Lotos-time in Japan

Source: Henry T. Finck, Lotos-time in Japan (New York: C. Scribner’s sons, 1895), pp. 91-99

Production: Unnamed kabuki drama, Shintomi-za theatre, Tokyo, 1890s

Text: During the hot lotos months the theatres of Japan, as of most countries, are closed. On July 7 and 8, however, there happened to be, for the benefit of sufferers from the failure of the rice crops, a special charity performance by the Danjiuro Association, at the Shintomi Theatre, to which foreigners were able to purchase tickets at two dollars each, and which was on no account to be missed, for Danjiuro is the greatest of Japanese actors. It was expected that a great many foreigners would be present, and for their benefit the principal play to be given had been abbreviated so that it would last only seven hours. For the same reason the performance was begun at three p.m. instead of at six o’clock in the morning, which is the orthodox Japanese hour for beginning a play that usually lasts till six in the evening, — sometimes like our newspaper serials, “to be continued” next day.

It was raining when we rode up to the theatre, which we found to be somewhat larger than ordinary Japanese buildings, but without any pretensions to architectural beauty, which would be too expensive a luxury in a city where destructive fires are as frequent as in Tokyo. Being already provided with tickets, we were able to dodge the custom indulged in by well-to-do Japanese, of securing their seats in an adjoining tea house, instead of at the box office. These tea houses also provide lunches during the intermissions of the play, and in various ways absorb a large share of the general theatrical profits, to which fact the frequent collapse of managers has been attributed.

Kurumas by the score discharged their foreign or native occupants at the door, while hundreds of other natives came along on clogs, that lifted them stilt-like above the mud of the unpaved streets. Before entering they left these clogs near the door, where a pile of at least a hundred pairs had accumulated, which servants were rapidly carrying to a corner within. Leaving our umbrellas — but not our shoes — in charge of an attendant, we were ushered up a flight of stairs to a gallery facing the stage, and provided with chairs — luckily, for it would have been torture to sit or squat for hours on the mats, as the natives did in the side galleries and in the parquet. This parquet was divided into small square boxes, somewhat as we divide the floor of a church into pews; there were, of course, no benches or chairs, but everybody knelt on mats during the whole performance.

On a first visit to a Japanese theatre the audience is quite as interesting as the play, for the reason that the family groups in the parquet behave very much as they would if they were between the paper walls and screens of their own homes. No one is so rude as to disturb others by coming or going during the continuance of an act; but between the acts the scenes in the parquet constitute an entertaining side-show. Every family group is provided with a lunch, which has either been brought along, or is ordered from an adjoining tea house. Two gangways, right and left, called hanamichi or flower paths, on a level with the stage, run from it to the other end of the hall, and from these gangways (which are also used sometimes for special entrances of the actors or for processions) male attendants distributed tea, cakes, and other refreshments to the audience. A number of the spectators took their lunch unceremoniously on the stage, in front of the curtain. Almost every man and woman was smoking a thimble-sized pipe, and this indulgence was not limited to the intermissions, but continued most of the time, except when the tears over a tragic situation threatened to put out the pipe.

Although many Japanese plays are very immoral, according to our notions of propriety, boys and girls of all ages are taken to them by their parents of the lower classes; but in justice to the Japanese, it must be added that until recently, on account of the coarseness of the stage, the upper classes did not frequent the ordinary theatre, but only certain ancient and highly respectable, unintelligible, and tiresome performances — quasi-operatic — known as Nō. The actors of these were honored in society; but ordinary actors were held in such contempt that, as Professor Chamberlain tells us, “when a census was taken, they were spoken of with the numerals used in counting animals. … Those to whom Japanese is familiar will,” he adds, “appreciate the terrible sting of the insult.” The strictness of Japanese etiquette on this point is illustrated by the account given, only a few decades ago, by Sir Rutherford Alcock of a visit to a theatre, which he made in Osaka, prefaced by this information: “In Yeddo I had never been able to gratify my desire to see this illustration of national manners, because no person of rank can be seen in such places; and it would have been a breach of all rules of propriety for a minister to visit a theatre.” Within recent years there has been a change and improvement, in consequence of which theatres and actors are no longer tabooed, which is a fortunate circumstance, for the reason that, to quote Chamberlain once more, the theatre is “the only remaining place where the life of Old Japan can be studied in these radical latter days.”

Apart from us foreigners seated on chairs in one gallery and our method of applause, which the Japanese have adopted in their public places, there was nothing in this theatre that could not have been seen in Old Japan. The dresses of the spectators may have been less sombre in former days; but this sombreness only served to enhance, by contrast, the beautiful colors and patterns of the accurate historic costumes worn by the actors. I cannot add “and actresses”; for even yet women are not considered to be fit to appear in a first-class play, and their parts are still taken by men — admirably taken by them, it must be confessed, with a grace truly feminine. Of the men’s costumes the oddest were the trailing trousers — those most extraordinary garments, which were part of the court costume until a few decades ago, and which amazed Sir Rutherford Alcock when he was received by the Shogun. He relates that facing him were fifty officials,

“all in gauze and silks. …. The most singular part of the whole costume, and that which, added to the headgear, gave an irresistibly comic air to the whole presentment, was the immeasurable prolongation of the silk trousers. These, instead of stopping short at the heels, are unconscionably lengthened and left to trail two or three feet behind them, so that their feet, as they advanced, seemed pushed into what should have been the knees of the garment.”

These trailing trousers played a conspicuous role in the drama we saw at the Shintomi. It has been suggested that, as such a garment must make its wearer clumsy and helpless, it was prescribed by the rulers to ward off the danger of assassination. But when I asked Mr. Shugio what he thought was the original object of this strange costume, he replied that it was to give the impression that the Shogun’s subjects were on their knees even when walking. The Japanese are indeed always on their knees, both for courtesy and comfort, except when walking or sleeping, and it would not be inappropriate to entitle a book on them, The Kneeling Nation. If one of them wrote a book on us, he would probably be tempted to entitle it, The Sitting Nation; for kneeling and walking are fast becoming lost arts among us.

Our performance consisted of a tragedy in four acts, a short comedy, and a dance in four acts, in which last the Misses Fukiko and Jitsuko, daughters of Danjiuro, took part — models of elegance in appearance and grace in gesture. An English program was distributed, containing the “dramatic (sic) personae” and a brief sketch of the tragic plot, the scene of which was placed at the beginning of the seventeenth century, and which had a good deal to do with fighting and plotting and poisoned cakes. I have never seen better acting than that in the poisoning scene of this play. However much the Japanese may differ from us in customs and etiquette, in the expression of grief and joy their faces are like ours, and their actors have such wonderful mimetic powers that I found no difficulty whatever in following the plot, both in the tragedy and the comedy. Danjiuro might come to America and act in his own language, as Salvini has done; he is the Salvini of Japan, and would be a popular idol anywhere. One of our party had intended to return to Yokohama at six, but I heard him say that he liked the play (of which he could not understand a word) so well that he had decided to stay to the end — four hours more, including an hour’s intermission for supper.

The only disagreeable feature of the performance was the tone in which the actors spoke their parts. In ordinary conversation the Japanese speak in a low, musical voice and with natural inflections, but on the stage they have adopted the idiotic Chinese sing-song, squeaking falsetto, unearthly yells, and other extraordinary sounds which make a Chinese theatre seem like an improvised lunatic asylum. Almost everything that is really absurd in Japan comes from China, and prominent among the absurdities which ought to yield as soon as possible to Occidental influences is the stage falsetto. I was surprised by another peculiarity of the theatrical diction. My grammars had told me thatthe Japanese have practically no verbal or oratorical accent, every syllable and word having about the same emphasis. But it seemed to me that these actors positively swooped down on certain syllables and words, with an emphatic sforzando. I had also noticed previously that railway guards often accented one syllable much more strongly than the others; for instance, Kamákura.

In its scenic features the Japanese stage has gone far beyond the Chinese, which is still in the primitive condition of Shakspere’s [sic] time when a board with “This is a Forest,” or whatever else was to be suggested, took the place of real or painted trees, mountains, and so on. It would be strange, indeed, if, with their passionate love of nature, which makes them paint a maple branch or a Fuji on every fan, screen, and teapot, the Japanese had been willing to dispense with a scenic background on the stage. Episodes of street life, domestic interiors, dogs, horses, boats, moats, and castles, forest scenes — are all painted, or bodily introduced, with an art that is thoroughly realistic, and illusory in its perspective. What is more, to save time, or rather, to shorten intermissions, the Japanese were the first to invent a revolving stage, which makes it possible to set up one scene while another is in use, thus facilitating rapid changes. The curtain is sometimes raised, as in our theatres, sometimes dropped out of sight, or again pushed aside and closed, as at Bayreuth. The Shintomi has two ornamental curtains, — one Dutch, the other the gift of a Hawaiian monarch.

But again, just as the splendid acting is marred by the silly Chinese intonation, so the scenic illusion is destroyed by incongruities. One might forgive the gangways running from the stage across the parquet, and the occasional appearance of actors on them, especially when they are arrayed in their most gorgeous costumes, genuine works of art which have few counterparts at the present day, and which can be better seen this way than on the stage itself; but one fails to understand how the Japanese can tolerate the Chinese nuisance of allowing stage attendants to walk about among the actors, light up their faces with candles, prompt them from an open book, bring on or remove furniture, etc., in an obtrusive manner which destroys all illusion. What is amusing about this farce is the Oriental naiveté of supposing these attendants to be invisible, as is indicated by their wearing black garments and veils. An explanation of this absurdity may perhaps be found in the fact that until recently the Japanese theatre was frequented only by the lower classes, whose illusion is not easily marred.

Shall I attempt to describe the music which accompanied the tragedy? It must be admitted that the Japanese, as well as the Chinese, anticipated Wagner in the idea that a tragedy needs a musical accompaniment. It is their way of carrying out this idea that Western ears object to. I frankly confess that I found a certain charm in the barbarous music of the Chinese theatre in San Francisco after I had heard it four or five times. If this Japanese dramatic music gave me less pleasure, it may be owing to the fact that it was too deep to be understood at first hearing. I will give it the benefit of the doubt, — the more willingly as I did subsequently hear samisen and koto playing which was truly musical in its way. What was surprising in the play at the Shintomi Theatre was the variety of musical effects and groupings. To the left of the stage was a sort of menagerie cage with bars, the occupants of which kept up a monotonous strumming on their samisens in accompanying the dialogue. In a row on the back of the stage there were some flute players and more samisenists, whose performance sometimes assumed a well-defined rhythmic form. In a sort of proscenium box on our right, ten feet above the stage, there were two more samisen players, besides two doleful vocalists, looking, with their shaven crowns, like Buddhist priests. Their song consisted of an occasional melodic bud, with a great deal of garnishing that it would be impossible to indicate in our musical notation. But the prima donna of the occasion was the fellow with the big drum. He had his innings when a ghost came on the stage, and again, when the ghost made his exit. That drummer could give points to a thunderstorm in the Alps. It is said that the Japanese do not stand in real awe of ghosts, but look upon their possible appearance with a certain kindly interest; yet I fancy that when accompanied by such an unearthly drum solo, a ghost must be awful even to them.

If I have neglected to mention the name of the play or its writer, that is not my fault. No name or author was given on the playbill, it being the custom to ascribe new dramas to the manager who produces them. Many of the plays are the result of the co-operation of a writer with the actors, scene painters, and carpenters, and there is much improvisation during the performance. Such a thing, after all, is not unknown in our own theatres. I have been told that of the original “Black Crook” nothing whatever remains but the name; yet the author still draws his royalty.

Comments: Henry Theophilus Finck (1854-1926) was an American music critic. Ichikawa Danjūrō IX (1838-1903) was among the greatest of Japanese Kabuki theatre performers, ninth in a line of actors all bearing the sane name. According to the http://www.kabuki21.com site, the names of his two acting daughters were Ichikawa Suisen II and Ichikawa Kyokubai II. Women  would occasionally perform in Kabuki, but in minor roles only.

Links: Copy at Hathi Trust

The Life of Samuel Johnson

Source: William Adams, in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (London: Oxford University Press, 1953, orig. pub. 1791), p. 141

Production: Samuel Johnson, Irene, Drury Lane, London, 6 February 1749

Text: Before the curtain drew up, there were catcalls whistling, which alarmed Johnson’s friends. The Prologue, which was written by himself in a manly strain, soothed the audience, and the play went off tolerably, till it came to the conclusion, when Mrs. Pritchard, the heroine of the piece, was to be strangled upon the stage, and was to speak two lines with the bowstring round her neck. The audience cried out “Murder! Murder!” She several times attempted to speak; but in vain. At last she was obliged to go off the stage alive.

Comments: William Adams (1706/7-1789) was a Doctor of Divinity, Fellow and Master of Pembroke College, Oxford, and a friend of Samuel Johnson (1709-1784). Johnson’s play Irene was a classical verse tragedy set after the fall on Constantinople, in which the Sultan takes the Christian Irene as his mistress. The play was put on by David Garrick (who played Demetrius, a Greek nobleman) at Drury Lane on 6 February 1749, under the title Mahomet and Irene, with Hannah Pritchard playing Irene. The play, which ran for nine performances despite some public displeasure, was a commercial success but an artistic failure. Adams’ impressions of the first night were given to James Boswell for his Life of Samuel Johnson. The play was subsequently altered so that Irene’s murder took place off stage.

Links:
Text of Irene at Project Gutenberg

An Old Playgoer on ‘Impulse’

Source: Matthew Arnold, ‘An Old Playgoer on “Impulse”’, in Essays in Criticism: Second Series – Contributions to ‘The Pall Mall Gazette’ and Discourses in America (London: Macmillan, 1903), pp. 260-264, originally published in The Pall Mall Gazette, pp. 3-4

Production: B.C. Stephenson, Impulse, St James’s Theatre, London, May 1883

Text: Like ‘society’ in general, I have been to see Impulse. Nothing, apparently, could be more to the taste of ‘society’ than this piece. That alone is a reason for going to see it. And what impression did it leave, what remained in the mind after seeing it? Chiefly, to tell the truth, this sentence of the Imitation: Multa oportet surda aure pertransire, et quae tuce pacis sunt magis cogitare. A piece more perfectly unprofitable it is hard to imagine. But it is worth pausing upon, because its production and its popularity bring well to light the want of clear vision, the turn for the half- true and for the factitious, characteristic of English ‘society.’

Impulse is founded, as its author, Mr. Stephenson, honestly informs us, upon a French piece. French pieces have their reason for existing in the state of society which they reflect and interpret. All people want to know life, above all the life which surrounds them and concerns them; and we come to the novel and to the stage-play to help us to what we want. French plays and French novels do undoubtedly render for French people the life which surrounds them. Those productions have this merit, at any rate. George Sand declares that Madame Bovary is not at all an immoral work, but, on the contrary, a useful one. Good and useful, after reading Madame Bovary in the family circle, Madame Sand and her family circle, so she tells us, judged this reading to be. But why? Because of the numberless Madame Bovarys, ‘les innombrables Madame Bovary en herbe’ at the present moment springing up everywhere throughout the provincial life of France, with their immense crop of ‘maris imbéciles’ and of ‘amants frivoles’ to attend them. That, says George Sand, is M. Flaubert’s defence for writing his book, and that is the reason for reading it that it holds the mirror up to French nature. Of course the same plea may even more confidently be urged for plays and novels rendering the life of Paris. They may be full of immoralities, but at any rate they hold the mirror up to nature, they do render the life of Paris.

I am far from saying that I agree with Madame Sand that a book is good reading, even for grown men and women, because it faithfully represents actual life. It must have a quality in it besides to make it so. Manon Lescaut, which has this quality, is good reading; I would not say that Madame Bovary has the quality, or that it is good reading. All this, however, we need not discuss now. What is certain is that the French play, the French novel, render the actual life of the French. One may rate the work of M. Alexandre Dumas the younger, or of M. Sardou, as low as one pleases. One may even refuse to call it literature. Of course it is not literature as the comedy of Shakspeare [sic] and of Molière is literature; it is not even literature as the comedy of Beaumarchais and of Sheridan is literature; perhaps it is not to be called literature at all. But that it renders French life one cannot deny, and that the French public, wishing to see its life rendered, should follow with eagerness and pleasure this rendering, one cannot wonder.

But Impulse – what life does it render? What does it say to all these wearers of attractive toilettes, to all these charming faces and figures, to all this ‘society’ a little wanting in soul and very much wanting in clear vision, which frequent it? Something half-true, factitious, and unmeaning. The English provinces really do not teem with ‘des innombrables Madame Bovary en herbe’: the most salient features of English society are really not the ‘mari imbécile’ and the ‘amant frivole.’ The ‘society’ news papers and their emancipated and brilliant staff may regret that the fact should be so, but so it is. Madame Bovarys, instead of being countless in our country neighbourhoods, are almost unknown there; the ‘amant frivole’ instead of being a stock element in our married life, is rare and unimportant. That fraction of our society for which the French play and novel are a rendering of its own life is so small as to be quite unimportant. This is proved, indeed, by the transformation the French play undergoes before the English playwright can present it to the charming faces, figures, and toilettes of our boxes and stalls. Virtue has to triumph; the ‘amant frivole’ has to come to grief. Ingenuous playwright! ingenuous ‘society’! Know this, as to your ‘amant’ as to your Victor de Riel: that, as your French guides would tell you, ‘c’est à prendre ou à laisser.’ Where he exists, where he is an institution, matters may well enough pass as they pass in the genuine French play; logic and experience are in favour of their so passing. Where he is an exotic, nothing can make him tolerable; defeated or triumphant, he equally makes the piece, of which he is the centre, unpleasant, makes it ridiculous.

Impulse is, in truth, in itself a piece intensely disagreeable. It owes its success to the singularly attractive, sympathetic, and popular personalities of Mr. and Mrs. Kendal. While they are on the stage it is hard to be dissatisfied. One must feel, nevertheless, even while liking Mr. Kendal, that the young English gentleman, whom one so well knows, with sterling qualities but no philosopher, does not talk quite so like a fool as Captain Crichton. Mrs. Kendal, as Mrs. Beresford, one could accept with entire pleasure if one could understand so winning and sensible a person having so little influence with her sister, or being so easily baffled by circumstances. Perhaps a sympathetic actress might have made the ungrateful part of Mrs. Macdonald not quite repulsive, not quite impossible. At present Mrs. Macdonald makes the impression, not of an interesting victim of passion, but of a personage morbid and perverse; and every scene between her and Victor de Riel is a misery. Victor de Riel is not ill acted; on the contrary, this exotic ‘amant’ is well acted too well. The fatal likeness to the ‘similis turpissima bestia nobis’ which so struck Alfieri in the passion-driven Frenchman, forces itself upon the mind; and the more passionate the love-making, the more that likeness forces itself on us. Why should cool-headed people hide their conviction that this sort of drama is detestable, even though the journals of ‘society’ call to one another, deep to deep, ‘Edmund’ to ‘Henry’ that it is very good? One can imagine the grim colleague of ‘Henry’ surveying the ‘society’ which enjoys this half-true, factitious, and debilitating art, and waving ‘Henry’ aside while he himself cries sternly to their common constituents, the Northampton populace, ‘Arise, ye Goths, and glut your ire!’

AN OLD PLAYGOER.
May 25, 1883.

Comments: Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) was an English poet, critic and essayist. His ‘Letters of an Old Playgoer’, five short essay-reviews written 1882-1884 for The Pall Mall Gazette. Benjamin Charles Stephenson‘s play Impulse was based on the novel La Maison du mari by Xavier de Montépin. It was produced at the St. James’s Theatre in London, with Madge Kendal and William H. Kendal. The Latin phrase at the start of the article from from Thomas à Kempis’s The Imitation of Christ.

Links: Copy at Internet Archive

The Torrington Diaries

Source: C. Bruyn Andrews (ed., abridged into one by volume by Fanny Andrews), The Torrington Diaries: A selection from the tours of the Hon. John Byng (later Fifth Viscount Torrington) between the years 1781 and 1794 (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode), pp. 479-480

Production: John Fletcher/William Shakespeare, Henry VIII, Drury Lane, London, 14 May 1794

Text: May 14th. My next morning was employ’d in walking about my detestation, London; waiting upon my lawyer; and lounging about till what I thought a good hour of dining: When I put in at the Piazza Coffee House Covent Garden and had the room to myself at such an unatural hour: Thence like an old country put, I adjourned to Drury Lane Playhouse where I enjoy’d the highly wrought exhibition of Mrs Siddons’s performance in Catherine in Henry 8th, altho’ lost and sent to waste in this wild wide theatre, where close observation cannot be maintain’d, nor quick applause received!

Restore me, ye overuling powers to the drama, to the warm close, observant, seats of Old Drury where I may comfortably criticise and enjoy the delights of scenic fancy: These now are past! The nice discriminations, of the actors face, and of the actors feeling, are now all lost in the vast void of the new theatre of Drury Lane.

Garrick – thou didst retire at the proper time – for wer’t thou restor’d to the stage, in vain, would now thy finesse, thy bye play, thy whisper, thy aside, and even thine eye, assist thee.

Thus do I crawl about in London I Where are my old friends? All gone before me!!! Where are thy new ones? Why, they understand me not; they speak a new language, they prescribe fashions, I think they do not understand comforts. ‘Why here is a fine theatre,’ say they? ‘Aye, it may be fine, it may be magnificent; but I neither hear, nor see in it! !’ ‘Thats your misfortune.’ ‘So it is I allow; but not yet my failing.’

‘Does it proceed from the narrowness of my faculties; or the width of your new stage? Answer me that? Is my decrease equal to your increase?’ No; No; fill your stage with monsters – gigantic cars, and long train’d processions – whilst the air vibrates with the sound of trumpets, and kettle drums: These will beat all your actors, and actresses out of the field. Who will listen to, or who can hear the soliloquies of Shakespeare, the inward terrors of the mind-perturbed imaginations and the strugglings of a guilty conscience?

To see a fellow hunting a dagger about the stage; or an old princess wasting in a great chair?

Who will go hereafter to see their tiresome attitudes? To hear them none will attempt, so let us have the battlements, the combat, the sulphur, the torches, the town in flames, and the chorus.

The countryman came home; and went early to bed.

Comments: John Byng, Fifth Viscount Torrington (1743-1813) produced several volumes of diaries covering the period 1781–1794, during which he travelled all over England and Wales. The production of Henry VIII was a redaction of Shakespeare and Fletcher’s original, undertaken by Charles Kemble, who played Cromwell. His sister, Sarah Siddons, played Katherine. Byng saw it at Drury Lane Theatre, London on 14 May 1794. The third theatre on the Drury Lane site had opened on 12 March 1794, having replaced the previous Theatre Royal which closed in 1791. The new theatre could seat 3,611 people, as opposed to the 2,000 offered by its previous incarnation.

Pepys’ Diary

Source: Diary of Samuel Pepys, 18 February 1662

Production: William Davenant, The Law Against the Lovers, Lincoln’s Inn Fields theatre, London 18 February 1662

Text: Having agreed with Sir Wm. Pen and my wife to meet them at the Opera, and finding by my walking in the streets, which were every where full of brick-battes and tyles flung down by the extraordinary wind the last night (such as hath not been in memory before, unless at the death of the late Protector), that it was dangerous to go out of doors; and hearing how several persons had been killed to-day by the fall of things in the streets, and that the pageant in Fleetstreet is most of it blown down, and hath broke down part of several houses, among others Dick Brigden’s; and that one Lady Sanderson, a person of quality in Covent Garden, was killed by the fall of the house, in her bed, last night; I sent my boy home to forbid them to go forth. But he bringing me word that they are gone, I went thither and there saw “The Law against Lovers,” a good play and well performed, especially the little girl’s (whom I never saw act before) dancing and singing; and were it not for her, the loss of Roxalana would spoil the house. So home and to musique, and so to bed.

Comments: Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) was a British naval administrator and diarist. The Law Against the Lovers was a play written by Sir William Davenant, which was based on Measure for Measure but added Beatrice and Benedick from Much Ado About Nothing. It was seen by Pepys at the Lincoln’s Inn Fields theatre, London, 18 February 1662. ‘Roxalana’ was the actress Hester Davenport.

Links: http://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1662/02/18

Booke of Plaies

Source: Simon Forman, Booke of Plaies, extract reproduced in E.K. Chambers, William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts and Problems (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930), vol. II, pp. 338-339

Production: William Shakespeare, Cymbeline, unknown venue, London, April 1611?

Text: Remember also the storri of Cymbalin king of England, in Lucius tyme, howe Lucius Cam from Octauus Cesar for Tribut, and being denied, after sent Lucius with a greate Arme of Souldiars who landed at Milford hauen, and Affter were vanquished by Cimbalin, and Lucius taken prisoner, and all by means of 3 outlawes, of the which 2 of them were the sonns of Cimbalim, stolen from him when they were but 2 yers old by an old man whom Cymbalin banished, and he kept them as his own sonns 20 yers with him in A cave. And howe (one) of them slewe Clotan, that was the quens sonn, goinge to Milford hauen to sek the loue of Innogen the kinges daughter, whom he had banished also for louinge his daughter, and howe the Italian that cam from her loue conveied him selfe into A Cheste, and said yt was a chest of plate sent from her loue & others, to be presented to the kinge. And in the depest of the night, she being aslepe, he opened the cheste, & cam forth of yt, And vewed her in her bed, and the markes of her body, & toke awai her braslet, & after Accused her of adultery to her loue, &c. And in thend howe he came with the Romains into England & was taken prisoner, and after Reueled to Innogen, Who had turned her self into mans apparrell & fled to mete her loue at Milford hauen, & chanchsed to fall on the Caue in the wodes wher her 2 brothers were, & howe by eating a sleping Dram they thought she had bin deed, & laid her in the wodes, & the body of Cloten by her, in her loues apparrell that he left behind him, & howe she was found by Lucius, &c.

Comments: Simon Forman (1552-1611) was an Elizabethan astrologer, whose manuscripts include the ‘Booke of Plaies‘ with Forman’s impressions of four plays that he saw in London 1610-11, three of which were productions of Shakespeare. Though some have argued that the document is a forgery, it is generally accepted as authentic. The date and location of the production of Cymbeline are not given by Forman, but its position in the manuscript between two dated productions suggest April 1611.

Links: Copy at Shakespeare Documented (image plus modernised and exact transcription)

The Classic Slum

Source: Robert Roberts, The Classic Slum: Salford life in the first quarter of the century (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1971), pp. 147-150

Text: For the tired and umambitious there were other allurements. in our midst stood the usual ‘Blood Tub’, a low-grade theatre whose presence impinged on life social and cultural over a wider area. With actors, as with bookmakers, feeling remained ambivalent. Star performers,of course, were wholeheartedly admired save by the narrowly religious few, but ordinary theatricals who made up the weekly touring companies and who lodged, keeping themselves, in the larger houses close to the theatre, both impressed and shocked us. We watched the small-part actors with cheroots swaggering through the stage door in lush coats, astrakhan collared, and were amazed to discover through the matriarchs (who knew everything) that many of them owned but a single shirt apiece or one pair of socks. Though when ‘the ghost walked’ – pay night – and they popped in at the shop to buy generously of boiled ham, mustard pickles and pineapple chunks, they seemed well-heeled enough. Undoubtedly some kept up a bold face on most meagre incomes: a pair of sisters we knew, competent artists, as late as 1913 kept going in some style on the combined pay of 35s a week, out of which they had to find 8s 6d for a place to sleep. We saw actresses powdered and mincing, befurred and large-bosomed, cheeks bright with rouge (‘Red John’ the matrons called it), and we knew they had shared a pair of kippers for lunch. And all were immoral! Of that the respectable had no doubt. Yet they brought glamour, new ideas, tilillating catch-words, beauty, fantasy and a sense of style to our wretched reality, and we loved them for it. Occasionally a girl in her early teens, to the envy of all others, would leave us to ‘go on the stage’, i.e. join a touring dance troupe. On fleeting visits home afterwards, ‘dolled up to the eyes’, she would often pass down the street and ignore everyone. But neighbours had the satisfaction of thinking the worst.

Nowhere, of course, stood class division more marked than in a full house at the theatre, with shopkeepers and publicans in the orchestra stalls and dress circle, artisans and regular workers in the pit stalls, and the low class and no class on the ‘top shelf’ or balcony. There in the gods hung a permanent smell of smoke from ‘thick twist’, oranges and unwashed humanity. Gazing happily down on their betters the mob sat once a week and took culture in the shape of ‘East Lynne’, ‘The Silver King’, ‘Pride of the Prairie’, ‘A Girl’s Crossroads’, ‘The Female Swindler’, ‘A Sister’s Sacrifice’ and the first rag-time shows. The drama critic of our weekly press invariably ladled handsome praise over all plays and performers, though when, in ‘A Woman of Pleasure’, the heroine was abducted in the first act, and again (by balloon) in the second, chased through the third across Africa by natives and wild beasts, then, in the finale, snatched at the last moment from a burning ship – all this to the rattle of the South African war – he felt that the title was ‘somewhat misleading’.

In later years, after cinema had begun to outstrip live entertainment as an attraction, our theatre, like many others, tried ‘go as you please’ competitions on Friday evenings when local amateurs, good to outrageous, trod the boards. Two turns, at least, after debut could not have pursued their art much further, and the first, a nerve-fraying soprano, brought down what, for a moment, looked like a genuine protest from heaven. In the middle of her rendering of ‘The Holy City’ a bolt of flame burst from the upper dark and fell like a judgement to consume itself over vacant seats in the stalls. It turned out, however, that some careless smoker had ignited a lady’s cotton shawl and she had cast it forth blazing from the gods. The altercation which followed, aloft, added much to our evening.

The other artist, who called himself Houdini II, performed to slow piano music. He invited members of the audience to tie him with ropes, guaranteeing to be free ‘in a trice’. Two dockers then trussed him up so effectively that a few minutes later the stage manager and his aide had to carry him off like a parcel, bent double and almost asphyxiated, the audience having watched his frenetic struggles in dead silence. Later he appeared at the tail end of the prize-winners and received a five shilling consolation award for ‘effort’.

Many patrons of the cheapest seats in the theatre, lacking the benefits of literacy, revelled in song and the spoken word much as Shakespeare’s ‘groundlings’ had done three hundred years before. Often two friends would go together; one to learn by heart the air of the latest hit, the other to concentrate on getting hold of the lyric. Songs first heard in the theatre were taken up in pubs then rendered with dreary iteration by street buskers for the next several years. Professional ‘cadgers’ came among us in hard times, as many as ten a week. Some made no attempt to earn reward but begged openly from door to door; others strutted in a stylized walk down the middle of the ‘cart road’ quavering loud enough for householders to hear. Local members of the fraternity, though, never had the bad taste to perform in their own district. Some after singing broke into oratory, when reasons for their destitution came crying along the wind. This form of appeal, however, was generally frowned on. ‘I didn’t know where to put myself!’ said one woman in the shop, ‘when that — today started shoutin’ the odds!’ There was common agreement that a man should not ‘cry poverty’. One doubts if beggary ever profited much by it.

Comments: Robert Roberts (1905-1979) became an English teacher following his Salford childhood, where his parents ran a corner-shop. His book is a classic of working-class autobiography.

Hamlet

Source: Jack Howison, Hamlet: a descriptive account of its performance witnessed by Jack Howison (Philadelphia, 1894)

Production: William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Girard Avenue Theatre, Philadelphia, 22 October 1893

Text: The other night I went to see Hamlet at the Girard avenue theater. I think it was Oct 22 1893.

The first scene was where two men were on guard and they heard some one coming and said stand and unfold your self it was Marcellows you come most careful on your hour said the guards. They were not there long before Marcellows said look look what comes speak to it one of the guard said speak speak I pray you speak I charge you speak no it will not speak said Marcellows it is offended so the ghost went away. It was the finest ghost I ever saw. Then Marcellows and the guards went right to Hamlet’s house and told him all about what they had seen the night before. Hamlet said I will be there betwix eleven and twelve so the next night Hamlet was there when the clock struct twelve and then the ghost came in Hamlet said to it speak speak and the ghost turned around and made motions for Hamlet to come with it. Marcellows did not want Hamlet to go but he would and he followed it till it came to a certain spot where it stoped and said I am thy father spirit who was killed by my own brother.

Doomed to walk the earth for a certain time but soft me thinks I smell the scent of the morning air I must away.

2 scene} Then Hamlet went back to the castle and was not there long before Ophilia’s father came in and Hamlet said to him have you not a daughter and the old man said he is harping on my daughter again. Ophilia came in and her father would not let her stay long but made her go away with him Hamlet was in love with her but she thought he did not love her but in a little while Ophilia came in again and Hamlet was talking to her when her father came and took her away. The next act was where Hamlet and his mother were in the room together and Hamlet told her to pray over his father and after that he showed her the picture of his father which he carried on a chain around his neck and said this was your husband and pointed to the picture on the wall and said this is your husband now and Hamlet thought the king was coming in the door so he drew his sword out and stabbed Ophilia’s father instead of the king after that Ophilla went crazy and very soon after drowned herself. The next act was church and grave yard the old grave diger was diging a grave Hamlet and Marcellows came and asked whose grave this is the old fellow said it is my grave Hamlet said I mean who is going to be hurried there A young lady said the old grave diger the old fellow dug a skull up out of the grave and Hamlet asked him whose it was the old fellow looked at it for a while and said it was David Garrick and Hamlet looked at it and showed it to Marcellows and then handed it back to the grave diger. The old fellow sings while he digs the grave in a little while the bell toles and the funeral comes in first six women carring the coffin and then her brother and the King and Queen and some others they open the lid of the coffin and look at her and close it again and the old grave diger lets the coffin down the hole the Queen throws a few flowers down in the grave Hamlet and Marcellows are hiding behind a tree and they see it all.

I forgot to put in where Hamlet stabbes Ophilia’s father behind the bed curtains he thought it was the king. In a very little while the white light’s go out and they show blue light on the stage to represent night this made me nervious. While Hamlet and his mother are in the room the ghost comes in and Hamlet asks his mother wheather she sees it and she thinks he has gone crazy. I thought it was the best play I ever saw the ghost was a dandy and Creston Clarke played his part so very well and the scenery was very pretty.

And another thing I forgot to say that Ophilia comes in the room where the king and Queen is with her hair hanging drown her back and with some flowers in her hand and she gets down on the floor and spreads flowers all around in a circle and after that gets up and goes out.

Near the first act Hamlet and some others get up a play to scare the King. They play that a man was lying down a sleep in his garden and some one comes and pours some poisen liquid in his ear that kills him They do this to remind the King how he killed Hamlet’s father and so he gets scared and runs out and every body wonders what is the matter with him The last act was a scene in the palace the King and Queen was sitting on the throne and a good many others are around the King had fixed it up with Ophilia’s brother to be there to fight a duel with Hamlet so he took two cups and put some good wine in one cup and some poisen in the other cup so the time came for Hamlet and Ophilia’s brother to fight the duel and so they began. Hamlet got the best of him the first time and the King said I drink to Hamlet but he did not mean it so they commense again and Hamlet wounded him and so the King handed Hamlet the poisen cup to Hamlet but he would not take it and the Queen says I will drink to Hamlet and so she takes it and says Hamlet I am poisned, and Hamlet runs right up to the King and stabbed him And so the play of Hamlet ended. 1 think it was the best play that Shaksphere or any body else ever wrote. The dresses were very pretty but looked queer to me though I suppose that was the way they looked in Shakspere time. I think Shakspere must have been a very great man and writer to have thought out such a great play.

I think it is just right I don’t think any body could improve this play.

I hear that he has written a great many more good plays but I don’t think any of them could be a fine as HAMLET I hope I will see some more of his plays sometime soon.

Comments: Jack Howiston (c.1882) was twelve-year-old boy living in Philadelphia when he wrote this account of having seen Hamlet in performance at the Girard Avenue Theatre, Philadelphia, on 22 October 1893. The introduction to this pamphlet (written by ‘S.A.B.’) states that he knew nothing of the play beforehand, and “for some days after the performance he amused and interested those of us in his family by reciting various passages, and illustrating the manner of the actors he had seen.” The family decided to publish his recollections privately, in this pamphlet, with spelling and punctuation unchanged. Creston Clarke, who played Hamlet, was a nephew of Edwin Booth.

Links: Copy at Hathi Trust

The Diaries of a Cosmopolitan

Alcestis being performed at Pompeii, Illustrated London News, 28 May 1927

Source: Count Harry Kessler (translated and edited by Charles Kessler), The Diaries of a Cosmopolitan 1918-1939 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson), p. 315

Production: Euripides, Alcestis, Odeon theatre, Pompeii, 12 May 1927

Text: During the morning the usual tour of Pompeii, but in the afternoon, starting at half past four, we saw the first performance that has taken place for two thousand years in the ancient theatre: Euripides’ Alcestis, in Italian. A very fine and in parts (especially the first half) very harrowing production. The strangely obscure personality of Admetus perhaps defies (like that of Hamlet) the range of any actor. The play’s stupendous boldness of imagination and genius nevertheless remains as fresh as ever. There is a romantic, Shakespearian quality too in the structure of the work, with its compound of tragic and comic elements. And finally, as is the case with Shakespeare, the spectator is left with the feeling that the human soul is a riddle to which events, situations, and catastrophes occasionally supply clues without revealing its ultimate springs of inspiration.

Comments: Harry Kessler (1868-1937) was an Anglo-German aristocrat and diplomat. His diaries are an exceptionally vivid and observant account of art and politics in Weimar Germany. Euripides‘ fifth-century BC play Alcestis was performed in the Odeon theatre at Pompeii. The production was directed (and translated) by Ettore Romagnoli, with Letizia Celli playing Alcestis.

The Diary of Philip Hone

Source: Bayard Tuckerman (ed.), The Diary of Philip Hone, 1828-1851 (New York, Dodd, Mead, 1889), vol. 1, pp. 265-266

Production: Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The Rivals, National Theatre, New York, 4 September 1837

Text: September 4. — Wallack opened the National Theatre (late the Italian Opera House) this evening, with the comedy of “The Rivals.” He has brought with him from England a very strong company, several of whom appeared this evening. I never saw a play go off with more spirit. Wallack, in the dashing part of Captain Absolute, with a handsome scarlet uniform coat, and his one beautiful leg (the other being a little crooked ever since he broke it by being upset in the stage at Brunswick), made a most captivating entrée, was received with great applause, and made, at the falling of the curtain, one of the best, most graceful, and eloquent speeches I ever heard on such an occasion. But I fear he will not succeed. The National is the prettiest theatre in the United States; but it is not in Broadway, and the New Yorkers are the strangest people in the world in their predilection for fashionable locations. In Paris the theatres are scattered over the whole city, and the fashionable milliners, jewellers, tailors, and all those who depend for their support upon the gay, the rich, and the fashionable, are to be found in by-streets, or in the mazes of narrow, dark alleys; but our people must have their amusements thrust under their noses, and a shopkeeper, if he hopes to succeed in business, must pay a rent of $4,000 or $5,000 in Broadway, when he might be equally well accommodated for $600 or $800 ten doors from it. But there is a greater obstacle to the success of the new establishment in the great number of theatres at present open in the city, each one of whom has some “bright particular star” shining to attract and dazzle the eyes of the multitude.

It is almost incredible that in these times of distress, when the study of economy is so great an object, there should be nine of these money drains in operation: The Park; the old Drury, of New York, which has done well during the whole of the hard times; the Bowery, with Jim Crow, who is made to repeat nightly, almost ad infinitum, his balderdash song, which has now acquired the stamp of London approbation to increase its éclat; the Franklin, in Chatham square; Miss Monier’s Theatre, in Broadway, opposite St. Paul’s, — little and weakly, and likely to die; the Euterpean Hall, Broadway, below Canal street, — short-lived, also, I suspect; the Broadway Theatre, next to Tattersall’s, which has been handsomely fitted up, and is to be opened next week; Mrs. Hamblin’s Theatre, formerly Richmond Hill, where the Italian opera first placed its unstable foot in New York; the Circus, in Vauxhall Garden, nearly in the rear of my house; and Niblo’s Vaudevilles, — the best concern of the whole at present, with a strong company playing little pieces à la française. Concerts, and rope-dancing, and other performances of the Ravel family, consisting of eight or ten of the most astonishing performers in their line who have ever appeared in this city. If Wallack can stand all this, he is immortal.

Comments: Philip Hone (1780-1851) was an American businessman and diarist, who was Mayor of New York 1825-1826. The National Theatre originally opened as the Italian Opera House in 1836. The actor-manager James William Wallack took over management in 1837, putting on a repertory of classic dramas. Wallack played Sir Anthony Absolute in this production of Sheridan‘s The Rivals. The theatre burned down in 1839, was rebuilt only to burn down again in 1841.

Links: Copy at Hathi Trust