Pictorial Shakespeare, 1880-1890 - eTheses Repository - University ...

peculiar talents* In Gilbert's case this organising genius
complement an orderliness in the plays and libretti - "something
consistent in form", in Granville~Barker's phrase, or,
as G.K.Chesterton more grandly put it:
...the author of The Bab Ballads was the only
Englishman who understood end observed the
unities of Greek tragedy.,-.,
In the second part of this thesis, it is proposed to examine
the treatment which Shakespeare's plays received at the hands
of two designers, £.,:. Godwin and Lewis Wingfield, who were
working towards a designer*s (as opposed to an actor's or
author's) theatre, and who were doing so not only with the
burden of resposibility associated with the National Poet,
but under what Henry Arthur Jones would later call "The Shadow
of Henry Irving". Irving was also striving to achieve artistic
success in the face of some difficulty, and in the next chapter
his management is considered in its relationship to the tendencies
of contemporary Shakespeare criticism, and the ideas about
painting outlined in Chapter One. Tennyson said on his deathbed
that he knew Irving woiild do him Justice. The Laureate
had himself atriven to do Irving justice; but how well did
Irving serve an author who, living, had no thought of writing
for the Lyceum?