Performing Shakespeare in the Age of Empire

During the nineteenth century the performance of Shakespeare’s plays contributed significantly to the creation of a sense of British nationhood at home and overseas. This was achieved through the enterprise of the commercial theatre rather that state subsidy and institutions. Britain had no National Theatre, but Shakespeares plays were performed up and down the land from the fashionable West End to the suburbs of the capital and the expanding industrial conurbations to the north. British actors travelled the world to perform Shakespeare’s plays, while foreign actors regarded success in London as the ultimate seal of approval. In this book, Richard Foulkes explores the political and social uses of Shakespeare through the nineteenth and into the twentieth century and the movement from the business of Shakespeare as an enterprise to that of enshrinement as a cultural icon. An examination of leading Shakespearean actors, managers and directors, from Britain and abroad, is also included in the study.

• Explores the range and diversity of Shakespearean performance in England from the Reform Bill to the Great War • Analyses the performance of Shakespeare as an expression of English nationhood during the Victorian Empire • Adds information on issues of patronage and state subsidy of the period but still of continuing relevance

List of illustrations; Acknowledgments; Introduction; 1. The hero as actor: William Charles Macready; 2. Equerries and equestrians: Phelps, Kean and Astley’s; 3. A babel of bardolaters: the 1864 tercentenary; 4. Made in Manchester: Charles Calvert and George Rignold; 5. The fashionable tragedian: Henry Irving; 6. The imperial stage: Beerbohm Tree and Benson; 7. The national arena: Granville Barker, Louis Calvert and Annie Horniman; 8. The theatre of war: the 1916 tercentenary; In conclusion; Notes; References; Index.

\'This is rather more than just another study of Shakespearean production in Victorian England: it is a collection of detailed studies of the functions that Shakespeare was made to serve, through live performance, throughout the world, between about 1832 and 1916.\' Journal of Theatre Research International

\'… cannot but impress [them] with its wealth of information and suggestions for further research.\' English Studies