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Volume 8 - November 1967

Contents

Research Article

  • Some Nineteenth Century Revivals of the Duchess of Malfi

  • Frank W. Wadsworth
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    21 October 2010, pp. 67-83

  • In his introduction to the excellent Revels edition of The Duchess of Malfi John Russell Brown provides a brief, updated stage history of John Webster's best known tragedy. Although Brown does much to correct the impression that Samuel Phelps' nineteenth-century revival was unsuccessful, even he does not fully indicate the Duchess' popularity during the twenty-five years following the Sadler's Wells performance of November 20, 1850. Nor does the statement of Don D. Moore in John Webster and His Critics 1617–1964 that “only in the mid-twentieth century—and then infrequently— has Webster on the stage been acceptable” help to correct the traditional misconception.

  • The Beginnings of Drama in Scotland

  • Terence Tobin
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    21 October 2010, pp. 1-16

  • The drama in Scotland, as in other countries of Western Europe, emerged from ancient pagan rites. Remnants of these rituals became Christianized. The extant information about these early folk entertainments, which is meager and tentative, exists mainly in ecclesiastical edicts suppressing these festivities. The sword dance, morris dance, and mummers' play all are outgrowths of dances and fertility rites associated with the four seasons. These ceremonies of pagan inspiration developed into plays of a more literary character, such as representations of St. George and of Robin Hood. Guisards, or players who performed on various holidays, were familiar figures in sixteenth-century Scotland.

  • Post-Restoration Shylocks Prior to Macklin

  • William S. E. Coleman
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    21 October 2010, pp. 17-36

  • After the closing of the London theatres in 1642, William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice waited almost one hundred years before it was revived in an acting version approximating the original script. Charles Macklin was instrumental in bringing an unaltered, but somewhat cut, version to the Drury Lane stage on February 14, 1741. Though no contemporary account of Macklin's first performances as Shylock exists, later biographers and critics state that he performed the part in a serious, almost tragic, manner for the first time since the Interregnum.

  • The Queen's Theatre, Haymarket: Vanbrugh's Opera House

  • Donald C. Mullin
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    21 October 2010, pp. 84-105

  • The Union of the Companies that had brought the theatre of London under the one roof of Drury Lane in 1682 degenerated under the mis-management of Christopher Rich into open rebellion in 1695. In that year Betterton and a group of followers abandoned the Theatre Royal to set up a rival company in the old theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields. This new group managed quite successfully for several seasons, but a decline soon set in, partly due to the shabby old theatre itself, but mainly due to internal bickering and poor management. By the first years of the eighteenth century the company was in such straits that a revitalization was understood to be necessary if the players were to survive.

  • Beerbohm Tree in America

  • Leonard H. Knight
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    21 October 2010, pp. 37-52

  • Even allowing for the exaggeration implicit in obituaries as such, this American description of a nineteenth-century English actor seems excessive. Yet Beerbohm Tree was not primarily an actor at all, certainly not (as some of his contemporaries would have put it) a “professional.” An unusually diverting mixture of jack-in-the-box and Jack-of-all-trades, his lack of conspicuous, all-consuming dedication to the principles of the profession he had chosen for himself, coupled with his obvious delight in its shallower aspects (spectacle, makeup, effects), gained him admiration from the audience at large and aroused suspicion among his fellow artists.

  • Aqueduct and Iron Curtain at the Federal Street Theatre, Boston

  • Richard Stoddard
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    21 October 2010, pp. 106-111

  • The equipping of theaters with fire-prevention devices is generally considered to be a relatively recent concern. For example, Barnard Hewitt writes of the American theater: “No one concerned himself with prevention until Steele MacKaye made a nuisance of himself with buckets, hoses, and fireproofing of scenery.” It is true that the prevention of fires in theaters did not become a significant public issue until the latter half of the nineteenth century. MacKaye was responding to increased public concern for the safety of theatergoers. Fires in theaters were indeed tragically common during that century. Gas lighting created a considerable fire hazard, and after its introduction in the first quarter of the century the incidence of fires in theaters increased alarmingly.

  • Anne Brunton in Bath and London

  • Gresdna Doty
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    21 October 2010, pp. 53-65

  • William Dunlap thus records his impression of Anne Brunton's Covent Garden debut as Horatia in The Roman Father, October 17, 1785. Until less than a year before her London debut this young woman had never stepped before an audience. Her mercurial rise from the Theatre Royal, Bath, to London did not prepare her to displace or challenge Mrs. Sarah Siddons, reigning queen of the London stage. It did, however, launch Anne Brunton on a successful Covent Garden engagement, preparing her for a career in the United States between 1796 and 1808.

  • Box office, U.S.A., 1864–1870: Regional Profiles

  • Eugene K. Bristow, William R. Reardon
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    21 October 2010, pp. 112-126

  • Paralleling in time, though not in power, the national expansion and concentration in finance, transportation, and manufacturing, the American theatre entered the 1860's as primarily a stock-company operation, but emerged from the decade as a traveling theatre with a central concentration in New York City. Circuits and booking agencies organized by managers and producers during the seventies and eighties led eventually to the virtual monopoly of the American theatre established by the Theatrical Syndicate in 1896.

Front matter

  • TSY volume 8 issue 1 Cover and Front matter

  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    21 October 2010, pp. f1-f3
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  • TSY volume 8 issue 2 Cover and Front matter

  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    21 October 2010, pp. f1-f3
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