April updates

After a couple of days of marathon gap-filling, I now have just 13.4 % left to find across all companies.  That's 87% complete - and a whole 6% better than this time last week.  Scouring the pages of The Stage on the British Newspaper Archive has really filled in a lot of gaps, although, frustratingly, some of it is really badly scanned and in places it is illegible.

A pretty good week new book-wise as well, as I've finally managed to track down a copy of Walter Shaw Sparrow's 'Memories of Life and Art' which has a couple of chapters concerning  his time with the Benson Company in the 1880s and 90s.   Sparrow married actress Ada Ferrar, who was also a member of the Company, playing leading roles, and his chapters emphasise some of the specific difficulties and extra expenses facing touring actresses at that time.  He also makes some interesting points about the London critical reception of the Globe season of A Midsummer Night's Dream and some insights into the problems of 'fit-up' touring, including collapsing scenery!  

The following story (mentioned briefly by Trewin, who used Sparrow as a source) seems particularly appropriate for the week following the Shakespeare Birthday commemorations in Stratford:

" It was during a Birthday Celebration at Stratford-on-Avon. (Beerbohm) Tree had come down in state to be a planet. On the morning of the great day, after breakfast, he and Mrs Benson stood together outside the Shakespeare Hotel.  The town was festooned and beflagged. Tree gazed at the decorations, waved a long right arm with elegant approval and in a voice modulating from a coo into a caressing purr, said: "Ah! is all of this ...for... me?"   "A little of it is intended for Shakespeare, I think," said Mrs Benson.  And Tree stared hard at a Union Jack; but no inspiration came to him. His impromptus needed hours of patient cogitation."

Finally, my trip to see the Durham First Folio was amazing.  Because of its damaged condition, the decision has been made not to rebind it for the time being and so, as well as the main book block, several loose pages are on display in double sided Perspex cases, allowing visitors to see far more of the 'real' book than is usually the case.  I must admit to goosebumps, looking at the page that listed the actors in the Company.  The exhibition is on until November and is completely free to visit: I will definitely be back - probably more than once!

Discover secrets of stolen Shakespeare First Folio - Durham University

Rehearse your parts...

I've been thinking a lot about rehearsal this week - specifically the 're' bit - because I've been re-reading 'The Haunted Stage: Theatre as Memory Machine" by Marvin A Carlson, which is a fascinating exploration of the (if you think about it!) utterly bizarre act of memory that is theatre performance.  It is one of several books which have some relevance to my current thoughts about the Benson company and their repertoire and this week I've been trying to pull it all into some coherent form that might actually make sense to someone else.

I keep coming back to the fact that so little has been recorded about the day-to-day business of being in a company.  Piecing it together often comes down to sifting though various autobiographical accounts and trying to pick meat from bones.  Almost every Merry Shrew wants to tell their funny story of a performance when something went hysterically wrong but very few give more than a scrap or two about how life went on day to day.  

O.B. Clarence at least intersperses his anecdotes with a few little nuggets in No Complaints:

"Benson himself, of course, rigidly attended and supervised all rehearsals.  At midday Charles Richmond, his dresser and factotum, would appear with a large bag of buns for a short lunch interval.  It was an established practise that anyone who was late for rehearsal had to subscribe a shilling to the 'Bun Fund." (pg41)

"No one could be of the Benson company for a day without feeling the urge to 'mark, read and learn'.  We were constantly rehearsing, parts were constantly changed round, we were always under observation and supervision.  When one got a better part it was a pat on the back, an encouragement to learn and strive more." (pg 51)

I suspect a closer 'mining' of my bookshelf might uncover a few more.

In an attempt to plug more gaps, (with 16% still left to find...) I've started to use an alternative newspaper archive - newspapers.com - partly because it has access to the Manchester Guardian. I managed to fill in around thirty gaps, including some which had eluded me for a long time. (Canterbury and Kettering proving particularly stubborn)   Inevitably, most April and May references to Benson focus on Stratford and whilst hunting in vain for some signs of the South Company, I found this gem in the Daily Mail for 26th April 1911:

1911 is an excellent year for Bensonian photographs - most of the 'outside the theatre' photos from Stratford date from 1911, and the Festival had a full, illustrated write-up in the Windsor magazine.  But this one is a gem.  It is difficult to surmise exactly WHAT is being rehearsed here - I suspect it might be little more than a bit of theatrical posturing! Dorothy Green's fashionable ensemble and hat also somewhat limits her movements, although I confess to some envy of those lovely shoes! However, it was lovely to find because of its incongruity - 'Shakespeare' poses, in day-clothes, surrounded by the flotsam and jetsam of what I assume to be the yard of the Shakespeare Hotel?

Tomorrow is 23rd April.  Celebrating by visiting the newly opened Shakespeare First Folio exhibition in Durham and then on Friday I'm 'zooming'  in on the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust 'Performing Shakespeare's Women' one day conference.  A former colleague of mine is in Stratford this week on holiday and, knowing how much I love it, is keeping me furnished with photographs - it looks as lovely as it always is in the spring, (although the slightly soggy Morris dancers outside the Birthplace looked a little unimpressed with the April showers...!)

Dukedom enough...

The RSC are currently on tour with their shortened version of The Tempest, which is coming to Newcastle's Northern Stage (formerly The Playhouse) next week and I've bought a ticket for the Wednesday matinee, partly out of loyalty to the RSC visiting Newcastle, and partly in hope that this might be the Tempest I'll love.  I've yet to see a version of this play which really thrilled me - which is strange, because I adore it on the page.  I've seen wonderful performances - notably Simon Russell Beale as first Ariel to Alec Mc Cowan's Prospero in 1993 and then, more than twenty years later as Prospero,  David Calder in 1998 and Philip Voss on tour in 2001. I've also seen an incredible ballet version, staged by Birmingham Royal Ballet as part of the Shakespeare Celebrations in 2016.  (I missed out on both Patrick Stewart and Alex Kingston. Stewart's fame caused the production sell out in minutes when it came to Newcastle and Alex Kingston was post Covid anxiety and inability to travel.)  

Benson, as far as I can tell, didn't ever play Prospero, Caliban being considered the better (shorter?) role.  Sadly, there isn't an extant Tempest prompt book, just that interesting picture with the fish...

Prospero's famous quote about his library has been on my mind all week, partly because I've had occasion to go back through my MA files from ten years ago and I've been astounded at the volume of reading I must've done over the three years. I've unearthed several there's lever arch files stuffed with material, some of which, if has to be said,  I no longer even understand!  And I've also recognised that although I already have a lot of books about theatre - some of them popular, some academic - I'll never have all that I want or need...

There's been a bit of a buying frenzy this week - and a bit of a reading frenzy too - in an attempt to bring myself up to date a bit more with the world of theatre research.  I'm hampered by the lack of a university library to access documents and journals and I'm also aware that I'm rapidly running out of shelf space - there's a lot of stuff piled up at the bottom of bookcases awaiting some rationalisation and there's at least four more books on their way here, ordered since yesterday! The rabbit holes of Victorian portable theatres and English Theatre in Wales are beckoning...

And in the midst of searching down another rabbit hole - Railway development and theatrical touring - I suddenly found myself reading my own words: Dr Hannah Manktellow's PhD thesis on Provincial Shakespeare cites ME in her chapter on Shakespeare touring, from my Theatre Notebook Essay!!!! To say I was flabbergasted would be an understatement.  I'm listed in footnotes along with some of my research/theatre history heroes - something I wrote, sitting at this desk, never imagining for a minute I'd be considered to be knowledgeable enough to be considered as a citation!

It felt like a bit of a message, to be honest.  I'm not usually one for horoscopes ("the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves...") but my horoscope last Sunday in that oh so erudite organ, The Sunday Post, suggested that this was the time to start doing 'that thing you know you are meant to do.'  

There's just the small matter of tidying up and re-organising my dukedom first...

UPDATE: The Tempest was a bit of a 'curate's egg', to be honest. Loved Ariel and Caliban, Prospero and Miranda were good, but there was rather too much 'shouting the words very quickly' for my liking and some bizarre pronoun/gender mangling : King/mother? Why not change it to Queen - they'd changed 'brother' for 'sister' to make Antonio female...although she was still called Antonio?? The most interesting part was watching the doubling costume changes - costumes and set were excellent and it was great to see how the ship-hat was used -  I'd seen it being made in Stratford on the Costume Tour. However, dashed home in time to catch the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust research conversation - an interview with Dame Judi Dench - and to hear her utterly sublime rendition of Viola's speech 'I left no ring with her...' Every word  meant something. An absolute privilege to witness.  A great reminder that not all new things are good things!