Crossref Citations
This article has been cited by the following publications. This list is generated based on data provided by Crossref.
Di Ponio, Amanda
2018.
The Early Modern Theatre of Cruelty and its Doubles.
p.
193.
Article contents
The Stage History of Shelley's The Cenci
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
Although some of Shelley's Victorian critics—notably Forman—believed The Cenci to be an acting play, it now seems to have become a settled dictum of Shelley scholarship that it is a closet drama. Woodberry in his edition of the play and Bates in his study of it both conclude that it is unsuitable for stage production, Bates summarizing his views as follows:
From all these facts it should be sufficiently clear what answer must be given to the question, how far is “The Cenci” an acting drama? As a whole it is not an acting drama at all. A play, one of whose acts fails to advance the plot in the least, ten of whose scenes are purely conversational and without action, and four-fifths of whose speeches are of impossible length, is surely not to be called an acting drama.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1945
References
1 In the long task of collecting material on this subject from many scattered sources we have received especially valuable assistance from the following scholars and would like both to acknowledge their help and give them our sincere thanks: Dr. George Freedley and Dr. Franz Rapp, New York Public Library; Dr. Kurt Pinthus, Library of Congress; Professor H. W. L. Dana, Harvard University; Professor Henri Peyre, Yale University; Professor Bruce Dickins, University of Leeds; and Mr. Benjamin DeCasseres.
2 Cf. the Introduction to the edition of The Cenci, published for the Shelley Society in 1886, pp. iv-xii.
3 George Edward Woodberry (ed.), The Cenci, by Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Belles Lettres Series (Boston, 1909), p. xxi.
4 Earnest Sutherland Bates, A Study of Shelley's Drama The Cenci (New York: Columbia University Press, 1908), p. 60.
5 Newman I. White, Shelley (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1940), ii, 141.
6 Ibid., p. 575.
7 “An American Performance of The Cenci,” Stanford Studies in Language and Literature (Stanford University, 1941), p. 287. Professor Hicks—we note as we go to print—recapitulates this material in the preface to the recent valuable acting edition of The Cenci (A Stage Version of Shelley's Cenci. By Arthur C. Hicks and R. Milton Clarke. Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton Printers, 1945).
8 The society, however, had several other objects in view and besides bringing out editions of Shelley's works put on a performance of Hellas. For a discussion of these objects see the controversy between Professor Newman I. White and Professor Walter E. Peck in MLN: xxxvii (1922), 411-415; xxxviii (1923), 159-163; xxxix (1924), 18-21; xxxix (1924), 312-314.
9 Newman I. White, “Shelley's Debt to Alma Murray,” MLN, xxxvii (1922), 411-415.
10 The Shelley Society's Note-Book, Part i, pp. 12-13.
11 Ibid., p. 62.
12 Ibid., p. 65.
13 Ibid., p. 76.
14 Ibid., p. 77.
15 Ibid., p. 54.
16 Ibid., p. 55.
17 Ibid., p. 54.
18 Ibid., p. 56.
19 Ibid., p. 59.
20 Ibid., pp. 75-76.
21 Ibid., p. 55.
22 The World (New York), May 9, 1886.
23 The Shelley Society's Note-Book, Part i, p. 66.
24 Ibid., p. 60. In partial contrast to these general critical condemnations we might note the following comments by Oscar Wilde in the Dramatic Review of May 15, 1886, reprinted in The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, xii (New York: Wm. H. Wise, 1927), pp. 346-349: “The production of The Cenci last week at the Grand Theatre, Islington, may be said to have been an era in the literary history of this country, and the Shelley Society deserves the highest praise and warmest thanks of all for having given us an opportunity of seeing Shelley's play under the conditions he himself desired for it … no one has more clearly understood than Shelley the mission of the dramatist and the meaning of the drama.”
25 Woodberry, op. cit., pp. xv-xxi.
26 Bates, op. cit., pp.48, 63, 91-95.
27 Walter Edwin Peck, Shelley, His Life and Work (New York, 1927), ii, 122-123. On page 123 Professor Peck has the following curious footnote: “The performance of the play by Alma Murray, for the Shelley Society, in 1866, and its later representation by John Barrymore, in London (1921) have sufficiently established this,” (i.e. that the play is a closet drama only). 1866 is evidently a slip for 1886 but the reference to the Barrymore production is more puzzling. A diligent search of the bibliographies and journals for 1921 fails to reveal any evidence for the existence of such a production. It is, however, mentioned also in M. Renzulli, La Poesie di Shelley (Rome, 1932), p. 192. How the rumor of such a production started we do not know; at any rate it seems to have no foundation in fact.
28 White, Shelley, ii, 140-142.
29 The Graphic, cvi (November 18, 1922), 724.
30 “Scandal About Count Cenci” in The Saturday Review, cxxxiv (November 25, 1922), 785.
31 New York, 1923, pp. 187-188.
32 xx (November 18, 1922), 204.
33 cxxix (November 18, 1922), 727. Turner's statements in the London Mercury of December, 1922, 201, are also very illuminating: “Turning to The Cenci, I find a similar absence of comprehension on the part of many critics who will insist on going to an author's work with their own idea of what he should have done and measuring it as it approaches or departs from that idea. To call a play undramatic which deals with the single unattractive theme of incest and has no relief whatever from the profoundest gloom and misery—no subordinate episodes, no humour, no sentiment, no fiery Marlowesque hyperbole; to call such a play undramatic which, lasting three hours with only one interval yet holds the audience spellbound, as if enchanted; this is, I maintain, simply to make a mockery of language. A play is undramatic when it fails to hold the attention of an audience in a theatre. That is the sole criterion of what is or what is not dramatic.”
34 xxxv (December, 1922), 523-525.
35 November 19, 1922.
36 “Shelley as a Dramatist,” Essays by Divers Hands, Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature of the United Kingdom (London: Oxford University Press, 1936), new series, xv, 77-106.
37 Ibid., p. 90.
38 Ibid., pp. 96-98.
39 August 18, 1935.
40 xxxvii (April, 1923), 58.
41 cvi (November 18, 1922), 724. See also D.L.M. in The Nation and The Athenaeum, xxxii (November 18, 1922), 296, 298.
42 clxi (November 25, 1922), 876.
43 Professor Allardyce Nicoll's opinion may be summarized in this one sentence from his A History of Early Nineteenth Century Drama 1800-1850 (1930), p. 197: “The Cenci is perhaps the most beautiful thing given to us by the poetic dramatists, but it shares the same defects and weaknesses which are so patent in the other plays of the time.”
44 Op. cit., pp. 97-98.
45 In Theatre Arts Monthly, xvi (September, 1932), 756-757, Mr. J. R. Gregson writes: “But it is to Leeds that we must look for the most original and vital theatrical phenomenon in Yorkshire… . Meanwhile W. B. Dow began a most interesting and promising experiment with his Industrial Theatre. Its second season's programme, all the work of numerous amateur groups, included no less than nine Shakespearean plays, Ibsen's Peer Gynt and A Doll's House, Shelley's The Cenci and plays by Shaw, Maeterlinck, Strindberg, Tchekov, Galsworthy, not to mention the lesser-known fry, and two operas and a pantomime.”
46 January 17, 1923.
47 December, 1922, and January, 1923.
48 Dated April 22, 1943. The reviews from the Yorkshire Post and The Gryphon we have also received through the courtesy of Professor Dickins.
49 The Saturday Review, cxli (March 13, 1926), 333-334.
50 cxxxvi (March 20, 1926), 523-524.
51 From The Era (London), March 17, 1926.
52 Die Cenci. Drama in fünf Akten. In neuer deutscher Bearbeitung von Alfred Wolfenstein (Berlin: Paul Cassirer, 1924).
53 Solomon Liptzin, Shelley in Germany (New York: Columbia University Press, 1924), p. 69.
54 Bühne und Welt, xvii (Berlin, 1907), 488-490.
55 Herbert Huscher in Anglia Beiblatt, xxxvi (1925), 52. Dr. Franz Rapp writes in a letter of June 11, 1943: “I have the impression that the Intendant Anton Ludwig is identical with the translator of the play. He was the head of the Coburg Landes-theater during that year only. In 1921 he was Direktor of the Stadttheater at Aachen; after 1923 he is listed as Dramaturg and Oberspielleiter at different private opera houses in Vienna. In 1939 he had been again at Aachen for several years as an Oberspielleiter and Dramaturg der Oper. The adaptation in question evidently has not been published.”
56 Alfred Wolfenstein was a protagonist of expressionism. He was the author of such collections of poems as Die gottlosen Jahre (1931), Die Freundschaft (1917), Menschlicher Kämpfer. Among his plays are Mörder und Träumer (1923), Der Narr der Insel (1925), Bäume in den Himmel (1926), Sturm auf den Tod (1926), Die Nacht unter dem Beil (1928). He translated Shelley and Verlaine.
57 clxxxiv (1925), 306.
58 Die Szene, xix (Berlin, 1929), 324-325.
59 Ibid.
60 Werner Deubel, Die Schöne Literatur, xxv (December 15, 1924), 492-493.
61 Frankfurter Zeitung, October 24, 1924.
62 Ibid.
63 Ibid.
64 Fritz Buch was Oberspielleiter at the Schauspielhaus in Frankfurt am Main from 1924 to 1933.
65 Frankfurter Zeitung, October 24, 1924.
66 xxv (December 15, 1924), 492.
67 Frankfurter Zeitung, October 24, 1924.
68 Die Schöne Literatur, xxv, 493.
69 Frankfurter Zeitung, October 24, 1924.
70 Ibid.
71 Ibid.
72 According to Dr. Rapp, “there is no possibility to find out in this Library how often The Cenci has been performed at Frankfurt in the season 1924-25. One would get it from Der Deutsche Bühnenspielplan, a periodical which listed every production in Germany, or from the local Almanack published by the prompter of the theatre. The Library of Congress has a copy of the Deutsche Bühnenspielplan; but I understand from the Union List of Serials that v. 28 and v. 29 which could answer your question are missing there too.”
73 Albert Steinrück (1872-1929) was an actor in various German playhouses. From 1909 to 1920 he was connected with the Hof- und Nationaltheater in Munich as an actor, director, and finally as the Schauspieldirektor. After this time he lived in Berlin, acting at many theatres there, and gave guest performances throughout Germany and in the films.
74 Die Szene, xix, 325.
75 Liptzin, op. cit., p. 70, note.
76 Henri Peyre, Shelley et La France (Le Caire, 1935), p. 215. In the Histoire Générale Illustrée Du Théâtre (Paris, 1934), v, 312, is to be found a picture of Mme. Allan Dorval in the role of Beatrice Cenci. The legend reads: “Mme. Allan Dorval, rôle de Beatrice Cenci. Pour l'unique représentation de la Porte-Saint-Martin, le 21 mai 1833. Texte d'As de Custine, d'après Shelley. Gravé d'après Jozen, par E. Rouargue. (Galerie Théât., pl. 24).”
77 Antoine, Le Théâtre (Paris, 1932), i, 252. Cf. Henri Peyre, op. cit., pp. 376-377, and Charles Morice in Mercure de France (March, 1893), 249-251.
78 Anna Irene Miller, The Independent Theatre in Europe (New York, 1931), p. 75.
79 March, 1891, 181-182.
80 Ibid., 182.
81 Mercure de France (May, 1891), 300.
82 Peyre, op. cit., p. 377.
83 Pierre Jean Jouve, “Les Cenci D'Antonin Artaud” in La Nouvelle Revue Francaise (June, 1935), 911. See also Gaston Rageot's remarks in Revue bleue, lxxiii (May 18, 1935), 353.
84 P. 912. Philip Carr in a letter to The New York Times, June 16, 1935, considered Artaud's version an adaptation from Shelley's The Cenci. He admits, however, some fundamental changes: “The author of this version, Monsieur Artaud, who also plays the principal male part in it, has set himself to accentuate rather than to modify the horrible nature of the subject. His avowed aim is to create a ‘théâtre cruel,’ and in order to produce the desired effect he spares nothing in the way of rancous cries and piercing shrieks, despairing gestures, violent movement, strident ‘noises off’ and strange and cacophonous musical accompaniment, made more overpowering still by mechanical ‘loud speakers’.” Charles Morgan on August 18 gave the following answer to Carr's contention, evidently based upon his visit to the Folies-Wagram, that Shelley's play is not a dramatic piece: “Mr. Carr was seemingly unfortunate in the Parisian production that was the occasion of his letter. I can well believe that translated into French and inadequately played, ‘The Cenci’ might be a shambles. What would he have said of ‘Macbeth’ as a stage-play if he had been asked to criticize it on the basis of that French performance which contained the following immortal line: ‘Monsieur Macbeth I Monsieur Macbeth I Méfiez-vous de Monsieur Macduff‘!”
85 Ibid., pp. 912-913.
86 xlii, 3 (May-June, 1935), 479-480.
87 For instance, R. de B. in Illustration, cxci (May 18, 1935), 96.
88 Stephen Jackson in N & Q, 4th series, xii (December 20, 1873), 504.
89 Nicollini's was the best known of these works and the only one, so far as we can ascertain, that directly follows Shelley. However, we find record of at least three plays with the title of Beatrice Cenci: a drama written by G. Carbone in 1853; a drama by Alcide Oliari in the Rivista Contemporanea of 1855; a tragedy by Luciano Calvo in 1872. For the date of the composition of Nicollini's play see the article by Professor White referred to in the following footnote.
90 Newman I. White, “An Italian ‘Imitation’ of Shelley's The Cenci,” PMLA, xxxvii (1922), 683-690. See also Maria Lusia Giartosio de Courten, Percy Bysshe Shelley e l'Italia (Milan, 1923), p. 215 ff. Corrado Ricci in the second volume of Beatrice Cenci (Milan, 1923), lists the following four Italian translations of Shelley's play: Ettore Sanfelice (Verona, 1892), Adolfo DeBosis in Il Convito (1898), Gualtiero Guatteri (1912), Francesco Pagliara in Il nuovo Convito (1919).
91 Clarence Stratton, “The Cenci Story in Literature and Fact,” Publications of the University of Pennsylvania, xiv, Studies in English Drama (1917), p. 130.
92 Letter of June 29, 1943.
93 For a short period (1921-22) Karel Capek held the position of literary manager at the Muncipal Theater in Prague. The translator of Shelley's The Cenci was Otokar Fischer, known for his many translations of classical drama from different languages, like Goethe's Faust, Shakespeare's Macbeth, Lope de Vega's Fuente ovejuna.
94 cvi (December 9, 1922), 878.
95 It is interesting to note that Professor Ashley H. Thorndike who discussed The Cenci in Tragedy (1908), pp. 353-355, claimed that “though faulty in the details of dramatic art, ‘The Cenci’ is, for a first tragedy, without an equal in its mastery of the great essentials of tragic poetry.”
96 i, 74. See also the description of Jones's “production” of The Cenci in Theatre Arts Magazine (February, 1917), i, 61, and (July, 1920), iv, 184-185.
97 viii, 408-409.
98 “If there were no other organization of the sort but the Lenox Hill Players, and if there were no other little theatre but the Lenox, and if it had never done anything but produce ‘The Cenci,‘ no further argument would be needed to demonstrate the importance of the little theatre movement, which has spread to this country from the Abbey Theatre in Dublin.”—Telegram (New York), June, 1926. The Lenox Hill Players came into existence around 1917 at the Lenox Hill Settlement on the upper east side. In 1924, the group became affiliated with the Community Church. Then they moved to West 14th Street and finally rented the Cherry Lane Theatre. For The Cenci the Lenox Hill Players had the services of Vladimir Nelidoff, formerly director of the Imperial Theatre of Moscow.
99 Stage (London), June 24, 1926.
100 American (New York), May 20, 1926.
101 June, 1926.
102 Letter of June 14, 1942.
103 Hicks, “An American Performance of The Cenci,” op. cit., pp. 287-290.
104 Ibid., p. 290.
105 Ibid.
106 Ibid., p. 310.
107 Ibid., p. 311.
108 Ibid.
- 1
- Cited by