Shakespeare in Wartime: Donald Wolfit’sKing Lear in London and Leeds, 1944-45

Historians have noted that the Second World War in

Britain witnessed a rapid expansion of theatrical activity,

accompanied by a change in cultural policy and the arts. The

creation of CEMA (Council for the Encouragement of Music and

Arts) in 1940 offered government support to drama companies

and music societies who found it difficult to sustain their

activities during the war in an attempt to boost morale

through the politics of art. CEMA became associated with

leading companies and stars: both the Sadlers’ Wells Ballet

and the Old Vic Company toured Britain in an effort to “remind

people what the country was fighting for” (Heinrich, “Theatre”

63). By exposing audiences from all social backgrounds to

what they perceived as the best in live entertainment, CEMA

tried to “create permanent, educated audiences all over the

country – and the popular success of its projects seemed to

validate this approach” (63). Classical drama – particularly

Shakespeare – met the requirements of theatre-as-education.

Watching a revival could remind audiences of their national

heritage and therefore make a contribution to the war effort

(Brown 15-16). In 1940 the Old Vic revived King Lear and The

Tempest, followed by King John (1941), Othello (1942), and The

Merchant of Venice (1943). In 1944 the Company established

themselves at the New Theatre (now the Noėl Coward Theatre) in

London’s St. Martin’s Lane under the direction of Laurence

Olivier, Ralph Richardson, and John Burrell. Their initial

choice of plays included Richard III in a season described by

Charles Landstone, CEMA’s associate Drama Director between

1940 and 1952, as “the greatest English theatrical event of

this generation” (151).

On the other hand Donald Wolfit’s company Advance Players

has received scant recognition for the contribution it made to

performing Shakespeare in wartime, not just in London but

throughout the provinces. Established by Wolfit in 1938 as an

actor-manager’s company, it transformed itself two years later

into a non-profit making organisation (by emphasizing its

educational role) and thereby qualified for CEMA support.

Nonetheless the majority of its tours were undertaken without

state support, apart from 1941 and 1942, when the Council

offered guarantees against financial loss as Advance Players

visited unfashionable venues in Cheltenham, Croydon and

Letchworth (Pilgrim 14). Wolfit was continually refused further

funding on the grounds that his productions lacked sufficient

quality. In 1940 CEMA’s Drama Advisory Board declared that,

while Wolfit himself “was quite good” as an actor, “his

company and scenery were definitely poor” (“Memo”).

Despite such reversals, Wolfit continued to perform

Shakespeare all over Britain, as well as in Canada, the United

States, Europe and Egypt. His finest production was

undoubtedly King Lear, described by James Agate in as “the

greatest piece of Shakespearian acting I have seen since I

have been privileged to write for The Sunday Times” (54). By

1944 he had established such a reputation that The Tatler and

Bystander reviewer described him as “a likely successor to

[actor-manager] F. R. Benson, who sharpened his good-natured

productions with touches of personal genius, and whose devoted

company, so liberally recruited, became a national

institution” (Horsnell). Herbert Farjeon believed that

Wolfit’s contribution to the British war effort was more

significant than that of the Old Vic: “Mr Wolfit’s [venture]

represents a solid and continuous attempt to give the public not

just one play, but the Works of Shakespeare, and not just in

London, but all over the country” (Farjeon). Through a case-

study of Lear as performed in various British venues in 1944

and 1945, with a particular focus on London and Leeds, this

article will try to account for Wolfit’s extraordinary

popularity, as well as speculating on why his contribution to

the British war effort has been largely forgotten.1 First, and

perhaps most important, he understood wartime playgoers’

theatrical tastes. Perhaps more so than in peacetime,

audiences were much more cosmopolitan, comprised of locals as

well as members of the armed forces from different

territories. This was not only true in London, but in most of

the provincial cities Wolfit visited – Leeds, Manchester,

Newcastle, Glasgow. Most playgoers treated a visit to the

theatre as a welcome respite from the stresses of everyday

life – even during an air-raid, most of them stayed in the

auditorium while the performance continued. They were

particularly attracted to productions that packed a powerful

emotional punch; Wolfit’s Shakespearean repertoire admirably

fitted the bill.

Second, Wolfit staged his Shakespearean performances

during a period of profound social and political upheaval.

The experiences of war – enduring air-raids, evacuation, the

experience of meeting members of different cultures on a daily

basis (perhaps for the first time) – brought people towards a

far closer mutual understanding than there had ever been in

the years leading up to 1939, and thereby increased the desire

for major social and other reforms of a universalist,

egalitarian nature (Kynaston 40). Although Wolfit’s personal

politics remained resolutely conservative, his repertoire

offered a good example of the kind of popular theatre that

tried to inspire all men and women to continue their fight for

better lives (Lowenstein 2).

Wolfit’s popularity also proved his undoing. Several of

the influential theatrical figures of the time served as

members of the Drama Panels of CEMA and the British Council.

By denying him the funds to stage extended London seasons, or

continue his provincial tours, they ensured that the Old Vic

Company consolidated its position as Britain’s premier

Shakespearean outfit, while Wolfit was consigned to the

theatrical margins.2

In an undated letter to his friend David Maitland, Wolfit

acknowledged that his interpretation of King Lear had been

inspired by Harley Granville Barker’s 1927 essay in Prefaces to

Shakespeare (“David Maitland”), which argued that Lear’s

“grandness and simplicity” transformed him into a tragic hero

(23). For Wolfit such qualities could only be communicated on

the wartime stage by following the example of great Lears of

the past, notably Henry Irving and Randle Ayrton (who had

played the part at Stratford in 1936 with Wolfit as Kent).

From Ayrton Wolfit learned the importance of portraying Lear

as a “god-like” tyrant, full of quick-tempered rage,

especially in the moments leading up his being cast out on the

heath. Godfrey Kenton, who played in the 1936 Stratford

production – and subsequently joined Advance Players –

recalled that Ayrton underwent a significant change during the

mad scenes, showing a magnanimity that was particularly

touching. Wolfit tried to incorporate similar traits in his

characterisation (“Every Inch”). After his final performance

as Lear in 1937, Ayrton congratulated Wolfit on his decision

to “don the purple” (i.e. assume the role of actor-manager),

and presented the younger actor with his whip. Wolfit used it

in his performances in the belief that the whip symbolised the

tradition of great acting (Wolfit 177).

While Wolfit’s characterisation might have been based on

imitation rather than originality, it was not short on

emotional power. When he put a curse on his daughters (“No,

you unnatural hags,/ I will have such revenges on you both/

That all the world shall – I will do such things –“

(II,ii,437-39), he turned his back to the audience, uttered a

thunderous groan and stretched his left hand out, making a

sign of the crescent, the evil eye, as he did so.3 Ellen

Pollock – who played Regan in the 1944 London production as

well as on subsequent provincial tours – described the

experience of listening to him on stage: “Wolfit had riveting,

hypnotic eyes; when they blazed with hate, he was like a fury

with terrifying dimensions […] You felt you had been cursed”

(“Every Inch”). In the final scene, Wolfit re-entered with

the dead Cordelia (Rosalind Iden) in his arms. Illuminated by

a single spotlight, he laid her on the ground and spoke in

hushed tones as he asked Kent (Kenton) to lend him a looking-

glass (V,iii,236). When Lear finally understood that she had

passed away, he held her hand and whimpered “No, no life”

(281), feeling for each word “as if to pierce the cruel

mystery of his own madness” (Baxter). Wolfit omitted the

final exchange between Edgar and Kent (“O, he is gone indeed

[….] nor live so long”); his production ended with Lear

falling slowly to the ground as the curtain descended, the

entire cast motionless on stage. The critic R. B. Marriott,

in the audience for the opening night at London’s Scala

Theatre on 12 April 1944, recalled that “We were in dead

silence, and there seemed to be a pause […] and then it [the

applause] broke. Never heard so much noise from so few people

in the theatre” (“Every Inch”). Within a week long queues

snaked round the Soho area, as playgoers sought to experience

“the excitement in the air and a psychic sympathy between

people and players […] one sensed that an event of importance

in the theatre was taking place” (“Baxter).

As someone who had spent the war years touring Britain as

well as playing several London seasons, Wolfit understood his

audience’s expectations. After four and a half years of war,

with the prospect of further air-raids by the Germans,4 many

Londoners were exhausted. The writer Ursula Bloom wrote on 5

April 1944 that “the deadly lethargy of strained endurance is

becoming even more insistent [….] that mood of acceptance

[characteristic of the Blitz in 1940] is over. We are

impatient, we are half starved, we are undermined” (170).

Helen Mitchell, living in Kent but on one of her periodic

visits to London, wrote in her diary in the same month that

most Londoners had “drawn tired faces,” compared to those

living in the Oxfordshire countryside (some fifty miles away)

who were “full of sleep” (qtd. in Purcell 232). Many citizens

treated the theatre and the cinema as a welcome refuge from

the realities of daily life, despite the presence of the

placard with ALERT on it (a warning of potential air-raids)

permanently placed at the side of the stage and/or screen. In

a personal letter to Wolfit, Charles Morgan admired his

ability to stir the audience’s emotions through his “great

performance”: Morgan’s young son was so moved that he could

not stop talking about the production afterwards (Morgan).

Wolfit returned to the Winter Garden Theatre, London, in

February 1945, when London was still plagued by frequent air-

raids.5 The journalist Freda Wakeling (of the Newark Journal)

informed him that she had attended every performance for a

week, and on every occasion audience reaction had been “Quite

emphatically [….] thumbs up!” At the end of Lear the entire

auditorium had been “stunned into pin-still silence”

(Wakeling).

The response was equally enthusiastic in the provinces.

Wolfit visited Leeds in early October 1945; this was one of

his regular touring dates, where he could be reasonably

assured of sizeable audiences, many of whom travelled in from

the suburbs for dinner and a night at the theatre. The writer

Keith Waterhouse described the sense of occasion experienced

by many younger playgoers travelling from the suburbs to Leeds

city centre, as they savoured the experience of eating “in

some style” at a variety of establishments and subsequently

enjoyed the experience of being in the “gilded palace” of the

Grand Theatre with its “strange varnished signboards,

intimidating loges and fauteuils” (134, 83). Theatre-going was

a cheap pastime: “a seat in the gods was a fraction of the

price of the cheapest cinema seat” (137). Wolfit understood

the importance of appealing to this captive audience; while

playing his week at the Grand in 1945, he participated in a

pageant celebrating the end of the Second World War involving

most of the local voluntary and armed services in a series of

parades. To open the event, Wolfit delivered a specially-

written paean of praise for the citizens of Leeds on the steps

of the Town Hall: “this famed meeting place of trade/ Where

ceaseless busy wheels turn night and day/ Joined in a strong

endeavour to uphold/ The British birthright.” The speech

continued by asking the citizens to cultivate “the arts of

peace to higher honours rise/ From streets of Leeds, to lands

across the sea,/ Britain shall lead a world from war set free”

(Ridley). In Wolfit’s mind at least, those “arts of peace”

would have included an appreciation of the works of

Shakespeare. He was a skilful publicist; in a series of press

interviews published at the same time, he conceived himself as

a public servant providing much-needed entertainment for

British troops and local people both at home and abroad. His

strategies proved highly effective; for the Lear performance,

several hundred people queued outside the theatre, including

miners, homemakers and groups of school students. The entire

Leeds week proved financially successful, with total receipts

amounting to nearly £2400 (for the entire tour, only

Manchester, Glasgow and Edinburgh took more money, according

to Wolfit’s financial journal (“Weekly”)). One schoolteacher

recorded her thoughts on Wolfit’s performance in a letter sent

to him a month later: “You touched, as far as I have

witnessed, the greatest height of your career so far”

(Williamson).

King Lear was a timely production as it caught the mood of

the times in a Britain undergoing profound social change. The

class and racial divisions which seemed so important a decade

earlier no longer had much significance as people tried to get

on with their lives as best they could. Ann Reid, a former

debutante, spent the war years as a nurse in London’s Charing

Cross Hospital; after an initial period during which time the

work seemed rather strange to her, she “learned very quickly”

how to integrate with her fellow-nurses: “They never teased me

because of my voice, they were absolutely sweet. I had such

admiration for all my workmates” (qtd. in De Courcy 233).

Mass-Observation asked working-class residents of the inner

London suburbs about the changes they hoped for after the war

had ended. One man replied: “There’ll have to be more

equalness.” A thirty-year-old woman hoped for an education

system in which “every child should be allowed to have the

same choice [....] the class distinction in the schools, I

think that should be wiped out” (qtd. in Kynaston 40-1).

Writing to André Gide on 16 July 1945, his translator Dorothy

Bussy detected a new spirit of cooperation in central London:

“Everyone […] is extraordinarily kind and attentive and

unselfish – bus conductors, the travellers in trains and

tubes, policemen of course, but food officials too” (qtd. in

Kynaston 76). With more service personnel from different

nations on the streets than ever before, Londoners had become

accustomed to dealing with racial differences. General

Eisenhower observed with some bewilderment that “the small-

town British girl,” would quite happily go out with an African

American soldier quite as easily as she would go out with

anyone else, a practice that “some of our white troops could

not understand […] the British press took a firm stand on the

side of the Negro” (qtd. in Wnder 329).

In provincial cities like Leeds, the inhabitants likewise

embraced the community spirit. This was not so at the

beginning of the war: Mass-Observation reported in 1941 that

“There is considerable prejudice […] against soldiers [of all

nationalities].” One local complained: “Noa, […] they annoy

other people, making such a row tramping up and down the

stairs when everyone’s in bed” (“Mass-Observation”). Within

four years that prejudice had been superseded by a willingness

on the part of all citizens to treat each other as equals, as

symbolized, for instance, in the distribution of tickets to

mass meetings: equal allocations went to the Church of

England, Jews and Roman Catholics, the university and the

British Legion (Hartley 443). The Workers’ Educational

Association opened its doors to civilians and service

personnel alike, offering courses in literary appreciation

delivered by experts from the University of Leeds. The Play

Reading Group studied no less than twenty plays in a year,

while performing one-act dramas in local social clubs (Steele

62).

Theatre fulfilled an important function in maintaining

this community spirit. E. J. Dent, a professor of music at

Cambridge University, published A Theatre for Everybody (1945),

which celebrated the work of the Old Vic and Sadler’s Wells in

bringing the arts to the people, especially during wartime.

Both companies visited towns and cities which “for a

generation at least had had no professional entertainment

beyond ‘the pictures’ […] Most of the people had never seen a

real play before in their lives. Their reactions […] were so

different from those of London that they suggested an entirely

different set of theatrical values” (125). Dent concluded

that “there will be a real need for a real Volkesbühne, a

People’s Theatre, housed permanently in London” while

simultaneously performing “good plays in areas where otherwise

probably no plays would be ever acted at all” (134).6 Although

Wolfit had not acted at the Old Vic since the early 1930s, he

was equally dedicated to performing productions all over the

country that would be accessible to everyone. Prices were

kept deliberately low – for Lear seats could be obtained for

as little as 4/- (20p) for the stalls, and less than 2/- (10p)

for the gods - even though Wolfit sometimes made heavy losses

by doing so. Percival Selby, his business manager, frequently

complained that he did not like London seasons, as “the

expenses […] always seem to be completely out of proportion to

the value received” (Selby). When he visited Newark, the town

of his birth, at the beginning of the Autumn 1945 tour, the

local newspaper congratulated him on achieving the dream of

establishing “Shakespeare as entertainment pulsating with

glamour and appeal […] To appreciate a Shakespeare production

it is not necessary to be a Shakespeare student” (Wakeling,

“Donald Wolfit”).

Although Wolfit’s Lear was highly old-fashioned in the

sense that it was modelled on great Lears of the past, his

revival nonetheless struck a chord with wartime audiences with

its emphasis on community values. Once out on the heath, Lear

showed a tender concern for Poor Tom (Richard Lyndhurst). The

two men walked arm-in-arm across the playing area to study the

heavens; it seemed as if they were great friends, even if they

had only recently encountered one another for the first time.

They turned back towards the hovel, and Lear told Poor Tom to

go inside and shelter from the storm. He turned towards the

audience and delivered the “Poor naked wretches” soliloquy

(III,iv,28-36) in serene tones, as if leading the audience in

prayer. He exhorted everyone to “feel what wretches feel,”

and thereby learn from their experience of suffering to work

towards a better world. Playing the Fool at the Scala

Theatre, Richard Goolden recalled that Wolfit told him to

“shrink and cower” in the hovel to underline the importance of

the speech in wartime (“Every Inch”). Later on Lear re-

encountered Cordelia; sat on a wooden chair, while being cared

for by servants, he admitted that he was “a very foolish fond

old man” (IV,vi,58). While reassuming his kingly role – as

Cordelia’s soldiers knelt in front of him – his eyes had lost

that intensity of observation that characterised some of the

earlier scenes in this production. Liberated from that

tyranny that destroyed him, he could now embrace Cordelia in

an unaffected yet emotionally powerful manner. Witnessing the

Scala Theatre performance, the Catholic Herald reviewer noted how

this image of love and loyalty rendered the audience “silent

and still. American soldiers in large numbers […] other

Servicemen, too – Poles, French, Czechs, Indians, negroes. I

often wonder […] on the strange phenomenon that the boy from

Stratford-on-Avon should be the one international – for he

speaks everybody’s language” (“King Lear”). Wolfit was so

elated by the reaction that he exclaimed to his wife

backstage: “I’ve done it! I’ve done it!” (“Every Inch”). He

had accomplished what he later termed the “uphill struggle” of

rendering Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy important to a

cosmopolitan audience (“People Today”). In a prize-winning

essay submitted to the Birmingham Weekly Post, Miss Beryl E.

Johnson described her experience of watching Lear on the Autumn

1945 tour as one of those “golden gleams” of that year, as

meaningful to her as witnessing “the breakdown of Nazi tyranny

or the August day which gave us final victory” (Johnson).

Although Advance Players represented the ideological

opposite of the People’s Theatre movement (he was always part

of the theatrical mainstream, despite funding shortages),

their basic aims were remarkably similar. All shared the

views of French writer Roumain Rolland, who claimed in Le

Théâtre du Peuple (1903) that theatre should “be open to the

masses, should be able to contain a people and the actions of

a people” (qtd. in Bradby and McCormick 6). Companies such

as Unity Theatre believed that “drama was an important part of

life in the community […] part of and not separated from the

line and ideals of the people [….] that demands, above all

else, that […] [it] be concerned with those things that

concern all men” (Lowenstein 5-6). In Glasgow the Citizens

Theatre exploited the feeling of togetherness amongst the

local working class by presenting a series of contemporary

plays that emphasised the importance of community values as

the basis of a civilized world (Dudgeon 289-90). One of their

productions – The Gorbals Story by Robert McLeish (1946) –

transferred to London’s West End and was later filmed.

Wofit’s fellow-actors were well aware of his popular

success and for the most part resented it. John Gielgud

remarked rather disdainfully that he disliked playing to

cosmopolitan audiences – especially service personnel – “with

anything very serious – but I hope they may stand for it if it

is swiftly and skilfully done” (Gielgud). Laurence Olivier

admonished critic Beverley Baxter for making an adverse

comparison between himself and Wolfit: “I deplore that you

should think it necessary to provoke unpleasant feelings in

our profession in order to provoke interest in your views

about it” (Olivier). Despite the support of influential

theatrical figures such as the impresario Charles B. Cochran,

who expressed the view that Wolfit should have his own theatre

in London supported by CEMA funding, Wolfit remained on the

theatrical periphery (Cochran). Wolfit must take some of the

blame for this, as he remained reluctant to work alongside

actors of similar stature, especially in London. Nonetheless

it is significant to note that several representatives of

CEMA’s or the British Council’s Drama Advisory panels were

closely associated with the Old Vic. Lord Esher, chair of the

Council Panel, was Chair of the Old Vic’s Board of Governors,

while Lewis Casson, a member of both panels, organised tours

of South Wales for the Old Vic under CEMA auspices with his

wife Sybil Thorndike in the lead. Both men had a vested

interest in denying Wolfit sufficient funds to prolong his

London seasons or invest more resources in sets and costumes.

It is thus hardly surprising that Wolfit should have resented

what he perceived as the Old Vic’s virtual monopoly of

Shakespearean production in London – especially when the

Company failed to attract star names in the early Fifties and

beyond (“People Today”).

Wolfit’s Lear was very much a product of its time and

culture. In 1947 the production played a brief season at New

York’s Century Theater; the critics slaughtered it on account

of its cheap and tatty sets and costumes and old-fashioned

acting-style,7 prompting Wolfit to speculate on whether they

were “anti-British” (Wolfit, “Garrick”). This was certainly

not the case: New York reviewers had not experienced the

rigours of the Home Front, and treated the production quite

differently from their British counterparts. Stanley Kauffmann

explained this to Wolfit in a letter dated 21 February 1947:

“If you had come in with a production in which the sets were

chromium with neon décor, if the costumes were of silver

oilcloth and the lights came up out of the floor, if it were

more difficult to distinguish the male from the female members

of your company and if one could only understand only one out

of six words – oh, then, what a success you would have had”

(Kauffmann).

However times were changing in Britain as well: in April

1947 the News Chronicle complained that Lear lacked “kingly

distinction and vocal beauty” and would perhaps be best suited

for provincial rather than West End production (“Lear at the

Savoy”). The mood of celebration in the last years of the war

had been superseded by one of fatigue and retrenchment. A

correspondent for Mass-Observation overheard a conversation in

London that summer: “Gor blimey Charlie – what a bloody

outlook etc. When are they [the government] going to stop

cutting things I’d like to know [….]/ Worse than the war mate

ain’t it?/ At least you knew wot was appening then but yer

didn’t know what to expect now do yer?” (qtd. in Kynaston

227). Nonetheless Wolfit’s production demands our attention

as a prime example of what might be termed Shakespeare in

wartime, as opposed to wartime Shakespeare (that consciously

memorialises violent histories and events taking place in a

country’s past) (Heinrich, Entertainment 108-9). A conscious

recreation of the kind of theatrical fare associated with

Wolfit’s acting heroes (Ayrton especially), this Lear looked

back to the past while at the same time reminding wartime

playgoers in London and the provinces of the immediacy of

Shakespeare’s subject-matter. Perhaps more so than any other

actor of his time, Wolfit proved beyond doubt that there was a

nationwide public willing to set aside its prejudices against

so-called “highbrow” drama and enjoy Lear on its own terms as a

tragedy of tyranny and redemption. The production embodied

the temper of the times, especially the belief that in the

post-war world Britain could become a more just society in

which citizens of different races and/or social classes would

be free of discrimination. The fact that everyone could

afford to pay the price of admission only reinforced that

egalitarian dream.

Perhaps we should draw on the experience of Wolfit’s Lear

to rethink the distinctions between “People’s Theatre” and

“unsubsidised” or “mainstream” theatre. In Germany People’s

Theatre was government-subsidised in the interests of

education and entertainment, whereas in Britain governments

were reluctant to become involved in theatrical matters, at

least until 1939. During wartime and afterwards theatre in

both countries – whether subsidised or not - tried to appeal

to all types of playgoer; to produce the kind of work that

mattered to everyone, especially the working class. Wolfit’s

Lear was a shining example of how this worked in practice. In

terms of British theatrical history it was ahead of its time:

Wolfit’s emphasis on productions aimed at popular audiences

adumbrated the work of Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop in

the early Fifties, which assiduously rejected what they

perceived as the bourgeois standards of the West End and the

Old Vic and produced shoestring revivals consciously aimed at

local audiences in London’s East End. Writing in 1976, John

Elsom drew attention to Theatre Workshop’s emphasis on “the

relationship between the characters on stage, a constant

commentary on the development of community lives” – even

though some productions were tackled in a non-naturalistic way

(110-11). It is one of the ironies of history that, whereas

Wolfit might have likened most theatre during the Fifties to

“an invalid that wants nurturing” (“People Today”), Theatre

Workshop created a devoted local following through strategies

very similar to those he had employed a decade earlier; in

other words, producing clear, uncluttered versions of

Shakespeare appealing to everyone, irrespective of class,

nationality and/or race.

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1 Ronald Harwood’s The Dresser (1980) was based on the author’s experiences of working with Wolfit as Assistant Stage-Manager. The central character (“Sir”) is clearly modelled on the older actor.2 CEMA had sponsored Wolfit’s season at the Strand Theatre, London, in 1940-41, thefirst State-sponsored theatrical venture in the West End. However attitudes changed as the war progressed: J. M. Keynes, who helped to found the Arts Council –CEMA’s successor – in the mid-Forties, declared his abhorrence for “shoestring” productions like Wolfit’s on the grounds that they “smacked of a worthiness that was almost ‘churchy’” (qtd. Devlin 217). Charles Landstone, CEMA’s Assistant DramaDirector, who later worked with Wolfit at the Old Vic, believed that the actor/manager could not “accommodate himself to the changing manners of the times,”favouring ensemble rather than star-focused productions (13).3 All refs. to the text of King Lear from The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works, ed. John Jowett et. al. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005. 4 The first V1 rocket, or “doodlebug” was launched on 13 June 1944, and until 9 October.532 such rockets were fired at London and south-east England. Lear played throughout these raids5 The last recorded air-raid (from a V2 rather than a V1 rocket) exploded in Londonon 27 March 1945.6 Wolfit was especially hurt that Dent had failed to mention his wartime performances in London and elsewhere in the book. He wrote to Dent on 20 December 1945, complaining that “the work of my company should have received a line of recognition at least [….] Having been the pioneer [of theatre in wartime] it is with great resentment that I read the credit given to the other theatres” (Wolfit, “Letter”)7 Brooks Atkinson of the New York Times was particularly scathing: “The scenery is morose; the costumes, dull’; the make-ups, unbecoming; the lighting, feeble. Mr. Wolfit’s scraggly-bearded Lear is querulous, nervous and croaking, and wholly lacking in the nobility of character that might give this tragedy stature” (Atkinson).