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

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in the use of unit sets, stylizeo decor ami neo-^lizebethen
costume - for Benson the design of e production would be
traditional in its succession of painted cloths and set scenes,
but inexpensive, sturdy and easily tr. sported.
For his London debut as a manager Be^son had chosen a
play which had long b^en considered above theatricel artifice.
Haalitt, reviewing a Covent Garden production in January 1816,
had set tiie p-vttern for revie ors of subsequent revivals:
VJe have found to our cost, once for all, that
the regions of fancy and the boards of Covent
Garden are not theearae thing. All tht.t is fine
in the pi y, v.'&s lost in the representation. The
spirit v,£>s evaporatec, the genius was fled; but
the spectacle w,: s fine: it was t*ut ; hich stved
the play.,,
The It ter part, of this review hi a be ,n included in Characters
. » ^^^*^*mmm*********^*
6f Shakes Ntsare* s Plays. first publish© a in 1817, me had
become a lucus classicus of anti -theatrical sentiment:
Poetry and the st£ ge ao not agre>- together. The
attempt to reconcile them fails not only of
effect, but of decorum. The ideal has no place
upon the sta^e, vhich is a picture vdthout
perspective: everything there is in the foreground.
That k ;hich is merely an airy shape, a
a passing thought, im. jeoiat^ly becomes an
re; lity. , ,
The argu c;it persists iii Korley*s notice oi whelps 's reviv;!:
The device of the clov.ns in the plfty to
present Moonshine seems but a frir expression
of thj kind of success th.. t might
be achieved by the best actors vho should
attempt to present A Jlic'su: :.mer Might's
' on the stege * « .
Phelps haci used a green gauze, subcuing "the flesh ana blood of
the