Preface to the Third Edition [1963]
For this republication in a third edition of my Principles of Shakespearian Production I have again added material, so that the present volume entitled ‘Shakespearian Production’ is composed of layers reflecting a wide span of variously settled and changing opinion. Chapters I to V made the original book. Chapter VI and the first part of IX under the title ‘The Professional Stage’ were in the second, Penguin, edition published in 1949. Chapters VII, VIII, X and the Appendixes are new. I do not reprint the essay ‘Drama and the University’ from my Penguin Appendix (first published in The University of Leeds Review, June 1949), but some quotations from it are included in Chapter VIII. The extent and nature of these additions appear to justify the new and more comprehensive title.
I have tidied up details of faulty expression in my old text, and made some deletions, but where new sections or thoughts are added to old material they are dated. I did not include my account of Timon of Athens, here presented in Chapter VII, in the Penguin edition mainly, so far as I recall, because I still at that time had hopes of being given the opportunity of repeating it on a larger and more public scale.
Following the productions recorded in my original preface (pp. 21–4 below) my Toronto work included The Winter’s Tale in 1936, Antony and Cleopatra in 1937 and Timon of Athens in the early part of 1940, together with revivals of Hamlet, for which I was joint-producer with Miss Frances Tolhurst, in 1938 and Romeo and Juliet in 1939; also The Tempest in 1938, directed by Miss Josephine Koenig (see p. 274 below); the two revivals presented by, and the others in association with, the Shakespeare Society of Toronto. These various presentations, though performed in the University area and relying largely on the University for their audiences, were not in themselves university productions, nor was Hart House a University theatre, though both staff and students often took part. We drew widely on the acting strength of the city.
I am happy to hear from time to time good news from Mr. Raymond Card of the Shakespeare Society’s activities, so recalling to memory my many friends in the Society, and their goodness to me. Among my Canadian correspondents I record my gratitude to Mr. and Mrs. Stafford Johnston, Miss Josephine Koenig and Mr. Leonard Parker for sending to me particulars of the new Festival Theatre at Stratford, Ontario.
My war-time composite of Shakespearian excerpts and lecture-commentary, given first in 1940 in collaboration with Miss Nancy Price at the Tavistock Theatre, London, was repeated at various centres about England, at one of which Cyril Maude was chairman, and culminated in a week at the Westminster Theatre in the summer of 1941, under the title This Sceptred Isle. For this production, though I had no acting support beyond off-stage voices, the late Henry Ainley returned from retirement to read some of my commentaries, as indeed I had heard him read the commentary of Hardy’s Dynasts in Granville Barker’s production at the Kingsway Theatre in 1914. At one performance we had the additional honour of a contribution by Sir John Martin Harvey. Among the most appreciative of those who attended were Sir Nigel and Lady Playfair, whose son Lyon was the Osric of my 1935 London Hamlet; and also Violet Vanbrugh, whom I had so admired (p. 51) as Lady Macbeth with Tree in 1911. The support of my mother and my brother did much to ease the anxieties of this ambitious and difficult year.
A facsimile of my programme of This Sceptred Isle is given on p. 314, but since the matter lies outside its range it is not covered by my present study. An outline has been given in The Sovereign Flower (264–5) and full particulars may be seen among my ‘Dramatic Papers’, the collection of programmes, pictures and press notices so excellently compiled by The Shakespeare Memorial Library of the Reference Library at Birmingham. At both the British Museum and the Birmingham Reference Library I have also lodged, under the title A Royal Propaganda, a typescript account of my difficulties in arranging this Westminster Theatre production, wherein I pay my tribute to the help and encouragement of Miss Margot Davies, without which the endeavour could scarcely have seen fruition. To the Librarian Mr. V. H. Woods, and to the staff of the Birmingham Reference Library, I am very grateful.
Owing to the war I was unable to return to the University of Toronto. At Stowe, where I taught from 1941 until 1946, I had the opportunity of producing Macbeth and playing the parts of the Madman in Masefield’s Good Friday and the Inquisitor in Shaw’s Saint Joan in productions by Mr. A. A. Dams. For the first the setting was the School Chapel, admirable for the purpose; and the speaking and acting of the Madman’s central speech I look back upon as among the most rewarding of my stage experiences.1
At the University of Leeds, after being appointed there in 1946 at the instigation of Professor Bonamy Dobrée to inaugurate a course on World Drama and take an active interest in the Leeds University Union Theatre Group, I have been peculiarly fortunate. I remain deeply indebted to the Theatre Group, under whose auspices I produced Louis MacNeice’s translation of the Agamemnon of Aeschylus in 1946 and Professor Kenneth Muir’s translation of Racine’s Athalie in 1947;2 repeated Timon of Athens in 1948; and had the privilege of playing in Othello and The Merchant of Venice, produced respectively by Mr. Arthur Creedy and Mr. Frederick May, in 1955 and 1960. I am also indebted to the Staff Dramatic Society of the University, whose King Lear, presented in collaboration with the Theatre Group and produced by Mr. John Boorman in 1951, was an event with which I feel it an honour to have been associated. Of the forbearance, sympathy and encouragement of these three producers I am deeply sensible.
I record my gratitude for their gracious welcome of my attempts to the late Hon. and Revd. Canon H. J. Cody as University President and to the Revd. Canon F. H. Cosgrave as Provost of Trinity College, in the University of Toronto; and to Sir Charles Morris as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Leeds, and to Lady Morris; and to Professor Dobrée; and to all, Staff and Students, at both universities—and perhaps especially to so authoritative a Shakespearian as Prof. R. S. Knox of Toronto—who have accepted my histrionic inadequacies and encouraged my pretensions; among them the many students of the Leeds University Union Theatre Group of which for a number of years I had the honour to be President. I remember words of sympathy and kindness, when they were much needed, from the staff of Hart House Theatre, and from Miss Ruth Playter. I recognize the lift given to my stage activities by the dramatic critics of the Toronto press and of Leeds; and also by the critic of The Times, Mr. Ivor Brown of The Observer, and Mr. C. B. Purdom, all of whom lent me confidence during the run of This Sceptred Isle; and by the two distinguished Patrons of that adventure; and by Mr. Richard Courtney, Mr. Frederick May, Mr. Robin Skelton, Mr. Roy Walker and Mr. Kenneth Young, who have written generously of my stage work. I have been grateful for the authoritative encouragement, as from stage artists, of Mr. Edward Roberts and Miss Elise Bernard, now Mrs. Haldane, and of Mrs. Dora Mavor Moore; and for that, as from a poet, of Mr. Francis Berry; and as from a poetess, of Miss Dallas Kenmare; and also of Mr. Arnold Freeman, who has himself over a number of years achieved wonders of Shakespearian and other classical productions on the tiny stage of the Sheffield Educational Establishment, demonstrating how much may be accomplished by integrity of purpose when material resources are slight.
I remember, especially, what I owe to the late Margaret Lucas, who first suggested that I should put on a production of my own and became in 1932 my first Juliet; and also to the sympathy and insight of Mr. James Bridges, at that time. At Leeds the dramatic perception and daily care of Mrs. Olive Hewetson were continual supports. My deepest debt remains to the late Leslie Harris, once of Tree’s company, who on the art of acting spoke with authority; and I am happy to include his name in my [1963] dedication.
My emphases here and in the following pages on my experiences as an actor may seem out of place in a book on production. But they form part of a necessary insistence that the driving force behind my stage adventures has been the instinct less of a scholar or even of a producer than, despite a host of deficiencies, of an actor. Now that the story is over, I wish to establish the record.
The extent to which my academic and stage theories have, during the last thirty years, affected our professional productions is discussed briefly in Chapter IX (pp. 258–9). Probably little theatres have been more widely affected than the professionals, and I should like to record that my ‘ideal’ Macbeth was honoured by being closely followed in a school production by Mr. Linden Huddlestone at Ecclesfield Grammar School in 1958. When in 1942 I myself produced Macbeth at Stowe School I was not able to engage in any elaborations, though the picking out of the three Apparitions by varied lights (pp. 143–4 below) may be regarded as a successful, if only provisional, expedient.
My pictures have been selected as illustrations of the facts or principles handled in my text. They are intended to suggest the whole dramatic person or, if a group, the whole scene, together with the relevances of either to the plays concerned.
It may seem that I should apologize for using so many pictures drawn from my own work, and I have avoided the repetition of my name in the captions. For many weeks I was planning and collecting a selection of possible pictures of well-known actors and productions, trying to wrench them to the service of my book; but somehow it would not come right. This is, after all, a personal study made largely from personal adventures, and the pictures used, constituting as they do visible records of the performances described in the text, give the book a dimension and a reality otherwise unattainable. Certainly I could wish that I had a higher proportion of group-scenes good enough for inclusion; but these, except under professional or school conditions where company, stage-space and photographer can be commandeered for two or three hours during or after a production’s run, are usually impossible to arrange; when they were attempted, the attempts were often hurried and the results untidy. I am really fortunate to have found so many groups not unworthy of inclusion, though I regret that more of my stage associates at Toronto, whose kindnesses live in my memory, are not represented. I am fortunate in having been able to present among my captions the names of W. Lyndon Smith, who as Mercutio, Polonius, the Gravedigger, Iago, Kent and Enobarbus so empowered my productions; the late Robin Godfrey, whose sister Patricia was the Queen in my 1935 Hamlet, in London; and Miss Patricia Murphy.
For these pictures, various acknowledgments are due. First, I record my gratitude to Mr. A. J. Nathan for allowing me to use Buchel’s portrait of Tree as Othello, which is possessed by Messrs. L. and H. Nathan, on whose premises it can be seen. Mr. Nathan allows me to say that he has a fair amount of documentary material relating to Tree and his productions. For the copying of the portrait I am indebted to Mr. George W. Nash of the Victoria and Albert Museum; and I have to thank Mr. Hesketh Pearson for lending me the photograph of Tree’s Forum scene in Julius Caesar. For other pictures, acknowledgments are due to the following photographic artists: for 2, 7, 8, 16, E. Mackintosh, Toronto; 9, 10, Ashley & Crippen, Toronto (9 copied by the late Alan Dredge, Photo-General, Leeds); 28, Mr. Bashur-ud-Din; 29, 30, The Yorkshire Post. Since some of my pictures bear no stamp, I am unable to state their source. For Picture 31 I thank Dr. Devendra P. Varma who has directed notable Shakespeare productions at universities in Kathmandu (Nepal), Damascus and Cairo. I have for long been grateful to the Revd. Claude Sauerbrei for having in 1940 taken the Timon photograph [now 1968, Picture 32] which, though probably beyond my merits, I have come to regard as a visual symbol of my life-work. Since my approach to Timon of Athens is my main contribution to the staging of Shakespeare I have accorded it emphasis in my selection of pictures.1
I have to thank Mr. Edward Gordon Craig and Messrs. William Heinemann Ltd. for being allowed to quote from On the Art of the Theatre; and the Executors of the late Louis MacNeice for the use of MacNeice’s Epilogue to the Agamemnon, composed on the occasion of our Leeds production.
An invitation by Mr. Werner Burmeister of the Department of Extramural Studies in the University of London to speak on Beerbohm Tree in a recent course of lectures arranged by Mr. W. A. Armstrong of King’s College led to an expansion of my section on Tree’s artistry. To Mr. Armstrong I am indebted for help in the collection of information, also to Mr. Frank Cox, Mr. Laurence Kitchin, Professor W. Moelwyn Merchant, Mr. Hesketh Pearson and Mr. C. B. Purdom. I am grateful to Mr. Patrick Saul of the British Institute of Recorded Sound for playing for me records of Tree and Forbes-Robertson; to the National Film Archive for arranging a presentation of the 1913 film of Forbes-Robertson’s Hamlet; and to the British Broadcasting Corporation, and especially to Mr. George MacBeth, for my own broadcast of Shakespearian speeches (p. 278). Some of my impressions have been checked by Mr. Richard Courtney, Mr. Hans de Groot and Mr. Robert Speaight. Dr. Patricia M. Ball has once again helped me with my index.
With some exceptions the nature and ordering of my analyses makes the use of line-references superfluous. Where they are given they apply to the Oxford Shakespeare. I am distressed to find so many inaccuracies in my old quotations, for which I must sometimes have relied simply on memories of performance. For Tree’s theatre, I vary the title ‘Her Majesty’s’ and ‘His Majesty’s’ according to the occasion being referred to. I follow his biographer, Mr. C. B. Purdom, in printing Granville Barker’s name without a hyphen. I likewise preserve the old style, forced by some of my references, in ‘J. Martin Harvey’ and ‘W. Bridges Adams’, without hyphens.
In giving cross-references to my present volume I use the letter ‘p’ For page-references to all other books, numerals only.
G.W.K.
Exeter, 1963.
1 For my tribute to the Shakespearian quality, under performance, of this speech, see The Golden Labyrinth, 335.
2 Subsequently included with other strongly dramatic translations in his Jean Racine, Five Plays (U.S.A., Mermaid Dramabook; London, MacGibbon & Kee).
1 The importance of Timon of Athens in our dramatic history is discussed in my ‘Timon of Athens and its Dramatic Descendants’, A Review of English Literature, II, 4; Oct., 1961; included in Shakespear and Religion, 1967.