Thomas William Robertson
Encyclopedia
Thomas William Robertson (9 January 1829 – 3 February 1871), usually known professionally as T. W. Robertson, was an Anglo
-Irish dramatist and innovative stage director best known for a series of realistic
or naturalistic
plays produced in London in the 1860s that broke new ground and inspired playwrights such as W.S. Gilbert and George Bernard Shaw
.
, Nottinghamshire
, England, Robertson was the oldest son of William Robertson, a provincial actor and manager. His family was famous for producing actors. The actress Margaret (Madge) Robertson
was his youngest sister. As a child, Robertson acted in juvenile parts in Rob Roy, Pizarro, The Stranger, "French" parts and eccentric comedy on the Lincoln Circuit and at the Marylebone in London. He also visited Paris as the stage manager and interpreter for an English company. Never a successful actor himself, he wrote numerous plays, mostly comedies, many of which achieved popularity. Robertson died at the age of 42 and is buried, as is his wife Elizabeth, at Abney Park Cemetery
in Stoke Newington
.
novels and wrote music hall
songs for comedians. He produced a farcical comedy, A Night's Adventure at London's Olympic Theatre
in 1851, but this did not catch on, and he remained for several more years in the provinces, acting and continuing with play writing and writing for newspapers. In 1860, he moved to London and worked as an editor, also writing a novel, later dramatised under the title Shadow Tree Shaft. He also wrote a farce entitled A Cantab, which was played at the Royal Strand Theatre
in 1861. This brought him a reputation among a Bohemian
clique of writers, the Fun
magazine gang (including W. S. Gilbert
, Tom Hood
, Clement Scott
, and F. C. Burnand), but so little profit that he thought of abandoning the profession to become a tobacconist. Finally, in 1864, he had his first notable playwriting success, David Garrick
, produced at the Haymarket Theatre
with Edward Sothern in the title role. Robertson also wrote the libretto to the 1865 comic opera
Constance, with music by Frederic Clay
.
Robertson found fame in 1865 with the production of his comedy Society
, under the management of Squire Bancroft
and his wife Marie (née Wilton)
at the Prince of Wales's Theatre
in the West End
. The play includes a scene that fictionalized the Fun gang, who frequented the Arundel Club, the Savage Club
, and especially Evans's café, where they had a table in competition with the Punch
'Round table'. This play became regarded as a milestone in Victorian drama because of its realism in sets, costume, acting and dialogue.
All of Robertson's popular plays, except for David Garrick
, were produced by the Bancrofts at the Prince of Wales's Theatre. Other Robertson successes included the domestic dramas Ours (1866), Caste (1867), Play (1868), School (1869), and M.P. (1870). He also wrote Dreams for the Gaiety Theatre, London
, which opened that new theatre in 1868 together with Gilbert's Robert the Devil
. His last play, War, was produced at the St. James's Theatre in 1871, the year in which he died. Robertson's plays are still occasionally seen. For example, Ours was given a professional production in July 2007 at the Finborough Theatre
, London
.
melodrama
s that were popular at the time. For example, whereas previously a designer would put as many chairs into a dining room scene as there were actors who needed to sit down, Robertson would place on stage as many chairs as would realistically be found in that dining room, even if some were never actually used. Or, if someone came in from a blizzard, snow would blow in from the doorway. In Ours, a pudding was made on stage, and this caused a major furore – people were not used to seeing such realistic tasks in a stage setting. Also, the characters spoke in normal language and dealt with ordinary situations rather than declaiming their lines.
In addition, the importance of everyday incidents, the revealing of character through apparent "small talk", and the idea that what is not said in the dialogue is as important as what is said are all Robertson trademarks. Some critics wrote that there was nothing in Robertson's plays but commonplace life represented without a trace of wit and sparkle, but many admired the new style of play and new style of acting. George Bernard Shaw
called Robertson's play Caste "epoch making" and referred to Robertson's innovations as a "theatrical revolution". It is now disputed whether Robertson really originated some of his innovations, but Society and its successors were viewed at the time as something new and, in a quiet way, revolutionary.
The Bancrofts, impressed with Robertson's dedication and skill, gave Robertson unusual artistic freedom to control his scripts and direct (or as it was then called, "stage manage") his plays. Before Robertson and James Robinson Planché, star actors generally had control of scripts, and theatre managers had control of casting in the theatre. Robertson insisted on retaining control over his scripts and casting and required that his actors follow his directions - a novel concept at that time. Robertson directed his own plays and aimed to get rid of the unreal stylisation and bombast of the old melodrama
s. He did not act in his plays but instead took on the role of a professional director to control the action on stage. W. S. Gilbert attended Robertson's rehearsals to learn from the older playwright's use of "stagecraft" and personally directed his own plays and operas based on what he had learned. Gilbert later recalled:
These pioneers opened the way for later proponents of realism in drama, such as Shaw, and for modern methods of play production. Robertson was also a leader in requiring a fee from his managers for every performance of his plays, thus pioneering the modern royalty system.
English people
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...
-Irish dramatist and innovative stage director best known for a series of realistic
Realism (arts)
Realism in the visual arts and literature refers to the general attempt to depict subjects "in accordance with secular, empirical rules", as they are considered to exist in third person objective reality, without embellishment or interpretation...
or naturalistic
Naturalism (literature)
Naturalism was a literary movement taking place from the 1880s to 1940s that used detailed realism to suggest that social conditions, heredity, and environment had inescapable force in shaping human character...
plays produced in London in the 1860s that broke new ground and inspired playwrights such as W.S. Gilbert and George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
.
Life and career
Born in Newark-upon-TrentNewark-on-Trent
Newark-on-Trent is a market town in Nottinghamshire in the East Midlands region of England. It stands on the River Trent, the A1 , and the East Coast Main Line railway. The origins of the town are possibly Roman as it lies on an important Roman road, the Fosse Way...
, Nottinghamshire
Nottinghamshire
Nottinghamshire is a county in the East Midlands of England, bordering South Yorkshire to the north-west, Lincolnshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south, and Derbyshire to the west...
, England, Robertson was the oldest son of William Robertson, a provincial actor and manager. His family was famous for producing actors. The actress Margaret (Madge) Robertson
Madge Kendal
Dame Madge Kendal GBE , born as Margaret Shafto Robertson, was an English actress of the Victorian and Edwardian eras, best known for her roles in Shakespeare and English comedies. Together with her husband, W. H...
was his youngest sister. As a child, Robertson acted in juvenile parts in Rob Roy, Pizarro, The Stranger, "French" parts and eccentric comedy on the Lincoln Circuit and at the Marylebone in London. He also visited Paris as the stage manager and interpreter for an English company. Never a successful actor himself, he wrote numerous plays, mostly comedies, many of which achieved popularity. Robertson died at the age of 42 and is buried, as is his wife Elizabeth, at Abney Park Cemetery
Abney Park Cemetery
Abney Park in Stoke Newington, in the London Borough of Hackney, is a historic parkland originally laid out in the early 18th century by Lady Mary Abney and Dr. Isaac Watts, and the neighbouring Hartopp family. In 1840 it became a non-denominational garden cemetery, semi-public park arboretum, and...
in Stoke Newington
Stoke Newington
Stoke Newington is a district in the London Borough of Hackney. It is north-east of Charing Cross.-Boundaries:In modern terms, Stoke Newington can be roughly defined by the N16 postcode area . Its southern boundary with Dalston is quite ill-defined too...
.
Plays
As a dramatist, Robertson began with adaptations of DickensCharles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
novels and wrote music hall
Music hall
Music Hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment which was popular between 1850 and 1960. The term can refer to:# A particular form of variety entertainment involving a mixture of popular song, comedy and speciality acts...
songs for comedians. He produced a farcical comedy, A Night's Adventure at London's Olympic Theatre
Olympic Theatre
The Olympic Theatre, sometimes known as the Royal Olympic Theatre, was a 19th-century London theatre, opened in 1806 and located at the junction of Drury Lane, Wych Street, and Newcastle Street. The theatre specialised in comedies throughout much of its existence...
in 1851, but this did not catch on, and he remained for several more years in the provinces, acting and continuing with play writing and writing for newspapers. In 1860, he moved to London and worked as an editor, also writing a novel, later dramatised under the title Shadow Tree Shaft. He also wrote a farce entitled A Cantab, which was played at the Royal Strand Theatre
Royal Strand Theatre
The Royal Strand Theatre was located in Strand in the City of Westminster. The theatre was built on the site of a panorama in 1832, and in 1882 was rebuilt by the prolific theatre architect Charles J. Phipps...
in 1861. This brought him a reputation among a Bohemian
Bohemian
A Bohemian is a resident of the former Kingdom of Bohemia, either in a narrow sense as the region of Bohemia proper or in a wider meaning as the whole country, now known as the Czech Republic. The word "Bohemian" was used to denote the Czech people as well as the Czech language before the word...
clique of writers, the Fun
Fun (magazine)
Fun was a Victorian weekly magazine, first published on 21 September 1861. The magazine was founded by the actor and playwright H. J. Byron in competition with Punch magazine.-Description:...
magazine gang (including W. S. Gilbert
W. S. Gilbert
Sir William Schwenck Gilbert was an English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator best known for his fourteen comic operas produced in collaboration with the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan, of which the most famous include H.M.S...
, Tom Hood
Tom Hood
Tom Hood , was an English humorist and playwright, son of the poet and author Thomas Hood. A prolific author, he was appointed, in 1865, editor of the magazine Fun. He also founded Tom Hood's Comic Annual in 1867....
, Clement Scott
Clement Scott
Clement Scott was an influential English theatre critic for the Daily Telegraph, and a playwright and travel writer, in the final decades of the 19th century...
, and F. C. Burnand), but so little profit that he thought of abandoning the profession to become a tobacconist. Finally, in 1864, he had his first notable playwriting success, David Garrick
David Garrick (play)
David Garrick is a comic play written in 1864 by Thomas William Robertson about the famous 18th century actor and theatre manager, David Garrick....
, produced at the Haymarket Theatre
Haymarket Theatre
The Theatre Royal Haymarket is a West End theatre in the Haymarket in the City of Westminster which dates back to 1720, making it the third-oldest London playhouse still in use...
with Edward Sothern in the title role. Robertson also wrote the libretto to the 1865 comic opera
Comic opera
Comic opera denotes a sung dramatic work of a light or comic nature, usually with a happy ending.Forms of comic opera first developed in late 17th-century Italy. By the 1730s, a new operatic genre, opera buffa, emerged as an alternative to opera seria...
Constance, with music by Frederic Clay
Frederic Clay
Frederic Emes Clay was an English composer known principally for his music written for the stage. Clay, a great friend of Arthur Sullivan's, wrote four comic operas with W. S...
.
Robertson found fame in 1865 with the production of his comedy Society
Society (play)
Society was an 1865 comedy drama by Thomas William Robertson regarded as a milestone in Victorian drama because of its realism in sets, costume, acting and dialogue. Unusually for that time, Robertson both wrote and directed the play, and his innovative writing and stage direction inspired George...
, under the management of Squire Bancroft
Squire Bancroft
Sir Squire Bancroft , born Squire White Butterfield, was an English actor-manager. He and his wife Effie Bancroft are considered to have instigated a new form of drama known as 'drawing-room comedy' or 'cup and saucer drama', owing to the realism of their stage sets.-Early life and career:Bancroft...
and his wife Marie (née Wilton)
Effie Bancroft
Marie Effie Wilton, Lady Bancroft was an English actress and theatre manager. She appeared onstage as Marie Wilton until after her marriage in December 1867 to Squire Bancroft, when she usually appeared under the name Lady Bancroft...
at the Prince of Wales's Theatre
Scala Theatre
The Scala Theatre was a theatre in London, sited on Charlotte Street, off Tottenham Court Road, in the London Borough of Camden. The first theatre on the site opened in 1772, and the theatre was demolished in 1969, after being destroyed by fire...
in the West End
West End theatre
West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's 'Theatreland', the West End. Along with New York's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English speaking...
. The play includes a scene that fictionalized the Fun gang, who frequented the Arundel Club, the Savage Club
Savage Club
The Savage Club, founded in 1857 is a gentlemen's club in London.-History:Many and varied are the stories that have been told about the first meeting of the Savage Club, of the precise purposes for which it was formed, and of its christening...
, and especially Evans's café, where they had a table in competition with the Punch
Punch (magazine)
Punch, or the London Charivari was a British weekly magazine of humour and satire established in 1841 by Henry Mayhew and engraver Ebenezer Landells. Historically, it was most influential in the 1840s and 50s, when it helped to coin the term "cartoon" in its modern sense as a humorous illustration...
'Round table'. This play became regarded as a milestone in Victorian drama because of its realism in sets, costume, acting and dialogue.
All of Robertson's popular plays, except for David Garrick
David Garrick (play)
David Garrick is a comic play written in 1864 by Thomas William Robertson about the famous 18th century actor and theatre manager, David Garrick....
, were produced by the Bancrofts at the Prince of Wales's Theatre. Other Robertson successes included the domestic dramas Ours (1866), Caste (1867), Play (1868), School (1869), and M.P. (1870). He also wrote Dreams for the Gaiety Theatre, London
Gaiety Theatre, London
The Gaiety Theatre, London was a West End theatre in London, located on Aldwych at the eastern end of the Strand. The theatre was established as the Strand Musick Hall , in 1864 on the former site of the Lyceum Theatre. It was rebuilt several times, but closed from the beginning of World War II...
, which opened that new theatre in 1868 together with Gilbert's Robert the Devil
Robert the Devil (Gilbert)
Robert the Devil, or The Nun, the Dun, and the Son of a Gun is an operatic parody by W. S. Gilbert of Giacomo Meyerbeer's romantic opera Robert le diable, which was named after, but bears little resemblance to, the medieval French legend of the same name. Gilbert set new lyrics to tunes by...
. His last play, War, was produced at the St. James's Theatre in 1871, the year in which he died. Robertson's plays are still occasionally seen. For example, Ours was given a professional production in July 2007 at the Finborough Theatre
Finborough Theatre
The Finborough Theatre is a fifty seat theatre in the Earls Court area of London, United Kingdom , which presents new British writing, UK and premieres of new plays, primarily from the English speaking world including North America, Canada, Scotland and Ireland, music theatre, and rarely seen...
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
.
Innovations in realism and directing
Robertson's plays became known as 'problem plays', because they dealt seriously and sensitively with issues of the day. In the 1850s and 1860s, Robertson's plays, both in style and substance, were considered revolutionary. Caste was about marriage across the class barrier and explored prejudices towards social climbing. These plays were notable for their "cup and saucer" realism, treating contemporary British subjects in settings that were realistic, unlike the oversize acting in VictorianVictorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
melodrama
Melodrama
The term melodrama refers to a dramatic work that exaggerates plot and characters in order to appeal to the emotions. It may also refer to the genre which includes such works, or to language, behavior, or events which resemble them...
s that were popular at the time. For example, whereas previously a designer would put as many chairs into a dining room scene as there were actors who needed to sit down, Robertson would place on stage as many chairs as would realistically be found in that dining room, even if some were never actually used. Or, if someone came in from a blizzard, snow would blow in from the doorway. In Ours, a pudding was made on stage, and this caused a major furore – people were not used to seeing such realistic tasks in a stage setting. Also, the characters spoke in normal language and dealt with ordinary situations rather than declaiming their lines.
In addition, the importance of everyday incidents, the revealing of character through apparent "small talk", and the idea that what is not said in the dialogue is as important as what is said are all Robertson trademarks. Some critics wrote that there was nothing in Robertson's plays but commonplace life represented without a trace of wit and sparkle, but many admired the new style of play and new style of acting. George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
called Robertson's play Caste "epoch making" and referred to Robertson's innovations as a "theatrical revolution". It is now disputed whether Robertson really originated some of his innovations, but Society and its successors were viewed at the time as something new and, in a quiet way, revolutionary.
The Bancrofts, impressed with Robertson's dedication and skill, gave Robertson unusual artistic freedom to control his scripts and direct (or as it was then called, "stage manage") his plays. Before Robertson and James Robinson Planché, star actors generally had control of scripts, and theatre managers had control of casting in the theatre. Robertson insisted on retaining control over his scripts and casting and required that his actors follow his directions - a novel concept at that time. Robertson directed his own plays and aimed to get rid of the unreal stylisation and bombast of the old melodrama
Melodrama
The term melodrama refers to a dramatic work that exaggerates plot and characters in order to appeal to the emotions. It may also refer to the genre which includes such works, or to language, behavior, or events which resemble them...
s. He did not act in his plays but instead took on the role of a professional director to control the action on stage. W. S. Gilbert attended Robertson's rehearsals to learn from the older playwright's use of "stagecraft" and personally directed his own plays and operas based on what he had learned. Gilbert later recalled:
Why, he invented stage management. It was an unknown art before his time. Formerly, in a conversation scene for instance, you simply brought down two or three chairs, and people sat down and talked, and when the conversation was ended the chairs were replaced. Robertson showed how to give life and variety and nature to the scene, by breaking it up with all sorts of little incidents and delicate by-play. I have been at many of his rehearsals and learnt a great deal from them.
These pioneers opened the way for later proponents of realism in drama, such as Shaw, and for modern methods of play production. Robertson was also a leader in requiring a fee from his managers for every performance of his plays, thus pioneering the modern royalty system.
External links
- 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica entry
- Broadway credits
- Biography of Gilbert that includes info on Robertson
- Photo of Robertson
- Photos of David Garrick by Robertson
- Article on realism, naming Robertson as a proponent
- Schoch, Richard, Performing Bohemia (2004)
- Details of the London production ofOurs in 2007
