Abstract
When John Ruskin wrote to Wilson Barrett in 1884 praising his production of Claudian and urging him to follow it up with other classically-set plays, he ended his letter with the ringing statement: ‘With scene-painting like that at the Princess’s Theatre, (you) might do more for art teaching than all the galleries and professors of Christendom’ (CW 37.34). In so doing, he entered into what was to become a major debate in late Victorian artistic circles — the question of whether or not theatrical scene painting should rank alongside other forms of painting as an art rather than as a theatrical craft.
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Henry Herman (1888) ‘The Stage as a School of Art and Archaeology’, Magazine of Art, 11, pp. 332–7.
Oscar Wilde (1885) ‘Shakespeare and Scenery’, Dramatic Review, 14 March, reprinted in
John Wyse Jackson (ed.) (1991) Aristotle at Afternoon Tea: The Rare Oscar Wilde (London: Fourth Estate), pp. 73–4.
Philip Beck (1883) ‘Realism’, The Theatre, n.s. 2 (September), pp. 127–31.
Percy Fitzgerald (1878) ‘Thoughts on Scenery’, The Theatre, n.s. 1 (October), pp. 201–4.
See also Fitzgerald (1887) ‘On Scenic Illusion and Stage Appliances’, Journal of the Society of Arts, 35, 456–66.
See John Stokes (1972) Resistible Theatres (London: Paul Elek)
and Sybil Rosenfeld (1973) A Short History of Scene Design in Great Britain (Oxford: Basil Blackwell).
Percy Fitzgerald (1908) Shakespearean Representation: Its Laws and Limits (London: Elliot Stock).
Herbert Beerbohm Tree (1900) ‘The Staging of Shakespeare - A Defence of Public Taste’, Fortnightly Review, 68, 52–65,
reprinted in Tree (1915) Thoughts and After-Thoughts (London: Cassell), pp. 39–72.
Sir Sidney Lee (1900) ‘Shakespeare and the Modern Stage’, The Nineteenth Centwy, 47, 146–56.
Jeffrey Richards (2005) Sir Henry Irving: A Victorian Actor and his World (London: Hambledon and London), p. 123.
On Irving’s Hamlet, see John A. Mills (1985) Hamlet on Stage: The Great Tradition (Westport, Connecticut: The Greenwood Press), pp. 153–72
and Alan Hughes (1981) Henry Irving, Shakespearean (Cambridge University Press), pp. 27–87.
On Barrett’s Hamlet, see James Thomas (1984) The Art of the Actor-Manager: Wilson Barrett and the Victorian Theatre (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press), pp. 73–79.
Clement Scott (1900) Some Notable Hamlets of the Present Time (London: Greening), pp. 102, 105.
For a detailed discussion of Godwin’s work on Hamlet, see Russell Jackson (1974) ’Designer and Director: E.W. Godwin and Wilson Barrett’s Hamlet of 1884’, Shakespeare Jahrbuch, 186–200;
James Thomas (1979) ‘Wilson Barrett’s Hamlet’, Theatre Journal, 31, 479–500;
and Fanny Baldwin (1999) `E.W. Godwin and Design for the Theatre’ in Susan Weber Soros (ed.), E.W. Godwin: Aesthetic Movement Architect and Designer (New Haven: Yale University Press), pp. 332–9.
Matthew Arnold (1919) Letters of an Old Playgoer (Brander Matthews (ed.)) (New York: Dramatic Museum of Columbia University), pp. 49–54.
Russell Jackson (1977) ‘The Shakespearean Productions of Lewis Wingfield’, Theatre Notebook, 31, 34.
Clement Scott (1899) The Drama of Yesterday and To-Day, Vol. 2 (London: Macmillan), p. 292.
Helena Modjeska (1910) Memories and Impressions (New York: Macmillan), pp. 414–15.
Dutton Cook (1883) Nights at the Play (London: Chatto & Windus), pp. 416–17.
Lewis Wingfield (1884) ‘Realism Behind the Footlights’, The Fortnightly Review 41 o.s./35 n.s., 472–81.
Lewis Wingfield (1888) ‘Costume Designing’, Magazine of Art 11, 403–9.
William Winter (1886) The Stage Life of Mary Anderson (New York: George J. Coombes), p. 94.
John Ranken Towse (1916) Sixty Years of the Theater (New York: Funk and Wagnalls), pp. 214–21.
Mary Anderson (1896) A Few Memories (New York: Harper and Brothers), pp. 165–83.
Merlin Holland and Rupert Hart-Davis (eds) (2000) The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde (London: Fourth Estate), p. 181.
William Winter (1915) Shakespeare on the Stage, second series (New York: Moffat, Yard and Company), pp. 176–7.
George Rowell (1986) `Mercutio as Romeo: William Terriss in Romeo and Juliet’ in Richard Foulkes (ed.), Shakespeare and the Victorian Stage (Cambridge University Press), pp. 87–96.
The Earl of Lytton (1884) ‘Miss Anderson’s Juliet’, The Nineteenth Century 16, 879–900.
Oscar Wilde (1963) ‘The Truth of Masks’ in Oscar Wilde, Complete Works (London: Spring Books), pp. 901, 902, 906–7, 907–8.
Dame Madge Kendal (1933) Dame Madge Kendal By Herself (London: John Murray), p. 152.
E.W. Godwin (1885) ‘Archaeology on the Stage III’, Dramatic Review (7 March), pp. 84–5.
Lillie Langtry (1925) The Days I Knew (London: Hutchinson), p. 151.
Margaret Lamb (1980) Antony and Cleopatra on the English Stage (London and Toronto: Associated University Presses), p. 24.
Richard Madelaine (ed.) (1998) Shakespeare in Production: Antony and Cleopatra (Cambridge University Press), p. 47.
Richard Dickins (1907) Forty Years of Shakespeare on the English Stage (privately printed), pp. 66–7.
For a full account of the play, see Russell Jackson (1985) ‘Cleopatra “Lilyised”: Antony and Cleopatra at the Princess’s 1890’, Theatrephile, 2, 8, 37–40.
Copyright information
© 2010 Katherine Newey and Jeffrey Richards
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Newey, K., Richards, J. (2010). Ruskinian Shakespeare. In: John Ruskin and the Victorian Theatre. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230276512_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230276512_7
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-35738-3
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-27651-2
eBook Packages: Palgrave Theatre & Performance CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)