The Victorian Drama

The Victorian era is the era of Queen Victoria. During this period of time, theatre flourished. According to Allardyce Nicoll, author of History of Late Nineteenth Century Drama, during this time theaters became very popular with masses.Theatrical atmosphere was not particularly restricted to certain classes of the society. One of the main reasons of masses attending the theatre was the improvement in the transportation system. The streets became safer for traveling at night time, Nicoll observes, which prolonged timing for the theatre. Plays could run for a longer time now. This all led to greater profits and an increase in the number of theaters. With an increase in theatre resulting from the increase in the number of spectators, production of stage plays and drama proceeded to surpass the quantity of dramas produced in the past periods. According to Nicoll When rail and omnibus became popular the whole of the area north, south and west of London was brought into the association with theatre. As a result, the number of ticket buyers increased many fold. Typical audiences in those days were mostly the citizens from the lower section of the society, with some representation from the aristocracy. The great alteration, however, didnt come until the middle of the Victorian era. The greatest work done to improve theatres perception was done by none other Queen Victoria. The Queens encouragements of the theatre not only pumped fresh air into the London theatre, but theater was also understood as something destined to yield a rich harvest in the future. Victorian Theatre Theatre in the Victorian era is regarded as history of theater during the era ruled by Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1901. It was the time during which literature and theatre flourished. During her reign a lot of new theatres were built along with theatre schools. It was also during her reign when political reforms came into practice which led to the openness of theatre and literature. Theatre openly displayed and played dramas relating to social problems. Generally it was a period which brought prosperity to themiddle class of England, and started to challenge the old hierarchical order of country.

The Theatre
The new audiences which were being built in the both the metropolitan and provincial areas demanded new theaters. It was also the need of the time to remodel the old theaters. Between 1860 to 1870 the Royalty, The Gaiety, The Charing Cross, The Globe, The Holborn, The Queens were remodel. Later in the following decade of 1870 to 1880 The Court, The Opera Comique and The Imperialwere built. This brief list is proof of steadily increasing interest of the common public in the theatre. According to Allardyce Nicoll, there were nineteen theaters in London during the summer of 1851. Barely half a century later in 1899, London boasts sixty one theaters, thirty eight in the west end twenty three in the nearby suburban districts.Their significance as centers of entertainment was enormous. The stage of these theaters had a picture frame. The picture frame had a realistic feeling. With this picture frame effect, far more could be achieved scenically than had ever been dreamed of before. The old conventional devices clung tenaciously to the boards of the stage and blocked the development of new ideas for the theatre. In the eightees there was a definite improvement in

the scenic design, and second the definite change in orientation from conventionalism to more naturalistic

Playwrights in the Victorian era

Oscar Wilde is one of the most prominent playwrights of the Victorian era. He was born in Dublin, Ireland. His first book was a collection of poems, simply entitled 'Poems'. The The Picture of Dorian Gray published in 1891, was Wilde's first successful novel. This novel was more like an allegory. Wildes easy wit insured an immediate success for the brilliant series of dramas that he wrote in the early nineties. In early 1892 Lady Windermere's Fan appeared at the St James' Theatre and was at once popular. The same year Wilde also wrote Salome. It was followed the next year by A Woman of No Importance. An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest, both filled with wit and brilliant paradoxes, appeared in 1895. They were the last things that Oscar Wilde was to write, before the blow fell that wrecked his life.(Oscar Wilde 951). Other plays and fiction by Wilde includes The Canterville Ghost (1887), The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888), The Portrait of Mr. W. H. (1889), A House of Pomegranates (1891), Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories (1891), and Intentions (essays, 1891). His plays include Vera or The Nihilists (1880), The Duchess of Padua (1883), Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), A Florentine Tragedy (La Sainte Courtisane 1893). Wilde's work has inspied many other fellow writers. His work has been translated into many languages, and has been on the stage over and over again. Other important writers include John Millington Synge. John Millington Synge was born at Newtown, in the vicinity of Dublin, in 1871. Not much is known of his early life, except that he lived at home until he was nearly twenty, that he entered Trinity College, Dublin, in 1888, and was graduated four years later. Some of his famous plays include Riders to the Sea, The Playboy of the Western World (1907). Synge died in 1909.( John Millington Synge 985). George Bernard Shaw was another famous playwright of the Victorian era. He wrote more than sixty plays. His plays were mostly about social problems such as education, religion,

marriage, and class privileges. Arms and Men,and You can Never Tell are his famous plays. Dion Boucicault was another famous playwright of the Victorian era. His famous plays include The Colleen Bawn, and The Shaughraun. Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 30 November 1900) was anIrish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. Today he is remembered for hisepigrams, his only novel (The Picture of Dorian Gray), his plays, and the circumstances of his imprisonment and early death. Wilde's parents were successful Anglo-Irish Dublin intellectuals. Their son became fluent in French and German early in life. At university Wilde read Greats, he proved himself to be an outstanding classicist, first at Dublin, then at Oxford. He became known for his involvement in the rising philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Paterand John Ruskin. After university, Wilde moved to London into fashionable cultural and social circles. As a spokesman for aestheticism, he tried his hand at various literary activities he published a book of poems, lectured in the United States and Canada on the new "English Renaissance in Art", and then returned to London where he worked prolifically as a journalist. Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress and glittering conversation, Wilde became one of the best-known personalities of his day. At the turn of the 1890s, he refined his ideas about the supremacy of art in a series of dialogues and essays, and incorporated themes of decadence, duplicity, and beauty into his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). The opportunity to construct aesthetic details precisely, and combine them with larger social themes, drew Wilde to write drama. He wrote Salome (1891) in French in Paris but it was refused a licence for England due to the absolute prohibition of Biblical subjects on the English stage. Unperturbed, Wilde produced four society comedies in the early 1890s, which made him one of the most successful playwrights of late Victorian London. At the height of his fame and success, while his masterpiece. The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), was still on stage in London, Wilde had the Marquess of Queensberryprosecuted for libel. The Marquess was the father of Wilde's lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. The charge carried a penalty of up to two years in prison. The trial unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and trial for gross indecencywith other men. After two more trials he was convicted and imprisoned for two years' hard labour. In 1897, in prison, he wrote De Profundis, which was published in 1905, a long letter which discusses his spiritual journey through his trials, forming a dark counterpoint to his earlier philosophy of pleasure. Upon his release he left immediately for France, never to return to Ireland or Britain. There he wrote his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol(1898), a long poem commemorating the harsh rhythms of prison life. He died destitute in Paris at the age of forty-six. Wilde's final play again returns to the theme of switched identities: the play's two protagonists engage in "bunburying" (the maintenance of alternative personas in the town and

country) which allows them to escape Victorian social mores. Earnest is even lighter in tone than Wilde's earlier comedies. While their characters often rose to serious themes in moments of crisis, Earnest lacks the by-now stock Wildean characters there is no "woman with a past", the principals are neither villainous nor cunning, simply idle cultivs, and the idealistic young women are not that innocent. Although mostly set in drawing rooms and almost completely lacking in action or violence, Earnest lacks the self-conscious decadence found in The Picture of Dorian Gray and Salome. The play, now considered Wilde's masterpiece, was rapidly written in Wilde's artistic maturity in late 1894. It was first performed on 14 February 1895, at St James's Theatre in London, Wilde's second collaboration with George Alexander, the actor-manager. Both author and producer assiduously revised, prepared and rehearsed every line, scene and setting in the months before the premiere, creating a carefully constructed representation of lateVictorian society, yet simultaneously mocking it. During rehearsal Alexander requested that Wilde shorten the play from four acts to three, which the author did. Premieres at St. James's seemed like "brilliant parties", and the opening of The Importance of Being Earnest was no exception. Allan Aynesworth (who played Algy) recalled toHesketh Pearson, "In my fiftythree years of acting, I never remember a greater triumph than [that] first night. Earnest's immediate reception as Wilde's best work to-date finally crystallised his fame into a solid artistic reputation. The Importance of Being Earnestremains his most popular play. Wilde's professional success was mirrored by an escalation in his feud with Queensberry. Queensberry had planned to insult Wilde publicly by throwing a bouquet of rotting vegetables onto the stage, Wilde was tipped off and had Queensberry barred from entering the theatre. Fifteen weeks later Wilde would be in prison. The play was first produced at the St James's Theatre on Valentine's Day 1895. It was freezing cold but Wilde arrived dressed in "florid sobriety", wearing a green carnation. The audience, according to one report, "included many members of the great and good, former cabinet ministers and privy councillors, as well as actors, writers, academics, and enthusiasts. Allan Aynesworth, who played Algernon Moncrieff, recalled to Hesketh Pearson that "In my fifty-three years of acting, I never remember a greater triumph than [that] first night". Aynesworth was himself "debonair and stylish", and Alexander, who played Jack Worthing, "demure". The cast was: John Worthing, J.P.George Alexander Algernon MoncrieffAllan Aynesworth Rev. Canon Chasuble, D.D.H. H. Vincent MerrimanFrank Dyall LaneF. Kinsey Peile Lady BracknellRose Leclercq Hon. Gwendolen FairfaxIrene Vanbrugh Cecily CardewEvelyn Millard Miss PrismMrs. George Canninge

The Marquess of Queensberry, the father of Wilde's lover Lord Alfred Douglas (who was on holiday in Algiers at the time), had planned to disrupt the play by throwing a bouquet of rotten vegetables at the playwright when he took his bow at the end of the show. Wilde and Alexander learned of the plan, and the latter cancelled Queensberry's ticket and arranged for policemen to bar his entrance. Nevertheless, he continued harassing Wilde, who eventually launched a private prosecution against the peer for criminal libel, triggering a series of trialsending in Wilde's imprisonment for gross indecency. Alexander tried, unsuccessfully, to save the production by removing Wilde's name from the billing, but the play had to close after only 86 performances. The play's original Broadway production opened at the Empire Theatre on 22 April 1895, but closed after sixteen performances. Its cast included William Faversham as Algy, Henry Miller as Jack, Viola Allen as Gwendolen, and Ida Vernon as Lady Bracknell.[20] The Australian premiere was in Melbourne on 10 August 1895, presented by Dion Boucicault, Jr.and Robert Brough, and the play was an immediate success. Wilde's downfall in England did not affect the popularity of his plays in Australia.

Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was born July 26, 1856, in Dublin, Ireland. In 1876 he moved to London, where he wrote regularly but struggled financially. In 1895, he became a theater critic for the Saturday Review and began writing plays of his own. His play Pygmalion was later made into a film twice, and the screenplay he wrote for the first version of it won an Oscar. During his lifetime, he wrote more than 60 plays and won many other awards, among them the Nobel Prize. Born in Dublin, Ireland, George Bernard Shaw was his parents' third and youngest child, and his early education took the form of tutoring sessions provided by his clerical uncle. Early on, Shaw explored the worlds of the arts (music, art, literature) under his mother's guidance and through regular visits to the National Gallery of Ireland. In 1872, Shaw's mother left her husband and took Shaw's two sisters to London, and four years later Shaw followed (his younger sister had died in the meantime), deciding to become a writer. Shaw struggled financially, and his mother essentially supported him while he spent time in the British Museum reading room, working on his first novels.

The Writing Life Begins

Unfortunately, despite the time he spent writing them, his novels were dismal failures, widely rejected by publishers. Shaw soon turned his attention to politics and the activities of the British intelligentsia, joining the Fabian Society in 1884. The Fabian Society was a socialist group whose goal was nothing short of the transformation of England through a more vibrant political and intellectual base, and Shaw became heavily involved, even editing a famous tract the group published (Fabian Essays in Socialism, 1889).

The year after he joined the Fabian Society, Shaw landed some writing work in the form of book reviews and art, music and theater criticism, and in 1985 he was brought aboard the Saturday Reviewas its theater critic. At was at this point that Shaw began writing plays of his own.

The Dramatist
Shaw's first plays were published in volumes titled "Plays Unpleasant" ( containing Widowers' Houses, The Philanderer andMrs. Warren's Profession) and "Plays Pleasant" (which had Arms and the Man, Candida, The Man of Destiny and You Never Can Tell). The plays were filled with what would become Shaw's signature wit, accompanied by healthy doses of social criticism, which stemmed from his Fabian Society leanings. These plays would not go on to be his best remembered, or those for which he had high regard, but they laid the groundwork for the oversized career to come.

The Literary Giant

Toward the end of the 19th century, beginning with Caesar and Cleopatra (written in 1898), Shaw's writing came into its own, the product of a mature writer hitting on all cylinders. In 1903, Shaw wrote Man and Superman, whose third act, "Don Juan in Hell," achieved a status larger than the play itself and is often staged as a separate play entirely. While Shaw would write plays for the next 50 years, the plays written in the 20 years after Man and Superman would become foundational plays in his oeuvre. Works such as Major Barbara (1905), The Doctor's Dilemma (1906),Androcles and the Lion (1912) and Saint Joan (1923) all firmly established Shaw both as a front-line (and popular) dramatist of his day and as a writer deeply interested in the issues of his time and of history. The year 1912 brought what might be Shaw's most famous play:Pygmalion, which was transferred to the big screen in 1938. Shaw won an Academy Award for the screenplay. Since he had won the 1925 Nobel Prize in Literature, his Oscar win made him the only person to receive both awards. Pygmalion went on to further fame when it was adapted into a musical and became a hit, first on the Broadway stage (1956) with Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews, and later on the screen (1964) with Harrison and Audrey Hepburn. Literally a writer till the end, Shaw died in 1950 at age 94 while working on yet another play.

PYGMALION
Pygmalion is a 1938 British film based on the George Bernard Shaw play of the same title, and adapted by him for the screen. It stars Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller. The film was a financial and critical success, and won an Oscar for Best Screenplay and three more nominations. The screenplay was later adapted into the 1956 theatrical musical My Fair Lady, which in turn led to the 1964 film of the same name.

The Hungarian producer Gabriel Pascal wished to create a set of films based on Shaw's works, beginning with Pygmalion, and went to see Shaw in person to gain permission to do so. Shaw was reluctant to allow a film adaptation of Pygmalionowing to the low quality of previous film adaptations of his works, but Pascal managed to convince him (on the condition Shaw retained full control over the adaptation) and later went on to also adapt Major Barbara, Caesar and Cleopatraand Androcles and the Lion. The resulting Pygmalion scenario by Cecil Lewis and W. P. Lipscomb removed exposition unnecessary outside a theatrical context and added new scenes and dialogue by Shaw himself. Ian Dalrymple, Anatole de Grunwald and Kay Walshalso made uncredited contributions to the screenplay. A long ballroom sequence was added, introducing an entirely new character, Count Aristid Karpathy (seen both here and in the musical My Fair Lady, named as Professor Zoltan Karpathy mentioned in the final scene of the original play, but with no name or onstage appearance), written wholly by Shaw himself. Against Shaw's wishes, a happy ending was added, with Eliza fleeing Higgins with Freddy but then returning to Higgins' home (though whether permanently or on her own terms is left deliberately ambiguous). Shaw and his fellow writers did, however, retain the controversial line "Not bloody likely!" from the playtext, making Hiller the first person to utter that swear word in a British film and giving rise to adverts for the film reading "Miss Pygmalion? Not ****** likely!".

Cast and Crew

Wendy Hiller was chosen by Shaw to play Eliza Doolittle after she had appeared in stage productions of Pygmalion and Saint Joan though the film's initial credits stated that this movie was introducing her, she had in fact already appeared on film in 1937's Lancashire Luck. Shaw's choice for Higgins had been Charles Laughton. The film also includes the very first (short and uncredited) film appearance by Anthony Quayle, as an Italian wigmaker. Cathleen Nesbitt, credited here as Kathleen Nesbitt in the role of 'A Lady,' would portray Mrs. Higgins in the original Broadway production of My Fair Lady 18 years later. The film's crew included David Lean (on his first major editing job he also directed the montage sequence of Higgins teaching Eliza), set designer Laurence Irving and the camera operator Jack Hildyard (who later carried out the photography for Lean's The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Sound Barrier and Hobson's Choice).

Reception
The writers, including the uncredited Ian Dalrymple, won the 1939 Academy Award for Writing (Adapted Screenplay). The film also received nominations for Best Picture, Best Actor (Howard) and Best Actress (Hiller). Shaw's reaction to his award was "It's an insult for them to offer me any honour, as if they had never heard of me before and it's very likely they never have. They might as well send some honour to George for being King of England." However, his friend Mary Pickford later reported seeing the award on display in his home. At

the 1938 Venice Film Festival, Leslie Howard won the Volpi Cup and the film was nominated for the Mussolini Cup. Pygmalion is a play by George Bernard Shaw, named after a Greek mythological character. It was first presented on stage to the public in 1912. Professor of phonetics Henry Higgins makes a bet that he can train a bedraggled Cockneyflower girl, Eliza Doolittle, to pass for a duchess at an ambassador's garden party by teaching her to assume a veneer of gentility, the most important element of which, he believes, is impeccable speech. The play is a sharp lampoon of the rigid British class system of the day and a commentary on women's independence. In ancient Greek mythology, Pygmalion fell in love with one of his sculptures, which then came to life. The general idea of that myth was a popular subject for Victorian era English playwrights, including one of Shaw's influences, W. S. Gilbert, who wrote a successful play based on the story called Pygmalion and Galatea first presented in 1871. Shaw also would have been familiar with the burlesque version, Galatea, or Pygmalion Reversed. Shaw's play has been adapted numerous times, most notably as the musical My Fair Ladyand the film of that name. Shaw wrote the play in the spring of 1912 and read it to famed actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell in June. She came on board almost immediately, but her mild nervous breakdown (and its doctor-enforced seisure, which led to a quasi-romantic intrigue with Shaw contributed to the delay of a London production. Pygmalion premiered at the Hofburg Theatre in Vienna on October 16, 1913, in a German translation by Shaw's Viennese literary agent and acolyte, Siegfried Trebitsch.Its first New York production opened March 24, 1914 at the German-language Irving Place Theatre. It opened in London April 11, 1914, at Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree's His Majesty's Theatre and starred Mrs. Campbell as Eliza and Tree as Higgins, running for 118 performances. Shaw directed the actors through tempestuous rehearsals often punctuated by at least one of the two storming out of the theater in a rage.

Ending
Pygmalion was the most broadly appealing of all Shaw's plays. But popular audiences, looking for pleasant entertainment with big stars in a West End venue, wanted a "happy ending" for the characters they liked so well, as did some critics. During the 1914 run, to Shaw's exasperation but not to his surprise, Tree sought to sweeten Shaw's ending to please himself and his record houses. Shaw returned for the 100th performance and watched Higgins, standing at the window, toss a bouquet down to Eliza. "My ending makes money, you ought to be grateful," protested Tree. "Your ending is damnable; you ought to be shot." Shaw remained sufficiently irritated to add a postscript essay, "'What Happened Afterwards, to the 1916 print edition for inclusion with subsequent editions, in which he explained precisely why it was impossible for the story to end with Higgins and Eliza getting married. He continued to protect the play's and Eliza's integrity by protecting the last scene. For at least some performances during the 1920 revival, Shaw adjusted the ending in a way that underscored the Shavian message. In an undated note to Mrs. Campbell he wrote, When

Eliza emancipates herself when Galatea comes to life she must not relapse. She must retain her pride and triumph to the end. When Higgins takes your arm on 'consort battleship' you must instantly throw him off with implacable pride; and this is the note until the final 'Buy them yourself.' He will go out on the balcony to watch your departure come back triumphantly into the room; exclaim 'Galatea!' (meaning that the statue has come to life at last) and curtain. Thus he gets the last word and you get it too. (This ending is not included in any print version of the play.) Shaw fought uphill against such a reversal of fortune for Eliza all the way to 1938. He sent the film's harried producer, Gabriel Pascal, a concluding sequence which he felt offered a fair compromise: a romantically-set farewell scene between Higgins and Eliza, then Freddy and Eliza happy in their greengrocery/flower shop. Only at the sneak preview did he learn that Pascal had shot the "I washed my face and hands" conclusion, to reassure audiences that Shaw's Galatea wouldn't really come to life, after all.