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Shaw's Reviews of Daly's Shakespeare: The Wooing of Ada Rehan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2009

Russell Jackson
Russell Jackson
Affiliation:
Russell Jackson is a Fellow of the the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, Stratford-upon-Avon.
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Extract

George Bernard Shaw reviewed three of Augustin Daly's Shakespeare productions in the course of his stint as theatre critic of The Saturday Review, and wrote briefly on another when he was the music critic of The World. At the beginning of the last of these notices, describing As You Like It in 1897 and Ada Rehan's performance in it, Shaw wrote: ‘I never see Miss Ada Rehan act without burning to present Mr Augustin Daly with a delightful villa in Saint Helena.’ Listing some of the production's errors produced a more sombre threat:

To think that Mr Daly will die in his bed, whilst innocent presidents of republics, who never harmed an immortal bard, are falling on all sides under the knives of well-intentioned reformers whose only crime is that they assassinate the wrong people! And yet let me be magnanimous. I confess I would not like to see Mr Daly assassinated. Saint Helena would satisfy me. (ShSh, 44) Readers of Shaw's reviews, especially those who encounter them only through Edwin Wilson's selection in Shaw on Shakespeare, will only know Augustin Daly's productions as seen by Shaw. But these critiques were part of a campaign on behalf of Shaw's aims for the theatre, and, specifically, a ‘wooing’ of Ada Rehan for the Shavian drama.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 19 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1994 , pp. 203 - 213
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 1994

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References

Notes

© Quotations from Bernard Shaw by permission of The Society of Authors, on behalf of the estate of Bernard Shaw.

1. For convenience of reference, Shaw's reviews are cited from Wilson, Edwin, Shaw on Shakespeare (New York, 1961; Penguin Shakespeare Library edition, Harmondsworth, 1969)Google Scholar, which is abbreviated to ShSh.

2. Peters, Margot, Bernard Shaw and the Actresses (New York, 1980)Google Scholar and Mrs Pat. The Life of Mrs Patrick Campbell (New York, 1984)Google Scholar; Holroyd, Michael, Bernard Shaw. Volume 1: 1856–1898. The Search for Love and Volume 2: 1898–1918 The Pursuit of Power (London, 1988 and 1989 respectively).Google Scholar

3. The summary is based on Felheim, Marvin, The Theater of Augustin Daly (Cambridge, Mass., 1956).CrossRefGoogle Scholar A well-illustrated and documented account of Daly's Shakespearian productions is given by Shattuck, Charles H., Shakespeare on the American Stage, Volume Two. From Booth and Barrett to Sothem and Marlowe (Washington, D.C., 1987).Google Scholar A volume of Plays by Augustin Daly edited by Wilmeth, Don and Cullen, Rosemary, has been published in the series British and American Playwrights (Cambridge, 1985).Google Scholar Interesting light is cast on Daly's methods as a producer by the costume designer W. Robertson, Graham, in Time Was: the Reminiscences of W. Graham Robertson (London, 1931).Google Scholar Designs by Robertson and correspondence relating to the projected Cymbeline are in the Folger Shakespeare library. (The letters are at MS Yc. 4829 (1–14)).

4. Cited by Shattuck, Shakespeare on the American Stage, p. 54.

5. Tori Haring-Smith observes that Rehan ‘was clearly a lady while a shrew and clearly energetic even when tamed’. (From Farce to Metadama. A Stage History of ‘The Taming of the Shrew’, 1594–1983 (Westport, Conn., 1985), p. 64).Google Scholar

6. Scott's letters to Daly: Folger MS Yc. 4933 (1) and (4): 12 May 1884 (accepting contract) and 2 July 1886 (on reviews). Scott's letter to Rehan is at Yc. 4933 (25), 8 September 1890. On Scott's Shakespeare reviews see also Robert Hapgood, ‘His Heart up on his Sleeve; Clement Scott as a reviewer of Shakespearean Productions’, Shakespeare Jahrbuch-West, 1967, pp. 70–87.Google Scholar

7. See Felheim, The Theater of Augustin Daly, p. 145.

8. Our Theatres in the Nineties (3 vols., London, 1932), II, 217.Google Scholar

9. Winter, quoted by Felheim, The Theater of Augustin Daly, p. 221.

10. Twelfth Night, Or What You Will … Arranged to be Played in Four Acts by Augustin Daly … With an Introductory Word by William Winter … (privately printed, New York, 1893), p. 11.

11. ibid., p. 12.

12. ibid., p. 58.

13. Archer, William, The Theatrical ‘World’ of 1895 (London, 1896), p. 235.Google Scholar

14. ibid., p. 238.

15. ibid., p. 239.

16. Hazlitt, William, Characters of Shakespeare's Plays (London, 1817Google Scholar; World's Classics ed., 1966, p. 104).

17. The Comedy of A Midsummer Night's Dream … Arranged for Representation at Daly's Theatre by Augustin Daly … (privately printed, New York, 1888), p. 48.

18. Archer, The Theatrical ‘World’ of 1895, p. 252.

19. Shaw, Our Theatres in the Nineties, III, 190.

20. ibid., III, 167.

21. Laurence, Dan H., ed., Bernard Shaw, Collected Letters, 1898–1910 (London, 1972), pp. 423–4.Google Scholar Subsequently referred to in the text as Letters.

22. Letter in the Ada Rehan Collection, Van Pelt Library, University of Pennsylvania. (Box 3).