William Poel's Shakespeare
The First Historically Authentic Productions
William Poel rebelled against the lush and sentimental versions of Shakespeare being staged in the nineteenth century, demanding a return to bare boards and poetry.
Whilst nineteenth-century directors such as Henry Irving and Beerbohm Tree were producing lavish Shakespeare spectaculars in the commercial theatres, a counter-movement was developing. Lead by William Poel, and originally mostly made up of amateurs and students, it called for Shakespeare’s plays to be staged authentically, under the same conditions as they would have been at the Globe Theatre or the Blackfriars.
In 1881, William Poel staged what he called an “authentic Hamlet”, without much scenery or many props, and using the text of the first printed quarto of Hamlet. This might not seem particularly unusual to modern theatregoers (apart from the choice of the so-called “bad quarto”) but in the 1880s it was positively revolutionary. In a time when stagings of Shakespeare were becoming ever more elaborate (and had been sophisticated only the previous year by the introduction of electric stage lighting), Poel seemed to want to turn the clock back.
In fact that was more or less what he did want. Disgusted by the sentimental, heavily edited productions of Shakespeare which dominated London drama, Poel was on a mission to restore Shakespeare’s actual plays to the stage, which meant remaking the stage itself. He pointed out that Shakespeare did not need elaborate sets – all the necessary atmosphere and scenic painting was supplied in the words of the play. He also rejected the widespread use of lush incidental music, insisting that the songs should be performed on authentic instruments and, where possible, using Elizabethan tunes. When he produced plays in theatres with a proscenium arch, he tried to reproduce some parts of Renaissance staging conditions by constructing side-boxes and pillars.
The effect, both upon his contemporaries, and twentieth-century theatre, was extraordinary. Some nineteenth century writers, such as the critic William Archer, and the impressario Beerbohm Tree, derided his productions as the work of “learned amateurs” and “dilettantes” who knew nothing about the real theatre. Admittedly, there were problems with his stagings, which sometimes toppled over into an almost Disneyesque Elizabethanism, such as putting actors in Renaissance costume in the audience and at the edges of the stage to give a more authentic flavour.
However, Poel’s ideas are now common currency amongst Shakespeare directors, and the existence of the Globe Theatre in London owes a lot to his insistence that historical authenticity is the only way to release the latent power of Shakespeare’s plays. Many people are uncomfortable with Shakespearean “purists”, who seem to risk strangling the life of the plays, which were, after all, originally designed as entertainment. There is also a more general concern that insisting on Shakespearean authenticity may make the works seem inaccessible and remote from most people; available only to an educated elite who are supported by a scholarly Shakespeare industry. However, Poel’s revolution liberated the texts from their mangled state under the “illusionist” Irving, and gave modern theatre directors a fresh set of options when approaching the Bard.
Sources: English Drama of the Early Modern Period 1890-1940, Jean Chothia (1996); The Oxford Illustrated History of the Theatre, John Russell Brown (1995)
