{"id":9858,"date":"2010-02-20T08:56:05","date_gmt":"2010-02-20T13:56:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=9858"},"modified":"2010-07-22T20:21:22","modified_gmt":"2010-07-23T00:21:22","slug":"virginia-woolf-on-ellen-terry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=9858","title":{"rendered":"Virginia Woolf on Ellen Terry"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Ellen Terry was onstage, observed Virginia Woolf, “all the other actors were put out, as electric lights are put out.”<\/p>\n

This is a blessing and a curse. Star power. Charisma. You either have it or you don’t.<\/p>\n

In 1907, great English actress Ellen Terry (who was approaching her 50th year onstage) appeared in George Bernard Shaw’s satirical Captain Brassbound’s Conversion<\/i>. Shaw wrote the part of Lady Cicely Waynflete for her, and he styled the male character, Captain Brassbound, against beloved English actor Henry Irving, who had just died the past year (and who had worked with Ellen for decades). Ellen Terry, in her 50s now, struggling with her eyesight, and the fact that there were basically no parts written for women of her age in the theatre, was moving into a new phase of her life. It was not easy. For decades, she had worked in Henry Irving’s Lyceum Theatre, a place that gave her steady work and (for the most part) good roles, not to mention the fact that Henry Irving was her dear friend. Now she felt a bit adrift. Shaw thought she was the best thing since sliced bread – and had been kind of insinuating to her through their correspondence that limiting herself just to Lyceum productions was not good. Henry Irving resisted the modern drama. He stayed away from Wilde, Ibsen, Shaw – and there are parts in all of those playwrights’ plays that Ellen could have soared in. Now with Irving gone, Shaw saw his chance.<\/p>\n

The play ran for 12 weeks in 1906. Ellen knew she was too old for the part. She knew something was “off”. She also had a hard time remembering her lines, and would sometimes go blank.<\/p>\n

Regardless, the show went on. Now this is interesting. Terry stumbled badly in the beginning of the run. Virginia Woolf saw the show one night. She was a giant fan of Terry. Woolf recorded her observations:<\/p>\n

[When Ellen Terry spoke] it was as if someone drew a bow over a ripe, richly seasoned ‘cello; it grated, it glowed, it grumbled. Then she stoped speaking. She put on her glasses. She gazed intently at the back of the settee. She had forgotten her part. But did it matter?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To a fan like Woolf, it might not have mattered, but Terry was crushed. Had she lost her touch? It was an odd sensation for her, to not know how to BE onstage anymore. She dashed off apologetic letters to Shaw about it, frantic that she had ruined his play. Shaw wrote her back and says something rather extraordinary (and rare) for a playwright:<\/p>\n

Behave as if you were more precious than many plays, which is the truth.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He’s telling her that the play is NOT the thing – it is what YOU bring to it that is so special. He had a way of relaxing her and also stimulating her that was quite unique in her long career. His words relaxed her. Apparently, she stopped worrying about the lines so much, and didn’t “blank” out if she forgot them. She just improvised along as the character, because she knew the character (there’s that confidence thing again – she remembered what she DID know) – she knew how to keep the play alive, with the lines or no. Bernard Shaw approved and wrote in a letter to a friend:<\/p>\n

[She is] magnificent … She simply lives through Lady Cicely’s adventures and says whatever comes into her head, which by the way is now much better than what I wrote.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I love this anecdote because it shows, yet again, that Ellen Terry had a process that, like every process, needed to grow and change as she grew and changed. One size does not fit all. This is true of different people and how one thing will work for one, and not work for another, but it is also true of the same person at different points in her life. “Why did this work for me without me even thinking about it when I was 22??” Well, maybe because you were 22, and you are 52 now. But instead of staying stuck in that stuck place (or just resting on her laurels and retiring) – Terry kept at it. In front of an audience<\/i>. She figured out her way during<\/i> the run of the play. Obviously she could do that because she was a giant star, but it is still so heartening to me to see her still working, still willing to fail.<\/p>\n

I will let Virginia Woolf have the final word (all of these excerpts come from Michael Holroy’d’s book on Ellen Terry and Henry Irving, A Strange Eventful History: The Dramatic Lives of Ellen Terry, Henry Irving, and Their Remarkable Families<\/a>\"\"<\/i>). Woolf, to me, captures what it means by star quality<\/i>, not an easy thing to describe or pin down. But she nails it.<\/p>\n

Virginia Woolf on Ellen Terry:<\/p>\n

Shakespeare could not fit her, not Ibsen; nor Shaw. But there is, after all, a greater dramatist than Shakespeare, Ibsen, or Shaw. There is Nature … now and again Nature creates a new part, an original part. The actors who act that part always defy our attempts to name them … And thus while other actors are remembered because they were Hamlet, Phedre, or Cleopatra, Ellen Terry is remembered because she was Ellen Terry.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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When Ellen Terry was onstage, observed Virginia Woolf, “all the other actors were put out, as electric lights are put out.” This is a blessing and a curse. Star power. Charisma. You either have it or you don’t. In 1907, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[111],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9858"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9858"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9858\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24751,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9858\/revisions\/24751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}