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

In this chapter Irving's personal and managerial techniques
are examined through the comments of contemporary
reviewers, and one of his major Shakespearean productions,
the Jlacbcth of 1888-1889» is discussed as an ocample of the
qualities and shortcomings of Lyceum production methods.
-he oraise and dispraise of
.Yillioin Archer's first book on Henry Irving, The Fashionable
Tragedian, appeared in 1877 and was written in collaboration .
v;ith Robert Lowe. In 1883 he published a second, more temperate
OG: ay, Henry Irving, Actor and Manager. In the intervening
years Irving had aquired a reputation as manager of
a theatre - a reputation less in depute thc.n hie talent as
an actor. Archer's comments on the Lyceum stage-management
arise from the same premises as his strictures on the actor.
In the earlier book Irving is rudely attacked PS the possessor
of a poor physique and bearing, wrongly interpreted by come
as "picturesque", and a limited range. His only talent is for
the depiction of "abject terror, sarcasm and frenzy" (The
fashionable Tragedian (second edition, 1877) o.9); his voice is
as unprepossessing as his arrnearance - Archer transcribes a
representative passage:
How ic the -.inter of our discontent
•lade glawrious summer by this sun of Yark;
And aall the clouds that lowr'd upon our house
In the deep bussura of the awchun - burred./ gv
's physique is mocked in a number of cartoons, and in
such descriptions as this, of his wall::
...he ,xL;:nte. one foot upon the stage as if
his whole "eminence" defended upon its firmness,
and then drags the other log after it in
a limn anil nerveless fashion, .. .all the while
working spasmodically with his shoulders, pncl
very often nodding his head backwards ar,a forwards
in a manner which is positively r-riiiful
to contemplate. / „•.
oone -.vriters, the pamphlet adults, find Irving' s ic-iosyncracies
"nicturesnue", but "There arc those who would dircover
picturesqueness in the v/ri things of the octopus in Brighton