Shakespeare from Betterton to Irving Volume 1 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1920 Excerpt: ... CHAPTER II ACTING VERSIONS OF THE PLAYS THE FIRST DECADE: INTRODUCTORY Pepys records in his Diary, from 1660 to 1669, attendance at about three hundred and fifty theatrical performances; he mentions also a very few others, from which, usually, he reluctantly absented himself. Of all these, toward the end of the decade, more and more were productions of contemporary poets; but, throughout, seventy-two were devoted to twenty-eight plays included in the Beaumont and Fletcher Folio of 1679, one being Father's Own Son, identified by Carew Hazlitt as Monsieur Thomas, and a second being The Two Noble Kinsmen, transmuted into The Rivals of Davenant; eighteen were given to four comedies and one tragedy by Ben Jonson; eleven to two plays of Massinger (seven times the jocund Pepys saw his favourite Bondman with Betterton); and nineteen to eight dramas of Shirley. As against this record, the diarist witnessed forty-one renditions of twelve of Shakespeare's works, unless we count The Law against Lovers as two, and assign some credit for two performances of The Rivals. The King's Company he saw in The Moore of Venice (twice), The Merry Wives of Windsor (three times), Henry IV (four, in part at least), A Midsummer Night's Dream (once), an( (twice) what he calls The Taming of a Shrew (probably Sauny the Scot, usually attributed to John Lacy, the actor-playwright). At the Duke's house he attended performances of Hamlet (five times), Twelfth Night (three times), Henry VIII (twice), Macbeth (nine times), Measure for Measure and Much Ado about Nothing, combined by Davenant in The Law against Lovers, and here counted as one play (once), Romeo and Juliet (once) and The Tempest (eight times). Not a great showing for Shakespeare Downes records performances of Pepys's list, but ad...