Dion Boucicault

“AND NOW” (he said) “it is nearly time to take in sail. The burden of theatrical direction is heavy; the pressure is unceasing—and I am no longer young. After forty-five strenuous years in the service of the public, I feel that I owe a little to myself, a great deal to my wife and children. At sixty a man may fairly rest from active labour. It is not easy to give up when one feels so well and strong; but my desire is to relinquish management in the very near future.”

I WAS BORN at Mercer, Pennsylvania, USA, on 26 August, 1845. Mercer is a county town where my father was a doctor. Both my father and mother were Americans. He was of Irish descent, she of Scottish. Of course I look upon America as my native country. Sometimes people have said to me, “Your fortune is bound up in Australia now; why don’t you get naturalised?” I don’t see that. Australia is my country too, and I expect to spend the rest of my days here, but I think a man should never deny his mother country.

JCW as a youth

I had a good common school and high school education, and the American schools in those days were excellent. One thing they seemed to do was to make every boy wish to hit out for himself. That was the first idea of every American boy in my time, to get away from home as soon as possible and start and make his own way. The schools encouraged independence of character. I don't think they do so now —I don’t know, of course, because I haven't been in close touch with America for a long time—but it seems to me that the American boy of to-day is less ambitious than we used to be. He isn't so eager to go ahead and do something for himself at an early age.

While I was a boy, our family shifted west to Milwaukee, the capital of Wisconsin, where my uncle was a merchant in a big way of business. There was a large family of us boys and girls, but I was the only one with a turn for the stage, and I don’t know that any of my father’s or mother’s people was ever inclined that way.

“Jimmy” was the Bloodhound

I used to act in amateur theatricals, and when I was sixteen I got an engagement with a company at the Milwaukee theatre. I was full of energy and enthusiasm, and did pretty well everything. My mornings were spent in learning fencing and dancing. In the afternoon I’d look after the box office, and at evening help the stage manager and take my part—sometimes three or four parts.

I remember I even painted some of the scenery for a performance of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. I knew nothing about scene-painting, but I did the ice scene—with the blocks of ice made out of candle boxes—and when Eliza and her child were escaping across the ice I shouted and waved the red fire, and looked after the barking of the bloodhound. I was the bloodhound.

‘Eliza Crosses the Ohio on the Floating Ice’ in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Drawing by George Cruikshank, 1852. The Victorian Web.

Well, one of the company arranged to go to Canada, and asked me to come along. That was in 1862. I went to my uncle—who was my guardian, my father being dead—and told him about it. I suppose they saw there was no stopping me; but he said “Remember, if you go, you go for good: there must be no coming back unless you give up the stage altogether. You can't do a little of this and a little of something else.” He wanted me to go to Harvard or Yale and study for a profession. “All right!” I said, and off I went, and from that day to this I have been connected with the stage, and I can say truly that I have made my own way and never had help from anybody to the extent of a shilling that I didn’t earn.

* * * * * * * * *

We played in Canada one year, and when the company broke up I determined to come to New York. That was in 1863. New York, of course, was the centre of our theatrical world, and it seemed there wasn’t much chance there for a youth of seventeen. However, I came along, and met a Mr. English whom I had seen with the company in Canada. He was running a high-class vaudeville entertainment at the Olympic Theatre, and he told me that he was going to put on a farce to play before his entertainment, and offered me a small part. I was to be “Quicksilver” in The Artful Dodger. He offered me ten dollars a week, and I took it gladly. I was engaged in New York!

Engaged in New York

Well, when the rehearsals came on I saw there was likely to be trouble. The principal actor objected to me playing “Quicksilver,” the fact was he had a friend of his own whom he wished to put on, and he would not hear of me. So one day I went in and saw Mr. English, and he said: “Jimmy, I can’t give you that part.” “But,” I said, “you've engaged me.” “Well,” he said, “I’m sorry, but the fact is Mr. So-and-So objects. He says you're too young.” “But,” I said, “I'm engaged!” “I can’t help that,” he said; “you can't have the part.” The end of it was he offered me another and smaller part. “But,” he said, “I can only give you five dollars a week!” “Never mind; I'm engaged!” That was my idea to have an engagement. Five dollars is only £1 a week, but I didn’t care: I could live on that, and I went on and took the part. The result was that in a few nights the actor who was playing “Quicksilver” didn't turn up, and I played “Quicksilver” for the rest of the run of the piece.

I had an idea I could do better, so one day I went and saw the elder Mr. Wallack. Wallack’s Theatre at that time was the leading theatre of America, and there never has been a better company on the English-speaking stage than Wallack’s company was then. There were no stars, but nearly every performer was an artist worthy of being starred: and if the same company could be brought together at the present time under the existing conditions of theatrical affairs there would not be a theatre in New York which would hold money enough at regular prices to pay the salaries they could command. That is because salaries were comparatively very low in those days. The most I ever drew at Wallack’s was fifty dollars a week. They used to stage the old comedies like Sheridan’s, and newer ones like Robertson’s. I remember Charles Mathews was the light comedian one season, and Charles Wyndham (now Sir Charles) was another.

Wallack’s Theatre, at the north-east corner of Broadway and Thirteenth Street, New York, c.1865

J.W. Wallack, sr.

I called at the old gentleman’s house—he was over seventy at that time. I met him just as he was getting into his carriage, and he consented to see me the following day. The following day I called, and was shown into a waiting-room—and I’ll tell you a singular thing. Do you see that picture of John Kemble as Rolla hanging on the wall? That was offered to me some years ago as a portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence. I made enquiries, and the history seemed to be all right, it being the original study for his great picture in the Peel gallery, so I bought it. Well, I couldn’t help thinking that I had seen it before; and one day, as I was looking at it, the memory came back to me. It had hung in old Mr. Wallack’s house, in the room where I sat waiting for him. I looked into the papers I had got with it, and sure enough I found that it had been owned by the elder Mr. Wallack. So it had travelled from England to America and from America to Australia, and had come to remind me of my first important engagement.

Taken on at Wallack’s

When I was shown into the old gentleman’s room I told him I wanted an engagement to fill a vacancy there would be in his company the next season. He put his hand on a pile of papers that seemed about two feet high, and he said “Do you see that, my boy? Two-thirds of those letters are from people who want the little engagement you are asking me for.” Then we talked, and he asked me to call again. I called, and found he had gone to the seaside. When he came back I called again, and he told me he was going to give me the part. So I came on at Wallack’s.

* * * * * * * * *

Just before I joined I had a joke with Mr. English. He was forming a company to go touring, and he met me one day and offered me a place in the company. I thanked him, and said “No,” I didn't think I'd be able to; I thought of taking an engagement at Wallack’s. That rather took him aback, for, of course, he didn’t believe the thing was possible, because Wallack’s was a close corporation in those days. To show you the strength of their company at that time, they played The Rivals in New York one night, complete to the smallest part. Every part was played by an actor, and by a good actor too. The same night the other half of the company played The School for Scandal at Brooklyn, also complete, with a good actor for every part. All the actors in both pieces belonged to the regular company, and either of those casts would be considered star casts nowadays.

I made my first big New York success as Dick Swiveller in The Old Curiosity Shop with “Lotta”—America’s most popular star comedienne—during a summer season at Wallack’s.

Lotta Crabtree

California Historical Society

Lester Wallack

The Lambs Inc., New York

A Treble Recall and a Waiting “Star”

Altogether I stayed with Wallack’s for seven years, playing all kinds of parts, and gradually improving my position. Generally I was cast for dialect parts. I took all dialects—French, Dutch, Irish, Chinese, Negro, Yorkshire, Somersetshire—anything that came along. Perhaps the greatest success of my young days was gained one night that I was playing “Sim” in O’Keefe's play of Wild Oats. I had a scene with Lester Wallack, who was a great actor. Now, Wallack’s Theatre in those days was a regular home of stage tradition, so far as the old comedies were concerned. The prompt books contained all the business that had been set down for the regular parts in all the plays, often going back many years and commencing with the business directed by the authors. The books were regarded as a kind of stage Bible, and any departure from them was simply not to be thought of.

Well, in this scene with Lester Wallack, between Rover and Sim, I seemed to feel the part much better in my own way than in the way it was set down for me by the prompt-book. I told that to the stage manager—Mr. John Gilbert—and he was properly shocked. “My boy,” he said, “it’s not to be thought of!” But when I got on the stage I felt as if I must take the part my own way after all, and I did. When my scene was over I went back to the dressing-room, and after a bit (it seemed quite a good while) a call boy came along and said “Mr. Williamson, you’re wanted!” I came out wondering what was up, and thinking the old gentleman was going to take me to task for altering the business. To my surprise I was told to go on in front; the audience had called for me—a remarkable thing in the middle of a scene. I went on, and they applauded furiously. Then I went off and was called back for more applause. Then I went off again, but the public would not let Mr. Wallack go on with the scene and a third time I was called back, and we had to do the end of the scene over again before they would let us go.

Well now, Mr. Wallack was a star, and I was only a youngster, and it was a very unusual thing that the star should be made to wait while the audience recalled the junior who had played with him. I always think that was one of the finest things that ever happened to me; and I was very proud of being specially complimented by Charles Fechter, who was in front.

Playbill for Wallack’s Theatre for 31 January 1870

JCW, c.1868

“Where’s Jimmy Williamson?”

One night old Mr. Wallack came to me and said that, owing to the illness of John Brougham, I must play the part of Sir Lucius O'Trigger in The Rivals on the following night. It is a very long part, and there were only a few hours to get it up in. “Jimmy,” he said, “you've got to do it!” “Well,” I said, “I'll try.  So after the play that night I went home and wrote out the part, which took me till about two o'clock, and studied it. Then I went to bed for two or three hours, woke up, had some strong coffee, and at it again. At night I played the part letter perfect. That was my idea, always to be ready for anything, and never miss a chance of getting on. The consequence was that, in the last years of my time at Wallack’s, whenever there was anything out of the way to do, they said “Where's Jimmy Williamson?”

After that I got an engagement at the Old Broadway Theatre as principal comedian; till in 1871 John McCullough, manager of the California Theatre, came to New York looking for a comedian. The California Theatre at San Francisco was a very big affair in those times, and prided itself upon its superiority. Their leading comedian, John Raymond, was leaving them, and after looking all round the manager offered me his place. That, of course, was a high testimonial, so I signed on at a very fine salary, and said good-bye to New York. In San Francisco I had great success at the California, with occasional trips starring round about. While I was in San Francisco, Dion Boucicault, senior, father of Dot Boucicault, came over to play a season, and I’ll tell you how he dished the ’Frisco reporters. They thought themselves smart men, as indeed they were, and when Boucicault’s season was announced they all sharpened their pencils, and it was hinted that Dion was going to have a warm time.

John McCullough

California Theatre, Bush Street, San Francisco, c.1871 where JCW and Maggie Moore appeared together between 1872 and 1874

How Boucicault Dished the Reporters

Well, of course, he heard all about it, and this is what he did. On his first night he introduced a sketch called Boucicault in California. In this he appeared at home in the Occidental Hotel, just arriving. I was Murphy, his servant, with remarks on all and sundry; Barton Hill came to tell him about the pieces he was going to play; then came in an actress to play the part of a debutante with a San Jose reputation (which is as if a debutante with a Parramatta reputation came to play at Sydney)—and so on. Then came in the reporters, especially W.A. Mestayer, as Bogus Push, of The Weekly Pill—and Boucicault talked to the reporters. He told them his opinion of everything, especially California—and left the genuine reporters without a leg to stand on. He simply said on the stage everything they had to say in the papers, and left them nothing at all to write. That always struck me as a particularly happy instance of turning the tables.

* * * * * * * * *

Maggie Moore, JCW’s first wife whom he married in San Francisco on 2 February 1873

JCW in San Francisco, c.1871

After three years of San Francisco I determined to try a trip to Australia. Horace Greeley’s advice, “Go West, young man! Go West!” was a popular saying in America about that time, and we determined to go still further West. Well, we came to Australia and landed in Melbourne in 1874, and opened at the Theatre Royal with Struck Oil. I suppose there’s no better known piece in this country. I’ve met hundreds of people who date their acquaintance with the theatre back to that piece. Men meet me and say “Look here, Mr. Williamson, I know you well! I remember when I was a boy my father took me to see Struck Oil.”

Theatre Royal, Melbourne, where Struck Oil opened on 1 August 1874

Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne

JCW as John Stofel with Maggie Moore as his daughter, Lizzie in Struck Oil

The History of “Struck Oil”

The history of the piece is rather interesting. While I was at the California I was told that an old miner named Sam Smith had written some plays and was anxious to sell them. I was looking round for some things to take to Australia, so when a friend asked me if I would go and hear him read one I said “Certainly.” The piece the old man wanted to show me was called The Blue and the Grey, but I saw there was not much in that. “Well,” he said, “I have another piece if you’ll let me read it. It’s called The Deed, or Five Years Away.” So he read that, and it contained the basis of Struck Oil. I saw there was a good deal in it, and a great deal that would have to be cut out and altered. So I bought it right out, giving the old fellow a hundred dollars more than he asked for it; and got a friend of mine—Clay Greene—to re-write it. A little later, I went starring to Salt Lake City, and I thought I'd try this piece. We rehearsed it, and I saw the last act wouldn’t do.  So one Sunday morning I started upon it and wrote and re-wrote until I had made it suit my own notion, giving out the parts to the company as I went along. We played it the next night, and it went very well, so we took it back to San Francisco and played it there, and I brought it along to Australia.

The first page of the script of Struck Oil

Ink and charcoal poster for Struck Oil

One of my friends, Mr. William Hoskins (so well known in Australia), said to me in San Francisco, “What have you got to take out there?” “Well,” I said, “I've got so and so, and so and so,”—and I mentioned Struck Oil. He said, “Don’t give them that in Australia on any account, it will be an utter failure. There are no Germans out there, and they won’t understand it.” Then, coming over in the ship, I used to have a look at it now and again, and read a bit here and there. The captain stopped one day to hear me, and he said, “Now, if you'll take my advice, you’ll keep that in your box. A thing like that won't go down in Australia.”

Well, I suppose I ought to have been discouraged, but I wasn’t, and I’ll tell you how I came to play it on our opening night in Melbourne. The night before we opened, I had gone to the Opera House, and Richard Stewart was there playing Prince Cassimir in the Princess of Trebizond. About the only German he used was “Mein Gott in Himmel!” and that seemed to go down so well with the audience that I said, “We'll have Struck Oil.” And of course you know how it caught on.

A Nightmare Adventure

In 1875 I went to India. It was at the time that the Prince of Wales was visiting there—the present King—and India was en fête. I suppose there has never been such a time there since. I had the honour of meeting the Prince of Wales in Charles Mathews’ dressing-room (for he was in India too), and I can tell you a story in connection with Mathews. One night after the play a lot of English officers came to supper with him, and I was there, and we had a very jolly time, and sat up till three in the morning. Their talk was all military, and they told us the awful tales of the Mutiny, of the well at Cawnpore, the massacre at Delhi, and so on— a very gruesome set of stories.

With all these things ringing in my head I went to bed and dreamed of throat-cutting and smothering, and all kinds of horrible things, and suddenly I woke to consciousness and realised that I couldn’t breathe. I opened my eyes, and saw what seemed to me (scarcely half-awake) a horrid black figure holding my nose with one hand, while he brandished a razor in the other. I gave a fearful yell and caught up the pillow and dashed it at him—sent him flying into one corner of the room, and his razor into the other. Next moment I was out of bed ready to defend myself, and I saw this darkey crouching at the other side of the room, and chattering pitifully. He didn’t understand what had happened to him, and for a moment I didn’t understand either. Then it came to me that it was the native barber who was accustomed to come in early in the morning and shave me while I lay in bed, and he had just been starting operations when he got mixed up with my dreams of the Mutiny.

THE BOOKFELLOW, 10 January 1907, pp. 11-12

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Edward, Prince of Wales, late-1870s

National Portrait Gallery, London

British comedian and playwright Charles Mathews, 1875

National Portrait Gallery, London

WELL, to continue. After India a few months were devoted to a jaunt through Egypt, Italy, France and Germany. Then, on Easter Monday, 1876,I opened at the Adelphi under the management of F.B. Chatterton, who had also the Drury Lane Theatre. Chatterton was the author of the much-quoted remark, “Shakespeare spells ruin.” We commenced our season with Struck Oil, the engagement being to star for three months with the option on the part of the manager to extend. This option was almost immediately exercised, extending the season from Easter to Easter—twelve months in all. We played Struck Oil 100 nights, which was a good run in those times, thirty years ago.

Silk theatre program for the Adelphi Theatre, 1876

We then went into Irish drama, doing a revival of Arrah-na-Pogue with a big cast, including such London favourites as William Terriss, Sam Emery, Mrs. Alfred Melon and Shiel Barry — the great Michael Feeney. We played Arrah-na-Pogue for four months, with such success that the manager wished to continue us in Irish drama, and insisted upon putting up The Shaughraun. I wouldn’t agree to this, because I knew the piece was Dion Boucicault’s. It was copyrighted in America, but the copyright did not extend to England, and legally we were free to play it. But Boucicault would not give his consent, though the manager offered him every inducement—and I held out that I would not play till Boucicault did give his consent. The manager went so far as to cast the piece and call rehearsals, and when he found I was determined he commenced an action at law against me for breach of engagement, but the case fell through. In fact, he had no chance, for I had Charles Mathews, Joe Jefferson, and others ready to back me up, and prove that he had no business to make the cast without the star’s consent. But the dispute ended our Adelphi season, and after touring two years in America, starring in Struck Oil, I decided to make another trip around the world, and came back to Australia. That was in 1879, and I've been here ever since; except for trips every two or three years to get new plays, new people, and new ideas. I believe in keeping myself right up to date.

Alfred Bryan caricature from The Entr’acte (London), 18 November 1876

Dion Boucicault in The Shaughraun

New York Public Library, New York

I had always said I would never go in for permanent management, because you see a manager’s life is never his own: he has to be at work all the time. I was doing well enough as an actor, and when a star actor wants a rest he can simply knock off and take a holiday for six months, or as long as he likes and then begin again. But a manager has no rest. Once he starts he has to keep going all the time. So I had always said “No management for me!”

At the Head of the Australian Profession

But when I came to Australia the second time, I brought out among other new pieces Pinafore, and the first thing I had to do when I landed was to take out injunctions against the people who were playing it without authority. Pinafore went very well, and then I got The Pirates of Penzance. George Musgrove was running an opera company at the time with Tambour Major, and Arthur Garner was running his English comedy company, and they came to me and said “We had better go into partnership!” Well, I held out for a bit, but eventually agreed, and that started what people called “The Triumvirate,” which lasted for nine years. Then Musgrove went out, and Garner and I were together for two years. Then I bought Garner out for a time until Musgrove rejoined me. We were together for seven years, and I was alone for four years until I joined forces with my present partners, Mr. George Tallis and Mr. Gustave Ramaciotti—both friends long associated with my affairs—Mr. Tallis as my Melbourne manager and Mr. Ramaciotti as legal adviser.

Maggie Moore and JCW in HMS Pinafore,1879

Theatre program for 15 November 1879

National Library of Australia, Canberra

The Triumvirate—Arthur Garner, JCW and George Musgrove, 1882

So now you’ve got a very fair outline of my professional career. A good deal of it has been spent in playing, but there’s a good deal that has not been play by any means. The stage has given me a lot of pleasure, a fair share of success, and a great deal of very hard work. I think it is capacity for hard persistent work that the Australian-born actor sometimes lacks. Sometimes he wants perseverance: he doesn’t keep plugging away, and he doesn’t think enough of the stage when he’s off the stage. If a man wants to be a good actor, he has to give his mind to the profession all the time. It’s not enough to gain applause at night, if you think so much about the applause next morning that you forget to look out for the next chance. An actor should be always studying to improve himself, always studying to fit himself for better parts, always studying to make himself such a trustworthy man all round that when there's an opening ahead, he'll be chosen to fill it.

Australian Actors

In our profession it is difficult to know enough, and you can never know too much. As a young man, when I was not engaged in a piece, I used to go round to the other theatres, wherever I happened to be: picking up an idea here, a wrinkle there, or storing away a little bit of business for future use: watching the other fellows take a part and deciding how I would take it if I got the chance, and so on: and, what is most important, studying what to avoid in order to correct my faults. Australian actors have great talent, naturally—and, mind you, I'm not making any sweeping condemnation, but I do think that it may fairly be said that some are deficient in application, deficient in painstaking ambition, too apt to forget that stage laurels will fade if they are not continually refreshed by new achievements. It seems to be the fault of the country. Things ripen too quickly. The fruit ripens quickly, the crops mature quickly—but the harvests are irregular.

JCW with his second wife, Mary (née Weir) and their daughters, Marjorie and Viola (‘Tootles’) in 1907

THE BOOKFELLOW, 24 January 1907, p.8

Additional Source

Ian G. Dicker, J.C.W.—A Short Biography of James Cassius Williamson [The Elizabeth Tudor Press, NSW: 1974]

Original Sources of Photos and Illustrations

The Harvard Theatre Collection: Wallack’s Theatre, c.1865; J.W. Wallack, Sr.; JCW c.1868; Maggie Moore (1873); Poster for Struck Oil

California Historical Society, San Francisco: John McCullough; The California Theatre c.1871; JCW c.1871

The New York Public Library Theatre Collection: Playbill for Wallack’s Theatre

J.C. Willamson’s Life-Story in His Own Words [N.S.W. Bookstall Co. Ltd., 1913]: JCW and family

J.C. Williamson Theatres Ltd., Sydney: Script page of Struck Oil

(The original 1874 orchestra parts for the incidental music for Struck Oil remain extant in the “J.C. Williamson collection of performance materials” archived at the National Library of Australia in Canberra—see https://trove.nla.gov.au/version/23704496)

The Australian Stage.

What it Demands of the Actor, the Author, and the Manager

An Interview with J. C. WILLIAMSON

Her Majesty’s Theatre, Sydney, 1903

IN what I have said of Australian actors I allow for exceptions, of course. But I’m speaking to you frankly, as you asked me; and speaking with all kindness, because a manager in his own interest always wishes to help people on if they’ll give him a chance—and some Australian actors don’t give the manager chance enough. They don’t exhibit the qualities that make a manager say “This fellow is ambitious: he works hard, he takes his present part well—he is taking trouble to fit himself for better parts. That’s the man I want.” Managers in Australia never get enough of that class of Australian actor.

The women are better in that way. They work harder, and they work more persistently. Then they seem quicker and more adaptable. If you think of all the good Australian actresses we’ve had though I needn’t mention any names—you will see my point. They have talent as well as the men, and they stick more closely to their profession. There’s any amount of talent, but often it is not talent that perseveres. And as I’ve said that, I ought to say, too, what good colleagues I’ve found in Australian actors, actresses and singers; what fine support. When they are interested, they don’t spare themselves in their efforts to help, and their natural aptitude is so great that they learn very quickly. What I would like them to do is to maintain their interest and their effort all the time, because my experience teaches me that’s essential. As soon as you let go in our profession, you lose ground.

Augustin Daly

New York Public Library, New York

J.C. Williamson, c.1908

Advice to Players

Let me show you in one of my old scrapbooks a notice which I have always treasured and many times referred to with pride when thinking over old times. It was written by Augustin Daly over 41 years ago, when he was one of the leading dramatic critics on the New York press. He afterwards became, as you know, America’s leading manager, and succeeded to the position formerly occupied by the Wallacks.

[This is portion of the article referred to by Mr. Williamson.]

Room for the Little People of the Stage! Make way there! and let us bow in the third and fourth rate actors, who, as “lords,” “gentlemen,” “Marcellus and Bernardo” or “Catesby” and the “Lieutenant of the Tower” have so often in their turn bowed in the Star of the evening.

The first-rate actors have their chroniclers; the second-rate actresses have their flatterers; who shall be the historians of the neglected ones of the lower grade? Shall we not lift them from the small notoriety of their favourite porter-house, and make them proud of something more than the awful admiration of little dirty boys along the street?

Is not the “utility man” worthy of honourable mention beside his distinguished co-labourers on the stage.

Let us see.

In the first place, the position of the fourth-rate actor demands of him the following qualities: Great versatility—for he must be one night a comedian of the old school, then a gay fellow of the genteeler comedy, then a noble patriot of the ante-Christian era, then a respectable tragedian of the modern period, then a howling bandit in a cavern, then an innocent rustic in a smock, then a belaced courtier of the Shakspearian drama, and then a red-shirted creature of the sensational.

Great application—for he must study hundreds of new parts in the course of the year;

Great patience—for he must wait and wait and bide his time for advancement through many weary seasons;

Great hopefulness—for he must never despair;

Great amiability—for he must endure the insults of stars and the jeers of his equals.

In fact—it requires more real ability to be a fourth-rate actor with his ceaseless and unnoticed labours, than to be a distinguished star who has half-a dozen stage pieces which he enacts all the year round, and who sees his name constantly mentioned in the papers.

It is a matter of congratulation that we are now having a better class of people in the humbler roles. If every stage only had a competent manager, to assist in developing the young talents, many famous actors might be made of the staff at present under command.

As it is, Mr. Williamson, of Wallack’s company, Mr. Burrows, of the Winter Garden, and Mr. Rockwell, of the Olympic, promise (if their modesty continues) to be actors of no mean order five years hence. But Mr. Williamson will be better than them all—not because he is more ambitious—but because he is more attentive and less vain!

Will the little people of the drama take some brief advice?

Give as much time to your dressing as a great actor gives to his. When Florence, the comedian, was a utility man, he used to make his own dresses and wigs for every little part he played—in order to look the character he was cast for. Florence was only a poor boy too, and had to stint himself to do it.

Never be ashamed, when on the stage in the presence of a “star,” to speak your lines with the emphasis you shall have studied in your own chamber.

Do not spend your leisure in idleness with those on whose level you now are, but retire early to your homes and study for a higher position.

Do not criticise the actor above you in the discontented circles of the green room, but try and learn from him how to be as good or as great as he. Fleury, the greatest of French comedians, when in his glory under the Empire, one night consented to play a part of but one scene, and in which he had but five words to speak. It was that of an insignificant old seigneur, to whom an appeal is made by a poor woman whose husband upon their wedding day is under arrest. Fleury seemed to listen to her at first, with the indifference with which a nobIeman usually receives the applications of such rude and ignorant peasants as she pretended to be; then all at once struck with the dignity of her manner and sentiments he fixed his eyes upon her, and while continuing to listen, as if by instinctive, almost involuntary movement, his hand was raised by degrees to his hat, which he finally raised from his head and lowered before her as if mechanically. When the wife was done speaking the old man was in the attitude of most respectful obeisance. The pantomime was so true, so delicate—it expressed so naturally the feeling of respect and surprise at finding the woman so superior to what she seemed, that the effect was electrical, and Fleury, who had not spoken a single word, was greeted with the most tumultuous applause.

A poor devil of an actor, who usually took the part, could not understand this at all: “Only see,” said he, “what prejudice does. Fleury got three rounds of applause just for taking off his hat; and I never got any applause in the part—and yet I never move my hat at all.”

But this is one thing the Little People must learn, above all, and remember—that if actors deserve it the public will reward them whether they are “stars” or not.

Always ask yourself what such or such a character would be apt to do in real life and govern yourself accordingly—never forgetting that in real life the simple message of a servant conveying important news is always as impressive as the circumstances justify. 

When a servant says: “Sir, your carriage is waiting”—he will, of course, do so in a business-like way. But should he have to announce: “Sir, your son is dead”—in real life, he would undoubtedly exhibit as much real concern in face and voice as the person whom he informs would be likely to feel. This simple illustration presents the case. Know the object of what you have to say, and ordinary discretion will suggest the mode of saying it.

Since we have no school of acting whence professionals may graduate, every humble performer must make his closet his college and tutor himself. With his looking-glass, his book, and a good deal of diligent observation and thought, every actor may be an artist, but it is equally certain that with foolish company, and discontented mind and disordered life—every drudge will remain such to his dying day.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

I think those remarks are well worth a young actor’s study.

Australian children are wonderfully gifted. There are no brighter children on the stage to he found anywhere. Go and see the children dancing in the Pantomime now: it’s a pleasure to watch how well and heartily they do it.

Australian Drama

About Australian drama? Room for it? Of course there is room for it. Hundreds, I might almost say thousands, of plays have been submitted to me, but the authors are either too literary, or they forget the prime requisites of a play. What are those? Well, a good play must have heart interest. It must hit the audience below the collar button. And it must have head: it must have a good plot, and not be intellectually below contempt. And in the third place it must admit of an appeal to the eye. Perhaps I should have put these qualities in the reverse order. The audience has first to be pleased through the eye; then it must have the appeal to the heart; and then there should be sufficient plot, sufficient intelligence, to leave a pleasant after-taste in memory.

If you look over all the plays that have been great successes, right from the very beginning, you will find they all have these qualities. There must be the love interest, there must be the plot, and the language must not be above the heads of the average playgoer. People go to the theatre as a distraction, as an amusement, as a relaxation after the toil of the day, so that they can drop their burdens and forget their troubles for a little while. They do not go to be instructed, or to be puzzled, or to be bored—and being human beings, the same human qualities appeal to them generation after generation. Take any play that has been a striking success—take The Silver King. That shows you what I mean. We can revive that play time after time, and always to good audiences. It has the love interest, it has the plot, and it is not a stupid play—though it does not profess to deal in problems. There is the child interest in it which always appeals to an audience, and it admits of being well staged so that it attracts the eye.

Where Local Drama Fails

So far Australian drama has failed to give us these things, or to put them in the right way. Certainly an Australian play could be made like In Mizzoura, but not so well,  because in Australia the types have not crystallised yet. America has been longer settled, and the Dutchman, the Negro, the Yankee, the Irishman, have all become well-known types of national life. In Australia it is not so. There is a bushman, of course, but he is not so definite a type as those I have mentioned, and he is not comparatively so interesting to a city audience.

Struck Oil is another play of the kind I mean. There is the old father—simple, honest, shrewd and kindly, and his happy laughing daughter. You see them together—father and child. The man goes away to the war, and Deacon Skinner comes in—the villain of the piece—the same old villain that you find in a hundred pieces. There seems to be nothing extraordinary in the story, yet that play always holds the audience, because it is sincere, because it is human, because it is true. Those are the keynotes of the play that lasts—humanity, sincerity, truth.

Of course there have been some fair Australian plays. Alfred Dampier did well with His Natural Life and Robbery Under Arms; and those are typical Australian plays. Very good in their way, no doubt, and in a sense representative. The fault I find with them is that they always bring in the revolver. That is always introduced when the dramatist gets in a difficulty. There is the bushranger, the heroine, and the villain, and they get along all right up to a certain point—then somebody must be shot in order to clear the air and let the play proceed. That seems to me to show a certain poverty of invention. A play should go easily and naturally, and nothing outrageous should occur in it. I suppose in convict and bushranging days the revolver episode was the natural thing; but it isn’t the natural thing now, and I don’t see why it should be so characteristic of the Australian drama we have. The Sunny South was another very good play of George Darrell’s—his best, I think. That was Australian; and there again—he had to use the revolver.

George Darrell. Photo by J.W. Lindt.

National Library of Australia, Canberra

Alfred Dampier, c.1875

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

A scene from the Alfred Dampier and Garnet Walch play Robbery Under Arms at Her Majesty’s Theatre, Sydney (1890). National Library of Australia, Canberra.

The Way to Write a Play

Well, your authors have got to write better before they will make a really successful play. The way seems obvious, and yet they don’t manage it. Authors bring plays to me: I have taken lots of trouble with some of them; and I’ve pointed out this thing and that which my experience tells me must be altered. They always profess themselves quite ready to alter and improve—always glad of suggestions, and so on—but somehow they don’t carry out the suggestions. They take the play away and bring it back, revised, but the faults are there just as before. It almost seems as if it wanted two men to write an Australian play, one to create it, and another to put it into shape for the stage. In the case of The Silver King the two authors had the valuable assistance of the technical knowledge and stagecraft of Wilson Barrett.

Perhaps that is why so many journalists fail. Their ideas are good enough, their language is good enough—sometimes a little bit too good—but it isn’t the kind that tells on the stage, and they don’t get the situations right. Then, they don’t seem to me to take enough trouble at the beginning. Now, I have had good authors under contract to me to write plays—Dion Boucicault and W.S. Gilbert, for example—and I know something of the way they set about it. I was particularly impressed with the trouble Gilbert took with his scenario: it was almost as long as the play. He wrote the scenario first to get his general effect, his main points, and his leading situations; and he spared no pains to put everything in the exact place where it was wanted for stage representation. It was only after he had made a scenario that would act that he set to work and wrote the play, filling in the language, creating the characters, and polishing every line until, in any play of Gilbert’s, you will find there is very little that can be dispensed with—very little indeed that can be cut with advantage. The reason is, as I say, that he has his careful scenario behind his language: his play is built before it  is decorated.

W.S. Gilbert, 1890. Photo by Herbert Rose Barraud.

National Portrait Gallery, London

Dion Boucicault

New York Public Library, New York

Words and Plot

A drama may be literature, but the words are not the essential thing about it. The essential thing is that it should live and move like a piece of real life—and that depends on the construction. Words are only the clothes, the dress of the drama itself. Struck Oil, for example, was in a great measure written upon the stage, as you might say. My part wasn’t even committed to paper until we had taken it all round Australia. We used what we call a skeleton manuscript, with only the cues given, and one night a good phrase would occur, another night we would invent a little bit of business, and so on, until the whole thing was different from the play as conceived by the original writer. But, mind you, behind the whole there was always the living interest—the heart-interest that I have spoken of. That must be the basis of a really successful play: that is what gives it vitality. Then the play must be built so that this interest can be effectively displayed, and last of all you drape it with words to interpret the interest and construction to the audience.

Australian authors usually seem to go the other way about. They write the words, and as long as the thing makes a continuous story, and the language is good, they seem to think the play looks right. But all they do in most cases is to dress a lay figure. You have to start from the other end—start from human emotions, human instincts, and base your plot on them, and only when you’re sure you have the play, and the interest of the play, and the construction of the play, go on to the language. In real living drama the language is the last thing to think about.

The First Act

Another thing about a play is that when you get a good one it goes of itself, it unfolds itself. I agree that the last act should always be the strongest: too much strength in the first act is a mistake—because you can't live up to it. I remember a very interesting example of that in a New York theatre. There was a play of Dion Boucicault’s—I think it was The Shenandoah. The first act simply amazed the audience—they couldn’t contain themselves. They applauded and applauded. The stage manager came round to Boucicault in a great state of excitement. “We've got them this time, Mr. Boucicault.” “No,” says Boucicault, “no.” “What?” said the other fellow. “What? Don’t you hear that applause?” “No,” says Boucicault, “we’re done. The play’s a failure. That first act is too strong.” And it turned out exactly as he said. The play could not live up to the first act, and it never succeeded. That shows you how stage experience and stage insight come in. Of course the elder Boucicault was a very clever man, one of the very cleverest men that have been connected with the modern stage. He was a great author, he was a great actor, and he was a great stage manager—a man with great ideas.

It is always difficult to foretell the success or failure of a play from the first act, and when I am telegraphing to my partners after the first act of a first performance I am always very careful to add some qualifying words. Sometimes the first act appears to go very well indeed, but you can’t trust it. In order to be quite sure, you have to wait. There is something in the attitude of an audience that tells you things are going right, or they are not going right—some magnetism, quite apart from the obvious signs. I mean by obvious signs, for example, an audience coughing, or things like that. When you hear a few little coughs, that clearing of the throat, you have to pay attention: something’s going wrong.

The play’s not holding the attention of the audience. The man in the chair has lost interest, and as soon as he ceases to be absorbed with the stage he turns his head away and gives that little cough—the manager’s danger-signal.

The Verdict of the Audience

A very curious thing is the way in which intelligence about a play is communicated. You produce a play on Saturday night. Everything appears to go well, and yet you’re not convinced. The audience separate and go away, and then—the fate of the play is settled between Saturday night and Monday night. Perhaps you get flourishing notices in the papers on Monday morning, after a first-rate house on Saturday night, and yet Monday morning’s booking falls off, and Monday night’s house drops to half, and the play does not run. It has failed to hit them, somehow.  The people settle it going home in the trams, or when they meet on Sunday: I don't know how. Time and again that has happened. A successful Saturday night; first-rate press notices on Monday; and on Monday night—the audience missing! They’ve given their verdict going home in the trams, and the air has carried it like microbes.

Charles Warner, 1891. Photo by Walery.

National Portrait Gallery, London

The Centennial Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 10, May 1889, p.699

National Library of Australia, Canberra

Captain Swift was a case like that. We opened in Captain Swift at the Theatre Royal in Sydney. It seemed a good play, with popular Charles Warner in the title role; it had a splendid reception, got splendid notices in the papers; and yet there was a poor house on Monday night, and it only ran a fortnight. In England a manager has time to recast and re-model his plays, and so he can convert a failure into a success. Several of George Edwardes’ musical comedies have been first-night failures. The audience simply wouldn’t stand them—but he has improved them night by night, and turned them into successes. In Australia we can’t do that, because the average run of a piece doesn’t give us time. In London people keep on going to the house, and there is population enough to give the manager a chance at mending. 

English and Australian Audiences

Perhaps English audiences are creatures of habit to a greater extent than Australian. They get used to an actor; they get used to a theatre; and as long as that actor and that theatre are above ground they will never leave them if they can help it. The Australian audience wants the actor and the theatre to justify themselves every time. If an actor fails in a new part, it doesn’t matter how often he’s succeeded before; if a new piece fails, it doesn’t matter how many other pieces have succeeded before: the audience stay away until the actor or the theatre offers them something better. Australian audiences are hard to please in that way. They’ve been used to the best things, and they want the best things all the time.

You may be sure that sooner or later an Australian author will make a good play on the lines I’ve suggested, and if it is good the Australian audience will soon let him know. You can trust their judgment, you can trust their appreciation. I have mentioned two or three Australian plays; we have had one or two good musical dramas like Tapu, with bright, original music; and I think that our pantomimes, such as Djin-Djin and Matsa, will bear comparison with anything of the kind done anywhere. And in Parsifal, just now, you have a successful play that’s made right on the Australian premises—our own scenery, our own scenic artists, our own costumes, as well as our own play. The whole thing is done here. In London it is quite different.  A theatrical manager sends for his costumes to one place, for his scenery to another, and so on. I don’t suppose there is a London theatre that employs a permanent staff of scenic artists. Here we have to do everything, as I say, on the premises.

Illustration by Will R. Barnes, 1895

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Illustration by Will R. Barnes, 1896

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Australian audiences are in many ways the best in the world. They are most difficult to please, for the reason that they have been accustomed to nothing but the best. Almost every play is tried in London or New York before it is staged here, and you never see the failures. You get scenery and costumes as good as London’s, and you get the most attractive plays. So audiences have naturally a high standard, and when a manager falls below that standard they are apt to complain. On the other hand, when they are pleased they support you well. They are very intelligent, very responsive, and very ready to excuse accidental shortcomings. When they do not like a play they do not hiss or make a row, they simply stay away—and they stay away with very great unanimity.

An Actor and His Part

When the Australian audience likes you their applause is very genuine. It’s a great thing to feel that you have an audience in your hands, and that their emotions respond directly to those you are portraying. The part I myself like best is the part which gives you an opportunity to make an audience cry one minute and laugh the next. “John Stofel” is such a part, and “Rip Van Winkle.” The scene where the old man is trying to recall himself to his daughter’s memory, I have always considered a test of the strength of my acting. I’ve never failed in that part to make the actress who was taking the daughter’s part cry—really cry. Never but once—the exception was a woman who paid no attention at all: she might just as well have been eating lollies. She wasn’t really concentrating her attention on the business of the piece. So I said to her one day, “Why don’t you wake up and listen to what is going on? Surely you have feelings: surely you understand the scene?” After that she did pay a little more attention, and she did feel the pathos. Before she had been letting the mind wander, with the result that I could not touch her at all.

An actor, I think, must keep control of himself, he must not let himself, as people say, be “carried away by the part,” for the result is that he ceases to play the part. He is merely himself. But you can feel a part intensely, and still remain in full possession of your faculties. You can realise the way the thing is going, and watch it, and decide how it shall go. To lose control so far that you forget you are on the stage at all—well, I doubt if it ever happens; and if it did happen, I should think the actor had made a mistake. He is there to act the part and if he forgets that he forgets the reason of his presence on the stage.

Stage Aspirants and “Twang”

One thing I do not like to notice, and it is a thing I have remarked about before: that is the twang that so many Australian children are growing up with. To my mind it is the result of simple carelessness. The children are not taught at school or at home to speak with the proper intonation. At the school, of course, the teachers may be as bad as the scholars. I think parents are at fault for not correcting their children in the home; I think teachers are at fault for not correcting the children in the school; and I think the Government is at fault for not correcting the teachers—for not saying that the first qualification of the teacher should be that he can speak correctly the language he is using. Government should insist that teachers are properly trained before they become teachers at all.

I hear this twang, of course, very frequently in the girls that come to me and offer to sing or act. So many of them have charming voices and excellent qualifications otherwise, if they would only speak correctly. Many, I am sorry to say, have no qualifications at all; and I think that girls who are aiming at a stage career should at the very outset of their training see somebody who would tell them this—somebody who would be able to say decisively that their voice, or their age, or their appearance disqualifies them for the stage. That would save many of them from wasting years at work which they ought never to have undertaken.

Some Old Parts

My favourite part—well, I can’t tell you that—I've succeeded in many. “John Stofel” in Struck Oil was a very good part, of course; and that part of “Sim” in Wild Oats was very popular in its day. Then I loved to play “Dick Swiveller,” “Kerry,” “Rip Van Winkle,” and lots of other parts which blended pathos and comedy. I can remember the first big round of applause I ever got—it was when as a boy of sixteen I took the part of “Ross” in Macbeth, and was applauded for the lines of Ross’s reply to Macduff: “Stands Scotland where it did?”

          Alas! poor country;
Almost afraid to know itself. It cannot
Be call’d our mother, but our grave; where nothing,
But who knows nothing, is once seen to smile;
Where sighs and groans and shrieks that rent the air
Are made, not mark’d; where violent sorrow seems
A modern ecstasy; the dead men’s knell
Is there scarce ask’d for who; and good men’s lives
Expire before the flowers in their caps,
Dying or ere they sicken.

That seems a very long time ago now, and indeed it is a long time since I thought about these things at all. Theatrical management keeps you too busy for personal recollections. It’s not alone keeping the companies going—though that is no light task in itself—but sometimes I have to take part in stage management. In Parsifal, for example, I staged the play and invented things as I went along. Then there is the continual labour of keeping in touch in order to be up to date. Weekly letters come from our agents in London and New York telling us what is going on there, and these have to be carefully considered. You have to keep an eye open for new men—for rising talent both in the field of authors and in the acting field. You have to see not only that the whole machine works, but that every part of it works so well that there is the least possible friction.

Act 1 scene 1 from Parsifal—Summit of the Grail Mount (scenery by W.R. Coleman). The old King of the Holy Grail, Titurel, blesses his son Amfortas as he sets out, armed with the Sacred Spear to attack the castle of the sorcerer Klingsor. State Library of New South Wales, Sydney.

A Manager’s Responsibility

And then you keep a general lookout on what’s going on around you. Often I come home from my office and bring my work with me, and my secretary to deal with a heap of correspondence that can’t be crammed into the day; and then, maybe, it’s necessary to sit up till two or three in the morning reading plays, or looking over the English and American dramatic papers, so as to miss nothing that will be of service. It requires constant watchfulness to keep you from falling behind and I think I can say that I am well abreast of everything that is doing in the theatrical world. But the labour it involves!—in addition to the responsibility and worry. That is what has made me ask myself frequently of late what am I getting out of it all.

Here I am at 61, still straining at the collar. Well, I haven’t many more years to play with, and I ask myself should I not try and get a little leisure. There is no such thing as leisure in management; the responsibility is always with you. And I think not only of myself, but of my wife and children. I would like to give my children the chances which I have often regretted missing for myself. My little girl Marjorie, for example, whose picture by Longstaff you see over yonder—will soon be of an age to travel, and I should like her to see the best pictures, hear the best music, read the best books, attend the best theatres, and meet bright, clever people. That, I think, is the best education a girl can have, and she should have it in her youth when her mind is receptive.

And while my children are growing up, I want to be with them. To me it is the greatest pleasure in life to be in the company of children. My other little girl had a birthday party in Melbourne the other day; she was four years old: so all her little friends came to luncheon, and afterwards they went along to the theatre to see Mother Goose—there happened to be a matinee performance; and I tell you the day I spent with them, watching them enjoy themselves so heartily, was one of the pleasantest I can remember. There happened to be a lot of little girls from the Orphan Asylum up in the gallery; and it was good to watch them too.

JCW with his wife, Mary and youngest daughter, Viola in the drawing room of their home ‘Tudor’ at Elizabeth Bay, Sydney in 1907. The portrait by Longstaff of Marjorie is to the right.

Harry Phydora as ‘Mother Goose’, 1907

National Library of Australia, Canberra

Personal Plans

So I should like to take my family and go away for a long trip, entirely free from care and worry. But the time is not yet come: for my business engagements have still some years to run. I am going to try and slacken the strain gradually. Next week, for example, I am going to New Zealand. I took a company through New Zealand twenty-five years ago; but since then I have not been back except on hurried visits, so I am going to renew my acquaintance with the country under its changed and improved conditions, and I shall spend some time in visiting all the leading towns. The New Zealand public always treat my companies splendidly. I shall keep in touch, of course, with my partners, who already relieve me of a great deal of the strain of management, but I shall try to make my visit as much of a holiday as possible. Perhaps later on I shall take a long trip to Europe, giving myself more leisure than I have previously had, and devoting my attention rather to securing new material, new plays and new actors, than to the direct business of management. So possibly I shall be able to slacken off work by degrees.

I’m not complaining; I’m explaining. In many ways I’m a fortunate man. I am deeply and sincerely grateful to the friends, and partners, and actors and actresses, and other assistants, who have made my success possible; and I am especially grateful to the Australian people, who have given me so warm a welcome and have made me one of themselves. As I told you, I’m still an American, for I don’t think a man should disown the country he was born in. But I’m Australian too, and when I have had the long holiday that I feel is necessary to my family and myself, this is the country I’m coming back to; this is the country where I want to live and die.

THE BOOKFELLOW, 31 January 1907, pp.14–17

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Endnotes

Compiled by Robert Morrison

Plays mentioned in the article:

In Mizzoura—4 act comedy-drama by Augustus Thomas premiered at Hooley’s Theatre, Chicago on 7 August 1893; written as a star vehicle for American comedian, Nat Goodwin who played in its Australian premiere at the Princess’s Theatre, Melbourne on 1 August 1896 for a 1 week season and subsequently on tour amongst his repertoire of plays.

For the Term of His Natural Life—Drama in 6 tableaux and a prologue by Thomas Somers (pseud. of Thomas Walker) and Alfred Dampier, based on Marcus Clarke’s novel His Natural Life (1874) premiered at the Royal Standard Theatre in Sydney on 5 June 1886 and played for an initial 42 performances. The play was subsequently revised by Walker and Dampier and produced at Her Majesty’s Theatre, Sydney on 30 November 1895 for an initial 19 performances.

Robbery Under Arms—5 act drama by Alfred Dampier and Garnet Walch, founded on Rolf Boldrewood’s novel (of 1888) premiered at the Alexandra Theatre, Melbourne on 1 March 1890 and ran for an initial 42 performances.

The Sunny South—5 act drama by George Darrell premiered at the Opera House, Melbourne on 31 March 1883 for an initial season of 36 performances.

Struck Oil; or, The Pennsylvania Dutchman—3 act comedy-drama, based on the unproduced play The German Recruit by Sam W. Smith, adapted and expanded by Clay Greene as The Deed, or Five Years Away; subsequently retitled with further revisions by J.C. Williamson, premiered at Salt Lake City, Utah on 23 February 1874 and received its Australian premiere at the Theatre Royal, Melbourne on 1 August 1874 for an initial 43 performances. This was followed by a return season of a further 13 performances commencing on Derby Day, 31 October and “every night during the Great Cup Week” concluding on 14 November. The play was then given a “Farewell Performance” as a Complimentary Benefit for the Williamsons on the final night of their Melbourne season on 21 December 1874, resulting in a record tally of 57 performances. (The original 1874 orchestra parts for the incidental music for Struck Oil remain extant in the “J.C. Williamson collection of performance materials” archived at the National Library of Australia in Canberra—see https://trove.nla.gov.au/version/23704496)

The Shenandoah—no play of that title is listed amongst the works of Dion Boucicault, however JCW may have been referring to Boucicault’s Belle Lamar, a play based on an episode of the American Civil War set in the Shenandoah Valley in the Spring of 1862, which opened at Booth’s Theatre, New York on 10 August 1874, and, failing to live up to audience expectations, closed on 13 September after a limited run of 34 performances. Although JCW was performing in Melbourne at the time and did not witness the play at first hand, he would have subsequently heard the anecdote about its failure at a later date, possibly from Boucicault himself.

The Silver King—5 act drama by Henry Arthur Jones and Henry Herman premiered at the Princess’s Theatre, London on 16 November 1882 and received its Australian premiere at the Theatre Royal, Melbourne on 27 October 1883 for an initial run of 49 performances. (The biographical Life and Letters of Henry Arthur Jones by his daughter, Doris Arthur Jones [Victor Gollancz, London: 1930] quoted Jones with regard to the play’s authorship: “Herman gave me the end of the second act, but he never wrote a line of it.”) Its popularity was such that it was regularly revived in Australia up to the late 1920s.

Captain Swift—4 act comedy-drama by Australian playwright, Charles Haddon Chambers premiered at the Haymarket Theatre, London on 20 June 1888 and received its Australian premiere at the Theatre Royal, Sydney on 16 February 1889 for a run of 12 performances. (In the original published text of his article JCW erroneously stated that the play had opened at the Princess’s in Melbourne, but this has been amended in the present transcription. The play was not included amongst Charles Warner’s repertoire during his prior Melbourne season at the Princess's Theatre from 31 March to 14 June 1888 and was only added during his later Sydney season at the Theatre Royal, after it had achieved success in London in Beerbohm Tree’s production.)  (See also “The Idiosyncrasies of the Australian Play-goer” by Gerald Marr Thompson in The Centennial Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 10; May 1889, p.699—https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-3083699840/view?sectionId=nla.obj-3089613560)

Tapu; or, A Tale of a Maori Pah—2 act comic opera with a book by Arthur H. Adams and music by Alfred Hill premiered at the Opera House in Wellington, New Zealand on 16 February 1903 for a season of 6 performances and received its Australian premiere at Her Majesty’s Theatre, Sydney on 9 July 1904 for an initial run of 19 performances. (The original orchestra parts for Tapu remain extant in the “J.C. Williamson collection of performance materials” archived at the National Library of Australia in Canberra—see https://trove.nla.gov.au/version/15801772)

Djin-Djin: The Japanese Bogie Man—pantomime by Bert Royle and J.C. Williamson, with music by Leon Caron and additional numbers by H.J. Pack, premiered at the Princess’s Theatre, Melbourne on 26 December 1895 for a seven-week season. (The original orchestra parts for Djin-Djinremain extant in the “J.C. Williamson collection of performance materials” archived at the National Library of Australia in Canberra—see https://trove.nla.gov.au/version/21824012 ; the published script is also available to read on-line from State Library Victoria at https://viewer.slv.vic.gov.au/?entity=IE6980073&file=FL19756886&mode=browse)

Matsa: Queen of Fire—pantomime by Bert Royle and J.C. Williamson, with music by Leon Caron and George Pack, premiered at the Princess’s Theatre, Melbourne on 26 December 1896 for a seven week season. (The published script is available to read on-line from State Library Victoria at https://viewer.slv.vic.gov.au/?entity=IE4122792&mode=browse)

Parsifal; or, The Redemption of Kundry—4 act drama by Rev. Thomas Hilhouse Taylor premiered at Her Majesty’s Theatre, Sydney on 22 December 1906 for an initial season of 51 performances. (Incidental music selected, arranged and composed by Christian Hellemann, and included the Prelude to Wagner’s opera.)

J.C. Williamson’s favourite parts included:

“John Stofel” in Struck Oil (see play details above).

“Sim” in Wild Oats—a comedy in 5 acts by John O’Keefe (which premiered in London at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden on 16 April 1791), was first played by JCW for a season at Wallack’s Theatre, New York which commenced on 20 December 1869.

“Dick Swiveller” in Little Nell and the Marchioness—a 4 act drama by John Brougham (“Partly adapted from the principal incidents of Charles Dicken’s The Old Curiosity Shop”), was first played by JCW for a season at Wallack’s Theatre, New York from 15 August 1867 opposite Lotta Crabtree in the dual title roles. He subsequently reprised the role for a two week season at the Theatre Royal, Melbourne, which commenced on 17 October 1874, in which JCW’s first wife, Maggie Moore played the dual roles of “Little Nell” and “The Marchioness”, and her brother, James Moore made his Australian debut.

“Kerry” in Kerry; or Night and Morning—a one-act play by Dion Boucicault, in which the title role was apparently first played by JCW at the Theatre Royal, Melbourne during a four week season, firstly as a curtain-raiser to Uncle Tom’s Cabin— “an emotional drama in 3 acts founded upon incidents connected with the world-read novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe” (in which JCW played the title role and Maggie played “Topsy”) from 21 September 1874 and again as a curtain-raiser to The Fairy Circle; or O’Carolan’s Dream— “a romantic and legendary drama” in 3 acts by H.P. Grattan (in which JCW played “Con O’Carolan” and Maggie played his wife “Molshee”) which commenced on 3 October 1874.

“Rip Van Winkle” in Rip Van Winkle—a 3 act drama by Joseph Jefferson (based on the story by Washington Irving) first performed by Jefferson at Washington D.C. in the U.S. in 1859 and in Australia at the Royal Victoria Theatre, Sydney on 3 February 1862, and subsequently revised by Dion Boucicault for a production at the Haymarket Theatre, London, starring Jefferson, which premiered on 4 September 1865. JCW first played the title role in the Australian premiere of Boucicault’s revised version for a two-week season at the Theatre Royal, Melbourne, which commenced on 30 November 1874. Maggie Moore was suffering from a severe cold at the time, so in order to give her a rest from performing, he hurriedly learned the role in three days and played it for the first time the following Monday. He subsequently wrote in a letter (dated 12 December 1874) to his actor friend, Henry Edwards in San Francisco: “I achieved a complete success the first night, and greatly improved upon it afterward, the press were unanimous in their praise. We played it two weeks.”    

Theatre Royal, Melbourne, 1877. Photo by N.J. Caire.

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Maggie Moore & JCW, c.1874. Photo by Bardwell, Ballarat.

National Library of Australia, Canberra

Additional Sources

Eric Irvin, Dictionary of the Australian Theatre 1788–1914 (Hale & Iremonger, Sydney:1985)

Ian G. Dicker, J.C.W. —A Short Biography of James Cassius Williamson[The Elizabeth Tudor Press, NSW: 1974]

Lynn Earl Orr, Dion Boucicault and the Nineteenth Century Theatre: A Biography [Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College: 1953]

The New York Times

The Argus (Melbourne)

Postscript

An insight into the financial aspects of The Firm and the scale of its operations in Australia and New Zealand in the era in which J.C. Williamson was interviewed is provided by the following newspaper article published in 1906.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

DRAMA AS AN INDUSTRY

MR. J. C. WILLIAMSON’S ENTERPRISES.

SALARY LIST OVER £100,000.

The relation of the stage to literature, to public morals, to the church are subjects of frequent discussion and controversy. Its relation to the industrial life of the community is never considered. The economist and the statist who delve fearlessly into almost all sorts and conditions of life and occupation, hang back from the stage door, as nervous as the youth with his first billet doux. All the same, the stage is a considerable factor in industry, and even in a population relatively small, like that of Australia, the magnitude and extent of its operations are unguessed by most of those who are excellently acquainted with it from the front of the house.

The various companies now controlled by the firm of Messrs. Williamson, Tallis and Ramaciotti include no fewer than 650 persons on the permanent staff. Of these 187 are actors or actresses, 83 musicians, and 52 mechanists and stage hands; while what might be termed the “headquarters staff” —to which falls the task of supervising the whole of this vast enterprise through the managers of the various departments—numbers 12. In addition to these persons, there is a large “floating” staff, consisting of the supers and assistants picked up at the cities as they are reached by the different theatrical companies. Although, of course, only casually employed, those who draw salary in the course of a year in this way must number nearly as many as the regular members of companies.  Indirectly there are a host of persons who derive work and wages from the enterprises. In fact it is only necessary to consider the immense figures supplied yesterday by Mr. J.C. Williamson to realise how much of the shilling which the playgoer pays for his amphitheatre seat is distributed again in wages to a multitude of trades. When the money has reached the treasury of the theatre the cue has come for “Enter Omnes.”

In salaries and wages, Mr Williamson paid away during the year 1905 no less than £110,183 [approx. equivalent to $17,435,832 in today’s currency], the greater part going to Australians. The printing and advertising cost £22,469 [$3,555,591]. The columns of advertisements published throughout Australia and New Zealand, placed end to end, would reach over two miles [approx. 3.2 km]; while the posters and bills exhibited on hoardings or walls, covered an area just under three acres [approx.1.2 hectares].

The rent bill amounted to £19,428 [$3,074,370], and the cost of lighting was £9,783 [$1,548,104]. Scenery cost no less than £10,593 [$1,676,282], 14 square miles [approx. 22.5 square km] of new canvas and 9½ miles [approx.15.3 km] of new timber having been used.  Even these immense figures do not represent all the raw material which was transmuted into landscapes and architecture, for nearly as much old canvas and timber again was repainted, and made available for stage presentation. Nearly the whole of the money spent under this head is distributed in Australia. There is a complete staff of scenic artists and assistants at both Melbourne and Sydney. The same system is followed in respect to the properties, which, inclusive of furniture and furnishings, absorbed £6,627 [$1,048,685]; and the costumes, in which the year’s expenditure was £5,390 [$852,937]. The employees in the costume department and wardrobe stores work without cessation all the year round.  Whether a big production is approaching makes but little difference to them. There is always something to do, and in the storerooms the strenuous life is discovered. In Sydney the whole of a building, formerly used as a skating rink, is used to store surplus wardrobe. The floor space is covered with hundreds of huge baskets, and day after day the contents of these are taken out and sorted, brushed, exposed to air and sunlight, and repacked with a fresh supply of preventives against the ravages of moths. In this store the costumes are the accumulation of 25 years of management, dating back to the time when the firm of Williamson, Garner, and Musgrove dominated the Australian stage. Added to the costumes purchased by this firm are those obtained during the periods when Mr. Williamson and Garner were in partnership, when Mr. Williamson controlled the enterprise alone, when Mr. Musgrove joined him, and when, subsequently, after another period of sole proprietorship, he became the senior partner of the present firm.

“These costumes would be worth a fortune for anybody who could find a use for them,” said Mr. Williamson. “In England and America managers are able to dispose of their surplus stocks for the provincial tours. Here there are no such means of recovering a portion of the initial expense. We cannot sell the costumes. All we can do is keep them in order, on the off chance of making use of the parts as opportunity arises.”

In 1905 over £5,000 [$791,222] was paid away in royalties to authors and others holding the copyrights of plays produced. In addition to such plays, however, Mr. Williamson holds the full Australasian rights of 105 musical operas and musical plays, 40 comedies, and 91 dramas which he has at different times bought outright. Such purchases have been spread over many years, and include the most successful musical and dramatic works produced in London for the last 20 years, as well as many American successes.

One of the largest items in expenditure is transportation. Last year £12,858 [$2,034,705] was expended in fares and freight. The Gilbert and Sullivan Company, which finished its Sydney season last Friday, started immediately for Adelaide, there to take the steamer for Perth, where it opens on October 1. For this season of three weeks only over 80 persons were despatched, and the fares alone amounted to over £1,000 [$158,244]. Companies now travel in a manner never dreamed of 10 years ago, the most striking instance of all being provided by the record of one week in 1905.  Within seven days the Repertoire Company started from Perth to Sydney; the Royal Comic Opera Company travelled by special train from Sydney to Port Adelaide to catch the steamer for Perth; the Nance O’Neill Company arrived in Sydney from San Francisco, and took train immediately for Melbourne; the Andrew Mack Company travelled to Sydney; the Gilbert and Sullivan Company from Melbourne to Sydney; the Tittell Brune Company from Melbourne to Wellington via Sydney; and the Knight-Jefferies Company from Sydney to Brisbane. During last year the various companies covered 76,674 miles [approx.123,395 km].

The Argus (Melbourne), Tuesday, 25 September 1906, p.5, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article9655665

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

N.B. Ticket prices for JCW productions in 1905 amounted to 5/ (shillings) (for seats in the Dress Circle & Orchestra Stalls), 3/ (Stalls), 2/ (Back of the Stalls) and 1/ (Ampitheatre or Gallery) =  $39.56, $23.74, $15.82 and $7.91 respectively in today’s currency.

Princess’ Theatre, Melbourne, 1893. Photo by Charles Rudd. State Library Victoria, Melbourne.

Another celebrity was Mr J.C. Williamson, who came to us accompanied by his wife, Miss Maggie Moore, from America, in 1874. They opened at the Theatre Royal on 1st August. Maggie Moore had a good singing voice; she went on the stage when only eight years of age. Their opening piece was “Struck Oil”, which ran for 57 nights. It was so successful that it was taken to Ballarat, Bendigo and Castlemaine. The company went on to Sydney and played the same piece for 20 weeks. “Struck Oil” was, I believe, the best money-making piece ever produced in Australia. After 12 months’ continued success in Australia, Mr and Mrs Williamson went to India, America and Great Britain, meeting with continued success everywhere. They returned to Australia in 1879. Mr Williamson relinquished acting and developed all his energies and experiences to theatrical management. His name is still borne by a theatrical management now carrying on business here.

JC Williamson. Photo by Bradley & Rulofson, San Francisco.

State Library of NSW, Sydney

Maggie Moore. Photo by Tuttle & Co., Sydney.

State Library of NSW, Sydney

We have had Maggie Moore with us until quite recently, when she announced her intention of departing for her native state, San Francisco. A special matinee was held in her honour on 13th of October 1925. Her memory will ever remain fresh in the minds of those who have been privileged to see her on the stage.¹

Frederick Marshall must not be forgotten. He came here under Garner’s management. He was a highly finished actor, carefully studying the characters he had to portray, his principal ones being Markham in “Friends”, Perkins Middlewick in “Our Boys”, and Quilp in “The Old Curiosity Shop.”

Another of our visitors was Mr William Creswick who gained distinction as a tragedian in the Old World. It was late in life when he came to Australia, and his brilliancy had rather faded. His greatest character was that of Sir Giles Overreach.

Dion Boucicault Sr. Photo by Bradley & Rulofson, San Francisco.

State Library of NSW, Sydney

G.W. Anson as Eccles in Caste. Photo by Falk, Sydney.

Falk Album, Theatre Heritage Australia

Dion Boucicault visited us in 1885. He was distinguished not only as an actor but also as an author. His comedy of “London Assurance” made him famous. His first appearance in Melbourne was as Conn O’Kelly in “The Shaughraun”, his own Irish drama. When he left these shores, he left behind him a son and daughter, Mr “Dot” and Miss Nina Boucicault, who inherited the talent of their father and proved admirable additions to the comedy company of Mr and Mrs Robert Brough.

Anson was on our boards for some time. The principal character in which I remember him was that of Eccles in “Caste”, which was a truly clever performance.

Mr John Dunn, the original “Jim Crowe”, came here accompanied by his two accomplished daughters and played with ultimate success. The eldest, Rose, was married to a well-to-do grain broker, Mr L.L. Lewis, who was also a skilled musician. He was organist in St John’s Church, Toorak, where I was a member of his choir. The younger daughter, Marion, was married to Marcus Clarke, the author of the well-known, “For the Term of His Natural Life”, and other well-known works. I was acquainted with Mr Clarke before his literary fame. He was then a clerk in the Bank of Australasia. On the death of her husband, Mrs Clarke was appointed Registrar of Births and Deaths for Melbourne, in recognition of her husband’s talents.

Julia Mathews, 1875. Photo by Lock & Whitfield, London.

National Portrait Gallery, London

Rose Edouin

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

One of the most clever and versatile actresses with whom we have been favoured was Miss Julia Mathews, who came to us from New South Wales, where, I believe, she was born. Her range of characters was unlimited. She was a most deservedly popular favourite. She left us in search of success in London, where she was engaged for the part of “The Grand Duchess Gerolstein”, in which she achieved success. Poor girl, she did not live long to wear her laurels. An unfortunate contretemps occurred to an intimate friend of mine, who had access to the stage of the Princess Theatre, and went there to see his friend, Willie Edouin. He and Miss Matthews were playing in the same piece, both dressed as sailor boys. My friend saw a figure stooping to look through a peephole in the drop scene, which is kept for the purpose of viewing the state of the house. My friend, stepping lightly forward, gave the figure a vigorous slap behind, when to his horror and consternation, Miss Matthews turned round and called out, “Here, look out; mind what you are doing”.

The Edouin family, consisting of a son and three sisters, were included in our public favourites. Willie afterwards became manager of a public theatre. His eldest sister, Rose, was married to Mr G.B.W. Lewis, for many years a leading circus proprietor. After the death of her husband, she was, to the best of my remembrance, manageress of the Haymarket Theatre.

Miss Fanny Cathcart, afterwards Mrs Robert Heir, was a brilliant exponent of Shakespeare and other well-known authors and was leading lady. She fell in love with Mr Robert Heir and married him. They continued to play in Melbourne for many years. He, poor fellow, came to a sudden end. He was on the way to New Zealand, when one day, sitting on a deckchair, he fell forward and expired, a victim of heart failure.

Louise Cleveland

Australian Performing Arts Museum, Arts Centre Melbourne

Madame Céleste

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Miss Cleveland must not be omitted from my list. She arrived here in 1864 with her husband, Mr Viner (Vincent on the stage). In the character of Constance in “King John”, she displayed wonderful versatility, grief, indignation, and utter despair, which were depicted with tragic force. She even essayed to play the part of “Hamlet”, in which she fairly succeeded.

We were favoured with a visit from Madame Céleste in 1867, which is to be well remembered as Nature had dealt kindly with her. The play in which I best remember her was “Green Bushes”.

Adelaide Ristori. Photo by J.T. Gorus, Sydney.

State Library of NSW, Sydney

Sarah Bernhardt as Cleopatra. Photo by Falk, Sydney.

Falk Album, Theatre Heritage Australia

Another distinguished visitor we had was Madame Ristori, in 1875—to give her full title, the Marchioness Capranica del Grillo. She appeared in Melbourne and the provinces for three months. Some of her leading characters were “Mary Stuart”, “Myrrha”, and Lady Macbeth”.

Although Sarah Bernhardt was here for a very short time, she left behind a lasting impression of her talents. Among her best characters were those of “Camille”, “Fedora”, “Cleopatra” and “Jeanne d’Arc”.

Jennie Lee as Jo. Photo by E.C. Waddington & Co., Melbourne.

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Nellie Stewart as Zaza. Photo by Talma & Co.

Talma Postcard collection, Theatre Heritage Australia

Jennie Lee must not be forgotten. From her first appearance in Melbourne, she jumped to the front as a great actress. She was most natural. He delineation of the Street Arab in “Bleak House” was excellent. It appealed to the heart, with pity for the sufferings of the poor waif.

One of my great favourites was Miss Nellie Stewart, who possessed great powers as an actress, as well as vocal powers in comic opera. In the character of Zaza, the actress disappeared, and the spectators saw a woman of many moods and deep emotions. Another character in which I admired her was “Sweet Nell of Old Drury”.

I have left to the last my old friend and one in whom I hold in the greatest esteem, George Coppin. He and his wife arrived in Melbourne in July 1845,² bringing a theatrical company, including G.H. Rogers, the famous comedian. As a comedian, Mr Coppin was a master. He took the management of the Queen’s Theatre and produced the first pantomime in Melbourne. He may well be termed the Father of the Victorian Stage. In later years, when it was my privilege to see Mr Coppin on the stage, he took the character of Paul Pry, and the manner in which he sneaked on the stage to interrupt some business in which he was not wanted, with the expression “I hope I don’t intrude”, was a very fine piece of acting. Other characters in which he excelled were Aminabad Sleek in “The Serous Family”, Mawworn in “The Hypocrite”, also Bob Acres and Milky White. We are indebted to Mr Coppin for his enterprise in introducing to Australia very many actors and actresses of great ability, including the late G.V. Brooke. Mrs Charles Young should also be mentioned as having been brought out by Mr Coppin. She afterwards became famous as Mrs Herman Vezin.

George Coppin as Paul Pry

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

G.H. Rogers. Photo by J.T. Gorus, Sydney.

State Library of NSW, Sydney

The Theatre Royal was erected by Mr John Black and Mr Bayne, a solicitor, and it was destroyed by fire in 1872. The present structure is on the same site.

The Olympic Theatre, in Lonsdale-street, was commonly known as “The Iron Pot”. It was one of Mr Coppin’s ventures, put up in 1855 and took only about 30 days to erect. It became the home of many able and talented companies including a company of black-faced comedians, well and deservedly known as “The San Francisco Minstrels”.

Another great enterprise was Cremorne Gardens, Richmond, on the bank of the river, which was opened in 1856. It became a very popular resort for out-of-door entertainments. The gardens were well laid out and included a number of statues. It had refreshment rooms, a wild beast show, optical illusions, and a clever tightrope dancer. Its greatest attraction was a scenic representation of the Siege of Sebastopol, consisting of a painted canvas which spread along the lake at the bottom of the gardens, and from which there was a nightly display of fireworks.

Later on, in 1858, a theatre was added to the attractions of Cremorne. Part of the pleasure of a visit to these gardens was a trip up the river in Waterman’s boats in the cool of the evening. Subsequently a railway was constructed by the Melbourne Railway Company as far as Cremorne, which now forms part of the Brighton railway line. Ultimately the gardens and their contents were disposed of and, alas! to what sad uses may we become at last, it became a private lunatic asylum. For one act alone Coppin’s name deserves to be immortalised; it is that of the establishment of the Old Colonists’ Home. He initiated it as a Home for Old and Disabled Actors and Actresses. I was in the audience of the Theatre Royal when he propounded his plan. It is still a home for disabled actors, but since the original establishment, others than frequenters of the stage are given homes there. In addition to Mr Coppin’s residence in Lennox-street, Richmond, he had a seaside home at Sorrento, in which he passed a good deal of his time. He once wrote to the Government, suggesting the planting of trees on the ocean side of Sorrento, and as I then had charge of State Forests, the matter was handed over to me. Before coming to a decision, I deemed it advisable to visit the place. Mr Coppin, hearing of my arrival sent an invitation to the hotel to spend the evening with him, which I accepted. It was a most delightful interlude. He had staying with him Miss Georgia Hodgson, principal contralto in Lyster’s Opera Troupe, who filled up the evening by singing and playing, to my great delight. After that I often met Mr Coppin in the city, when he would never let me pass without a few words of pleasant converse. When he passed to that “bourne from whence no traveller returns”, I felt I had lost a dear friend.

I have personally had some little experience on the stage. In 1863 I joined the “Garrick Club”, and included in its membership were a number of leading business and professional men. I remained a member of the club for some years, and appeared, I think, on the stage of all the Melbourne theatres, taking part in Shakespearian plays and English comedies.

In conclusion, may I ask my readers to think kindly of the poor players who “strut and fret their hour upon the stage”, and then are heard no more.

David Martin. Photo by Talma & Co., Melbourne.

Courtesy of Margaret Knight

Endnotes

1. Maggie Moore died last month, Jan 1926,  at San Francisco, supervening on an operation in which she lost a leg—Editor of The Justice of the Peace Magazine

2. Possibly January 1845—Margaret Knight, 2025

First published The Justice of the Peace Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 119, 7 February 1926, pp.2-3

Thank you to Margaret Knight, great grand daughter of David Martin, for providing a transcript of this article and also for supplying photographs of her great grandfather.

For more information on the career of David Martin, refer https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/martin-david-7502

A Radical New Idea

Although copyright for published books dates back to the British Copyright Act of 1770,¹ it only applied to items the technology of the time could copy in large numbers, principally the printing press. By the nineteenth century it was woefully out of date, particularly in relation to theatrical performances, which were based on an often unpublished script used to create a transient public event, not an object for private reading.

In the early nineteenth century, copyrighting play performances was a new idea. The tentative groundwork was established by the Dramatic Copyright Act(1833) of the British Parliament, supplemented by some provisions of its later Literary Copyright Act(1842) which applied to plays.² Two distinct rights could be granted: copyright (to prevent unauthorised copies of a published work being made) and performing right (to prevent the unauthorised presentation of a story in acted form on the public stage). Only published books could be granted copyright protection, and similarly for a play the performing right began at the first public performance.

Act 1 script for Struck Oil, 1874

Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne

Script for The Wool King by Wilton Welch, 1911

National Archives of Australia, Canberra

Judges, puzzling over this radical new idea, struggled with and were slow to allow anything more than the absolute minimum rights unambiguously conferred by the legislation, while many stage entrepreneurs simply ignored or actively resisted it. They regarding staging plays as their unencumbered right and were reluctant to pay royalties to the playwright—and particularly to pay a licence fee to a rival manager who claimed to have bought the ‘rights’ to a play and was now trying to prevent them from also performing it.

There were also practical difficulties for those trying to enforce the new laws, particularly in the provinces and distant colonies of the British Empire and in the US states west of the Ohio. Who knew what the travelling troupes were presenting? Enforcing performing rights outside the major cities only became possible as the means of communication improved.

From 1869 onwards the five mainland Australian colonies passed their own copyright acts based on the British laws, which were in turn replaced by a Commonwealth Copyright Actof 1905 (in force from 1 January 1907), but the 1833 Act remained the basis of legislation until the 1911 British Copyright Act,the adoption of which in Australia on 1 July 1912 marked the beginning of a fundamentally new approach to copyright law and is therefore the logical cut-off point for this account.³

Even after the first laws to prevent dramatic piracy were passed in Britain and its colonies, Australian playwrights (or managers who had purchased the script from them) found it difficult to protect their work or their investment. If registered in the colony where it was first performed, the play was protected only in that colony, whereas a script registered at Stationers’ Hall in London was protected throughout the Empire.

The situation in the USA was even more difficult, since the US refused for a full century to agree to the 1886 Berne Convention which almost all the other nations in the western world signed and which meant that copyright in one country applied world-wide.⁴ In the USA, till 1986, unless the copyright owner was a permanent resident in the US, they could not secure copyright in that country even if they were performing their own play there. Some tried, nevertheless. The Queensland politician and prolific playwright Randolph Bedford did manage to register no fewer than nine of his plays with the Library of Congress in the years 1910-1930, though it is unclear how. He would have needed to have it performed there and then got a US citizen to register it. Neither seems to have happened. Like many copyright claims in this period, his was probably just bluff.⁵

Dramatists in Australia before 1912 mostly sold their scripts outright to theatrical producers who in turn, instead of relying on copyright protection, attempted to restrict what they regarded as piracy by more direct means. A popular unpublished play usually existed only as a single manuscript prompt script which was guarded like a prized jewel. If it was stolen or destroyed—and in the Victorian era theatres often burned down—then the work itself was lost.

As had happened since at least Shakespeare’s time, actors were only given ‘sides’—part scripts containing only their own lines and the relevant cues; and often had to return them to the actor-manager at the end of the season. This was customary practice in any case in a period when copies had to be laboriously transcribed by hand, but it also restricted the opportunities for piracy.

In England stage censorship required that a complete copy of a work had to be submitted to the Lord Chamberlain’s Office for approval before being performed. When copyright laws were passed in the Australasian colonies (and similarly in the USA), it was intended that this too would involve the submission of complete copies of all works for which copyright registration was sought. With publishedworks (in the literal sense of the term which still survives in modem copyright legislation; i.e. those printed and distributed in multiple copies as books, including printed plays, etc) this was indeed the case, and those copies submitted now form a major part of the collections of Australiana in the state and national libraries. With the performanceof unpublished dramas in manuscript it proved impracticable to demand that a complete copy be deposited—at least until carbon paper and then typewriters came to be widely used.

Obtaining copyright protection for a play in Australia in the nineteenth century was also not the automatic consequence of having written it that it is today. Dramatists were expected to register their work at an appropriate Copyright Office, attached to the Trademarks and Patents Office in each colony. In the earliest years, a copy was submitted to the officer in charge, who read it to see if it contained scurrilous, obscene, defamatory or anti-government material.⁶

If approved, the manuscript was stamped and (if it was the only copy) returned to the author or theatre manager who had submitted it. Later, these attempts at censoring plays were abandoned. Instead, legislation granting licences to theatre owners include clauses that gave powers to governments to close their premises if offensive material had been performed. Instead of being tied to censorship powers, copyright registration became a powerful weapon (though, as we shall see, until 1912 an imperfect one) which authors and managers could use to guarantee their intellectual property and the way it was used.

The Registration Books in which the copyright officer wrote the details of authorship, title, date and place of first performance, and, if relevant, the assignment of rights to a theatrical manager, have survived for each mainland state (Tasmania had no relevant legislation). Together with the Registers of the later Commonwealth Copyright Office, they offer a basic guide to Australian theatre between 1870 and 1969. In addition the Registers of Stationers’ Hall in London (now held in the Public Record Office at Kew) contain entries relating to the performance of Australian plays between 1877 and 1907; however it is not clear whether a play performed only in Australia could be granted a performing right in Great Britain. Some Australian dramatists did apply to Stationers’ Hall; unfortunately, the whereabouts of the actual scripts sent to London for registration is, according to the Stationers’ Hall’s archivist Robin Myers, ‘something of a mystery’.⁷

For the United States the published two-volume index Dramatic Compositions Copyrighted in the United States 1870-1916gives information about the attempted registration of plays in that country by many authors associated with Australia, including W.M. Akhurst, Randolph Bedford, Kyrle Bellew, George Fawcett Rowe, E. Lewis Scott, Toso Taylor, Inigo Tyrell, and J.C. Williamson. It also indicates that scripts of Scott’s The Silence of Dean Maitland (performed in 1894 in Adelaide, registered in 1900 in the USA) and Bedford’s White Australia (1909 Melbourne, 1910 USA) were at one time held in the Library of Congress. I obtained a photocopy of, and later published, Bedford’s offensively racist but influential play, presented by William Anderson’s company in 1909 and witnessed in Melbourne by many fellow legislators and other leaders of Australian society.⁸

V&A, London

Loopholes, bullying and bluff

Nineteenth-century courts in Britain, the United States and Australia were unwilling to allow authors any rights over their work beyond those unequivocally prescribed by statute. In one famous example, Stowe v Thomas(1853), a Circuit Court in the United States held that Harriet Beecher Stowe’s copyright in Uncle Tom’s Cabin had not been violated by an unauthorised German translation, even though Stowe had previously caused her novel to be translated into German and had secured copyright for her authorised translation.⁹ Strange as such a decision seems now, the reasoning of Mr Justice Grier shows the fear of the courts that extending authors’ rights would severely inhibit the dissemination and influence of literary and dramatic narratives, characters and ideas throughout society:

By the publication of her book, the creations of the genius and imagination of the author have become as much public property as those of Homer or Cervantes. Uncle Tom and Topsy are as much publici jurisas Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. All her conceptions and inventions may be used and abused by imitators, playwrights, and poetasters. They are no longer her own: those who have purchased her book may clothe them in English doggerel, in German or Chinese prose.

The learned judge clearly didn’t care that Cervantes was long dead, but that Mrs Stowe was alive and trying to make money to support her seven children.

The major gap in the 1833 British Dramatic Copyright Act was its silence on such questions of translation and adaptation, and in particular on the common practice of making unauthorised stageadaptations of literarynarratives, which the English courts decided did not constitute piracy. This anomaly was a source of much frustration throughout the nineteenth century to novelists in particular, who were obliged to write play versions of their own works, and have them performed in public, if they wished to obtain the performing right for their stories.

The belief that this gave authors some control over dramatic piracy came from Reade v Conquest (1861).¹⁰ In 1853 Charles Reade had written a play Gold! which dealt with the Australian goldrushes, and which was performed and also published as a book. Three years later Reade reproduced parts of this play in his novel It’s Never Too Late to Mend,which was in turn dramatised by the popular playwright George Conquest and staged by Conquest’s brother with great commercial success at London’s Grecian Theatre. Reade was able to sue successfully for breach of performing right not because Conquest had dramatised his novel, but because Conquest’s play was held to have a ‘substantial identity’ with Reade’s original play Gold! ¹¹ Novelists therefore assumed that they could protect their works by either dramatising their own narratives or employing a trusted playwright to make an authorised stage version.

From this belief—and from the fact that in any case it was necessary to perform a play in public before performing right could be granted—came the practice of giving a ‘copyright performance’. This involved hiring actors to give a public reading of a new play, sometimes in costume, so that performing right could be claimed before piracy could occur. The practice of giving such readings – both for dramatisations of stories and for original plays—was common in Australia until the 1912 legislation came into effect; special playbills sometimes being printed to give colourable substance to these ‘performances.¹²

George Coppin, 1881, photo by Waddington, Melbourne

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Dion Boucicault, 1870s, photo by Bradley & Rulofson, San Francisco

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Several of the cases reported in Australian courts confirm the lack of faith which playwrights and managers had in the power of the copyright legislation. While in London in 1865, the actor and entertainment entrepreneur George Coppin thought he had secured an agreement with Dion Boucicault—by then and for some years afterwards the most successful popular playwright of them all in Britain, the USA and Australia—for the exclusive right to perform in Australia Boucicault’s latest success, Arrah-na-Pogue.

Back in Melbourne early in 1866, Coppin was angered to learn that the rival actor-manager Barry Sullivan was already staging it in Sydney. Coppin took him to the NSW Supreme Court. Sullivan said that he had evidence that Boucicault had also authorised his production but couldn’t prove this, so an injunction was granted in Coppin’s favour.¹³ (He widely publicised this and, until I pointed out the error, even his official Australian Dictionary of Biography entry believed him.) However, only two weeks later, Sullivan tendered written evidence to the court that Boucicault had in fact granted him permission to stage the play in Australia. Coppin’s injunction was set aside, and Sullivan’s staging went ahead to much greater acclaim than Coppin’s.¹⁴

Soon after, Coppin tried again in a different colony, South Australia.¹⁵ In this case an Adelaide manager, Abraham Solomon, did ask Coppin’s permission, but the latter’s proposed terms—fifty percent of the gross takings over and above the first one hundred pounds a week—were not acceptable to Solomon, who went ahead with an unauthorised performance. In the South Australian Supreme Court Gwynne J. rejected Coppin’s application for an injunction to prevent Solomon from presenting Boucicault’s play.

The problem was that, the year before Coppin’s presumed purchase of the Australian performing rights to Boucicault’s play, in London the case of Jeffries v Boosey(1854) had been decided. The judge, Lord St. Leonard, stated that copyright could be sold outright but notdivided up amongst different purchasers in different parts of the British Empire.¹⁶ Thus rights could be assigned(that is, sold in their entirety), but a manager who had simply obtained a licenceto give performances in particular English counties or overseas colonies could not sue other managements for breaches of copyright. Boucicault himself could have sued Solomon successfully, but Coppin could not. This case was cited and followed by court in colonial Australia from that time onwards.

Probably this difficulty was a relatively minor one in Great Britain where a manager who had obtained a licence to perform an author’s play could quickly communicate with the author or the assigned copyright holder, and where licence agreements presumably contained clauses which obliged the copyright holder to protect the exclusive rights of a licensee. However, it was a major obstacle in the distant colonies of Australasia, where a pirate might well conclude a long and successful season before the author even knew of the breach of performing right, and where in any case legal proceedings by the author would have been greatly hampered by the tyranny of distance.

Jeffries v Boosey didn’t stop George Coppin. An occasional playwright himself, he established the Dramatic Author’s Association and, according to his Australian Dictionary of Biographyentry, claimed to have ‘acquired the nucleus of what later amounted to the performing rights covering some eight thousand works’.¹⁷ He publicised his first legal victory and not the ones he lost and pursued other managements relentlessly. They, often less financially secure than he was and, in any case, wanting to avoid the expense of litigation which would probably cost more than the licence fee, generally capitulated. But there was no legal basis for Coppin’s bullying for the next 41 years.

Maggie Moore and J.C. Williamson in Struck Oil, from The Australasian Sketcher, 5 September 1874

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Alice Lingard as Josephine in one of the many ‘pirate’ versions of HMS Pinafore, 1879/1880. Photo by Clifford & Morris, Dunedin.

State Library of NSW, Sydney

J.C. Williamson’s bluff

The next actor-manager to succeed Coppin and used the same bluff and bully tactics was J.C. Williamson. Williamson and his then wife, Maggie Moore, were Americans who had toured Australia in 1874-75 with a hugely successful play written in part by Williamson himself, Struck Oil.(A beautiful manuscript of this is held in the Victorian colonial copyright collection.) They subsequently played it in England and America, and early in 1879 made plans to again visit the Australian colonies.

Wanting to move from being an actor to a theatrical entrepreneur, Williamson came to an agreement with Gilbert and Sullivan which he thought granted him an exclusive right to perform in Australia and New Zealand their extremely successful new comic opera HMS Pinafore. This licence, which cost Williamson the large sum of three hundred English pounds for only one year’s rights, also specifically empowered Williamson to sue, ‘in the name of the authors, for all damages and penalties incurred by others not licensed to represent the said piece’.¹⁸

While playing in San Francisco in June, Williamson heard to his alarm that ‘Pinaforemania’ had already reached Australia. Kelly and Leon’s company were performing it in Sydney and there were two simultaneous productions in Melbourne: one by the Lingards at the Academy of Music and the other by the Stewarts at St. George’s Hall. Williamson instructed his Australian attorney to register HMS Pinafore in the colonies and, arriving in Sydney on the Zealandiaon 3 August, he immediately commenced legal proceedings against all three companies. The Stewarts’ season had already ended; their management later came to a ‘satisfactory arrangement’ with Williamson.¹⁹ The Lingards, still performing in Melbourne while Williamson was litigating Kelly and Leon in Sydney, ignored his suit. After fifty-six performances to capacity houses, they closed their production just before Williamson arrived in Melbourne and shortly afterwards went to New Zealand. Williamson’s lawsuits pursued them, but no evidence has been sighted to suggest that he was successful in suppressing unauthorised performances ofHMS Pinafore by the Lingards or any other company in any colony other than New South Wales.²⁰

However, in Sydney on 9 August 1879 in Williamson v Kelly, Williamson succeeded in getting an injunction to restrain the Kelly and Leon Minstrels from performing HMS Pinafore. As this was the first action he had commenced, it must have given considerable concern to his adversaries and confirmed their desire not to indulge in expensive and possibly unsuccessful litigation. An ‘unusually large attendance of the public’ was present on the Saturday morning of the case, and reports of the hearing were widely and prominently reported in the Sydney and Melbourne press.²¹

However, the reports suggest that the matter was decided on the facts, but despite the law:

It was the defendants’ fault, for they let the case be heard on plaintiff’s affidavits only. He had facts on one side only, but arguments on both sides.... His Honour... said he had some difficulty in granting the injunction in the face of Jeffries v Boosey.He thought there was sufficient ground to grant the injunction especially as plaintiff had gone to great expense in preparing for the piece.

The matter was complicated by the fact that the judge, Sir William Manning, was an acting judge and his duties were to cease at the end of the same Saturday’s session. He decided therefore to grant only an interim injunction, effective from the following Monday, until the matter could be heard by the Full Court of the Supreme Court. However, Kelly and Leon decided to save themselves further legal expense by withdrawing their production after that Saturday evening’s performance. (They had already played a full season of HMS Pinafore and had completed several weeks of a return season.)

Williamson’s aggressive willingness to litigate his presumed ‘rights’ appears to have successfully bluffed the pirates into a strategic retreat, but the matter was not mentioned in the law reports for that year and was not cited as authority in subsequent cases. The incident shows something of the gap between industry myths about copyright law and established case precedent. Many theatre professionals chose to believe that this case had validated copyright licence agreements in the Australian colonies, a belief which Williamson himself did much to promulgate,²² as Coppin had done with his single success thirty years earlier. Judicially it did not alter the law in any way and almost certainly a permanent injunction would have been refused if the matter had ever gone to the Full Court.

To be continued

Author’s Note

The first version of this article, entitled ‘Dramatic Copyright in Australia to 1912’ and written jointly with lawyer Roslyn Atkinson who located the surviving cases and checked the draft for legal accuracy and correct citations, originally appeared in Australasian Drama Studies 11 (1987): 47-63. Full citations appear there, plus a guide to some scripts registered in the Victoran colonial Copyright Office. Since then, I have found more relevant evidence, which has been incorporated in this new version. See also Richard Fotheringham, ‘Copyright Sources for Australian Plays and Films’, Archives and Manuscripts 14.2 (1986): 144-53.

Endnotes

1. ‘The printing press and the Statue of Anne‘, Australian Libraries and Archives Copyright Coalition, alacc.org.au, accessed 17 December 2025.

2. For an explanation of copyright as it applied to dramatic works in England in this period, see ‘Copyrighting a Dramatic Work ‘, Phyllis Hartnoll, ed., The Oxford Companion to the Theatre(London: Oxford UP, 1951), pp. 149-154.

3. See Merilyn Minell, A Nation’s Imagination: Australia’s Copyright Records, 1854-1968. National Archives Research Guide No 18 (Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia, 2003).

4. See ‘Berne Convention’, Intellectualpropertyoffice.org, accessed 17 Deecmber 2025.

5. Dramatic Compositions Copyrighted in the United States 1870-1916, 2 vols (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1918).

6. For an example of an attempt to use copyright laws as a form of political censorship, see Veronica Kelly, ‘The Banning of Marcus Clarke’s The Happy Land:Stage, Press and Parliament ‘, Australasian Drama Studies,2.1 (l983), pp.78-80.

7. Robin Meyers, letter to the author, 14 October 1986.

8. Playlab Press (Brisbane), 2014.

9. 2 Wall. Jr. 547; 2 Am. Law Reg. 210.

10. 9 C.B. (N.S.) 755 [142 E.R. 297]; (1862) 11 C.B. (N.S.) 479 [142 E.R. 883].

11. ibid.

12. See e.g. the playbill printed for the copyright performance on 31 July 1911 for Wilton Welch, The Wool King,CRS A1336/1 item 2026, National Archives of Australia (ACT).

13. Sydney Morning Herald, 9 March 1866.

14. Sydney Morning Herald, 21 March 1866.

15. Coppin v Solomon(1868) 2 S.A.L.R. 83.

16. 4 H.L.C. 815; [10 E.R. 681].

17. Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 3, 1969.

18. Sydney Evening News,9 August 1879, reprinted in the Argus (Melbourne), 12 August 1879, p.6.

19. Argus,19 August 1879, p.5.

20. Coppin v Solomon(1868) 2 S.A.L.R. 83.

21. Sydney Evening News,9 August 1879. See, in addition to the Sydney Evening News and Argusaccounts, Sydney Morning Herald, 1 August 1879, p.6.

22. Garnet Walch, The Williamsons, Being A Brief Account of the Careers of Mr and Mrs J C. Williamson. Together with Facts and Figures Relating to the Firm of Williamson, Garner, and Musgrove(Melbourne: William Marshall, 1885), p.22. I am grateful to Professor Veronica Kelly for drawing my attention to this obscure source.