Regency Theatre Conference

I'm in Cambridge for the Society for Theatre Research's conference on Theatre in the Regency Era. And it's wonderful!

Yesterday, we had a tour of an extant Regency theatre, the Barnwell Theatre, subsequently renamed the Festival Theatre, and now a Buddhist center in Cambridge. Though the space doesn't immediately look like a Regency theatre, a number of original elements remain, and you really can experience what it was like to be in the audience, whether in the pit, in the boxes, or up in the gallery.

Today we had the bulk of the presentations. I first went to the session on dancers and dancing with Moira Goff of the Garrick Club and Michael Burden of New College, Oxford. I am particularly interested in social dancing on stage, and Groff mentioned that minuets were performed in both High Life Below Stairs and in The Belle's Stratagem. The focus of the session was on theatrical dancing, of course, and Burden spoke about Hughes Balls Hughes' scandalous elopement with the ballerina Mercandotti.

The next session I went to was on Shakespeare in the Regency era. Fiona Ritchie gave a great presentation on Dorothy Jordan's response to the Old Price riots. Though she was touring in Birmingham at the time, she heard about the events at Covent Garden and wrote about them. Franklin Hildy then gave a fascinating talk about period-appropriate productions of Shakespeare. He presented the novel idea that it was Regency fashion, in particular the replacement on knee breeches with trousers, but also the simplified fashions more generally, that made Shakespeare for the first time sound odd when performed by actors in modern dress. It was only then that antiquarian productions started to become popular, a fact Hildy linked to the simplified cuts of modern clothes not matching the complexity of poetic language.

Celina Fox gave the keynote address about public entertainments in London functioning as a type of theatre. She mentioned that the last Frost Fair was when the Thames froze over in 1814, which was the occasion for a massive fair out on the ice. Later that year was the Great Jubilee, celebrating the centennial of the Hanover Dynasty, as well as the anniversary of the Battle of the Nile. Fox walked us through a number of other public festivals as well, going up to the coronation of King George IV in 1820.

In the afternoon, there was a great session on Hippodrama, with presentations by Ellen K. Gjervan, David and Cassie Mayer, and Lucy Barnes. They discussed some of the plays of the period that called for horses on stage, including The Blood Red Knight, Timour the Tartar, and Mazeppa. Theatres also used horses to stage recent battles, as when J.H. Amherst wrote plays about Napoleon. In many cases, both the human and equine actors were veterans of actual battles.

My own panel came later in the afternoon, with Terry Robinson speaking about Sarah Siddons and Michael Gaunt speaking about George Frederick Cooke and the mysterious disappearance of his skull. He was able to tell me that the Stranger's Vault, where Cooke was originally buried, no longer exists. (I had looked for it at St. Paul's Chapel, but had not had any luck. No wonder why!) I then gave my one presentation on Eliza O'Neill, which I thought was well received.

We then had a performance of reconstructed period acting, and then the conference gala dinner. Tomorrow, I hope to attend sessions on melodrama and on the theatre architect James Winston. It should be fun!

Mr. Cooke Is Goosed

At the beginning of 1789, while France was on the verge of a revolution, the actor George Frederick Cooke found himself being slighted by Elizabeth Whitlock.

Cooke was acting in Newcastle, where he had been almost single-handedly responsible for the success of the Theatre Royal there. When it came time for his benefit performance on March 23rd, it seemed likely that all of his fellow actors would graciously accept invitations to perform with him.

Taking advantage of an actor's prerogative to use his benefit to take on roles that he might not ordinarily play, Cooke decided to play the title role in Joseph Addison's Cato for the first time. He approached Whitlock, the leading actress in the company, and asked her to play Marcia. The role is not particularly large, but it is the leading female part in the play. Whitlock declined.

Undaunted, Cooke engaged another actress for the part. While Whitlock might have lacked a certain amount of tact, there was no reason for the matter to extend beyond the walls of the theatre. Unfortunately for her, it did. A number of ladies, appalled by Whitlock's ingratitude toward the man who had done so much for the theatre in Newcastle, withdrew their support for her benefit.

Faced with declining popularity, Whitlock resigned her own benefit for the season, supposedly to show she had no pecuniary motives, but more likely to avoid playing before a half-empty house. This made matters worse, and with public sentiment turning more and more against her, Whitlock eventually agreed to play the role. That night, she made a public apology from the stage, but then retreated after the audience expressed their hostility. After much ado, she performed the role, skipping a number of her own lines, and ending the whole affair in disgrace.

I recount this little anecdote, because it gives an idea of how rough and tumble the world of theatre could be in Cooke's day. Audiences could be an actor's friend one day, but then turn on him the next. Cooke was a brilliant performer, but he also struggled with alcohol his entire life, and he could be his own worst enemy. Ultimately, the bottle brought him down, and all the talent in the world could not save him.

Cooke was known for playing villains, particularly Richard III, but also Shylock, Iago, and other Shakespearean bad guys, as well as Sir Giles Overreach in Philip Massinger's A New Way to Pay Old Debts. He was drawn to classic plays and did not support the gifted playwrights of his own day. Cooke once wrote of the wonderful Matthew G. Lewis play The Castle Spectre:

I hope posterity, if they read it, will not believe it could repeatedly attract crowded houses, when the most sublime production of the immortal Shakespeare, even for one night, would be played to empty benches, at least to empty boxes:—But it certainly is the best treat for empty skulls.

On Halloween night, 1800, Cooke made his debut at Covent Garden in the role of Richard III. He could have made a home in London long before that, but quarrels with fellow actors kept him out in the provinces. Fortunately, his return to the capital was a success. A letter he received, and kept until the day he died, carried a warning, though:

The public are your friends:—look to them alone; for while you merit their patronage you will ever experience it.

An implied warning here was that if he ever ceased to merit the patronage of the public, Cooke would be lost, just as poor Elizabeth Whitlock was after the Newcastle Cato affair.

Over the next few years, Cooke engaged in an intense rivalry with John Philip Kemble, the leading tragic actor of the day. Cooke saw himself as Kemble's equal, but while he had an intensity Kemble lacked, Cooke did not have as great a range. He also allowed his temper to get the better of him—especially when he was drinking.

In 1802, Cooke saw the Newcastle episode repeat itself, only this time it was in London, and he himself was on the losing end of the audience's wrath. Cooke declined to perform in a benefit performance of another Lewis play, The Harper's Daughter, which is an adaptation of Friedrich Schiller's drama The Robbers. Kemble's nephew Henry Siddons ended up reading the part in the performance while Cooke disappeared for more than two weeks, presumably getting drunk every night.

Cooke returned in time to play the title character in King John, which was being done as a benefit for the remarkably talented actress Harriett Litchfield, who was playing Constance. Cooke on occasion angered Litchfield, but the two remained on good terms throughout their lives. According to a report in the Morning Chronicle, the audience was not as ready to forgive. They hissed Cooke on his first appearance, and—like Whitlock in Newcastle—he had to apologize to them directly.

In that instance, Cooke claimed he had been ill, and the audience allowed him to continue, even giving him hearty applause by the end of the show. As time went on, though, Cooke's "illnesses" became understood as euphemisms for bouts of drunkenness.

Eventually, Cooke left Britain to tour in the United States. In 1810, he performed in America for the first time, making his debut at the Park Theatre in New York, once again in his most famous role of Richard III. The theatre was packed, but by the end of the winter, the novelty had worn off and houses thinned in bad weather. Cooke was living the life of an exile. He was not wanted at home, and did not feel welcome abroad, either.

In 1812, Covent Garden invited Cooke to return. Though his antics had become legendary, management missed the box-office draw he could provide. By that time, however, it was too late. Cooke died on September 26, 1812 at the age of 56. A post-mortem found his liver had almost ceased to function.

Cooke's body was buried in the so-called Stranger's Vault of St. Paul's Chapel in lower Manhattan. According to biographer Arnold Hare, the great actor Edmund Kean (who was an admirer of Cooke) while visiting New York in 1820 arranged for the remains to be moved to the center of the churchyard where a suitable monument could be erected.

Legend says that when they dug up the body, the skull was removed and used as a prop in Hamlet, eventually making its way to a medical museum. Kean also took a bone for himself. (In some versions of the story, it was a toe bone, but Hare asserts it was a finger bone.) Mrs. Kean subsequently threw it away.

The remains of the remains are still there outside St. Paul's Chapel, which narrowly missed being destroyed by the collapse of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. I went down there this afternoon. Unfortunately, all of the grass is currently fenced off, so I couldn't get very close to the grave, but I did snap this picture:

The plaque on the monument says it was erected in 1821. Kean was in America from 1820 to 1821, so either year could be correct. I am inclined to doubt Hare's biography, but 19th-century gravestones can be notoriously inaccurate.

Unfortunately, the man at the church gift shop, though very eager to help, was not able to provide any information about the Stranger's Vault. He did give me a number to call to contact the church archives, though, so perhaps I'll be able to get more information next week.

Until then, rest well, Mr. Cooke. I hope you found some peace in death that you rarely had in your lifetime.

The French Revolution and the London Stage

I recently read George Taylor's book The French Revolution and the London Stage, which tracks theatre on both sides of the channel from 1789 to 1805. It tells a fascinating story that makes me want to read more of the plays of that period.

Taylor's first chapter covers England and France in the year 1789. It so happens that on July 14th, when the French were storming the Bastille, audiences at the Haymarket Theatre in London watched Inkle and Yarico, a play by George Colman the Younger that was critical of the slave trade. People in both countries seemed to be calling out for freedom.

Chapter Two discusses the staging of the Revolution, and it is interesting to me how quickly theatres began re-enacting the events of the 14th of July. In August, freedom-loving citizens of London had multiple opportunities to see what had been accomplished by their brethren in France. John Dent produced a spectacle called The Triumph of Liberty; or, the Bastille at the Royal Circus. Astley's Royal Grove Amphitheatre followed that up with Paris in an Uproar; or, the Destruction of the Bastille. By the end of the month, Sadler’s Wells had jumped into the fray with Gallic Freedom; or, Vive la Liberté.

In Paris, historical dramas echoed recent events. Marie-Joseph Chénier's play Charles IX, which he had written in 1787, went into production at the Comédie Français. The story, about how the Cardinal of Lorraine and the Duke of Guise used Marie de Medici to get the king to authorize the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, had clear parallels with the present day. Scheming churchmen and foreign queens certainly didn't look very good in the play. The revolutionary Danton even claimed that "If Figaro killed the aristocracy, Charles IX will kill the royalty."

The following chapter discusses theatre after the Revolution but before the Terror. Chénier’s anti-clerical Henry VIII, banned in 1789, became a hit in Paris in 1791. The next year saw his new play Caius Gracchus, which looked back to Republican Rome for inspiration. The French also turned to Shakespeare, and in 1792 Jean François Ducis premiered his adaptation of Othello (a play later adapted into French by Alfred de Vigny). The French also staged numerous fêtes which celebrated the Revolution in grand public ceremonies.

For the British, however, censorship made it difficult for the theatres to speak openly about a Revolution that was becoming increasingly controversial. Instead, producers turned to gothic dramas that reflected the heightened sense of anxiety. The Haunted Tower premiered in 1789, The Siege of Belgrade in 1791, and The Pirates in 1792. Then, in 1794, John Philip Kemble produced his spectacular Lodoiska, featuring villainous noblemen, imprisoned maidens, and burning castles.

In a chapter on dramatizing the Terror, Taylor discusses the quintessential gothic drama, Matthew G. Lewis's The Castle Spectre. He notes that Dora Jordan played the ingénue, Angela. In the play, men are ineffective, and it is Angela who must stab the villainous Osmond. This event, Taylor says, parallels Charlotte Corday's very real murder of Marat, with the spectre perhaps representing the spirit of the slain Marie Antoinette, looking on and aiding the action.

The following chapter discusses the performers of the era, who seemed to be moving toward a greater naturalism. Taylor also spends a good deal of time on William Betty, the so-called "Infant Roscius" who began his career at age 10, playing adult roles to great acclaim. Apparently, both Kemble and George Frederick Cooke, the leading tragedians of the day, took a brief break from the stage while Bettymania burned itself out, then returned to what they had been doing before the young curiosity came to town.

Taylor argues that the diminutive Master Betty was in some ways a stand-in for Napoleon, the subject of his next chapter. The big play here is Pizarro, Richard Brinsley Sheridan's adaptation of the Incan epic by August von Kotzebue. Jordan again played the ingénue role, Cora, while Sarah Siddons played the weightier role of Pizarro's mistress, Elvira. Apparently, Sheridan expanded this latter role from what Kotzebue had originally written.

The final chapter covers the feeling of alienation many people felt in the wake of the Revolution and how this was reflected on stage. Taylor argues this alienation helped to create the new form of melodrama. Whether or not he is right in this, he certainly gives one food for thought.

Poor Julia Glover!

The life of an actress is rarely easy, but Julia Glover had it harder than most. Born Julia Betterton to a family of 18th-century actors, she went to work early. By the time she was six years old, she reportedly had appeared more times on stage than most actors do in their entire lives.

As a juvenile actress, she soon outshone her own father. Young Julia acted the part of the child Duke of York to George Frederick Cooke's Richard III. Her father drove hard bargains managing her career in the provinces, and in 1797 she made her London debut as Elvina in Hannah More's tragedy Percy.

While Mr. Betterton was living off of his daughter, he treated her horribly, and by one account even had her horsewhipped for slight or non-existent transgressions. Eventually, he decided to sell the goose that laid the golden eggs. In return for a thousand pounds, he agreed to coerce his daughter into marrying Samuel Glover, a so-called gentleman who was anything but.

Samuel said he loved Julia more than anything. He also said his bond for a thousand pounds was totally good. Mr. Betterton should not have believed him on either count. The two were married, and soon after, it was found that Glover's entire family had been reduced to poverty. Even had they still kept anything, Samuel wouldn't have received it. His father cut him off for marrying an actress, and Mr. Betterton was never paid.

Julia went from being forced to support a dead-beat parent to being forced to support a dead-beat husband. Fortunately, the theatres were willing to pay. John Philip Kemble gave her a three-year contract to play at Covent Garden. She played for four, and then after not getting what she asked for, left. In 1810, she joined the company of Drury Lane. Their theatre had burned down the previous year, so they were performing at the Lyceum, but when the new Drury Lane Theatre opened in 1812, hopes for the company were high.

Though Julia was known for her comic roles, she did a turn as Alhadra in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's gothic tragedy Remorse. Even more memorable for her contemporaries were her portrayals of Mrs. Malaprop in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The Rivals and Mrs. Candour in Sheridan's The School for Scandal. The real scandal, however, was her husband Samuel. In addition to living off of Julia himself, he used her earnings to support a mistress. When she discovered this, she left him. But as he was still her husband, he demanded that Drury Lane pay her salary directly to him. The theatre balked. He sued. He won.

As if that weren't bad enough, Samuel tried to get custody of their children, in spite of never having taken an interest in them before. Presumably, his real motive was to extract more money from his wife. Whether he got it or not, she kept custody of the kids. Her eldest daughter ended up making a fine actress, taking the role of Juliet opposite Edmund Kean in a production that featured Julia as the nurse. Julia went on to play numerous older characters as she continued to act well into her twilight years. She gave her final performance in the role of Mrs. Malaprop on July 12, 1850. She died four days later.

For all her tragedy in life, Julia never lost her comic timing. According to an anecdote, she was once gossiping with two other actresses after the renowned Madam Vestris had married fellow actor Charles Mathews. Supposedly, before Vestis had accepted the proposal, she had made a full confession of all her previous lovers. "What touching confidence!" cried one actress. "What needless trouble!" cried another. "What a wonderful memory!" cried Julia.

A woman of such wit deserved better in life.

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