Society (play)
Encyclopedia
Society was an 1865 comedy drama by Thomas William Robertson
regarded as a milestone in Victorian
drama because of its realism in sets, costume, acting and dialogue. Unusually for that time, Robertson both wrote and directed the play, and his innovative writing and stage direction
inspired George Bernard Shaw
and W. S. Gilbert
.
, Liverpool
, under the management of Mr A. Henderson, opening on May 8 1865. It was recommended to Effie Wilton
, the manager of the Prince of Wales's Theatre
in London's West End
, by H. J. Byron
, where it ran from November 11 1865 to May 4 1866 Robertson found fame with his new comedy, which included a scene that fictionalized the Fun
gang, who frequented the Arundel Club, the Savage Club
, and especially Evans's café, where they had a table in competition with the Punch
'Round table'. The play marked the London debut of Squire Bancroft
, who went on to marry Effie Wilton
in 1867 and become her co-manager.
Society had been rejected by many theatrical managers before finally being produced at the Prince of Wales's Theatre. Together, Robertson and the Bancrofts are considered to have instigated a new form of drama known as 'drawing-room comedy' or 'cup and saucer drama', so-named because real cups and saucers were used as props
. The Bancrofts
gave Robertson an unprecedented amount of directorial control over his plays, which was a key step to institutionalizing the power that directors wield in the theatre today.
came to see the play. In Society, Robertson made a distinct attempt to introduce naturalism into contemporary drama. In his play, Robertson looked at the world around him and tried to reproduce it realistically through drama. The characters act like people of their day. Society was so popular that it encouraged Robertson to go further along the same realistic path in a series of plays: Ours (1866), Caste (1867), Play (1868), School (1869), and M.P. (1870). These plays, together with Society, inspired playwrights such as W. S. Gilbert
and George Bernard Shaw
. Robertson directed his own plays, which was a radical change from the usual system in Victorian theatre of the manager of the theatre company staging the work around its star player. Gilbert said of this innovation: "I frequently attended his rehearsals and learnt a great deal from his method of stage-management, which in those days was quite a novelty, although most pieces are now stage-managed on the principles he introduced. I look upon stage-management, as now understood, as having been absolutely invented by him."
It was in Society that the originality and cleverness of the dramatist were fully recognised. Play-writer and company were exactly suited one to another; the plays and the acting together – the small size of the playhouse being also in their favour – were at once recognised as a new thing. Although some critics sneered at the "cup-and-saucer comedy," others voted it absurdly realistic, and said there was nothing in it but commonplace life represented without a trace of Sheridan
ian wit and sparkle. Nevertheless, playgoers flocked to the little theatre in Tottenham Court Road
, and the London stage was at once inundated with imitations of the new style of acting and the new kind of play.
Robertson's original manuscript
of Society was donated to the Shakespeare Memorial Library at Stratford-upon-Avon
.
Thomas William Robertson
Thomas William Robertson , usually known professionally as T. W. Robertson, was an Anglo-Irish dramatist and innovative stage director best known for a series of realistic or naturalistic plays produced in London in the 1860s that broke new ground and inspired playwrights such as W.S...
regarded as a milestone in Victorian
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
drama because of its realism in sets, costume, acting and dialogue. Unusually for that time, Robertson both wrote and directed the play, and his innovative writing and stage direction
Theatre direction
A theatre director or stage director is a practitioner in the theatre field who oversees and orchestrates the mounting of a theatre production by unifying various endeavours and aspects of production...
inspired George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
and W. S. Gilbert
W. S. Gilbert
Sir William Schwenck Gilbert was an English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator best known for his fourteen comic operas produced in collaboration with the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan, of which the most famous include H.M.S...
.
Origins
The play originally ran at the Prince of Wales's TheatreLiverpool Empire Theatre
Liverpool Empire Theatre is located on the corner of Lime Street and London Road in Liverpool, Merseyside, England. The theatre is the second to be built on the site, and was opened in 1925. It has the largest two-tier auditorium in Britain and can seat 2,350 people...
, Liverpool
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
, under the management of Mr A. Henderson, opening on May 8 1865. It was recommended to Effie Wilton
Effie Bancroft
Marie Effie Wilton, Lady Bancroft was an English actress and theatre manager. She appeared onstage as Marie Wilton until after her marriage in December 1867 to Squire Bancroft, when she usually appeared under the name Lady Bancroft...
, the manager of the Prince of Wales's Theatre
Scala Theatre
The Scala Theatre was a theatre in London, sited on Charlotte Street, off Tottenham Court Road, in the London Borough of Camden. The first theatre on the site opened in 1772, and the theatre was demolished in 1969, after being destroyed by fire...
in London's West End
West End theatre
West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's 'Theatreland', the West End. Along with New York's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English speaking...
, by H. J. Byron
Henry James Byron
Henry James Byron was a prolific English dramatist, as well as an editor, journalist, director, theatre manager, novelist and actor....
, where it ran from November 11 1865 to May 4 1866 Robertson found fame with his new comedy, which included a scene that fictionalized the Fun
Fun (magazine)
Fun was a Victorian weekly magazine, first published on 21 September 1861. The magazine was founded by the actor and playwright H. J. Byron in competition with Punch magazine.-Description:...
gang, who frequented the Arundel Club, the Savage Club
Savage Club
The Savage Club, founded in 1857 is a gentlemen's club in London.-History:Many and varied are the stories that have been told about the first meeting of the Savage Club, of the precise purposes for which it was formed, and of its christening...
, and especially Evans's café, where they had a table in competition with the Punch
Punch (magazine)
Punch, or the London Charivari was a British weekly magazine of humour and satire established in 1841 by Henry Mayhew and engraver Ebenezer Landells. Historically, it was most influential in the 1840s and 50s, when it helped to coin the term "cartoon" in its modern sense as a humorous illustration...
'Round table'. The play marked the London debut of Squire Bancroft
Squire Bancroft
Sir Squire Bancroft , born Squire White Butterfield, was an English actor-manager. He and his wife Effie Bancroft are considered to have instigated a new form of drama known as 'drawing-room comedy' or 'cup and saucer drama', owing to the realism of their stage sets.-Early life and career:Bancroft...
, who went on to marry Effie Wilton
Effie Bancroft
Marie Effie Wilton, Lady Bancroft was an English actress and theatre manager. She appeared onstage as Marie Wilton until after her marriage in December 1867 to Squire Bancroft, when she usually appeared under the name Lady Bancroft...
in 1867 and become her co-manager.
Society had been rejected by many theatrical managers before finally being produced at the Prince of Wales's Theatre. Together, Robertson and the Bancrofts are considered to have instigated a new form of drama known as 'drawing-room comedy' or 'cup and saucer drama', so-named because real cups and saucers were used as props
Theatrical property
A theatrical property, commonly referred to as a prop, is an object used on stage by actors to further the plot or story line of a theatrical production. Smaller props are referred to as "hand props". Larger props may also be set decoration, such as a chair or table. The difference between a set...
. The Bancrofts
gave Robertson an unprecedented amount of directorial control over his plays, which was a key step to institutionalizing the power that directors wield in the theatre today.
Success
The comedy was such a success that another row of stalls had to be added, and the Prince of WalesEdward VII of the United Kingdom
Edward VII was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and Emperor of India from 22 January 1901 until his death in 1910...
came to see the play. In Society, Robertson made a distinct attempt to introduce naturalism into contemporary drama. In his play, Robertson looked at the world around him and tried to reproduce it realistically through drama. The characters act like people of their day. Society was so popular that it encouraged Robertson to go further along the same realistic path in a series of plays: Ours (1866), Caste (1867), Play (1868), School (1869), and M.P. (1870). These plays, together with Society, inspired playwrights such as W. S. Gilbert
W. S. Gilbert
Sir William Schwenck Gilbert was an English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator best known for his fourteen comic operas produced in collaboration with the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan, of which the most famous include H.M.S...
and George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
. Robertson directed his own plays, which was a radical change from the usual system in Victorian theatre of the manager of the theatre company staging the work around its star player. Gilbert said of this innovation: "I frequently attended his rehearsals and learnt a great deal from his method of stage-management, which in those days was quite a novelty, although most pieces are now stage-managed on the principles he introduced. I look upon stage-management, as now understood, as having been absolutely invented by him."
It was in Society that the originality and cleverness of the dramatist were fully recognised. Play-writer and company were exactly suited one to another; the plays and the acting together – the small size of the playhouse being also in their favour – were at once recognised as a new thing. Although some critics sneered at the "cup-and-saucer comedy," others voted it absurdly realistic, and said there was nothing in it but commonplace life represented without a trace of Sheridan
Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Richard Brinsley Butler Sheridan was an Irish-born playwright and poet and long-term owner of the London Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. For thirty-two years he was also a Whig Member of the British House of Commons for Stafford , Westminster and Ilchester...
ian wit and sparkle. Nevertheless, playgoers flocked to the little theatre in Tottenham Court Road
Tottenham Court Road
Tottenham Court Road is a major road in central London, United Kingdom, running from St Giles Circus north to Euston Road, near the border of the City of Westminster and the London Borough of Camden, a distance of about three-quarters of a mile...
, and the London stage was at once inundated with imitations of the new style of acting and the new kind of play.
Miss Marie Wilton, the darling of the Strand Theatre, and the life and soul of the merry and really witty burlesques (what a contrast to the vapid 'musical comedies'Edwardian Musical ComedyEdwardian musical comedies were British musical theatre shows from the period between the early 1890s, when the Gilbert and Sullivan operas' dominance had ended, until the rise of the American musicals by Jerome Kern, Rodgers and Hart, George Gershwin and Cole Porter following World War I.Between...
of to-day!) that then formed the staple fare at that popular little playhouse, was anxious to spread her wings and try her strength in comedy. With that object in view she had taken the old Prince of Wales Theatre, hard by Tottenham Court Road, a place of amusement that had fallen into such disrepute that it was sneeringly nicknamed "The Dust-bin" ... So different in treatment was it from the plays with which theatre-goers were then apparently well pleased that Miss Wilton's friends and admirers frankly warned her that introduction was "dangerous."
The supposed danger lay in the simplicity of the play. True to nature it might be, but audiences accustomed to theatrical types verging on the border-land of caricature would (so managers thought) be hardly likely to accept a mere photograph of human life. It was the old tale of actors' portraits "Penny plain and tuppence coloured." The coloured articles had the readiest sale in the shops, ergo they could not be made too florid in the theatres. Miss Wilton, however, having in common with SothernEdward Askew SothernEdward Askew Sothern was an English actor known for his comic roles in Britain and America, particularly Lord Dundreary in Our American Cousin.- Early years :...
estimated Society at its true worth, declared that danger was better than dullness, selected her supporters, and under the now delighted author's superintendence, commenced rehearsals. After some preliminary difficulties it was produced, first in Liverpool and then in London.
Having been very favourably received in the Lancashire city, Society was produced in the metropolis on November 11, 1865, and on the following day Robertson awoke to find himself famous. The success of the piece
was, indeed, instantaneous, and soon became the talk of the town. Not to have seen Marie Wilton as Maud
Hetherington, Bancroft as Sidney Daryl, John HareJohn Hare (actor)Sir John Hare , born John Fairs, was an English actor and manager of the Garrick Theatre in London from 1889 to 1895.-Biography:Hare was born in Giggleswick in Yorkshire and was educated at Giggleswick school...
as Lord Ptarmigant, John Clarke as John Chodd, junior, Fred Dewar as Tom Stylus, and Sophie Larkin as Lady Ptarmigant, was to argue yourself unknown and so at
one and the same moment the fortunes of a luckless theatre and a hitherto misunderstood dramatist were made.
How much of this success was due to Robertson may be told in Mr. Bancroft's own words: "As the part I first
played in Society," he says, "was a very important one to intrust to so young an actor as I then was, bearing as it does much of the burden of the play, I should like to note how much of the success I was fortunate enough to achieve was due to the encouragement and support I received from the author, who spared no pains with me, as with the others, to have his somewhat novel type of characters understood and acted as he wished."
He might have added but perhaps he hardly realised it that the triumph of the whole play owed much to
the tact and the liberality of the clever lady who allowed Robertson to have his own way with the stage-management and (as far as was then possible) with the mounting of his work."
Robertson's original manuscript
Manuscript
A manuscript or handwrite is written information that has been manually created by someone or some people, such as a hand-written letter, as opposed to being printed or reproduced some other way...
of Society was donated to the Shakespeare Memorial Library at Stratford-upon-Avon
Stratford-upon-Avon
Stratford-upon-Avon is a market town and civil parish in south Warwickshire, England. It lies on the River Avon, south east of Birmingham and south west of Warwick. It is the largest and most populous town of the District of Stratford-on-Avon, which uses the term "on" to indicate that it covers...
.
Original cast
- Maud Hetherington – Effie WiltonEffie BancroftMarie Effie Wilton, Lady Bancroft was an English actress and theatre manager. She appeared onstage as Marie Wilton until after her marriage in December 1867 to Squire Bancroft, when she usually appeared under the name Lady Bancroft...
- Sidney Daryl – Squire BancroftSquire BancroftSir Squire Bancroft , born Squire White Butterfield, was an English actor-manager. He and his wife Effie Bancroft are considered to have instigated a new form of drama known as 'drawing-room comedy' or 'cup and saucer drama', owing to the realism of their stage sets.-Early life and career:Bancroft...
- Lord Ptarmigant – John HareJohn Hare (actor)Sir John Hare , born John Fairs, was an English actor and manager of the Garrick Theatre in London from 1889 to 1895.-Biography:Hare was born in Giggleswick in Yorkshire and was educated at Giggleswick school...
- John Chodd, Jnr – John Clarke
- Tom Stylus – Fred Dewar
- Lady Ptarmigant – Sophie Larkin