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Home » Browse » Academic journals » Theater Journals » Theatre Notebook

Theatre Notebook

Theater Journals • 18 issues, 76 articles

Articles

Vol. 66, No. 2, June

"Books of the Songs to Be Had at the Theatre": Some Notes on Fruit Women and Their Contribution to Theatre Finances
Arthur Scouten, discussing the sale by fruit women of playbills in his critical introduction to the London Stage, 1729-1747, expresses surprise that account books of the patent theatres of the time showed no records of receipts for such sales by the...
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Christopher Rich-From Puritan to Theatre Manager
On 2 September 1642, the Puritan-dominated Parliament issued an order closing the theatres. (1) Performances of public stage-plays were considered inappropriate at a time when the country was threatened with "a Cloud of Blood by a Civil War". The ordinance...
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Paternity of the Siblings of Charles and Thomas Dibdin
Harriet Elizabeth Pitt, daughter of Ann Pitt of Covent Garden, had four illegitimate children. The two younger boys, Charles Isaac Mungo Dibdin and Thomas John Dibdin are well recorded; they were the sons of Charles Dibdin (1745-1814). Reference books...
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Going at the Theatre: Toilet Facilities in the Early Playhouses
For Andy Gurr Lectures and talks on the physical conditions of early English theatres and their audiences unfailingly give rise, sooner or later, to questions about the need for audiences of any period to relieve themselves: where were the toilets...
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The Proscenium Doors in the Duke's Theatre Lincoln's Inn Fields
For many years the number of doors on English stages during the Restoration period has been the subject of debate among theatre historians, both in Theatre Notebook and elsewhere. The basic problem is the lack of pictorial evidence, which has caused...
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Vol. 66, No. 1, February

Margaret Gibson's Letters to Her Mother 1931-40
In memory of Carola Hicks 1941-2010 On 11 December 1935 a young woman seeking to establish herself in the acting profession firmly demonstrated her growing independence in a letter written back home to Scotland from her lodgings near Victoria Station...
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"Finest Printing on the Road": The Importance of Poster Advertising for Touring Theatre Companies around the Turn of the Twentieth Century
In 1899, the poster artist John Hassall complained that in this "machine and devil driven England" the dictates of art too often gave way to the vulgar demands of business. This was a typical complaint of the leading posters artists of the period....
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The Phenomenology of Non-Theatre Sites on Audience
[FIGURE 1 OMITTED] [FIGURE 2 OMITTED] "Art exists that one may recover the sensation of life: it exists to make one feel things" Victor Shklovsky (12) During Look Left Look Right's You Once Said Yes (2011), a series of one-on-one encounters...
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Vol. 65, No. 2, June

"Scaenes with Four Doors": Real and Virtual Doors on Early Restoration Stages
Debate over the number of physical doors of entrance on English stages during the Restoration period (1660-1700) has been a staple of commentary since the late nineteenth century. The majority of commentators prefer four, with several suggesting two,...
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Mr Macready and His Monarch
Queen Elizabeth I and Richard Burbage, King Charles II and Thomas Betterton, King George III and Sarah Siddons, Queen Victoria and William Charles Macready, King Edward VII and Herbert Beerbohm Tree, Laurence Olivier and Queen Elizabeth II. What if...
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Redefining the Grotesque: E. J. Odell, Actor and Comedian
In the history of the Victorian stage E. J. Odell (1834-1928) stands out as an actor and comedian unsurpassed for an eccentricity verging on the grotesque. (1) Paradoxically however it was his reputation off the stage that secured his fame. Of unconventional...
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Vol. 64, No. 3, October

Epilogues, Prayers after Plays, and Shakespeare's 2 Henry IV
Recently, the subject of play-endings--in particular, the way plays may have concluded differently at court and in the public theatre--has provoked a flurry of interest. Two possibly Shakespearean epilogues are behind this new preoccupation. James...
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An Early Pioneer of the New Drama: Charles Charrington, Actor-Manager and Fabian Socialist
Charles Charrington (1854-1926) and his first wife Janet Achurch (1863-1916) are principally remembered for the introduction of Ibsen, their names indelibly linked to the first professional, unadapted production of William Archer's translation of A...
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Tickets, Critics & Censorship: The Royal Court, the Spectator & the Arts Council of Great Britain 1969-70
This article revisits a small, but immensely significant event in the history of the English Stage Company (ESC) at the Royal Court. It is a story that involves childish intransigence, monstrous egotism and low cunning matched against tacit diplomacy...
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The Sword(s) of Edmund Kean
If there can be said to be a single talismanic object in the long history and tradition of English acting, it is probably Edmund Kean's sword. Reputedly worn by Kean when he played Richard III, the sword passed into the hands of William Chippendale,...
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Additions to Archives
The following information about major accessions to repositories in 2009 relating to cinema, drama and the performing arts has been received from the National Archives. BUSINESS BBC Written Archives Centre Peppard Road, Caversham Park ...
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Vol. 64, No. 2, June

Manufacturing Spectacle: The Georgian Playhouse and Urban Trade and Manufacturing
The surviving account books of Drury Lane and Covent Garden theatres from the mid- to late-eighteenth century provide "A Peep Behind the Curtain," to quote the title of David Garrick's 1767 play, shedding light not only on production costs, but the...
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Miss Cheer as Lady Rosehill: A Real-Life Drama in Late-Colonial British America
During the later 1760s, the actress billed as Miss Cheer appeared on the British-American stage as leading lady in David Douglass's American Company. Theatre historians routinely mention Miss Cheer, whose standing is established by a variety of contemporaneous...
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Jesters to the Revolution-A History of Cartoon Archetypical Slogan Theatre (CAST), 1965-85
The year 1968 has assumed iconic status in the history of post-war Europe and America. It stands as the fulcrum of a period of global political and cultural ferment which was led in the main by the young, and in particular by students. From Nanterre...
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Vol. 64, No. 1, February

Editorial
After 12 years Marion O'Connor has stepped down as an editor of Theatre Notebook to take over responsibility for the Society for Theatre Research Publications. Her enthusiasm, her range and depth of knowledge and her meticulous attention to detail...
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Playgoers on the Outdoor Stages of Early Modern London
The presence of playgoers on the indoor or "private" theatre stages is indicated in numerous contemporary anecdotes and generally accepted (although rarely considered in discussions of early modern staging), but the less plentiful evidence of playgoers...
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The Will of John Rich-Probate and Problems
John Rich, the theatrical impresario, who made his fortune from The Beggar s Opera and built the first Covent Garden theatre, died in November 1761. In his will, made earlier in the year (National Archives: B 10/2310) (1); he entrusted the future management...
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The Other Percy Nash: Theatrical Interludes in the Life of a Film Pioneer
Of humble stock, Percy Nash (1868-1958), a pioneer of silent film, enjoyed a theatrical career of some merit which has until now remained uncharted. In a diverse life, he succeeded as an actor, tour manager, stage manager, theatrical agent, theatrical...
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The Jocelyn Herbert Archive, Wimbledon College of Art-Invitation to Researchers
Jocelyn Herbert Jocelyn Herbert (1917-2003) was a key influence on British theatre design, known particularly for her groundbreaking work at the Royal Court Theatre from the late 1950s onwards, where she worked on world premieres of scripts by Samuel...
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Vol. 63, No. 3, October

Adelphi Theatre, Moor Street, Birmingham
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The name Adelphi was but one of many which this unfortunate house bore during the six years of its existence. Moor Street, now smothered by the Queensway Ring Road, was a working-class district where artisans of many callings...
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Re-Emergence of a Unique Theatrical Teapot
Those who know Sybil Rosenfeld's book Temples of Thespis (STR, 1978) may recollect its treatment of the Margravine of Anspach's amateur theatricals, mainly at Brandenburgh House, Hammersmith. The Margravine (1750-1828) was a scandalous socialite, who...
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W.P. Dando's Improved Tableaux Vivants at the Palace Theatre of Varieties, London
They have Tableaux Vivants at the Palace Theatre,' a reviewer in Black and White pointed out early in 1894, and have had them for some time. The Empire people, anxious to repel any suggestion of imitation, present their audiences with "Living Pictures"....
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Notes & Queries
ADDITIONS TO ARCHIVES The following information about major accessions to repositories in 2008 relating to cinema, drama and the performing arts has been received from the National Archives Business BBC Written Archives Centre Peppard Road,...
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Vol. 63, No. 2, June

Actors' Names as Textual Evidence
The presence of actors' names in early modern printed playtexts has resulted in a sometimes uneasy intersection between theatre history and bibliography. Theatre historians have used such stray names as evidence for the biographies and company affiliations...
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Letters from Thomas Coutts to William 'Gentleman' Smith
Among the William Smith papers in the Beinecke Library of Yale University are twelve letters from the wealthy banker Thomas Coutts (1735-1822) to the prominent actor William 'Gentleman' Smith (1730-1819). (1) Dated from April 1791 to March 1814, the...
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Theatrical Custom versus Rights: The Performers' Dispute with the Proprietors of Covent Garden in 1800
Actors' 'rebellions' against what they regarded as tyrannical management were an occasional but notable feature of London theatre in the long eighteenth century. Four of the five principal instances occupy conspicuous places in theatre history, but...
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Vol. 63, No. 1, February

Spaces, Doors and Places in Early Modern English Staging
In a recent article in Theatre Notebook, Mariko Ichikawa makes a valuable contribution to an understanding of how the resources of the early-modern English stage might have been deployed and managed in performance, and in particular how the two stage...
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Natural-Born Showman: The Stage Career of Charles Collette, Actor & Comedian
Charles Collette (1842-1924) was an actor and comedian whose career spanned over forty years. His formative years were spent under the Bancrofts' management at the Prince of Wales Theatre (in Tottenham Street, rebuilt in 1904 as the Scala Theatre)....
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Lena Ashwell and the Starlight Express
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] By the time actress/manager Lena Ashwell (1869-1957) decided to produce The Starlight Express, the stage version of Algernon Blackwood's The Prisoner of Fairyland (adapted from his 'Uncle' books series), at the Kingsway Theatre,...
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Iglass Plate Negatives by Bertram Park and Yvonne Gregory
Through the kindness of Rosalind Adams, a descendant by marriage of Bertram Park and Yvonne Gregory, the Mander and Mitchenson Collection has recently acquired around 800 negatives taken by these two important theatre photographers. Park and Gregory,...
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The Theatre
The Tower Theatre Company, founded in 1932, from 1953 until recently was based at Canonbury Tower in North London. They have now acquired a site for their new theatre at New Inn Broadway, off Curtain Road in Shoreditch. Provisional plans have been...
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'Pioneer Women: Early British Modern Dancers'
'PIONEER WOMEN: EARLY BRITISH MODERN DANCERS' A new project of The National Resource Centre for Dance (NRCD). The project will focus on two previously closed collections containing material representing forms of 'barefoot dance' that were prominent...
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Vol. 62, No. 3, October

Herkomer's Legacy to Craig and the New Stagecraft
As a theatrical reformer the name of Hubert Herkomer (1849-1914) does not spring to mind. He was a successful illustrator, genre painter, portraitist, and teacher, as well as a talented amateur musician. He composed music for violin and played the...
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Theatres of Influence: The Remarkable Music Halls of Robert Edwin Villiers
In the music halls of nineteenth-century London a suppressed air of apprehension must have accompanied the patrons as the combination of bare gas flames, cigarettes, cigars, readily combustible materials and inadequate fire protection presented a constant...
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The Diary of John Stede, London Theatre Prompter from about 1710 to the 1760s
In June 2007, while searching through materials held by the West Yorkshire Archive Service--Leeds that might shed light on the audience for Handel's performances during his years in England and Ireland (1710 to 1759), I came across a small diary said...
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Irving and a Dead Body
If Henry Irving's discussion with Dr George Stoker about carrying off the dead body of Paris extended to influencing the Richardson/Olivier corpse removal in 1945, briefly discussed by Thomas E. Band in Theatre Notebook, 61, 2007, 111, the later participants...
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Additions to Archives
The following information about major accessions to repositories in 2007 relating to cinema, drama and the performing arts has been received from the National Archives Local Cheshire and Chester Archives and Local Studies, Duke Street, Chester,...
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Vol. 62, No. 2, June

Admission Prices at the Dorset Garden Theatre: An Analysis of the Duke's Company's Bill for Nell Gwyn's Attendance (1674-1676)
In a note published by the Harvard Library Bulletin in 1950, William Van Lennep described a manuscript bill presented to Nell Gwyn for her attendance at the Dorset Garden Theatre between September 1674 and November 1676. (1) Van Lennep offered a transcription...
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Vol. 62, No. 1, February

Editorial
This is the first issue of Theatre Notebook to feature colour reproduction, in Iain Mackintosh's exploration of the significance of the painting The downfall of Shakespeare on a modern stage, recently purchased for the Theatre Museum (also known as...
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Was Mary Lee the 'Woman Turn'd Bully'?
Maria Jose Mora is lecturer in English Literature at the University of Seville. She is part of a team working on Restoration comedy. They have published editions of Shadwell's The Virtuoso and Epsom Wells (University of Seville Press, 1997 and 2000),...
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England's Glory and the Celebrations at Court for Queen Anne's Birthday in 1706
Olive Baldwin and Thelma Wilson have written extensively on English stage music and singers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and have edited facsimile editions of the complete songs of Richard Leveridge and of The Monthly Mask of Vocal Music,...
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Deciphering the Downfall of Shakespeare, Represented on a Modern Stage of 1765
After reading Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford and running the Prospect Theatre Company for its first twelve years, lain Mackintosh joined Theatre Projects as a designer of theatrespace: new buildings included the Cottesloe, Glyndebourne,...
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Vol. 61, No. 3, October

Oldys, Motteux and 'The Play'rs Old Motto': The 'Totus Mundus' Conundrum Revisited
In the Prolegomena to his 1778 edition of Shakespeare's Plays, George Steevens, drawing on information derived from the antiquary William Oldys, sets down what he takes to have been the motto of the Globe theatre: 'Totus mundus agit histrionem': the...
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'Abominable, Impious, Prophane, Lewd, Immoral': Prosecuting the Actors in Early Eighteenth-Century London
When the London theatres were re-established in 1660 the actors were sworn in as royal servants, and thus enjoyed immunity from prosecution, unless the Lord Chamberlain gave permission. Occasionally performers were threatened with arrest for presenting...
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Ira Aldridge at Covent Garden, April 1833
The appearance of Ira Aldridge as Othello on the Covent Garden stage on 10 April 1833 was an unprecedented event in British theatrical history. No other black performer had been seen on the boards of one of London's patent theatres in the early nineteenth...
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Emily Soldene: In Search of A Singer
Emily Soldene: In Search of A Singer Kurt Ganzl Steele Roberts Ltd, Wellington, New Zealand, 2007. Two volumes 1552 pages, approx. 700 illustrations, 390 NZ$ approx 258 [pounds sterling] ISBN 978-1-877338-72-4 Kurt Ganzl's monumental...
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The Place to Spend A Happy Day
The Place to Spend A Happy Day A History of Rosherville Gardens Lynda Smith The Gravesend Historical Society, 2006 Paperback, 48pp., 5.60 [pounds sterling] ISBN: 0-978-0954813741 Students of Victorian popular entertainment may be...
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The Place to Spend a Happy Day
The Place to Spend a Happy Day may be purchased from Mrs. S.Soder, Hon. Secretary The Gravesend Historical Society. 58 Vicarage Lane, Chalk, Gravesend, DA12 4TE at 5.60 [pounds sterling] (inc. p.& p.). Cheques payable to Gravesend Historical...
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Vol. 61, No. 2, June

'Our Theatrical Attempts in This Distant Quarter': The British Stage in Eighteenth-Century Calcutta
The exploration of this lively birthplace of an expatriate subculture can suitably start with David Garrick. Traces of his involvement with the theatre in Calcutta are embodied, not always clearly, in disconnected bits of documentation. Some of these...
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'We Are Not in Little England Now': Charles and Ellen Kean in Civil-War America
In 1859, exhausted after nine years of proprietorship of the Princess's Theatre, Charles Kean withdrew from management with an eye on a speedy, patrician retirement. He was then forty-eight and his wife and co-star Ellen Tree, fifty-four. During subsequent...
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After Janet: A Brief Biography of St Aubyn Miller, Actor and Dramatist
St Aubyn Miller, (1) a dramatist unheard of today, was the first husband of the Ibsenite actress Janet Achurch (1863-1916). (2) Their separation 'by mutual agreement' after only seven months of marriage, and subsequent divorce in 1889, (3) relegated...
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Vol. 61, No. 1, February

'Assisted by a Barber': The Court Apothecary, Special Effects, and the Gypsies Metamorphosed
In an epilogue added to the only court performance of his masque The Gypsies Metamorphosed (1621), Ben Jonson credited apothecary John Rumler with making the theatrical paint used to disguise the masquers as 'tawny'-coloured gypsies. (1) Given current...
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The Early Restoration Stage Re-Anatomised: The Adventures of Five Hours at Lincoln's Inn Fields 1663
The first decade or so of the Restoration has received scant attention from theatre historians and literary critics alike. Consequently, critical commentary referring to the staging of plays in the 1660s has tended to have a long shelf life. This is...
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Dryden and Lee, Oedipus: A Probable Performance in January or February 1697/98
Oedipus: A Tragedy was written by John Dryden and Nathaniel Lee, Dryden being responsible for the first and third acts, and Lee for the second, fourth, and fifth. It was first performed by the Duke of York's company at the Dorset Garden Theatre in...
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Charles Alexander Calvert and the Theatre Royal, Newport
A newspaper clipping places Charles Alexander Calvert on the Welsh circuit performing the part of Fazio during the summer of 1855. (1) It was while Calvert was in Wales that he was discovered by Richard Shepherd of the Surrey Theatre. Shepherd took...
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'Such a Humble Branch of Our Art': The Victorian Theatre Orchestra
In 1893, an article appeared in the Musical Times which virtually apologised for its subject matter: 'So universal has the neglect of the theatrical orchestra become, that we daresay many of our readers will be surprised that we should even refer to...
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Vol. 60, No. 3, October

Acting in the Field
... by Your Danger, and our Duty prest, We acted in the Field, and not in Jest (1) How many actors actively participated as soldiers in the civil wars in England, Wales, and Ireland between 1642 and the early 1650s we shall probably never discover....
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The First Edinburgh and London Editions of John Home's Douglas and the Play's Early Stage History
John Home's tragedy, Douglas, having been rejected by David Garrick in 1755 as unsuitable for performance at Drury Lane, (1) was produced on Tuesday, 14 December, 1756 at Edinburgh's Canongate Theatre (2) (at that time under the management of West...
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A Theatre for All Seasons: The Queen's Theatre, Hull, 1846-1869
Many years ago I undertook to give a conference paper, subsequently published (1), on the Hull Theatre Royal--a patent theatre on the York circuit, built in 1769--charting its development over the course of the nineteenth century via the large collection...
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The Charringtons off the Stage
In The Rise of the Victorian Actor (London, 1978), Michael Baker remarked on how little is known of the private lives of Victorian actors, even those of celebrity status. Janet Achurch is a good example of this, in Baker's phrase, 'conspicuous gap...
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Additions to Archives
The following information about major accessions to repositories in 2005 relate to cinema, drama and the performing arts has been received from the National Archives. Local Birmingham City Archives, Central Library, Chamberlain Square, Birmingham,...
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Vol. 60, No. 2, June

'Greene's Baboone': Thomas Greene, Ape Impersonator?
In the context of a discussion of 'rough animal mockery' on the early modern stage, Muriel Bradbrook states: In 1615, Thomas Greene, the clown, leader of Queen Anne's Men, appeared in indecent disguise at the Red Bull, as a baboon 'with long...
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Boyle's Guzman at Lincoln's Inn Fields 1669
Roger Boyle's Guzman may be read as an attempt to combine elements of two of the most successful plays of the 1660s: the farce of John Dryden's Sir Martin Mar-all with the Spanish setting of Samuel Tuke's The Adventures of Five Hours. Boyle's volte-face...
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New Garrick Letters
Surprisingly, the comprehensive edition of the Letters of David Garrick contains only one from Garrick to Sir Robert Wilmot (c. 1709-72; from 1761 to his death, secretary to successive Lord Chamberlains), though the two must often have corresponded...
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Managing the Pantomime: Productions at the Theatre Royal Nottingham in the 1860s
In 1866, John Knowles, the Manager of the Theatre Royal, Manchester, was questioned regarding the types of dramatic genres that attracted audiences at provincial theatres. He was asked whether 'the higher class of drama answers' or whether 'successful...
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Vol. 60, No. 1, February

George Speaight (1914-2005)
Co-founder of the Society for Theatre Research, Editor of Theatre Notebook, Showman and Historian of a Miniature World George Speaight, FRSA, who has died aged 91, was acknowledged as the world authority on nineteenth-century toy theatre. He was one...
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Were the Doors Open or Closed?: The Use of Stage Doors in the Shakespearean Theatre
The stages of most early modern English playhouses almost certainly had three entryways, that is, two flanking doors and a central opening. (1) Most entrances and exits were made through the flanking doors, and the central opening was used for special...
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Ira Aldridge's London Debut
It is generally accepted that Ira Aldridge made his debut in London at the Royal Coburg Theatre on 10 October 1825 by playing the role of Oroonoko in The Revolt of Surinam; or, a Slave's Revenge, an adaptation of Thomas Southerne's Oroonoko. Herbert...
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The Outsider: The Michel Saint-Denis Archive: A Theatre Archive Project of the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the University of Sheffield, and the British Library
The current primary focus of this five-year project is the partially-sorted postwar British Theatre Archive that is held at the British Library. Research development work is being undertaken on significant theatre collections (John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson,...
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A Brief Candle in Wartime: Anthony Rawlins and the Lunts, 1943
The letter published below gives a vivid personal view of the well-known American actor-director Alfred Lunt and his British-born wife, Lynn Fontanne, in Robert E. Sherwood's anti-fascist drama There Shall be no Night, at the Aldwych Theatre, London,...
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Anne Bracegirdle-A Current Myth
The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry on Anne Bracegirdle now records as fact the romantic notion that the actress made no appearances in the theatre for more than two months after the fatal attack on the leading actor William Mountfort...
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Periodical details

  • Publishing Company: The Society for Theatre Research

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