Cymbeline - eTheses Repository - University of Birmingham

87.
the Queen. The character would have
received much better support at the hands
of Mr. Webster.
Rice concluded that "the whole play is one of the greatest
hits of the season" and added,
... but the play was not announced for
repetition: to become popular it must
terminate in future before eleven.3
In 1838 Cymbeline was given one performance - at Covent
Garden on September 26. Samuel Phelps played Posthumus,
Vandenhoff, lachimo. In Coleman's Memoirs of Samuel Phelps
Phelps is reported as saying of his engagement with
Macready:
The rest, the comfort, the home surroundings,
and the permanent income made me swallow some
bitter pills during my first season, but v;hen
at the opening of the second season I found
Vandenhoff engaged to open in Coriolanus and
myself cast as Tullus Aufidius, I felt myself
wronged. I remonstrated. As a sweetener I
got Leoriatus Posthumus.4
Helen Paucit had cmalms concerning the costume in which she
was to appear as "Fidele", and ordered a design for her
tunic which would descend to her ankle:?. Macready, seeing
this design, ordered its shortening and "with many tears"
Miss Faucit was obliged to wear it in its abbreviated form:
... he was sure I would forgive him when he
explained to me that such a dress would not
tell the story, and that one-half the audience -
all in fact, who did not know the play - would
suppose Imogen to be still in woman's attire...
I had to yield, and to add my own terror to that
of Imogen, when first entering the cave, I managed,
however, to devise a kind of compromise,
by swathing myself in the "franklin's Housewife's
riding-cloak", which 1 kept about me as I went
into the cave; and this I caused to be wrapped
afterwards, when the brothers carry in Imogen -