Shakespeare had an impact on early colonial Australia centuries after his death

EARLY colonial Australia embraced all things Shakespeare, including tours by actors such as Sir Laurence Olivier (left). This weekend is the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare and the NSW State Library is hosting a series of events.

Actors Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh on tour in Australia in 1948. Picture Picture from book 'Lords and Larrikins: The Actor's Role In The Making Of Australia' by Kath Leahy. Currency Press. Pic Hobart Mercury 1948.

THIS weekend sees the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare, an anniversary that will be marked by theatre lovers around the world.

Australia is no exception, with the NSW State Library hosting a series of special events to commemorate the occasion.

The British were a long way off sending a fleet to Australia when the Bard died in 1616. By the time Shakespeare’s plays were first produced in Australia he had been already dead for nearly two centuries.

The first known Australian production was at John Sidway’s Theatre Sydney on April 8, 1800. The play was Henry IV part I, starring W. Smith as the Prince of Wales and J. White as the wayward knight Sir John Falstaff.

The name of the actor playing Henry IV is impossible to decipher from the advertising poster that has survived.

Nothing is known about the production and how it was received but the actors had their Shakespearean careers stifled by the rising crime rate spurred on by the theatre. Some people only came to see who was in the audience so that they could slip out and rob their houses and others committed crimes to buy tickets. The governor soon ordered the theatre pulled down.

Viven Leigh and Sir Laurence Olivier perform Sheridan’s School For Scandal in Adelaide during The Old Vic theatre company tour of Australia in 1948.

Despite the criminal tendencies, there was no stopping the popularity of Shakespeare. Within a few years many local companies were putting on productions, often relying on enthusiastic amateurs. Over the course of the 19th century the number of theatres grew, as did the professionalism.

However, while there were some accomplished native-born actors performing Shakespeare from the middle of the 19th century, up until the late 20th century many Australians believed the best Shakespearean actors had to come from overseas.

Producers paid to bring out stars such as the American Edwin Booth, who toured in the 1850s and played to packed houses, despite some critics deriding his American accent. Englishman Herbert Beerbohm Tree was another great Shakespearean who visited in the early 1900s. Tree inspired such a fervour that Australian entrepreneur George Marlow formed a local Shakespeare company, under local actor Allan Wilkie, which resulted in huge celebrations for the 300th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death in 1916.

Perhaps the most celebrated and influential tour by Shakespearean actors was the 1948 arrival of The Old Vic theatre company, with its stars Laurence Olivier, considered the world’s finest Shakespearean actor of his era, and his wife Vivien Leigh.

Sir Laurence and Lady Olivier (Vivien Leigh) registering at a Brisbane hotel after their arrival in 1948.

Starting in Perth, the company toured the country, visiting Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane with a program of three plays including Olivier’s then innovative take on Richard III, which was later turned into a film. Olivier and Leigh, two of the world’s biggest stage and screen stars at the time, playing to packed houses and was greeted by enthusiastic crowds when they went out in public.

In Brisbane, however, they moved from one hotel after being pestered by the crowds. Olivier said: “We came here for privacy and we are entitled to it. When we are on the job we put everything we have into it and we want to relax completely now.”

In Sydney Olivier and Leigh also discovered a young British-born Australian actor named Peter Finch wowing audiences while doing Moliere and invited him to come back to Britain with them. Leigh would later have an affair with Finch that would hasten the end of her marriage to Olivier.

Vivien Leigh is mobbed by fans enroute to Surfers Paradise with her husband Sir Laurence Olivier in 1948.

Throughout the tour the press reported all of Olivier’s pronouncements about acting and the theatre. He warned about the drain of talent overseas and encouraged Australia to establish theatre schools. The tour had a huge impact on theatre in this country. It inspired other companies to bring their acts to Australia, including the Shakespeare Memorial Company from Stratford, precursor to the Royal Shakespeare Company, with its star Anthony Quayle.

Driven by actors like Olivier, the subsequent “Shakespeare Boom” of the 50s, as one paper called it, saw a revival of the Bard’s works on stage and screen and gave impetus to the formation of the Australian Elizabethan Trust in 1954, our first national theatrical foundation.

For information about State Library Shakespeare events see sl.nsw.gov.au/Shakespeare400

Originally published as Shakespeare had an impact on early colonial Australia centuries after his death