Much matter to be heard and learn'd...

I am recently returned from Birmingham and Stratford, having spent a week attending the induction for the PhD course, with all the anxiety and excitement which inevitably goes along with such a thing.  On balance, the excitement has been foremost, revolving around finally setting foot inside the Shakespeare Institute, being able to talk about Benson to my heart's content, having a full week to think exclusively about what it is I'm trying to/want to do and of course, the joys of being able to use a University Library again.  

Dashing though to Stratford last Monday, I managed to squeeze in a brief visit to 'The Play's the Thing' exhibition, which changes some of its exhibits each year around the end of March.  I was keen to see if there was a 'new' Benson costume, and was delighted to see that it was the red Lady Macbeth dress I'd missed the last time it was on display, along with a sumptuous red velvet cloak.  Sadly, the label was entirely wrong - it actually referred to the pink and purple dress which was displayed two years ago - and I found myself feeling a tad indignant on CB's behalf: how much more effort would it have taken to create the right label? And does no one ever check these things?

So, to keep the record straight, this is the description of the costume from 'Stage Costumes and Accessories in the London Museum' by M. R. Holmes, published by HMSO in 1968.

Dress of deep red silk, with full skirt and very wide bell sleeves gathered into a body made of oriental brocade and three horizontal bands of green silk and gold braid.  Sleeves edged with gold fringe.  Long train of vermillion velvet lined with yellow silk and augmented with elaborate gold embroidery and jewels.  Worn by Constance Benson in the Banquet scene.

This costume was actually chosen as the frontispiece of the catalogue - the ONLY colour plate in the volume - and Holmes writes about it more fully in his introduction. He begins by referencing the fire in Newcastle and then continues:

"Irving was touring in America, but cabled his agents and had baskets of rich dresses and materials sent from his own store, and one of Constance Benson's dresses as Lady Macbeth shows what ingenious use was made of them.  In the banquet scene of the third act, she wore a magnificent mantle of vermillion velvet, rich with embroidery and jewels, and with it, a gown made by combining a bodice made of rich-looking oriental fabric with sleeves and a skirt of deep red silk.  The two make an impressive and harmonious whole and it is only a detailed scrutiny of the embroidery on the mantle that reveals it as having been intended originally for a court train of the [French] First Empire, presumably in the scene of the Napoleonic reception in Madame Sans-Gene which Irving had produced a little before [in 1897], but was not likely to revive."

Brackets are my additions.  

My photographs suffer from the usual light glare on glass - it was a very sunny day and the Benson window was positively glowing! - and I was very aware that I was running late for getting food and catching my train back so they are not quite as crisp or detailed as I  would have liked.  

 

 

I returned to Stratford on Friday for the Shakespeare Institute Induction day, one of the highlights of which was a tour of the absolutely wonderful library! I'm now plotting and planning a return in order to browse the shelves at greater leisure.  

My tables...

As promised, a little more information about the spreadsheet of performers I posted last week:

Benson Company sample performer spreadsheet

I've used the casting from the Stratford upon Avon Festival performances, as catalogued by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and I've added in casting from the London 1900 season and the 1913/14 North American tour, both of which can be found in the appendices in J.C. Trewin's Benson and the Bensonians.  

The Stratford dates, in particular, also cover guest appearances, often by 'Old Bensonians' who came back to slot into productions alongside the regular cast.  Where this appears to be the case I've marked their entry with an asterisk after the name.  Other 'special guests' include performers such as Johnston Forbes Robertson, Herbert Beerbohm Tree and Ellen Terry who were never members of the Benson Company.

Sheet 1 lists the performances for each season along with the performers who appeared, with FRB and CB first and then others arranged in alphabetical order, with the parts they played.  I've separated out performers who were listed as only appearing once in the season into a separate alphabetical sequence.  Often these are people local to Stratford who might appear in small or 'thinking' roles. They also include some 'faux' performers - the company often doubled roles using different names, the most famous being 'Walter Plinge' (and at times, his extended family!). Some, like B.Righton and M.Argate are clearly intended as puns - my favourite so far has to be L.Oakel - but others which are less conspicuous such as 'Mr James' 'Mr Sherrard' also appear frequently. Trewin makes it clear that these names could be inter-changeable between performers, making it difficult to identify how role-doubling worked in performance.

Sheet 2 takes performers who appear in at least two seasons with the Principal Company and lists their roles chronologically.  The intention here is to show some degree of career progression and the range of roles undertaken by each person both within any given season and across seasons. Again, an asterisk implies a guest role.

(I am intending that Sheet 3, which is currently blank, will provide some basic biographical information for each of these performers - I'm still working on this at the moment!)

The information is, inevitably, very Stratford-centric at the moment, which isn't necessarily reflective of the Company on tour across the provinces.  As I come across casting - either on programmes or in reviews - I will add to this.  I also want to extend the casting to later iterations of the company and expand it to cover the North and South Companies where possible.  

A surprise popped up on my Facebook page this week - a publicity postcard advertising the appearance of Oscar Asche and Lily Brayton at the King's Theatre in Sunderland.  Now long gone - as is Crowtree Road where it stood and the 1970s leisure centre that replaced it - the site is today part of the Bridges  shopping centre , having been badly damaged in an air raid during the Second World War.                                          

Kings Theatre in the centre of the picture with the dome of the Londonderry pub - now the Peacock - clearly visible at the end of the street.

O Time...

Slightly off topic this morning... looking at Osmond Tearle's touring in the 1870s through the old pages of the Era, I came across one of those fabulous stories that just have to be shared.

It concerns Tearle's business manager, Walter Hastings, and is only funny because it could have been tragic:

The photograph is of Ayr's town hall clock - presumably the culprit!

What a piece of work...!!!

Last time I posted, I had decided to create a basic reference spreadsheet of performers in the Principal Company, taken from the records in the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust archive catalogue, Well, I might have slightly underestimated how long that task would take, even given such a limited frame of reference.

However, I think it will have been worth the effort when I finally reach the end of it...

Up until now, I suppose I've just had lots of names sloshing round in my head, with only the vaguest idea about dates,  roles and career progression. It has been fascinating to see how the personnel of the Principal Company changed over the years that they were the resident company at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre.  The spreadsheet has also highlighted some persons of interest outside the 'usual suspects' who may be worthy of further exploration because their stories suggest something about what it meant to be a touring Shakespearean in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

J.C. Trewin's  'Benson and the Bensonians' gives as much credit in its title to those who passed through the companies as FRB himself and the list of Bensonians name-checked in the book is impressive. Re-reading it again this week, every sentence seems crammed with information and I'm in awe of the research and collation such a work must have taken.  It has done very little for my Pre-PhD nerves or my inevitable imposter syndrome.  I once sat behind the seat dedicated to  Trewin in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and I feel that's still where I am - just sitting in his shadow!

A few interesting things I've stumbled across this week include two separate essays about Lily Brayton's career, information about Alice Denvil's theatrical family (one of her sisters was apparently the wardrobe mistress at Drury Lane) and the revelation that actress Tita Brand was actually Michael Morpurgo's maternal grandmother.  

I've also unearthed another article by Arthur Machen which contains some fascinating details about 'Pastoral' performances, based on his experiences with the 'vacation' company of Harcourt Williams and Garnet Holme.  Because of the spreadsheet it has been really easy to identify the other performers he refers to, usually only by character name or as 'A'. 'B' or 'C' and I can see it will also be useful when trying to identify actors in uncredited photographs.

He finishes his recollection with the following, which I rather liked: 

I remember once in Hampshire, Rosalind and Orlando, Jaques and Touchstone, and the rest of that company of forest wanderers, made their entrance by strolling down under the pines, knee deep in heather and bracken; and I should think those fantastic figures, glinting amongst the green, must have added no small charm to the show (...) In a wicked, tiresome world such as this is, when men earn their living for the most part by ‘doing  business’ or by such other evil and squalid tricks, there seems nothing more innocent or more charming than this device of wandering from wood to wood in odd dresses, in doublets and trunk hose, with false beards and painted faces, speaking Shakespeare’s lines, and trying to murmur the airs of Arden in the fairy age to this dull and gloomy time. 

According to the review in the Derbyshire Advertiser and Journal  on Friday 12th July 1901, Rosalind was played by Constance Robertson, Orlando by Harcourt Williams, Arthur Whitby was Jaques and H.O. Nicholson played Touchstone.  

(The illustration is by Charles A. Buchel)

UPDATE: Benson Company Performers sample database is now here!!!  Some tweaks and changes still to make but v1 is live.  I'll post more details next week, but Sheet 1 focuses on rep, Sheet 2 lists the roles played by any performer in the sample who spent two or more seasons with the company within the framework of the Stratford 1886-1916 performances.