Book contents
- Shakespeare at War
- Shakespeare at War
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Notes on Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Note on the Text
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 ‘The Truth for Which We Are Fighting’
- Chapter 2 The Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) and Garrick’s Shakespearean Nationalism
- Chapter 3 Revolutionary Shakespeare
- Chapter 4 Hamlet Mobilized
- Chapter 5 Shakespeare, the North-West Passage, and the Russian War
- Chapter 6 ‘Now for Our Irish Wars’
- Chapter 7 Shakespeare and the Survival of Middle England
- Chapter 8 Ellen Terry Stars at the Shakespeare Hut
- Chapter 9 The 1916 Shakespeare Tercentenary at № 1 Camp in Calais
- Chapter 10 Shakespeare Does His Bit for the War Effort
- Chapter 11 Germanizing Shakespeare during the First World War
- Chapter 12 Readers and Rebels
- Chapter 13 Forgotten Histories
- Chapter 14 ‘Now Good or Bad, ’tis but the Chance of War’
- Chapter 15 ‘Precurse of Feared Events’
- Chapter 16 But What Are We Fighting For?
- Chapter 17 Henry V and the Battle of Powerscourt
- Chapter 18 Unser Shakespeare in Nazi Germany
- Chapter 19 Framing the Jew
- Chapter 20 G. Wilson Knight’s ‘Royal Propaganda’ in ‘This Sceptred Isle’ (1941)
- Chapter 21 Shakespeare’s Desert Camouflage
- Chapter 22 ‘May I with Right and Conscience Make This Claim?’
- Chapter 23 Henry V and the Invasion of Iraq
- Chapter 24 Who Pays the Price?
- Chapter 25 ‘Mere Prattle, without Practice, Is All His Soldiership’
- Chapter 26 ‘Thou Hast Set Me on the Rack’
- Afterword
- Notes
- Index
Chapter 8 - Ellen Terry Stars at the Shakespeare Hut
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 August 2023
- Shakespeare at War
- Shakespeare at War
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Notes on Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Note on the Text
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 ‘The Truth for Which We Are Fighting’
- Chapter 2 The Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) and Garrick’s Shakespearean Nationalism
- Chapter 3 Revolutionary Shakespeare
- Chapter 4 Hamlet Mobilized
- Chapter 5 Shakespeare, the North-West Passage, and the Russian War
- Chapter 6 ‘Now for Our Irish Wars’
- Chapter 7 Shakespeare and the Survival of Middle England
- Chapter 8 Ellen Terry Stars at the Shakespeare Hut
- Chapter 9 The 1916 Shakespeare Tercentenary at № 1 Camp in Calais
- Chapter 10 Shakespeare Does His Bit for the War Effort
- Chapter 11 Germanizing Shakespeare during the First World War
- Chapter 12 Readers and Rebels
- Chapter 13 Forgotten Histories
- Chapter 14 ‘Now Good or Bad, ’tis but the Chance of War’
- Chapter 15 ‘Precurse of Feared Events’
- Chapter 16 But What Are We Fighting For?
- Chapter 17 Henry V and the Battle of Powerscourt
- Chapter 18 Unser Shakespeare in Nazi Germany
- Chapter 19 Framing the Jew
- Chapter 20 G. Wilson Knight’s ‘Royal Propaganda’ in ‘This Sceptred Isle’ (1941)
- Chapter 21 Shakespeare’s Desert Camouflage
- Chapter 22 ‘May I with Right and Conscience Make This Claim?’
- Chapter 23 Henry V and the Invasion of Iraq
- Chapter 24 Who Pays the Price?
- Chapter 25 ‘Mere Prattle, without Practice, Is All His Soldiership’
- Chapter 26 ‘Thou Hast Set Me on the Rack’
- Afterword
- Notes
- Index
Summary
A history of Shakespeare in wartime could not be complete without including an object representing the only built memorial in London for Shakespeare’s Tercentenary of 1916, the Shakespeare Hut for servicemen on leave in London. However, material traces of this extraordinary building are extremely scarce. Focusing for the first time on the material and paradigmatic significance of one surviving object from this building and a sister document, this essay examines a paper programme that epitomizes the multilayered significance of women’s Shakespearean performance in wartime. This programme presents an evening of Shakespearean speeches, scenes, and songs, performed by diverse practitioners from theatre superstar Ellen Terry to a troupe of teenaged girls from Miss Italia Conte’s school. Terry kept a copy of this piece of ephemera for the rest of her life. The programme’s flimsy physical form (a small, folded piece of thin paper) reveals how necessary wartime austerity contrasts starkly with the cornucopia of star talent and entertainments presented within, reminding us of the ephemeral and uniquely transient nature both of wartime performance and of the specific fragility and rarity of material traces of women’s wartime Shakespeare production.
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- Shakespeare at WarA Material History, pp. 81 - 90Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023