Charles Rogers: Late Victorian Provincial Playwright

CHARLES ROGERS: LATE VICTORIAN PROVINCIAL PLAYWRIGHT A DECADE AND A HALF AGO Allardyce Nico.ll in autho.ritatively summarizing Victo.rian drama no.ted that in the last half o.f the nineteenth century "dramatic productivity" exceeded "in quantity that o.f any co.rresPo .nding perio.d o.f the past." In attempting to. list all of the autho.rs and plays in Great Britain in the last fifty years befo.re the inno.vatio.n o.f mo.tio.n pictures, he co.unted so.me 3,000 playwrights andfo.und himself "burdened with more than 20,000 titles." Able to treat specifically o.nly the majo.r figures in the mo.untaino.us material befo.re him, he suggested : "Later wo.rkers may fill in such gaps as I have left."l It is my purpo.se in this paper to. write the mo.dest, mino.r Charles Ro.gers chapter o.f this vo.lumino.us reco.rd,2 with the ho.peful notion that there may be o.ccasional items in it that theatrical historians can use to. co.rrobo.rate o.r qualify their picture of the period. Altho.ugh he never gained prominence in the West End during his sho.rt career, Ro.gers did succeed well eno.ugh as autho.r, acto.r, and manager to. send his large family to. private schoo.l and give the older children o.PPo.rtunities for a firm foundatio.n in the acting pro.fession. He was bo.rn in Edinburgh, Sco.tland, in 1863. During Ro.gers' bo.yhood, his father, Charles, moved to Manchester, England, where he established a small business as a manufacturer of rubber garments and allied products. The future playwright, apprenticed to. this business, reno .unced it in favor o.f the theater, of which he had had a taste through various local productions. Leaving for London against his father's wishes he secured a role in Black-eyed Susan at the old Sadler's Wells. And then he fell in Io.ve. But neither Hannah Maria Smith no.r her parents appro.ved of the theater. They thought acting a degrading profession fo.r a man. At the time of decision young Rogers wrote his beloved from Cambridge where the co.mpany he was in was apparently playing. The letter is dated "August-the-I-don't-kno.w"; but there is no uncertainty about "My darling Annie": 1. Allardyce Nicoll, A History of Late Nineteenth Century Drama, 1850-1900 (Cambridge, 1946), I, vili-ix. 2. In addition to information available in Nicoll and in The Era and The Era Almanack and Annual this paper is based upon the following original sources: a study of the manuscripts of five of Rogers' plays, an examination of an unpublished sketch of the playwright's life by his eldest surviving son, Mr. John Rogers, Sherman Oaks, California, and an unpUblished personal memoir of Mr. John Rogers (both written in 1957), letters to Charles Rogers from theater associates, handbills and programs of Rogers' plays, newspaper clippings, contracts, box-office records and other mementoes of Rogers' career obtained from Mr. John Rogers and his sister, Mrs. Ruby Rogers Taylor, Clearwater Beach, Florida. 117 118 MODERN DRAMA September I received your loving letter on Tuesday. I can't help the mistakes cos I'm in love-not with the widow [apparently his role in the play called for this] but with my Annie. We had very hard work all week and here I am now in my bedroom studying. I haven't had much chance of seeing about Cambridge, but what I have seen of it is lovely. There is a beautiful river here and I have been invited by a gentleman to accompany him for a day's good boating but I can't get the time. I am so glad you confessed how much you love me, dear. I shall always try to be worthy of your love. You know how I love you, dearest; and if you have forgotten 111 have to repeat all my love stories when I return. I am counting all the kisses that I am missing, up till...