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Madame Vestris' A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Web of Victorian Tradition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2010

Gary Jay Williams
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Extract

The long stage life of A Midsummer Night's Dream as a leafy Victorian valentine, with all the traditions our era has so strained to be rid of, is all but gone—with few questions ever having been asked about its origins and development. That Victorian stage image of the play, still familiar to us, owes the most to the production of the remarkable Madame Lucia Elizabeth Vestris. Her A Midsummer Night's Dream opened on 16 November 1840, in the second of her three season management of Covent Garden with her new husband and lessee, Charles James Mathews. As well as restoring the text, for which Odell duly credited her, Vestris set many precedents in staging, casting, costuming, and music. Her production has never been studied in detail, either for itself or its considerable influence.

Type
Research Article
Information
Theatre Survey , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , November 1977 , pp. 1 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1977

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References

NOTES

1 Shakespeare from Betterton to Irving (New York, 1920), II, 223Google Scholar.

2 The Fairy Queen, an Opera. Represented at the Queen's Theatre . . . (London, Jacob Tonson, 1692).Google Scholar For analysis of the music and staging of this opera, see Moore, Robert, Henry Purcell and the Restoration Theatre (Cambridge, Mass., 1961), pp. 100, 128-129Google Scholar. For analysis of the text and music of each of the eighteenth and early nineteenth-century adaptations referred to in the following discussion, see my " 'The Concord of this Discord': Music in the Stage History of A Midsummer Night's Dream," Yale/Theatre, IV, 3 (Summer 1973), 40-60.

3 Richard Cross and William Hopkins, Manuscript Diary, Folger Shakespeare Library; George Winchester Stone, "A Midsummer Night's Dream in the hands of Garrick and Colman," PMLA, LIV, 2 (06 1939), 469–481Google Scholar.

4 St. James Chronicle, 24 November 1763.Google Scholar

5 "Pyramus and Thisbe" was done as a run-through in the forest which Theseus observed from behind a tree. When he stepped forth to disclose himself, Bottom, played by John Liston, fell over in a dead faint—twice.

6 Covent Garden playbill, 17 January 1816, Harvard Theatre Collection.

7 The Examiner, 20 January 1816.Google Scholar

8 New York Daily Times and New York American, 8 and 9 November 1826Google Scholar

9 The Spirit of the Times, 4 09 1841Google Scholar; fugitive clipping, Joseph Ireland's Scrapbooks of the New York Stage, Beinecke Library, Yale University.

10 Annals of the New York Stage, IV (1928), 530Google Scholar; Odell, , "A Midsummer Night's Dream on the New York Stage," Shaksperian Studies, eds. Brander Matthews and A. H. Thorndike (New York, 1916), pp. 127–129Google Scholar.

11 University Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor: Charles Shattuck, "The Shakespeare Promptbooks: First Supplement," Theatre Notebook, XXIV (Winter 1969), MND No. 9.Google Scholar

12 Drury Lane playbill, 30 November 1833, Crawford Theatre Collection, Sterling Library, Yale University. The Mendelssohn overture premiered in concert in 1827; Mendelssohn's later incidental score was commissioned for the Ludwig Tieck production of 1843 in Potsdam.

13 Folger Shakespeare Library.

14 Pattie was also the publisher of George Scharfs Recollections of the Scenic Effects At Covent Garden Theatre, during the Seasons 1838-9 (London, 1839)Google Scholar.

15 E.g., Lacy notes at the end of Act III that a Maypole dance was done at this point "at the Princess's Theatre," and in his Act V opening stage directions calls for Mendelssohn's "wedding march." The Maypole dance was uniquely Kean's and the march is part of the incidental score not yet written when Vestris did the play. Dating Lacy's volume at circa 1856 are the playbills of that year accompanying other plays in the volume.

16 As in many of his Acting Plays, Lacy has the note: "Those lines marked with an asterisk are generally omitted in the performance." This proves a most unreliable guide; asterisks mark only some of the lines cut in the Pattie edition, not all, and many other lines are silently omitted. Compare Odell's reliance on the Lacy edition, Shakespeare from Betterton to Irving, II. 204. Professor Shattuck in Mr. Macready Produces As You Like It (Urbana, 1962Google Scholar), v, similarly found Lacy's text unreliable.

17 Line counts were done by a line by line comparison with the Variorum Edition of the play, Horace Howard Furness, ed. (New York 1953)Google Scholar.

18 Halliwell, James Orchard, An Introduction to Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream (London, 1841), pp. 51–52Google Scholar. Halliwell also issued a pamphlet vigorously defending Vestris' management of Covent Garden and of Planche in response to a letter in the Cambridge Advertiser (Folger).

19 Based on the Folger Shakespeare Library promptbook made for the Phelps production in 1861: Shattuck, Charles, The Shakespeare Promptbooks (Urbana, 1965)Google Scholar, MND No. 19. Its staging notes agree substantially with all accounts of the 1853 production.

20 Based on the promptbook of his stage manager, John Moore, Folger Shakespeare Library: Shattuck, MND No. 10.

21 Based on the promptbook made for Kean by T. W. Edmonds in 1859, Harvard Theatre Collection. This annotated, illustrated promptbook is made up from pages of Kean's own third edition of the text (1859), and no further cuts are added to those in the edition. Shattuck, "Supplement," MND No. 15a.

22 Based on French's Standard Drama edition of Laura Keene's promptbook (New York, O. A. Roorbach, Jr., 1859), Folger Shakespeare Library.Google Scholar

23 Based on the Folger Shakespeare Library promptbook made up from Daly's edition: Shattuck, MND No. 23. Winter also freely rearranged lines.

24 Based on the Folger promptbook, Shattuck, MND No. 31. I am grateful to the Tree estate executors for permission to examine the Tree promptbooks formerly held by the Victoria and Albert Museum, now at the University of Bristol. The clearest of that group of promptbooks (Shattuck MND No. 29) shows the artisans' reunion scene omitted entirely, which would add thirty-seven lines to the total.

25 Promptbook, Harvard Theatre Collection, Shattuck, MND No. 35a. For fuller discussion of each of the texts referred to here and others, see my "Our Moonlight Revels: A Midsummer Night's Dream on the English-speaking Stage 1662-1970" (Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1974), Chapters 2, 3.

26 Halliwell, p. 45.

27 The Literary Gazette and Journal of the Belles Lettres, Arts, Sciences, & c., 21 November 1840Google Scholar.

28 "Music in the Stage History of MND," 53-56.Google Scholar

29 21 November 1840.

30 Horn's duet was used, for example, in the productions of Barry (1854), Daly (1888), Sir Frank Benson (1889), Tree (1900), and Otho Stuart-Oscar Asche (1905). As late as 1936, these lines were being sung, in Regent's Park, but to Mendelssohn's "On Wings of Song."

31 The Town, 21 November 1840Google Scholar; The Theatrical Journal, 23 January 1840Google Scholar.

32 17 November 1840.

33 Otho Stuart played Oberon in Benson's 1889 London production. (Walter Hampden played the role in the Stuart-Asche MND of 1905, and James Young in Annie Russell's 1906 New York production.) From Garrick to Vestris, Oberon was played by Master Reinholt in 1755; Miss Rogers in 1763 (both versions); Mr. Duruset in 1816; Mr. Richings in 1826; and Miss Taylor in 1833. Phyllis Neilson-Terry played Oberon in Regent's Park as late as 1936; Helen Cherry played it there.in 1942. Benjamin Britten scored the role for a counter-tenor in his 1960 opera.

34 Pall Mall Gazette, 11 January 1900.Google Scholar

35 Manchester Guardian, 2 September 1865Google Scholar; preface to Calvert's acting edition of the play, Folger Shakespeare Library.

36 Covent Garden playbill, 17 January 1816, HTC: Vestris playbill reproduced in Lacy, vol. XXVIII: Kean, 3rd ed., iv.

37 Recollections and Reflections (London, 1872), II, 23Google Scholar.

38 For this prologue (and the best documented biography), see Appleton, William W., Madame Vestris and the London Stage (New York, 1974), pp. 124–125Google Scholar.

39 Comedies, I (1839), 333.

40 Yale-Rockefeller Collection of Theatrical Prints, D.I.3.10.0005. Rowe's frontispiece to his 1709 edition of the play shows an heroically plumed, classically armored Oberon with a train of similarly dressed fairies, an engraving associated with Purcell's opera by Merchant, W. Moelwyn, Shakespeare and the Artist (London, 1959), pp. 50Google Scholar, 45; plate 9b.

41 All stage directions cited are from the Pattie edition; costume descriptions come from its costume list.

42 21 November 1840.

43 The Theatrical JournalGoogle Scholar, 1 May 1841. Pattie's list of "Scenes and Properties" for II. ii gives the change as follows: "The previous scene works off gradually and discovers another part of the Wood."

44 21 November 1840.

45 Phelps is the century's only producer who does not alter this sequence; his forest was not as literally illustrated, and he placed the reunion scene in Quince's house at the beginning of his Act V. See also Richard Foulkes, "Samuel Phelps's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Sadler's Wells—October 8, 1853," Theatre Notebook, XXIII, 2 (Winter 1968-69), 57-59.

46 21 November 1840.

47 The Times, 17 November 1840Google Scholar.

48 Planché, II, 51-52.

49 The Theatrical Journal, 1 May 1841Google Scholar.

50 John Bull and-The Spectator, 21 November 1840Google Scholar.

51 21 November 1840.

52 17 November 1840.

53 21 November 1840.

54 The Spectator, 21 November 1840Google Scholar; Belton, Fred, Random Recollections of an Old Actor (London, 1880), p. 151Google Scholar. For traditional acting business in the play, see Sprague, Arthur Colby, Shakespeare and the Actors (New York, 1973), pp. 50–55Google Scholar.

55 The Spectator, 21 November 1840Google Scholar.

56 Halliwell, An Introduction to Midsummer Night's Dream (London, 1841), pp. 45-46Google Scholar; The Times, 17 November 1840; The Athenaeum, 21 November 1840.

57 The Spectator and John Bull, 21 November 1840; The Times, 17 November 1840. The 16 November 1840 cast was as follows: Theseus-Cooper; Egeus-Diddear; Lysander-J. Vining; Demetrius-Brindal; Philostrate-Hemming; Quince-Bartley; Bottom-Harley; Flute-Keeley; Snout-Meadows; Snug-F. Matthews; Starveling-W. H. Payne; Hippolyta- Mrs. Brougham; Hermia-Mrs. Nesbett; Helena-Miss Cooper; Oberon-Vestris; Titania-Mrs. Walter Lacy; Puck-Miss Marshall; First Fairy-Miss Rainforth; Second, Third, and Fourth Fairies-Misses Grant, Lee, and A. Taylor; Peaseblossom-Miss A. Payne; Cobweb-Miss Mott; Moth-Master Payne; Mustardseed-Miss Green; Fauns-Messrs. Binge, S. Jones, and Gilbert; Wood Nymph-Miss Ballin; Satyrs-Messrs. C. J. Smith, Gouriet, Ridgway, Sutton, Ireland, Gardiner. Remaining lists of miscellaneous fairies and attendants upon Theseus and Hippolyta number seventy with eight apparent instances of doubling.

58 The Life of Charles James Mathews, Chiefly Autobiographical, ed. Charles Dickens (London, 1879), II, 321-322. Macready's The Tempest of 1838 had a total of fifty-five performances.

59 Ibid.., II, 92-93

60 The Lyre, 21 May 1842.

61 Moore's collection of promptbooks was extensive, and in his career he is a carrier of the traditions of this play from Burton to Daly for whom he also stage managed.

62 Promptbook, NYPL Theatre Collection: Shattuck, MND No. 12.

63 Playbill, The Boston Theatre, 11 September 1856, Harvard Theatre Collection.

64 Reviews, New York Daily Tribune, 14 November 1867, and Herald, 5 November 1867; playbill, Olympic Theatre, 3 December 1867, Crawford Theatre Collection, Yale; William Winter, The Jeffersons (Boston, 1881), pp. 190-191.

65 Shattuck, MND No. 25; playbill for Grand Opera House, 30 August 1873, Crawford Theatre Collection, Yale.

66 Literary Gazette, 21 November 1840.

67 In addition to the appropriate promptbooks and reviews previously cited, sources for the paragraph are: Olympic production—New York Herald, 29 October 1867; Daily Tribune, 30 October 1867; fugitive clipping of 1867, Harvard Theatre Collection. Oberon costume list in Lacy's Acting Plays, LIX. The Kean watercolor of the meeting of Oberon and Titania may be seen (in b/w) in Heinz Kindefmann, Theatergeschichte Europas, VII (Salzburg, 1965), facing p. 97. One of the Tree photographs may be seen in Oscar Brockett, History of Theatre, 3rd ed. (Boston, 1977), p. 477Google Scholar.

68 Benson, , My Memoirs (London, 1930), p. 287Google Scholar.

69 Shattuck, , ed., William Charles Macready's King John (Urbana, 1962), introductionGoogle Scholar.