Cymbeline - eTheses Repository - University of Birmingham

they too were bound by devotion to art:
This theatre has become a Mecca, the temple
of a special cult, the promised land of
countless tribes of devotees, who have filled
it from floor to roof and who have felt again
and again that by their presence there they
have been assisting at a high festival. >
ill.
In the proponents of an independent ariu a national theatre,
Irving was to find critics who considered this an unhealthy
devotion not to drama (still less to Shakespeare)
but to his own charisma and to his style of production.
Irving'a Lyceum failed to fit into the terms of the dispute
between a 'i'heatre of benevolent (and possibly subsidized)
iheatrical Endeavour and the 3ad Theatre of Profits. Some
managers, notably Hollingshead at the G-aiety, tried to
solve the dilemma by offering fragments of the first at the
expense of the second. .^either solution satisfied the
Pabian Hhaw or the rationalist \rcher.
in addition to these financial and ethical problems,
the problem of finding a cast to perform Shakespeare beset
those who wished to do so. In 1do6, Webster had testified
before the .ouse oJ.' Commons Select Cojonittee on Theatrical
licences and Regulations:
^uestion 5178: Take the School for Scandal, or the Rivals,
or nay any of ohakespeare's comedies, in
consequence of the nunber of theatres open
you cannot get a good company to act all
the minor parts, I suppose? - ho.
3179i You get two or three good ones, and the
rest you are forced bo fill up t,,y well as
you can? - Yes, because the freedom of
t uie theatres has dispersed the talent.
A ;-lan that should be playing a walking
Gentleman at tie Haymarket or .Mn.ry Lane,
Jan play Hamlet at ~i;he Jast aid, tjid he
prefers that, au£ he ^ets a larger salary
for it. 6
This, Webster agreed, was "in consequence of our having
free trade in drama".