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A Yorkshire Tragedy, 1953-2013: Celebrating 60 years of the
Shakespeare Institute Players.
Apr 22, 2013 12:08 pm | José A. Pérez Díez
The eminent theatre historian Allardyce Nicoll founded the Shakespeare
Institute in Stratford-upo-Avon as a postgraduate centre for the study of
Shakespeare and Renaissance drama. Inheriting the former headquarters
of the British Council, Mason Croft, the house that once belonged to the
popular novelist Marie Corelli and her partner, Bertha Vyver, the Institute
opened in October 1951. In an interview shortly afterwards, Professor
Nicoll, its first director, described the Institute as follows:
The students must have felt the need to start some sort of theatrical
activity alongside their studies, perhaps seeing the enormous potential of
the Lecture Hall for dramatic performance. The Hall is a mock
Elizabethan building that was originally conceived as the dining room of
Trinity College, the educational institution next door that remained open
between 1872 and 1908, and that was subsequently converted into
residential flats. Marie Corelli purchased the dining room soon after
moving into Mason Croft in 1901, and transformed it into her music
room, adding a small stage in the corner where the piano now stands, and
crowding the space with all sorts of decorative and artistic objects (as can
be seen in the picture). At her death in 1924 Bertha Vyver inherited
everything, and by the 1930s the property had fallen into considerable
disrepair. When Vyver died in 1941, she left the house and all its contents
to the nation, and the British Council took over Mason Croft. The Hall
started to be used as a tea room, until the University of Birmingham
acquired the property and the Shakespeare Institute opened its doors.
Maureen Bell has eloquently written about the history of Mason Croft
here.
The Hall of Mason Croft in Marie Corelli’s time.
© University of Birmingham
And so it was that two years after the foundation the Shakespeare
Institute Dramatic Society was born. The inaugural production was
perhaps an unlikely choice. Instead of a major Shakespeare play to start
the society’s activity, the students chose A Yorkshire Tragedy, a short
play then thought to be anonymous, but originally published in 1608
under Shakespeare’s name. It has since then been confidently attributed
to Thomas Middleton, and is still one of the most powerful and shocking
pieces of theatre of the Jacobean period. The play takes us to the house of
a brutal and spendthrift man who abuses his wife, children, and servants,
making their lives a living hell. Based on real events that happened in
West Yorkshire in April 1605, it tells a story that is still horrifyingly
relevant to the modern world.
A Yorkshire Tragedy, was performed in the Hall of Mason Croft in
February 1953. The cast included Robert Loper (Husband), Carol
O’Connell (Wife), and John McCabe (Master of the College), with the
other parts played by Denis Hurrell, Hilary Evans, Bob Fleming, Richard
O’Connell, Austin Hunt, Eric Pendry, Charles Mulraine, Terry
O’Connell, Corinne Rickert, Raymond Gentle, and Elizabeth Brennan.
The Hall of the Shakespeare Institute today.
Robert B. Loper, who played the pivotal role of the Husband, was an
American Fulbright scholar who graduated from the Institute with his
PhD in 1957, having written a thesis under the title Macbeth productions
at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, 1900-1938. After moving back to
the United States, he went on to develop a remarkable stage career,
playing Macbeth, Hector, and Prospero at the Oregon Shakespeare
Festival, where he also directed 14 professional productions, including
Death of a Salesman and Oedipus Rex. He also performed at the
Colorado Shakespeare Festival, the Seattle Repertory Theatre, the Empty
Space Theatre, Intiman Theatre, and A Contemporary Theatre (ACT).
But he was also a dedicated teacher, first at Stanford University, where he
was appointed Head of Drama in 1963, and then, from 1968, as Master
Acting Teacher at the School of Drama of the University of Washington,
where he served as head of the School’s Directing programme from 1986
to his retirement in 1990. He died at the age of 75 in 2000. Jacqueline
MacDonald, Shakespeare Institute alumna and current PhD researcher at
the Drama department in Birmingham, studied with Robert Loper at
Washington, and has said that “Bob was an incredibly gifted acting
teacher and was very influential on my acting work”.
The records do not indicate, unfortunately, that the activity was
continued, although I am currently conducting some research on this. The
Institute was transferred to the main campus of the University in
Edgbaston for economic reasons, and it was relocated from 1962 to
Westmere House, where it remained for the next 17 years. Professor
Stanley Wells, who studied for his PhD at Mason Croft between 1958 and
1961, says that he cannot remember any plays being performed in his
time as a student in Stratford, and that Westmere did not have a suitable
performance space, though a professional company sometimes performed
Shakespeare plays in the summer in its garden.
According to our records, activity resumed in 1983 with the production of
The Fatal Contract at Stratford’s Methodist Hall as part of the Stratfordupon-Avon Festival. But the society that performed the play was Cloak
and Dagger, part of Birmingham’s Guild of Students, rather than the
resident company. When Stanley Wells was appointed Director of the
Institute in 1988 and he finally managed to relocate it to Mason Croft, the
new and more stable part of the history of the Shakespeare Institute
Players begun. In December 1989 the students produced Tweflth Night, in
which the Shakespeare Institute Librarian, Jim Shaw, famously played Sir
Andrew Aguecheek. It was to become the first venture of an unbroken
performance tradition that continues to this day.
The Hall fitted with modern technical equipment for A Midsummer
Night’s Dream
Since then, over the last 24 years the students of the Institute have been
keeping the flame alive, performing a total of 60 productions and 11
evening entertainments (see the SIP website for further details). The
repertory has been very varied, especially in the early years when the
menu included plays like Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie,
George F. Walker’s Zastrozzi or Wendy Kesselman’s My Sister in This
House. Though it has included some ancient Greek drama, Restoration
adaptations, and one medieval morality play, it has naturally tended to
focus on Shakespeare and the other dramatists of the English
Renaissance, normally at the ratio of two Shakespeare productions for
one non-Shakespearean Renaissance play.
Of course, the casts and crews have consistently included people who
went on to have outstanding careers elsewhere, including many eminent
Shakespearean scholars: Emma Smith, M. J. Kidnie, Jane KingsleySmith, Kevin Ewert, Roberta Barker, Gabriel Egan, Paul Prescott, Paul
Edmondson, Elizabeth Klett, John O’Connor, Eleanor Lowe, Erin
Sullivan or Will Sharpe, to name but a few.
The current members decided early on in this season that we had to mark
the Players’ 60th anniversary with a new production of the play that the
pioneering dramatic society performed in 1953. We asked Dr Peter
Malin, long standing member of the society since his days as a PhD
researcher, to direct the new production of A Yorkshire Tragedy. In his
production the tale comes to life with uncommon vividness, in an
intimate and intense experience for the audience.
The cast includes students from the Institute and other local actors, as the
Players have always fostered an engagement with the local community by
inviting Stratford actors to join their ranks. Mark Spriggs takes on the
crucial and difficult role of the Husband, while Helen Osborne plays his
unfortunate Wife, and Elizabeth Sharrett his Jilted Fiancée (an invented
non-speaking character that haunts the new production). The cast also
features Yolana Wassersug (Maid), Cassie Ash (Son), Louis Osborne
(Ralph), and Rachel Stewart (Principal of a College).
The performances will take place on 2, 3 and 4 May at 8pm, with a
matinee on Saturday 4 May at 3pm. Tickets are £6 (£5 concessions)and
can be booked in advance on [email protected].
Maureen Bell has stated that Marie Corelli “firmly insisted in her will that
all actors, actresses ‘and all persons connected with the stage’ be
excluded from the premises’”. She would have been horrified, perhaps, to
know that her beloved music room is now the hub of a vibrant and
thriving theatrical activity. But, challenging her prohibition, the current
members of the Shakespeare Institute Players take great pride in being
part of an illustrious tradition of theatre making. And it is in this spirit
that we will be honouring our preceding generations with this tribute to
their achievement in keeping our theatrical heritage alive.
José A. Pérez Díez
The programme note from the director of the 2013 production,
Shakespeare Institute alumnus Dr Peter Malin:
Journalism into Theatre: A Drama-Documentary?
On 23 April 1605 Walter Calverley, a Yorkshire gentleman, killed two of
his three young sons, attacked his wife and left her for dead. Taking to
horse with the intention of killing his third son, a six-month old baby who
was out at nurse some distance from Calverley Hall, he was thwarted
when his horse stumbled and threw him. He was quickly apprehended
and subsequently examined, imprisoned, and executed by “la peine forte
et dure”, or pressing to death.
Calverley’s story was being told in pamphlets and ballads even before his
execution. The only surviving example, dramatically titled Two Most
Unnatural and Bloody Murders, tells of his betrothal to a local girl,
whom he subsequently abandoned to marry a “courteous gentlewoman”
closely related to his guardian in London. Whether there was an element
of social coercion in this marriage is uncertain. For whatever reason,
Calverley fell into a dissipated lifestyle, lost a fortune at the gaming table
and began to take out his frustrations on his wife. His brother, a
theological student at Cambridge, stood surety for him and was cast into
prison when his debts went unpaid. Examined by the magistrate, Sir John
Savile, after his arrest for the murder of his sons, Calverley claimed as a
motive his wife’s frequent assertions that “the said children were not by
him begotten” and that he had found himself “in danger of his life sundry
times by his wife”.
A Yorkshire Tragedy was printed in 1608, claiming to be one of Four
Plays in One; the others, if they ever existed, have not survived.
According to the title page it had been acted by the King’s Men at the
Globe, and was written by one W. Shakespeare. The second of these
assertions has not survived close scrutiny, though the people of Calverley
in Yorkshire remain understandably reluctant to relinquish their
connection with the Bard. The claim of performance by the King’s Men
may also be nothing more than a canny marketing ploy – one which I
have been happy to repeat in the publicity for this production! Current
scholarship has largely settled on Thomas Middleton as the author of the
play.
At first glance, it seems that Middleton has slavishly followed Two
Unnatural Murders in constructing the play. Much of the dialogue could
be characterised as a mere versification of the pamphlet, with even stage
directions picked up more or less verbatim: “she caught up the youngest”,
for example, becomes “catches up the youngest”. The playwright’s skill,
however, creates a spare, tight drama, alternating between tense
duologues and emotionally fraught soliloquies, supported by a subtle
interplay of prose, blank verse and rhyming couplets. Calverley’s
behaviour is left open to a range of interpretations, from marital
disharmony and social pressures to psychological imbalance and even
demonic possession. Middleton surrounds his protagonist with a variety
of subsidiary figures ranging across a broad social spectrum; whatever
their status, however, these secondary characters are guided by a
powerful and affecting moral courage which they are prepared to assert in
facing up to Calverley even at the risk of their own physical safety.
It is notable that Middleton leaves the characters largely unnamed –
perhaps for fear of offending Calverley’s surviving (and influential)
family. One effect of this, despite the source pamphlet’s localised
verisimilitude, is to turn the dramatis personae into generic figures –
Husband, Wife, Son, Gentleman, Knight, Master of the College –
suggestive of both the morality play tradition and the contemporary
fashion for “warning” literature. These people could be us.
We have taken this feature of the text as a licence to remove the play one
or two stages further from its historical and geographical origins, not
concerning ourselves, for example, with fidelity to its Yorkshire setting.
That, perhaps, should remain the preserve of Northern Broadsides.
Peter Malin