Theatre in the 19th century
Charles Kean and the Meiningens
Prologue: Not Realism
Allow me to be frank at the
commencement: I will not talk about
stage realism. The romantic, depressive, legal,
philosophical, tactical, figural, moral, magical, monstrous yet elusive beast
which haunts continues to haunt literary criticism. It is linked to a deeper pursuit of truth, immediacies of
experience and timeless stories of unchanging moral valuesbut in the wake
of the deconstructionalist frenzy and the destruction wrought upon a finely
ordered world conventional notions of language patterns and structures | the exploration of the textual subconscious
revealed, hidden beneath that innocently simple and maddeningly obscure term
run deep level fault lines of controversy by Opposing: ideal vs. commonplace in experience, social
and aesthetic purpose in literature, and the rational with the irrational in
human behavior while confronting you, ladies and gentleman with the
overwhelming question: WHAT. IS . REAL?
Classmates, comrades, professor - an
announcement! Despite potential complications, semantic confusions due to the
philosophical, metaphysical and epistemological discourses that cloud the term realism
for literary studies, as we go on you will find that this madness here dose
have method to it.
And that is it, that is my prologue, no in
rhyme, no high flown praise of the “self-school’d, self-scann’d,
self-honnoure’d, self-secure” bard whose name ranks among the aoidoi
of classical antiquity and his “moral, grave, sublime” actors who made sure
“that our drama did not die”.
You were not expecting that, I hope. I will not to talk about realism on the 19th
century stage, but I am talking about versions of reality produced on the 19th
century stage by Charles Kean and the Meiningen Troupe.
I have subdivided this dramatic experiment
into two 2 main acts:
ACT 1: Performing Shakespeare in the 19th century: What I am trying to do in act one is
to establish a continuity between Macready to Charles Kean the “prince of theatrical antiquaries” of
the 1850s and 1860s and the Meiningens in 1870 – 1890.
ACT 2: Performing history, where my focus lies on the microcosm theatre as
a place where based on imitations of art illusions of reality are created
(Martin Meisel), specifically à the 19th century stage where time
and place collapse into each other so that history could be performed on stage
and the thesis I am pursuing with this is as follows: Thus the theatre at first glance a
place apart from the day to day constraints of the Victorian here and now but
by functionalizing Shakespeare’s plays (mainly history plays) and by dressing
the bard once more in the borrowed clothes of an educator and historian, the
mid-19th century stage creates a link between a seemingly distant
almost mythical past and the Victorian present, starting with the Hundred Years
War and the singing of the magna carta by King John in and around the year 1215
through the all the Edwards, Henrys and Richards roughly the bloody Wars of
Roses to the glorious ascension the Tudor dynasty, these historical fragments
get dragged onto a Victorian stage that is celebrating the creation of a nation
and a national identity by performing history a grand narrative of national
progress.
ACT 1: Performing Shakespeare in the 19th century
In earlier presentations we have already
encountered William Charles Macready
(epithet “the eminent tragedian” during his lifetime) and his concern for
greater textual authenticity. During Macready’s tenure at the Covent Garden and
later at Drury Lane (2patent theatres at least till Theatre Regulation Act
1843) we not only witness the return of the Fool in 1838 (actress Priscilla
Horton) but most of Nahum Tate’s revisions were rejected and King Lear became a
tragedy once more and with Richard III he also turned away from Colley Cibber’s[1]
1699 revisions. But despite this new found interest in the original
Shakespearean texts, the Restoration revisions continued to haunt the English
stage: William Davenant’s Macbeth[2]
(1674), Dryden’s The Tempest (1712) Tate’s Lear (1681) and Cibber’s Richard III
(1699) continued to be staged until the 1890s.
Macready was not only the
actor-manager avant la letter who back to the Shakespearean roots. One of the key innovations of
Macready was that he gradually moved away from so called acting points towards
a more integrated performance but not quite an ensemble performance yet that
comes in with the Meininges (individual moments of declamation[3]
by individual actors that later passed into tradition, no longer should
speeches be delivered in a declamatory sing-song without any sense of dramatic
interaction). Rather holistic concept: because already with Macready we see the
merging of arts and theatre, he is driven by pictoral style (costume,
special effects, elaborate scenery and props creates tableaux vivants). So he
also needed more specific interior and exterior scenes (Folie: generic history set), using for example a Cyclorama or
Panorama designed by Clarkson Stanfield for Macready’s Henry V in 1839 (passage
of the English fleet across the channel). Thus, performance was understood as a
series of living pictures that offer instruction by illustrating history,
bringing it to life.
Due to time constraints we cannot look at other
no less important actor-managers (like Samuel Phelps who was a contemporary and
rival of Charles Kean or Elisabeth Vestris aka Mme Vestris)
Which brings us directly
to Charles Kean:
He was the Eton-educated son of the
legendary stage genius Edmund Kean, about whom G.H. Lewes once said that the
“irregular splendor of his power” especially in titular roles like Othello
Richard III left him “strangely shaken by the terror and the pathos, and the
passion of a stormy spirit uttering itself in tones of irresistible power”. So the son who should never have gone
into acting who according to his
father’s wishes should have become a proper gentleman had big shoes to fill. Especially
with his father’s deteriorating condition (alcoholic) and ultimate death in 1833
and forcing the young Charles to become the breadwinner of the family.
According to biographer William Cole the stage for Charles became a means to
earn a living for him and his mother. However, he was less charismatic than
Edmund Kean not as blessed with natural talent and in terms of acting style and
performance he never really matched the stature of his father. Debut 1827 Drury
Lane John Home’s Douglas shattering disappointment. In its aftermath with the
bad press Kean was forced to learn his craft from the ground up the old
fashioned way, touring the provincial theatres and America. But here is the good news:In 1838 his return performance of Hamlet not only got great reviews, he became part of the Victorian mythology of the respectable self-made gentleman of the
theatre (through struggles, perseverance à critical recognition and popular
success à Samuel Smiles). For a while he continued
to be cast in leading roles and married Ellen Tree, fellow actress and history
affectionato.
But like Macready before him, he
knew theatre could do more than entertain: the theatrical medium with its
technical advancements in scenery (wings and flats, gauze, trap doors and 3
dimensional set pieces) and lighting (gaslamps limelight) could create vibrant and
most of all accurate illusions/ representations of the past to educate the
masses in history. What he said was: Forget Eton and
Harrow … come to the theatre,
Shakespeare will not only teach you morals and values of civilization he’ll
teach you history, a sense of national
pride and Englishness à and in the absence of a mandatory school
system it worked immensely well, as we’ll see.
Anticipating his own period antiquarian
Shakespearean revival productions of the 1850, Kean in self-conscious imitation
Macready staged in 1846 King John[4]
using the costume historian James Robinson Planché as a source for historically
precise costumes as
well as historical methods of mise-en-scène (dioramas, trap doors, wings and
flats). From that point on Shakespeare productions were not only a matter of
performance and the ever expanding stage technology but they also touched on other
fields of intellectual or scholarly pursuit trying to gain more respectability
by association. In order to even surpass the
accuracy of historical novels (Scott), architectural recreations or genre
paintings, Kean set out to reenact the actual historical events on the stage
rather than merely pay homage to Shakespeare, therefore the prince of
antiquaries, obsessed with historical precision, studied not only Shakespeare’s
descriptions in the plays but he even more extensively researched other in
historical sources
-
to
first of all accurately date the events (timeline) within the play.
-
THEN:
To overcome what he thought were the shortcomings of the script: he added
antiquarian supplements/ historical interludes basically scenes of what
Shakespeare failed to document was: I have 3 examples.
o
for
example in Henry V (1859) à to the play about “England’s favourite king”,
spruced it up with music, dancing, lots
of extras for the Siege of Harfleur and Henry’s triumphal return to London à Folie) (singing angels, biblical
Prophets a chorus of virgins, noblemen, Lord Mayor à not in the text: Allusion to the
event by the Chorus in the Prologue to ACT 5, source is a 15th cnt
text Sir Harris Nicholas
o
And
sometimes his zeal for historical accuracy happened at the detriment of textual
fidelity:
o
like
in Henry VIII (to another obscure
play but then regarded as inherently spectacular could indulge in antiquarian
splendor banquet scenes ) à Kean used a moving diorama imitating the
movement of the Lord Major who travelled by boat to Elizabeth’s Christening
source 1543 eyewitness accounts,
o
or
in Richard II (1857)chronicle play
monarchy in dereliction took his historizing frenzy a bit far (according to
Punch Magazine he had the playbills printed on fly-leaves from old folio
editions of the History of England) he added the king’s entry in London as
described by contemporary sources, needed built-up sets aligned diagonally
across the stage (Folie) great success 111 performances secured Keans election
to the Society of Antiquaries (up to that moment the highest honour a actor
could hold) book p. 90
Punch magazine dubbed the actor-manager and
antiquarian not the Upholder of Shakespeare but the Upholsterer of Shakespeare
who provided his audience beyond the visual extremely costly splendor with
extensive descriptions historical paraphanalia and essays in playbills that
went beyond earlier advertising sheets. But the lavishness of the scenery
appealed to the Victorian desire for visuals and the Even Queen Victoria was a
great admirer à
Royal Command Performances since 1848 increasing the prestige of the
profession) However some critics see the spectacle of special effects as blasphemy
à too
sensational to do the great national bard credit. So the reactions to Kean’s
productions in a way reflect an ongoing Victorian debate about: the restoration
of Shakespearean authenticity vs. popular demands for visual splendor,
elaborate sets that necessitated growing number of scene changes (10-12 on
average) that made it necessary to extensively cut and rearrange the bard’s
words.
Towards the end of the Victorian era
there was an even greater degree of movement in the acting community with
foreign actors like Sarah Bernard or Tommaso Salvino and foreign theatre
companies like the Saxe-Meiningen Troupe
coming to London and touring the world taking Shakespeare global.I suppose it is a curiosity of
theatre History that Kean’s antiquarian productions, his attention for detail
and great skills as a manager rather than an actor are linked to European/
continental staging traditions where they were never actually seen à Most prominently he is connected
the Saxe-Meiningen Troupe founded in 1866 by George Duke of Saxe-Meiningen.
Married to a niece of Queen Victoria during his
trips to London he had the chance to visit the Princess’s Theatre apparently he
was so fascinated and passionate about the theatre that after the death of his
first wife he morganatically married to the actress Ellen Franz and
established a court company. That
company became the famous Meiningen Troupe that from the 1874 until the 1890s
went on tour across Europe. And with 3000 performances they became a great
success, even in 1881 London despite the fact that they performed three
Shakespeare plays in German.That is largely due to the visual approach of
the Duke à who
turned theatre experience into a sensual spectacle:
Assisted by Ludwig Chronegk (actor) the duke, not only directed the productions
and designed the scenery as well as the costumes, based on Charles Kean’s
methods he established his own Meiningen Principles:
·
That
meant not only a high degree of historical accuracy in terms of set design and
costumes
·
but
in order to create a moving work of art he showed a greater/ absolute fidelity
to the scripted play and used movable scenary (steps and platforms to keep the
action fluid) so that the actor became a natural part of his environment
·
His
more integrated approach towards performance meant that each player became a
character in its own right (no formal groupings clustered around a leading
actor, acting points). This is the beginning of the modern ensemble performance
with carefully planned rehearsals.
This is the beginning of Modern theatre,
especially since based on these principles RSC and Constantin Stanislavski Method Acting was
developed.
ACT 2: Performing History
Taking a closer look at Charles Kean’s it is worth mentioning
that first season as actor-manager at the Princess’s Theatre coincided not only
but also with Macready’s farewell from the stage but also with the Great Exhibition
in 1851. William Cole (Biographer) remarked: “The six month which followed were
pregnant with instruction”. The theatre in Oxford Street was only a short
distance away from William Paxton’s glass and iron construction – Crystal
Palace in Hyde Park where Great Britain was celebrating itself in historical
displays and proof of contemporary industrial and technical ingenuity or in
other words - like the theatre – it was show of social integration and cultural
nationalism. Here amidst Victorian Culture
Shakespeare, the embodiment of all things English, held a special place (he got
his own statue and a ceremony between remnants of the past and heralds/
harbingers of a new technological future, so beyond all ideals of identity and
moral guidance he was by then so deeply embedded in Victorian culture and
society, national and historical consciousness that the hero of many faces
could make one more transformation à putting on the borrowed clothes of
and educator and a historian. For John Ruskin, lectured about art and society, Shakespeare and his
theatre were the proper medium that combined entertainment with education, both
aesthetic and moral. So in the absence of a compulsory education system, the
purple passages were a marker of cultural maturity and a way of testing reading
and oratory skills even for children.
What is uniquely Victorian is the theatre:
although it was always considered a place where entertainment met instruction àwith the rise of the middle classes
and the emergence of a self-confidant bourgeoisie in the 19th cnt.
when the idea of self-betterment and cultural advancement permeated all social
strata (Samuel Smiles) and the theatre like the Cystal place
Was
a communal space
In
that sense: A going to the theatre meant cultivating the idea of personal
growth and at the same time perpetuating the notion of national progress or in the words of Homi Bhabha:
“Nations, like
narratives, lose their origins in the myths of time and only fully realize
their horizons in the mind’s eye. Such an image of the nation –or narration –
might seem impossibly romantic and excessively metaphorical, but it’s from
those traditions of political thought and literary language that the nation
emerges in the west” (Homi Bhabha, Narration and Nation)
That basically means the wholly ambivalent
concept of nation is not just a political ideology or a container of power
constituted by a political apparatus but a site of criss-crossing discourses
about space, time, class etc. that are
erect on a system of cultural signification. Nationness or national identity is
a symbolic force with a performative dimension that self-generates a grand
narrative of origins, continuity and
tradition, especially in the 19th century, where looking back into
the past meant finding a future and declaring oneself part of history in away.
When Mathew Arnold aesthetically reconstructed the bard as the demi-god
of a new cultural religion, people like Macready and Kean did their best to
turn the theatre into its temple, purifying and vindicating the institution in
the process. In order to awaken the nation’s
historical consciousness they provided this new religion with a space where it
was possible to encounter excessively symbolic but most of all bodily
incarnations of national history. Through the theatrical performance the
gathered historical fragments gained coherence and history in a way got its own
voice: Charles Kean’s
antiquarian approach regarding Shakespeare is built on that: the theatre as an
ideal vehicle between the public at large and the historians and antiquarian theatre
as a means to teach history, was available to everyone – from the lowest to the
highest born in the country even
if historical instruction meant that meant changing and rearranging the bard’s
words or extending the plays with historical interludes in the name of historical
authenticity.
So staging the history plays became a wholly
patriotic an nation building undertaking (esp. Henry V and King John because of
the signing of the magna carta inserted by Kean) and turned Shakespeare himself
into a quasi-historian.
As for my Epilogue:
This is neither comedy nor tragedy
neither death nor marriage seems appropirate? Of course there is much more to
be said about the theatre in the 19th century, especially about
antiquarian and pictorial dramaturgy as a nation building exercise that brought
historical fragments, historical truth to life and facilitated the
identification of the theatre-going public with the nation’s past. In order to
conclude this: allow me to quote Meisel once again (Realizations p. 36) BY
realizing the scenes which Shakespeare had previously but imperfectly imagined,
history received a “concrete perceptual form” that moved from the mind’s eye to
the body’s eye bestowing “concrete reality upon signification”, figural truth
upon historical narrative and materiality upon emotions and morals. And the
question I’ll leave you to ponder at home is, to what degree have these
antiquarian readings and revivals of Shakespeare has it influenced modern day
productions and even our perception of history itself?
So there it is at the last: The only thing that now remains: Thank you for
your attention, if you have any more questions, comments or constructive
criticism the rest should not be silence.
[1] Cut 800 lines, made it fit within
the 2h window, adapted the plot to an Orange stage, added different aspects à plot extensions, (new opening, the
murder of Henry VI, new scenes and monologues) cut out Queen Margarete (less
supernatural, also because less use of ghosts – only before Richard not
Richmond), Violence: Shakespeare mainly in the dark Cibber more brutal picture à Cibber shows the murder Edward and
Clarence, 2 princes in the Tower (Richard bloody tyrant)
[2] Macbeth (performed 5 November 1664; printed 1674), an operatic adaptation:
singing dancing witches
[3] Quoi ?
tandis que Néron s’abandonne au sommeil, Faut−il que vous veniez attendre son
réveil ? (Britannicus Racine)
[4] Shakespeare: history play set
during the reign of King John, believed to have been written in the 1590s,
Today - Very obscure play barely staged anymore, probably because it could be
difficult to modernize it, thematically very Elizabethan in a way: about the
line of succession (very political play)
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