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Alfred Wigan: Victorian Realist

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2009

David Rinear
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Extract

Considerations of developing realistic acting styles on the English stage between the debut of Macready in 1817 and the triumph of Fechter in 1860 usually focus their attention on Macready, Charles Kean, and Phelps. Although these three men differed significantly in their approaches to acting, their styles shared in common a romantic goal that René Wellek attributes to Coleridge: “to domesticate the wonderful.” The means of attaining this goal varied. Macready relied on developing the audience's appreciation of his conscious artifice at playing domesticated points. He was, consequently, less realistic than Phelps and Kean, who were primarily concerned with trying to make an audience feel what they believed their characters felt. This concern with transmitting character feeling is compatible with Kean's excellence at gentlemanly melodrama and Phelps' ability at playing the pathetic elements in comic characters.

Type
Research Article
Information
Theatre Survey , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , November 1972 , pp. 44 - 59
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1972

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References

Notes

1 Wellek, René and Warren, Austin, A Theory of Literature (New York, 1942), p. 242Google Scholar.

2 Allen, Shirley, Samuel Phelps and The Sadler's Wells Theatre (Middletown, Conn., 1969), p. 167Google Scholar.

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4 Ibid., and Duerr, Edwin, The Length and Depth of Acting (New York, 1962), p. 357Google Scholar.

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13 Coleman, John, Players and Playwrights I Have Known, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1890), I, 233, states: “Elegant, accomplished, finished as he was in everything he touched, he was always, or nearly always, Charles Mathews.” Marston is of the same opinion: “Generally, Mr. Mathews imparted a good deal of his own personality into his various assumptions” (II, 160). Lewes goes even further in stating: “I now see, in retrospect, that it was the charm of the man rather than any peculiar talent in the actor which carried him so successfully.…” (I, 76)Google Scholar.

14 The only twentieth century considerations of Wigan are contained in Downer's, Alan S. “Players and the Painted Stage: Nineteenth Century Acting,” PMLA, LI (1946), 557–558, and Watson, p. 371Google Scholar.

15 DNB, XXI, 188Google Scholar.

16 Athenaeum, 12 February 1842, p. 150: “Mr. Wigan looks and speaks the part of a French valet to the life.”Google Scholar

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18 Times, 4 October 1847, p. 5Google Scholar.

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24 Ibid., 16 May 1855, p. 9.

25 Saturday Review, XII (1861), 560: “It is quite possible that the artist [Wigan] in his extreme anxiety to avoid caricature, may glide into the opposite extreme of missing character altogether.… ”Google Scholar

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28 Athenaeum, 18 November 1848, p. 1155Google Scholar.

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30 Athenaeum, 6 January 1849, p. 18Google Scholar.

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32 Ibid., 8 February 1851, p. 171.

33 Ibid., 29 November 1851, p. 1259.

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36 Athenaeum, 15 May 1852, p. 554Google Scholar.

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40 Times, 18 October 1853, p. 4Google Scholar.

41 See advertisement in Times, 17 October 1853Google Scholar.

42 Theatrical Journal, XIV (14 12 1853), p. 395Google Scholar.

43 Times, 27 December 1853, p. 10Google Scholar.

44 Season derived from advertisements in the Times.

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52 Himmelfarb, Gertrude, Victorian Minds (New York, 1968), p. 289.—Subsequently, the aristocratic and lower classes embraced the ideals developed by the middle class and transformed them into national political policies. See Himmelfarb, p. 277 and Houghton, p. 5Google Scholar.

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54 Houghton, p. 190.