Performing Shakespeare in the Age of Empire, and: Not Shakespeare: Bardolatry and Burlesque in the Nineteenth Century (review)

Reviewed by: Performing Shakespeare in the Age of Empire, and: Not Shakespeare: Bardolatry and Burlesque in the Nineteenth Century Tracy C. Davis (bio) Performing Shakespeare in the Age of Empire, by Richard Foulkes; pp. x + 235. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003, £45.00, $60.00. Not Shakespeare: Bardolatry and Burlesque in the Nineteenth Century, by Richard Schoch; pp. xix + 209. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002, £40.00, $60.00. Ever since the restoration of the theatres in 1660, performing in Shakespeare has marked a level of achievement in an actor, production of Shakespeare has signalled artistic aspiration in a theatre, and appreciation of Shakespeare has been taken as seriousness of mind in a population. By the Victorian period, the oversupply of actors, plethora of commercially competing theatres, and prejudices of reading and theatregoing audiences made Shakespeare a litmus test for all three entities: actors' reputations were made [End Page 544] through innovative character-based interpretation of major roles, theatres' reputations were secured through credible production (though their treasuries were rarely sustained by these efforts), and the public judged the artists while at the same time they were judged by their decision to exercise connoisseurship on behalf of the Bard. Extending work by Gary Taylor, Jonathan Bate, and Michael Dobson, Richard Foulkes argues in Performing Shakespeare in the Age of Empire that Victorian and Edwardian Britain's claims to Shakespeare were multiple and that the tension between seeing him honored abroad and duly honoring him at home involved speculation in reputations as well as finances, with the question of a national theatre—or rather, the lack of one—consistently dogging "the intelligent classes." Building on work by Stanley Wells, Robert Allen, and Leah Marcus, Richard Schoch's Not Shakespeare: Bardolatry and Burlesque in the Nineteenth Century argues that Shakespearean burlesques critique the very idea of "legitimacy" that paired the national dramatist with a national theatre. Shakespeare was put to many purposes on behalf of nationhood, national identity, and the nation's unity. For example, Foulkes documents that James Fraser, the second Archbishop of Manchester, looked upon Shakespeare as "breakwaters amongst the surging waters of vice" (84) and strongly supported Charles Calvert's productions aimed at a broad audience. Calvert's extensive Shakespearean repertoire in the 1860s was intended to ascertain whether or not there could be "one nation" (89) assembled in the stalls, boxes, and gallery of the Prince's Theatre Manchester. Meanwhile, in London, the increasing specialization of theatres and growth of suburban venues suggested that while there were many welcoming neighborhoods for Shakespeare, only some classes found a niche in West End theatres. Foulkes is chiefly concerned with chronicling the succession of actors whose careers were substantially devoted to Shakespearean production, and from William Charles Macready to Herbert Beerbohm Tree most were based in London. Yet he also demonstrates that the loci of Shakespearean devotees beyond the metropole's center— including Samuel Phelps at Sadler's Wells (Islington) in the 1840s and '50s; Lilian Baylis at the Old Vic (Lambeth), beginning in 1912; and the steady efforts of Frank Benson's company using Stratford-upon-Avon as a touring base for nearly thirty years beginning in 1882—suggests that actor-managers consistently sought a national stage, if not a national theatre, for the playwright. As the Painter in Timon of Athens pragmatically reasons, sometimes intent is all that can be offered: if Shakespeare could not secure certain profit in Britain, there were other marketplaces where he could. Foulkes's chronicle of British stage interpreters is interspersed with indications of the appeal of Shakespeare abroad, especially in the United States, France, and Germany, with sketches of stage history in India, New Zealand, South Africa, Australia, and brief mention of Canada. (Many colonies—in the Caribbean, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific—are overlooked.) Thus, the book posits "age of empire" in a temporal rather than geographic sense, for just as steamships and railroads facilitated trade they also enabled touring, though whether Shakespeare reached most of those within the Empire, or what anyone thought of him if he did, are not taken up. It is not the consolidation of empire through drama that interests Foulkes so...

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