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.

Colin Visser's recent article, “The Descent of Orpheus at the Cockpit, Drury Lane,” performed a valuable service by calling attention to the presence of technically sophisticated French “Machine” drama in London as early as 1661. Visser bases his argument on a pamphlet in the Malone collection at the Bodleian, “The Description of the Great Machines, of the DESCENT of ORPHEUS Into Hell. Presented by the French Commedians at the Cock-pit in Drury-lane.” This libretto, printed in both English and French, does not identify the French troupe, but Chapoton's Descente d'Orphée was in the repertory of les comédiens de Mademoiselle d'Orléans, a touring company whose name disappears from the Continental records for most of the period of French activity at the Cockpit.

One of the basic facts of eighteenth-century London theatre history is the disinclination of the managers of the patent theatres to engage in serious competition of any sort following the Licensing Act of 1737. This preference for peaceful coexistence was not, in fact, a new development: a strong inclination toward a modus vivendi can be proven as early as 1720. The evidence is a pair of almost entirely neglected manuscript charters (contracts) preserved in the British Library. In both instances we find the managers of the two theatres attempting to restrict actor transfers. The first contract (dating from September 1720) was apparently never formally concluded, but the second (dated April 1722) was duly signed and sealed, and evidently remained in effect until about 1730. Taken together, the two charters shed considerable light on the accommodation eventually reached between the two companies after the reestablishment of competition in 1714, and they also give us lists of performers in 1720 and 1722 that add significantly to the company rosters in The London Stage.

Regency toy Theatre flourished in England in the years between 1811 and 1830. At the height of its popularity thousands of middle and working class youths, together with their upper class “betters,” escaped the grim realities of industrial London for the joys of staging — and playing all the parts of — The Fairy of the Oak, or Harlequin's Regatta (1811), Ferdinand of Spain, or Ancient Chivalry (1813), Bluebeard (1824), or even more exotic pieces such as “The Grand New Spectacle called Korastikan, Prince of Assassins” (1824).

The nineteenth-century theatregoer in America and in England enjoyed a wonderful diversity of acting styles and roles among the actresses of the period. To be sure, it was an age of the womanly ideal, when playing Juliet appealed to every young actress. Perhaps too many aspired to the youthful, feminine charms of Juliet, for one disgusted New York critic complained that “40,000 American girls were doing the Balcony Scene that ought to be doing the family dishes.” Other roles such as Paulina, Galatea, and Parthenia thrived on the Victorian stage, male theatre critics applauding the feminine virtues of gentility and grace, loyalty, delicate humor, and occasional submissiveness. Interestingly, another sort of female role became extremely popular during this time: the breeches role.

Henry Fielding's Rape Upon Rape, only a modest success when first staged at the Haymarket in summer of 1730, was produced at Lincoln's Inn Fields in December of the same year under the revised title of The Coffee-House Politician. Several scholars have noted this revival in passing, but they have ignored or misunderstood the significance of this little episode in Fielding's dramatic career. Two questions are worth attention. What does the complicated bibliographical history of his plays suggest about Fielding's relationship with his publishers at this early date? And why did Fielding take this play to John Rich, a champion of the pantomime Fielding had himself ridiculed in The Author's Farce (March, 1730)? Investigating these issues casts some interesting light on the exigencies of the first phase of Fielding's theatrical career.

Between 1921 and 1925, an experimental form of nongovernmental censorship of the theatre was developed and practiced in New York City. Referred to variously as volunteer juries, citizens' juries, or the play-jury system, the experiment attempted to overcome the shortcomings of existing legal controls on the theatre and to relieve public concerns about the exploitation of sexually suggestive and obscene materials in stage plays. Although the play-jury system was short-lived, a review of its brief career reveals significant accomplishments and can provide a clearer picture of some of the issues confronting the American theatre in the first part of the twentieth century.

Vera; or, The Nihilist was Oscar Wilde's first performed play, a work, as Wilde described it, “not of politics but of passion,” expressing the “cry of the peoples for Liberty.” Liberty as subject — and the rhetoric of republicanism that made liberty a catchword — came naturally to Wilde, as son of the Irish patriot Speranza and as a concerned and compassionate individual. But Wilde was also professionally ambitious. By writing a wordy tragedy of self-sacrifice with Russia and the Nihilist movement as background, Wilde hoped to appeal to popular taste in the theatre and to capitalize on public interest in current affairs. He may well have drawn his dramatic characters and the events of his play directly from a contemporary newspaper, The Era.

As an adjunct to my note in the May 1984 edition of Theatre Survey on the publishing of Robert Hunter's Androboros, I offer the following information concerning the identification of one of the play's characters, “Flip.” Although an apparently subtle reference, it provides clear justification for the numerous scatological references within the script and clarifies one of the more controversial scenes in the play. Moreover, it may indicate an additional impetus for the play's creation.

Wolcott Gibbs once told the New Yorker's readers: Now, in 1938, only the invincibly naive imagine they go to a production of “Hamlet” for the purpose of watching a bunch of actors in a play. The others understand that they are about to be confronted with a ringing challenge to their culture. The man who has not seen Barrymore, Massey, Hampden, Lieber [sic], Gielgud, Howard, Evans, Tinker, and Chance (to round up enough for a little ball game) and is not prepared to discuss their respective performances might better go and live in Rockport, Indiana, though it is by no means certain that he would be safe even there. (22 Oct. 1938, p. 34)

No special skill is required to light a stage; we need only switch on the fluorescents, or perform in daylight like the Greeks and Elizabethans. Our troubles began when we decided that we wanted to control light. The sun remains as intractable as Phaeton found it, so we excluded it by enclosing our theatres. Even then, the battle with artificial light was long and hard, Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg's Eidophusikon established the goal: a measure of control that could duplicate on stage and in motion the painterly variation of color and chiaroscuro that had been mastered on canvas in the High Renaissance and Baroque.