Bram Stoker and the Stage: Reviews, Reminiscences, Essays and Fiction ed. by Catherine Wynne (review)

Though widely known to theatre historians as Henry Irving’s long-serving acting (business) manager, hitherto few can have been aware of the extent of Bram Stoker’s writing on the theatre. This situation has now been remedied by the publication of a substantial two-volume set edited by Catherine Wynne. Volume I is devoted to Stoker’s drama reviews in Dublin from 1871 to 1877, whereas volume II is more diverse, encompassing extracts (over a hundred pages) from Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving (1906), nine Theatrical Essays (five dating from after Irving’s death), and one incursion into fiction: Snowbound: The Record of a Theatrical Touring Party (1908).

One of the Theatrical Essays, “Dramatic Criticism” (1894), obviously provides an interesting gloss on Stoker’s own contributions to theatre reviewing a couple of decades earlier. Reading these, one is struck by the vibrancy of Dublin theatre especially after the established Theatre Royal was joined by the Gaiety Theatre which opened in 1871. Charles Matthews, E. A. Sothern, Charles Calvert, Genevieve Ward, Madame Ristori, Barry Sullivan, Tommaso Salvini and, of course, Irving, all traversed the Irish sea to appear in the empire’s second city. As Dr Wynne notes, the 1870s saw a renewed campaign for Irish Home Rule in which context the position of the theatre (in those pre-Abbey days) is intriguing. Stoker’s description of the composition of the audiences and their response to dignitaries such as the Duke of Connaught and the Duke of Marlborough as well as to the performances on stage, seems to pre-figure the glittering assemblies at the Lyceum Theatre. Of drama critics there Stoker expected “tolerant understanding”, counselling against taking “as the field of his judgment theefforts of the first performance” for which the services of “a descriptive reporter” were most appropriate. This had very much been the tenor of Stoker’s reviews for the Dublin Evening Mail which consisted of lengthy summaries of the plot of each play. When it came to describing a performance Stoker tended to rely on generalised commendations, “effective” being a particular favourite. In other words Stoker was an irredeemably pedestrian critic, but fortunately for posterity the critical ranks at theLyceum were occupied by considerably more trenchant and gifted writers such as Clement Scott and George Bernard Shaw.

That is not to dismiss Stoker as a chronicler of the theatre. Personal Reminiscences will endure as a prime source for Irving and it is useful to have reprinted extracts from it. Stoker’s essay “The Question of a National Theatre” (1908) is an important contribution, following Irving’s death, to the vigorous debate being conducted with proponents such as Harley Granville Barker and William Archer. Stoker marshals detailed figures of “the probable cost” of such an institution calling, not unexpectedly, upon the experience of his Lyceum years. He concludes that there would be an annual deficit of £25,000 for which “a primary endowment of £1,000,000 sterling would be required”, a figure which, everything being taken into account, would need to be raised to £1,700,000.

The following year (1909) Stoker published what Catherine Wynne describes as his “only substantial fiction of the theatre”, Snowbound “a patchwork quilt of stories related by the members of the company who find themselves trapped in a carriage of their train in Scotland”. She identifies several of these actors: Benville Nonplusser, “a lightly veiled portrait of Irving”, Flora Montressor and Miss Venables both of whom are “loosely modelled on [Ellen] Terry” and Stoker himself as “the acting manager, Mr Wragge” (vol 2, xiv–xv). Several of these thespian (Canterbury) Tales, in particular the harrowing “A Star Trap”, still read very well as short fiction as well as being valuable repositories of stage lore and practices.

Pickering & Chatto’s policy of printing substantial volumes (the Shakespearean Actors series, The Collected Letters of Ellen Terry) of “original” material seems somewhat contrary in [End Page 122...