Today's the day...

...the world goes a bit Shakespeare mad - the commemorations of the 400th anniversary of his death.  The attention will be centred on Stratford, obviously, and although I'd hate the crowds, I'd love to be there.
On Friday, the Royal Shakespeare Theatre unveiled their new sculpture, hanging over the staircase of the former Library and Picture Gallery of the old Memorial Theatre.  It is made up of 2000 metal stars and creates a deliberately androgynous and non-race specific human face, inspired by the famous quote from the Balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet.   See it here . I'd rather like to think that each of those stars is waiting to be endowed with the memory of an actor or actress who helped to make that theatre what it has become.  Benson and the Bensonians, of course, would be the chief amongst them.

One hundred years ago, Benson was in the midst of what would prove to be his last real Stratford season, running for three weeks even though country was in the midst of war.  It was thirty years since his first appearance at the SMT and change was in the air.  Festivities in Stratford were somewhat muted as this blog entry from the Birthplace Trust relates and the big London celebrations would not occur until May 2nd - but that's next week's post!

Don't miss the celebrations on the BBC!  And Happy Shakespeare Day!

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!

All is Mended...

The Royal Shakespeare Company are marking the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death with a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, featuring various different amateur companies playing the Mechanicals and local school children as the fairies.  I went to see the first leg of their ten venue tour in Newcastle on Monday and thoroughly enjoyed it, particularly Lucy Ellinson's performance as Puck.  There's something  liberating about hearing Shakespeare in a regional accent - especially one's own! - and it helps to break down the 'elitist' barrier a little more.  See the trailer for this production on the RSC's website.

Lucy Ellinson and Chu Omabala as Puck and Oberon

Although the RSC used Northern Stage's theatre (formerly the Newcastle Playhouse) rather than the Theatre Royal, there were a few Bensonian links.  The Bensons used to stay at the Grand Hotel in Newcastle's Haymarket - now Blackwell's University bookshop - which is virtually next door to the playhouse and their 'fairy band' was also populated by local children, drilled by the actor playing Puck - who was usually a woman.

This week in 1912, the Company were appearing at the New Theatre Royal Portsmouth, the first of a two week season of Rep which included Dream.  The theatre has recently reopened after a major rebuild which has taken three years. A mixture of Phipps and Matcham architecture, this is how it looked in Benson's day:

Closed for many years as a theatre, it was used by Ken Russell for the film 'The Boyfriend' before fire, theft and vandalism brought it to the brink of demolition.

Filming 'The Boyfriend' in 1972

 Purchased by the New Theatre Royal Trust in the 1980s it came back into use as a theatre in 1984 and now has Grade II* listing.  So lovely to see a theatre come back from the brink!  It's on my bucket list...

Stratford Great Escape 2016

Time is such a relative thing. I find it hard to believe that it is already a week since we were a day into our Stratford 'Great Escape' - four nights in a lovely cottage in the heart of the town, less than three minutes from the Shakespeare Centre, paid for by the Louis Marder Scholarship I was awarded last year.

Having this amount of time to research is a real luxury - normally I'm squeezing time out of the day job and fitting it in where I can. I'd planned three days of research in the Birthplace Library and Archives during which time I was able to access some of the company's accounts and prompt books from three specific productions.

Having the cottage meant a relaxing start to the day, a leisurely saunter to the Archives around 10am and a return to a warm, cosy and very comfortable house, with plenty of work space, two very comfortable sofas and lovely beds! We decided to self-cater - although the tea shops of Stratford did provide some welcome late lunches - and thanks to Marks and Spencer, dined like Queens!  Rachel, who owns the cottage, had left us a welcome gift: how could she have known I was such a fan of ginger?  The discovery of a DVD of The Great Escape in one of the cupboards was another unexpected bonus...

Stratford in February can be incredibly cold and we'd gone prepared with woolly socks and hot water bottles.  Sitting all day in the Library was a chilly business and we were glad of the central heating!

As I'd taken my research assistant with me (she's also my mum!) we were able to get about thirty hours worth of work done between us over the three days: lots of data to add to my database, extra information about the financial state of the company, and the wonderful prompt books.

I'm very much an amateur at this, but I've developed a method for using the prompt books - I buy cheap copies of the plays and then deface them in accordance with the script! Some prompt books are more detailed than others but they all give a flavour of what the productions must have been like on stage to watch.  It's an incredible feeling, handling a book which must have been used in the wings of countless theatres on hundreds of occasions.

The account books, too, have a papery charm - heavy pages designed for pen and ink, meticulously handwritten, each page telling the stark truth about Benson's dreadful financial situation!  In between the pages sometimes are still some 'daily returns' from the theatre managers on the touring circuit or the occasional bill from a printer - the daily ephemera of running a a theatre company,

So busy were we with archival stuff that Stratford itself sort of faded into the background, although on Thursday - which had been a beautiful day - we went and took some photos as the sun set spectacularly over our favourite monument.  My photos don't do it justice!

After such a wonderful week, coming back to reality has been something of a challenge!  Although much of the material we discovered is still to be typed up, I've already used some of the details from the account books to update the database, add some dates and repertoire details, and correct a few gaps and errors.

I now have approximately 60% of the main (principal or A) company mapped, which is really exciting.

It was such a successful visit that I'm already working out when it might be possible to repeat the experience.  We're back in Stratford, as luck would have it, in just over four weeks time but we'll be theatre tourists rather than researchers.  Hopefully, the first signs of spring we saw last week will have fully blossomed by then!

(When I finally arrived home, I could barely get the front door open: six complementary copies of the edition of Theatre Notebook with my essay in were blocking the door!)

In Shakespeare's Garden

Magnolia blossom by the canal

A quick catch up...

Not quite sure where 2015 went to, nor where January 2016 has gone.  2016 is a highly significant year for Shakespeare aficionados, of course, and FRB has already had an honourable mention in an article Gregory Doran, artistic director of the RSC, wrote for the Sunday Telegraph on January 1st
Read it here.

FRB as Othello, date unknown

The very last day of 2015 also saw the publication of my Midsummer Night's Dream article in Theatre Notebook - my own  small attempt at putting FRB back on the British Shakespeare Map.  Of course, I'm hyper-critical of it and can see lots of things which I could have done better... but it is lovely to see it properly in print!

After a very time-pressured start to the year, work has again resumed on the data base and in a little over a week's time I'm heading back to the archives in Stratford, having used some of the Louis Marder Scholarship money to rent a cottage for the week. I've set myself (and my willing research assistant!) a mountain of material to get through, including the prompt books for three tragedies - Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet and Othello.  I'm interested to see how Benson edited them and whether they were as rearranged as some of the other plays were. I'm also hoping to fill in some of the gaps in the database, particularly in relation to the smaller companies, where the itineraries still look rather colander-like...

Looking forward to lots of cake and good company, and just being in my absolute favourite place on earth!

We few...

Today being Remembrance Sunday, it seems appropriate to remember those members of the Benson Company who fought during The Great War of 1914 -18.  Those members of the company who lost their lives are commemorated in a window which can be seen in the Gallery Swan of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. Unveiled by Dame Ellen Terry in 1925, it shows St George defeating the dragon.  St George is the likeness of Eric Benson, the only son of Frank and Constance, who was killed in action  at the Somme in September 1916.  Winchester College's website contains more details of his war service, military honours and death:  http://www.winchestercollegeatwar.com/archive/eric-william-benson/

Lt-Col Eric William Benson 

Nine other Bensonians are also remembered in the window: Charles Bibby, Harold Chapin, Rupert Conrick, Arthur Curtis, William Harris, Frank Mathews, Guy Rathbone, W Ribton Haines and James Stanners. Many other members of the Company served and survived the war. Benson himself tried to sign up on several occasions and made spirited efforts to convince the authorities that he was actually younger than his age. Finally in 1916 he and Constance set out to work with the Red Cross.

The BATH CHRONICLE AND WEEKLY GAZETTE of June 3rd 1916 reported that Sir Frank Benson, the Shakespearian actor, and Lady Benson are going to Salonika to help in the work of one of the Serbian Army hospitals. They hope to start in about three weeks. "The opportunity of going out presented itself," he said, "and we naturally jumped at it. So many actors have thrown up everything and gone to the front that we felt we ought to do what we could...I do not say that every one on the stage ought to go to the front, for I think that the theatres at home are doing real war work in keeping the nation in good spirits, and the work of actors and actresses in cheering the wounded has, I believe, been of great service. "There is, of course, a difficulty in obtaining men for Shakespearian plays, for you need young, vigorous men for Shakespeare - just the kind you need for the Army. About a dozen of my younger men have gone to the Army during the past year. The stage has already given a great proportion of its men to the Army, and others are working in munition factories and showing skill and ability... I do not advocate closing theatres, but when a man gets a call to go he has to answer it, and that is why I am off." Sir Frank Benson's absence will mean the suspension of his company's Shakespearean tours until next spring.

In 1917 Sir Frank and Lady Benson ran canteens in France for the French Red Cross. They returned to England in June 1917 and recommenced touring , but returned again to France in 1918, Frank driving an ambulance and Constance serving in the British base at Etaples. Sir Frank was awarded the French Croix de Guerre. 

Progress: slow but steady

Two exciting things happened in the spring and summer of this year.  The first was that the essay I submitted to the Society for Theatre Research won their 'New Scholars' Prize for 2014 and is to be published in their journal, Theatre Notebook. As a long-time member of the STR, I am delighted that they are going to publish my research into one of the Benson productions.

Me and Shakespeare's Birthplace in the rain, July 2015

The second exciting thing was the award of a Bursary from the Shakespeare Birthplace Centre.  The Louis Marder Scholarship, in the words of the Birthplace Trust ' is awarded to ‘a worthy Shakespearian currently pursuing a Ph.D. or similar study, who pledges to produce an original, publishable article on a previously approved literary, historical, or biographical topic about William Shakespeare (as opposed to character analysis or authorship studies) from The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust Library or Archives, approved by The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust’s assigned authorities, within two years of the accepted funds.' My attempts at mapping the Benson itineraries and exploring the repertory was deemed 'worthy' by the judges and so I have been given a bursary to enable me to spend more time in the Shakespeare Birthplace archives to work on creating something suitable for publication. To say I was delighted would be an understatement. 

Both of these endorsements come from organisations I greatly admire and which have, over the years, nurtured my curiosity about theatre history and enabled me to feel brave enough to take the first steps to write about what I've discovered. There's still a long way to go but knowing that someone else has faith in what I'm doing and believes it is valid, interesting and useful, really makes me want to keep going!

35% mapped and still going...