Robert Dighton's Caricatues

The author Dion Clayton Calthrop said in an article about the Regency-era artist Robert Dighton, “The essence of caricature is polite laughter and polished attack.” That description seems to fit Dighton’s theatrical portraits, which are well worth a look.

Dighton was born in 1752 and lived until 1814. He first exhibited his work at the Free Society of Artists when he was only seventeen, and he continued to exhibit from 1769 to 1773. In 1775 he exhibited some drawings at the prestigious Royal Academy, but his fame came from more popular works.

In December of 1806, Dighton published a portrait of Angelica Catalani, the famed opera singer who caused much controversy on the London stage. Rumored to be mistress to the brutal politician Lord Castlereagh, Catalani became a target of numerous xenophobic attacks. Dighton's hand-colored caricature of her is sympathetic, though, showing her in the opera Semiramide by Rossini.

Another famous caricature Dighton did was of the actor Stephen Kemble, who was famous for playing Falstaff without needing any extra padding for the role. Kemble allegedly weighed 18 stone, about 250 pounds. Sadly, Dighton's depiction of Kemble playing Hamlet is less than sympathetic.

By the way, Kemble was brother to both John Kemble and the enormously popular Sarah Siddons. Here's his vision of Siddons as Elvira in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's play, Pizarro:

Dighton's son Richard followed him into the print-making business. Richard Dighton later engraved a portrait of William Farren, an actor known as "The Cock Salmon" (don't ask) who famously appeared as Sir Peter Teazle in The School for Scandal, also by Sheridan.

Farren, by the way, essentially acted as stepfather to the Victorian actress Helen Faucit. Much to Faucit's embarrassment, Farren had carried on an illicit affair with her mother. The actor did eventually marry his live-in mistress, but only after Faucit's father died.

And you thought your parents were embarrassing....

Talfourd's ION

In the latest issue of Theatre Notebook, Christopher Butcher has an excellent article on William Charles Macready bringing Thomas Noon Talfourd's play Ion to the stage.

Though the play shares its title with a tragedy by Euripides, Talfourd's take is quite different, and involves the young prince Ion sacrificing his own life for the good of the state. The author had the piece printed privately and circulated it among a number of notables, including Macready.

The actor was excited about the play, but recognized that audiences might consider him too old to play a young character like Ion. However, impressed by Macready's performance in another tragedy on classical themes, Virginius, Talfourd requested the star actor to appear in the starring role. Macready was only too happy to oblige.

Originally, the play was supposed to be performed for Macready's benefit night at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. Unfortunately, Macready had a violent quarrel with the theatre's manager, Alfred Bunn. Macready had to turn to Talfourd for legal advice in the matter. The actor wanted out of his contract at Drury Lane, and so he ended up using Ion as a pretext for gaining his own dismissal. He wrote to Bunn demanding that the play be brought into rehearsal as soon as possible. Bunn fired Macready for his impudence, which is precisely what the actor wanted.

Even before Bunn had fired him, Macready had begun negotiations to appear at the rival Theatre Royal, Covent Garden. Included in his contract was a stipulation that Ion be performed. Eventually, the date of the premiere was set for May 26, 1836, which was also Talfourd's birthday. Macready wanted the painter Clarkson Stanfield to provide the scenery, though he was unfortunately unavailable.

Ellen Tree agreed to play the role of Clemanthe, and the piece was advertised as being for one night only. Joanna Baillie, the most highly regarded dramatist of her day, was in the audience, as were William Wordsworth, Walter Savage Landor, Henry Crabb Robinson, Henry Hart Milman, Robert Browning, Sheridan Knowles, and Charles Dickens.

The play was a success, with the audience calling for the author to take a bow. Talfourd received numerous letters congratulating him, and plans were made for a lengthier run, rather than just the one-night-only event. Macready had introduced cuts that greatly reduced the role of Clemanthe, and when the play later began its official run, Helen Faucit replaced Ellen Tree. At first, Faucit was disappointed by her own performance, but Talfourd wrote her a kind letter that buoyed her spirits.

Ion was performed June 1, 3, 6, 8, 9, 10, and 11 at Covent Garden, and would have run longer, except Macready had engagements elsewhere. It even led to a minor revival in Greek themes on the London stage. Though the play has been largely forgotten, Butcher's article brings new attention to this important moment in theatrical history.

Incidentally, if you want to read more about Macready, you can find plenty of information about him in my new book, Romantic Actors, Romantic Dramas. Though I don't have a full chapter on Macready, his career is discussed at length, as is the work of Baillie, Browning, Faucit, Knowles, Milman, and others.

And though I don't have an article in this issue of Theatre Notebook, my article "War, Pandemic, and Immortality: 1918 and the Drama of Eternal Life" appears in the latest issue of Shaw. Check it out!

The Would-Be Richelieu

Edward Bulwer-Lytton is less known today for his good plays than he is for his for his bad novels. His novel Paul Clifford (which was itself successfully adapted for the stage) begins with the infamous line: "It was a dark and stormy night..."

Born Edward Bulwer, he married against his mother's wishes, and had a turbulent relationship with his bride, Rosina Doyle Wheeler. After their marriage, his mother cut off the allowance he had previously lived on, so to make money, he began to write.

He had previously published a few poems, but beginning in 1828 he wrote a series of popular novels including Pelham, The Disowned, and The Last Days of Pompeii. In 1838, he had a stage hit with The Lady of Lyons, which starred Helen Faucit and William Charles Macready.

After his mother died in 1843, Edward Bulwer changed his surname to Bulwer-Lytton, adding her maiden name to his own in compliance with her will (thus, allowing himself to inherit her fortune).  He seems to have genuinely mourned her, though, and had already come to regret the marriage she had opposed. He legally separated from Rosina in 1836, and after that, she began to publish her own novels, which rivaled his in sensationalism and sometimes included thinly veiled attacks on her ex-husband.

In 1839, the year Rosina published her first novel, Cheveley, he had his second stage success, Richelieu; or, The Conspiracy. The historical drama opens with the enemies of France's King Louis XIII planning to revolt, forcing the king to abdicate power to his brother. They also scheme to murder the king’s top adviser, Cardinal Richelieu. That part was played by Macready, who portrayed him both as a cunning politician and as a loving father figure to his adopted ward, Julie de Mortemar. Julie is in love with one of the conspirators, the Chevalier de Mauprat. The cardinal craftily arranges to pardon de Mauprat and marry him to Julie, thus turning an enemy into an ally.

Unfortunately, the king has taken a liking to Julie and wants her as his mistress. Scarcely have the marriage rites been performed, when de Mauprat is ordered to abandon his bride. Julie runs to the cardinal, accusing him of betrayal, but he convinces her to trust him. As his enemies close in on him, Richelieu feigns death. Even after he reveals himself to be alive, the king continues to oppose him, until in the final act Richelieu is able to secure a document signed by the conspirators confirming their treason. France is saved, and Julie is reunited with her husband.

Unfortunately, Bulwer-Lytton’s life was not so happy. He might have fancied himself a sort of Richelieu, but he lacked the finesse of the great statesman. In 1858, when Bulwer-Lytton was standing for parliament, his estranged wife denounced him publicly. He had her declared insane and placed in an asylum, but after a public outcry she was released. Still, the scandal did not prevent him from being made a baron in 1866.

As strange as Bulwer-Lytton's fiction could be, his life was sometimes stranger.

The Rise of the English Actress

I just finished reading Sandra Richards's book The Rise of the English Actress. By its nature, the book is a rather general study, but it gives a wonderful history of women on the British stage.

Women appeared on stage during the middle ages, but by the Renaissance they were official banned from taking part in the public performances of plays in England. There were some exceptions, such as the infamous "Moll Cutpurse" who acted illegally, and the French actresses who were hissed at the Blackfriars Theatre in 1629.

It wasn't until the Restoration that actresses became the norm in England, and they quickly became an attractive novelty. Richards points out that in 1664 Thomas Killigrew staged an all-female performance of his play The Parson's Wedding. All-female casts were still being used a decade later when John Dryden's Secret Love was revived with only women on the stage.

By the early eighteenth century actresses were using playwrights to pen works especially for them. Richards cites Henry Fielding's Deborah and The Intriguing Chambermaid, written for Kitty Clive, and Colley Cibber's The Careless Husband and The Provok'd Husband, both vehicles for Anne Oldfield. Such collaborations did not always go well, though. Samuel Jonson blamed the failure of his play Irene on a sub-standard performance by Hannah Pritchard.

Perhaps the most celebrated eighteenth-century role created for a specific actress was Lady Teazle in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The School for Scandal. According to Richards, Sheridan wrote the part especially for Frances Abington. It was Abington who made the mob cap fashionable after she wore it on stage in James Townley's two-act farce High Life Below Stairs. The role she played, Kitty, was originally played by Kitty Clive, but Abington used it to create a fashion sensation that came to be known as the Abington Cap.

Women were instrumental in the creation of the benefit performance, and their earnings could top those of male actors. Richards notes that in 1792 the top-grossing benefit night belonged to Dora Jordan. That year, Jordan earned 540 pounds, while the tragic actress Sarah Siddons earned 490 pounds, and the leading male actor, John Philip Kemble, earned only 480 pounds. The Jordan-Siddons rivalry mirrored a debate over whether comedy or tragedy was the superior genre. The Dramatic Magazine in 1788 sided with Jordan, declaring she "fairly beat Melpomene out of the field."

The late eighteenth century also saw the remarkable career of Mary Robinson, the actress who in 1775 began publishing her poems under the patronage of the Duchess of Devonshire. Unfortunately, her 1794 play Nobody struck a nerve, and was hissed off the stage when it exposed the gambling habits of a number of prominent society ladies. Robinson allegedly dictated her poem "The Maniac" while under the influence of opium. As one might expect, Samuel Taylor Coleridge saw a kindred spirit in her and in 1800 declared Robinson "a woman of undoubted genius."

Robinson was famously painted by the major artists of the day, and as Richards puts it, it was in the eighteenth century that actresses "now became a means of establishing a painter's reputation when they allowed themselves to be portrayed." Portraits of actresses "were offered to the market by painters satisfying a public demand, and reflected how audiences saw female players." Richards specifically cites Thomas Lawrence, whose 1790 portrait of Elizabeth Farren catapulted the painter into fame and royal favor.

The great tragic actress of the late eighteenth century was of course Sarah Siddons, and Richards devotes an entire chapter to her. Drawing on Siddons's biography by Thomas Campbell, Richards points out that Siddons strove to be "natural" but by "natural" she meant credible for the character, rather than what we today might consider naturalistic. Siddons famously studied Egyptian and Greek sculpture, using it to help her achieve the exact poise and muscle tension she wanted to have.

In spite of her generally acknowledged superiority over her brother, John Philip Kemble, Siddons could not always enjoy her stardom. While Kemble was given a public dinner at the occasion of his farewell performance, Siddons received no such honor. She remarked to Samuel Rogers, "Well, perhaps in the next world women will be more valued than they are in this." Still, she left her mark on plays, and Richards notes that "Siddons's personality and bearing unquestionably informed and determined the role" of Jane de Monfort in Joanna Baillie's play De Monfort, which premiered in 1800.

Eliza O'Neill succeeded Siddons as the great British tragedienne of the early nineteenth century. O'Neill retired from the stage in 1819, though, and in the early Victorian period actresses like Helen Faucit and Siddons's niece Fanny Kemble took the reins. In 1837, Fanny Kemble wrote An English Tragedy, but William Charles Macready refused to stage the play, in spite of recognizing that it was "full of power, poetry and pathos."

The most famous Victorian actress was Ellen Terry, and Richards gives Terry her own chapter. Terry was most renowned for playing Lady Macbeth, wearing "a gown of soft green silk and blue tinsel edged with rubies and diamonds, draped by a heather velvet cape and decorated with flaming griffins and real beetle wings of green to achieve a metallic dazzle.” John Singer Sargent painted a portrait of Terry wearing the dress, helping it to become, in Richards's words, "the most famous costume in stage history."

Sybil Thorndike was one of the great British actresses of the early twentieth century. Richards considers her production of Percy Shelley's The Cenci in 1922 to be one of the most important of the actress's career. According to Richards, "Sybil's Beatrice established her firmly as a great tragic actress and Shelley as a great dramatist." At the time, George Bernard Shaw was trying to determine who should play the title character in his new play Saint Joan. After seeing Thorndike as Beatrice Cenci, Shaw informed his wife, "I have found my Joan." Thorndike later became closely associated with the role of Joan of Arc, which she did indeed originate in Shaw's play.

Richards continues the story of the English actress past Thorndike, writing for instance about Peggy Ashcroft, who played Desdemona opposite Paul Robeson in Othello. She goes right up to the present, discussing Harriet Walter, who I just saw play Prospero in an all-female production of The Tempest. All in all, this is a wonderful book for anyone interested in the history of British acting.

Mary Warner

The eminent tragedian of the Victorian era, William Charles Macready, was often paired with an equally skilled leading lady, Helen Faucit. After Faucit went her own way, however, another actress stepped up to Macready's side. She was Mary Warner, and also an important performer of note.

Born Mary Amelia Huddart, she came from a family of thespians and began acting when she was around 15 years old. By 1829, she was making appearances in Dublin, and the following year Macready discovered her talents and began casting her whenever possible. She made her Drury Lane debut on November 22, 1830 in Thomas Otway's Venice Preserved playing Belvidera opposite Macready's Pierre.

Initially, there seems to have been some romantic attraction between the two. Macready, however, was married, and a devoted husband and father. While he and Miss Huddart were performing together in Manchester, the actors were fortunately able to fall into a purely professional relationship, with Macready recording in his diary that he was relieved to be set free from a temptation.

As Miss Huddart, she frequently played secondary female roles to Macready's regular leading lady, Helen Faucit. For instance, she took the role of Paulina to Faucit's Hermione in Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. Around 1836 or 1837 (it's unclear which) she married the tavern keeper Robert Warner, and as Mrs. Warner she took on increasingly strong roles, such Regan in Macready's production of King Lear.

When Macready took over the management of Covent Garden in 1837, Warner joined his company, and she followed him when he moved to the Haymarket Theatre two years later. It was at the Haymarket that Warner originated the role of Lady Arundel in Edward Bulwer-Lytton's play The Sea Captain.

Eventually, Warner rose to performing Lady Macbeth with Macready. In 1844, she took on the management of Sadler's Wells, along with Samuel Phelps and T.L. Greenwood. Her final performance in England came in 1851 at Sadler's Well, acting the title role of Mrs. Oakley in George Colman the Elder's The Jealous Wife. After that, she departed for America, where British actors frequently thought they could make their fortunes.

Unfortunately, Warner had developed cancer, and she eventually returned to London, where the retired Macready kindly gave her some financial assistance. In 1853, she filed for bankruptcy, and the following year she died. Macready saw to the upbringing of her son, while the wealthy philanthropist Angela Burdett-Coutts took charge of her daughter.

Throughout her career, many actors and critics paid tribute to Warner's considerable talents.  One appreciation came in the form of this anonymous acrostic, which appeared in the Theatrical Journal of 1839:

M ild in your natural character, thou art
A n able actress of the fiery mood;
R ebundant action, frequent strut and start,
Y our judgement wisely tells should be subdued.

W ell do your death-black eyes their part fulfill,
A nd flash to fury, or in scorn strike awe;
R ich in Evadne's portraiture of ill.
N o critic e'er condemned it; all who saw
E steemed it noble, thrilling, awful, grand.
R evived and cleansed by great Macready's hand!

Did Macready REALLY try to revive the drama?

The Victorian actor William Charles Macready often spoke of "reviving the drama." To him, this meant one thing: the return of verse tragedy. Far from reviving the drama, however, Macready did his part to crush it.

Shirley S. Allen might have been a little biased. She was a biographer of one of Macready's rivals, Samuel Phelps. However, in her book Samuel Phelps and Sadler's Wells Theatre, Allen makes a strong case for Macready acting like the villain in one of the melodramas he claimed to have despised.

When he first saw Phelps act in 1837, Macready wrote that he "displayed intelligence, occasionally great energy, some imagination--not much." Rather ominously, he added, "His best scene decidedly was his death." Macready planned to take over Covent Garden, and in spite of his lukewarm opinion of Phelps, he arranged to hire him.

First, however, Phelps had to make his debut at the Haymarket in the role of Shylock. He was an unqualified success, but his strength as an actor scared Macready more than excited him. The great tragedian recorded in his diary that "an actor's fame and his dependent income is so precious, that we start at every shadow of an actor."

Once Phelps joined Macready's company at Covent Garden, Macready made sure this upstart actor would never upstage him. Phelps made his debut as Jaffier in Venice Preserved by Thomas Otway, opposite Macready's own Pierre. Though the production was a success, Macready gave up the role of Pierre rather than appear with another actor who had garnered greater acclaim from the audience.

Phelps then appeared as Othello opposite Macready's Iago. Again, Phelps won the laurels, and again Macready was petty. He made Phelps act the part of Macduff to his own Macbeth, and aside from that, gave him only one other role (in Rob Roy) for a considerable time. Though Macready was paying Phelps handsomely, he would rather the actor not play at all than become a rival for his own glory.

Macready did make some progress toward reviving the drama with a production of Edward Bulwer-Lytton's The Lady of Lyons in 1838. Phelps was not allowed to perform in that piece, and most critics credited its success not to Macready, but to Helen Faucit, who played Pauline, the titular heroine. The following year, Macready premiered another Bulwer-Lytton play, Richelieu, with a title role written expressly for Macready.

Unfortunately, Macready quarreled with the owners of Covent Garden, and he and Phelps both ended up at the Haymarket during the summer of 1839, alternating in the two leading roles in Othello. Much to Macready's pain, Phelps received the better reviews. Macready demanded that the play be withdrawn, despite the fact it was attracting full houses. He set about looking for a new piece, and approached Robert Browning. Surely, if anyone could revive poetic drama in England, Browning could.

But Macready did not think highly of Browning's play King Victor. Taking over the management of Drury Lane, Macready looked for other playwrights to produce. He decided to stage Gerald Griffin's tragedy Gisippus, but he made a bad play even worse, revising it to divide one character into two different parts, just so no one would have a chance to challenge his own preeminence as the lead. 

In was in October of 1842 that Macready introduced his famous production of King John. Later that year, he staged the premiere of another new play, Westland Marston's The Patrician's Daughter, with Helen Faucit in the title role. The reviewers praised Faucit, Phelps, everyone but Macready. The play only lasted 11 performances. Macready turned down another tragedy, William Smith's Athelwold, because he felt there was not a sufficient leading role for himself.

Then, Macready finally turned to Browning, who more than a year before had given him the script to A Blot in the 'Scutcheon. Macready treated the play with contempt, though. In the past, he had invited authors to read their plays aloud to the cast. In this case, he assigned that duty to the prompter and left the room. Though he hadn't been present for the reading, Macready told the author that it had been a disaster and demanded a revised second act. Browning complied.

Macready eventually divorced himself from having anything to do with A Blot in the 'Scutcheon, assigning Phelps to take his place. Toward the end of the rehearsal process, Macready inserted himself again, suggesting Browning change the ending so that Phelps would be deprived of a dramatic death scene. Browning declined, and in his diary, Macready called the author "a very disagreeable and offensively mannered person." For his part, Browning saw the suggestion for what it was, a plot to avoid giving Phelps the opportunity of acting in a true tragedy.

According to Allen, the play premiered to "tumultuous applause." Phelps called for the author to come take a bow, but Browning declined. Macready was not called to the curtain, a fact that made him angry. Reviewer after reviewer, even those hostile to Macready, praised the play. Audiences flocked to see it, packing Drury Lane. Yet Macready pulled the play at the height of its popularity, never allowing it to be performed again under his management. Writing in his diary after the whole affair was over, Macready called Browning a "wretched insect."

The year 1843 saw the end of the monopoly Drury Lane and Covent Garden had enjoyed on "legitimate" drama in London. Macready had always argued that the monopoly was necessary, but in 1843, he asked the owners of Drury Lane for a decrease in rent. (He was also asking each actor to accept a one-third reduction in pay.) The owners declined.

After that, Macready drafted a petition to end the monopoly for which he had fought, and within weeks, the monopoly was gone. Macready, who was so intent on reviving the drama by bringing in talented new playwrights not only marred the works of playwrights (as with Griffin), belittled playwrights (as with Jerrold), and insulted playwrights (as with Browning), he seemed not to even know what a playwright was. He had suggested some revisions for Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher's The Maid's Tragedy, which eventually became an adaptation called The Bridal. Macready then claimed ownership of the piece as if he had written it.

Phelps successfully revived the adaptation at Sadler's Wells, presenting the play 30 times in his first season of managing the theatre. In 1848, however, Macready wrote to Phelps about the play, saying, "as I intend to act it myself during my present engagement, I do not consider it right to extend the permission for performance at present." Phelps must have been confused. Since when did he need Macready's permission to perform a play the actor had not written?

Perhaps trying to save face, Macready then magnanimously granted Phelps a permission he had not asked for nor required. "You will therefore receive this note, if you please, as the requisite permission to perform the play of the Bridal at Sadler's Wells," Macready wrote a few days later.

When Macready finally retired in 1851, he did give Phelps some credit, praising the "learned and tasteful spirit of his productions." According to Allen's account, Phelps, not Macready, had actually done the most to revive the drama.

At the end of the 1856-57 season, Phelps chaired the Theatrical Fund Dinner. Charles Dickens gave a tribute to the actor, praising his "sensible subservience of the scene-painter and the mechanist to the real meaning of the play."

Dickens was a good friend of Macready, but he, too, saw the value of what Phelps had done.

Helen Faucit

The famed Shakespearian actress Helen Faucit was born in 1814, during the Regency, and died in 1898, at the end of the Victorian era. In many ways, her life reflects the tremendous social changes at work during that period.

I recently finished Carol Jones Carlisle's biography, Helen Faucit: Fire and Ice on the Victorian Stage. She corrects some of the errors made by Faucit's original biographer, her husband, Sir Theodore Martin. Sir Theodore made his wife younger than she really was, claiming she was born in 1817, a year after him. He also glossed over some rather unpleasant business with her family.

Faucit (who was baptized Helena, but always went by Helen) came from a family of actors, a profession not generally known for their chaste sensibilities (especially during a time when the Prince Regent was running around with assorted mistresses, including the actress and poet Mary Robinson). Her mother, Harriet Diddear, eloped with John Faucit when she was only 16, a fact she would use later on when she tried to sue her husband for an annulment.

John Faucit took to theater management while his wife took to the stage, famously playing Gertrude in Hamlet. She could not compete, however, with the brightest star of the Regency stage, Eliza O'Neill. After a couple of years, the talented but impetuous woman took up with a new man, William Farren, who already had a wife of his own. This was the Regency, though, so that mattered very little. The two set up house, undeterred by Mrs. Faucit's unsuccessful attempt in 1821 to terminate her first marriage.

Young Helen stayed with her mother, and Farren became a stepfather to her, in spite of the fact he was still married to another woman. While he might not have been a paragon of family values, he did have a keen business sense, and he helped Helen successfully navigate her early career on the stage. According to legend, the family was at the King's Theatre in Richmond when Helen and her elder sister Harriet decided to act out the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet upon an empty stage. The new manager, Willis Jones, overheard them, and decided to put the young Juliet in front of a live audience.

On September 30, 1833, Helen Faucit made her debut as Juliet, listed in the program simply as "A Young Lady". She was so nervous that she crushed the glass vial holding Juliet's potion, slicing open her hand and fainting in earnest. Still, she went on with the show, and the audience applauded her heartily. She repeated the performance the next night, this time using a wooden vial. The following month, she went on as Julia in James Sheridan Knowles' play The Hunchback, a part made famous by Fanny Kemble. In November, she appeared as Mrs. Haller in The Stranger, Benjamin Thompson's adaptation of a play by August von Kotzebue.

At the end of 1835, Faucit was given an opportunity to make her London debut on the stage at Covent Garden. Originally, she was supposed to play Juliet, but George Bennett, her prospective Romeo, was deemed too old for her, and Knowles himself was available to play the title role in The Hunchback. At the last minute, the play was switched, and Faucit found herself making her debut as Julia, not Juliet. On January 5, Twelfth Night, Faucit made her London debut. After a rocky start, she was a smash in the role, writing afterward in her diary, "Again and again, thank God it is over!"

Faucit later appeared as Belvidera in Thomas Otway's Venice Preserved, but predictably she suffered in comparisons to Eliza O'Neill, the standard in that role ever since the Regency. A few nights later she appeared on stage as Mrs. Haller in The Stranger, another role played by O'Neill. This time, however, she did something remarkable that set her apart. Instead of allowing the adulterous Mrs. Haller to be reconciled to her estranged husband at the end, she had the unfortunate woman embrace her children, then fall to the feet of her husband, spurned and rejected to the end.

Such a change, just a year before Queen Victoria's ascension to the throne, marks a shift in attitudes toward women, marriage, and sexual morality. During the Regency, Mrs. Haller could do her penance and reunite with her husband. In Victorian England, that would no longer be possible. Faucit, painfully aware of her own family's history, might have had personal reasons for making the change as well. After her mother's scandalous behavior, she herself wanted to be beyond reproach, and that meant no apologies for fallen women.

Faucit appeared as Lady Margaret in Joanna Baillie's The Separation. Then in March, she was at last allowed to go on as Juliet in London. The performance attracted some attention, and Faucit later found herself being invited to act with her hero, William Charles Macready in Thomas Noon Talfourd's tragedy Ion. Faucit worshipped Macready, but he remained cold toward her throughout their professional relationship. Still, she acted opposite him in a number of Shakespeare productions, including Othello, and Macready's landmark King John.

Amazing to me, Faucit originally did not want to play Cordelia in Macready's 1838 production of King Lear. She felt the part had too few lines and not enough opportunities for making a grand effect. Macready's production revolutionized the play, however, getting rid of the silly love story and happy ending introduced during the Restoration, and bringing back the part of the Fool. Critics rewarded Faucit for taking the role, praising her sweetness in the part. They complained, however, that she spoke too softly, perhaps another effect of her Victorian worldview.

Faucit had to play her fair share of unsuitable roles, including Mrs. Oakley in George Coleman the Elder's The Jealous Wife. However, the same year as Macready's Lear, she was given the part that would grant her the most fame, Pauline in Edward Bulwer-Lytton's The Lady of Lyons. The same author who had once begun a novel with the infamous line "It was a dark and stormy night" this time hit pay dirt for Faucit, and she would perform the part of Pauline over and over again for the rest of her career.

Later, Faucit appeared opposite Macready in Bulwer's play Richelieu, but that play was more of a vehicle for her costar. She found more success in Shakespearean roles, playing Rosalind in As You Like It, Miranda in The Tempest, Portia in The Merchant of Venice, as well as a formidable Lady Macbeth opposite Macready. Faucit's Lady Macbeth was not power mad, though, but rather ambitious only for her husband's sake. Victorianism strikes again.

When Macready left to tour America, the 28-year-old Faucit was left to develop her craft on her own. She toured the provinces, becoming a success in Dublin, Birmingham, Bristol, Edinburgh, and Glasgow. In 1844, she reunited with Macready in Paris, playing Desdemona to his Othello. Returning to Dublin, she appeared as Antigone, and was later painted as "The Greek Muse" by Sir Frederick William Burton.

In 1851 Faucit married Theodore Martin, whom Queen Victoria later knighted for completing a grand biography of Prince Albert. They set up house in London, neighbors to the Thackerays, and had a second home in Wales to boot. Still, Faucit didn't give up acting, and she kept her maiden name for billing purposes.

She did not perform as frequently after marriage, but Faucit kept acting until 1879, and even after her retirement from the stage, she took part in numerous fundraisers and public readings, often reading aloud multiple parts in scenes from Shakespeare.

At the instigation of her friend Geraldine Jewsbury, she began a series of published "letters" on characters she had played. These were later collected under the title: On Some of Shakespeare's Female Characters. A typical passage on Desdemona goes like this:

Making so small a part of her father's life, and missing the love, or the display of it, which would have been so precious to her, she finds her happiness in dreams of worth more exalted than any she has known, but which she has heard and read of in the poets and romancers...

So, too, did Helen Faucit, a child of a broken home from an earlier, more permissive era, dream of happiness. Only her happiness was one bound up in the stability and tranquility of wedded life. And fortunately for her, she found it.

Macready's King John

On October 29, 1842, the London newspaper The Examiner carried a review by John Forster of William Charles Macready's latest triumph, a magnificent revival of Shakespeare's King John at Drury Lane. Forster wrote:

It is six years since we saw King John, with some seven ragged supernumeraries for the power of England, while that of France, headed by a king in boots a la Louis Quatorze, crawled about the stage with three. What a picture has taken the place of this! ... The accoutrements are complete, from the helmet to the spur of each mailed warrior. Not a distinction is missed in the appointments. From citizen to baron, gentleman to knight, herald to man-at-arms, soldier to servant, priest to king, gradations are marked with picturesque exactness, to the eye and to the mind.

These comments might be overlooked by some as the effusions of an admiring theatre fanatic with no real sense of historic costuming. However, we know that Macready's production did employ costumes that sought to reproduce the period with meticulous accuracy. In the twentieth century, Macready's granddaughter discovered 39 sheets of watercolor costume designs. Of these, 12 were for King John, showing a total of 15 figures, all with a reasonable degree of historical accuracy.

According to the theatre historian Charles Shattuck, the watercolors are probably the work of Col. Charles Hamilton Smith, a noted antiquarian of the time. Most interesting to me is the fact that the watercolors seem to strive not just for historical accuracy, but for an audience's idea of what the period should look like. For instance, the image of Cardinal Pandulph shows him in a wide-brimmed cardinal's hat. However, notes on the back of the image indicate that such hats were not actually worn until 1245, decades after the death of King John.

The designer seems to have realized that in some cases, historical accuracy can get in the way of a production. We all picture cardinals in big hats, so to have Pandulph without the traditional cardinal hat would have gotten in the way of the audience's understanding of the play. Whether the costumers ultimately followed through on Smith's suggestions (as Shattuck believes they did) the images show Macready was interested in creating the most historically accurate costumes he could, provided they truly served the play.

Scenery was also important to the production, and again, historical accuracy (within reason) seemed to reign. Forester noted in his review:

The scenery has had the same attention. The council room, the field before and after battle, the fortifications of Angiers, the moated and embattled fortress of Northampton, the glitter of the Royal tent, the gloom of Swinstead Abbey; they have all the air of truth, the character of simple and strong fidelity. And above all, in every movement of the tragedy, there is Mind at work, without which wealth of material is nothing.

William Telbin was in charge of painting the backdrops. Though he had been working on scenery for a while, this was Telbin's first really big job for a major London theatre, and he received a whopping 250 pounds for his work. For the first several performances, Telbin was not credited, but by mid-November his name was being recorded in the playbills.

Telbin based his designs on real places, but he modified them to create his stage pictures. For instance, in depicting Angiers, he left out the moat, reduced the number of towers, and placed the entrance in the foreground to be more dramatically effective. He also got rid of the black and white bands that make the castle distinctive, but not like the average audience member's idea of what a castle should look like. He also exaggerated the mountains in the background for a heightened effect.

Macready directed the cast with extraordinary skill. He himself played the title role, something he had previously done for Charles Kemble's company at Covent Garden. According to Shattuck, Macready had played the king a total of 25 times in London before his own 1842 revival, but not to the meticulous actor's own satisfaction. The reviewers were kind, but Macready was not satisfied with his performances until he had helmed his own production of King John.

This was not merely a star-focused production, however. Macready's King John was noted for the power of its ensemble cast, and for the skill with which Macready handled the crowd scenes. As Forester wrote:

The crowds on the stage are instinct with life and passion. Yielding to the impulse of their leaders, they rise to fierce activity or sink into grim repose. These sudden changes are the very picture of that age: its selfish insincerity, its rude devotion, its servile slavery. Men they are not, though with those gallant forms of men, they are machines of war.

Samuel Phelps played Hubert, and reviewers praised his acting as second only to Macready's. Critics singled out as particularly masterful the temptation scene, where King John tells Hubert to kill the young Prince Arthur. Certainly, Macready and Phelps acting out such a splendid Shakespearean duet must have produced fireworks. Also, Phelps was particularly affecting in his interactions with Arthur. He generated intense pathos with his struggle between obeying his monarch and doing what was right.

The part of Arthur was taken by a child actress, initially one Miss Newcombe. One reviewer found her performance "overtrained," but that is perhaps a danger for child roles in general. The part also requires a bit of acrobatics, as Arthur must leap down from a tower in the fourth act. Apparently, some men were waiting below to catch the actress in a carpet. They would then tumble her through a gateway and down some steps. Some critics felt rolling down stairs after the fall was just a tad too much. (Critics....)

James Anderson played the bastard Faulconbridge with all the cynicism that we associate with the role today. For Macready's audience, this was a tremendous departure from the standard heroic portrayal of the character. Most reviewers hated this new interpretation, though a writer for the Atlas praised it as "more true to Shakespeare than Charles Kemble's more smiling and polished effort." Obviously, the play's subsequent stage history has vindicated Anderson's acting choice.

The incomparable Helen Faucit played Lady Constance, one of Shakespeare's more memorable heroines from the history plays. She had played the part opposite Macready at Covent Garden when she was only 19, but now at 25 she had acquired greater skill as a performer without having lost the charm of her youth. Unfortunately, she was still overcoming an illness when the revival opened at Drury Lane, so her initial notices were not good.

Her later performances, however, helped to change people's idea of the character. Previously, tragic actresses like Sarah Siddons had portrayed Constance as prideful and self-willed. They filled the character with ambition and delivered their lines with bitter sarcasm. Faucit emphasized Constance's tenderness and maternal affection. While still scornful of her enemies, Faucit's Constance rose to a noble grandeur that contemporaries felt was superior to the Constance of Siddons.

The costumes, scenery designs, and acting choices of Macready's King John all had a tremendous impact on later productions of the play (especially Charles Kean's production which later toured America, bringing British stage traditions to the U.S.). Perhaps the most significant choices Macready made, however, were in how he chose to cut the text.

And how did Macready manage to trim back the monster of King John into a concise, effective piece of theatre? I'll be writing about that on the blog tomorrow.

The Society for Theatre Research

I am very excited to be joining the Society for Theatre Research, a U.K.-based group for all those interested in the history and technique of the British theatre. After some frustration wrestling with their website, I finally was able to send them my dues through PayPal, so hopefully I'll be on the membership roles soon!

STR is perhaps best known as the publisher of Theatre Notebook, a journal that since 1945 has been publishing essays on British drama by both amateurs and academics. It has recently run articles on the actress Janet Achurch, adaptations of the work of Matthew G. Lewis, and even toilet facilities in early British theatres! This is definitely a publication after my own heart.

The society also publishes books, including biographies of George Frederick Cooke, Helen Faucit, and Charles Mathews. They periodically present lectures in London, as well, though I'm not likely to make it to many of those.

For more information about this great organization, click here:

Society for Theatre Research

http://www.str.org.uk/research/index.html