GARRICK WAS THE ORIGINAL STAR OF ACTING
Emily Bendell, the Oxford-educated boss of the lingerie business Bluebella, producer of raunchy Fifty Shades of Grey underwear, launched an injunction against London’s menonly Garrick Club in July last year. She was striking a blow at one of the last bastions of male independence. The Garrick, favourite retreat of top actors, artistic types, politicians and lawyers since 1831, tolerates women as guests but not as members. And not just women are excluded. One of its founding principles was that ‘it would be better that ten unobjectionable men should be excluded than one terrible bore should be admitted’.
David Garrick, after whom the club is named, was a hugely influential actor who might enjoy the publicity attached to the fuss. He was arguably the first actor to whom the word ‘star’ was applied, after a writer in 1761 wrote about the arrival of ‘a bright luminary in the theatrical hemisphere, which soon became a star of the first magnitude and was called Garrick’.
There was an echo of modern times in 1742 when Garrick came to Smock Alley in Dublin during an
‘His career transformed the social status of actors and the concept of acting’
epidemic that became known as ‘Garrick fever’ because it was connected in some minds with the large crowds that came to see him perform.
An early biographer wrote that after his second visit to Ireland, he left the country ‘satiated with kisses from all ranks of people’.
He was a dazzling celebrity in England, Ireland and on the continent, before the word ‘celebrity’ was even invented. In an era before high-powered PR marketing, he progressed from unsuccessful wine-merchant to brilliant actor and self-publicist, adept at manipulating the newspapers and magazines of his time.
Owning shares in the popular St James Chronicle, and The Public Advertiser, enabled him to write glowing accounts of his own performances anonymously. But the genuine reviewers confirmed his own assessment of himself.
His career transformed the social status of actors and the whole concept of acting. Where most actors stood centre stage and declaimed speeches, Garrick developed characters with a more nuanced, natural style, using pauses, silence and natural delivery in Shakespeare and comedy. One Dublin audience member wrote that with more experience, the young Garrick would be ‘the best and most extraordinary player that ever these kingdoms saw’.
He was clearly a step up from one Irish performer at the time, known as ‘the teapot actor,’ whose favourite pose was to stand with one hand stretched upward and the other resting on his hip.
Later,followingtheexperienceshe had endured from some unruly audiences in Dublin, Garrick brought greater discipline to performers and audiences when he became part owner and manager of Drury Lane Theatre in London. Actors had to attend all rehearsals and audience members were not allowed on the stage or behind the scenes. His career transformed the social status of actors and the whole concept of acting. He developed lighting techniques using oil-lamps and reflectors instead of candles, with every detail of the scenery and costumes aimed at creating an overall dramatic experience.
He even had a special wig made that he could manipulate during the ghost scene in Hamlet to make his hair seem to stand up with fright.
As well as the Garrick club, one of London’s major theatres is named after him along with a street and yard in Covent Garden, and a number of theatres abroad, including Perth in Australia.
Garrick has been criticised for not expanding the repertory of plays during his tenure at Drury Lane. But he certainly improved the status of theatre from where it had fallen in the years before his arrival on the scene.
His friend, the great Dr Samuel Johnson would occasionally criticise Garrick, but would never allow other people to do it. ‘He is the first man in the world for sprightly conversation. I thought him less to be envied on the stage than at the head of a table.’ And he added: ‘His profession made him rich and he made his profession respectable.’ So respectable indeed that Garrick mixed on equal terms with the highest in the land and lived in a large riverside villa in London. According to Dr Johnson, he had also ‘given away more money than any man in England.
When Garrick did a successful production of one of Johnson’s plays, Johnson enjoyed mixing with the performers backstage after performances.
But he eventually stayed away, telling Garrick: ‘David, the silk stockings and white bosoms of your actresses excite my amorous propensities.’ What chance of white-bosomed, raunchily-clad members descending soon on the hallowed Garrick?
‘He improved the status of theatre from where it had fallen before his arrival’