The Drama

“I’m afraid of the Rock and the Record,” a bishop tells Sir Henry Irving when asked why he never goes to the theatre. Can even a friend of drama be kept from its pleasures by fear of what others will say?

In these late-nineteenth-century addresses, the celebrated actor speaks to audiences accustomed to treating the stage as a suspect cousin of literature. Irving argues that a play is not fully understood on the page: in rehearsal and performance, an actor can reveal fresh depths in a character, while even modest plays may stir sympathy and thought. The theatre, he insists, belongs not to the court or the wealthy few, but to an educated public whose judgment can help shape what appears on stage. If the stage can enrich its audience, what has kept it so long under suspicion?

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