121, 124–8, 132, 133, 143, 146, 164, 166, 190 Olivier, Laurence 110, 111, 112, 113,

Index

247

117, 118–19, 124, 125, 132, 148, 152, 164, 174, 179 roles Coriolanus, 148 Hamlet 112–13, 118–19 Iago 113–14 Richard III 179 Sir Toby Belch 112 Olivier Theatre 4 On the Art of the Theatre 94 Ondine 121 Ordish, Thomas Fairman 36, 37, 38, 39 Oresteia, The 141 Osborne, John 127 Otello 188 Othello 90, 111, 192 productions (1937–8) 113 (1959) 148–9, 174–80, 176, 195 Oxford University Dramatic Society 102

Pole, Mark 9 Pole, Reginald 8–9 Pole, William (Sr.) 9–11 Policy for the Arts, A 169 Prefaces to Shakespeare 57, 61–2, 65, 66, 74, 76, 78, 79, 80, 87, 88, 89 Prescott, Paul 3, 6 Prevost, Annette 119 Priestley, J. B. 100 Private Life of Henry VIII, The 105 Prokofiev, Sergei 188 Pryce, Jonathan 194 Purdom, C. B. 64 Purser, Philip 209

Patterson, Tom 133, 134 Payne, B. Iden 160 Peach, Blair 202 Peele, George, 50 Peer Gynt 118 People’s Palace 20 Percy, Esmé 43 Peter Grimes 124 Peter Pan 114 Pilgrim, Kate 107, 111 Pilgrim Trust 102, 107, 111, 116 Pinero, Arther Wing 56, 76, 82, 86 Pinter, Harold 141 Players’ Shakespeare, The 62, 72, 78, 86, 94, 96 Plutarch 89 Poel, William 4, 5, 6, 7–54, 56, 66, 69, 70, 73, 99, 160, 161 roles Angelo 26 Parolles 45 Polonius 19 Poetaster 40, 47, 48 Poetics, The 82 Pole, George Henry 9 Pole, Harriet 35

Rainmaker, The 171 Rapson, Ralph 140 Rea, Oliver 140 Rebellato, Dan 109, 117 Redgrave, Michael 164–5, 170 Redgrave, Vanessa 149, 190 Regents Park Open Air Theatre 117 Reich, John 181, 182, 183 Reinhardt, Max 71, 80, 102 Richard II 89 Richard II 134 productions (1894) 19 (1899) 55 (1906) 39 (1933) 102 (1933) 152 (1947) 121, 134 Richard III 173 productions (1897) 23 (1937–8) 113 (1944–5) 118 (1953) 137–9, 139 (1965) 142 Richardson, Ralph 113, 115, 118, 124

Quatermaine, Leon 84 Quayle, Anthony 106, 128, 131, 145, 149, 167 Queen’s Theatre 110 Quinn, Anthony 192

248 Index Richardson, Tony 148, 149, 174–9, 190, 195 Ricketts, Charles 105 Rigg, Diana 149, 189 Riggs, Lynn 164 Ritchie, Anne 31 Rivals, The 100 Robertson, T. W. 56, 76, 82, 86 Robeson, Paul 148, 174, 176, 179, 180, 199 Robins, Elizabeth 77 Robson, Flora 102, 106, 107, 108 Rogers, Paul 127 Romance of Canada, The 134 Romeo 89 Romeo and Juliet 78 productions (1888) 19 (1895) 19 (1905) 34, 35, 39 Rose, George 145 Rose Tattoo, The 172, 192 Rothenstein (Rutherston), Albert 71, 94 Rourke, Kate 68 Rowell, George 115 Rowley, Samuel 34, 50 Royal Academy of Dramatic Art 47 Royal Albert Hall 54 Royal Festival Hall 196 Royal Shakespeare Company 148, 190, 191, 194, Royal Shakespeare Theatre 4, 142, 199 Royal Society of Literature 76 Royalty Theatre 25, 27, 28, 29, 31, 32, 34, 35, 43, 50, 51, 53 Rutter, Carol Chillington 110 Rydell, Robert 157, 158 Rylance, Mark 188, 194 Sad Shepherd, The 34 Sadler’s Wells 100, 102, 103, 105, 110, 114, 115, 124 Saint-Denis, Michel 110, 124 Salter, Denis 134, 138 Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaits 121–4, 128, 130, 144, 150

Savoy Theatre 57, 58, 60, 61, 62, 65, 66, 67, 70–80, 91 Scala Theatre 117 Schafer, Elizabeth 120 Schmitz, Dora 31 School for Scandal, The 110 Schwartz, J. M. v.d.p. (‘Marten Maartens’) 30 Scofield, Paul 192 Scott, Terry 190 Sears, Elizabeth 199–200 Secret Life, The 81, 82, 83, 221n. 78 Sejanus 7, 50, 51, 52 Sennett, Mack 3 Sentimentalists, The 81 Sezegho, Roy 184 Shaughnessy, Robert 4 Shakespeare Effect, The 4 Shakespeare Memorial Committee 58 Shakespeare Memorial National Theatre (S.M.N.T.) 39, 40, 68–70 Shakespeare Memorial Theatre 42, 43, 49, 100, 102, 110, 124, 143–9, 155, 160, 166, 174–80 Shakespeare Myth, The 203–4 Shakespeare Oxford Society 199–200 Shakespeare Reading Society 10, 18–28, 29, 46, 54 Shakespeare Revolution, The 62–3, 66, 99 Shakespeare Stage Society 135 Shakespeare’s Globe 1, 5, 6, 151, 152, 154, 186–210 Shakespeare’s Globe: A Theatrical Experiment 155 Shakespeare’s Globe Rebuilt 155 Sharp, Cecil 79 Shaw, Fiona 194 Shaw, G. Bernard 5, 10, 15, 16, 21, 30, 34, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 63, 64, 67, 68, 76, 83, 83, 89, 95, 127, 138, 147, 218n. 18, 220n. 56, 221n. 63 Shaw, Glen Byam 124, 148, 166, 167, 174 Shelley Society 30 Shepherd, Simon 117 Sheridan, Richard Brinsley 56, 86, 124

Index Sherlock, Jr. 3 Shewring, Margaret 155 Shoemaker’s Holiday, The 189 Short Story 109 Shylock 87 Simpson, Percy 52 Sitwell, Edith 137 Six Characters in Search of an Author 104, 128 Smith, Dodie 108 Smithson, Laura 39 Society of West End Theatre Managers 40 Sophocles 124, 141 South Central Hackney School 43 Southwark Borough Council 193, 196, 199, 205, 206 Speaight, Robert 7 Sproat, Iain 207 Squire, William 146 St George’s Hall 14, 31, 35 St George’s Elizabethan Theatre 188 St Helier, Ivy 113 St James’s Hall 26 St James’s Theatre 58, 117 St Mark’s Vestry 20 Stage Society 55, 56 Stanislavski, Constantin 80, 102, 161, 163, 165, 172, 209 Steinway Hall 26 Stevens, Thomas Wood 48, 150, 161 Stevenson, Robert Louis 56 Stirling, Edward 7 Stockwood, Mervyn 204 Strand Theatre 117 Strasberg, Lee 163, 179 Stratford, Connecticut 134 Stratford Festival, Canada 4, 132–40, 143, 146, 149, 181, 183 Streatham Shakespeare Players 43 Streetcar Named Desire, A 164 Strife 77 Strindberg, August 164 Stuart, Otho 84 Styan, J. L. 62–3, 66, 99 Sudermann, Hermann 58 Sûmûrun 71

249

Sunday Shakespeare Society 26 Superman IV 199 Swan drawing 15 Swan Theatre 4, 199 Swanwick, Anna 31 Sweet Aloes 108 Sydney Opera House 188 Tagore, Rabindranath 208 Talawa Theatre Company 194 Tamburlaine 128–32 Taming of the Shrew, The 121 productions (1939) 113, 114 (1955) 139 Tandy, Jessica 112, 141 Tate Modern 196 Tea and Sympathy 171 Tempest, The 20 productions (1897) 19, 34 (1934) 100, 106–7 (1940) 115 Tempest, Marie 109 Tennent, Cecil 174 Tennyson, Alfred 50 ‘Tent’ seasons 166, 187–95, 202, 208 Thacker, David 194 Theatre Prospect 104 Thorndike, Sybil 43, 105, 109 Thorne, Sarah 58 Thorne, Stan 206 Thornycroft, Hamo 31 Three Sisters, The 80, 142, 220n. 56 Threepenny Opera, The 166, 172 This Wooden ‘O’ 155 Tickle, Frank 115 Timon of Athens 192 productions, (1952) 124–5 Tippett, Michael 188 ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore 189 Todhunter, John 30 Tollemache, Beatrice 31 Tourist, The 151 Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron, The 50, 52, 53 Traviata, La 124

250 Index Tree, Herbert Beerbohm 43, 67, 69, 70, 73, 76, 78 Trelawny of the Wells 56 Trench, Herbert 69 Trewin, J. C. 119, 129, 130, 143, 147, 189 Troilus and Cressida 15, 20 productions (1956) 126–7 (1912) 43, 51 (1954) 166 (1956) 126–8, 138, 143 Twelfth Night 18, 19, 78 productions (1889) 19, 26, 29 (1895) 30, 36 (1897) 4, 32, 34 (1903) 39 (1912) 57, 72, 73, 74, 77, 78, 96 (1933) 100, 103, 104, 111, 112 (1957) 139 (1973) 190 Two Gentlemen of Verona, The 20 production (1892) 19, 26 (1897–8) 34 (1903) 57, 58 (1910) 35, 43, 53, 69, 73, Tynan, Kenneth 127, 168 Uncle Vanya 141 University College, London 22 Ure, Mary 148 Valois, Ninette de 114 Vaudeville Theatre 110 Vedrenne, J. E. 58 Veihman, Theodore 160 Verdi, Giuseppi 83, 188, 195 Vessel of Wrath 110 Viceroy Sarah 108 View from the Bridge, A 168, 170, 171 Vipond, Neil 139 Votes for Women! 77 Voysey Inheritance, The 77, 83, 95 Walker Foundation 140

Waller, Lewis 67, 69 Wanamaker, Abby 151 Wanamaker, Charlotte Holland 151, 163, 167, 177, 184 Wanamaker, Maurice 157 Wanamaker, Sam 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 148, 151–210 roles in Cleveland 160 as Iago 155, 174–80, 176, 184, 190 as Macbeth 181–6, 185 Wanamaker, Zoe 151 War and Peace 188 Ward, A. W. 32 Wardle, Irving 190 Waste 60, 78, 83 Waugh, Evelyn 147 Webster, Ben 84 Webster, John 24, 141 Wedmore, Frederick 21, 30 Weinstein, Hannah 175 Welles, Orson 171 Wells, John 19 Westminster Theatre 100, 102, 106, 108, 121 What Happens in Hamlet 58 Wheatley, Henry 15 When You See Me You Know Me 50, 52 Whitby, Arthur 84 Whiting, Frank 140 Wild Duck, The 86 Wilde, Oscar 56 Wilder, Thornton 110, 128 Wilkinson, Fanny 31 Wilkinson, Norman 71, 73, 74 Williams, Clifford 127 Williams, Harcourt 84, 101, 102, 106, 113 Williams, Tennessee 164, 172 Williamson, Audrey 143 Williamson, Nicole 192, 194 Wilson, Effingham 11 Wilson, John 32 Wilson, John Dover 58, 112 Wiman, Ann Deere 167, 168, 173 Wiman, Dwight Deere 167 Winter Journey 164–5

Index Wintergarden Theatre 131 Winter’s Tale, The 91 productions, (1912) 57, 67, 71, 73, 77, 80, 84, 91 Witch of Edmonton, The 111 Withers, Googie 164 Wodehouse, P. G. 147 Wolfit, Donald 51, 117, 124, 128, 148 as Tamburlaine 124, 128–31 Wontner, Arthur 84 Womack, Peter 117

251

World’s Fair 156 Worth, Irene 137, 138 Worsley, T. C. 109, 129, 130, 144, 145 Wyndham, Charles 67 Wynyard, Diane 144 Yeats, William Butler 59 You Never Can Tell 60 Ziesler, Peter 140