We happy few...

Well, after a dismal summer where 'the rain it raineth every day', my 'Great Escape' to Stratford upon Avon was blessed by September sunshine and temperatures not usually seen at this time of year.  In fact, the week was glorious in every respect: exactly what was needed to mark the first week of a new school year... the first without me actually being at school

The official motive for going was to spend some time in the Shakespeare Birthplace Reading Room, somewhere I haven't been since before the Covid lockdowns.  I wanted to add to my prompt book research by looking at 'Twelfth Night' and also try to build up a better picture of the company by looking at some of the material connected to some of the company members.

The very generous Louis Marder Bursary paid once again for my accommodation in the lovely 1837 cottage where I've stayed before.  Although I was there on my own this time, it felt very much like a home from home.  It cost about the same as a guest house or hotel and it gave me the freedom to come and go as I wanted, to pop home for lunch or drop off bags after researching, as well as a couple of comfy sofas and a good kitchen table to write on!  Marks and Spencer were my caterers, saving me from having to eat out at further expense.

I spent a day and a half in the archives and the rest was divided between being a tourist and pretending I was a resident.  I set myself the task, in tourist role, of seeing how many references or traces I could find of the Benson Company and was very pleased with the final result.  Far from being forgotten entirely, there are still quite a few references to them to find around the town if you are paying attention! ( I was!)

I must have seen this before on my visits to Holy Trinity church, but maybe I'd just not read it? In the St Peter's Chapel, reserved for quiet prayer, is this on the wall, a partner to the Benson memorial window in the Swan foyer.  The lines are by Rudyard Kipling.

The plaque appears on the Imperial War Museum's War Memorial's Register and is surrounded by other memorial plaques, most of which predate the First World War.  

Holy Trinity also holds the silver processional cross donated in memory of Bensonian Frank Rodney, who died in 1903.  I'll have more to say about him - and this- later: I took a lot of photos of it.  Again, I'd walked past this many times and never really given it a glance.

High up in the panelling of what had been the library of the old Memorial Theatre - now the bar of the Swan Theatre - there's this:

Beneath it, an explanation of the fact that Benson 'would play the character of Caliban with a real fish in his mouth, rather than a prop.  If the fish was not changed regularly, it would soon smell bad.  His wife. Constance, recalled in her memoir " Sometimes, the property man would forget to renew this piece of realism,,,which was most distressing to Benson, and indeed to everyone on stage." '

The Benson memorial windows are still very much the centre piece of the picture gallery upstairs, which now hosts the annually changing 'The Play's the Thing' exhibition. The lighting conditions and weather outside made the windows slightly better than normal to photograph, although I still cannot manage to get the centre panel really clearly.  The second window is rather obscured by the displays, which is a shame. I've read in several places that when the memorial to Benson was added in 1952, there was a window also dedicated to Constance Benson.  However, there is no trace of this at all, and I've been unable to find any photographs.  The hunt continues...  

Finally, the thing I most wanted to see - Constance Benson's costume as Lady Macbeth.  The panel dates this to 1902/3, but also claims it was salvaged from the Theatre Royal fire.  As always, it is the colour that impresses me - I'm so used to seeing black and white photographs that costumes 'in real life' always surprise me with their vibrancy.  I was particularly interested in seeing how this garment compared to the famous 'Beetle Wing' dress worn by Ellen Terry at the Lyceum in 1889. 

The dress is silk and very Pre-Raphaelite in its gathering and draping. Unlike Ellen Terry's very fitted bodice, this is loose and unstructured, designed to drape like a column rather than reveal her figure.  It has similar vast sleeves to those on the Terry dress and the metal beads which have been sewn along the sleeve edges and the neck line would probably have caught the stage lights in a similar way to the beetle wing casings.

The embroidery on the bottom half of the dress is worked in satin stitch - it has faded to grey and cream, but I suspect a gold and lavender were the original colours.  This echoes the decoration on the top half of the dress which I thought at first was stencilled but is actually narrow gold ribbon, surface appliqued.

It would be interesting to see this in the context of the production, of course: to see to what extent the costume stood out on stage from the rest of the setting.

In 2016, the RSC displayed another dress from the collection as Constance's Lady Macbeth costume, stating that this had been ' thrown together from a few last minute donations, following a fire that devastated the company's entire wardrobe'  (RSC (1) Facebook)

Sadly, I didn't get to see this one 'in person'.