Page 69 - King Lear: The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare

klv KING LEAR
scenery marked the revival, with realistic thunder and
lightning, wind and rain in the storm scenes. From 1845
to 1848 he produced the play each year at the Princess's
Theatre, and finally in 1849 and 1851 at the Hay-
market (3 February his last appearance). In 1845,
Mrs Stirling played Cordelia and in 1848 from 3 March
Mrs Butler (Fanny Kemble). In Macready's first year
Vandenhoff had reappeared at Covent Garden; 1836
brought a more dangerous rival in Edwin Forrest, the
American tragedian, to Drury Lane, whose Lear on
4 November was a considerable success. But when he
came back in March 1845, to the Princess's, still follow-
ing Tate's text, he met with a hostile reception which he
put down to Macready's instigation, who followed him
1
there in October.
This same year a third King Lear-was seen in London,
Samuel Phelps's first, at Sadler's Wells, in his second
year as manager. He had previously acted Lear in 1841
at the Surrey Theatre in Liverpool, in the winter of
1843-4.* Now he presented the genuine play with
much fewer cuts than Macready and in Shakespeare's
order of scenes. Miss Cooper was Cordelia, Marston
Edgar, and Bennett Edmund; and the Fool was now
played by a man (Scharf). It was acted six times. The
critics were full of praise for Phelps's acting; it would
'bear comparison', said the Observer, 'with the best by
any other actor ever'. 3 He again showed the play in
1852-3; in 1857 from 5 December Mrs Charles Young
was his Cordelia. His latest productions at Sadler's
Wells were in September and October 1859, and
1
On the rivalry of these two cf. Macbeth, Stage-History,
p. lxxxii.
2
See W. May Phelps and J. Forbes-Robertson, Life and
Life-Work of Samuel Phelps (1886), pp. 53, 61.
3 For this revival see op. cit. pp. 79, 81-6, 264; Odell,
op. cit. II, 272-3.