SOURCE: “The Americanization of Beatrice: Nineteenth-Century Style,” Theatre Survey, Vol. 31, No. 1, May, 1990, pp. 67-84.

[In the following essay, Carroll examines two nineteenth-century American portrayals of Beatrice and contends that each reflects a different idealization of femininity.]

To nineteenth-century theatre managers, who believed in the play as a commercial venture rather than an aesthetic one, portrayal of the modern American woman presented a dilemma. Sophisticated theatre-goers, familiar with the rhetoric of the women's suffrage movement, looked to female role models for direction on how to maintain a delicate balance between independence and subservience: to project strength of convictions without loss of femininity (traditionally measured by male desirability), and to remain dependent on the economic necessity of marriage (Ziff, 278-80). Speculative theatre managers found Shakespeare's comedies especially adaptable to modern audience's tastes because the plays lacked stage directions, required no royalty payments, were exempt from copyright laws, and centered on ambiguous female characters. American audiences, believing they were becoming cultured, supported Shakespearean revivals, and strongly applauded those plays Americanized by theatre managers. Two late nineteenth-century productions of Much Ado About Nothing, one in 1882 by Henry Irving, the other in 1896 by Augustian Daly, clearly demonstrate how each speculative manager, acting in the name of art, refashioned Shakespeare's text and interpreted Beatrice around his own ideal of femininity, an ideal each believed American audiences would endorse.

Charles Shattuck has said that, “During the last quarter of the nineteenth century and throughout the Edwardian era, society in America … experienced an extraordinary intensification of woman-worship” (II, 93). This phenomenon, running concurrently with the women's rights movement, contradicted feminist thinking. The fashions of the 1890s—“party gowns with exposed, glowing shoulders, conspicuous bosoms, constricted waists, swelling hips, and long sweeping trains”—demonstrate that “women were being dressed and paraded, coveted by men and envied by women, for their attractiveness as sex-objects” (Shattuck, II, 93). The Theatre Diary of Marie Elizabeth Jeffreys Hobart, a privately collected scrap book containing programs, photographs, and newspaper clippings, as well as private commentaries on the performances she and her contemporaries witnessed during the 1890s, confirms Shattuck's claim. Female stars and plays featuring these stars predominate the scrapbook's contents.

Mrs. Hobart witnessed both Irving's and Daly's Much Ado; the contents of her scrapbook reveal her preference for Daly's production, as well as her adoration of Ada Rehan. Living in an era when magazines and the theatre provided the basic reference source for feminine behavior, Mrs. Hobart and her companions religiously followed Ada Rehan's performances. Shattuck reports that “As public affection for Miss Rehan grew into almost a cult (and Daly's affection for her grew into a personal passion), Daly promoted her above everything else. His theatre became a temple where the people gathered to worship the beloved Ada, a secular Madonna” (95). Mrs. Hobart regularly attended Daly's “temple,” and her theatre diary reflects her interest in the stage portrayals of womanhood. Like other controlling theatre managers of his time, Daly, to suit his own commercial needs, shaped the image of femininity projected by Ada Rehan and adored by Mrs. Hobart and her companions. Within the annals of American theatre history, Augustin Daly holds a reputation as “autocrat of the stage” (Taubman, 114). To historians his reign, 1876 to 1899, symbolizes nineteenth-century theatre tradition: a theatre manager whose commercial ventures incorporated the American love of melodrama and popular character types; who endorsed the American practice of centering a play around a star; who Americanized foreign productions instead of encouraging native playwrights; and who firmly believed that in return for the “very large popular support [he] always received” his own generation deserved the opportunity of seeing the works of Shakespeare “in their best shape” (Felheim, 242, quoting Daly). Daly's critics have tended to deprecate his management style and his notions of stagecraft by insinuating that he modeled his theatre practices after those of Henry Irving (Felheim, 14). Although Daly denied these accusations in a letter to Winter, whom he commissioned to write the scripts for his Shakespearean revivals,¹ he and Irving shared the common belief that they could stage Shakespeare better than Shakespeare himself.

To render Shakespeare into ‘his’ best shape, Daly (and Irving) rigorously inspected the texts to adjust “the decor to suit the poetry” and to eliminate all taints of bad taste—a standard determined “by an audience whose manners were dictated by fussy society editors” (Felheim, 234). To accomplish his goal, “Daly saw no harm in transferring speeches from one character to another” (Felheim, 236), meddling with lines and words, and rearranging scenes to give his featured performer stronger stage presence—a stage practice employed by Irving as well. These practices and beliefs justified Daly's 1896 production of Much Ado About Nothing, a rendition he announced would “secure from promptbooks the most approved rendering of the many disputed passages” (“Announcement of Daly's Opening,” 11). Daly's point of comparison was Irving's 1882 revival, a production that enjoyed three successful American tours in 1884, 1888, and 1894.

Since Shakespeare offers few explicit stage directions, theatre managers have traditionally taken the liberty of modernizing Shakespeare's characters into facsimiles of their own contemporary society. A comparison of the historical productions of Much Ado demonstrates this American (and British) practice and reflects the changing idealized view of femininity during the last decade of the nineteenth century. Staging Beatrice as either a strong-willed or a submissive woman determines audience interpretation of the play. How seriously Beatrice delivers her command to Benedick to “kill Claudio” as a sign of love for her determines whether the audience sees the play as a light-hearted comedy or a disturbing one, hinting at an underlying tragic tone. A half-serious, joking delivery of these lines would suggest that Beatrice is frivolous, flirtatious, and a submissive marriage partner; whereas, a strong, serious delivery would suggest a woman who believes in the power of her selfhood, one who will stand on equal footing with any man she marries. In the text Shakespeare cleverly balances the verbal exchanges between Benedick and Beatrice, distributing their verbal sparring equally between the two; and cleverly contrasts the Hero-Claudio marriage plot to that of Benedick and Beatrice. Female character strength or submission is determined by the performer's expressions, inflections, actions and gestures—the stage directions dictated by the manager to render his desired portrait of Beatrice.

Traditionally Much Ado was staged as a comedy, and Henry Irving's 1882 production was the most comic rendition of the day. Critics used this rendition as the standard against which they evaluated other productions. They measured the play's success by how convincingly the humorous verbal wit swept over the tragic elements, or what these theatre managers called “the disputed passages.” Although Augustin Daly's interest in rendering a different interpretation was primarily commercial, his refashioning of the play into a melodrama challenged Irving's ‘authoritative’ version. Each manager interpolated the original to attain his goal; ironically, each manager claimed he was giving his audience the most authentic interpretation of Shakespeare's text.

In 1882 Irving needed another Shakespearean production “to balance the programme for his forthcoming visit to America” and believed that Much Ado would “relieve the tragic gloom of the other plays he was taking with him” (L. Irving, 401). In this spirit, Irving included Much Ado in his repertoire and cast Ellen Terry as Beatrice. To effect the comic spirit, he “rejected entirely any suggestions of the capricious shrew” in Beatrice's character and rendered Ellen Terry/Beatrice into a “personification of a pleasant-spirited lady—all mirth and audacious mockery—a stranger to melancholy” (L. Irving, 401). He downplayed the image of Beatrice as a disdainful woman, diminished the sincerity of her request to “kill Claudio,” and consequently reduced the significance of the uncomic affair of Hero and Claudio. The 212 nights the play ran before full houses indicate the audience’s enthusiasm for the play. Irving wanted to make Beatrice's indignation rather comic. His promptbook demonstrates that he interpolated gestures and altered lines to maintain the image of Beatrice as a character lacking complexity—his “pleasant-spirited” lady is angry at Claudio, pities Hero, and hopes to win Benedick's affections.

When Irving arrived in America in 1884, he brought a production of Much Ado that required a company of celebrities, artistic scenery noted for its “beautiful scenic effects,” and a production whose musical arrangement required an orchestra, military band, an organ, and a full chorus. To intensify the merry effect Irving “made the comedy almost an opera.” He concentrated on the capricious and witty verbal exchanges between Benedick (played by himself) and Beatrice to draw many laughs from his audience. Irving delivered Benedick's jests with a “military bluntness”; he produced “strong comic effects when love leads Benedick to play the fop in his attire, and causes him to quarrel with Claudio.” Ellen Terry stressed Beatrice's femininity throughout the play. She delivered the comic scenes with “airy graces and charming coquetry” (Fiske, “Review-1884”).

Benedick and Beatrice's verbal exchange begins when he greets her with “Well my dear Lady Disdain! Are you yet living?” (I.i.119).² Irving pencilled in his promptbook that at this moment, Benedick “kisses her hand.” This gesture diminishes Beatrice's disdainful manner, for few men would kiss the hand of a scornful woman. Irving strengthens this initial portrait by including “hoo's and Ah's” throughout the verbal sparring in Act I. These merry additions suggest the characters on stage do not take the bantering seriously; the audience takes their cue from the characters. In Act II, the masquerade scene, Beatrice delivers her barbs to Benedick in disguise “with an airy grace”; Benedick, in turn, omits the most scornful lines describing Beatrice in his “O, she misus’d me” speech. After Hero's defamation in Act IV, when Benedick asks: “Is there any way to show such friendship?” Benedick “takes Beatrice's hand and kisses it.” Irving's stage directions imply he wants the “kill Claudio” scene to serve as pivotal in the realization of their mutual love. Benedick responds to Beatrice's ultimatum with “HA! not for the wide world,” and then “seizes her hand.” Irving interpolates lines and gestures into this disengagement scene: he seals each of his pledges by “kissing her hand”; to Benedick's line “I will challenge him,” he adds “by your will, by your bright eyes I will”; to “I must say she’s dead,” he adds, “as sure as I’m alive I will”; and he omits “And so farewell.” Irving added this gag because “many actors felt this scene lacked vehemence, and Benedick needed a more forceful disengagement” (L. Irving, 403). Irving's addition strengthens Benedick's and Beatrice's commitment; their mutual agreement on Claudio's wrong becomes a reason to pledge their love. Irving manages to win the audience's approval of this love match with his “devouring eyes,” repeated embraces of Beatrice, and Beatrice's willing surrender to his approaches (Fiske, 1884). Their love continues to grow throughout the rest of the play. To remind the audience of their bond, Irving ends their exchange with Benedick's promise: “I will never love that which my friend hates.” At the end of the play, “Beatrice goes up stage to read and kiss his poetry and hide it next to her heart when the other characters move to the front for their final speeches” (Fiske, 1884). Irving's ending is complete; reviews highly praised the way he effected the happy ending.

American critics made Irving's 1884 production legendary. The Spirit of the Times stated: “We have not been accustomed to such complete representations of Shakespeare in this country; but having once seen them, our public will be satisfied with nothing else” (Fiske, 1884). The New York Times hailed the production as “one of the best dramatic achievements of its time” (Review of Much Ado, 14 November 1884). Reflecting the woman-worshiping terminology to which Shattuck refers, a critic for the New York Times extolled Ellen Terry's performance: “Superlatives have long been exhausted. In our judgment, it is one of the new impersonations which justify the use of superlatives … there has never been a more radiant, mirthful, sunny Beatrice than this one, so fair of person, so musical in her speech, so true to her womanhood in all the merry episodes of her love story” (“Review of Much Ado,” 12 March 1885). According to Laurence Irving, no critics detected Irving's interpolations in the church scene. “No doubt his delivery of the offending line (‘as sure as I’m alive I will’) was so forceful that Shakespeare, himself, might have been persuaded he had written it” (403). American critics continued to endorse this production as “one of Shakespeare's loveliest comedies” and as late as 1895 praised Irving's third American revival for “softening in effect the brutality of its central incident … with no loss of either truth or vigor” (“Review of Much Ado,” 5 December 1895). The laudatory American reviews determined that this British production established a standard for evaluating all other productions. Much Ado should be staged as a light comedy, and Beatrice should be feminine, flirtatious, loving, and submissive.³

Ellen Terry's memoirs note she never played Beatrice as she felt her. In these lectures on Shakespeare, she described Beatrice as a proud woman, not vain, who “recognizes an element of truth in what Hero and Ursula say about her” in the arbor scene. She disagreed with Irving's use of the scene as a moment to reveal Beatrice's happiness at the discovery that Benedick loves her. Terry also stated that Beatrice's realization scene should be “charged with passion of a strong, deep heart”; however, she delivered the lines with “emotion,” “not passion” (Terry, 87). She further disagreed with Irving's plan to make Beatrice's indignation in the church scene comic. Mr. Lacy, an “actor of the old school” who was engaged by Irving, was quite serious when he explained to Miss Terry: “When Benedick rushes forward to lift up Hero after she has fainted, you ‘shoo’ him away. Jealousy, you see. Beatrice is not going to let her man lay a finger on another woman.” Terry's reaction was: “Oh nonsense Mr. Lacy,” to which he retorted: “Well, it’s always been done … and it always gets a laugh” (Terry, 95). Ellen Terry refused to follow these directions and finally managed to convince Irving to drop this action, but failed to convince him to drop the ‘gag’ he interpolated into the end of the church scene, the gag “hallowed by tradition” (L. Irving, 403).

Although most of the male critics highly praised Irving's submissive Beatrice, Terry's comments imply that she questioned Irving's interpretation that the marriage of Benedick and Beatrice should be a foregone conclusion from the start of the play. Nina Auerbach, in her recent biography, Ellen Terry: Player in Her Time, demonstrates that the actress used indirect strategies on stage to protest playing her roles in the way Irving envisioned them. When Terry disagreed with Irving's interpretation, her “impulse was to drown her plays in laughter … she used laughter to fight and transcend the roles she was given” (277). However, as his leading lady, she adapted her stage personality to the roles she was assigned and subordinated herself to his “self-obsessed performances.” As an actor in the company he managed, Irving centered his productions around himself and reduced equally important roles to supporting roles. In Much Ado, where Shakespeare equally balances the verbal exchange between Benedick and Beatrice, Irving downstaged himself by delivering his exchanges “in a slow and stately manner” (Memoirs, 115, 172) and arranged the set design to give himself primary visibility to the audience. Ellen Terry became an “ornament of Irving's theater … the visual power of her presence was so overwhelming that it obliterated her performance” (Auerbach, 195).

At the Lyceum Terry never received equal billing with Irving. When they toured America, Irving revised the program layout to give it to her: “American democracy claimed to be enlightened about women … its intelligentsia was ostentatiously conversant with feminist ideas; Ellen Terry was presented to America as Irving's proud equal and was billed accordingly (Auerbach, 194). But in the actual performance Irving continued to claim centrality. From her subordinated position in his theatre, Terry enviously looked at Ada Rehan and the acting opportunities given to her in Daly's company. In her Memoirs Terry “wistfully” describes the acting combination of a leading actor and actress, John Drew and Ada Rehan, in contrast to her own situation: “With what loyalty he supported Ada Rehan! He never played for his own hand but for the good of the piece” (Memoirs, 225, quoted by Auerbach, 235). In Ada Rehan, Ellen Terry believed she saw an actress given all she was not—boy's parts (Rosalind and Viola—characters she longed to play, but could not because they did not fit Irving's image of womanliness), and the opportunity to play Shakespearean heroines in the way she felt they were written to be played.

Terry overlooked the similarities between herself and Rehan. According to Auerbach, “Ada Rehan is Ellen Terry in reverse” (236). Like Terry, Rehan's stage self was created by Daly to meet the needs of his productions and to represent his audience's tastes, but unlike Terry, she was playing for “liberal” American audiences who applauded productions championing the “New Woman.” On stage Ada Rehan represented to Terry (and to the audiences she played before) the possibilities for women. In reality both actresses intuitively understood the underlying resentment in Beatrice's character, and her disdain for female powerlessness in patriarchal societies.

In Shattuck's view: “It was only through Ada Rehan … that [Daly] found the perfect means of self-expression that he craved” (II, 54). Graham Robertson implied that Daly must have been “a great actor who couldn't act” (Shattuck, 54). When John Drew, Daly's leading actor, left the company, “Daly had no choice but to stake his fortune on Miss Rehan” (Shattuck, 57). William Winter, the senior drama critic in New York, adored her and believed in Daly's decision wholeheartedly. His reviews, which “defined … femininity in terms exactly typical of a woman-worshiping American gentleman of the day,” defended the images of womanliness Daly presented to his public (Shattuck, 100). Mrs. G. H. Gilbert, a loyal member of Daly's company as well as a New York Times drama critic, claimed that Ada Rehan also believed Irving's interpretation of Beatrice was “too simple.” Mrs. Gilbert even stated that “Beatrice is the reason for Daly's [1896] revival” (Gilbert, 8). According to the critic, Ada Rehan saw Beatrice as a “strong-willed, complex character—a woman capable of strong love and hate—mentally developed among her feminine associates, not to be called sweet or coy or dainty, yet not lacking in the graces of gentle womanhood” (Gilbert, 8). Needing a powerful role in which to cast his leading lady, Daly commissioned Winter to rework Beatrice into a prototype of the American New Woman and decided to center the play on her.

The American New Woman became a popular character type on the American stage during the 1890s. Ibsen's A Doll House, a favorite among New York intellectuals, played to packed houses in 1891 at the Garden, Lyceum, and Harlem Opera House, and reopened in Hoyt's in 1895 (Hornblow, 233). In a letter of 21 November 1894 to Daly, Sydney Rosenfield, one of his playwrights, expressed his desire to write a play of this kind that would star Ada Rehan: “I am pregnant with an idea for a ‘strong woman's play’—Before I sit down in cold blood to write it, I want to have its goal in immediate contemplation. I have Ada Rehan in view for the part” (Rosenfield, “To Augustin Daly”). Rosenfield's suggestion would have appealed to Daly, who was plagued by internal problems among his company. Many actors were leaving because Daly adhered to strict company policies. Even Ada Rehan, his close friend, leading lady, and alleged mistress, had a disagreement with him in the summer of 1894. She agreed to remain with his company only after he agreed “to star her and to pay her a salary commensurate with her improved status” (Felheim, 31). In 1896 Daly assigned William Winter the task of refashioning Much Ado to star Ada Rehan. Winter chose to utilize the same techniques that had brought Daly's 1887 revival of The Taming of the Shrew popular acclaim.

Following the nineteenth century tradition of refashioning Shakespeare to suit what managers perceived to be the tastes of their audiences, Daly had hired Winter to tailor the plays and to write the commendatory prefaces for his adaptations (Felheim, 220-21). Winter insisted that a performance should be “relieved wherever possible” so as to last no more than three hours; should exhibit “good taste” by elimination of vulgar language; and should be pared of superfluous descriptive passages that impede the action (Felheim, 221). Winter exhibited no compunction when he centered The Taming of the Shrew around Ada Rehan. He metamorphosed the play into “the taming by the shrew” and delayed Rehan's entrance until the second act, at the highest pitch of the performance—a technique he repeated in Much Ado (Felheim, 240-41). Rewriting Much Ado at a point when Daly's company had been “weakened by death and desertion,” Winter modeled this adaptation after the earlier success, a highly popular production continually brought back “as a means of reviving [Daly's] fortune after a failure” (Felheim, 262, 239). Hoping for a New York success to replenish a dwindling bank account, Daly, with the assistance of Winter, attempted to give the American public all he believed to be fashionable in New York theatre: a lavish production of Shakespeare that bordered on melodrama, with a popular star cast in the role of the modern woman.

In the Commendatory Preface to Much Ado, Winter defends his and Daly's interpretation against Irving's. His 1884 review of Irving's production commends Miss Terry's performance but finds her sarcasm superficial: “She is nothing harsher than a merry tease … after the arbor scene she drops all flippancy and grows into tender and loving womanhood. A more fascinating personality than this Beatrice could not be wished; and Miss Terry's method of expressing it is marked with pliant, effortless power and absolute simplicity” (Winter, Commendatory Preface). To substantiate Daly's interpretation, Winter views Beatrice as “high-spirited” rather than “pleasant-spirited”; “complex rather than “simple;” and as a character whose “remarks are extremely diverting … [but] no more sapient than other women, once her heart is touched” (Winter, Commendatory Preface). She scorns the necessity in herself of longing for love and disdains the conventional assumptions toward marriage suggested by Claudio's proposed marriage arrangement to Hero. He identifies the wedding scene as:

the great moment of the play, for Beatrice is that of her prodigious, passionate, unspeakable resentment of the awful insult that is offered to the poor and gentle girl whom she so tenderly loves. It is as if all womanhood were incarnated in her single person, to rebuke, humiliate and punish the arrogant injustice of man. Women, usually, are the sternest censors of other women; but women at their best may well admire Beatrice, for she is all woman and the splendid champion of her sex. (Winter, Commendatory Preface)

According to Winter, Ada Rehan conveyed the ideal Beatrice to her audience. Daly's promptbook reveals how he effected this portrait.

Daly opened his Much Ado with the messenger-Leonato exchange up to line 30. The script then jumps to line 96.⁴ Beatrice is not on stage until Hero draws attention to her entrance. After the men exit, Beatrice and the messenger backtrack to the exchange that begins at line 30, “I pray you, is Signior Mountanto return’d from the wars?” Hero assumes Leonato's lines, so all attention focuses on Beatrice. The scene continues with few other changes to line 95. However, at the entrance of Don Pedro, Claudio, and Benedick, the dialogue moves ahead to line 162 and continues to the end of Act I. Then Beatrice reenters, saying “I wonder that you will be talking Signior Benedick, nobody marks you,” and Benedick greets her with “What, my dear Lady Disdain!” (ll. 116-17). Their dialogue ends at line 145, where Don Pedro clears the stage for the new end of Act I. Daly's rearrangements interrupt Shakespeare's witty exchange between Beatrice and Benedick to maintain Beatrice's centrality. She has the first chance to deliver her venomous lines while defenseless Benedick remains off-stage.

In II.i.51, Beatrice delivers her “Yes faith, it is my cousin's duty to make cur'sy and say Father, as it please you. … Father as it please me” in a “mocking tone;” stage directions indicate she should emphasize the underlined words. Beatrice sharply contrasts with the demure Hero in this scene. She will not subscribe to her uncle's orders. After Hero and Claudio's betrothal, stage directions indicate Beatrice should tap Claudio on the shoulder as she says “Speak, Count, ’tis your cue,” then loudly sighs as Claudio says to Hero, “Lady, as you are mine” (ll. 305, 308). In this same scene she says “Heigh-ho for a husband!” in a mocking tone (l. 320). All of these gestures clearly communicate to the audience where Beatrice stands on the issue of arranged marriages—she will follow no man's orders.

Of Rehan's interpretation of Acts I and II, Gilbert, in her New York review of the play, says that “Beatrice more than half means what she says, when she declares she’ll never wed. It seems possible she may fall in love with Benedick, but she is surely heart-whole in the first encounters with that valiant and loquacious soldier.” For Beatrice to be convincing in this play, she must realize her own sentimental possibilities. Gilbert says that at the masked ball, Beatrice reveals

tenderness and sympathy … at the news of Hero's betrothal—she appears the loving elder sister more than half pitying Hero for being so early doomed to captivity, yet recognizing her fitness for wifehood. Miss Rehan shows the beginning of change when she summons Benedick to dinner, and delivers her soliloquy at the end of the arbor scene with “strong passion”; she regrets her cruelty and shows pity and sympathy.

By III.ii. the audience sees two dimensions to Beatrice's character; both reach a climax in the church scene where she shows her love for Benedick as well as her hatred for Claudio. Daly omits the pre-nuptial scene in Hero's bedroom, apparently because this scene shows Beatrice's physical vulnerability, which is inconsistent with the image the audience should have acquired in the first three acts.

William Winter called Rehan's rendition of the church scene the moment where

she crowned her triumph by a magnificent outburst of passion—not turbulent, nor combative, not hysterical, but that of a woman's outraged mind and suffering heart—which while it impelled the dramatic action swiftly to a brilliant climax, it also operated to illuminate the whole character and to disclose it as intrinsically the soul of womanlike virtue and honor (Commendatory Preface).

Since Daly planned to make Hero representative of the powerless female and Beatrice her spokesperson, he needed to interrupt the balance of the scene. Unlike Irving, who reduced the seriousness of Beatrice's lines and characterization, Daly interpolated lines and gestures to draw the audience's attention toward the passion and sincerity of Beatrice's lines and to reduce the power of Benedick's.

At IV.i.65 stage directions indicate Beatrice should “fix her glare” on Don Pedro when he says, “I stand dishonor’d, that have gone about to link my dear friend to this common wanton, here.” Her glare as well as Daly's alteration strengthen the audience's awareness of the implied irony of his lines, while the connotation “common wanton” justifies Beatrice's readiness to attack. At line 209, after Leonato asks “What shall become of this? What will we do?” Beatrice kneels before the altar, apparently praying for mercy. When Benedick professes his love to Beatrice, he kneels before her as he says, “I lov’d nothing so well as you.” These interpolations work to heighten Beatrice's character on stage. When she delivers “Kill Claudio,” Gilbert says “she means the lines … that is the price of her love.” Gilbert reports that the audience “gasped at Beatrice's vehement utterances,” demonstrating they realized the tragic force of Rehan's delivery. As Beatrice delivers her two “O that I were a man” speeches, she again looks fixedly at Benedick. This look implies that if Benedick is a man he will kill Claudio. Beatrice becomes more tender-hearted when Benedick accepts her challenge. To ensure that the audience would understand his acceptance as submission to Beatrice, Daly revised from line 331 to the scene's end, intertwining Irving's emendations with his own:

Bene: I will challenge him.
Beat: You will!
Bene: I will kiss your hand and
so leave you. By this hand, Claudio shall render me a dear account.
Beat: You will challenge him!
Bene: By these bright eyes I will!
Beat: Kiss my hand again!
Bene: As you hear of me, so think
of me; and so, farewell.
Beat: Kill him! Kill Claudio!
Bene: As sure as he’s alive
I will.

Although Daly's loyal supporters commended Ada Rehan's performance, Shattuck notes that a New York Post review of 24 December 1896 “said Miss Rehan never really ‘got into the skin of Beatrice’; She fell back upon her old impersonation of Katherine the Shrew, and ‘imparted a bitterness, not to say a rudeness, to the sallies of the fair disputant which does not belong to them’” (quoted by Shattuck, 89).

Both Daly and Irving's renditions of Much Ado demonstrate the liberties managers have taken with Shakespeare's folio text under the claim of art. While proclaiming to have a more artistic sense of the play than the orginator, managers like Daly and Irving were capitalizing upon American audiences' innocence as well as their social belief that culture could be purchased. In the eyes of these managers the theatre was a commodity, not an art form; in the eyes of the public, art was a commodity. Theatre revenue records indicate that Americans, believing they were becoming cultured, supported these disembowelments of Shakespeare; in turn, they expected the performances to reflect their social world.

Since managers traditionally took the liberty of making Shakespeare identifiable and understandable for their society, examination of Shakespearean stage history provides insight into the conflicting perceptions of femininity on the American stage. The historical tradition of staging Much Ado as a comedy implies that stage directors have ignored the underlying complexity of Beatrice's character. In America (and England) Much Ado continued to be staged as a comedy, until Gielgud's 1952 production permitted “the sincerity of the scene between Benedick and Beatrice to be realized,” when Gielgud's “low-toned, disbelieving” first refusal to “kill Claudio” eliminated the usual laugh (Campbell and Quinn, 567). Although Gielgud was not the first to challenge the traditional comic interpretation, his production is credited by Campbell and Quinn as the first to examine the underlying complexity of Beatrice's characterization. Producers and directors follow this precedent today when reviving Much Ado.

Augustin Daly clearly was not a feminist. His artistic ideal was corrupted by personal and commercial motives. Nevertheless, he did experiment with strengthening Beatrice's characterization and giving her stronger stage presence. Like his contemporary, Irving, he used his leading actress to project to American audiences a portrait of femininity he perceived would be compatible with the expectations of 1890 theatregoers. In contrast to Irving, he attempted to draw attention to the underlying complexity of Shakespeare's female characters. By refashioning the text to suit his purposes and his audience's tastes, Daly successfully staged Beatrice as an identifiable role model for American audiences. He failed to keep his interpretation grounded in Shakespeare's folio text; yet, his vision of Beatrice looked forward to modern revivals of Much Ado—a vision modern producers have found obvious within the text.

Notes

1. “My style of management,” he wrote, “has not been an imitation of anyone else's. That precision of detail, luxury, completeness of surroundings and general unity of company and performance which was found so fascinating in Irving's performance, was inaugurated by me in 1869, ten years before Irving began his career as manager” (Felheim, 15, quoting Daly).

2. William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, as arranged for the stage by Henry Irving and presented at the Lyceum Theatre on Wednesday 11 October 1882 (London: Cheswick Press, 1882). This promptbook is in the Folger Shakespeare Library. Irving's stage directions and interpolations are pencilled in the text. All of Irving's stage directions, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from this promptbook. Line references refer to the play as published in The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans.

3. Not all Americans were blinded by Irving's textual infidelities. On 30 March 1885, an anonymous “student of Shakespeare” in a Letter to the Editor of the New York Times, criticized American critics for not commenting upon Irving's lack of respect for the text: “I simply am astounded that none of the good students of Shakespeare in this good city of Gotham have seen fit to comment upon this addition to the divine William's lines” (anonymous letter, 30 March 1885). The author is referring to the “gag hallowed by tradition” at the end of the church scene.

4. William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing: A Comedy in Five Acts, as arranged for production at Daly's Theatre, and privately printed for Mr. Daly, 1887. This text is part of the Folger collection. Daly's stage directions, rearrangements, and interpolations are printed as part of his text. All of his stage interpolations are taken from this text. Line references refer to the play published in The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans.

Works Cited

Announcement of Daly's Opening of Much Ado About Nothing. The New York Times, 20 December 1896, 11.

Anonymous Letter. The New York Times, 30 March 1885, 11.

Auerbach, Nina. Ellen Terry: Player in Her Time. New York: Norton, 1987.

Auerbach, Nina. “Ellen Terry's Victorian Marriage,” pp. 268-291 in Romantic Imprisonment: Women and Other Glorified Outcasts, ed. Carolyn Heilbrun and Nancy Miller. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985.

Brown, John Mason, ed. The American Theatre as Seen by its Critics 1752-1934. New York: Norton, 1934.

Campbell, Osar James, and Edward G. Quinn. Reader's Encyclopedia of Shakespeare. New York: Crowell, 1966.

Craig, Edith, and Christopher St. John, ed. Ellen Terry's Memoirs. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1970.

Davis, Walter R., ed. Twentieth Century Interpretations of ‘Much Ado About Nothing’. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1969.

Felheim, Marvin. The Theatre of Augustin Daly. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1956.

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Fiske, S. “Review of ‘Much Ado About Nothing’,” ed. E. A. Buck. Spirit of the Times (16 October 1886), 382.

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