making changes: victorians channeling shakespeare.

The nineteenth century was a time of expansion and development. It was also a time when poets and artists revived medieval and Renaissance ideals. They turned to Arthurian legends, tales of chivalry, and Renaissance masters for inspiration. There were even circles of Victorians who sought through spiritualism to revive ancient rituals and mysticism. In addition to all of these explorations of past cultural ideals and societies, the Victorians also turned to Shakespeare. Shakespeare's works never required a revival because they had never died out since the Elizabethan era, but the Victorians thought that they could raise the Bard to the level of success they thought he had desired during his own time. Because of the many artistic liberties the Victorians took with Shakespeare's work, and because of the ever-changing ideals and inventions of the nineteenth century, they created several interesting interpretations of Shakespeare's plays. The Victorians saw Shakespeare as a conduit for transmitting the new ideals of the upcoming twentieth century. They also saw him as a way to voice drastic changes in society and in the world. 

Through the actress Sarah Bernhardt, Victorian ideals on womanhood were explored and challenged. Because of Shakespeare's unorthodox gender roles in his works, Berhardt was able to channel male characters, her most famous role being that of Hamlet. This unconventional representation of actresses taking on the roles of male characters helped the society of the time see that women's roles inside and outside the home were changing, and that women were capable of all that men were capable of. Shakespeare's works helped promote the New Woman of the Victorian era, and aided in feminism at the turn of the twentieth century. 

Ellen Terry's passion for Shakespeare created a fan following through her many discourses and lectures of her beloved Bard. Terry had a romance with Shakespeare and his works, and encouraged others to have a similar relationship with him. Terry became so involved as a Shakespearean actress that she lived her parts, and got so deep into the characters and the stories that she knew she was serving her lover's cause by playing the parts of such strong female characters.

Charles Kean was a different sort of a Shakespearean actor. He not only played the most prime Shakespearean roles, but he produced the most spectacular of the Bard's plays by creating the scenery, and re-creating the history of the tales. Kean, as the actor-manager of the Princess's Theatre, supplemented Shakespeare's plays with all the missing historical facts that he felt Shakespeare left out due to time restraints. Kean felt that he was fulfilling Shakespeare's mission through this re-creation of history, and through his elaborate, and thoroughly produced, productions of the Elizabethan playwright. 


For the Victorians, Shakespeare proved to be the perfect way to express all the new ideals and the new directions that society was headed at the turn of the twentieth century.