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

c-38
propoial to present Browning's In a Balcony at tho St. Jcraes's,
assured thut there was "no sufficient reason" to assume thc-t
the "only literary pabulum" it v/: s "safe to ciainister" ould
be th.-t acceptable fifteen years previously (17 December 1881).
But the production of Tennyson's The Falcon showed thr t the
poet could only offer a tableau, vivant witn dialogue as suitable
material for the company and their style. It seemed that
the Kendals could depict only one kind of character in action:
the domestic.
This view of the j-iinitations of the Robertsohian style
wa0 nciooteci by H^nry Arthur Jones, in two articles on "The
Dramatic Outlook" published in January and' February, 1185, in
The English Illustrated Magazine. Roberteonicai technique
required ulie suppression of poetry and emotion*
...it never occupied itself with any greater
tl .erne than a contrast of manners between a
wlgcr, usurping, middle class, end a decaying
cvristocrrc r .
The playgoer muafe be thankful for come values of the ochool,
notably the cultivation of scenic consistency and accuracy,
but,
...unless it is touched with the sense of
eternity, wrapped, round with the splendour of
heroism, and imbedred in what is primary and of
everlasting i.rnort, the mere reproduction on
the stage of the commonplace dr. tails of everyday
life must ulwr'.ys be barren, worthless, and
evanescent.
(ail.1 II (January 1885) 287, 28f)
Jones's articles echo a complaint coav.on at the time, but
after the two major ShakespCL roan productions of the autumn
of 1884, there was a particular i-, ;iediccv about the reminder
in the magazine's February issue that "so long as an audience
io interested or excited, or im-iosed upon by scenery or dresceo
or at; / e-cffect, it is very careless of the ;;cluc! wordc that
that ere spoken" (p.346). Unless it could ring nn undeniable
clarity and effectiveness to its treatment of the text, a
sumptuous revivrl of o. Shake, pearean play early i-i 1885 would
find itself the focus of the reviewers' ";rov,iac antr.ronism
towards such an enterprise.
Other circumstances combined to raclte the timing of the
St. James's As Yui Lil:o It inauspicious. The .vich-^iscussed