Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

formerly called the Royal Coburg, its foundation-stone was laid by Princess Charlotte’s husband Leopold of Saxe-Coburg (later King of the Belgians) in 1816. It was renamed in honor of the Princess Victoria, later becoming popularly known as the Old Vic, dispensing Shakespeare and opera in English, most famously under Lilian Baylis, on the South Bank in London, and becoming the home of the National Theatre in its early years. When it performed a dramatic version of Jane Eyre in the first months of 1848 it was at one of its low points: W. S. Williams’s account of the theatre was so graphic that Charlotte described it as “ loathsome .” Of the play itself, she anticipated that it would be “woefully exaggerated and painfully vulgarised,” and this seems to have been realized by the event: “You must try now to forget entirely what you saw” (to WSW, 5 & 15 Feb 1848). ... log in or subscribe to read full text