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Playbill of Early Theatrical^ in his
Father's House
To return to Dickens and the theatre. I sometimes wonder if I am alone in
suspecting that, if we were to see today one of the dramatic productions Dickens acted
in and directed, we would be dissapointed, whereas if we attended one of his readings we
would be as riveted as contemporary audiences were. The plays were so negligible, it's
difficult to imagine anyone doing more than making the best of a bad job out of them.
We must remember, moreover, that none of the opinions we have of them are entirely to
be taken on trust. Dickens himself enthused over them, of course, but he speaks mainly
of production details, individual character studies and melodramatic or comic coups. Though
he speaks of audience responses he rarely offers a judgement on the overall dramatic
success or failure of a production. His friends have things to say about them, of course,
but although some of them were not uncritical friends they were, for all that, friends. Many
contemporary newspaper reviewers praised them, but what were their standards? You don't
have to be tall to look big among pygmies, and it was, as I have said, an appalling age
for the drama. Nor indeed did Dickens's dramatic productions meet with universal praise.
The Carlyles were unimpressed with his "Every Man in his Humour*, and Thomas
Carlyle grimly refused to add his voice to the acclaim of Dickens's own portrayal of Captain
Bobadil. "Poor little Dickens", he declares, "all painted in black and red, and affecting
the voice of a man of six feet". Dickens's public readings of his own works were another
matter. Though by no means the first virtuoso solo performer to appear before the Victorian
public, Dickens may well have been the first novelist to give public readings of his own
