''Society'' was a comedy drama by

T. W. Robertson Thomas William Robertson (9 January 1829 – 3 February 1871) was an English dramatist and stage director known for his development of Naturalism (theatre), naturalism in British theatre. Born to a theatrical family, Robertson began as an acto ...

, premiered in 1865, regarded as a milestone in

Victorian Victorian or Victorians may refer to: 19th century * Victorian era, British history during Queen Victoria's 19th-century reign ** Victorian architecture ** Victorian house ** Victorian decorative arts ** Victorian fashion ** Victorian literatur ...

drama because of its realism in sets, costume, acting and dialogue. The piece, set in Victorian London's literary and theatrical

bohemia Bohemia ( ; ; ) is the westernmost and largest historical region of the Czech Republic. In a narrow, geographic sense, it roughly encompasses the territories of present-day Czechia that fall within the Elbe River's drainage basin, but historic ...

, depicts "the efforts of an illiterate millionaire to introduce his son into 'society', and the equally vigorous efforts of 'society' to repel the intruder". Unusually for that time, Robertson both wrote and directed the play, and his innovative writing and

stage direction In theatre, blocking is the precise staging of actors to facilitate the performance of a play, ballet, film or opera. Historically, the expectations of staging/blocking have changed substantially over time in Western theater. Prior to the movem ...

inspired

George Bernard Shaw George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from the 188 ...

and

W. S. Gilbert Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (18 November 1836 – 29 May 1911) was an English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator best known for his collaboration with composer Arthur Sullivan, which produced fourteen comic operas. The most fam ...

, among others.

Background and premiere

Beginning his career by 1851,Knight, Joseph
"Robertson, Thomas William (1829–1871)"
''Dictionary of National Biography'', Smith Elder, 1896 and Oxford University Press, 2004. Retrieved 9 February 2021

had met with little success as an actor, playwright and journalist. In 1864 he wrote ''

David Garrick David Garrick (19 February 1716 – 20 January 1779) was an English actor, playwright, Actor-manager, theatre manager and producer who influenced nearly all aspects of European theatrical practice throughout the 18th century, and was a pupil a ...

'', an adaptation of Mélesville's comedy '' Sullivan''; it starred Edward Askew Sothern. The play's success advanced the Robertson's career. Encouraged, he wrote a new comic play, ''Society'', with Sothern in mind, but the actor was unavailable. ''Society'' was rejected by many theatrical managers in London before finally being produced at the

Prince of Wales's Theatre The Scala Theatre was a theatre in Charlotte Street, London, off Tottenham Court Road. The first theatre on the site opened in 1772; the last was demolished in 1969, after a catastrophic fire. From 1865 to 1882, the theatre was known as th ...

Liverpool Liverpool is a port City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. It is situated on the eastern side of the River Mersey, Mersey Estuary, near the Irish Sea, north-west of London. With a population ...

, through the influence of Robertson's friend H. J. Byron,"The Prince of Wales Theatre", ''Liverpool Mercury'', 9 May 1865, p. 6 under the management of A. Henderson, opening on 8 May 1865. There it was a critical and popular success. Byron recommended the play to Effie Wilton, who had begun managing the

in London's West End; Byron had been writing Victorian burlesques for her. Producing the play was a risk for a theatre manager to take: in his introduction to his edition of ''Society'', Thomas Edgar Pemberton writes:

The supposed danger lay in the simplicity of the play. True to nature it might be, but audiences accustomed to theatrical types verging on the border-land of caricature would (so managers thought) be hardly likely to accept a mere photograph of human life. Wilton ... estimated ''Society'' at its true worth, declared that danger was better than dullness, selected her supporters, and under the now delighted author's superintendence, commenced rehearsals.

''Society'' opened at the Prince of Wales's on 11 November 1865. Wilton starred in the play opposite Squire Bancroft, who went on to marry her in 1867 and become her co-manager.

Success and aftermath

Pemberton wrote that on the morning after the London opening, "Robertson awoke to find himself famous. ... e fortunes of a luckless theatre and a hitherto misunderstood dramatist were made." In a highly favourable notice the reviewer in ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British Newspaper#Daily, daily Newspaper#National, national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its modern name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its si ...

'' wrote, "The piece was vehemently applauded from beginning to end. Success could not be more unequivocal"."Prince of Wales's Theatre", ''The Times'', 14 November 1865, p. 7 ''Societys run of 150 performances, closing on 4 May 1866, established the fortunes of the struggling theatre, as well as those of the playwright. Another row of stalls had to be added at the theatre, and the

Prince of Wales Prince of Wales (, ; ) is a title traditionally given to the male heir apparent to the History of the English monarchy, English, and later, the British throne. The title originated with the Welsh rulers of Kingdom of Gwynedd, Gwynedd who, from ...

came to see the play. In ''Society'', Robertson popularized naturalism in contemporary British drama; he looked at the world around him and tried to reproduce it realistically on stage; the characters act like people of their day, and Robertson's form of

drawing room play A drawing room play is a type of play, developed during the Victorian period in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. They set upper- and middle-class characters confronting a social problem of the time with a comedic twist. The play ...

became known as "cup and saucer drama", because real cups and saucers were used as props. The success of ''Society'' encouraged Robertson to continue along the same realistic path in a series of plays that dealt seriously and sensitively with social issues of the day: ''Ours'' (1866), ''

Caste A caste is a Essentialism, fixed social group into which an individual is born within a particular system of social stratification: a caste system. Within such a system, individuals are expected to marry exclusively within the same caste (en ...

'' (1867), ''Play'' (1868), ''School'' (1869), and ''M.P.'' (1870). The London stage was at once inundated with imitations of the new style of acting and the new kind of play. These plays, together with ''Society'', inspired playwrights such as

and

. Gilbert's biographer Andrew Crowther wrote that ''Society'' "was written in a colloquial style that came as a breath of fresh air after the bombast and staginess of much of the drama of that age. ... obertsongained a reputation as a theatre reformer, with his gift for easy, natural-seeming dialogue and his appreciation of what we would now call subtext – the idea that apparently trivial conversations can hide deep emotions." A reviewer wrote:

''Society'' and ''Ours'' prepared the way for a complete reformation of the modern drama, and ... ''Caste'' has thrown aside all doubt. ... The scene-painter, the carpenter, and the costumier no longer usurp the place of the author and actor. ... Robertson has succeeded in concentrating an accumulation of incident and satire more interesting and more poignant than might be found in all the sensational dramas of the last half-century. The whole secret of his success is – truth!

Robertson directed his own plays, which was a radical change from the usual system in Victorian theatre of the manager of the theatre company staging the work around its star player. Squire Bancroft later said, " w much of the success I was fortunate enough to achieve n ''Society''was due to the encouragement and support I received from the author, who spared no pains ... to have his somewhat novel type of characters understood and acted as he wished." W. S. Gilbert said of Robertson's directorial innovations: "I frequently attended his rehearsals and learnt a great deal from his method of stage-management, which in those days was quite a novelty, although most pieces are now stage-managed on the principles he introduced. I look upon stage-management, as now understood, as having been absolutely invented by him." Wilton's giving Robertson directorial control over his plays was a key step to institutionalising the power that directors wield in the theatre today. ''Society'' was revived several times during the next two decades, and it was given nearly 500 performances under Wilton's (later the Bancrofts') management.Savin, p. 128 Robertson's original

manuscript A manuscript (abbreviated MS for singular and MSS for plural) was, traditionally, any document written by hand or typewritten, as opposed to mechanically printed or reproduced in some indirect or automated way. More recently, the term has ...

of ''Society'' was donated to the Shakespeare Memorial Library at

Stratford-upon-Avon Stratford-upon-Avon ( ), commonly known as Stratford, is a market town and civil parish in the Stratford-on-Avon (district), Stratford-on-Avon district, in the county of Warwickshire, in the West Midlands (region), West Midlands region of Engl ...

Original cast

*Maud Hetherington – Effie Wilton *Sidney Daryl – Squire Bancroft *Lord Ptarmigant – John Hare *John Chodd, Jnr – John Clarke *Tom Stylus – Fred Dewar *Lady Ptarmigant – Sophie Larkin

References

External links

Full text of ''Society'' and ''Caste''
edited by T. Edgar Pemberton (1905) {{DEFAULTSORT:Society (play) 1865 plays Plays by Thomas William Robertson