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Elizabeth Robins: The Genesis of an Independent Manageress

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2010

Gay Gibson Cima
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Extract

J. T. Grein's Independent Theatre has long been considered the counterpart to Antoine's Théâtre Libre and Brahm's Freie Bühne: a subscription-based theatre introducing experimental drama to a coterie audience in the 1890s. However, just as in Paris there were rival production groups such as Paul Fort's Théâtre d'Art, so in London Grein was not the sole purveyor of the new drama. He had many individual competitors, the most important of whom were women who produced primarily the plays of Henrik Ibsen.

Type
Research Article
Information
Theatre Survey , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , November 1980 , pp. 145 - 163
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1980

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References

NOTES

1 Archer produced his adaptation, entitled Quicksands, on December 15, 1880. Mrs. Beringer chose Archer's later, published translation of the play.

2 In June 1890, Mrs. Winslowe recited portions of The Pilluis of Society and An Enemy of the People to a private audience. Miss Fraser presented her A Doll's House on January 27, 1891, at Terry's Theatre, and Miss Farr produced Rosmersholm in February 1891, one month before Ghosts'March 13 premiere.

3 Robins, Elizabeth, Both Sides of the Curtain (London: William Heinemann, 1940), p. 10.Google Scholar

4 Robins' diaries and the unpublished letters quoted herein are housed in the Fales Library of New York University.

5 Robins appeared in matinee productions of Miss Morland's Quichands on February 18, 1890, and Dr. Dabbs' Punchinello on June 27, 1890. On March 13, 1891, she played in Mrs. Florence Bell's matinee A Joint Household.

6 Robins' June 12, 1890, diary entry.

7 Alexander publicly critized her for not changing from her Will to her Dr. Bill costume fast enough, a chastisement which led her to write him a letter suggesting that he could use her understudy for the curtain-raiser if he wasn't pleased with her work. He responded by giving the letter to his lawyers; she countered by giving him two weeks' notice.

8 TS from Robins' diary, October 26, 1891, Fales.

9 Robins, Elizabeth, Theatre and Friendship (London: Jonathan Cape, 1932), p. 66.Google Scholar

10 Heinemann had discovered in 1890 that he could secure the rights by publishing Edmund Gosse's English translations at the same time Hedda was published in Norwegian, but Archer had previously arranged with Ibsen that his own translation would appear in Walter Scott's edition, which Archer argued was the official translation.

11 From TS of Robins' diary, Fales.

12 Cf. Shaw, George Bernard, Collected Letters, 1874–1897, ed. Laurence, Dan (New York: Dodd, Mead, & Co., 1965), pp. 292 and 295Google Scholar, and Archer's letters to Robins, April 23, 1891, and one dated “April 22 or 29, 1891,” Fales.

13 For the Hedda production Robins contributed her small savings account and Lea her jeweled bracelet, which allowed them enough in “securities” to borrow £300 from “an amiable friend.” Cf. Robins, Elizabeth, Ibsen and The Actress (London: Leonard and Virginia Woolf, 1928), p. 16.Google Scholar Nowhere is the Hedda loan agent named. At first Robins hoped that The Master Builder would be produced by an actor-manager who would cast her as Hilda, but all except for Tree, who was attracted to the role of Solness, rejected her. When she discovered, however, that as with Ghosts there were “conditions,” she decided to produce the play herself.

(Tree's conditions were that the play would be “lifted out of its sordid provincialism” by making Solness a sculptor and by setting the play in England, with English stock characters, as Elizabeth also records in Ibsen and the Actress, p. 40.)

14 Cf. letters from Foss to Lea, March 18 and 19, 1891, Fales, for a record of all these arrangements. The sketch entitled “Working at Hedda,” in Robins' archives at the Fales, reveals a faithful rendering of Ibsen's floor plan description.

15 Srar, March 23, 1891, from Robins’ theatre clippings scrapbook, Fales.

16 By March 25, 1891, Robins and Lea had secured the following cast: Scott Buist, Tesman; Charles Sugden, Judge Brack; Arthur Elwood, Levborg; Henrietta Cowen, Miss Tesman; and Patty Chapman, Bertha. The top salary went to Sugden, who demanded £20 a week.

17 Walkley, A.B., Playhouse Impressions (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1892), pp. 62–3.Google Scholar

18 Edmund Gosse, in the introduction to his translation of Ibsen's, Henrik limited edition of Hedda Gabler(London: Heinemann, 1891), p. 13.Google Scholar

19 From an undated review in Robins' theatre clippings scrapbook, Fales.

20 Cf. Robins' records, Fales, or Archer, William, “The Mausoleum of Ibsen,” Fortnightly Review, July, 1893.Google Scholar

21 From the Harvard Library Theatre Collection, quoted in Jane Marcus, “Elizabeth Robins,” Diss. Northwestern 1973, p. 79. Marcus' thesis is especially detailed in its analysis of Robins' feminism.

22 London Illustrated News, February 25, 1893, theatre dippings scrapbook, Fales.

23 Archer, William, Theatrical World of 1893 (London: Walter Scott, Ltd., 1894), p. 163.Google Scholar

24 London Illustrated News, July 15, 1893; cf. also July 8, 1893, theatre clippings scrapbook, Fales.

25 Shaw, George Bernard, Our Theatre in the Nineties (London: Constable, 1932), II, p. 112.Google Scholar

26 From what appears to be a diary-like letter to Florence Bell, dated February 19, 1892, Fales.

27 From a note pinned to a newspaper article entitled “Two Women Found Slain in Hotels in Los Angeles” in the Fales Library. The note, in Elizabeth's handwriting, reads in part: “The William Heinemann Scene—pistol—he waiting outside front door in the dimness—a mere shadow—I heard the steps going down long after.” There is an arrow from the word “pistol” to “it was re-enacted with Shaw,” as it later was.

28 Shaw, George Bernard, Collected Letters (New York: Dodd, Mead, & Co., 1965), p. 292.Google Scholar

29 Shaw's logic stumbled when he later contended that Robins was also playing herself as Hilda in The Master Builder. Cf. Our Theatres in the Nineties (London: Constable and Co., rev. rep. 1948), pp. 78–9.

30 Cf. letter from Shaw to Robins, February 5, 1893, in Shaw, , Collected Letters, p. 380.Google Scholar

31 Ibid., p. 381.

32 Letter from Shaw to Robins, June 5, 1893, in Shaw, , Collected Letters, p. 397.Google Scholar

33 Cf. Shaw, George Bernard, Preface to Ellen Terry and Bernard Shaw, A Correspondence, Ed. John, Christopher St. (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1931), pp. vii, x.Google Scholar

34 Shaw often annoyed his actresses by telling them to act more like Elizabeth in her “strong” roles. He sometimes called upon her for advice, as when he asked her to help him cast Mrs. Warren's Profession. (Cf. letters from Shaw to Robins, November 14 and 20, 1893, Fales.) He considered casting her in Man of Destiny (Cf. letter from Shaw to Achurch, August 31, 1895, in Shaw, , Collected Letters, pp. 553–4Google Scholar), and You Never Can Tell. (Cf. letter from Shaw to Ellen Terry, October 2, 1896, in Shaw, , Collected Letters, p. 671.Google Scholar) Finally he suggested that she succeed Grein as a possible co-director-of the. Independent Theatre in 1895. (Cf. letter from Shaw to Charrington, October 10, 1895, in Shaw, , Collected Letters, p. 563.)Google Scholar

35 “Even W.A. my strongest anchor to good good cheer and wholesome activity is coming to demand too much of me of time and regard. It would not be hard for me to love this man not wisely but too well and I must guard my poor life against a curse like that. For soon after I had acknowledged him the one being in the world for me he wd. possess the supremest power to pain me, and unconsciously and inevitably he wd. use his power. Not that he wd. wish to, not that he wdn't try to avoid it, but he wd. be as helpless as I. (From a TS of November 5, 1891, diary entry, Fales.) Shaw noticed Archer's fondness for Robins and teased them both about it, charging that Archer had lost his ability to criticize her acting objectively. (Cf. Shaw to Archer, in Shaw, Collected Letters, pp. 320–3, and Shaw to Robins, November 9 and 10, 1891, Fales.)

36 Cf., for example, Robins' side-book for Hedda Gabler, p. 47, Fales. The Archer translations published after the Hedda Gabler production reflect Robins’ alterations. For a list of these translations, see pp. 144–5 in the Bibliographical Appendix to Ibsen's Speeches and New Letters by Henrik Ibsen, trans. Arne Kildal (London: Frank Palmer, 1911). Gilbert Murray, in a letter to Archer on July 24, 1897, agreed with a charge made in “Ibsen in Translation” (The Speaker, July 10, 1897) that Archer's translations were full of Americanisms. This is further evidence of Robins' hand in Archer's translations from Hedda on.

37 Unsigned review, Saturday Review, March 4, 1893, lxxv, pp. 241–2, quoted in Egan, Michael, Ibsen, The Critical Heritage (London: Routledgc and Kegan, 1972), p. 289.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38 Robins did not always star in her own productions: though she played Hedda, Hilda, Agnes, and Rebecca, she cast Achurch as Rita to her own Asta and Miss Ward as Gunhild to her Ella.

39 For a hilarious account of one such trial matinee see p. 148 in Robins' satirical novel George Mandeville'sHusband, published under the pseudonym “C.E. Raimond” (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1894).

40 Orme, Michael, J.T. Grein: The Story of a Pioneer 1862–1935 (London: John Murray, 1936), p. 142.Google Scholar

41 Saturday Review, Vol. 79, 1895, p. 126.