Engraving from a photograph of the production of the Agamemnon at Balliol College, Oxford, from The Graphic, 26 June 1880, 653.
Aeschylus’s Agamemnon was performed at Balliol College, Oxford, on 3 June 1880. It was the first time in living memory that a complete Greek play had been performed in the original language and the London press covered the production extensively. According to an interview Oscar Wilde gave two years later in Philadelphia the play had been his own idea [read the interview here]. He was certainly familiar with the Agamemnon. In his final year at Portora School he was examined on it and received a mark twenty-five percentage points above his nearest rival. A translated fragment from the play had been amongst his earliest published writings.
Frank Benson as Romeo (1886). National Portrait Gallery, UK.
The only reason he had not acted in it himself, Wilde told his interviewer, was that by 1880 he had left Oxford, but his undergraduate friends were amongst the cast. He singled out for special praise a New College student who had played Clytemnestra. The young man’s performance had been “so successful that he has since decided to adopt the profession of an actor.” Wilde did not give the actor a name check, but he was Frank Benson. Benson did indeed embark upon a career on the boards. He founded his own company in 1883, managed the Stratford-upon-Avon Shakespearean Festival for 30 years, and was knighted for his contributions to theatre in 1916.
As well as originating the idea for the play, Wilde claimed to have been responsible for “[t]he distribution of the parts, the selection of the dresses, and the arrangement of the scenery”, essentially that he had been the manager. He was overstating his involvement. A. C. Bradley, a Fellow of Balliol who had trained the play’s fifteen-strong Chorus of Argive Elders, wrote to The Standard to point out that “the success of the play was due first of all to the energy and skill of the undergraduates who formed the Committee and acted in the drama.” Although most of the cast had been Balliol students, Bradley graciously acknowledged that “the original suggestion [for the play] came from New College”.
Frank Benson was identified in contemporary reports as the manager of the play. He published a memoir in 1930 in which he described his first major theatrical endeavour in some detail. In his version of events, a fellow of New College expressed an interest in staging the Agamemnon in Greek to an undergraduate of the college who, aware of his own limitations as an actor (he would end up playing the Thirteenth Argive Elder), invited Benson to take the role of Clytemnestra. Benson, along with Balliol man William Napier Bruce (Agamemnon), “practically organized and ran the whole thing”. They cast the play within a week, mostly from the ranks of the university sports clubs, and Bruce persuaded the master of Balliol, Benjamin Jowett, to grant the use of the college hall. Benson rallied cast and crew “with a somewhat despotic stage-management”.
Sappho and Alcaeus by Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1881). Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.
The costumes and scenery were made “under the supervision” of George Richmond R. A., the Slade Professor of Fine Art. The painter Edward Burne-Jones was credited with “partly” designing the dresses, and advice on Greek drapery was also provided by Lawrence Alma-Tadema, famous for his pictures of classical antiquity, and Sir Frederic Leighton, the President of the Royal Academy. Benson evidently had a long list of contacts; his funds were less abundant. Volunteers sewed the costumes from fabric that Benson dyed in his own bathtub. Benson’s brother, who would go on to be a designer of some note, drew up the plans for the scenery. A writer for The Pall Mall Gazette, one of the few naysayers, criticised the anachronistic late Greek (rather than Bronze Age) decorations and pointed out that the lion above the gate of Mycenae was incorrectly depicted. “Such glaring inconsistency might have been avoided by a brief consultation with the authorities at the British Museum, or even by turning over Dr. Schliemann’s plates”, he fumed.
The Lion Gate at Mycenae, from Rambles and Studies in Greece by J. P. Mahaffy.
A few years earlier Wilde had visited Greece. He had passed through the Lion Gate at Mycenae and, in Athens, had inspected the Mycenaean treasures unearthed by the archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann. In his review of the Grosvenor Gallery’s 1877 exhibition he had flaunted his first-hand knowledge of the Peloponnese by complimenting William Blake Richmond for painting the correct flowers for an Argive scene in his Electra at the Tomb of Agamemnon. If Wilde had played an active role in the design or painting of the scenery of Benson’s play, he would have argued in favour of authentically Mycenaean decorations.
Despite his claim to have been responsible for the “selection” and “arrangement” of the costumes and scenery, and for the casting of the play, Wilde’s involvement was evidently minimal. The only reason to suspect he had any hand in the production at all is that Benson, who admitted that his knowledge of Greek was paltry, had, in preparing for the play, “interviewed, or corresponded with, all the Greek scholars of the day”. Wilde had carried away a double first in Greats (classics) only a couple of years previously and may have been the recipient of one of Benson’s missives. He responded positively to a similar request in the winter of 1880-1881 from Alma-Tadema, who wanted help with the Greek inscriptions for his painting of Sappho and Alcaeus. Wilde obliged, writing that “[i]t is always a pleasure for me to work at any Greek subject”.
Rennell Rodd, 11 years after playing Eleventh Argive Elder at Balliol. National Portrait Gallery, UK.
Benson remembered that he had received advice from a number of eminent scholars, but did not list Wilde amongst them. This is perhaps to be expected, however, in a memoir written in 1930: many of Wilde’s former friends and acquaintances underplayed their connection to him after his downfall and death. But neither did the actors mention Wilde when, after the first performance, they thanked those who had provided assistance. Still, Wilde really was friendly with several of the cast members (his poetic protégé Rennell Rodd played one of the Argive Elders) and it is not inconceivable that he offered advice or attended the occasional committee meeting, convincing himself in the process that his support was vital to the play’s success.
The audience at Balliol on 3 June was distinguished and included the poets Alfred Lord Tennyson and Robert Browning. The play was repeated at Balliol the following day, performed by special request at Harrow, Winchester, and Eton, and, in December, transferred to London for three charity shows. Jowett and Bruce argued against producing the plays in the capital before a general audience, but Benson must have swept them along with his boundless enthusiasm. The shows were a success. George Eliot attended the last performance (only five days before her death) and wrote to Benson to tell him how much she had enjoyed it. Benson also received complements and encouragement from the actors Ellen Terry, Henry Irving, and Edwin Booth.
Helena Modjeska as Adrienne Lecouvreur (c. 1880) National Portrait Gallery, UK.
This is the point at which Wilde seems to have done most of his work, not for the play but for its stars. He asked the eminent Polish actress Helena Modjeska, with whom he was already acquainted, if he could bring Benson and Rodd to meet her one afternoon (perhaps anticipating a refusal, he assured her that Benson “went the two nights before he acted to get inspiration from you at the Court [Theatre, where she was playing Adrienne Lecouvreur]”). He hosted a gathering at Keats House, the Chelsea residence he had shared with the artist Frank Miles since the summer, which was attended by Modjeska, Benson, George Lawrence (who had played Cassandra), and several of the chorus. He even invited the theatrical critic Clement Scott, whom he suspected of having written an anonymous flattering review of the play for the Telegraph, so that the cast could thank him personally.
Why did Wilde exaggerate his involvement in Oxford’s Agamemnon? As well as touring his lectures on home decoration throughout North America, in 1882 Wilde was shopping his first play, Vera; or, The Nihilists. He wanted to project the image of a man with theatrical experience and acumen and, while he was at it, to boast about his scholarship.
What’s more, at 3,500 miles remove from the City of Dreaming Spires, he thought he might get away with it.