Jan McDonald

Lesser Ladies of the Victorian Stage

The theatrical memoirs published by actresses in the nineteenth century were generally written by women who had achieved recognition in their profession and had, therefore, acquired a place in society. Comparatively little is known about the jobbing actress who never achieved distinction in London, but who eked out an existence in the provinces, either with one of the better companies in Bath, Bristol or Edinburgh, on a theatrical ‘circuit’, or with one of the troupes of travelling players who rarely performed in theatre buildings, but in barns, village halls, inns and, occasionally, in private houses. At the bottom of the pile came the performers in fairground booths and penny theatres.

St John Hankin

Hankin is, of all the Court dramatists, the one who is most closely allied to Shaw in his open revolt against contemporary theatre practice. He believed that as a result of increased commercialism and of the resultant pandering to middle-class taste, the drama had been ‘reduced to the last stage of intellectual decrepitude’. He espoused the cause of the Stage Society, believing that whether or not the plays it presented were masterpieces, they were at least not merely conventional hack-work. From 1902 until his death he served on the Society’s Council of Management, and his first full length play, The Two Mr Wetherbys was staged by the Society in 1903. This is a much slighter piece than his later works, but the opposing philosophies of the ‘good’, but unhappy, Mr Wetherby and of his joyful brother, who is ‘bad’ according to the dictates of social convention, give rise to some humour and much irony. The Society also staged his translation of Brieux’s The Three Daughters of M. Dupont, which was later published in an edition of three plays by Brieux, with a Preface by Shaw.

Harley Granville Barker

Harley Granville Barker was born in London on 25 November 1877. His father made a living by converting houses into flats, and his mother, under the name of Miss Granville, was a professional reciter. As a child, Barker often appeared with her in small halls and assembly rooms. In 1891, he became a pupil at Sarah Thome’s dramatic school in Margate, where he met the actor, Berte Thomas, with whom he collaborated in his early attempts at dramatic writing, The Family of the Oldroyds, The Weather-hen and Our Visitor to ‘Work-a-Day’. None is published, and only The Weather-hen was ever produced, at a special matinee at Terry’s Theatre in June 1899.