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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 January 2009
The première of It Is Never Too Late to Mend at the Princess's Theatre on 4 October 1865 marked the appropriately tumultuous return of Charles Reade to the London stage after an absence of nine years. That night, one of the most memorable disturbances in the nineteenth-century theatre occurred when the drama critics in attendance, led by Frederick Guest Tomlins of the Morning Advertiser, demanded that the play be halted because of its offensive subject matter and one particularly shocking scene. The dispute became a cause celebre among critics, dramatists, and the general public and was recalled (with varying degrees of accuracy) years later by its participants, witnesses, and other interested parties.
1. Reade, Charles, Gold (London: Thomas Hailes Lacy, c. 1853)Google Scholar. Lacy's Acting Edition of Plays, vol. 11.
2. Times, 11 01 1853, p. 8.Google Scholar
3. Burns, Wayne, Charles Reade: A Study in Victorian Authorship (New York: Bookman, 1961), p. 103.Google Scholar
4. Charles L. Reade and the Rev. Reade, Compton, Charles Reade: A Memoir, 2 vols. (London: Chapman and Hall, 1887), II, 164Google Scholar; Coleman, John, Charles Reade as I Knew Him (London: Treherne, 1903), pp. 143–44.Google Scholar
5. Report from the Select Committee on Theatrical Licences and Regulations (1866; rpt. Shannon: Irish Univ. Press, 1970), p. 235Google Scholar, questions 6724–26.
6. Reade and Reade, II, 162–63.Google Scholar
7. Ibid., II, 164–65.
8. Reade v. Lacy, 1861, 1 J. & H. 528.Google Scholar
9. Reade v. Conquest, 1861, 9 C. B. (N. S.) 755.Google Scholar
10. Reade v. Conquest, 1862, 11 C. B. (N. S.) 479Google Scholar. For discussion of these cases and their influence on adaptations by Dickens, see Fielding, K. J., ‘Charles Reade and Dickens—A Fight Against Piracy’, Theatre Notebook, 10 (1956), 106–11.Google Scholar
11. Coleman, John, Players and Playwrights I Have Known, 1 vols. (London: Chatto and Windus, 1888), II, 26.Google Scholar
12. ALS, Reade, to Laurie, and Keen, (his solicitors), 2 02 1867Google Scholar, Parrish Collection, Princeton University Library. All quotations from the Parrish Collection are printed with the permission of the Princeton University Library.
13. Contract between Coleman, and Reade, , 7 02 1865Google Scholar, Parrish Collection, Princeton University Library.
14. Reade, and Reade, , I, 311.Google Scholar
15. As recounted in Coleman, , Charles Reade, pp. 173–74.Google Scholar
16. All references to It Is Never Too Late to Mend are from the printed licence copy, British Library Add. MS. 53044 D. This copy is the privately printed edition that Reade showed to Coleman, with some additions, excisions, and transpositions made by Reade. The text is similar to that in the most recent edition of the play, Plays by Charles Reade, ed. Hammet, Michael (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1986)Google Scholar. Hammet, who does not disclose his copy-text or editorial principles, includes one scene (Act Four, scene two) that Reade himself cut, and excludes short scenes at the start of Acts Three and Four which, Reade specified, were intended to be read but not performed. I have also consulted Reade's manuscript of It Is Never Too Late to Mend, contained in three notebooks and preserved in the Parrish Collection, Princeton University Library.
17. Coleman, , Charles Reade, p. 11.Google Scholar
18. Times, 12 09 1853, pp. 9–10.Google Scholar
19. Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Inquire into the Condition and Treatment of the Prisoners Confined in Birmingham Borough Prison (London: Eyre and Spottis-woode, 1854).Google Scholar
20. Coleman, , Charles Reade, p. 11.Google Scholar
21. Ibid., p. 171.
22. Ibid., p. 176.
23. Coleman, , Players and Playwrights, II, 31.Google Scholar
24. Ibid., II, 32.
25. ALS, M. H. Davies (Coleman's treasurer) to Reade, Charles, 19 12 1866Google Scholar, Parrish Collection, Princeton University Library. Davies prepared a transcript of the ledger because Reade questioned the payments he had received from Coleman. Other documents in the Parrish Collection show that Reade and Coleman continued to wrangle over Coleman's managerial practices and accounts. In particular, Reade objected to Coleman's unauthorized leasing of the play to J. P. Weston of the Theatre Royal Bolton for 20% of the receipts while paying Reade 10%, with Coleman reserving the balance ‘for my humble expence in providing prompt book, music, sketches[,] models of scenery [,] posters, wood cuts, &c.’ Reade also believed he was owed forty guineas for performances in Cambridge and York. On the whole, however, Reade thought that ‘Coleman and I have done business together very fairly and agreeably’. Not only did he like Coleman, but as he confided to his solicitors, ‘[Coleman] may be useful to me by starting another play and so forcing it on those idiots the London managers.’
26. Reade, and Reade, , II, 168.Google Scholar
27. Stephens, John Russell, The Censorship of English Drama 1824–1901 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1980), pp. 124–25.Google Scholar
28. Era, 8 10 1865, p. 11.Google Scholar
29. Mayhew, Henry and Binny, John, The Criminal Prisons of London and Scenes of Prison Life (London: Charles Griffin, [1862]), p. 304.Google Scholar
30. Ignatieff, Michael, A Just Measure of Pain: The Penitentiary in the Industrial Revolution, 1750–1850 (London: Macmillan, 1978), p. 177.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
31. Sunday Times, 8 10 1865, p. 3.Google Scholar
32. Report of the Commissioners, pp. vi–vii.Google Scholar
33. Ibid., p. vii; Mayhew, and Binny, , p. 308.Google Scholar
34. Priestley, Philip, Victorian Prison Lives: English Prison Biography 1830–1914 (London: Methuen, 1985), p. 123.Google Scholar
35. Ibid., p. 197.
36. Mayhew, and Binny, , p. 311.Google Scholar
37. Morning Advertiser, 5 10 1865, p. 6.Google Scholar
38. Era, 8 10 1865, p. 11Google Scholar. Given the ensuing outcry, Vining must indeed have said, ‘…that most of the dissentient persons have Come in Free’, although the article in the Era reads ‘…the dissentient persons have not…’
39. Scott, Clement, The Drama of Yesterday and To-day, 2 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1899), II, 274.Google Scholar
40. Illustrated London News, 7 10 1865, p. 334.Google Scholar
41. Morning Advertiser, 5 10 1865, p. 6.Google Scholar
42. Pall Mall Gazette, 6 10 1865, pp. 10–11.Google Scholar
43. Fun, 21 10 1865, p. 53Google Scholar. Robertson's unsigned contribution is identified through the Proprietor's Copy of Fun at the Huntington Library.
44. Scott, , II, 274.Google Scholar
45. Era, 8 10 1865, p. 11.Google Scholar
46. Pall Mall Gazette, 6 10 1865, pp. 10–11Google Scholar; Daily News, 5 10 1865, p. 2.Google Scholar
47. Burns, , p. 236.Google Scholar
48. Reade, and Reade, , II, 167–68.Google Scholar
49. See Fun, 25 11 1865, p. 103.Google Scholar
50. Elwin, Malcolm, Charles Reade (London: Jonathan Cape, 1931), p. 183.Google Scholar
51. Era, 15 10 1865, p. 11Google Scholar. The Era (8 10 1865, p. 11)Google Scholar noted that the suicide attempt and other ‘more prominent causes of disapprobation’ had been removed by the second night. According to Coleman, Reade himself decided that the treadmill must be banished before the second performance (Coleman, , Charles Reade, p. 210)Google Scholar. I have not found any mention of the treadmill being used after the première.
52. Report from the Select Committee, p. 143Google Scholar, question 4064.
53. Era, 8 10 1865, p. 11.Google Scholar
54. Reade, and Reade, , II, 168.Google Scholar
55. Morley, Henry, The Journal of a London Playgoer (1866; rpt. Leicester: Leicester Univ. Press, 1974), p. 313.Google Scholar
56. Archer, William, English Dramatists of To-Day (London: Sampson Low, 1882), pp. 27, 32, 34.Google Scholar
57. Report from the Select Committee, p. 160Google Scholar, question 4511.
58. Reade, and Reade, , II, 37–8.Google Scholar
59. Research for this article was supported by a Travel to Collections grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
