Dickens Stage Links:
Best of Times: The theater of Charles Dickens - From The New York Public Library
Condensed version of A Christmas Carol Dickens used for public readings
New York Reading 1867:
Edwin Coggeshall remembered that his entire family came over from Brooklyn by ferry in a blinding snowstorm. On such a night, some astonished friends said, they wouldn't have come from Brooklyn to hear the Apostle Paul. "No, neither would we, " was the reply, "but we came to hear Dickens."
-Edgar Johnson
During the American reading tour of 1867/68 President Andrew Johnson attended one of the readings in Washington and invited Dickens to the White House. Dickens visited on February 5, 1868...Johnson was impeached later that month.
Anyone who doubts that a man reading a book aloud, using only changes in voice, gesture, and vocal expression, can enthrall and move an audience, need only see Anton Lesser perform as Dickens to understand the immense popularity of Dickens' reading tours.
Dickens met the poet during his first American visit in 1842 and the two became friends. Longfellow visited Dickens in England on three occasions and attended Dickens' readings in Boston during Dickens second American visit in 1867/68. Longfellow's daughter, Annie Allegra, attended the readings with her father and later recalled "How the audience loved best of all the Christmas Carol and how they laughed as Dickens fairly smacked his lips as there came the 'smell like an eating house and a pastry cook's next door to each other, with a laundress's next door to that,' as Mrs Cratchit bore in the Christmas pudding and how they nearly wept as Tiny Tim cried 'God bless us every one!'"
Would Dickens be writing soap operas if he lived today? Robert Giddings looks at this popular belief in light of BBC's new Bleak House
Amateur Theatricals | Public Readings
The story of the Crummles' traveling theatrical troupe in Nicholas Nickleby was one close to Dickens' heart. As a child Charles was exposed to, and loved, the theater.
As
a schoolboy he formed a small dramatic company of his friends. Had it not
been for an illness on the morning of a scheduled audition at the Covent
Garden theater in the early 1830s, just before his writing gained attention,
he may have made a career on the stage. After years away from the stage, Dickens agreed to direct and perform in three plays while in Montreal, Canada in 1842. The success of the Montreal plays provided the spark that rekindled Dickens' love of the footlights. Back home in London Dickens gathered friends to perform Ben Jonson's Every Man in his Humour for charity, which was a huge success.
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Many of his friends and associates in the arts, including Forster, Douglas Jerrold, John Leech, Mark Lemon, Augustus Egg, Wilkie Collins, and George Cruikshank acted in these theatricals which were performed across Britain. The distinguished actor William Macready, a close friend of Dickens, provided guidance in the performance of the productions. Another friend, artist Clarkson Stanfield, lent a hand designing scenery. The schoolroom in his home, Tavistock House, could be converted to a theater for small performances. The Dickens' amateur troupe even performed twice for Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.
Read
about an interesting incident  that
happened while the Dickens' amateur acting troupe was performing in
Sunderland in 1852. |
Later in his career Dickens' theatrical training contributed to the success of public readings of his works, some of which were so physically taxing that they may have hastened his early death.
Dickens was, first and foremost, an entertainer. From childhood and into adult life he loved the stage and loved and needed the outpouring of adulation he received. He performed in amateur theatricals throughout the 1840s and 50s and, had he not achieved early fame as a writer, would almost certainly have made a career on the stage.
In 1853 Dickens began giving public readings of his works, first for charity,
and beginning in 1858, for profit. Before this time no great author had
performed their works in public, but Dickens' works were uniquely suited
for performance, as they would later successfully adapt to the screen. Dickens'
friend and advisor, John Forster,
argued unsuccessfully that such public exhibition for money was beneath
his calling as a writer and a gentleman. Throughout the 1860s, except for a break at mid-century when he was writing Our Mutual Friend, Dickens undertook reading tours of Britain, making more money from the readings than he could from writing, even though he always made sure that seats were available at working-class prices.
The performances initially included the Christmas books: A Christmas Carol, The Chimes, and Cricket on the Hearth. Later Dickens incorporated scenes from Dombey and Son, Nicholas Nickleby, Pickwick Papers, Martin Chuzzlewit, and his favorite, David Copperfield. He tightened the narrative, wrote stage directions to himself in the margins, and tried to infuse as much humor as possible, leaving out passages of social criticism as inappropriate for evenings of entertainment.
Dickens biographer Edgar Johnson on the public readings: "It was more than a reading; it was an extraordinary exhibition of acting ...without a single prop or bit of costume, by changes of voice, by gesture, by vocal expression, Dickens peopled his stage with a throng of characters."
Thomas Carlyle, author and friend of Dickens, after attending one of the readings, remarked that Dickens was like an entire theater company...under one hat.
Dickens' six-man entourage for these reading tours included his manager
(Albert Smith, later George Dolby), a valet, a gas man, and a couple of
others doing clerical work and odd jobs. The unique stage equipment included
a reading desk, carpet, gas lights, and screens behind to help project his
voice forward. After much deliberation, and with the promise of big money, he undertook a reading tour of America from December 1867- April 1868 which earned him 19,000 pounds.
On his return to England, and with declining health, he began a farewell tour of Britain in October 1868. This tour included a new addition, a very passionate and dramatic performance of the murder of Nancy from Oliver Twist. Many believe that the energy expended in this performance, which he insisted on including even as his health worsened, hastened his early death in June, 1870.
Read Dickens' friend Charles Kent's report on the reading of Sikes and Nancy.
Mark Twain saw Dickens perform in January 1868 at the Steinway Hall in New York and gave this report.
An Actor's Dickens
Adapted and edited by
Beatrice Manley
Scenes for Audition and Performance from the Works of Charles Dickens
