FEATURES
FROM AM DRAM TO AMBITIOUS DRAMA ‘… acting just like a real play.’ On Whit Monday in 1857 ten-year-old John Godley had his first experience of a dramatic performance: it left him stage-struck. This was ‘acting just like a real play’, with a stage set up in the schoolroom (now the Library), great curtains, a grand piano, tickets, and costumes all brought from London. The play was Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1. Afterwards, John requested (and received) the complete works of Shakespeare for his birthday. William Sewell had introduced drama to Radley. For Sewell, this was a part of the beautiful, Arcadian aspect of life at the school – an appropriate cultural and leisure activity associated with living in a country house. Educationally, through performing
or reading plays and memorising speeches and poems to give as recitations, boys would become familiar with both Classical and modern European cultures. They would learn posture, voice projection, memory techniques and teamwork as part of fitting them for public life. But above all, they would have great fun.
The classics
From 1880 onwards, the whole school, and most Old Radleians, gathered at Radley for the annual All Saints' Day celebrations where, alongside a Chapel service, a concert, sports and a dinner, theatrical entertainments were put on. There were scenes from Shakespeare, Molière (performed in French during a period when the playwright’s works were seldom performed in France) and Restoration comedies but the highlight was the Latin play. These were produced from texts specially prepared for performance at Radley and printed for sale by Oxford University Press. Performance at Radley was something to be done properly. From 1880 until 1897 four Roman comedies were performed in Latin in strict rotation: Andria, Phormio and Adelphi by Terence, or Trinummus by Plautus – on the whole, the school preferred Plautus. Productions of Terence’s Adelphi in 1894 and Andria in 1903.
The cast of the 1892 production of Plautus’ Trinummus.
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the old radleian 2023
