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Fanny Kemble Reads Shakespeare: Her First American Tour, 1849–50

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2009

Gerald Kahan
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Extract

The nineteenth-century English speaking stage was the setting for some of the most significant and interesting productions of Shakespeare's plays. It was the age of both Keans, Macready, Phelps, the Booths, Beerbohm Tree, Irving, and Poel, to mention only a few of the innovators and stars. As usual, Shakespeare was the most popular and frequently produced playwright in the language, but performances were not limited to the traditional stage. Hundreds were presented as platform readings in most of the major cities of England and America, where the halls and lecture rooms were frequently filled. The readings were given by stars and neophytes alike: Henry Irving, Ellen Terry, William Charles Macready, Sarah Siddons, Charles Kemble, and others whose names are barely footnotes to the history of the theatre. The most accomplished, popular, and preeminent among these was Frances Anne (Fanny) Kemble, Charles' daughter and second generation to the great acting family. Her career and success as an actress are well documented, but comparatively little has been written about her reading performances of Shakespeare — an activity that occupied her for nearly a quarter of a century. For most of the others, the readings were spinoffs from their stage work, favors to friends, experiments or brief encounters; for Fanny reading was a serious business, indeed her very subsistence.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Survey , Volume 24 , Issue 1-2 , May 1983 , pp. 77 - 98
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1983

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References

Notes

1 Kemble, Frances Anne, Records of Later Life (New York: Henry Holt, 1882), p. 653Google Scholar.

2 Ibid., p. 534.

3 Ibid., p. 633.

4 Ibid. Fanny wrote, in 1882, that she delivered twenty-four of the plays. She listed Cymbeline, of which I have found no record between 1849–50, and deleted Twelfth Night, which she did read, several times, during the same period.

5 Ibid., pp. 632–34.

6 Charles Kemble's reading versions of the plays were published in three volumes in London in 1870 by Bell and Daldy under the title Charles Kemble's Shakespeare Readings; Being a Selection of the Plays of Shakespeare, as Read by him in Public. Kemble began his readings after his retirement from the stage, and the editor, R.J. Lane, writes “I had lent him a copy of Hanmer's quarto, in order that he might mark the scenes and passages that were to be omitted; and happily, his marks were extended to the accentuation of words, and an occasional syllabic stress…” (p.v). “In the curtailment of the plays Mr. Kemble carefully prepared all that he would desire to read; but as, in every case, a play was to be compressed into the compass of a single reading, he found it necessary to omit much more than his judgement or his feeling approved” (pp. v–vi). Kemble began his new career in April 1844 with Cymbeline, at royal command, and by May was giving public readings at Willis's Rooms under the management of Mr. Mitchell. “From these good beginnings the readings of Shakespeare made their way, in due course, to the various public rooms and literary institutions of London, and of the chief provincial towns; and Mr. Kemble may be said to have so set an example that has been generally followed, and to have created a demand which this publication is designed to supply”(p. viii).

7 The number of lines and the nature of the scene designations, here and elsewhere, are based on the Hanmer texts.

8 In January 1848, several months before she began her readings in England, she wrote, “Is not Shakespeare true to human nature? Why does he never disgust one with it? Why does one feel comparatively clean in spirit after living with his creatures? Some of them are as bad as real men and women ever were, but some of them are as good as real men and women ever are; and one does not lose one's respect for one's kind while reading what he writes of it: and his coarse utterances, the speech of his time, hurt one comparatively little in the midst of his noble and sweet thoughts …” (Records of Later Life, pp. 601–02). She obviously changed her mind when she was required to read aloud in public.

9 Kemble, F.A., “Some Notes on Shakespeare,” Atlantic Monthly (September 1860), pp. 288 ffGoogle Scholar.

10 In Kemble, Frances Ann, Notes Upon Some of Shakespeare's plays (London: Richard Bentley & Son, 1882), pp. 131–136Google Scholar.

11 “Some Notes …,” pp. 293–94.

12 Daily Evening Transcript (Boston), 27 January 1849.

13 Kemble, Frances Anne, Further Records 1848–1883 (New York: B. Blom, 1972), I, 129, nGoogle Scholar.

14 A Philadelphia Perspective. The Diary of Sidney George Fisher Covering the Years 1834–1871 ed. Wainwright, Nicholas B. (Philadelphia: The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1967), p. 226Google Scholar.

15 Mrs. Longfellow: Selected Letters and Journals of Fanny Appleton Longfellow (1817–1861), ed. Wagenknecht, Edward (New York: Longmans, Green, 1956), pp. 148–150Google Scholar. Actually, Fanny Kemble read Macbeth on the 12th.

16 Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow With Extracts From His Journals and Correspondence, ed. Longfellow, Samuel (Boston: Ticknor, 1886), II, 131–135Google Scholar.

17 New York Tribune, 6 March 1849.

18 New York Tribune, 13 April 1849.

19 American and Commercial Daily Advertiser (Baltimore), 9 November 1849.

20 Ibid.

21 Fanny's reading of the Longfellow poem was an expression of her gratitude for the sonnet he had written a year earlier.