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“Shakespeare spelt ruin and Byron bankruptcy”: Shakespeare at Chatterton's Drury Lane, 1864–1878

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2009

Daniel Barrett
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Extract

In the honor roll of nineteenth-century theatrical producers of Shakespeare, the name Frederick Balsir Chatterton has never been entered. Even in his own time he was often considered more of an entrepreneur or entertainer than a serious advocate of Shakespeare. Since then he has either been ignored or ridiculed by critics and historians, the lone exception being Odell, who gave Chatterton's productions their only serious attention. What historians remember instead is Chatterton's infamous maxim— “Shakespeare spelt ruin and Byron bankruptcy”—a saying he did not invent and did not totally believe.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Survey , Volume 29 , Issue 2 , November 1988 , pp. 155 - 174
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1988

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References

Notes

1 Odell, George C. D., Shakespeare from Betterton to Irving, 2 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1920), II, 257–259, 298–308Google Scholar.

2 Coleman, John, Players and Playwrights I Have Known, 2 vols. (London: Chatto and Windus, 1888), II, 334Google Scholar.

3 Smith could not comply with the terms of his seven-year lease (signed in October 1859), whereby he was obligated to redecorate Drury Lane at considerable expense. Falconer bought out the remainder of Smith's lease for £6,055.17.6, an amount that included Chatterton's investment of £2,886 in the Lyceum. These and other facts about the Falconer-Chatterton management appear in Falconer v. Chatterton. Complaint and Answer [1866], a lawsuit brought in 1865 by Falconer to block Chatterton's sole assumption of managerial duties. Falconer won a settlement and Chatterton, typically, published the affidavits in his own defense. A copy of this document is in the Harvard Theatre Collection (Thr 465.20. 141).

4 Falconer had gone heavily into debt by the time the theatre opened, spending up to £8,000 on interior decorations—an extravagant amount, in Chatterton's opinion. Consequently, according to his solicitor, Falconer suffered “serious embarrassment producing great mental anxiety nervousness and depression.” Chatterton attributed Falconer's disorders to alcoholism. In any case, because of Falconer's inability to pay his debts and participate in the day-to-day operation of the theatre, Chatterton proposed in March 1863 that they form a new partnership. Chatterton's income remained the same—£6 a week, a third of the net profits, and two benefits—but with Falconer incapacitated, Chatterton ran the theatre singlehandedly for the next year. In March 1864, Chatterton proposed a new agreement—£10 a week salary and a 50–50 split of the profits—which Falconer accepted. Falconer later argued that this new arrangement did not revoke his original rights as sole lessee, such as determining when the theatre would open and what plays would be performed (Falconer v. Chatterton, passim).

5 Shirley S. Allen writes that Chatterton hired Phelps for a weekly salary of £80, a statement not entirely concordant with Chatterton's opinion that Phelps was “the greatest and cheapest feature we ever had.” The source of Allen's figure is uncertain. Stirling tells us that Phelps received £80 and sometimes £100 a week, but whether he did so during the entire engagement is unclear. See Allen, , Samuel Phelps and Sadler's Wells Theatre (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan Univ. Press, 1971), p. 293Google Scholar; Coleman, II, 345; Stirling, Edward, Old Drury Lane, 2 vols. (London: Chatto and Windus, 1881), II, 199Google Scholar.

6 Coleman, II, 345.

7 The Legitimate Drama at Drury Lane Theatre. By a Dilettante (London: T. H. Lacy, 1864), p. 16Google Scholar.

8 The First Part of Shakespeare's HENRY IV. at Drury Lane Theatre. By a Dilettante. Supplement to the Drury Lane playbill, Harvard Theatre Collection.

9 Athenaeum, 18 March 1865, p. 392.

10 Allen, pp. 297–98.

11 Sunday Times, 6 November 1864, p. 3.

12 Daily News, 4 November 1864, p. 2.

13 Illustrated London News, 12 November 1864, p. 498.

14 For an excellent, detailed analysis of this performance, see Carlisle, Carol J., “Helen Faucit's Lady Macbeth,” Shakespeare Studies, 16 (1983), 205–233Google Scholar.

15 Daily News, 18 October 1864, p. 2. Henry Morley made a related point in his Examiner review: “Miss Faucit is too essentially feminine, too exclusively gifted with the art of expressing all that is most graceful and beautiful in womanhood, to succeed in inspiring anything like awe or terror” (Henry Morley, The Journal of a London Playgoer, 2nd ed. [1891; rpt. Leicester: Leicester Univ. Press, 1974], p. 289).

16 Times, 7 November 1864, p. 4.

17 Report from the Select Committee on Theatrical Licenses and Regulations (1866; rpt. Shannon: Irish Univ. Press, 1970), p. 162, questions 4554–55.

18 By the opening of the 1865–66 season, neither partner was satisfied with the uneasy system of joint management. Chatterton was exasperated by Falconer's ill-advised methods of money-raising, and Falconer was annoyed at Chatterton's presumption in opening the theatre in September on his own authority. From the settlement of the lawsuit, Chatterton appears to have bought out Falconer's interest for£1500–£2000 (Falconer v. Chatterton, pp. 23–25, [33]). According to Baker, H. Barton, History of the London Stage and its Famous Players, rev. 2nd ed. (1904; rpt. New York: Benjamin Blom, 1969), p. 102Google Scholar, Chatterton signed a new lease for Drury Lane in 1866 at terms of £6,000 a year, and £10 a night after 200 performances. The actual figures are somewhat different. In an arbitrated settlement between Chatterton and Dion Boucicault dated 11 May 1870, John Hollingshead recorded the yearly minimum rent for a 200-night season as £5,000, and the yearly maximum rent for 270 nights as £5,350 (MS. HD 96, Huntington Library).

19 Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. Season 1866–7. Harvard Theatre Collection.

20 Coleman, II, 352–53.

21 Richard Foulkes has found that in 1863, not all the members of the Stratford Tercentenary Committee agreed with Phelps's self-assessment as “the foremost man in my profession in a demonstration meant to honour Shakespeare.” The Reverend J. C. M. Bellew, for one, thought Phelps “never has made any mark in Hamlet; and he is now quite too old.” The fiasco of inviting a London star to Stratford for the Tercentenary celebration began with this divided opinion on Phelps's merits. See Foulkes, , The Shakespeare Tercentenary of 1864 (London: The Society for Theatre Research, 1984), pp. 11–17Google Scholar.

22 Coleman, II, 355.

23 Falconer v. Chatterton, pp. 29–31.

24 Kenney, Charles Lamb, Poets and Profits at Drury Lane Theatre. A Theatrical Narrative. Suggested by F. B. Chatterton (London: Aubert's Steam Printing Works, 1875), p. 21Google Scholar.

25 Examiner, 11 March 1865, p. 151.

26 Coleman, II, 355.

27 Times, 24 August 1869, p. 10.

28 Chatterton later claimed that Boucicault not only invented the tag but goaded him to use it, with the result of bringing “a hornet's-nest about my ears” and causing “the tempest which has for years raged round these words” (Coleman, II, 355).

29 Chatterton and Kenney disagree on the receipts for the three Scott adaptations. Chatterton states that Amy Robsart and Rebecca netted about £6,000 each, The Lady of the Lake about £4,000. Kenney records profits of almost £10,000 for Amy Robsart (not counting its revival after the Christmas pantomime) and Rebecca, but says The Lady of the Lake was “the reverse of profitable to the management” (Coleman, II, 357; Kenney, pp. 30, 33, 39). Stirling (1, 291) reports earnings of “some £8,000” for Rebecca.

30 Cook, Dutton, Nights at the Play, 2 vols. (London: Chatto and Windus, 1883), I, 292Google Scholar. Cook (I, 293) quotes Chatterton's assertion “that a play to be acceptable to all classes in a large theatre must appeal to the eye and the senses as well as to the understanding; that the action must be accompanied by spectacle, and the play itself must be adapted to the dramatic fashion of the time in which we live.”

31 Halliday, Andrew, Pref., Shakespeare's Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra (London: Tinsley Brothers, 1873), p. [v]Google Scholar.

32 Daily Telegraph, 8 September 1873, quoted in the playbill for Antony and Cleopatra, Harvard Theatre Collection.

33 Halliday, p. vii.

34 Sunday Times, 28 September 1873, p. 3.

35 Cook, I, 294.

36 Anderson, James R., An Actor's Life (London: Walter Scott, 1902), p. 317Google Scholar.

37 Sunday Times, 28 September 1873, p. 3.

38 Kenney, p. 44.

39 Knight, Joseph, Theatrical Notes (London: Lawrence and Bullen, 1893), p. 151Google Scholar.

40 Coleman, II, 370.

41 Rossi also performed individual scenes from Othello and The Merchant of Venice for his final benefit. See Carlson, Marvin, The Italian Shakespearians (Washington, D.C.: Folger Shakespeare Library; London: Associated University Presses, 1985Google Scholar) for complete descriptions of all three actors' leading roles. On the response by London playgoers to the Italian performers, see Richards, Kenneth, “Shakespeare and the Italian Players in Victorian London,” in Shakespeare and the Victorian Stage, ed. Foulkes, Richard (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1986), pp. 240–254Google Scholar.

42 Coleman, II, 370. Coleman heard from Chatterton “that in a theatre which could hold £1250 a night, the entire receipts of Rossi's last week (three nights and a matinee) amounted to a total of £45!” (Coleman, John, Charles Reade as I Knew Him [London: Treherne, 1903], p. 332)Google Scholar.

43 Ibid., II, 373.

44 The Coming Season at Drury Lane Theatre (London: W. S. Johnson, 1878)Google Scholar. Kenney, in unwitting prophecy, wrote, “Whatever be [a theatre manager's] aspirations, he must watch…the tide of public fashion, and this, be it mean, frivolous and unworthy, or all the reverse, must be keenly followed and implicitly obeyed, else will disaster and deficit for a certainty ensue” (p. 6). The only known copy of this document is in the Garrick Club Library.

45 Times, 30 September 1878, p. 4.

46 Kean's production has been the subject of two recent studies, both exemplary although supporting different conclusions: Wilson, M. Glen, “Charles Kean's Production of The Winter' Tale,” Theatre History Studies, 5 (1985), 1–15Google Scholar; Bartholomeusz, Dennis, The Winter's Tale in Performance in England and America 1611–1976 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1982), pp. 81–100Google Scholar.

47 Times, 30 September 1878, p. 4.

48 Theatre, NS I (1878–1879), 300Google Scholar.

49 Knight, pp. 236–37.

50 Stirling, I, 316–17.

51 Ibid., I, 303.

52 ALS, Folger Shakespeare Library. For a full account of the events preceding the opening of the theatre on 23 April 1879, see Beauman, Sally, The Royal Shakespeare Company: A History of Ten Decades (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1982), pp. 8–25Google Scholar.

53 One commentator wrote in 1879, “The only wonder to our minds is, not that Mr. Chatterton has failed, but that he had not failed long ago. The old theatre is, considering the state of its repair, let at a ridiculously high rent and under absurd conditions. No man could have striven more courageously or by more varied means to make it pay than has Mr. Chatterton…, and he has in his misfortune only followed the road trodden by plenty of bankrupt Drury Lane managers before him” (Theatre, NS 2 [1879], 81)Google Scholar.