The Meininger Company and English Shakespeare

Summary

The visit of the ducal company from Saxe-Meiningen to Drury Lane in 1881 received a great deal of advance publicity in the London press and continuous journalistic attention throughout a stay in May, June, and July of eight weeks, extended from the intended seven. Ever since 1874, when the company under the direction of Georg II and his stage manager Ludwig Chronegk created a sensation in Berlin with Julius Caesar and other productions, the Meininger players had established a substantial European reputation with tours to several major cities, including Vienna, Budapest, Prague, and Amsterdam. Their reputation had travelled ahead of them to London; thus the interest and publicity attached to the fact that they chose to open in Shakespeare with Julius Caesar and Twelfth Night. In all they gave fifty-six performances in those eight weeks: sixteen of Julius Caesar, two of Twelfth Night, seven of The Winter’s Tale, and collectively thirty-one more of Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell, Die Räuber, Fiesko, and other mainly German plays. The company in London numbered eighty, and supers were recruited locally, principally Germans living in London who, with a much better education than the average English super, were paid correspondingly more.