The performance was thus witty and controlled, with much evidence of suppressed power. 8
Henry Irving was praised for finally eliminating Cibber in his production at the Lyceum in 1877. He managed to restore even more of Shakespeare’s text in a subsequent revival of 1896. Gone with Cibber’s text, though, was his fundamental conception of the role and Irving was blamed for this change of approach. As a reviewer explained in the
Athenaeum:
All that is conventional in tragedy is gone, leaving us musing whether after all we were wise in demanding its removal … We have no “sawing of the air with your hand thus” [
Hamlet
, 3.2.4–5], and we have no search for the flea in the actor’s bosom, as was irreverently described a favourite gesture of Charles Kean, Macready, and Phelps. We have, on the contrary, a polished presentment of Court manners, in which nothing offends and is as nearly as possible real. Where, however, is tragedy? It is gone. Richard III is not now a tragic role. It is what is conventionally called “a character part.” Very fine is some of the acting, and the character of Richard is charged with a ferocity that is impressive and we dare say original. We are, however, never scorched or electrified. We are gratified, tickled, amused. 9
The old-style melodrama was still in evidence, for example in John Barrymore’s 1920 performance at the Plymouth Theater in New York, a production which incorporated even more of
3 Henry VI
than Cibber had done. The show lasted until one o’clock in the morning, but still had a rapturous reception. Tyrone Guthrie at the Old Vic in London in 1937 offered, by contrast, an ironic modern production. As the London
Times
reviewer explained:
Mr. Emlyn Williams might have attempted the difficult return to full-blooded stage tradition and sought to carry conviction by storm. Instead he wisely took oblique means to the same end. By giving Richard a humorous relish of his own excesses he did what he could to prevent the audience from smiling at them in the wrong way … if we were amused, so in his own devilish way was the royal murderer. The actor had cleverly outflanked our criticism of a demoded tragic villain, and at the same time had contrived to make of him an arresting theatrical figure—a figure of stealthy, cat-like cunning, with more perhaps of the poisoner than the soldier in his composition but formidably, relentlessly dominant and consistently exciting. 10
The Second World War changed attitudes to the play and saw the start of productions which related more or less obliquely to fascism. Donald Wolfit confessed that his study of Richard in the 1942 production at the Strand Theater had been influenced by Hitler. 11 The most famous postwar Richard, indeed the most famous Richard of all time thanks to his later film version, was Laurence Olivier. His acclaimed performance reconciled different facets of Richard, as the critic J. C. Trewin recognized:
A Richard must make his theatrical effects boldly; at the same time he must expose the man’s brain. It is the marriage of intellect and dramatic force, of bravura and cold reason, which so distinguishes Mr. Laurence Olivier’s study at the New Theatre. 12
Kenneth Tynan analyzed Olivier’s performance in detail:
From a sombre and uninventive production this brooding, withdrawn player leapt into life, using the circumambientgloom as his springboard. Olivier’s Richard eats into the memory like acid into metal, but the total impression is one of lightness and deftness. The whole thing is taken at a baffling speed when one recalls how perfectly, even finically, it is articulated: it is Olivier’s trick to treat each speech as a kind of plastic vocal mass, and not as a series of sentences whose import must be precisely communicated to the audience: the method is impressionistic. He will seize on one or two phrases in each paragraph which, properly inserted, will unlock its whole meaning: the rest he discards,
Henry Irving was praised for finally eliminating Cibber in his production at the Lyceum in 1877. He managed to restore even more of Shakespeare’s text in a subsequent revival of 1896. Gone with Cibber’s text, though, was his fundamental conception of the role and Irving was blamed for this change of approach. As a reviewer explained in the
Athenaeum:
All that is conventional in tragedy is gone, leaving us musing whether after all we were wise in demanding its removal … We have no “sawing of the air with your hand thus” [
Hamlet
, 3.2.4–5], and we have no search for the flea in the actor’s bosom, as was irreverently described a favourite gesture of Charles Kean, Macready, and Phelps. We have, on the contrary, a polished presentment of Court manners, in which nothing offends and is as nearly as possible real. Where, however, is tragedy? It is gone. Richard III is not now a tragic role. It is what is conventionally called “a character part.” Very fine is some of the acting, and the character of Richard is charged with a ferocity that is impressive and we dare say original. We are, however, never scorched or electrified. We are gratified, tickled, amused. 9
The old-style melodrama was still in evidence, for example in John Barrymore’s 1920 performance at the Plymouth Theater in New York, a production which incorporated even more of
3 Henry VI
than Cibber had done. The show lasted until one o’clock in the morning, but still had a rapturous reception. Tyrone Guthrie at the Old Vic in London in 1937 offered, by contrast, an ironic modern production. As the London
Times
reviewer explained:
Mr. Emlyn Williams might have attempted the difficult return to full-blooded stage tradition and sought to carry conviction by storm. Instead he wisely took oblique means to the same end. By giving Richard a humorous relish of his own excesses he did what he could to prevent the audience from smiling at them in the wrong way … if we were amused, so in his own devilish way was the royal murderer. The actor had cleverly outflanked our criticism of a demoded tragic villain, and at the same time had contrived to make of him an arresting theatrical figure—a figure of stealthy, cat-like cunning, with more perhaps of the poisoner than the soldier in his composition but formidably, relentlessly dominant and consistently exciting. 10
The Second World War changed attitudes to the play and saw the start of productions which related more or less obliquely to fascism. Donald Wolfit confessed that his study of Richard in the 1942 production at the Strand Theater had been influenced by Hitler. 11 The most famous postwar Richard, indeed the most famous Richard of all time thanks to his later film version, was Laurence Olivier. His acclaimed performance reconciled different facets of Richard, as the critic J. C. Trewin recognized:
A Richard must make his theatrical effects boldly; at the same time he must expose the man’s brain. It is the marriage of intellect and dramatic force, of bravura and cold reason, which so distinguishes Mr. Laurence Olivier’s study at the New Theatre. 12
Kenneth Tynan analyzed Olivier’s performance in detail:
From a sombre and uninventive production this brooding, withdrawn player leapt into life, using the circumambientgloom as his springboard. Olivier’s Richard eats into the memory like acid into metal, but the total impression is one of lightness and deftness. The whole thing is taken at a baffling speed when one recalls how perfectly, even finically, it is articulated: it is Olivier’s trick to treat each speech as a kind of plastic vocal mass, and not as a series of sentences whose import must be precisely communicated to the audience: the method is impressionistic. He will seize on one or two phrases in each paragraph which, properly inserted, will unlock its whole meaning: the rest he discards,
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