The Merry Shrews of Venice: A Profitable weekend...

Monday, 28 March 2016

A Profitable weekend...

Easter Bank Holiday weekend in the UK. Pleased to have typed up and started to analyse the weekly accounts for the Benson Company from August 1908 to September 1910. Sadly, the figures show that the touring was not very profitable at all... Watch this space for further thoughts after my upcoming trip to Stratford!

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F.R. Benson's Shakespearean Touring Company

F. R. Benson (later Sir Frank) is usually thought of in connection with his work at Stratford upon Avon, where he helped to establish the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, which eventually became the Royal Shakespeare Company. However, Benson was primarily a touring actor-manager. He and his wife spent up to 45 weeks a year 'on the road' each year between 1883 and 1933, taking their repertory of popular Shakespeare plays and 'Old English Comedies' around Britain and Ireland, often giving seven or eight different performances in a week. This blog has grown out of research I did for an MA at the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford upon Avon. Although my dissertation is now complete, I knew I'd only really scratched the surface as far as this Company was concerned. In this blog I want to track the Company's footsteps as they travelled the country and to share what I'm still discovering about the Bensons and the 'Bensonians'...

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