Rehearsals
NUMBER OF REHEARSALS
Mention has already been made of the inadequate rehearsal time — at
least according to modern standards — allowed to plays in the eighteenth
century. This amount of time was, in the eyes of a great many critics and
commentators in that century, indeed wholly inadequate. Two weeks was,
on an average, considered sufficient. The Public Advertiser of 6 January 1780
notes that “Julius Caesar is now in rehearsal”; it was acted on 24 January.
1 he Hay market playbill of 5 July 1791 says the same thing about The
^iege oj Calais , which was given its first performance on 30 July. There
would appear to be no particular difficulty here. But whereas to-day two weeks
°f rehearsal for eight or more hours every day can for many plays be entirely
sufficient, two hundred years ago not more than one hour a day, or at
most two, was set aside for this purpose. Throughout the Drury Lane season
°f 1 794 and for about half of the following season that theatre’s prompter,
William Powell, kept an exact recording of every rehearsal of every play.wz
1 tom these notes a typical example may be taken, that of Richard Cumber¬
land s successful comedy, The Jew. It went into rehearsal on 24 April 1794.
Work on it continued as follows: on the mornings of April 26, April 30
and May 8 (the day of the first performance) it was done again in full; partial
rehearsals for never more than two actors at a time were held on April 28
and 29 and on May 2, 5, 6, and 7. Four complete rehearsals and six partial
)nes, none lasting longer than two hours and sometimes less, making a
hrund total of perhaps eighteen hours for an entirely new, fairly complicated,
five-act play.
Such remarks, then, as the following arc perhaps not to be wondered
jW ^viewing the opening night of Sheridan’s Pizarro the Morning Chronicle
~1 May 1799 states, patiently but sadly, that “The first night may be
^‘Larded as an experimental rehearsal rather than as a finished performance.”
/y C ‘Ul^10r 193 °f a short-lived journal devoted to theatrical matters, The
npter, complains in its issue of 4 November 1789 of the woeful behavior
192 These
Museum nC notcs are written on the back of Powell’s set of playbills, now in the British
um (Drury Lane, Vols. 4 and 5).
to be the actor, James Fennell.
cxlv