Impression Henry Irving
The Performance in the Portrait by Jules Bastien-Lepage
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10866360 |
|---|---|
| Authors | William Storm (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2004 |
| Volume | 46 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 399-423 |
| Publication date | 2004-04-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Victorian Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0042-5222 • E-ISSN: 1527-2052 |
| Publisher | Indiana University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.2979/vic.2004.46.3.399 |
| OpenAlex | W2032027997 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 8 |
Impression Henry Irving:The Performance in the Portrait by Jules Bastien-Lepage William Storm (bio) As star actor and manager of the Lyceum Theatre, Henry Irving was among the most dominant theatrical figures of his time. His command of the Lyceum, its repertoire, company constituency, and artistic presentation was, in the tradition of the British actor/manager, absolute. His reign there lasted from 1878 until 1899, from the time he was forty until he was sixty-one, six years prior to his death. Irving was, however, not only powerful but controversial. His choice of plays was limited for the most part to Shakespeare and select melodramas, notably to works that featured roles presumably suited to his own particular talents and inclinations. George Bernard Shaw carried on a vociferous and well-documented argument with Irving that, among other matters, pertained to the latter's lack of interest in introducing new works—including plays by Henrik Ibsen, Oscar Wilde, or by Shaw himself. And, in spite of his considerable success and popular reception in roles from Shylock to Mephistopheles to Mathias in The Bells (1871), Irving was not a consistent critical favorite. Although lauded for the strength and magnetic force of his stage presence, and for his success in given roles, he was critiqued and even satirized, in print and in illustrative caricature, for a range of perceived abnormalities and eccentricities having to do with his walk, tempo, vocal inflections, and range of expression and gesture—that is, for the most fundamental elements of an actor's instrument, physicalization, and interpretive choices. Ellen Terry recounts what the actor said to her once, as they were traveling together on tour in America: "I was thinking...how strange it is that I should have made the reputation I have as an actor, with nothing to help me—with no equipment. My legs, my voice—everything has been against me. For an actor who can't walk, can't talk, and has no face to speak of, I've done pretty well" (qtd. in Story 108). Terry herself echoed the actor's own assessment: "Irving at [End Page 399] first had everything against him as an actor. He could not speak, he could not walk, he could not look. He wanted to do things in a part, and he could not do them. His amazing power was imprisoned, and only after long and weary years did he succeed in setting it free" (Story 81). The documentation of Irving's life and theatrical career is voluminous and detailed; in addition to historical, biographical, and critical writings, the record includes a large and varied range of visual depictions. There are many photographs, particularly of the actor as he appeared in later life, as well as paintings, drawings, and caricatures. Bernard Partridge, himself an actor and once a member of the company at the Lyceum, created several of the drawings that have become well known, many of which, drawn at the theater, depict Irving in character with detailed attention to makeup and costume, expression and gesture (King 94). Partridge fashioned images of Irving for several of the souvenir programs at the Lyceum, as Laurence Irving notes, and his closeness to the theatre "enabled him to hand down to posterity a faithful and invaluable record of Irving's appearances as an actor" (511). There are, additionally, many pen and ink drawings by artists such as Harry Furniss and Philip William May.1 Caricatures, of course, could be less flattering than depictions aiming at fidelity to Irving's appearance, in character or otherwise, and at times these emphasize one of the actor's more pronounced peculiarities in regard to comportment on stage—at least in the view of the caricaturist. Collectively, these widely varied visual representations offer an informative record of Irving's appearance at different ages and in different plays and roles. At the same time, the figure of Henry Irving raises important and elusive questions when it comes to precisely this subject of his visual depiction—or, more inclusively, the visual representation of an actor in history. Even though Irving lived into the twentieth century (he died in 1905), all of the illustrative depictions of him are frozen
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| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,17 |
| Citation span | 2020 - 2020 (1) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |