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

137
All move and walk as though they were in
Rome, and I would advise everyone who wishes
to form a clear idea of how the Romans looked
and lived to pay a visit to the Princess's
Theatre.
(Truth, *7 TH.H* 1885)
In this case the staging was more attractive than the play,
described by Punch as a tragedy "in five nets and a head-ache".
The Coombe theatricals of the Pastoral layers were
attracting some attention in the mid-decade. The 1884 As You
Like It, with Vezin as Jaques and Eleanor Calhoun as Rosalind
was repeated in the following year - on both occasions Lady
Campbell played Orlando - and in 1885 Fletcher's The Pai.tlifull
ohepherdesse was aclr'ed to the repertoire. In 1886 the venue v;as
changed to Cannizaro Woods, Wimbledon Common, where Fair Rosamund,
adapted, designed and directed by Godwin, was presented,
with Genevieve Ward in the title part. This was an adaptation
of Tennyson's Socket . Ticket s cost a guinea and the programme
informed matrons, "Horses can be taken out and picketed, and
Carriages dr .wn up in shade in a neighbouring field".
The direct result of these performances v/as a fashionable
ent-iusiasi i for open-air theatricals, in suburbs of varying
degrees of glamour and by actors of varying skills: one such
evening, made miserable by poor weather, forms the subject of
the opening sketch in Anstey's Voces. Populi, published in
1890, where Caliban objects to playing with a '.vet hump, and
the audience find themselves unexpectedly summoned a'.vay rt the
first opportunity. Aesthetically, the effect of the perfomanccs
at Coombe .ould seen to have been very fine. The circular
advertising the activities of the rroup orocl- inc. t.lioir aim:
By quitting the artificialities of the theatre
the 'PASTORAL PLAYERS ore enabled to take ncvrntr.ro
of natural beauties, so re to exhibit their art in
a light -ooculicrly adapted to the rcviv 1 of Clr -. n.ical
effect.
"Clrocicism" - the orer.onto.tion of the ancient \ orld in a
faithful manner - had been the appeal of such spectacles as
Charles Kean's productions of The inter's T--lo and Uyron's
Sardanapulus in the eialiteen-fifties. now the ap-ooal v;as directed
not so ijuch at the hunger of the nirYile and lower classes for
edification, as the desire of the wealthy and educated to oee