Sir Henry Irving

Sir Henry Irving PDF Author: Jeffrey Richards
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 9781852853457
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 556

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Book Description
Sir Henry Irving was the greatest actor of the Victorian age. He transformed the theater in Britain and America from a disreputable and marginal entertainment into a respected art form. His admirers ranged from Queen Victoria to working men and housewives. He was thought of by Gladstone as his greatest contemporary and in 1895 became the first actor to receive a knighthood. Published to mark the centenary of Irving’s death, this book gives an account not only of Irving himself and of his career, but also of his whole impact on the Victorian Theatre and on Victorian culture.

Sir Henry Irving

Sir Henry Irving PDF Author: Jeffrey Richards
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 9781852853457
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 556

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Book Description
Sir Henry Irving was the greatest actor of the Victorian age. He transformed the theater in Britain and America from a disreputable and marginal entertainment into a respected art form. His admirers ranged from Queen Victoria to working men and housewives. He was thought of by Gladstone as his greatest contemporary and in 1895 became the first actor to receive a knighthood. Published to mark the centenary of Irving’s death, this book gives an account not only of Irving himself and of his career, but also of his whole impact on the Victorian Theatre and on Victorian culture.

Henry Irving and The Victorian Theatre

Henry Irving and The Victorian Theatre PDF Author: Madeleine Bingham
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317386124
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
Originally published in 1978. Henry Irving achieved an astounding success in Britain and America as an actor; yet he lacked good looks, had spindly legs, and did not have a good voice. He said so himself. Today Irving is regarded as the archetype of the old-time actor, but in his own time he was regarded as a great theatrical innovator. Even Bernard Shaw, who attacked him pitilessly, even unto death, called him ‘modern’ when he first saw him act. Irving, the man, with his tenacious, obsessive talent, his human limitations and weaknesses, and his ephemeral glory is brought most sympathetically to life in this biography. It is written from contemporary sources, and from criticisms, lampoons, caricatures and gossip columns. If Irving reflected certain aspects of his age, this book underlines the Victorian ethic to which he appealed and the backcloths against which it was set – the extraordinary lavishness of the Lyceum productions and the incredible extravagance of social entertaining. Not the least absorbing aspect of this biography is the fascinating account of the long partnership between Irving and Ellen Terry, still in many respects an enigmatic one, but here portrayed with lively insight into character combined with understanding and deep knowledge of the social and theatrical context of the Victorian age.

Henry Irving

Henry Irving PDF Author: Richard Foulkes
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317218809
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
Henry Irving (1838-1905), the first actor to be knighted, dominated the theatre in Britain and beyond for over a quarter of a century. As an actor, he was strikingly different with his idiosyncratic pronunciation, his somewhat ungainly physique, and his brilliant psychological portrayals of virtue and villainy. He was also the director of spectacular, and commercially driven, entertainments and as the manager of the Lyceum theatre, he controlled every aspect of the performance. First published in 2008, this collection of essays by leading theatre scholars explores each element of Irving’s art: his acting, his contribution to the plays he commissioned, his flair for the stage picture, and his ear for incidental music. This book will be of interest to those studying the history of theatre.

Henry Irving's Waterloo

Henry Irving's Waterloo PDF Author: W. D. King
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520080720
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
"This is an extraordinary, provocative, and informative book which covers a wide range of aspects of the theatre of the time and touches upon a large number of individual artists and personalities. The book locates a theatrical phenomenon in the larger culture, drawing upon documents around and beyond the theatre itself. It will shake up complacent scholars, generate a new methodological freedom, and open up a whole period to sophisticated and creative cultural analysis."--Cary M. Mazer, author of Shakespeare Refashioned "W. D. King has developed an original close-reading of a particular (and only apparently marginal) episode of theatrical history and has placed that episode within a network of crucial cultural issues and values. The book is original in methodology, elegant in its argument, and persuasive in its conclusions."--Joseph R. Roach, author of The Player's Passion

The Life of Henry Irving

The Life of Henry Irving PDF Author: Austin Brereton
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Actors
Languages : en
Pages : 468

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Book Description


Shadowplay

Shadowplay PDF Author: Joseph O'Connor
Publisher: Europa Editions
ISBN: 1609455940
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
A West End theater in London is shaken up by the crimes of Jack the Ripper in this novel by the New York Times–bestselling author of The Star of the Sea. Henry Irving is Victorian London’s most celebrated actor and theater impresario. He has introduced groundbreaking ideas to the theater, bringing to the stage performances that are spectacular, shocking, and always entertaining. When Irving decides to open his own London theater with the goal of making it the greatest playhouse on earth, he hires a young Dublin clerk harboring literary ambitions by the name of Bram Stoker to manage it. As Irving’s theater grows in reputation and financial solvency, he lures to his company of mummers the century’s most beloved actress, the dazzlingly talented leading lady Ellen Terry, who nightly casts a spell not only on her audiences but also on Stoker and Irving both. Bram Stoker’s extraordinary experiences at the Lyceum Theatre, his early morning walks on the streets of a London terrorized by a serial killer, his long, tempestuous relationship with Irving, and the closeness he finds with Ellen Terry, inspire him to write Dracula, the most iconic and best-selling supernatural tale ever published. A magnificent portrait both of lamp-lit London and of lives and loves enacted on the stage, Shadowplay’s rich prose, incomparable storytelling, and vivid characters will linger in readers’ hearts and minds for many years. “A vibrantly imaginative narrative of passion, intrigue and literary ambition set in the garish heyday of a theater. . . . Artfully splicing truth with fantasy, O’Connor has a glorious time turning a ramshackle and haunted London playhouse into a primary source for Stoker’s Gothic imaginings.” —Miranda Seymour, The New York Times Book Review “A gorgeously written historical novel about Stoker’s inner life. . . . I wasn’t prepared to be awed by his prose, which is so good you can taste it. . . . O’Connor dazzles.” —Michael Dirda, The Washington Post “And Mr. O’Connor’s main characters—Stoker, Irving and the beloved actress Ellen Terry—are so forcefully brought to life that when, close to tears, you reach this drama’s final page, you will return to the beginning just to remain in their company.” —Anna Mundow, The Wall Street Journal “This novel blows the dust off its Victorian trappings and brings them to scintillating life.” —Publishers Weekly, PW Picks, Starred Review FINALIST 2019 COSTA BOOK OF THE YEAR FINALIST 2020 DALKEY LITERARY AWARD 2020 WALTER SCOTT PRIZE

Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving

Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving PDF Author: Bram Stoker
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Actors
Languages : en
Pages : 528

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Book Description


A Strange Eventful History

A Strange Eventful History PDF Author: Michael Holroyd
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1429939044
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 772

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Book Description
PLEASE NOTE: THIS EBOOK DOES NOT CONTAIN PHOTOS INCLUDED IN THE PRINT EDITION. Deemed "a prodigy among biographers" by The New York Times Book Review, Michael Holroyd transformed biography into an art. Now he turns his keen observation, humane insight, and epic scope on an ensemble cast, a remarkable dynasty that presided over the golden age of theater. Ellen Terry was an ethereal beauty, the child bride of a Pre-Raphaelite painter who made her the face of the age. George Bernard Shaw was so besotted by her gifts that he could not bear to meet her, lest the spell she cast from the stage be broken. Henry Irving was an ambitious, harsh-voiced merchant's clerk, but once he painted his face and spoke the lines of Shakespeare, his stammer fell away to reveal a magnetic presence. He would become one of the greatest actor-managers in the history of the theater. Together, Terry and Irving created a powerhouse of the arts in London's Lyceum Theatre, with Bram Stoker—who would go on to write Dracula—as manager. Celebrities whose scandalous private lives commanded global attention, they took America by stormin wildly popular national tours. Their all-consuming professional lives left little room for their brilliant but troubled children. Henry's boys followed their father into the theater but could not escape the shadow of his fame. Ellen's feminist daughter, Edy, founded an avant-garde theater and a largely lesbian community at her mother's country home. But it was Edy's son, the revolutionary theatrical designer Edward Gordon Craig, who possessed the most remarkable gifts and the most perplexing inability to realize them. A now forgotten modernist visionary, he collaborated with the Russian director Stanislavski on a production of Hamlet that forever changed the way theater was staged. Maddeningly self-absorbed, he inherited his mother's potent charm and fathered thirteen children by eight women, including a daughter with the dancer Isadora Duncan. An epic story spanning a century of cultural change, A Strange Eventful History finds space for the intimate moments of daily existence as well as the bewitching fantasies played out by its subjects. Bursting with charismatic life, it is an incisive portrait of two families who defied the strictures of their time. It will be swiftly recognized as a classic. Please note: This ebook edition does not contain photos and illustrations that appeared in the print edition.

Shakespearean Gothic

Shakespearean Gothic PDF Author: Christy Desmet
Publisher: University of Wales Press
ISBN: 1783163712
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 327

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Book Description
This book explores the paradox that the Gothic (today’s werewolves, vampires, and horror movies) owe their origins (and their legitimacy) to eighteenth-century interpretations of Shakespeare. As Shakespeare was being established as the supreme British writer throughout the century, he was cited as justification for early Gothic writers’ fascination with the supernatural, their abandoning of literary “decorum,” and their fascination with otherness and extremes of every kind. This book addresses the gap for an up to date analysis of Shakespeare’s relation to the Gothic. An authority on the Gothic, E.J. Clery, has stated that “It would be impossible to overestimate the importance of Shakespeare as touchstone and inspiration for the terror mode, even if we feel the offspring are unworthy of their parent. Scratch the surface of any Gothic fiction and the debt to Shakespeare will be there.” This book therefore addresses Shakespeare’s importance to the Gothic tradition as a whole and also to particular, well-known and often studied Gothic works. It also considers the influence of the Gothic on Shakespeare, both in-print and on stage in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain. The introductory chapter places the chapters within the historical development of both Shakespearean reception and Gothic Studies. The book is divided into three parts: 1) Gothic Appropriations of “Shakespeare”; 2) Rewriting Shakespearean Plays and Characters; 3) Shakespeare Before/After the Gothic.

Henry Irving, the Actor and His World

Henry Irving, the Actor and His World PDF Author: Laurence Irving
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Actors
Languages : en
Pages : 796

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Book Description