PARAGON REVIEW

Issue 5

Sweeping the dust from the boards: dramatic pieces

Scattered throughout the archives in the Brynmor Jones Library are many miscellaneous letters, pamphlets, essays and playbills relating to the dramatic arts. In what follows Ruth Pyle (Archives Assistant) and Dr Rebecca Johnson (Assistant Librarian, Manuscripts) shed light on these records, which include some of the earliest material in the Library.

The very earliest records of dramatic activity which are held in the Brynmor Jones Library's archives concern the many visits of travelling players to Selby Abbey in the late medieval period. We know that they entertained the monks because the obedientaries' account rolls intermittently between 1431 and 1532 register payments to various dramatic performers. The accounts form part of the Earl of Londesborough's archive (DDLO), and are supplemented by further rolls recently transferred from the Westminster Diocesan Record Office (DWE). These are important records precisely because so little material relating to the early English theatre has survived.

The archive of the Hotham family, of South Dalton near Beverley, is a major, if more modern, source. As has been seen in the previous article by Amanda Capern and Ruth Pyle, Sir Charles Hotham, an eighteenth century collector of dramatic and other material, acquired much that is of interest. For example, in 1674 John Crowne, Thomas Shadwell and John Dryden wrote a withering attack on Elkanar Settle's controversial yet successful play The Empress of Morocco. This 72-page pamphlet entitled Notes and Observations on the Empress of Morocco or Some Few Erratas to be printed instead of the Sculptures with the second edition of the play (1674) is bound into a volume of miscellaneous pamphlets (DDHO/20/154). Elkanar Settle was one of a band of dramatists encouraged by the restored Charles II to create an English equivalent to French heroic drama. The Empress of Morocco was remarkable for being the first Restoration play in which the climax of the drama occurred in a musical scene with its own score. Dryden et al were not impressed. In their pamphlet they reprinted Settle's defence against scurrilous critics only to follow it with a devastating line by line dissection of his play. Apart from ridiculing Settle's stammer, they abhorred his sense of the dramatic. They argued that his plot did not add up, his dramatic verse was grammatically at fault and his settings were absurd. To make matters worse he made eyes hear and ears see, a particularly heinous crime in an age where the body was a metaphor for the well being of state and nation.

The Empress of Morocco was performed at The Duke's Theatre, Dorset Garden, London in 1673. The published edition of the play included a set of engravings by W. Dolle illustrating scenes from the Dorset Garden production. It is this combined effort which the critical triumvirate target with their withering scorn. Act II for example begins with a description of a great fleet coming up a river and sailing to Morocco. The three authors write:

It is hard to say who has pictured ships worst, the poet Elkanah, or the Sculpture-Maker Will. Doll. Of the two I think Will. Doll has done the best; for he has scratched out five things which look a little like ships, (which our Poet calls a glorious fleet) but the things which the Poet designs for Ships are Pageants, masques, things with instincts Animal, and no body knows what . . .

Recourse to Dolle's illustration shows this criticism to be unjust as well as harsh. But, jealous of Settle's popularity as a dramatist (especially with women), Crowne, Sheridan and Dryden put aside their own considerable differences to complete a thorough hatchet job on The Empress of Morrocco. At stake of course were their own dramatic careers!

If vicious slander has always been an integral part of the drama critic's armoury so has the tendency to judge the new against the old. A Short Criticism on the Performance of Hamlet by Mr Kemble was written in 1789 and is also part of the Hotham Collection (DDHO/20/127). John Philip Kemble, brother of the actress Sarah Siddons, was first engaged by the company at Drury Lane in September 1783. His debut performance was the title role in Hamlet. The author of the pamphlet thinks it unfair that Kemble's performance should be judged in the shadow of another actor's legacy (that of David Garrick). Kemble's more 'majestic form', the 'melancholy visible in his countenance', he argues, 'peculiarly fits him for the filial and grief-worn Hamlet'. Admitting Kemble's occasional 'stiffness of action' the critic nevertheless supports the actor's style of delivery. In the famous opening scene in which Hamlet sees his father's ghost Garrick had said 'Did you not speak to it?' when addressing his friend Horatio. Kemble puts his emphasis in a different place saying, 'Did you not speak to it?' Such debate underlines how important good delivery was for a rave review from the eighteenth century critic. Kemble's debut, though less successful than his sister's, put him at the forefront of his profession.

Sir Charles Hotham corresponded with Kemble as well as with actors such as William and Sarah Siddons and Eliza Farren. The Kemble correspondence dates between 1784 and 1791. On 19 September 1787 Kemble wrote excitedly to Hotham about the refurbishment of the Drury Lane Theatre:

. . . I must think the house ought in justice to be seen, before the smoaky lamps have dull'd the Gold, and darken'd the white, and wither'd the bloom of the rose-coloured Linings in the boxes. (DDHO/4/23)

John Kemble and Sarah Siddons as Mr and Mrs Beverley in The Gamester, 1783

Two years later in 1789 the actor himself became manager of the theatre he admired so much.

Not all managers were as dedicated to the beauty and harmony of their theatre. One of the most peculiar items to be found in the archives is a small notebook which contains the manuscript version of an elaborate criticism of the management of the Bath Theatre Royal (DP/157/1). The Dangers of a Lee Shore, or an Impartial View of the Bath T- - - -e in the year 1759 is a 48 page pamphlet 'by J Brownsmith Late Prompter to the Said Theatre'. Part of a small miscellaneous collection, it begins with an allegorical letter 'From a sailor on Board to his friend on Shore'. Evidently the prompter has moved to a new job at Bristol Theatre and is looking back at Mr John Lee, his old employer. What follows is a long complaint against manager and company. In sum, the notebook is illustrative of some of the many difficulties that could face theatrical companies, engendering backbiting, criticism and jealousy.

Bath was one of the more unusual eighteenth century towns in having a theatre house by 1759. Before 1750, whilst London's theatrical venues were established, the provinces had little such provision. Additionally, actors and actresses were positively discouraged from seeking work by the licensing acts of 1713 and 1731 which had the power to deprive players of acting for monetary reward. After 1750 more major provincial towns got their own theatres royal. For example, a theatre royal opened on Finkle Street in Hull on 3 October 1768 with a production of Love In a Village. Tate Wilkinson, the manager of the 'York Circuit', recorded the event in The Wandering Patentee, his own account of the early days of the York Circuit:

A new, elegant Theatre was opened at Hull; we jogged on quietly on a safe and pleasant easy trot there.

The Brynmor Jones Library holds series of playbills for Hull's Theatre Royal and other local theatres which record sequences of performances from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries. The evidence from the Hull Theatre Royal playbills tells us that the theatre hosted many touring companies. Additionally, it appears that some of the best known actors and actresses of the day such as Mrs Jordan (comedy) and Sarah Siddons (tragedy) appeared as star attractions. Players could appear in two or three major roles in one night, moving between entirely different parts. Double or even triple bills were the norm. This could lead to an incongruous mix of entertainment. For example, on 23 January 1806 Hull Theatre Royal staged Macbeth, starring Mr Melvin in the title role. It was followed by a farce in two Acts called High Life Below Stairs, with Mr Melvin as Sir Harry's servant.

Titles which promised scenes of moral decay were evidently popular at this time. With plays like High Life Below Stairs, Provocation Or Spanish Ingratitude and Inconstant doing the rounds it seems reasonable to suggest that Dissipation, a comedy in five acts (1781) by Miles Peter Andrew (DDHO/20/147) might be typical of the sort of play which was staged in Hull during the late eighteenth century. A printed copy of this play is in the archives. Again collected by Charles Hotham, it was originally written for the Drury Lane Theatre, London, and starred actors such as Mrs Abington and Mr King. A good example of a comedy, fast moving and witty, it is concerned with courting couples, mistaken identity and the habits of aristocratic society. In the preface the author curses the producer who was the playwright Sheridan:

Mr Sheridan, it must be confessed, has taken away several witty things from this comedy . . . but should he, in his great dearth of genius, ever venture to introduce them in any further production of his own, and the audience should not immediately perceive the difference, the original author will certainly put in his claim to all the merit they possess.

The petty politics evident here between dramatists is mirrored in the political comedy which proliferates in the play. Politicians it seems were just as hypocritical in 1781 as they are today!:

Charles (looking at the paper): I see your Lordship has been speaking against the Budget.

Lord: Against the Budget! No, against it! O yes, yes, so I was; I did not recollect immediately; but you know its all the same thing with us.

Charles: Really my Lord!

Lady: Why you grave creature, ha! ha! ha! are you going to be surprised because a man of fashion forgets which side he took, or thinks politicks a mere matter of amusement?

It should not be forgotten that grievances aired in public frequently have the beneficial effect of attracting publicity. Whilst play-wrights were launching vicious attacks on the quality of each other's work, front house managers went to great lengths to court audiences with promises of novelty, urban sophistication and ever more dramatic innovation. For example the playbill advertising Farquar's play Inconstant wooed its audience with the promise of 'alterations, as performed in London'. Those who went to see Provocation Or Spanish Ingratitude were promised 'An ENGAGEMENT between Four Spanish Frigates and Four English; during the Engagement one of the Spanish Ships blows up. - Rule Britannia in full Chorus'.

Theatre playbills give us valuable insight into the social concerns and pleasures of the day. On 22 January 1790 Hull Theatre Royal staged a new opera called The Iron Mask with libretto by the Hon. John St John and music by Thomas Shaw. The first English opera to be inspired by the fall of the Bastile (July 1789) it promised topical scenes: 'A DUNGEON in that Prison, The HOTEL de VILLE at PARIS, RUINS of the BASTILE'. The enthusiasm of this opera for the French Revolution can be adduced from the playbill's promise that the work would 'conclude with the RISING of the TEMPLE and GENIUS of LIBERTY'. Yet, such revolutionary fervour is carefully balanced by the tragedy which precedes it the same evening. The anonymously written Percy, it is announced, will include 'Stand to your Guns, my Hearts of Oak', by Mr Mitchell.

As well as reacting and responding to political events, the playbills show a theatrical world responding to fads and popular themes, as we can see in those of the Alexandra Theatre (1909-1922), Hull Assembly Rooms (1845-1872) and Hull Grand Theatre (1896-1900). Towards the end of the nineteenth century images of the American West were all the rage. On 27 June 1898 The New World ('a picturesque and realistic Western Romance') by Fred Darcy was performed at the Grand Theatre and Opera House, George Street, Hull. It was advertised as 'A thrilling story of Pioneer Life in the Goldfields of the Great North-West'. By this time audiences had to be wooed with more than promises of revamped London theatre. The highlight of the play was to occur in Act I where Joe Williams was to be 'Actually hanged in full view of the audience'. Other novelties were to come. In the early twentieth century cinema also began to be incorporated into the theatre. On Monday March 8 1909 at the Alexandra Theatre, The Woman Pays by Frank M Thorne was to be shown together with 'cinema-tograph pictures . . . between the acts'.

As we have seen, a wealth of detail can be crammed onto a playbill. In addition, a scene by scene synopsis of the play was often included, with apposite comments on the characters. Local train times were also frequently added. Evidence from the playbills suggests that moral themes continued to make good theatre throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The White Girl Slave by Joseph Warncliffe was put on at the Alexandra Theatre, Charlotte Street, Hull, on 22 June 1914. This was a theatre where 'the sliding roof renders the atmosphere at all times clear and agreeable'! Warncliffe was author of other moral dramas such as Foiled by a Woman, The Woman of Death, and Through Thick and Thin. Perhaps not surprisingly therefore the playbill emphasises the feminine content of the play rather than the evils of slavery. 'Knowledge is power' shrieks the playbill, 'and the knowledge of the real deadly danger which menaces English Girlhood to-day at the hands of the White Slave traders, will give girls the power to guard against danger when it threatens'. The scene by scene synopsis tells us that we will be transported from Eva Lennard's house in Manchester to Buenos Aires where it is enigmatically stated that 'England is aroused'.

In conclusion, Hull's drama-related holdings are a well kept secret. This article has focused on early archival holdings. It would take another article to describe and present all the twentieth century material that is available. As well as playbills the twentieth century archives includes 1930s drama by the sons of landed gentry (unperformed) and work by the young Philip Larkin and Alan Plater.

The dust is waiting to be swept from the boards once more!

Ruth Pyle and Rebecca Johnson

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