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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 January 2009
Oscar Asche is one of a number of Edwardian actor-managers who have been largely ignored by theatre historians in favour of the dominant figure of Herbert Beerbohm-Tree. Asche was one of that generation of directors, which also included Lewis Waller, Sir John Martin-Harvey, and Arthur Bourchier, who regarded the staging of pictorial productions of Shakespeare as a sign of status – a claim to be taken seriously in his profession. He had an adventurous career, representative in many respects of the energy and enterprise that characterized the Edwardian theatre – yet his work also exemplified attitudes and practices that would be discounted by a generation of playgoers enthused by different ways of interpreting Shakespearean drama, a new theatrical aesthetic, and the broader social and educational aims of the non-commercial stage. After his death in 1936, he was remembered more as the author of one of the new century's most successful romantic fantasies – Chu Chin Chow – than as a Shakespearean actor-manager. The author of this reassessment, Russell Jackson, is Deputy Director of the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham. His publications include editions of plays by Wilde and Jones, and Victorian Theatre: a New Mermaid Background Book (1989). He is currently working on a study of Shakespeare in Victorian criticism and performance.
1. Asche, Oscar, His Life: by Himself (London, n.d. [1929]), p. 26–7Google Scholar; 55 (hereafter referred to as ‘Asche’). This is the principal source for information concerning Asche's career and opinions. See also Littlewood's, S. K. article in The Dictionary of National Biography, 1931–1940 (1949), p. 18–19Google Scholar; obituary in The Times, 24 March 1936. Brayton, Lily married DrWatson, Douglas Chalmers in 1938 and died in 1953: obituaries appeared in The Times on 2 and 14 05 1953Google Scholar.
2. Trewin's, J. C.Benson and the Bensonians (London, 1960)Google Scholar is the fullest and most reliable account of the company, which supplements and corrects the lively but unreliable memoirs of Constance , Benson (Mainly Players: Bensonian Memories, London, 1926)Google Scholar, and F. R. Benson himself (London, 1930). See also Beauman, Sally, The Royal Shakespeare Theatre: a History of Ten Decades (Oxford, 1982)Google Scholar, and Crosse, Gordon, Shakespearean Playgoing, 1890–1952 (London, 1953)Google Scholar.
3. Beerbohm, Max, ‘Two Performances of Shakespeare’ (Saturday Review, 24 February 1900) in Around Theatres (London, 1924; reprinted 1953), p. 61–4Google Scholar. The ‘university cricket’ metaphor is taken up by Beerbohm from an article in the News Chronicle, which he quotes in the course of the review.
4. Asche, p. 96–7.
5. Gordon Crosse, MS Diaries, ‘Shakespeare Plays I Have Seen’ (21 vols., Birmingham Shakespeare Library), III, p. 137 (hereafter referred to as ‘Crosse, Diaries’).
6. Crosse, Diaries, III, p. 13.
7. Asche's production is discussed in the context of the traditions of the play on stage by Haring-Smith, Tori, From Farce to Metadrama: a Stage History of ‘The Taming of the Shrew’, 1594–1983 (Westport, Connecticut, 1985), p. 81–6Google Scholar.
8. Promptbook, The Taming of the Shrew, Adelphi Theatre, 1905, Shakespeare Centre Library, Stratford-upon-Avon, 72.930. This is one of a number of Asche/Brayton promptbooks donated to the library by Brayton after her remarriage. The collection also includes band parts for the incidental music to several of the plays.
9. Promptbook, The Taming of the Shrew, F. R. Benson's production: Shakespeare Centre Library, 72.930. As Haring-Smith points out, during Benson's violent finale Petruchio's behaviour makes the onlookers scream: Asche makes them helpless with laughter.
10. Promptbooks, The Merchant of Venice, Australia and South Africa, 1909–13: Shakespeare Centre Library, 72.921. The directions are quoted from the first of the two books (accession number 5407), and in substance repeated in the second (5408).
11. The strong-box and the general sense of confinement and security in Shylock's house derived directly from Tree's production.
12. Promptbook, Othello, His Majesty's Theatre, 1907: Shakespeare Centre Library, 72.925. A second promptbook (at the same class mark) begins with an abbreviated version of the play's opening.
13. Crosse, Diaries, IV, p. 67. Beerbohm, Max, ‘At His Majesty's Theatre’ (Saturday Review, 12 10 1907), in Around Theatres, p. 477–80Google Scholar.
14. ‘It is not easy to eat and act at the same time …’, Asche, p. 119. The promptbook for the production is in the Shakespeare Centre Library (72.903).
15. Beerbohm, Max, ‘Elsinore Again Overhauled’ (Saturday Review, 8 04 1905), in Last Theatres ed. Hart-Davis, Rupert (London, 1970), p. 147–52Google Scholar. Asche's Claudius, more complex than was commonly the case, would have been particularly appropriate to H. B. Irving's interpretation of the title part: see Mazer, Cary M., ‘The Criminal as Actor: H. B. Irving as Criminologist and Shakespearean’, in Foulkes, Richard, ed., Shakespeare and the Victorian Stage (Cambridge, 1986), p. 106–19Google Scholar.
16. Yeats, W. B., ‘At Stratford-upon-Avon’, The Speaker, 11 05 1901Google Scholar. Subsequent reprints of the article do not include this paragraph.
17. Walkley, A. B., review in The Times, 21 03 1906Google Scholar. A promptbook in the Shakespeare Centre Library (72.920) has few indications of business and no signs of having been used in production: the fact that only Isabella's part has some notes on interpretation and emphasis suggests that it may have been used by Lily Brayton in studying the role.
18. Promptbook for Henrik Ibsen, The Pretenders, Shakespeare Centre Library.
19. Asche, p. 112.
20. On the modern-dress productions staged by the Birmingham Repertory Company, see Cochrane, Claire, Shakespeare and the Birmingham Repertory Company, 1913–1929 (London, 1994)Google Scholar.
21. Crosse, Diaries, V, 34. The ‘two best sets’ were ‘the fields with the river frozen over and a view of Windsor castle in the background, and the Park scene at the end’. This production, at the Garrick Theatre, ran for 49 performances between 25 February and 8 April 1911.
22. Crosse's diary describes vividly the appearance of Casca as the curtain went up on the senate scene: ‘He was lounging on a bench, saying nothing, and yet dominating the whole scene not by managerial tricks but by sinister force – an excellent performance’ (XIII, 54). Crosse notes that Asche followed Tree in bringing Calpurnia on at the end of the forum scene, which (as in Tree's version) occupied an entire act to itself. There was ‘a most realistic imitation of pouring rain’ for the storm, which reminded Crosse of the effect in the first scene of Tree's production of Pygmalion in 1914.