The Magical Body on the Stage

310 Pages·2014·2.08 MB·English

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The Magical Body on the Stage:
Henry Irving Reconsidered

Michael Kendrick Punter

Submitted for the degree of PhD
Royal Holloway College, University of London
Department of Drama and Theatre
March 2014
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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements 6
Declaration 7
Abstract 8

Introduction
1 Outline 10
2 Methodology 15
3 Early Biographies of Irving and the Irving Narrative 19
4 Negative Responses to Irving’s Acting 23
5 Later Biographies and the Irving Narrative 24
6 Recent Irving Scholarship 26
7 Irving, Shaw and Modernity 30
8 An Overview of the Thesis 35
Chapters
1: Henry Irving and the Great Tragedians
1:1 Introduction 37
1:2 Irving’s Self-Fashioning 38
1:3 Irving’s Early Work 40
1:4 Irving and J.L. Toole 41
1:5 Influences on Irving’s Acting Style 43
1:5:1 John Phillip Kemble 45
1:5:2 Edmund Kean 48
1:5:3 William Charles Macready 53
1:5:4 Samuel Phelps 61
1:6 Conclusion 69
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2: Henry Irving’s Early Career
2:1 Introduction 71
2:2 Irving’s Initial Casting 72
2:3 Irving’s Public Readings 76
2:4 Irving in Dublin 78
2:5 The Davenport brothers and Occult Performance 83
2:6 Irving’s Spiritualist Burlesque 90
2:7 Changes to Irving’s Casting from 1865 101
2:8 The Dream of Eugene Aram 106
2:9 Conclusion 107
3: The Bells: The Spectacular Body and the Magical Body
3:1 Introduction 108
3:2 The Melodramatic Body 108
3:2:1 The Magical Body 110
3:3 Background to The Bells 114
3:3:1 Texts of The Bells 115
3:3:2 Origins 116
3:4 Melodrama 117
3:5 Le Juif Polonais 122
3:5:1 Becoming The Bells 123
3:6 Critical Reception 125
3:7 Changes to The Bells 129
3:7:1 Lewis’s Modifications 131
3:7:2 From Mathis to Mathias 134
3:8 Irving’s Use of the Magical Body 142
3:8:1 Enacting the Magical Body 145
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3:8:2 The Court Scene 150
3:9 Conclusion 153
4: The Melodramatic Hamlet
4:1 Introduction 157
4:2 Irving and Hamlet 157
4:3 Irving’s Roles in Hamlet 158
4:4 Hamlet and the Irving Narrative 159
4:5 Influences on Irving’s Hamlet 162
4:6 Irving’s Contemporaries as Hamlet 166
4:6:1 Samuel Phelps 166
4:6:2 Charles Kean 168
4:6:3 Charles Fechter 170
4:6:4 Tom Taylor’s Production of Hamlet 176
4:7 Irving as Hamlet in 1864 181
4:8 Irving as Hamlet in 1874 187
4:9 Towards a Hysterical Hamlet 191
5: The Hysterical Hamlet
5:1 Introduction 194
5:2 Irving’s Leadership of the Lyceum 196
5:3 Ellen Terry as Ophelia 198
5:4 Transformation of the Lyceum 199
5:4:1 Auditorium 199
5:4:2 Lighting 200
5:4:3 Music and Sound Production 203
5:5 Irving’s Text of Hamlet 205
5:6 Responses to the 1878 Hamlet 209
5:7 Irving and Hysteria 211
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5:7:1 William Winter’s Approach to Irving 215
5:8 Conclusion: Henry Irving Reconsidered 222
6: After Hamlet: Irving Miscast?
6:1 After Hamlet 228
6:2 Faust 228
6:2:1 Mephistopheles or Faust? 231

6:2:2 An Occult Body 233
6:3 The Magical Body Untransformed 234
6:4 King Arthur 237
6:5 Abandoning the Magical Body 239
6:6 Henry Irving and Henrik Ibsen 240
6:6:1 Ibsen in England 241
6:7 The Medicine Man 246
6:8 Conclusion 250
Conclusion 253
Appendix: Henry Irving and Henrik Ibsen: A Speculation 272
1 Irving’s Brand? 272
2 The Bells and A Doll’s House: Two Late-Melodramas? 279
3 The Bells Neglected 288
Illustrations 291
Bibliography 299
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my supervisor Dr Gilli Bush-Bailey for her support,
patience and insight throughout this project. I am also most grateful to
Professor Dan Rebellato and Dr Sophie Nield for reading parts of this
project in various drafts and pointing out new areas for my research.
Additional thanks are due to Ben Hart for his advice on the Davenport
séance and its relationship to Victorian magic; Kerry Bradley for bringing
Irving’s world to life; Colin Blumenau and the cast and crew of Stagefright
at the Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds; Peter Johnson at the Society for
Psychical Research for his assistance in locating the works of Eleanor
Sidgwick; Marcus Risdell at the Garrick Club Library and Collections for
enduring all my questions; Michael Kilgariff at the Irving Society, Lisa, Will
and Manny Punter for putting up with my absences, physical and
psychical, over five years.
This thesis is dedicated with love to my parents, Roy and Valerie Punter,
for their constant support of all my projects both creative and academic.
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Declaration of Authorship
I, Michael Punter, hereby declare that this thesis and the work presented
in it is entirely my own. Where I have consulted the work of others, this is
clearly stated.

Michael Punter
1st March 2014
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Abstract
This thesis proposes that Henry Irving, the Victorian actor and manager, has been
undervalued as a performer, and that his position in the history of nineteenth century
theatre is in need of revision. The argument is developed by a re-appraisal of two
contesting narratives that have, in their different ways, both obscured the nature of
Irving’s work. Irving deployed a diverse range of techniques to present the Victorian
body under stress from powerful and unseen forces. His work, although not obviously
contributing to theatrical modernism, was both original and innovative in a number of
important ways.
Modernism’s rejection of Victorian melodrama located Irving firmly at the
centre of George Bernard Shaw’s eviscerating criticism. This critical narrative was
quickly countered with a number of pro-Irving biographies, mostly written after the
actor’s death by colleagues and members of his family. Yet these have worked
effectively to reinforce another narrative of Victorian theatre; the move to
respectability and the gentrification of the actor/manager, of whom Irving is the
exemplar. Both narratives ignore important aspects of Irving’s professional
development and aesthetic approach, but the latter, identified here as the ‘Irving
Narrative’, overwrites the actor’s biography and reshapes it to fit the well-worn trope
of ‘rags to riches’.
The thesis begins by defining the nature of the Irving Narrative and identifying the
key texts that constitute it, then moves on to position Irving within the body of English
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nineteenth century actors, considering those who influenced his development via
anecdote or personal observation. Irving’s early career is then charted, focusing on
three key incidents that the writers of the Irving Narrative have either simplified or
chosen to ignore.
Irving’s encounter with the work of the spiritualist performers the Davenport
brothers is of particular importance. This meeting exercised a profound influence on
his subsequent approach to both performance and production. The techniques of
occult performance continued to be employed by Irving throughout his career,
beginning with his performance of Mathias in The Bells in 1871. Occult performance
emphasised the power and importance of the transformative body, making it appear
magical.
The thesis continues by examining Irving as a performer of the body in crisis. It
argues that the actor’s selection of conflicted characters allowed him to demonstrate
the effects of psychological extremity upon the body, resulting in a spectacular
performance of male suffering and, eventually, hysteria. Irving applied this approach to
Shakespeare, winning new audiences to his production of Hamlet by decoupling the
play from certain well-established traditions. Finally, I consider the decline of Irving’s
use of the magical body, and his increasing dependence on the creation of an
overwhelming spectacle in plays such as Faust and King Arthur. The final reflections
consider the indirect influence of Irving upon contemporary theatre.
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Introduction
Henry Irving’s Reputation
1 Outline
This thesis is about the career of the Victorian actor Henry Irving and his
representation in the theatre history of the late-nineteenth century. Irving was the
most successful British actor of the age, performing in some of the most commercially
and artistically successful productions of the period. Yet he divided audiences and
critics. Many believed that Irving’s productions were the highest example of theatrical
art they had seen. Others, on the other hand, took a diametrically-opposed view. To
this latter group, Irving was artificial, unconvincing and old-fashioned. After Irving’s
death in 1905, a glut of biographies lionised the actor, and yet the position of the anti-
Irving group has generally held sway. This is largely due to the prominence of George
Bernard Shaw amongst Irving’s critics and the influence of realistic forms of drama
during the twentieth century. Henry Irving was associated with a reactionary and anti-
progressive movement, and presented by Shaw as a relic of the previous century. In
this thesis, I consider how Irving’s history has been over-written by contending
narratives. These narratives have ignored important aspects of the actor’s work and
over- simplified his career.
Henry Irving was a complex and nuanced figure. He represents a considerable
challenge to the modern theatre historian. Irving’s success was centred upon an
extraordinary level of stage presence achieved via the ‘spectacular body’, a mode of