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Shakespeare in Edinburgh Playbills: The Theatre Royal, 1810–1851
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 October 2010
Extract
In the National Library of Scotland under R.283.C. (bound volumes) and pressmrk Mus.Box.250 (boxes of loose materials) are collections of long-neglected playbills—a mine for detailed study of many aspects of theatre in Edinburgh. No printed catalogue of these ephemerae exists, though they provide valuable information that J. C. Dibdin chose to omit from The Annals of the Edinburgh Stage. The collections of Edinburgh playbills are uneven. Sixteen of forty-two Theatre Royal seasons between 1810 and 1851 are not represented by any bills.
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- Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1979
References
NOTES
1 These collections contain playbills from London and various provincial cities as well as from Edinburgh, and no scholarly work has been done on these. Popular accounts of Edinburgh theatre playbills include: Fleming, Mary, “Old Edinburgh Theatre Posters,” SMT Magazine, 46 Number 6 (December 1950), 38–41Google Scholar, and “Edinburgh Theatre Posters 1800–1900 as an Added Attraction to the Edinburgh Festival,” Priming World (31 August 1966), 274. I thank the Trustees of the National Library of Scotland for allowing me permission to reproduce posters in their collection. I also thank the Leverhulme Foundation for providing me the fellowship at the University of Edinburgh that made my research possible.
2 Dibdin, James C., The Annals of the Edinburgh Stage (Edinburgh: Richard Cameron, 1888).Google Scholar [Robert Chambers], Sketch of the History of the Edinburgh Theatre Royal (Edinburgh, 1859) is a very brief outline of the theatre's history.
3 Watson, Ernest B., Sheridan to Robertson. A Study of the Nineteenth-Century London Stage (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1926)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; the quotation serves for Edinburgh as well as London.
4 Dibdin, pp. 257–58.
5 Dibdin, p. 268. In 1809 the Siddonses gained the patent for the Edinburgh Theatre Royal, and in 1851 W. H. Murray left the stage. For members of the Theatre Royal, see Dibdin, pp. 495–500.
6 Nicoll, Allardyce, A History of English Drama, 1660–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955), 4: 1–2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
7 Dibdin, pp. 270–71; of Murray: “His connection with the Edinburgh itage was probably of more importance to it than of any other man who ever lived” (pp. 260–61). Murray's picture is the frontispiece to. Dibdin's study.
8 Cf. Laws of the Shakespeare Club of Scotland [Edinburgh, 1827]. The society had a wide membership. For meetings the members wore a uniform. Each member was assigned as his code or membership name, the name of a Shakespearean character and given a seal impressed with Shakespeare's image. The Museum of the City of Edinburgh now has on display the paraphernalia associated with membership.
9 Plays sponsored were non-Shakespearean.
10 Extensive research into Scott's influence on Edinburgh threatre must be followed by a much broader investigation of the influence of adaptations of the Waverley novels on the course of British drama as a whole; see Nicoll, 4: 92, fn. 1, and Dibdin, passim.
11 See, for example, three letters of Lord Meadowbank to Mr. Murray regarding the re-engagenient of Charles Kean in 1836, printed in Cole, John W., The Life and Theatrical Times of Charles Kean. F.S.A. (London, 1859), 224–27Google Scholar; also see pp. 228–29 for Lord Jeffrey's approval of Kean. J. P. Kemble was highly regarded from 1780 to 1817; see Baker, Herschel, John Philip Kemble: The Actor in His Theatre (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1942), p. 143.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
12 These titles are not in Dibdin, though he lists many of the Shakespearean performances during this period.