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A Re-Examination of Baldwin's Theory of Acting Lines

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2009

Skiles Howard
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Extract

Theatre history sometimes amuses us with the persistence of certain notions which, no matter how roundly discredited, simply refuse to die. One of these speculations concerns the method of pairing role and actor in the Elizabethan theatre. Actors were assigned to their roles, and roles were written for actors, in accordance with the actor's “lines of business” — weren't they? T. W. Baldwin's long and influential book, The Organization and Personnel of the Shakespearean Company, attempts to prove this method of role designation. However, his is one of those theories of remarkable stamina which, in spite of serious critical challenge, never stay down for the count, but stagger gamely back into lectures and appear unexpectedly in respectful citations. Given its shortcomings and inaccuracies under close scrutiny, Baldwin's hypothesis seems to demand a final and permanent interment. To that end, I will examine the question of acting lines — the theory, its champions and its challengers, and the evidence for and against it, taking Baldwin's work as a starting point.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Survey , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , May 1985 , pp. 1 - 20
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1985

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References

1 “Lines of business” refers to the casting practice which organized the theatre in England from the Restoration through the nineteenth century, by which each actor specialized in a certain kind of role — a young lover, a villain — and played this part exclusively throughout his career. It is well documented that in the Restoration, only a few extraordinary actors played a variety of parts; the rest took up one line, or specialized even further in a part of a line. For a discussion of this practice and its effects, see Nicoll, Allardyce, A History of Restoration Drama 1660–1700 (London: Cambridge, 1928), p. 65Google Scholar, and Highfill, Philip H. Jr., “Performers and Performing,” in The London Theatrical World 1669–1800, ed. Hume, Robert D. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1980), pp. 171–176Google Scholar. Mullin, Donald C. writes in Victorian Actors and Actresses in Review (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1983), pp. xxiv–xxvGoogle Scholar, “In the nineteenth century it was ‘lines of business’ that provided a precise method for the organization of theatre companies, and players were cast only in the kinds of parts for which they had been engaged, which represented their specialty, and which they could be expected to perform readily on very short notice. Only leading actors and actresses could be expected to display some variety of manner.… Many actors thought themselves entirely out of their depth if asked to play a character different from their line, and it was considered almost a legal right for a player to refuse deviations from the agreed line of parts.”

2 Baldwin, T.W., The Organization and Personnel of The Shakespearean Company (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1927)Google Scholar. Nowhere, I think, did Baldwin use the term “lines of business” in its entirety, preferring “lines,” “acting lines,” or even “business.” Perhaps he chose to abbreviate the term in order to uproot it from its familiar context.

3 Baldwin, p. 177. Emphases mine, immodest assertion Baldwin's. He refers to the King's Company as the Shakespearean Company throughout, even when dealing with events which took place long after Shakespeare's death. The “preceding plays” he refers to are The Roman Actor, The Deserving Favorite, The Picture, The Duchess of Malfi, and The Wild Goose Chase, listed on p. 175.

4 Beckerman, Bernard, Shakespeare at the Globe (New York: Macmillan, 1962), p. 135Google Scholar.

5 Baldwin, Ch. VII, “Division of Labor in the Shakespearean Company,” pp. 176–90. Baldwin cites relative lengths of roles frequently and even takes the trouble to chart them (p. 175). Roles are categorized as “leading,” “major,” and “minor”; therefore, “importance,” a rather subjective value in the way Baldwin understands it, is relevant. Actors are also categorized as “clown” and “not-clown,” the latter category subdivided into serious actors and villains-and-comedians (p. 186).

6 Baldwin, p. 373, and similarly on p. 305. Is he not incorrect in assuming the existence in Shakespeare's time of the greasepaint, and nose-putty school of make-up that was particularly adapted to the color spectrum of artificial light? But to return a moment to the question of the character's resemblance to the actor, in Appendix IV (pp. 373–87), Baldwin undertakes to collect the physical descriptions of the characters from each actor's repertoire. For example, Benfield's characters are described as “a young lord,” “an old blind fool,” “a youth,” “an old man,” and “a handsome man.” It is improbable that Benfield looked simultaneously old and young; and the most detailed description, “handsome,” is not only vague, but made about the character De Gard when he is in disguise, which Baldwin neglects to point out.

7 Baldwin, pp. 305–06. On the basis of the most minimal evidence, one report of what he calls the actors “playing their accustomed parts in a drama of real life,” he pronounces: “these men did not act, they were themselves” (pp. 183–84). This conclusion is also cited, skeptically, by Bevington, David M. in From Mankind to Marlowe (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1962), p. 108Google Scholar.

8 Baldwin, pp. 197, 300, 306, and 373 for a start.

9 Kakutani, Michiko, “What Makes an Actor Choose a Certain Role?” The New York Times, Feb. 8, 1981, Sec. 2, p. 1, cont. p. 14Google Scholar, quotes Helen Hayes comparing the present with the days of her youth: “Roles aren't being fitted to the actors anymore; the actors are being fitted to the roles.” The article insists at some length that Belasco and other producers of that time frequently had plays written specifically to “show off” a star's personality. And this was also true in the nineteenth century, according to Cole, Toby and Chinoy, Helen Krich in Actors on Acting (New York: Crown, 1949), p. 461Google Scholar: “For these popular actors [Cushman, Forrest, and Booth] the American dramatists wrote their plays. John Howard Payne (1791–1852), actor-playwright of the early part of the century and author of Home, Sweet Home, attested to the preeminence of the actor when he wrote in the preface of his play Thérèse: [It is necessary in the production of modern drama to consult the peculiarities of leading performers.]”

10 Bentley, G.E., The Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 7 vols. (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1941–1956). In Vol. IIGoogle Scholar, Bentley discusses four of the sharers on whose roles I will focus, Benfield (pp. 374–76), Robinson (pp. 550–53), Sharpe (p. 569), and Swanston (pp. 584–86). In connection to the first three he refers directly to Baldwin; only in regard to Swanston's roles does he differ with Baldwin, and then solely with respect to the nature of this actor's line, the existence of which he never questions.

11 Bentley, Gerald Eades, The Profession of Player in Shakespeare's Time (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1984), ch. VIIIGoogle Scholar.

12 Bevington, David, review of The Shakespearean Stage, 2nd ed., by Gurr, Andrew, Shakespeare Quarterly, 35 (1984), 487–489CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 David, Richard, “Shakespeare and the Players,” Studies in Shakespeare, ed. Alexander, Peter (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1964), p. 35Google Scholar.

14 David, p. 40, discusses physical characteristics, and on p. 50, asserts Shakespeare's essential dependence on his actors, but does not attempt to explain how Shakespeare visualized his Hamlet, Othello, and Lear as well as Richard III in terms of the stage personality of Richard Burbage.

15 Gurr, Andrew, The Shakespearean Stage 1574–1642, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1980), pp. 102–104Google Scholar.

16 Gurr, p. 102. Concentration on one's memory might indeed be difficult. Gurr's statement betrays the scholar's understandable if regrettable bias toward the primacy of the word and neglects to account for the possibility that a man might have become an actor precisely because he found “personation” and memorization easy and enjoyable.

17 All citations are to the following editions: The Deserving Favorite, ed. Gray, Charles (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1905)Google Scholar; The Duchess of Malfi, ed. Lucas, F. L. (New York: Macmillan, 1959)Google Scholar; The Wild Goose Chase, in Drama of the English Renaissance II: The Stuart Period, ed. Fraser, Russell A. and Rabkin, Norman (New York: Macmillan, 1976)Google Scholar. The responsibility for the spelling of Carliell's surname is Gray's. The reader is advised to expect inconsistency in citation form, since the plays are printed according to different conventions. In The Deserving Favorite, lines are numbered from the beginning of the play; in The Picture, lines are not numbered at all, and I have added page numbers in the interest of specificity.

18 The responsibility for the spelling of Swanston's given name is Bentley's (p. 584).

19 The versatility issue can cut both ways. Baldwin refers to Taylor's versatility as a characteristic of his “line” (p. 178), and Bevington, arguing against “lines,” cites Lowin's versatility (Mankind, p. 104).

20 Baldwin backhandedly acknowledged that his system does not work with them (p. 384).

21 The active/ reactive category owes its inspiration to Bernard Beckerman in Dynamice of Drama (New York: Drama Book Specialists, 1979), pp. 80–98Google Scholar.

22 Baldwin, p. 184, discusses Sharpe's career and repertoire.

23 Line totals and ranks are taken from Baldwin's chart facing p. 175, which almost surprisingly seems to present fairly accurate information to use against him. Bentley (Player, p. 222n.) does acknowledge Baldwin's line counts.

24 Baldwin, p. 184. According to this description, Sharpe rather than Swanston should have been Lowin's “understudy.” as Baldwin terms it (pp. 182, 188). Baldwin has a peculiar understanding of this term. As commonly defined, an understudy is someone who plays a role in the temporary absence of the regular player, not someone who plays a similar but smaller role, or even someone who takes over a role.

25 His part is longer than those of Lowin and Taylor, which brings into question another of Baldwin's criteria of “lines.”

26 Baldwin, p. 184. This, moreover, is a characteristic of all the repertoires.

27 Bentley, Vol. I. pp. 76–77.

28 Baldwin, p. 187. Baldwin frequently reduces an actor or his role to “orator” or “oratorical.” a facile maneuver for making large, relatively meaningless groupings.

29 Though Baldwin calls him “young” (p. 187).

30 According to Baldwin (p. 182) and Bentley (p. 584). Swanston inherited Othello. This makes no sense if his “line” consisted of “smooth villains” – in that case he should have played lago.

31 Baldwin, p. 181. In other words, whatever parts are not “smooth villains” are assumed because of Swanston's “utilitarian” function, that is, his versatility.

32 Bentley, Vol. II, p. 584.

33 Contrast this with the Cardinal's entrapment in The Duchess of Malfi, which is less funny, lago. we remember, attempts a hasty exit when exposed.

34 Baldwin, p. 183, emphasis mine.

35 I.160–65; II.535–69; IV.2385–2440 and 2713–97.

36 I.182–83; II.568–69; III.1892–96 and 1876–77; IV. 2757 and 2789; and V.3161.

37 It should be evident by now that with few exceptions (Rusticus, the Cardinal), the characters within a play tend to speak like one another more than the characters of an actor's repertoire resemble each other in their speech patterns. The language of all characters in The Deserving Favorite is “expressive” – overwrought, elaborate — and that of The Roman Actor, “persuasive.” with emphasis on argument and deception. With none of the actors is there this kind of consistency from play to play.

38 Baldwin, p. 183. Emphasis mine, mistake his.

39 From William Ostler; Bentley. p. 375.

40 Compare this with the Cardinal's 252 lines (my count).

41 Baldwin explains away this blatant deviation from his system by a projection onto Swanston of a disgruntled attitude over having to play an uncharacteristic and thankless role (p. 364).

42 Bentley. p. 584.

43 See The Roman Actor (III.ii) for a good example of the meddling non-pro who has ideas about casting, editing, and coaching.

44 Bentley, p. 692.

45 See notes 1 and 10.