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From Covent Garden to the Bowery: Kemble and Hamblin Promptbooks for Henry VIII

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2010

Frederick J. Marker
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Extract

John Philip Kemble, particularly during his palmy days at the rebuilt Covent Garden from 1809 to 1817, introduced a new style of production and management into English theatre. In producing Shakespeare's plays (twenty-seven in twenty-nine years) Kemble was determined “to bend every nerve to make them perfect, beyond all previous example.” His calculated “authenticity,” picturesque groupings, illusionistic scenery, and splendid processions revolutionized theatrical style. “Unquestionably all the truth, all the uniformity, all the splendour and the retinue of the stage came in, but did not die, with Mr. Kemble,” writes his biographer, James Boaden, with customary enthusiasm. “He transported us absolutely into the days of Henry VIII. or Coriolanus,” recalls one admirer.

Type
Research Article
Information
Theatre Survey , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , November 1968 , pp. 72 - 87
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1968

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References

NOTES

1 Boaden, James, Memoirs of the Life of John Philip Kemble, Esq. (London, 1825), I, 157.Google Scholar

2 Ibid., I, xxi.

3 Kemble, John Philip, Select British Theatre (London, 1815), I, vii.Google Scholar

4 Nicoll, AlIardyce, A History of Late Eighteenth-Century Drama, 1750–1800 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1927), pp. 29–30Google Scholar, and A History of Early Nineteenth-Century Drama, 1800–1850 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1930), I, 38–39.

5 Dec. 19, 1813.

6 Dec. 19,1813.

7 For further details, see Hornblow, Arthur, A History of the Theatre in America (Philadelphia, 1919), II, 26Google Scholar, and Hughes, Glenn, A History of the American Theatre 1700–1950 (New York, 1951), p. 131.Google Scholar

8 Cf. Hewitt, Bernard, Theatre USA., 1668 to 1957 (New York, 1959), pp. 116–117.Google Scholar

9 Moody, Richard, Edwin Forrest, First Star of the American Stage (New York, 1960), p. 268.Google Scholar

10 Wemyss, Francis C., Chronology of the American Stage from 1752 to 1852 (New York, 1852), p. 68.Google Scholar

11 This promptbook, bound in patterned blue paper covers, is identified by the inscription “Henry the Eighth, in Four Acts, as played at the Bowery Theatre, by Mrs. Hamblin. The Property of Joseph J. Salmon” and the Yale call number Ig/3/1/K57. Original ink notations include a three-page historical introduction, calls, cuts, stage business, groundplans, and cues for music and effects.

12 Odell, George C. D., Annals of the New York Stage, V (New York, 1931), 538.Google Scholar

13 Ibid., 349.

14 Shattuck, Charles H., The Shakespeare Promptbooks: A Descriptive Catalogue (Univ. of Illinois Press, 1965), p. 156Google Scholar, no. 8. Citations in the present article are from the MS. in the Players Club in New York, whose courtesy is gratefully acknowledged.

15 Gassner, John and Allen, Ralph G., Theatre and Drama in the Making (Boston, 1964), p. 871.Google Scholar

16 Roscius Anglicanus, or a Historical Survey of the Stage, ed. Montague Summers (London, 1930), p. 24.

17 London Times, Oct. 21, 1811.

18 Cf. Odell, George C. D., Shakespeare from Betterton to Irving (London, 1920), II, 102–103.Google Scholar

19 Brissard's frontispiece to Molière's Impromptu de Versailles (produced 1663) is in reality an excellent illustration of conventional placement in the semicircle. An interesting indication of the survival of this convention in the nineteenth century is, for example, the comment in Le Courier français (Sept. 13, 1827) which, expressing admiration for the original scenic arrangements in the English guest performances in Paris in 1827, added: “Chez nous, quand cinq ou six personages se trouvent à la fois sur le théâtre, ces personages forment un demicercle devant la rampe.”

20 London Times, Oct. 21,1811.

21 Cf. Sprague, Arthur Colby, Shakespeare and the Actors (New York, 1963), pp. 77–78.Google Scholar

22 Ibid., pp. 78–79.

23 The Life and Theatrical Times of Charles Kean, F.S.A. (London, 1859), I, 113.

24 The Kembles (London, [1871]), II, 174.

25 Fleeming Jenkin, H. C., “Mrs. Siddons as Lady Macbeth and as Queen Katharine,” in Matthews, Brander, Papers on Acting (New York, 1958), p. 105.Google Scholar On this celebrated moment, see also Fitzgerald, II, 174–75, and Boaden, I, 420–21.

26 “Shakesperian Stage-Traditions,” The Principles of Playmaking (New York, 1925), p. 116.

27 Memoirs of Mrs. Siddons (Philadelphia, 1827), p. 319.

28 Cf. Sprague, p. 81.

29 Odell, , Annals of the New York Stage, V, 349.Google Scholar An interesting sidelight to the attenuated Hamblin version is provided by a remark entered in the Kemble promptbook by Edwin Booth, who eventually acquired it. “End this in the usual way,” notes Booth at the end of the vision scene, “and if necessary terminate the play here or with Wolsey's exit Act 3.” “The usual way” is apparently a reference to the shortened version. Booth adopted Wolsey as a star part in 1876: see Gassner and Allen, p. 940. In 1855 Charles Kean restored the fifth act, which “had of late years been entirely omitted.”

30 “Shakesperian Stage-Traditions,” p. 101.