Smash hit Shakespeare in Banbury’s elegant theatre

On Monday 11th October 1790, audiences were treated to Romeo and Juliet in a lovely new theatre. Kemble has assembled something of an all-star cast for this production and wants Banbury to know it, as each actor has a prestigious theatre attached to their name on the playbill.

This cast includes the well-known actor fresh from Edinburgh’s Theatre Royal, Mr Venables as Romeo, and Mrs Kemble, who has married into the most famous acting family of the era, as Juliet, a role she has performed numerous times at London’s Covent Garden theatre.

This actress is Elizabeth Satchell (1763–1841) who married the actor manager George Stephen Kemble in 1783. She acted with him for several years, and of the two she was felt to be the greater talent, but her career played second fiddle to his. When her husband’s engagements took him out of London, she accompanied him.

There were several different adaptations of Romeo and Juliet – this one was probably a popular version by David Garrick which played up the sentiment of the lovers’ final embrace before death.

It features 'the Procession of Juliet to the Monument of the Capulets, and a Solemn Dirge' in Act 5 - this was originally created for a performance in 1750 at Covent Garden to draw audiences. The intention was to lure audiences away from David Garrick's adaption which was running at Drury Lane. It was so popular that Garrick quickly inserted his own version of funeral scene with dirge, and it is performed on this evening in Banbury.

The story of Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers Romeo and Juliet has been a smash hit ever since it was first written. In fact there is a note on the title page of the 1597 edition of the play which says: "it hath been often (with great applause) plaid publiquely".

In the Bard’s time, the play would have been acted on a bare-stage and with a minimum of props.

The balcony at the end of the stage would be Juliet’s bedroom and a trapdoor would signify her tomb.

After the restoration of Charles II to the throne, the play was performed for a brief time on the stage at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in London in 1662 by the actor-manager William Davenant.

In 1679, Thomas Otway adapted Romeo and Juliet and this version reigned on stage for about the next seventy years. He set the play which was entitled The History and Fall of Caius Marius in ancient Rome and renamed the lovers Marius and Lavinia. The play highlighted political issues of state and it’s believed this reflected the real-life crisis dominating the country who would succeed to the throne.

In 1744, Theophilus Cibber played Romeo in a version closer to the original, but it still retaining some of Otway's additions, such as Juliet waking before Romeo dies for a final impassioned speech. Extracts from another of Shakespeare's plays, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, were added. Cibber’s casting was controversial as his daughter played opposite him. At the time Cibber was in his early forties, while his Juliet was just 14.

It seems that audiences did not like this casting. A version which fared better was David Garrick's Romeo and Juliet, staged at Drury Lane in 1748, to much greater success. He removed many of Shakespeare’s bawdy jokes and sexual references, with the result that the role of Mercutio was reduced. He also read his audiences desire for sentimentality and inserted a scene between Romeo and Juliet in the tomb before they die. His version of the play was the standard text for the stage for the next 100 years or so.

40 years before this production, two leading actors in two rival productions duelled for audiences in London.

Actor Spranger Barry in Romeo and Juliet (Credit: Folger Shakespeare Library)

The actor Spranger Barry had been alternating lead roles such as Hamlet and Macbeth with the famous David Garrick. But his success as Romeo proved too much for the actor manager and Barry left the company in 1750 for a rival production at Covent Garden, taking his 'Juliet', Susannah Cibber with him.

With David Garrick himself taking the title role at Drury Lane, the two were in direct competition.

Barry was the more ardent Romeo; whereas Garrick best embodied the tragic nature of the role.

Audiences could compare the performances for themselves by enjoying Barry’s impassioned wooing at Covent Garden for the first half of the play before visiting Drury Lane to see Garrick die tragically in the second.

The Royal Shakespeare Company website carries a quote from a female fan who captures the differences between the two performances:

"Had I been Garrick's Juliet – so impassioned was he, I should have expected that he would have come up to me on the balcony; but had I been Juliet to Barry's Romeo – so tender and seductive was he, I should certainly have jumped down to him!"