Theatre Royal The 19th Century Continued
The 19th Century Continued |
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The practice of importing London actors to supplement the stock company, continued in the 19th century, and again many of the most celebrated actors of the day appeared in York during profitable provincial tours. In July 1819 Edmund Kean, of whom Coleridge said that to see him act was 'like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning', performed in York for six nights during the summer Assize Week. In 1811 Kean and his wife, Mary, had been strolling players. They had arrived at Whitehaven from Ireland, and stopped at various towns - Dumfries, Annan, Carlisle, Penrith, Appleby, Richmond - where they would hire a room and give a mixed entertainment of songs, dances, recitations and extracts from plays. From Richmond they are said to have gone to York where, according to a recent re-telling of the legend, 'they starved ... he tramped the streets looking for employment of any kind . . . They were . . . saved by kindness. A Mrs Nokes, the wife of a dancing master, heard of their distress and visited Mary. On leaving, she passed a folded piece of paper into her hand. To her astonishment, Mary found that she had been given a five-pound note. Kean regarded this gift as divine intervention on his behalf and he used the money to take his family by coach to London'.28 There he was to be acclaimed as a genius for his performance of Shylock at Drury Lane on 26 January, 1814. By 1819 his powers to attract huge London audiences were waning, but that summer he attracted good houses in York, where he played Richard III, said to be his greatest role; Shylock; Sir Giles Overreach in Massinger's A New Way to Pay Old Debts, generally acclaimed as one of his masterpieces of frenzy; Othello; Macbeth; and Rolla in Sheridan's Pizarro, the first time he had played the part outside London. He returned to London from the provinces to find his new rival, William Charles Macready, challenging him directly by performing Richard III at Covent Garden. Macready appeared in York during the Musical Festival Week of 1823. He played six nights - Virginius, Richard III, Othello, Macbeth, Rob Roy and Hamlet - to crowded houses and a total receipt of £843. Charles Kean, Edmund Kean's son who had been sent to Eton in the hope of keeping him off the stage, made the first of many visits to York in September 1838. Between 1851 and 1859 he and his wife, Ellen Tree, were to become famous for their presentations of 'gentlemanly melodrama' and of Shakespeare, set with some attempt at historical accuracy, at the Princess's Theatre in London. On his first visit to York he played Hamlet,'Othello, Richard III, Claude Melnotte and Macbeth. Of his Macbeth the Yorkshire Gazette wrote that 'the struggles between conscience and a bad ambition, prompted by his wife's haughty spirit, seemed to grow with the truth of nature out of a mind at first unconscious of the evil within; then came the terrible remorse, and last the hardened, but wretched heart. All was powerfully and truthfully pourtrayed'.29 The reviewer was not pleased, though, with Macbeth's fight with Macduff, played by Mr Fitzjames:
Mr Kean . . . fell into a not uncommon temptation with accomplished actors,, that of showing his superior skill as a swordsman; and very nearly succeeded in making his mimic death absurd by 'a trick of fence'; for he narrowly missed The York Theatre in the 19th century was let to visiting performers - some novelty acts, some dancers, some musicians - while the stock company was playing elsewhere. Among them was Paganini, who appeared in the Theatre Royal on his second visit to York on 12 October, 1834. The evening was divided into two Acts, and he performed two pieces in each, as did two vocalists who appeared with him. The concert was advertised in fulsome terms:30 To attempt a description of his wonderful powers would be" unnecessary to those who were present at his last Concert, and to those who have never heard him it would be impossible to convey anything like an adequate idea of the effect he produces. He has been appositely designated as the 'eighth wonder of the world'. But the critic reporting on the concert in the York Chronicle was less enthusiastic:31 So much has been said of the performance of this singular being, that we can add nothing new on the subject. It strikes us as being more surprising than pleasing.
But it was increasingly only on nights when celebrities appeared that the York Theatre had good houses, and this was of little help to managements when London visitors appearing with the stock company charged them high fees. Henry Compton, who acted in the York company before becoming famous as a Shakespearean clown, said in his Memoirs of the years 1835 and 1836 in York, that 'though we worked hard, played hard, fought hard, and had many hard engagements we brought home very little hard cash with us'. And complaints about miserable houses, depressed conditions and the declining interest in the drama proliferate. It came to be apparent that only London visiting companies could attract audiences, and, with the development of the railway network in the 1840s, it became possible for entire companies, with their scenery and costumes, to tour a London production. The stock company system thus came to be superseded by the touring companies. |
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