Performing Shakespeare in the Age of Empire (review)

It seems natural now to think of Shakespeare in connection with nineteenth-century imperial Britain, a towering playwright emblematic of a world power. In Performing Shakespeare in the Age of Empire, Richard Foulkes specifies the fit between the two by interweaving several historical narratives: the colonial extensions of Britain's Shakespeare, the emerging idea of a national theater, and the conscription of Shakespeare by high culture. The complex relationships he describes (covering the period from 1832 to 1916) are, as he argues persuasively, most profitably read through the lens of performance.

The first half of the book takes a new look at many familiar actor-managers, with chapters focused on Macready (chapter 1); Phelps, Kean, and the managers at Astley's (chapter 2); and the mid-century managements of Calvert and Rignold growing out of Manchester (chapter 4). (Chapter 3 interrupts this sequence with an analysis of the 1864 tercentenary celebrations in England.) These chapters, then, record the histories of the men whose personal agendas shaped Shakespearean production in this period. Perhaps too subtly, Foulkes begins the argument here that social and historical contexts, not individuals, dictated management of the stage.

The initial chapter on Macready establishes the organizational pattern of examining performance by moving from one geographic location to another, tracing Macready's work from England to North America to Paris. With the dissipation of the theatrical monopoly in 1843, Macready and others created the populist Shakespeare that would dominate the Victorian years Foulkes examines. In this chapter, Foulkes begins detailing the nuanced ways in which performance was location-specific, but only in later chapters does he fully establish the theoretical underpinnings of this approach.

As the subsequent chapters' account of performance unfolds, Foulkes traces the roles of royal patronage and both urban and suburban geographies on the spreading commercialization of Shakespeare. Foulkes's elaborations on the transatlantic traffic in Shakespeare are expected, and his careful consideration of performance in Germany establishes the strong Germanic investment in Shakespeare, a thread of the argument that becomes more compelling as the book develops. Victoria and Albert's love of theater shapes the mid-century appetite for Shakespeare, but Foulkes also stresses the genuinely popular appeal of Shakespeare across national and economic groups. He is attentive to the contributions of ethnic minorities and women, though his argument is not conceptualized in a way that allows him to analyze potential differences among these contributions.

The book's two most effective chapters are those on the 1864 and 1916 tercentenaries. Freed from the focus on personalities that drives the other chapters, Foulkes offers a powerful history of the politics of honoring Shakespeare. Ironically, however, the glaring lack of artistic and intellectual leadership in 1864 also argues persuasively for Foulkes's decision to concentrate on managers as an organizing principle for the study of Shakespearean performance. In analyzing the failures of the 1864 event, Foulkes details the London/Stratford struggle for geographical claim to Shakespeare and the involvement of Shakespearean societies. He provides beautifully contextualized analysis of the international dimensions of the events, including discontent over the showcasing of a French actress, the vigorous contributions of German scholars, and the offense caused by Garibaldi's leaving London on April 23! The lack of active royal patronage was a final factor accounting for an unintentionally decentered celebration.

The final chapter on the 1916 celebrations is also a tale of an international, though fragmented, celebration colored by the divisions of politics and war. It is notable that at the same time discussion of a national theater reached a new intensity in England, Shakespeare was increasingly an international cultural presence—in Czechoslovakia, Scandinavia, the Netherlands, the US, and even in Berlin, where Reinhardt was producing Shakespeare. As Ernest Stern related in a 1951 memoir, "'the world was to learn that Great Britain's enemy honoured Great Britain's poet despite the war'" (quoted in Foulkes, 187).

This final...