The Merry Shrews of Venice: Happy Birthday, FRB!

Monday 4 November 2024

Happy Birthday, FRB!

Just a quick post this week - I'm still busy with Garnet Holme! - to commemorate the birth on November 4th 1858 of Sir Frank Benson. Still inspiring, all these years later.

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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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