REVIEW: The Birth Of Modern Theatre, Routledge Press ✭✭✭✭

Mark Ludmon reviews Norman S Poser's new book, The Birth of Modern Theatre, about David Garrick and his contemporaries and theatre-going in the 18th century

The Birth of Modern Theatre

Norman S Poser

Routledge Press

4 Stars

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Next year, the Royal Shakespeare Company celebrates a man who contributed to the continuing popularity of Britain's greatest playwright and established his birthplace as the epicentre of the "Shakespeare industry". It will be 250 years since David Garrick, the charismatic actor-manager, produced the spectacular Shakespeare Jubilee in the then little-known town of Stratford-upon-Avon, bringing together the nation's greatest stage stars and society's elite for a three-day festival of entertainment and parties to mark two centuries since the writer's birth. Next summer's RSC celebration, featuring two Restoration plays that were successes for Garrick, is likely to be a more decorous affair than the original jubilee of 1769 which is one of the events brought to life in Norman S Poser's meticulously researched new book, The Birth of Modern Theatre. Not only was the festival in fact held five years later than the 200th birthday but it was a victim of the "mania" for Shakespeare in the 18th century, attracting more crowds than the little Midlands town could accommodate. But it was mostly a victim of the weather, with heavy rain and high winds causing havoc from the second day. It also attracted criticism, derided as expensive, vulgar and having little to do with Shakespeare's plays - not least because, at the time, the town had no theatres to stage them.

Hannah Pritchard and David Garrick in Macbeth by Henry Robert Morland. (C) Routledge

While the Jubilee was a loss-making venture, it was a huge, enduring success in a re-imagined form at Drury Lane in London, confirming the public's high regard for Shakespeare that lives on to this day. Alongside farces, social comedies and sentimental tragedies, the dominant offering at Drury Lane and Covent Garden - London's only two licensed theatres in the 1730s - was Shakespeare, and Poser provides fascinating insights into how his plays were staged. From the early 1740s, Garrick, along with another star actor Charles Macklin, led the move away from declaratory, grandiloquent performance towards psychologically rounded interpretations of character and what was considered a more “naturalistic” style. At the same time, we are reminded that 18th-century theatre-makers were not averse to crowd-pleasing re-writings of the classics that saw Romeo and Juliet have an extra 75-line death scene together and Lear to enjoy a happy retirement alongside newlyweds Cordelia and Edgar.

David Garrick and Shakespeare by Thomas Gainsborough. (C) Routledge

Other innovations - now taken for granted - included period dress instead of contemporary clothes and wigs, with Garrick causing a sensation by appearing as Lear in “Old English” costume and Macklin gaining notoriety for playing Macbeth in Highland garb instead of the conventional British army officer's uniform. It was also a time of improvements in scenic design and lighting, allowing audiences to see actors' expressions more clearly, plus the development of theatre coverage in the press which, Poser reports, grew sevenfold in Garrick's time. However, he also sets out some aspects of theatre-going that would horrify modern-day audiences, including outbreaks of violence and even riots. Seats were unallocated, leading to the common practice of the rich sending servants in advance to sit in their place until they arrived. Despite the theatres sometimes employing "hush men", silence was not the norm, and Poser repeatedly tells of audiences responding throughout shows with comments, heckling, hissing and even food throwing. If they were unhappy with the billed play, they would boo to force a manager to put on a different one. It took until 1762 for Garrick to achieve his long-held ambition to end the practice of allowing people to sit on stage during performances.

Against this detailed backdrop of mid 18th-century theatre-going, Poser tells us the colourful stories of the actors and managers, their love affairs and their rivalries. Alongside Garrick and Macklin, his cast list includes stage stars such as Peg Woffington, Kitty Clive, Sarah Siddons, Jane Pope, Hannah Pritchard, George Anne Bellamy and Susannah Cibber as well as Thomas Sheridan and Tate Wilkinson. He provides illuminating context to one of the most notorious events of 18th-century queer history when a charge of sodomy - punishable by death - was levelled against actor-manager Samuel Foote who had established London's third licensed theatre, the Haymarket. Eventually acquitted thanks to widespread public support, he is thought to have become the target for revenge after creating a thinly veiled version of a real-life bigamous duchess in one of his own plays.

Despite being based on extensive research (with plenty of references), this is not an overly academic work, focusing more on the lives and adventures of the actors and managers of the time, enhanced by black-and-white illustrations. Poser leaves it to other books to give detailed accounts of the playwrights and their plays, concentrating on providing a vivid behind-the-scenes picture of theatre and theatre-going in London from the 1740s to the 1770s. It charts a period of change in British theatre that saw it evolve from the exuberance of Restoration drama to the more serious and polite theatre of what Poser dubs "the age of dignity". More change lay ahead, from the shallowness of Victorian melodrama to the advent of naturalistic theatre in the late 19th century, but this book makes a strong case for Garrick and his friends (and enemies) being pioneers of many of the now-familiar aspects of theatre-going today.

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