Three double-page photogravures published in the Illustrated London News magazine delating to the London Theatre entitled as follows:

""Ulysees" at Her Majesty's Theatre, February 1, Scene from the Last Act. " - dated February 8, 1902  (A souvenir program of this performance currently offered on the internet is copied below with cast members)

"Ben-Hur" at Drury Lane: The Scene at the Fountain of Castalia - dated April 5, 1902. See account below

"Paolo and Francesca" at the St. James Theatre: Scene from the Last Act - dated March 8, 1902 - see below

Good condition with vertical folds as originally published . Minor binding holes at the fold of one. Unrelated text to the reverse. Page sizes 22 x 16 inches. 

These are original antique prints and not reproductions. Great collectors item for the theatre historian - see more of these in Seller's Other Items 

NOTE RE: FREE MAILING - Mailing in a protective tube is unfortunately expensive. If you buy 2 "lots" of these double-page engravings (I have listed a great selection) domestic mailing would be free. If you buy 3 then international mailing is free. 

Ben-Hur, London, 1902

Live horses and 30-ton chariots amaze the critics at the premiere of Ben-Hur, April 3 1902

Charlton Heston looking more than usually rugged is the image most people have of Ben-Hur. But before it was a film it was a novel, and after that - unbelievably, when you think about the chariot race and other amazing special effects required - it was a play. 

Ben-Hur, a Tale of the Christ, was written by the grizzled lawyer and soldier General Lew Wallace while he was governing wild New Mexico. After its publication in 1880, he was deluged with requests to dramatise it, but refused them all because he objected in principle to the portrayal of Christ on stage. When William Young suggested an ingenious solution - Jesus would be represented by a beam of light - Wallace let him adapt it. The result was a hit on Broadway in 1899: it ran for an astonishing 21 years, during which time over 20 million people went to see it. 

In 1902, Arthur Collins produced a replica production in London at the Drury Lane theatre. "The staging of such a play," wrote Tatler's critic, "is just the thing that Mr Arthur Collins revels in, for it requires all the ingenuity of a master of stage mechanism to give the play the actuality of the posters." The posters had had quite an impact; the Tatler critic's prose turned purple as he described these "fine samples of American lithography". Not for nothing had Collins poured money into the production, retaining the effects but bringing in a new cast and design team to give London a spectacle such as it had never seen before. As Tatler's critic noted gratefully: "Everything about Ben-Hur is on an enormous scale." 

The impressive cast included Constance Collier as the temptress, Iras, despite the fact that she was also starring as Calypso in Ulysses, another stage epic, down the road at His Majesty's. She would run between the theatres and slip out of Calypso's flowing robes into Iras's unkempt wig and exotic, dishevelled clothing. Born in Kennington, like her friend Charlie Chaplin, Collier had been a Gaiety Girl before she switched to "legitimate" theatre, specialising in goddesses, queens and romantic heroines. Doe-eyed, curvy and carmine-lipped, she lamented in her 1929 autobiography that classic Victorian beauties had been overtaken by a succession of "lovely nymphs", leaving the British stage bereft: "There is none of the languid grace or warm beauty of 1900." Noël Coward, another friend and sparring partner, described her in later life as a grande dame, "presiding from her bed, attired in a pink dressing gown, with a Pekingese in one hand and a cigarette in the other". 

The press liked the performances. Robert Taber, wrote the Illustrated London News's critic, played the eponymous Jewish prince with "rare personal charm" and the whole was "capitally acted", while Collier was coyly described by the Sketch's critic as "very alluring". But the real star of the show was backstage, in the mighty machinery that made the chariot race come alive. 

The Era's critic dutifully detailed how it was achieved by "four great cradles, 20ft in length and 14ft wide, which are movable back and front on railways". The horses - real ones - galloped full-pelt towards the audience, secured by invisible steel cable traces and running on treadmills. Electric rubber rollers spun the chariot wheels. A vast cyclorama revolved in the opposite direction to create an illusion of massive speed, and fans created clouds of dust. It was, wrote the ILN's critic, "a marvel of stage-illusion" that was "memorable beyond all else". The Sketch's critic called it "thrilling and realistic ... enough to make the fortune of any play" and noted that "the stage, which has to bear 30 tons' weight of chariots and horses, besides huge crowds, has had to be expressly strengthened and shored up". 

But there was more to Ben-Hur than sensation. The Sketch's critic noted that the opening night crowd included not just "sporting-men", there for the horses, but also "several clergymen", and it was the religious story, with the clever prefigurement of Christ and heart-wrenching melodrama, that finally impressed the audiences. The Sketch's critic was particularly moved by the "beautiful finale, breathing peace to those who have suffered".

Francesca da Rimini

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the person. For the classical works, see Francesca da Rimini (disambiguation).
Paolo and Francesca da Rimini
(Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1867)
Gustave Doré, from his illustrations to the Divine Comedy(1857): Dante faints at the pitifulness of Francesca da Rimini's plight, while the hurricane of souls that she and her lover are trapped in surround the scene.
The death of Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta by Alexandre Cabanel (1870).

Francesca da Rimini or Francesca da Polenta (1255–ca. 1285) was the daughter of Guido da Polenta, lord of Ravenna. She was a historical contemporary of Dante Alighieri, who portrayed her as a character in the Divine Comedy.

Life and death[edit]

Daughter of Guido I da Polenta of Ravenna, Francesca was wedded in or around 1275 to the brave, yet crippled Giovanni Malatesta (also called Gianciotto; "Giovanni the Lame"), son of Malatesta da Verucchio, lord of Rimini.[1] The marriage was a political one; Guido had been at war with the Malatesta family, and the marriage of his daughter to Giovanni was a way to solidify the peace that had been negotiated between the Malatesta and the Polenta families. While in Rimini, she fell in love with Giovanni’s younger (and still hale) brother, Paolo. Though Paolo too was married, they managed to carry on an affair for some ten years, until Giovanni ultimately surprised them in Francesca’s bedroom sometime between 1283 and 1286, killing them both.[2][3]

In the years following Dante's portrayal of Francesca, legends about Francesca began to crop up. Chief among them was one put forth by poet Giovanni Boccaccio in his commentary on The Divine Comedy, Esposizioni sopra la Comedia di Dante; he stated that Francesca had been tricked into marrying Giovanni through the use of Paolo as a proxy. Guido, fearing that Francesca would never agree to marry the crippled Giovanni, had supposedly sent for the much more handsome Paolo in Giovanni's stead. It wasn't until the morning after the wedding that Francesca discovered the deception. This version of events, however, is very likely a fabrication. It would have been nearly impossible for Francesca not to know who both Giovanni and Paolo were, and to whom Paolo was already married, given the dealings the brothers had had with Ravenna and Francesca's family. Also, Boccaccio was born in 1313, some 27 years after Francesca’s death, and while many Dante commentators after Boccaccio echoed his version of events, none before him mentioned anything similar.[4]

In Inferno[edit]

In the first volume of The Divine Comedy, Dante and Virgil meet Francesca and her lover Paolo in the second circle of hell, reserved for the lustful. Here, the couple is trapped in an eternal whirlwind, doomed to be forever swept through the air just as they allowed themselves to be swept away by their passions. Dante calls out to the lovers, who are compelled to briefly pause before him, and he speaks with Francesca. She obliquely states a few of the details of her life and her death, and Dante, apparently familiar with her story, correctly identifies her by name. He asks her what led to her and Paolo’s damnation, and Francesca’s story strikes such a chord within Dante that he faints out of pity.

Related works[edit]

In the 19th century, the story of Paolo and Francesca inspired numerous theatrical, operatic and symphonic adaptations:

Poetry[edit]

Theatre and opera[edit]

Paolo and Francesca da Rimini by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1855)


"souvenir of Stephen Phillips' production of 'Ulysses' produced by Herbert Beerbohm Tree on 1st February 1902, full of lovely chromo-type colour illustrations of the cast in costume drawn by Charles A. Buschel, cast includes Courtice Pounds, Oscar Ashe, Lionel Brough, Gerald Lawrence, Constance Collier",