Without theater impresario and actor David Garrick, we wouldn’t have celebrity licensed merchandising. Charles-and-Camilla commemorative teacups, Britney Spears perfume, the Olsen Twins empire, John Wayne china plates — we have Garrick to thank for those.
Oh, yes, and for Shakespeare as well.
“David Garrick (1717-1779), a Theatrical Life,” a Garrickpalooza of paintings, playbills, furniture, etchings, texts and other objects at the Folger Shakespeare Library, depicts the far-flung interests and influence of this remarkable 18th-century actor, writer, theater manager, entrepreneur and international celebrity, who revolutionized the way theater was done in England and elsewhere.
His Drury Lane Theatre exists to this day, although the building has burned down twice since Garrick strode in the footlights. “Miss Saigon” played there for 10 years, and his brainchild, the Drury Lane Theatrical Fund, still provides financial aid to performers who fall on hard times.
His natural style of acting helped elevate the craft from a job performed by prostitutes and scalawags to a profession and an art form. “Garrick gave actors — and most importantly, actresses — a living wage so they didn’t have to depend on male ’patrons,’” says Erin C. Blake, one of the exhibit’s curators.
“They could be actresses, not mistresses. One of Garrick’s improvements was getting male patrons off the stage, so there was more of a separation between performer and audience. Before, men wanted to get as close as possible to their favorite actress or dancer.”
Miss Blake notes the other ways Garrick made acting more respectable, including darkening the theater; allowing actors some degree of privacy backstage; and eliminating half-price admission after the third act of the main attraction, which led to rioting. “He also pioneered side lighting so that the actors did not have to stand under a chandelier to be seen, which resulted in more natural and dynamic acting styles,” Miss Blake says.
Garrick introduced ensemble acting, intense preparation for comic and tragic roles, and professional standards for acting companies and backstage personnel. He got rid of the rhetorical, declamatory mode of acting that made plays seem little more than glorified poetry readings. After seeing Garrick, Alexander Pope observed, “That young man never had his equal … and he will never have a rival.”
Perhaps most significantly, Garrick was an ardent champion of William Shakespeare, who had fallen way out of fashion in the 1700s. Garrick performed much of the canon in his theater, and he also created a Temple to Shakespeare on the grounds of his house at Hampton (just down the road from Hampton Court).
Among the most arresting objects in the exhibit is the mahogany elbow chair designed by William Hogarth, richly carved with masks, snakes, cloven feet and musical instruments, as well as a portrait of Shakespeare.
Also on display is Louis Francois Roubiliac’s terra-cotta preparatory sculpture of Shakespeare; the life-size marble statue is in the British Museum.
“David Garrick turned a national poet into the national poet,” says James C. Kuhn IV, one of the exhibit’s curators. “In 1769, he organized and financed the Shakespeare Jubilee, a three-day celebration of the Bard that was to include fireworks, a procession of Shakespeare characters, a horse race and many commemorative knickknacks.”
The jubilee was rained out, to the point where the Avon River flooded. “It was a complete bust, and the jubilee was widely satirized after the fact by the wits of the time,” Mr. Kuhn says. “And Garrick was chief among them. He produced and wrote ’Jubilee: A Farce,’ which ran 92 performances at Drury Lane.”
The Jubilee may have been rain-sogged, but it did mark the creation of Shakespeare as England’s national poet and the beginning of a culture and industry some now call “bardolatry.”
No doubt about it, Garrick was mad about the Bard.
His portrayal of Hamlet in 1742 became the blueprint for the role for decades. His aghast, arms-flung-out gesture at the sight of the ghost of Hamlet’s father became the definitive pose for this scene. Hamlet was Garrick’s most frequent tragic role, one he played 90 times in his career. The exhibit also features a portrait of the actor performing in “King Lear,” in which one critic noted: “Lear goes mad so gradually that you scarce see where he first begins. … It steals so gradually and imperceptibly, the Difference grows like a Colour, which runs on from the highest to the darkest Tint, without perceiving the Shades, but by comparing them at different Parts of the Whole.”
After a century of adaptations that muddled and bastardized Shakespeare’s original text, Garrick restored the plays using the work of Samuel Johnson, William Warburton, Edward Cappell and George Steevens. “Shakespeare was so out of favor in the mid-18th century that Samuel Pepys declared ’A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ ’the most insipid, ridiculous play that I ever saw in my life,’” Miss Blake says. “Garrick brought Shakespeare’s plays back to life by making them beloved by the public and by personalizing and popularizing the characters.”
As a result, hoi polloi championed plays the critics panned, making Shakespeare a staple in London theaters for economic reasons alone.
Garrick was not perfect. A promptbook from “Hamlet” shows him removing the gravedigger scene and the fencing scene between Laertes and Hamlet. “Critics complained that Garrick’s cuts were a bow to French neoclassicism, which looked at comic scenes and swordfights as ’low’ entertainment,” Mr. Kuhn says.
He was also an indefatigable self-promoter who would have put Donald Trump to shame. “The exhibit features examples of celebrity merchandise from the 1700s — a theater-themed tea set, a scent-bottle case and snuff box, all bearing Garrick’s image,” Miss Blake says.
“Not to mention hundreds of portraits and etchings of himself, many of which are shown at the Folger.”
His death in 1779 was a primo public-relations event. The Folger has the elaborate printed invitation to his funeral, as well as two of the six mourning rings designed for the chief pallbearers. The esteemed actress Ellen Terry, the great-aunt of actor Sir John Gielgud, owned one of the larger rings.
“David Garrick is a wonderful mix of nuance and seeming contradiction,” Mr. Kuhn says. “While at Drury Lane, he mounted grand spectacles and processions, yet at the same time, he worked hard to restore Shakespeare’s own language to 18th-century stages.”
WHAT: “David Garrick (1717-1779), a Theatrical Life”
WHERE: Folger Shakespeare Library, 201 East Capitol St. SE
WHEN: Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Through Aug. 28.
TICKETS: Free.
PHONE: 202/544-7077
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