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Dateline: 24th June, 2005
RSC Celebrates Irving
The Royal Shakespeare Company is celebrating the life and work of the celebrated actor-manager Sir Henry Irving, with an exhibition in the Collection area of the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon. Marking the centenary of the great Victorian actor’s death, First Knight: Henry Irving 1838-1905 will run from 30th June until 5th November 2005.
Sir Henry Irving was the first actor to be knighted, and enjoyed a highly successful association with the Lyceum Theatre in London, where his Shakespearean performances included Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello and Shylock in The Merchant of Venice.
Although Sir Henry never performed in Stratford-upon-Avon, he visited the town on a number of occasions. He was one of the first people to subscribe 100 guineas (£105) to become a Governor of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre when it was founded in 1875, and in the early 1880s he chaired a committee to raise funds for the theatre’s new library.
Amongst the costumes, paintings and other theatrical memorabilia on display, this new exhibition will include a number of his annotated scripts, a painting on loan from Sir Donald Sinden, and some of the last props Sir Henry used on stage just hours before his death.
The exhibition has been jointly arranged by the RSC and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, and brings together items from both the RSC Collection and the RSC owned Bram Stoker Collection, which is housed in the theatre’s library at the Shakespeare Centre. Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula, was Sir Henry’s manager and friend for many years, and on his death in 1912 the considerable collection he had amassed was presented anonymously to the Memorial Theatre library. Please note that all three Archive indices are very long and will therefore take some time to download.
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