3 September 1825: The Manchester Guardian reviews Edmund Kean’s Richard II praising the actor’s individual style: ‘After being accustomed to listen to the monotonous declamation so common in our theatres... it is a high treat to hear the fine language of Shakespeare from the mouth of Kean.’
11 April 1847: The Observer reports from Florence on the sensational success of the premiere of Verdi’s opera Macbeth. ‘In the music we have found a number of fine and striking things... more deeply imbued than we could have imagined with the spirit of Shakespeare.’
18 October 1871: The Guardian’s art column discusses the historic origins of Shakespeare’s Shylock and the infamous bond of a ‘pound of flesh’.
30 November 1893: There are rumours that Verdi is to adapt Romeo and Juliet. The paper gives an overview of various musical adaptations of the play.
14 October 1905: The death of the great Shakespearean actor Sir Henry Irving is announced. ‘He was confessedly the most intellectual actor of his day... he was the leading interpreter and producer of Shakspere’s [sic] plays.’
19 October 1905: Sir John Martin Harvey’s Hamlet is reviewed: ‘Mr. Harvey’s ambition was to render the soliloquies in conversational tones, and to render an Elizabethan poem as though it had been a modern problem-play.’
8 March 1926: The Shakespeare Memorial theatre is destroyed in a fire. Whilst considering what might replace the building, the paper asks ‘Why not a “Globe”? One would like to see there a stage on which Shakespeare could be played as he was played in his own day.’
23 April 1932: On the anniversary of Shakespeare’s death an article looks at how Stratford-on-Avon honoured his legacy on the first recorded jubilee of 1769.
21 April 1949: John Gielgud produces Much Ado About Nothing starring Anthony Quayle, for the Shakespeare Festival, which the paper acclaims for its ‘tremendous liveliness and splendour.’
