Garden Theatre Research Articles

Double take: the story of the Elgin and Winter Garden Theatres

Double take: the story of the Elgin and Winter Garden Theatres

The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. A Series of Articles to Mark the 250th Anniversary. Covent Garden Theatre in 1732

The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. A Series of Articles to Mark the 250th Anniversary. Covent Garden Theatre in 1732

Upfront

Film producer Garth Drabinsky has been trying for years to gain control of the Winter Garden Theatre complex, a 69-year old multi-space facility on Yonge Street in downtown Toronto. Drabinsky - working with W.B.C. Productions (which owns both the Bass ticket agency and Concert Productions International) told the Province and Famous Players (which actually owns the facility) that if given control, they would convert the main floor into a 1,600 seat movie/legitimate theatre and the long-dark secon d-floor Winter Garden vaudeville house into a 900-seat playho use chiefly for the transfer of Canadian productions.

French Opera and the Making of the Dorset Garden Theatre

In the summer of 1671, after the court had left London and after his performance as Ladislaus in John Crowne's Juliana – a play thwarted, as the preface declared, by the fact that ‘the Dog-Star was near his Reign’ – Thomas Betterton made his way with Joseph Haines to Paris. What they, and particularly what Betterton, saw there helped to determine the form of the Dorset Garden Theatre which was then under construction, and which would open in November that year. When we compare what was happening on the French stage during and immediately after Betterton's visit with what we know of the Dorset Garden Theatre, however, it becomes clear that Betterton's experience was to have an effect on the form of the Dorset Garden Theatre not immediately, but in the years that followed its opening, and that the single most influential work was not one that Betterton saw on his visit to France in 1671, but one which was first performed two years later.

The Forties and Beyond: The New Play Society

Every now and then in the media, there is some odd mention of the Winter Garden Theatre, which sadly rests above a movie house in the heart of Toronto’s downtown. This relic of Canada’s cultural past is today solemnly called the city’s “forgotten theatre”. But there is another “forgotten theatre” in Toronto, one of which even fewer people have likely ever heard. To look at it now, one finds it difficult to believe it was there that professional productions of many of the world’s greatest dramas were once performed. It was in this theatre, that many of Canada’s outstanding stage and radio performers received early experience and recognition. Today, most of the seats in the auditorium still remain, while only a fraction of the original stage is still intact. This is Toronto’s “other forgotten theatre” — the Royal Ontario Museum Theatre. The time was almost thirty-five years ago. The people called themselves the New Play Society and they were led by Dora Mavor Moore.

The Borderers: Wordsworth's addenda to Godwin

Even before it was revised for the stage at Coleridge's instigation, The Borderers was a unique experiment for Wordsworth. Whether cast in the form of a play or closet drama, it represents, in all likelihood, an attempt on Wordsworth's part to find a style more direct than that of 'Salisbury Plain,' later Guilt and Sorrow, to convey the full freight of his growing social philosophy while at the same time enlisting sympathy for the spectacle of human suffering presented by his characters. By December 1797, the play had been rejected by the Covent Garden Theatre because of what was, according to the poet's relative, Elizabeth Threlkeld, 'the metaphysical obscurity of one character,' and almost four decades later the reviewer for The Athenaeum of the published version could still complain that Oswald stood 'too much on the extreme of evil.' The figure of Oswald has been at the centre of the 'metaphysical' aspect of the play in our own times also, but the principal question for twentieth-century critics has been whether The Borderers embodies acceptance of William Godwin's Enquiry Concerning Political Justice or testifies to Wordsworth's rejection of it. That critics should look to Oswald is natural enough inasmuch as it is he who acts and Marmaduke, the hero, who is acted upon. There is, nevertheless, a compelling case to be made for Marmaduke as a more Significant indicator of Wordsworth's attitudes towards Godwinism. In what follows, I shall show that the poet, in his treatment of Oswald, accepts Godwin but attempts to supplement him, while with Marmaduke he tries to show inadequacies in the philosopher's system.

A Conjectural Reconstruction of the Dorset Garden Theatre

The most magnificent of the Restoration playhouses, yet the one with the most lamentable history, was the Dorset Garden. Conceived by Sir William Davenant, the building was not erected until after his death. Though it was the most expensive and lavishly equipped of all the theatres built between 1660 and 1700, it fell into partial disuse eleven years after it opened and was demolished in 1709 after a life of only thirty-eight years.

Hamlet as Edwin Booth

Since Edwin Booth was so generally considered the best American actor of his time (some say of all time), and since Hamlet was his best known and most frequently performed role, our interest in it is more than academic. Booth knew Hamlet as well as any man in his century. His particular illumination of the role—an intellectual, neurotic, romantic Hamlet—has become a part of our own understanding of the character and has been reflected in the recent interpretations of Burton, O'Toole, and Plummer.Booth first played Hamlet in California, at the suggestion of his father, Junius Brutus Booth, and it quickly became his most celebrated role. When Edwin joined with John (Sleeper) Clarke and William Stuart in the management of the Winter Garden Theatre in New York, Hamlet was his first production. It had a phenomenal run of one-hundred nights, setting a record which was not eclipsed for some time.

The Dorset Garden Theatre in Pictures

The so-called river view of the Dorset Garden playhouse and the Dolle engravings in Settle's The Empress of Morocco (1673) have long been familiar to theatre historians, but these are not the only pictures we have of this elegant Restoration theatre, and it may be helpful to gather together here all the pictorial material that has been found, much of which is new, intriguing, and sometimes baffling.

“The Second Chronicler”: A Tentative Identification of the Unknown Hand in The MS. Diaries of the Drury Lane Theatre

Among the important collections of memorabilia concerning eighteenth-century London playhouses is that known as The Ms. Diaries of the Drury Lane Theatre, thirteen manuscript notebooks or theatrical calendars of quarto size among the holdings of The Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C. While there is a gap of two seasons, 1760–1762, and another of four seasons, 1764–1768, these documents are valued for their chronological record of theatrical seasons at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, throughout the management of David Garrick and his partner James Lacy, 1747–1776. Each night's reckoning is set down with the plays and entertainments produced, the box office receipts in round numbers, the numerical position of the performance in the particular season, and very often the prompter's notations concerning anything unusual about production, performers, the temper of the audience, or merely “the way things went” on a particular evening. Together with Course of Plays, 1740–1742, a similar calendar of the 1740–1741 season at Covent Garden Theatre and the 1741–1742 season at Drury Lane attributed to Richard Cross, these diaries have become known popularly as The Cross-Hopkins Diaries, after the two Drury Lane prompters, Richard Cross and William Hopkins, acknowledged compilers of the greater part of the series.

Bulwer and His "Lady"

Previous articleNext article No AccessBulwer and His "Lady"Dewey GanzelDewey Ganzel Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Modern Philology Volume 58, Number 1Aug., 1960 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/389354 Copyright 1960 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Manuscript copy for the playbill of a performance of “Richard III” (Cibber’s adaptation) at Covent Garden Theatre

Journal Article Manuscript copy for the playbill of a performance of “Richard III” (Cibber’s adaptation) at Covent Garden Theatre Get access Shakespeare Quarterly, Volume 10, Issue 1, Winter 1959, Page 10, https://doi.org/10.1093/sq/10.1.10 Published: 01 January 1959

Manuscript copy for the playbill of a performance of “The Constant Couple” at Covent Garden Theatre

Manuscript copy for the playbill of a performance of “The Constant Couple” at Covent Garden Theatre

Shakespeare in New York City, 1956-1957

HE season for Shakespeare in New York City during i956I957 was considerably brighter than in the past few years. During the past decade, soaring production costs have made Shakespeare on Broadway all but prohibitive, so that presentations have been limited to those ranging from hastilyassembled offerings at the City Center to well-intentioned but not always satisfying productions off Broadway. During the season just finished, however, the Shakespeare scene in New York was a specially happy one for theatregoers because of the presence of two widely different companies-the Old Vic from England, appearing at the Winter Garden theatre from October to January, after which it toured the country, and the Summer Shakespeare Festival, offered in the parks of New York City from June to September. The Old Vic in its welcome visit demonstrated anew for American audiences the superb effects which may be achieved with fine ensemble playing, in which even the minor characters are well acted. All of the actors in this group perform in a harmony that can be achieved only when the company is a permanent one, whose members have appeared together in repertory in many different Shakespearian works, an actor playing the leading role in one and a minor part in another. In the four plays offered by the Vic, Richard II, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth and Troilus and Cressida, none of the actors was as well known to American audiences as were Laurence Olivier and Ralph Richardson when they headed the Vic repertory in i946, and naturally there was lacking that intense excitement generated by a great star in a great role. But the two leading actors in the most recent visit, Paul Rogers and John Neville, exemplify outstandingly good performers whose art has been developed within the Old Vic itself, working up from minor to major roles in the company, experience combining with their natural talents to result in performances that were most stimulating. The plays offered by the Summer Shakespeare Festival were bright in promise if somewhat lacking polish in execution. At least to one observer this festival was significant for two reasons. First, it indicated the chief characteristic of the most successful current American productions of Shakespeare, that of a vigorous and theatrical style. Secondly, the tremendous popularity of these plays, offered free of charge to audiences most of whom had never seen Shakespeare performed before, or, in many instances, had never seen live theatre before, demonstrated for those who need to be reminded, that Shakespeare was and is a playwright of the people, that despite the reverence shown by the scholar and select

John Rich and the First Covent Garden Theatre

John Rich and the First Covent Garden Theatre

Covent garden theatre

Covent garden theatre

Landscape Gardening

THE Institute of Landscape Architects is to be congratulated upon the appearance of Landscape and Garden, a new quarterly journal devoted to garden design and landscape architecture (vol. 1, No. 1, 1934, pp. 74. 2s. 6d.). The volume is edited by Mr. Richard Sudell. The Garden Theatre at the Herrenhausen, Hanover, is described briefly by G. A. Jellicoe, who shows by means of plans and photographs the lay-out of this very artistic piece of garden architecture. R. V. Giffard Woolley contributes a helpful study on “The Management of Small Spaces”. Various considerations for the production of vistas, and the incorporation of stone-paving and ornament, are given. A park to link Karlsruhe with the Rhine is described by P. Morton Shand, and particulars of an interesting bird sanctuary are included. Capt. R. C. H. Jenkinson writes about;“New Shrubs for Old”, and in addition to describing several of the more recently introduced shrubs, discusses possibilities for their artistie grouping. “Birdseye” is a series of aerial photographs showing forms of community housing in England through the last five hundred years. A. J. Cobb writes on “Tree Surgery”, outlining methods for the lengthening of life, or the complete repair, of damaged trees. The use of focal points in design is very ably treated by Hervey Bennett, in an article entitled “Where Shall I Look?” A series of photographs showing the illumination of gardens, together with a short description, are provided by Waldo Maitland. Some very striking effects, produced by flood-lighting trees, are shown. “Roof-gardens, the Lungs of the Future” are given adequate treatment in an article by Lady Allen of Hurtwood, who introduces many practical suggestions. One might advance the suggestion that the ‘extremely small spaces’ such as are included with the majority of present-day houses might receive adequate treatment in future numbers, though the editor seems to be alive to this need. A study of the development of the ‘garden city’ is promised for the next number (July).

Comus' at covent garden theatre

Comus' at covent garden theatre

Comus' at covent garden theatre

Comus' at covent garden theatre

Comus' at covent garden theatre

Comus' at covent garden theatre