Shakespeare in the Theatre: An Anthology of Criticism

Shakespeare in the Theatre offers a rich, varied, and wonderfully evocative collection of eye-witness accounts of Shakespearian performances over the centuries. Theatre generates an excitement that stimulates fine prose: here are Hazlitt's famous accounts of Edmund Kean as Richard III and Hamlet, Bernard Shaw on Forbes-Robertson's Hamlet and his hilarious descriptions of Augustin Daly's productions, Max Beerbohm on Gordon Craig, and Kenneth Tynan on Olivier and Wolfit. Here too are lesser-known pieces by great writers: the German novelist Theodor Fontane on Charles Kean, Evelyn Waugh on Olivier, Virginia Woolf on Twelfth Night at the Old Vic. Taken together these pieces represent an appreciation of the work of the finest Shakespearian interpreters, and a survey of changing styles of Shakespearian production - ranging right across the canon - from the seventeenth century to the present, in England, America, and further afield. The post-war period is amply represented, right up to the present day, with vivid accounts of landmark productions by directors such as Peter Brook, Peter Hall, John Barton, Deborah Warner, Trevor Nunn, and Declan Donnellan. Stanley Wells introduces the volume with an essay on `Shakespeare and the Theatre Critics', and supplies each review with a helpful headnote and explanatory references.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Shakespeare and the Theatre Critic ; c.1700 Colley Cibber on Thomas Betterton as Hamlet ; c.1738-9 Thomas Davies on Cibber as Justice Shallow in 2 Henry IV ; (?1744-68) Thomas Davies and James Boaden on David Garrick and Mrs Pritchard in Macbeth ; (uncertain date) Thomas Davies on Garrick as King Lear ; 1774-5 Georg Christoph Lichtenberg on Garrick as Hamlet ; 22 May 1776 Henry Bate on Garrick as King Lear ; (uncertain date) Charles Lamb on Robert Bensley as Malvolio and James William Dodd as Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Twelfth Night ; (uncertain date) Sir Walter Scott on John Philip Kemble as Macbeth and in Coriolanus's death scene ; (uncertain date) Julian Charles Young on Kemble as Coriolanus and Sarah Siddons as Volumnia in Coriolanus ; 15 Feb. 1814 William Hazlitt on Edmund Kean as Richard III ; 27 Feb. 1814 Thomas Barnes on Kean as Richard III ; 14 Mar. 1814 Hazlitt on Kean as Hamlet ; 21 Jan. 1816 Hazlitt on A Midsummer Night's Dream, adapted by Frederic Reynolds, with music by Sir Henry Bishop ; 4 Nov. 1816 Leigh Hunt on Kean as Timon of Athens ; 21 Dec. 1817 John Keats on Kean as a Shakespearian actor; with John Hamilton Reynolds on Kean on Richard Duke of York (in the Merrivale adaptation of the three Henry VI plays) ; 4 Oct. 1818 Leigh Hunt on Kean as Othello ; 31 Oct. 1819 Leigh Hunt on William Charles Macready as Richard III ; 5 Dec. 1819 Leigh Hunt on Macready as Coriolanus ; 25 Apr. 1820 anon. review of Kean as King Lear ; c.1832 James E. Murdock on Kean as Posthumus in Cymbeline ; c.1837 Helena Faucit on herself as Hermione, with Macready as Leontes, in The Winter's Tale ; 14 Fen. 1838 John Forster on Macready as King Lear ; 18 Mar. 1838 Forster on Macready as Coriolanus ; 1 844 James Robinson Planche's description on Ben Webster's neo-Elizabethan The Taming of the Shrew ; 15 Oct. 1853 Henry Morley on A Midsummer Night's Dream produced by Samuel Phelps ; 3 Sept. 1854 Morley on Phelps's Pericles ; 1856 Theordor Fontane on Kean's production of The Winter's Tale ; 24 Apr. 1858 anon. review of Kean's production of (and performance in) King Lear ; (uncertain date) Henry Austin Clapp on Charlotte Cushman as Queen Katharine in Henry VIII ; 10 Apr. 1875 Joseph Knight on Tommaso Salvini as Othello ; Jan. 1879 Edward Dutton Cook on Henry Irving as Hamlet ; (uncertain date) William Winter on Irving as Shylock ; 8 Nov. 1880 anon. Times review of Edwin Booth as Hamlet ; 6 July 1895 Bernard Shaw on The Two Gentlemen of Verona, produced by Augustin Daly ; 15 July 1895 Shaw on Daly's A Midsummer Night's Dream ; (uncertain date) Winter on Ada Rehan as Kate in The Taming of the Shrew ; 2 Oct. 1897 Shaw on Johnston Forbes-Robertson as Hamlet ; 1898 William Archer on Julius Caesar produced by Herbert Beerbohm Tree ; 5 Feb. 1898 St John Hankin on Julius Caesar produced by Herbert Beerbohm Tree ; 30 Sept. 1899 Max Beerbohm on Beerbohm Tree's production of King John ; 13 Nov. 1899 anon. review of Richard II produced by William Poel ; 4 Dec. 1899 C. E. Montague on Frank Benson as Richard II ; 30 May 1903 Beerbohm on Much Ado About Nothing with Ellen Terry as Beatrice and designs by Gordon Craig ; 7 Nov. 1903 Beerbohm on The Tempest at the Court Theatre, London ; 8 Apr. 1905 Beerbohm on H. B. Irving as Hamlet ; 28 Sept. 1912 John Palmer on The Winter's Tale directed by Harley Granville-Barker ; 1 Jan. 1922 Granville-Barker on Twelfth Night directed (in French) by Jacques Copeau ; 20 Nov. 1922 Stark Young on John Barrymore as Hamlet ; 1923 Herbert Farjeon on Nigel Playfair's production of The Merry Wives of Windsor, with Edith Evans as Mistress Page ; 30 Aug. 1925 Hubert Griffith on Hamlet directed by Barry Jackson ; 30 Sept. 1933 Virginial Woolf, on Twelfth Night directed by Tyrone Guthrie ; 18 Nov. 1934 James Agate on John Gielgud as Hamlet in his own production ; 17 Oct. 1935 Agate on Gielgud's production of Romeo and Juliet, with Gielgud, Peggy Ashcroft, Laurence Olivier, and Edith Evans ; 12 Nov. 1937 John Mason Brown on Orson Welles's production of Julius Caesar ; 1944 Ronald Harwood on Donald Wolfit as Lear ; 1947 Kenneth Tynan on Olivier as Richard III ; 1947 Tynan on Olivier and Ralph Richardson in Henry IV, Parts One and Two ; 1947 T. C. Worsley on Guthrie's production of Henry VIII ; 1950 Richard David on Measure for Measure directed by Peter Brook, with Gielgud and Barbara Jefford ; 1955 Evelyn Waugh on Titus Andronicus directed by Brook, with Olivier as Titus ; 1959 John Russel Brown on All's Well that Ends Well directed by Guthrie ; 1959 Laurence Kitchin on Olivier as Coriolanus, directed by Peter Hall ; 1962 Kitchin on Brook's production of King Lear with Paul Scofield as Lear ; 1964 Ronald Bryden on Olivier as Othello ; 27 Aug. 1965 Bryden on Peter Hall's production of Hamlet with David Warner as Hamlet ; 1970 Robert Speaight on Brook's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream ; 1973 Peter Thomson on Richard II directed by John Barton ; 1976 Roger Warren on Macbeth, directed by Trevor Nunn, with Ian McKellan and Judi Dench ; 1978 Warren on Love's Labour's Lost, directed by Barton ; 29 June 1984 Stanley Wells on Antony Sher as Richard III, directed by Bill Alexander ; 1985 Nicholas Shrimpton on a production of the first quarto version of Hamlet ; 1985 Warren on Howard Davies's production of Troilus and Cressida at Stratford-upon-Avon ; 1986 Wells on Henry IV, Parts One and Two, and Henry V, directed by Michael Bogdanov ; 11 Apr. 1987 Michael Billington on Antony and Cleopatra directed by Peter Hall ; 1987 Wells on Titus Andronicus, directed by Deborah Warner at Stratford-upon-Avon ; 1989 R. L. Smallwood on Othello, directed by Trevor Nunn at Stratford-upon-Avon ; 3 Oct. 1990 Paul Taylor on The Tempest, directed by Brook ; 6 Dec. 1991 Taylor on As You Like It, directed by Declan Donellan for Cheek by Jowl ; 1993 Peter Holland on Richard III, directed by Barrie Rutter for The Northern Broadsides ; 1996 Smallwood on The Comedy of Errors, directed by Tim Supple