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

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We hope we are doing Sir i^uire Bancroft, the
late Mr Wilson Barrett and others no wrong in
assuming that, though they were instrumental in
forwarding the movement inaugurated by E.W.Godwin,
they were not the source from which the whole
movement sprang, 27
He added that Bancroft, Bnrrett and the rest did little of
any value without Godwin - a characteristically absolute and
tactless staeuienis, interesting in GO far as it draws attention
to Godwin's dealings with these men, rather than to his more
obviously avant-garde work at Coombe or in Hengler's Circus.
Godwin and ;.ingfi e i', like the managements which employed them,
were obliged to achieve a compromise. On the one hand was the
kind of absurdity evident in Coleman's Henry V - a pale imitation
of Charles Kean's didactic and h phassardly pleasing
approach - and with it the near disappearance of the text. On
the other was the tasteful and seductive dioplry of the Alhambra,
and of the tableaux in Drury Lane pantoinimec. If it was
accepted that display was required, it had to have come relation
to the literary text. In addition to this problem was the more
fundamental one posed by the 1 -"ic-1 conclusion of the antiquarian
pursuits should the original circumstances of performance
be reproduced? One of Godwin's ex-nori.ionts, Iloloiia in
Troas, provided a Greek equivalent of .illiam Pool's efforts
to reconstruct Shakespeareon etc -gin-, AL YOU Like It, by
contrast, offered the ultimate romantic recliom - a real wood.
Thio was probably resolved for Godwin, in so far as his
professional Shakespeare productions were concerned, by the
assumption that Greek plays (or the "matter of Greece") could
only be shown in the Greek mcrinor, i.hilst Shalce. poare'c ployhouse
y/ae only an imperfect ana malce-shift arrangement, erected
while the world awaited the picture frame stage. Greek
dramatists had values of their own, Shakespeare's were those
of contemporary Victorian playwrights.
uis failure to make the step towards Pool's kind of
antiquarian theatre has left Godwin nnc his Shakecpearean
productions with little prominence in most thortre-hictory.
In the following: chanter hin _!%.;•;. let is c'lic.cucccd as an attonmt
on the ->art of a commercial man;:'a client to provicc a ta