Deciphering the Downfall of Shakespeare, Represented on a Modern Stage of 1765

After reading Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford and running the Prospect Theatre Company for its first twelve years, lain Mackintosh joined Theatre Projects as a designer of theatrespace: new buildings included the Cottesloe, Glyndebourne, the Orange Tree and Hall Two at the Sage, Gateshead, with restorations of the Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, and the Georgian Theatre Royal, Richmond. Meanwhile he curated exhibitions: The Georgian Playhouse 17301830; The Royal Opera House Retrospective 1732-1982 and CURTAINS!!! Or a New Life for Old Theatres. Routledge published his Architecture, Actor and Audience in 1993. If any thing be overlooked, or not accurately inserted, let no one find fault, but take into consideration that this history is compiled from all quarters. (Evagrius, p473, as quoted by John Genest on the title page of his Some Account of the English Stage from the Restoration in 1660 to 1830, Bath, 1832) The Theatre Museum has recently acquired this mysterious work by William Dawes. It measures 69.8 cm. by 90.8 cm. It was put up for auction by Maria Dubno Nicoll, retired librarian of the University of Birmingham Shakespeare Institute and widow of Allardyce Nicoll (1894-1976), at the Malvern Sale Room of Philip Serrell Auctioneer on 11 May 2006. This painting, with estimates of 15,000 [pounds sterling] to 20,000 [pounds sterling], failed to sell under the hammer and was subsequently sold by private treaty to the Theatre Museum (a department of the Victoria and Albert Museum). The acquisition was handled by Dr. Jim Fowler, Director of Research and Collections at the Theatre Museum. 5,000 [pounds sterling] came from the bequest to the Theatre Museum of Society for Theatre Research stalwart, Jack Reading, and 1,000 [pounds sterling] was donated by the Society for Theatre Research specifically to assist the purchase. The downfal of Shakespear, represented on a modern stage (sic) (Plate 4) was first exhibited at the Free Society of Artists exhibition held in March/April 1765: catalogue number 76. In modern times it has been exhibited at The Royal Opera House Retrospective 1732-1982 in 1982/3 (1) and again at 'An Extravagant and Irrational Entertainment" Staging the opera in England 1632-1792 (sic) in 1987. (2) Both catalogues contain short entries which scraped the surface of the mystery of this painting. In the catalogue for the 1987 exhibition and in an article for Early Music, February 1990, I went further in exploring attitudes of English audiences of the time to foreign opera and quoted Sylas Neville's diary of 24 February 1767 after visiting La Buona Figliola at the Opera House in the Haymarket: 'I can't say I was greatly entertained tho' the Music is very pleasing. There is something very absurd and truly characteristic of the present Age in supporting a set of people at an immense expense to perform in a language which very few understand.' (3) This, it now turns out, was misleading as the scene depicted alludes to an opera sung in English. But at the time I was unable to identify the subject of the painting and why Dawes had painted it when he did. Neither had the Nicolls who lived with the picture for ten years. They had acquired the painting in Oxford in 1965, the Bonfiglioli Gallery having advertised it for sale, with a half a page black and white reproduction in The Burlington Magazine of September 1965, together with information only about the Free Society of Artists exhibition of 1765. I knew Kyril Bonfiglioli, having been a lodger in his large north Oxford house in 1961 or 1962, while I was Resident Stage Manager at the Oxford Playhouse but he died in 1985. My first sight of a reproduction of the painting was in 1980 when the Manchester University Press published The Garrick Stage--Theatre and Audiences in the Eighteenth Century by Allardyce Nicoll. (4) The editor of this posthumous work was Sybil Rosenfeld, a distinguished eighteenth-century scholar. …