{"id":39193,"date":"2011-07-18T09:48:03","date_gmt":"2011-07-18T13:48:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=39193"},"modified":"2015-05-11T12:11:50","modified_gmt":"2015-05-11T16:11:50","slug":"the-books-ellen-terry-bernard-shaw-a-correspondence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=39193","title":{"rendered":"The Books: Ellen Terry & Bernard Shaw: A Correspondence<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Daily Book Excerpt: Memoirs<\/a>: <\/p>\n

Next book on the Memoir\/Letters\/Journals shelf is ELLEN TERRY & BERNARD SHAW: A CORRESPONDENCE.<\/a>\"\"<\/i>, edited by Christopher St. John (a woman, who was the longtime companion of Ellen Terry’s daughter – both formidable women in their own rights). <\/p>\n

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\nI’ve been obsessed with Victorian-age actress Ellen Terry<\/a> for some time (I read her memoir years ago and fell in love with it) and her decades-long association with actor-manager Henry Irving and his Lyceum Theatre. Ellen Terry was one of the greatest stars of her age and it saddens me that I can never see what she was like in person. But I can imagine it. Her memoir is fantastic and shows her smarts as an actress (if you click on the “Ellen Terry” link above you can see some of my posts about her, as well as an excerpt from her memoir). Oscar Wilde was obsessed with her. Everyone was obsessed with her. She was a celebrity. She worked hard. She had a gift for graceful comedy but Lady Macbeth was one of her greatest triumphs. She knew what she was good at – she had no false modesty – but she also knew when she needed to call in the great guns for help. She had a fascinating life, full of potentially scandalous happenings (her marriage as a teenager to the gay painter G.F. Watts, and living in sin with Edward William Godwin, having two kids out of wedlock) – but she kept her respectable surface, and her children grew up to be difficult brilliant people (Gordon Craig and Edith Craig) who continued her theatrical legacy in their own ways. John Gielgud is her grandnephew. I mean, come on. <\/p>\n

Another person obsessed with Ellen Terry was Irish playwright and theatre critic George Bernard Shaw. A cantankerous know-it-all, he thought Terry was totally wasted at The Lyceum (despite her great fame) and thought she had submitted far too much to the will of Henry Irving. She should be doing modern plays, Shaw thought – HIS plays. She should be doing Ibsen. She should not be mucking about with stupid Shakespearean roles (Shaw was brutal about Shakespeare). Terry and Shaw struck up a correspondence which then spanned decades, and it is a must-read for anyone interested in that time, and also in acting, theatrical history, script analysis. I believe they only met in real life one or two times, and it was nervewracking for both. I think modern day people can relate to that, when who we are in our emails seems freer and more real than who we are in person. It’s hard to make that adjustment. So Shaw and Terry smartly kept it to the correspondence, although they continually talked about getting together, and Terry coming over so he could read his latest play to her, etc. They wanted to work together, but Terry was bound to Irving at the Lyceum. This drove Shaw mad. He doesn’t hold back in his letters to her, letting Terry know how he feels about Irving and how Irving ran the Lyceum. Terry is gentle and humorous in response. You can feel her mettle. She does not gossip about Henry behind his back, she remained loyal and true – although you can sense her frustration with some of her smaller parts, and also how Irving took her for granted. You can sense how glorious it was for her to talk to Shaw, someone who didn’t take her for granted at all, who recognized her brilliance, and thought it was wasted. <\/p>\n

The letters are funny, chatty, fascinating, at times prickly – they really beat each other up occasionally. They are intimate. In the early days of the correspondence, Shaw really turns on the courtly submissive stuff – lots of “o dear lady, I bow to your superiority” junk which was in the style of the day – but which is nearly unreadable now. You want to tell him to just CHILLAX. He eventually does chillax, and the two are lifelong friends. The letters, naturally, are usually about theatre: what he is working on, what she is working on – and they help one another. She provides an actress’ perspective on his plays, what is playable, what is not … and he helps her to plumb the depths of whatever she is working on, and parse the script into its different more manageable elements. <\/p>\n

My favorite part of this correspondence – which is an intellectual FEAST as a whole – is early on, when Terry is preparing to play Imogen in The Lyceum’s production of Cymbeline<\/i>. Shaw does not admire the play, and thinks Terry is a fool for wasting any intellectual time worrying about it. Shaw is willing to see the flaws in Shakespeare (or, as he spells it, “Shakespear”) and points them out to Ellen, essentially saying; “Be careful here – Shakespear was sloppy – this is unnecessarily difficult to play …” Shaw did not approve of Henry Irving’s cuts, and suggested other cuts, better cuts – cuts that would make the play easier to PLAY. Shaw realizes that he is not talking to a scholar in a dusty office: he is talking to an actress, a talented actress, whose gift could make a grocery list sound interesting … but script analysis is worthless to an actor unless it adds up to something one can PLAY. Shaw understands that. Let the academics fuss about motivation and influence – these are not play-able. But Shaw’s breaking-down of the “headless man” scene in particular is quite good because it speaks to the actress’ need to be able to make SENSE of the unfolding of events. <\/p>\n

He doesn’t treat Shakespeare like an untouchable god. He treats him like a fellow playwright who was damned good at some times and then damned awful at others. Mainly, though, he was upset that Ellen Terry, with her giant talent, was being wasted on a role like Imogen, that he thought she could do in her sleep. Terry should be playing a Modern Woman. <\/p>\n

This argument goes on for the entirety of their correspondence which lasted their entire lives. He kept pushing Ellen to break out from the Lyceum’s pull, but Terry enjoyed the ensemble, loved Henry Irving, and also didn’t want to mess with a good thing. She was famous. Would the public accept her in a modern play? <\/p>\n

Here is Ellen Terry as “Imogen”, the role in question.<\/p>\n

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Excerpt from ELLEN TERRY & BERNARD SHAW: A CORRESPONDENCE.<\/a>\"\"<\/i><\/big><\/p>\n

XXI: G.B.S. to E.T.<\/big><\/p>\n

The Intelligent Actress’s Guide to Cymbeline<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

6 September 1896<\/p>\n

I really don’t know what to say about this silly old Cymbeline, except that it can be done delightfully in a village schoolroom, and cant be done at the Lyceum at all, on any terms. I wish you would tell me something about Imogen for my own instruction. All I can extract from the artificialities of the play is a double image – a real woman divined<\/i> by Shakespear without his knowing it clearly, a natural aristocrat, with a high temper and perfect courage, with two moods – a childlike affection and wounded rage; and an idiotic paragon of virtue produced by Shakespear’s views<\/i> of what a woman ought to be, a person who sews and cooks, and reads improving books until midnight, and “always reserves her holy duty,” and is anxious to assure people that they may trust her implicitly with their spoons and forks, and is in a chronic state of suspicion of improper behavior on the part of other people (especially her husband) with abandoned females. If I were you I should cut the part so as to leave the paragon out and the woman in; and I should write to The Times explaining the lines of the operation. It would be a magnificent advertisement.<\/p>\n

There are four good lines in the part. First<\/p>\n

“– how far it is
\nTo this same blessed Milford.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

which, like that whole scene, you will do beautifully.<\/p>\n

Second, the exit speech, with its touch of vernacular nature: —<\/p>\n

“Such a foe! Good heavens!”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Third, to leave the comedy lines for the more painful ones: —<\/p>\n

“I’ll hide my master from the flies.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Fourth, the only good line of pure rhetoric in Mrs Siddon’s style: —<\/p>\n

“Fear not: I’m empty of all things but grief.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Only Shakespear, like an ass, spoils that line by adding, in words, all that the delivery of the line itself ought to convey. The words “They master is not there, who was, indeed, the riches of it” should not be spoken. If anyone says you left them out you can retort “I did not speak them; but I did not leave them out.”<\/p>\n

If you utter all that rubbish about false Aeneas and Dido’s weeping, I will rise, snatch the nearest family Shakespear, solemnly throw it at your head, and leave the theatre. The moment Pisanio says “Good Madam, hear me,” cut him short with “Come, fellow, be thou honest”; and say it with something of the deep admonition which makes me remember your “Shylock: there’s thrice thy money offered thee” since years and years ago. And when you have fairly started cutting the miserable attorney’s rhetoric out of the scene, do it with a bold hand. Dont trouble about the Paragonese “Some jay of Italy” stuff, or the wretched impossible logic chopping. And oh, my God, dont read the letter. You cant<\/i> read it: no woman could read it out to a servant. (Oh what a DAMNED fool Shakespear was!) You must manage it by this way. In the second scene of the third act, let Pisanio begin by reading the letter, from “Thy mistress, Pisanio, hath played the strumpet, etc.” down to “lie bleeding in me.” Then let him break off and exclaim “Howl of adultery!” etc. down to “O my master, thy mind to her is now as low as were thy fortunes!” Then let him resume the reading of the letter to the end, when he will find himself with just the right cue for “How! That I should murder her … I! her!<\/i> …” and so on. The audience will not forget what is in the letter after that; and when Pisanio hands it to you in the fourth scene, you can play<\/i> the reading of it with the certainty that the audience will have the clue in their imaginations burning hot. The pantomime will be easy for you – it goes this way – the horrible shock of the first sentence – “I<\/i> false!” — then the slow, significant look at Pisanio, the man who is to kill you (it is the majesty of death that raises you for a moment from your horror) — then the return to the subject of the accusation and the slipping away of consciousness. Then, cut all the rubbish out of the scene which follows, thus: —<\/p>\n

P. What shall I need to draw my sword? The paper
\nHath cut her throat already. What cheer, madam?
\nI. False to his bed, etc. (the whole speech uncut)
\nP. Alas, good lady (Imogen has nothing to do with this speech and should go straight on without hearing it)
\nI. I<\/i> false! Thy conscience witness, Iachimo (Everything can be conveyed in these 4 words)
\nP. Good madam, hear me —
\nI. (Turning on him with solemn sternness)
\nCome, fellow, be thou honest.
\nDo thou they master’s bidding, etc. etc. (the whole speech uncut)
\nP. Hence, vile instrument
\nThou shalt not damn my hand.
\nI. (Sharply, not much impressed by his rhetoric at such a pass)
\nWhy, I must die;
\nAnd if I do not by thy hand, thou art
\nNo servant of thy master’s. Prythee despatch.
\nThe lamb entreats the butcher: where’s thy knife, etc. etc.<\/p>\n

All this will mean an intolerable load off your memory and off the real side of Imogen. Archer will complain in The World of the violation of the Bard’s integrity; and I will declare in The Saturday Review that your dramatic instinct and delicacy of feeling have never guided you more unerringly than in rescuing the live bits of Imogen from the bombazine trappings of the Bishop’s wife.<\/p>\n

There is another point which puzzles me – in that other big scene – that nice Elizabethan morsel of the woman waking up in the arms of a headless corpse. I cannot for the life of me follow the business of that long speech without getting the words “A headless man” in the wrong place. For instance, you wake up, you sit up, half awake, and think you are asking the way to Milford Haven – the blessed Milford<\/i>, since for the moment you have forgotten your unhappiness. You lie down to sleep again, and in doing so touch the body of Cloten, whose head (or no head) is presumably muffled in a cloak. In your dim, half asleep funny state of consciousness, you still have the idea that you mustnt go to bed with anybody else but Posthumus, and you say “But soft, no bedfellow.” Then in rousing yourself sufficiently to get away from this vaguely apprehended person, you awaken a little more at this very odd, dreamlike thing, that the bedfellow is covered with flowers. You take up a flower, still puzzly-dreamy, and look curiously at it. It is bloody<\/i>, and then in an instant you are broad awake – “Oh gods and goddesses!” etc. But it is quite clear that you must not know that “this bloody man” is headless, as that would utterly spoil the point later on. He looks simply as if he had swathed his head in his cloak to sleep in. It is the blood under the flowers that makes him so horrible to be alone with. When you utter the prayer “If there be yet left in heaven as small a drop of pity as a wren’s eye, feared gods, give me a part of it,” I suppose you kneel and cover your eyes with your hands in the hope that when you remove them your prayer will be answered the the nightmare gone. You take down your hands and dare to look again. “The dream’s here still. Even when I wake it is without me and within me, not imagined – felt.” Now in the text, what follows is “A headless man!” That is what I cannot understand; and I believe it is an overlooked relic of some earlier arrangement of the business. For see how it plays if you omit it. Your attention is caught by the garment of Posthumus; you go on with the recognition step by step (confound those classical allusions, but they cant be helped); at last you lift the cloak to see the face, and then – “Murder in Heaven!” you go tearing, screaming, raging mad and rave your way to the swoon as best you can (a nice thing to play every night for 100 nights). But if you leave in the words “A headless man” the sequel is spoiled, and you are represented as being surprised at finding no face on a man, who, as you have already observed, has lost his whole head. Therefore, I submit that the “headless man” sentence must be left out.<\/p>\n

These, dear madam, are the only ideas I have on the subject of Imgoen. I daresay you know your own business better than I do; but no matter; your consciousness of your own view will only become more definite and determined if it contradicts everybody else’s.<\/p>\n

So you see I have no opinion whatever to an intelligent cutting out of the dead and false bits of Shakespear. But when you propose to cut me, I am paralyzed at your sacrilegious audacity. I always cut myself to the bone, reading the thing over and over until I have discovered the bits that cant be made to play-act anyhow. All<\/i> of Napoleon can be done, if only the right touch is found. If a single comma is omitted, that will be because the actor has been beaten by the author. And I always like to beat the actor, and to beat the public, a little<\/i>: it is the only way to keep screwing up the standard. I own I have certain misgivings about H.I. as Napoleon. Swift brute force, concentrated self-assertion, and the power of letting the electricity discharge itself in the meaning of the line, instead of in the look and tone of the stage figure, are all just what he has not got. His slowness, his growing habit of overdoing his part and slipping in an imaginative conception of his own between<\/i> the lines (which made such a frightful wreck of Lear), all of which are part of extraordinary insensibility to literature, are all reasons why he should avoid me, though his feeling for fine execution, and his dignity and depth of sentiment, are reasons why I should not<\/i> avoid him. However, when Cymbeline is off his mind, I shall make him say Yes or No about The Man of Destiny. Meanwhile, I shall begin another play – a melodrama. After that I will write a real comic opera, to revive that<\/i> industry a bit; and then I shall do whatever may come next.<\/p>\n

You will observe how strictly I confine this letter to business. After the 22nd I decline further responsibility for my actions.<\/p>\n

G.B.S.<\/p>\n

\nXXII. E.T. to G.B.S.<\/big>
\n[Tyars: Frank Tyars, a member of Henry Irving’s company for many years. He was a sound and reliable actor, indispensable to Irving as a sympathetic coadjutor in parts which had to be played to enhance the effect of Irving’s own creation. Of his Pisanio in Cymbeline, Shaw wrote in The Saturday Review: “There is no reasonable fault to find.”<\/i>]<\/p>\n

7 September 1896. Savoy Hotel,
\nVictoria Embankment, London<\/p>\n

You dear fellow. Now this is a real help! (Oh I forgot! I was not agoin’ to write).<\/p>\n

I shall begin to think myself a proper clever person, for I had already cut out nearly everything you tell me in your letter of this morning to cut, just because when I got the words into my thick noodle and began to act<\/i>, I found I could not speak them or act them. As to the letter (which is fine to act, by not<\/i> acting it) that difficulty I got over rather well by appearing to read it to myself. Of course<\/i> she could not “read it to a servant”. This is better than your way, suggesting that Pisanio should read it (pardon me, blessed man) because I can act better than Tyars (You know I can). If H.I. played Pisanio I’d suggest it at once, for he’d do it better than E.T.<\/p>\n

I didnt think about the flower with the blood upon it (the “headless man” scene). It’s lovely, and I’ll try to do it – have<\/i> tried this minute (not successful, but it will come, for practice makes perfect, and how I will practise). I’ve cut that speech a great deal. Very many beautiful lines are gone, but oh dear friend I had to, for these emotional parts just kill me, and a sustained effort at that moment would probably make me mad. I should laugh – or die.<\/p>\n

Gods! How you seem to feel with one! Because of the “screwing up the standard” I find heart to go on and on, and feel intense interest all the while. “Security is mortal’s chiefest enemy.” The sickening flattery one gets! If it made one smug, how unhappy! how wretched! And I see around me such great people sapped by it.<\/p>\n

Now dont write to me (but thank you for writing) for I cant help writing then. You are very kind to me. I’m getting very well, know every word of my part! In tremors about that boy’s dress (being fat and nearly fifty). Oh pray for me! Wish for me!<\/p>\n

ELLEN TERRY<\/p>\n