The Tragedy of Ina

After Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s verse tragedy Remorse became a hit in 1813, many writers with literary ambitions turned to the stage, hoping to repeat the poet's success.

One of them, Barbarina Wilmot, had her play Ina premiered at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in 1815. In the first scene, the Mercian princess Edelfleda’s maid Bertha even cries out, “Oh heaven! thou speak’st as tho’ remorse / Had stung thy bosom.”

Edelfleda counters that remorse more rightfully belongs to the man who has wronged her, Prince Egbert of Wessex, who was engaged to Edelfleda by his father in order to secure peace with Mercia. However, he is actually in love with Ina, Edelfleda’s beloved friend.

For his part, Egbert thinks of Edelfleda as a sister, while he is passionately in love with Ina, the orphan daughter of a warrior who died saving the king. That king, Egbert’s father Cenulph, decides to resolve the quandary by sending his son off to war defending the kingdom’s border, but Egbert instead flees with Ina.

Act II begins with Egbert brought back to his father, who reprimands him for placing himself above the good of his people. The problem is that Egbert and Ina have not only been secretly married already, but they even have a child together. Edelfleda leaves in a passion, declaring she will have vengeance. When the Mercian forces invade, Cenulph has little choice but to allow his son to lead an army against them.

In the following act, Edelfleda goes to Ina and tells her that Egbert has been imprisoned and placed in chains. This was briefly true, but is no longer, as becomes apparent when Egbert himself arrives. Thwarted, Edelfleda leaves, quietly vowing Ina’s death. Alwyn, the king’s faithful retainer, arrives and offers to take Ina and her child to safety as Egbert goes off to war. All of them are aware of the dangers present at court, not just from Edelfleda but also from the monk Baldred, who was once himself in love with Ina. 

Indeed, Baldred captures Ina and in the next act brings her to trial for treason. The trial scene allows Ina, who was originally played by Sarah Smith Bartley, to shine in her own defense, but it is in vain, and she is sentenced to death. In the final act, she appeals to the king and escapes her execution, but Egbert, returning to her home, finds her gone and expects the worst. Just before he kills himself, Ina returns, and the play has a happy ending, depriving the actor who plays Egbert of a death scene.

Who was that actor originally? It was none other than Edmund Kean, an otherwise brilliant performer who ended up giving such a weak portrayal of Egbert that the play was only presented at Drury Lane for a single night. Reviewers praised Julia Glover as Edelfleda, but she was unable to carry the show.

Is there a lesson here? Perhaps it's to always give your leading actor a juicy death scene, at least if your leading actor happens to be Edmund Kean.

Remorse and Shakespeare

I previously blogged about theatre articles that appeared recently in The Byron Journal. Today, I want to write about an article in The Coleridge Bulletin.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge is best known today as a poet, but by his own account, he made more money off of his verse drama Remorse than all of his other poetry combined.

Dominik Laciak wrote an article called "Coleridge's Remorse and the Haunting Shadow of Shakespeare" which argues that Coleridge's playwriting and Shakespeare criticism informed one another, which definitely makes sense. Remorse opened at Drury Lane in January of 1813, and throughout the rehearsal process Coleridge was also delivering lectures on Shakespeare.

Laciak concentrates on three Shakespeare villains who likely influenced the character of Ordonio in Remorse: Macbeth, Richard III, and Iago. Like Macbeth, Ordonio feels guilt but tries to pretend that he doesn't. Like Richard III, he is constantly posturing. Like Iago, he takes pride in his intellect.

I wrote about Remorse in my book Romantic Actors, Romantic Dramas. It's nice to see other scholars writing about the play as well.

Byron's Dramas

Today is the birthday of novelist Mary Shelley, but I want to write about the plays of one of her associates, George Gordon Byron, who remained a close friend and colleague of hers until his death in 1824.

While Byron is today known mainly as a poet, the latest issue of The Byron Journal has a couple of articles addressing his dramas Cain and Manfred. Both plays are verse dramas that Byron protested (perhaps too much, methinks) were not intended for the stage, but then they got performed over and over again anyway.

In "Byron in Space" Anthony Howe of Birmingham City University takes a look at cosmology in Cain as well as Byron's mock-epic poem Don Juan. While earlier poets like John Milton could invoke the Ptolemaic universe at least somewhat seriously, that was not the case for Byron in the 19th century. Act II of Cain shows Lucifer taking the title character to "The Abyss of Space" and asking him to point out the Earth. Cain responds:

                                                        As we move

    Like sunbeams onward, it grows small and smaller,

    And as it waxes little, and then less,

    Gathers a halo round it, like the light

    Which shone the roundest of the stars, when I

    Beheld them from the skirts of Paradise...

Howe notes how Cain becomes lost in the vastness of space. He seems to suffer from the pain of the Copernican revolution, no longer able to count on the Earth being a fixed point. Interestingly, though, the cosmos he sees still has elements of the Ptolemaic model of the universe, including not just "ether" also a heaven that is a "blue wilderness" postulated by earlier astronomers who thought the sky only grew dark when the Earth's shadow passed over it.

Flora Lisica of Northeastern University London speculates in "Byron's Manfred and Tragedy in the 'Mental Theatre'" that the tragedies of Byron achieve their greatest intimacy when read. Curiously, she does not include Heaven and Earth with the tragic plays Byron had published. (The play is a sort of sequel to his earlier drama Cain.) However, she does remind readers of the advice--traced back to Roman drama--that Byron gives in his poem Hints from Horace:

    Yet many deeds preserved in history's page

    Are better told than acted on the stage;

    The ear sustains what shocks the timid eye,

    And horror thus subsides to sympathy...

Later in the article, Lisica quotes from one of Byron's letters he wrote after seeing Barbarina Wilmot's tragedy Ina, which failed at Drury Lane, probably due to the half-hearted acting of Edmund Kean. Byron lamented Kean's poor performance, and the fact that the epilogue recited by Sarah Bartley could hardly be heard. Alas, the play bombed, in spite of fine performances by Alexander Rae as the villainous monk Baldred and Julia Glover as Princess Edelfleda.

Perhaps it was the fear of failing with a play like Ina that made Byron turn inward when writing Manfred, creating a deeply introspective work. In any case, I enjoyed reading both articles and look forward to the next issue of The Byron Journal when it arrives.

Report of the Special Committee

In 1832, the British parliament issued a report by a select committee formed to investigate the state of dramatic literature.

Edward Bulwer, who would later go on to write the popular plays The Lady of Lyons and Richelieu, chaired the committee. It also included other members of parliament with literary ambitions, including Richard Lalor Sheil.

According to the report, "a considerable decline, both in the Literature of the Stage, and the taste of the Public for Theatrical Performances, is generally conceded." That this was a matter of urgent business for the government seems almost unthinkable today in the U.S.

Of course, the British stage in the early 19th century was also subject to significant regulation. The Licensing Act of 1737 had solidified a virtual monopoly on spoken-word drama held by the Theatres Royal at Drury Lane and Covent Garden. However, according to the select committee, "such privileges have neither preserved the dignity of the Drama, nor, by the present Administration of the Laws, been of much advantage to the Proprietors of the Theatres themselves."

It was not until the passage of the Theatres Act in 1843 that the monopoly was abolished, allowing the so-called "minor theatres" to perform spoken-word drama. Before that, they were limited to a handful of musical genres such as burletta. What exactly is burletta? Well, the committee tried to find out, and discovered no one really knew. According to James Winston, former stage-manager of the Haymarket and Drury Lane, even the Lord Chamberlain himself--who was charged with regulating drama--had difficulty defining burletta.

While two theatres in London had been sufficient during the Restoration era, the city had grown tremendously since then. The sizes of the two patent theatres were enlarged, but there were still only two. J. Payne Collier (who had his own controversies to come) testified before the committee, "the great evil has always been that instead of multiplying theatres in proportion to the increase of population, the proprietors have enlarged theatres."

Collier opined that London playwriting was at low ebb, and the committee seems to have agreed. It would not be until the end of the century that the British theatre would see the playwriting talent of Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde.

William West and the Toy Theatre

Printmaker William West pioneered the creation of the Regency toy theatre, helping to preserve the theatrical legacy of Britain in the early nineteenth century.

West's work was the subject of an exhibition at Sir John Soane's Museum in 2004 and later an accompanying book. His endeavor began with a print showing characters from the pantomime Mother Goose which were derived from the contemporary theatre.

Initially, West worked together with an engraver's apprentice named John Green, who later set up his own toy theatre business. Their first prints were just sheets of characters that children could color, cut out, and mount on stiffened backings to enact on a miniature stage.

Later, West printed stage fronts that could be attached to miniature prosceniums, and eventually scenery that could be used as backdrops or wings. Many toy theatre makers also printed abridged texts of popular plays to be used in at-home amateur performances.

Black-and-white prints were traditionally sold for a penny, with pre-colored prints offered for two pence. West employed some serious artists, including George Cruikshank, who seems to have designed characters from the pantomime Harlequin Whittington. Cruikshank's brother Robert also created numerous toy theatre prints.

The artist Charles Tomkins began making theatrical prints for West and later became a scene painter for real theatres, first at the Royal Coburg and later at the Surrey and the Adelphi. West himself had numerous connections with the theatre, and by his own account even talked his way into getting a sketch of the new proscenium at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane before the rebuilt theatre had been opened to the public.

Popular plays West offered in toy theatre form included Charles Robert Maturin's Bertram, Richard Brinsley Peake's The Bottle Imp, and Isaac Pocock's The Miller and His Men, which according to West sold better than any other play he offered in a toy version.

Joanna Baillie's Circle

A recent issue of The Coleridge Bulletin published some new letters from Sara Coleridge, daughter of poet and dramatist Samuel Taylor Coleridge. I was surprised to learn that she was acquainted with the playwright Joanna Baillie, and the two had a number of friends in common.

I had known that Baillie frequently corresponded with the painter Thomas Lawrence and the writer Walter Scott, but the letters reveal that her circle also included not just Sara Coleridge, but other notables including the poet Maria Jane Jewsbury and the playwright William Sotheby.

Writing to Jewsbury on November 3rd, 1830, Sara Coleridge noted "Mrs. Baillie we often see and are more & more delighted with her" and that Baillie had "been staying a few days with Mr. Sotheby." Sotheby's play Julian and Agnes had been performed at Drury Lane in 1801, the year after Baillie's De Monfort premiered there. Both plays featured the same leads, the brother-sister duo of John Kemble and Sarah Siddons.

Two years later, Sara Coleridge wrote that "Mrs. J. Baillie has been at the point of death with a low fever, but is happily recovered." Baillie ended up living well into her 80s, and didn't die until 1851. She rose to fame after the first volume of her Plays on the Passions was published in 1798.

That volume included her comedy The Tryal, which will be getting a staged reading next month at the Theatre Royal in Bury St Edmunds. You can find more information about it here.

Censoring Marino Faliero

The latest issue of The Byron Journal recently arrived, including my article "Shaping a New Marino Faliero for Drury Lane."

I first encountered the censored version of Marino Faliero, the only one of George Gordon Byron's plays to be performed during his lifetime, when I was in California for a reading of my play Bones of the Sea at Pasadena Playhouse.

Technically, the play was self-censored, as there is no indication that John Larpent, the Examiner of Plays at the time, demanded any more cuts than the Theatre Royal at Drury Lane willingly provided. Still, the theatre was effectively forced to make some of the most devastating cuts for political reasons.

You can read all about it in the article, which appears alongside some other brilliant pieces, including an analysis of Byron and slavery by Christine Kenyon Jones. She was the co-author of a great book on portraits of Byron, and recently wrote a new book on Jane Austen and Lord Byron.

Other articles in the issue include Ioannes P. Chountis on Byron and Edmund Burke and Konstantina Georganta on the Victorian reception of Byron's "The Isles of Greece."

The Spirit of Burlesque

In an 1888 article in The Universal Review, the British dramatist F.C. Burnand set out to defend burlesque, not the sexy strip-shows of today that we call by that name, but the comic plays of the 19th century that spoofed the hit plays then popular on the stage.

According to Burnand, "'To burlesque' is to make ridiculous by means of exaggeration, mimicry, parody, grotesque distortion, travesty, and caricature." Originally, though, the term had been used along with "melodrama" and "burletta" to define the types of plays that could be performed by the minor theatres that did not hold royal patents like the Theatres Royal at Drury Lane and Covent Garden had.

Prior to the passage of the Theatres Act in 1843, the minor theatres in London had to add a certain amount of music in order to prove they weren't invading the territory of the patent houses. (Exactly how much music they needed to add was a matter of some debate and considerable litigation.) For Burnand, though, the spirit of the burlesque goes back to the Miles Gloriosus of Roman comedy and the comedic Ancient Pistol of Shakespeare's history plays.

Burnand himself was a prolific writer of burlesque plays, but he looked back admiringly on earlier work by James Planché, whose Olympic Revels was a hit when produced by Madame Lucia Elizabeth Vestris. Planché also wrote an adaptation of The Birds by Aristophanes that utilized the structure of the original while poking fun of topics current in the 19th century. The play featured Charles Matthews as a one-man Greek chorus, comically dressed in a Doric chiton over his modern clothes.

Burlesque, in the hands of a skilled dramatist like Planché, is "the candid friend" of the drama, according to Burnand. He writes that burlesque "by means of parody, travesty, and mimicry, publicly exposes on the stage some preposterous absurdities of stagecraft which may be a passing fashion of the day, justly ridicules some histrionic pretensions, parodies false sentiment, and shows that the shining metal put forward as real gold is only theatrical tinfoil after all.” It is just such parody that "killed the old blood-and-thunder melodrama," he concludes.

Burnand should know, as he wrote burlesques of previously successful melodramas such as Black-Eyed Susan by Douglas Jerrold, as well as burlesques of Shakespeare classics like Richard III. The spirit of burlesque is present whenever we pull back the artifice of theatre and comically expose the rude mechanical conventions that lie beneath it.

A Forgery in the Library!

Yesterday, I was at the Rosenbach Library and Museum in Philadelphia, and what did I see there? A blatant forgery!

Don't worry. The Rosenbach knows it's a forgery. In fact, they acquired it because it was a known forgery... one of the most famous forgeries of all time.

The item in question is a supposed love letter by William Shakespeare to his mistress, Anne Hathaway, whom he later married. Obviously, it's not authentic. It was penned in the 1790s, not the 1500s, and not by William Shakespeare, but William-Henry Ireland.

Ireland fooled some of the best minds in England into thinking he had uncovered previously unknown writings by Shakespeare. These included letters, a profession of faith (conveniently confirming that the Bard held conventional religious beliefs and belonged to the official Church of England), and even a new play called Vortigern and Rowena.

That play had a rather infamous opening (and closing) night at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane on April 2, 1796, just one day late to be an April Fool's joke. The premiere was no laughing matter, though. It starred the famed actor John Philip Kemble as the ancient King of Britain, Vortigern. The comedic actress Dorothea Jordan, mistress to the future King William IV, took on the minor role of Flavia.

Together with screenwriter Matt Bird, I wrote a play about Ireland's forgeries. The piece is called Shakespeare or the Devil, and it was named a finalist for the Shakespeare's New Contemporaries program at the American Shakespeare Center. The play has a flexible cast of 5-10 actors playing multiple characters.

If you'd like to read the script with an eye for future production, please contact me. I would love to see it performed!

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!

Byron's Plays... and Mine

Today I chaired a panel on "New Approaches to Lord Byron" for the BARS/NASSR 2022 "New Romanticisms" conference, and tomorrow I'll be attending my own play My Fellow Americans at the Secret Theatre in Queens.

Byron was a tremendous dramatist, penning such plays as Manfred, Marino Faliero, and The Deformed Transformed. The first panelist we had was Arif Camoglu, who spoke on Byron and the Ottoman gaze. He showed a rather trivializing account of Byron published within the Ottoman Empire that reproduced the famous portrait of Byron in Albanian dress. Oddly, there was no comment given in the publication about the famous writer wearing dress that was normally worn in the Ottoman Empire, not in Britain!

After Arif, I spoke on shaping a new Marino Faliero at Drury Lane. Byron published the play in 1821, not intending to have it performed (at least not any time soon). However, Robert William Elliston, the lessee of Drury Lane at the time, wanted to perform it anyway, so he sent a cut copy of the text to the Examiner of Plays to get it approved by the censor. Unfortunately, in order to get the play passed the censor, quite a bit had to be excised, including some of the most stirring passages. I got a chance to see the cut copy of the script at the Huntington Library, though images of it are now available online.

Our third panelist was Lesley Thulin, who spoke on deformity in Byron's unfinished drama The Deformed Transformed. Lesley is writing a dissertation on disability and political economy in Romantic literature. She noted that Byron, who had a clubbed foot, could in some ways relate the the play's disabled protagonist, but in general, she tried to steer clear from biographical readings of the drama, since the aristocratic Byron was economically insulated from many of the effects of a disabled body that the title character had to endure. Though Byron left the play unfinished at his death, Mary Shelley later wrote a short story called "Transformation" that re-envisions Byron's story and supplies it with an ending.

The conference continues until August 5th, the rest of it held in person at Edge Hill University outside of Liverpool. I couldn't get back over to the United Kingdom to attend in person, though, in part because tomorrow is the fourth performance of My Fellow Americans, which is being produced as a part of the Secret Theatre's One Act Festival. If you haven't seen it yet, please come! Make sure you get tickets to Program D.

Rachael Langton directed the play, which stars Rebecca Ana Peña as the President of the United States. I hope you can make it!

Theatres in London

I am currently in London for two things, a research appointment with the National Portrait Gallery which I had on Monday, and a Dickens conference that starts tomorrow with an event at the Charles Dickens Museum.

Since I am here, though, I knew I had to also take in some theatre. As I wrote in my last blog post, I spent Sunday night at Shakespeare's Globe, where I saw Kathryn Hunter perform the title role in King Lear. The Globe is a unique place to see a play, since it is probably closer to Shakespeare's original Globe than any other theatre.

That wasn't why I was there, of course. I've always enjoyed seeing Hunter on stage, back to when I first saw her in Kafka's Monkey. Still, there is something to be said for getting to experience a play in a particular building. One thing I've learned is that doing what many of Shakespeare's original audience members did, renting a cushion for the duration of a performance, is a good idea.

I had never paid extra for a cushion before, but if I ever go back, I think I will again. I will probably also try to get a seat against the back wall as I did this time, so I can have something to lean against during the play. Notice that until you are in a physical theatre space, a lot of issues just seem academic. Who cares if audience members paid to rent cushions? Well, after you've felt the difference of watching a show on a wooden bench with or without a cushion, this little tidbit about the past seems much more tangible.

Monday I went to the Theatre Royal Haymarket to see Only Fools and Horses. In this case, I did choose the play for the theatre building. I've watched a bit of the television series the musical is based upon, but I'm not a die-hard fan. (Many other audience members clearly were.) What I really wanted was to experience seeing a show at the Haymarket. I did something similar back in 2016 when I went to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory primarily so I could get inside the Theatre Royal at Drury Lane.

As with getting tickets to Drury Lane, I made sure to get tickets in the gallery, so I could experience the show the way working class people might have going all the way back to the Regency period. When I went to Drury Lane, I tried to enter through the lobby, but I was redirected around the corner to a separate side entrance. That's right, poorer folks had to use a different entrance so wealthy patrons in the nice seats didn't have to mix with the riffraff like me! At the Haymarket today, audience members in the gallery don't have to walk around the corner, but they still have a separate entrance!

The other thing I noticed was how small the theatre was. Yes, I knew that the Haymarket was the "little" theatre generally just open in the summer, and its house wasn't as large as the two main patent theatres at Drury Lane and Covent Garden. Still, knowing that is one thing, while feeling it in the actual space is quite another. I'm glad I went, both because I got to experience the space, and because the show itself was delightful. The songs were catchy and fun, and there was a sweetness to the musical that I didn't always get from the original television series.

Tuesday night I went to see Agatha Christie's play Witness for the Prosecution, which was staged in London's old County Hall on the south bank of the Thames, right near the London Eye. The play is performed in the old Council Chamber, where the city's government used to meet. This seemed fitting, since much of the play takes place in a courtroom, and the Council Chamber was already arranged with a central chair, seats on the main level, and galleries for the public. The main chair is now occupied by the judge in the play, and to his side is a jury box where some audience members sit.

Before the play began, and again at intermission, the woman who played the court stenographer gave instructions to the audience members in the jury box. I wasn't seated in the jury box, though. Again, I was in the gallery, but this time the gallery was also a performance space! At one point, a woman appeared in the gallery near where I was seated. (She hadn't been there before, by the way.) A spotlight shined on her, and she yelled at the prosecutor. The judge ordered her removed from the gallery, and so she was. This was all a part of the play, of course. It was nice to see how the production made full use of the improvised space.

Tonight, I didn't go to a play, as there was a poetry reading linked to the upcoming anniversary of the death of Percy Shelley. Kelvin Everest read some of Shelley's later poems, and mentioned that "When the Lamp is Shattered" was originally intended to be part of a play Shelley was working on but never finished. There were also Shelley poems read by biographer Richard Holmes and poet George Szirtes, who read "Ozymandias" both in English and in Hungarian!

Anyway, the conference begins next, so I'm back to work.

The Visual Life of Romantic Theatre

Yesterday, I tuned in for a very informative online panel on "The Visual Life of Romantic Theatre" which previewed some of the work that will be published in a forthcoming book offered by University of Michigan Press.

Diane Piccitto and Terry F. Robinson hosted the event, which began with with a fascinating talk by Susan Brown on the diary of Mary Rein, who oversaw the design and construction of costumes at Drury Lane beginning in the late 18th century. While we don't have any of her own sketches of costumes, we do have images of costumes she designed and constructed with the help of the theatre's wardrobe staff.

One thing I found fascinating was that even though performers were generally expected to supply their own costumes, many of the dresses Rein recorded making were for the leading ladies of the stage. In one case, she provided a dress for the star actress Dorothy Jordan for her "personal use" though the outfit might also have been worn on stage as well. Though scenery costs far eclipsed theatre expenditures on costumes, Brown argued that clothing was an important part of Romantic spectacle.

Next, Uri Erman spoke on the Italian singer Angelica Catalani, who was rumored to be mistress to the controversial politician Lord Castlereagh. Erman showed a cartoon by James Gilray entitled "Delicious Dreams!" The image, which dates from 1808, shows a cat (-alani) whispering into Castlereagh's ear. Foreign opera singers like Catalani became a target for xenophobic forces. They also were used by those who opposed the encroachment of opera into London's patent theatres, replacing the castrati, which had previously been used as images of operatic monstrosity, but by the 19th century had fallen out of favor.

I was particularly excited to hear Danny O'Quinn discuss the Romantic toy theatre. Though toy theatre production increased during the Victorian period, he said it was essentially a Regency art form. O'Quinn discussed William Webb's toy theatre version of Aladdin, which showed several Aladdins in different positions, so they could be switched in and out during the performance. This, he said, made changes in character indistinguishable from the changes in physical objects frequently used in pantomime. O'Quinn also mentioned that screens were sometimes used by toy theatre performers to hide the operators and make the performance all the more dramatic.

Deven Parker spoke about a play that was frequently adapted to the toy theatre, Isaac Pocock's The Miller and His Men. She noted that play texts could serve to mediate live performances, helping the reader to visualize what would otherwise be seen on stage. Even the use of punctuation--such as dashes--can help convey to the reader what the visual experience of watching a play is like.

Last to speak was Dana Van Kooy, who discussed Obi; or, Three-Fingered Jack, a play by John Fawcett about the Jamaican folk-hero Jack Mansong. The piece premiered at the Haymarket Theatre in 1800 with Charles Kemble as Mansong, and Maria De Camp as Rosa, the plantation owner's daughter.

It was a great panel, so I'm glad I tuned in for it!

What Doesn't Go up in Smoke

I have no affection for cigarettes. When I was growing up, both of my parents smoked, and wanting to be like them, I wanted to smoke, too. One day, sitting on my mother's lap, I asked her if I could have a puff of her cigarette. She handed it to me. I took a puff. I have never wanted to smoke anything ever again.

What I do have a fascination for, however, is cigarette cards. These cards were originally added to cigarette packages to stiffen them, and by the 1880s, manufacturers were printing advertisements on them, often including popular images that could be collected by consumers. Those images could be of sports stars, famous Native American leaders, national flags, exotic animals, or sometimes actors and actresses.

These cards can sometimes be found on Internet auction sites, and I've purchased a few in recent years, wanting to have images of performers from the Regency era. The first one I bought was when I saw for sale a cigarette card of the actress Eliza O'Neill identical to one in the collection of the New York Public Library. The card, issued by Chairman Cigarettes, probably dates to the 1920s. The reverse side gives information about O'Neill, including that she excelled in the roles of Belvidera, Juliet, and Mrs. Beverley.

Chairman Cigarettes appears to have been based in England at the beginning of the 20th century, but I've found scant information on them. Recently, I obtained a number of cigarette cards issued by Player's Cigarettes. John Player & Sons was based in Nottingham, but it merged with Imperial Tobacco Group in 1901. Under the ownership of Imperial, Player's issued a number of trading cards, though it had issued its own cards as far back as 1893. Probably around the same time Chairman issued the card showing O'Neill, Player's issued a series of 25 cards showing miniature portraits of great painters. (I've seen 1923 given as the year for this series, but cannot verify it.)

Many (though not all) of those miniature portraits displayed images of actresses. This one shows Sarah Siddons, who according the the reverse side was "one of our greatest tragic actresses." Siddons first appeared on the London stage in 1775, but her first great success did not come until seven years later, when she appeared at Drury Lane as Isabella in an adaptation of Thomas Southerne's The Fatal Marriage. The Player's card calls this performance "a triumph almost unequalled in the history of the English stage."

Siddons introduced her most famous role, Lady Macbeth, in 1785. This portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence, however, appears to show her in the role of Mrs. Haller from The Stranger, an adaptation Benjamin Thompson did of a melodrama by August von Kotzebue. Siddons was long the reigning tragic actress on the London stage. It was only after the retirement of Siddons that O'Neill came to London from Dublin, taking over many of the elder performer's roles, including Isabella and Mrs. Haller. Neither actress, however, had much of a gift for comedy. The great comedic actress of the period was Dora Jordan.

Here's a Player's trading card showing Jordan. As the card states, the image is based on a painting by George Romney. Jordan's real name was Dorothea Bland, but for obvious reasons, the actress changed it. Like O'Neill, she was born in Ireland and rose to fame in Dublin. Jordan made her London debut at Drury Lane in 1785, the same year Siddons first wowed audiences as Lady Macbeth. Rather than competing with the great tragedienne, Jordan gravitated toward comic roles, making her London debut in the role of Peggy, the protagonist of David Garrick's bowdlerized version of The Country Wife. 

Jordan was just as famous for her personal life off of the stage as she was for the roles she played on stage. In 1790, she became the mistress of the Duke of Clarence, a younger son of the reigning monarch, George III. They had ten children together, but sadly, the Duke could not marry her. After all, she was a humble Irish actress, and he was in line to ascend the throne. In fact, when his elder brother died in 1830, the Duke became King William IV. By that time, poor Jordan was dead. Her body was buried in a cemetery on the outskirts of Paris.

Another Regency actress, Maria Foote, appears on this Player's card, based off of a portrait by George Clint. Foote made her London debut at Covent Garden in 1814, as did O'Neill, but while O'Neill went on to massive fame as an actress, Foote did not. As the reverse side of her trading card puts it, she was "more celebrated for her beauty than for her acting." After her debut in The Child of Nature by fellow actress Elizabeth Inchbald, Foote went on to perform numerous Shakespearean roles, including Miranda in The Tempest, Lady Percy in Henry IV, and Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Foote also played a key role in Virginius, a new play by James Sheridan Knowles that after a brief run in Glasgow made its London premiere at Covent Garden in 1820. Foote played Virginia, the virtuous daughter of the title character. Virginia falls in love with Icilius, but the tyrant Appius lusts for her, and claims she is secretly the daughter of one of his slaves, sold to Virginius's now conveniently dead wife, since she was allegedly barren. The play made the new British king, George IV, rather nervous, since he was known for treating his wife and numerous mistresses not terribly well.

When I bought several Player's cards from a vendor, he kindly sent for free this 1930s card as a thank you. The card shows Nell Gwyn, who according to the reverse side of the card rose from being "a fruit hawker in the precincts of Drury Lane Theatre" to eventually becoming "enrolled a member of the King's Company of Players." This was during the Restoration under Charles II, and the king himself "fell a victim to her charms" as the card says. It was allegedly Gwyn who persuaded the king to complete the construction of Chelsea Hospital to provide a home for discharged soldiers.

The card is one of a series of 25 "Famous Beauties" taken from drawings by A.K. Macdonald. Other "beauties" drawn by Macdonald included Catherine the Great, the Queen of Sheba, and Pocahontas, so including the actress is quite a compliment. Gwyn was a close associate of the playwright Aphra Behn, who dedicated her play The Feigned Courtesans to the actress.

While I certainly am not a fan of the cigarettes that led to the creation of these cards, I'm glad many of the cards are still around today. They give us a fascinating glimpse not just of the world that created them, but also of the way that world looked back upon its own past.

Harriet Smithson

In 1833, composer Hector Berlioz married Harriet Smithson, but she had enjoyed a distinctive career on her own as an actress long before she became Madame Berlioz.

According to her entry in Oxberry's Dramatic Biography, Smithson was born on March 18th, 1800 in County Clare, Ireland, of English parentage. Her father, William Smithson, traced his ancestry back to Gloucestershire, but worked managing theatres in the Waterford and Kilkenny circuit.

At first, young Harriet's parents had great ambitions for her, and they actively kept her away from the stage, but after hard times fell upon the family, the young girl seemed their only hope. She made her stage debut in Dublin as Albina Mandeville in Frederick Reynolds's play The Will, and subsequently began to perform across Ireland.

In 1817, Smithson was introduced to Robert William Elliston, who was then manager of the Birmingham Theatre Royal. It was while performing in Birmingham that she caught the attention of the management of the Theatre Royal at Drury Lane in London. She made her debut at that theatre on January 20, 1818 as Letitia Hardy in Hannah Cowley's comedy The Belle's Stratagem.

Since her brother was manager of an English theatre in Boulogne, Smithson performed both there and in Calais. She made her Paris debut in 1827, performing the role of Lydia Languish in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The Rivals. Charles Kemble's company, touring in France, then took her on to play Ophelia in Hamlet, and she made quite a stir with her mad scene. Kemble was apparently impressed, as he subsequently cast her opposite himself as they played the leading roles in Romeo and Juliet.

Berlioz saw Smithson perform as Ophelia in 1827 and promptly became obsessed with her. She was reportedly the inspiration for his Symphonie Fantastique, as well as other works of his. He also wrote her numerous love letters, which she failed to answer. Berlioz was three years younger than her, and not yet particularly well known. He also could just barely speak English. The young composer entreated her to meet with him. She declined.

Smithson returned to London, this time performing at the rival Theatre Royal at Covent Garden rather than Drury Lane. Unfortunately, the reviews were harsh. She toured a bit, joined the company of the smaller Haymarket Theatre, then eventually went back to Paris to set up her own troupe in 1830. She performed in English at the Théâtre-Italien, but the next year she broke her leg and had to put her whole career on hold.

Then, in 1832, there was a performance of Lélio, Berlioz's sequel to Symphonie Fantastique. She had missed Symphonie Fantastique's premiere in 1830, but this time she thought she'd give that mad Frenchman's music a try. That's when she figured out that this crazy twenty-something kid who'd been stalking her was a musical genius. She agreed to meet with him, and the next year they were married.

Sadly, their marriage was not the happiest. They never really got along with each other's families and friends. Plus, her career had already peaked, and his was just beginning. She became jealous of his success, not to mention of the mistress he picked up at the Paris Opera. Still, her performances were both inspired and inspiring, and for that, she should be remembered.

T. P. Cooke

In a recent post, I wrote about Margaret Somerville Bunn, one of the performers highlighted in The Biography of the British Stage in 1824. Today, I want to discuss an even more famous actor featured in that book: Thomas Potter Cooke.

A regular fixture in English melodramas of the early 19th century, Cooke was a former sailor who also excelled at playing sailors on the stage. According to his entry in The Biography of the British Stage, young Cooke attended a nautical spectacle when he was only around 10 years old and became fascinated by the sea. In 1796, he became a member of the Royal Navy and sailed on the H.M.S. Raven to Gibraltar, Toulon, and the Mediterranean.

It was on board the Raven that Cooke experienced an infamous shipwreck. Sailors spent two days and nights clinging to the remains of the ship. Though many of his fellow mariners died, Cooke managed to reach shore. After a long fever, it was deemed he was not fit to return to service, and he left the navy. So enthusiastic was he for the sea, however, that after he recovered, he set sail again, this time on board the H.M.S. Prince of Wales. He continued to serve on that vessel until the Treaty of Amiens temporarily ended hostilities in 1802.

Though the agreement at Amiens ended up being only a brief intermission rather than the end of the Napoleonic wars, Cooke this time gave up the sea, and in 1804 he made his debut as an actor at the Royalty Theatre in Whitechapel. Cooke then accepted a position at Astley's Amphitheatre "upon liberal terms" according to The Biography of the British Stage. Two years later, he moved to the Lyceum Theatre, but ultimately he left London for Dublin, appearing at an amphitheatre on Peter Street. He returned to England in 1809, and Robert William Elliston got him to help run the Surrey Theatre.

Minor and provincial theatres were all well and fine, but in the early 19th century, serious actors were supposed to perform at one of the two patent theatres at Covent Garden or Drury Lane. Beginning in 1816, Cooke did appear in a series of melodramas at Drury Lane, as well as at Covent Garden, the Royal Opera House, and the Royal Coburg. Cooke had the honor of originating some of the most famous Gothic roles of all time, appearing as the title role in The Vampyre, based on the novel by John Polidori, as well as the creature in Presumption, the first stage adaptation of Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein.

It was for his appearances in nautical melodramas that Cooke was most famous, though. He appeared as a sailor in Edward Fitzball's The Pilot, Douglas Jerrold's Black-Eyed Susan, and John Thomas Haines's My Poll and My Partner Joe, among other plays. No doubt his experience as an actual sailor aided him in providing verisimilitude.

Margaret Somerville Bunn

The actress Margaret Somerville made her debut at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane playing the female lead in Charles Robert Maturin's play Bertram opposite none other than Edmund Kean.

At the time, she was only 16 years old, at least if we can rely on The Biography of the British Stage, published by Sherwood, Jones, & Co. in 1824. That source gives Somerville's birth as being in Lanark, Scotland, on October 26, 1799.

Young Margaret, at the age of 10, began performing in private theatricals, taking on the role of Marcia in Joseph Addison's Cato in a performance of juveniles. Apparently, she grew into an impressive actress, and in 1815 Douglas Kinnaird, a member of the sub-committee running Drury Lane, managed to get her into rehearsal at the theatre in the starring role of Belvidera in Thomas Otway's Venice Preserved.

Alas, poor Margaret Somerville was dismissed from those rehearsals, being informed she was simply not up to the role. Undeterred, she appealed to John Kemble, then manager of the rival patent theatre at Covent Garden, but he declined to help her. She then returned to Kinnaird and performed some passages from Venice Preserved in an attempt to win a second chance. It so happened that Lord Byron, who was also on the sub-committee, was present, and he and Kinnaird both agreed that the young woman should make her debut immediately.

Bertram opened on May 9, 1816, with Somerville in the role of Imogine. The show was a success, and the actress was offered a three-year contract on "very advantageous terms" according to The Biography of the British Stage. In 1817, she obtained permission to perform in Bath for a engagement of ten weeks, lasting into the new year. It was there that she played the role of Bianca in H.H. Milman's tragedy Fazio. In 1818, she left Drury Lane and defected to Covent Garden, where she played Bianca again. That role had already been made famous in London by Eliza O'Neill, who subsequently appeared with Somerville in Jane Shore by Nicholas Rowe.

Somerville was frustrated with a lack of choice parts for her in London, though, and she left Covent Garden to tour the provinces. It was while performing in Birmingham that she met Alfred Bunn, whom she married in 1819. Bunn became part of the inner circle of Robert William Elliston who then took over Drury Lane, allowing Margaret, now Mrs. Bunn, to appear in London as Bianca again, as well as Hermione in William Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale and Cornelia in Sheridan Knowles's Caius Gracchus.

Perhaps Margaret Bunn's most famous role, however, was Queen Elizabeth in an adaptation of the Walter Scott novel Kenilworth. According to The Biography of the British Stage, she was applauded "to the very echo" in the role.

According to a local newspaper in south-central Minnesota, the Bunns' second daughter Helen immigrated to the United States, and Margaret, then widowed, joined her. She died in 1882 and is buried in Blue Earth, MN.

London's 1782-83 Season

I was recently asked to give a presentation on the London theatre season for 1782-1783. This was the season that Sarah Siddons returned to the Theatre Royal at Drury Lane and revolutionized British acting.

Even before Siddons made her return, the public was primed for great things. All three London patent houses--Drury Lane, Covent Garden and the summer theatre at the Haymarket--had been redecorated, welcoming audiences to grander, more opulent interiors.

Covent Garden's renovation had been the most extensive. A contemporary account in Universal Magazine claimed that "Nothing remains of the old structure but the outside walls." Seating was increased, and boxes replaced the side doors to the stage, finally moving side entrances fully behind the proscenium.

The Theatre Royal at Covent Garden benefited from something else, as well. Frances Abington, the previous leading lady at Drury Lane, left in 1782 for Covent Garden, where she continued to perform until her retirement. When Drury Lane opened its season with a production of The Clandestine Marriage, a comedy David Garrick co-wrote with George Colman the Elder, the female lead was played by Priscilla Brereton, who was never considered a particularly strong actress. The receipts that night only totaled 200 pounds and four shillings.

By contrast, Covent Garden opened its season with Susanna Centlivre's comedy The Busy Body. That evening brought in a whopping 314 pounds and 18 shillings. While you might expect a theatre's opening night of the season to be a hit, Covent Garden continued to perform well for the rest of the month, too. They followed up their initial success with a production of Isaac Bickerstaff's musical drama The Maid of the Mill. That play brought in more than 270 pounds, easily beating out anything Drury Lane put on that month, including on its opening night of the season.

Drury Lane tried to draw audiences in with a production of William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, which they had not done for three years, and featuring a new actress making her Drury Lane debut in the role of Viola. In spite of a strong cast that included Elizabeth Farren as Olivia, and the novelty of a new actress making her debut, receipts only totaled 144 pounds and 11 shillings. The next week Drury Lane brought out a production of Shakespeare's Hamlet. Receipts were better, but still couldn't break above 200 pounds. Only on its opening night had Drury Lane managed that feat.

The next month, though, Drury Lane scored a palpable hit with Siddons. The actress was returning to London after a long absence, having performed principally at Bath following her inauspicious debut at Drury Lane in 1775. In Bath, Siddons had honed her craft and developed a devoted following for her dramatic style. When she reappeared on the stage of Drury Lane in October 1782, this time in the title role of Isabella in Garrick's adaptation of Thomas Southerne's The Fatal Marriage, she was an immediate sensation.

On the nights Siddons appeared on stage at Drury Lane, receipts were frequently over 200 pounds more than they were on evenings when she did not appear. Given that during the month of September, Drury Lane only just made it to collecting 200 pounds on opening night, and then never made that amount again for the rest of the month, we can see that the presence of Siddons more than doubled the amount the theatre took in on a given night.

Covent Garden collected nearly 36,000 pounds for the season as a whole, though, while Drury Lane took in something closer to 34,000 pounds. While Covent Garden's box office returns were larger, both houses had introduced substantial alterations to their physical buildings. Those investments were not included with ordinary expenses, and were made with an eye toward the long-term success of the ventures.

We might look at the introduction of Siddons in a similar way that we view the capital improvements to the theatre buildings themselves. Though in the short run, Siddons was unable to make Drury Lane more profitable than Covent Garden, she was laying the groundwork for Drury Lane to become a more prestigious, and hopefully more profitable theatre in future seasons.

The Wolves of Kean

The actor Edmund Kean was notoriously associated with wolves, and in fact presided over a social group known as the "Wolves Club" that drank heavily and mocked the pretensions of the aristocracy.

Kean's infamous Wolves Club allegedly met at a pub known as the Coal Hole, which I visited in London back when the United Kingdom was still open to foreigners. In 1815, members of the club gave Kean a gold medal featuring an image of a lone wolf.

The Wolves Club had stopped meeting by 1817 when Junius Booth tried to star in a production of Richard III at Covent Garden. Unfortunately, a few nights earlier, Booth had disappointed a packed audience at Drury Lane, where he had been scheduled to act opposite Kean in Othello. Kean's fans took this as a slight, especially since Richard was a role associated with their hero, so they all showed up at Covent Garden, less than pleased.

Apparently, Booth couldn't even be heard amid all the uproar. He tried to apologize to the audience, but they refused to be quiet long enough for him to do so. Eventually, he came out wearing a placard stating "I have acted wrong..." The disaster was the talk of the theatre world, and a great embarrassment for Thomas Harris, the manager of Covent Garden. The artist George Cruikshank created a satirical print making fun of the whole affair, showing the theatre fans as well-dressed wolves.

Two years later, another satirical print came out making fun of a dispute Kean and Drury Lane's manager, Alexander Rae, had with the playwright Charles Bucke. Poor Bucke's tragedy The Judgement of Brutus had been a failure, but then Kean starred in a suspiciously similar piece by John Howard Payne called Brutus; or, The Fall of Tarquin. Bucke kept at it, and submitted a play called The Italians which had a role explicitly written for Kean. While the play was in rehearsal, however, Kean refused to proceed, stating he would rather pay a thousand pounds than have to perform the role. Three wolves guard Kean in a rather funny cartoon on the matter.

Later, when Kean got embroiled in a lawsuit over his affair with Charlotte Cox, Cruikshank's brother Isaac Robert created a print showing a whole audience full of wolves watching Kean perform on stage. As you can see, wolf imagery was frequently associated with Kean and his fans.