In this creative study of history and popular culture, W. D. King ingeniously illustrates how a long-forgotten instance in theatre history can reveal the very process of historical change itself. Late in the nineteenth century, Henry Irving, the leading actor-manager of the English stage, was scathingly attacked by George Bernard Shaw for his popular performance in Conan Doyle's play, A Story of Waterloo. Shaw's review was one of the first onslaughts in a war against the old guard of the English stage, against Victorianism, against England and Empire itself. King's depiction of this event and its aftermath illuminates the period's crucial values and cultural issues, and is presented in a manner that is both convincing and highly entertaining. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1993.

Henry Irving (1838-1905), the first actor to be knighted, dominated the theatre in Britain and beyond for over a quarter of a century. As an actor, he was strikingly different with his idiosyncratic pronunciation, his somewhat ungainly physique, and his brilliant psychological portrayals of virtue and villainy. As a director of spectacular, and commercially driven, entertainments, Irving anticipated Hollywood directors from D.W. Griffith to Stephen Spielberg. And as manager of the Lyceum Theatre, where audiences included the leading public figures of the day, he controlled every aspect of the performance. This collection of essays by leading theatre scholars explores each element of Irving's art: his acting, his contribution to the plays he commissioned, his flair for the stage picture, and his ear for incidental music. Like Wagner, Irving was a proponent of a holistic approach to the stage, that is, blending together acting, painting, music, and architecture to create harmonious, balanced, and artistic theatre. Irving emerges not only as the peer of such eminent contemporaries as Tennyson, Sullivan, Shaw, and Burne-Jones, but also as a powerful influence on the twentieth-century theatre.

"This is an extraordinary, provocative, and informative book which covers a wide range of aspects of the theatre of the time and touches upon a large number of individual artists and personalities. The book locates a theatrical phenomenon in the larger culture, drawing upon documents around and beyond the theatre itself. It will shake up complacent scholars, generate a new methodological freedom, and open up a whole period to sophisticated and creative cultural analysis."--Cary M. Mazer, author of Shakespeare Refashioned "W. D. King has developed an original close-reading of a particular (and only apparently marginal) episode of theatrical history and has placed that episode within a network of crucial cultural issues and values. The book is original in methodology, elegant in its argument, and persuasive in its conclusions."--Joseph R. Roach, author of The Player's Passion

Waterloo was the last battle fought by Napoleon and the one which finally ended his imperial dreams. It involved the deployment of huge armies and incurred heavy losses on both sides; for those who fought in it, Dutch and Belgians, Prussians and Hanoverians as well as British and French troops, it was a murderous struggle. It was a battle that would be remembered very differently across Europe. In Britain it would be seen as an iconic battle whose memory would be enmeshed in British national identity across the following century. In London news of the victory unleashed an outburst of patriotic celebration and captured the imagination of the public. The Duke of Wellington would go on to build his political career on it, and towns and cities across Britain and the Empire raised statues and memorials to the victor. But it was only in Britain that Waterloo acquired this iconic status. In Prussia and Holland its memory was muted - in Prussia overshadowed by the Battle of the Nations at Leipzig, in Holland a simple appendage to the prestige of the House of Orange. And in France it would be portrayed as the very epitome of heroic defeat. Encapsulated in the bravery of General Cambronne and the last stand of the Old Guard, remembered movingly in the lines of Stendhal and Victor Hugo, the memory of Waterloo served to sustain the romantic legend of the Napoleonic Wars - and contributed to the growing cult of Napoleon himself.

Publisher Description

This book contains a multicultural and multifaceted study of ideologies and conflicts related to the complex realities and fictions of Nation and Identity represented in contemporary literature written in English. The history and present time of the United Kingdom, the British Empire and North America provide vast fields of research which have been explored by our selection of authors. Their interests range from the moral and personal consequences of modern nationalist conflicts to the memories of old racial confrontations on the British soil. Readers will find analyses and reflections on the individual’s pursuit of identity in a challenging environment that covers more than two centuries of mainly Western civilization and abound in national dilemmas, social concerns, authoritarian legacies, and problematic postcolonial hybridizations. Short stories, novels, plays and poems by Irish, American, English, Nigerian, and Scottish writers will enable readers to consider the diverse approaches, propositions and debates the issues raised by Nation and Identity are being dealt with.

Is King Lear an autonomous text, or a rewrite of the earlier and anonymous play King Leir? Should we refer to Shakespeare’s original quarto when discussing the play, the revised folio text, or the popular composite version, stitched together by Alexander Pope in 1725? What of its stage variations? When turning from page to stage, the critical view on King Lear is skewed by the fact that for almost half of the four hundred years the play has been performed, audiences preferred Naham Tate's optimistic adaptation, in which Lear and Cordelia live happily ever after. When discussing King Lear, the question of what comprises ‘the play’ is both complex and fragmentary. These issues of identity and authenticity across time and across mediums are outlined, debated, and considered critically by the contributors to this volume. Using a variety of approaches, from postcolonialism and New Historicism to psychoanalysis and gender studies, the leading international contributors to King Lear: New Critical Essays offer major new interpretations on the conception and writing, editing, and cultural productions of King Lear. This book is an up-to-date and comprehensive anthology of textual scholarship, performance research, and critical writing on one of Shakespeare's most important and perplexing tragedies. Contributors Include: R.A. Foakes, Richard Knowles, Tom Clayton, Cynthia Clegg, Edward L. Rocklin, Christy Desmet, Paul Cantor, Robert V. Young, Stanley Stewart and Jean R. Brink