KENDAL, Madge (1848-1935). Actress.
Autograph Quotation Signed ("Madge Kendal Grimston") from the play Diplomacy,
Quotation from the play Diplomacy, from the year of its debut
KENDAL, Madge (1848-1935). Actress.
Autograph Quotation Signed ("Madge Kendal Grimston") from the play Diplomacy,
“I know what I would rather be, the wife of my husband, the mother of my children.”
Diplomacy is a play that was first performed in 1878, the year of this quotation. Based on the French play, Dora, by Victorien Sardou, which debuted in Paris the previous year and was immensely successful, it was translated and adapted by Benjamin Charles Stephenson and Clement Scott. A Bancroft production, performed at The Prince of Wales Theatre (on Charlotte Street, later Scala Theatre), it was described by the English theatrical paper The Era as “the great dramatic hit of the season” (23 June, 1878). It was an immensely popular play for fifty years, enjoying numerous revivals, it was made into a film in 1916.
Madge Kendal played Dora and her husband, William Hunter Kendal, played Captain Beauclerc.
See The Theatre: Its Development in France and England, and a History of Its Greek and Latin Origins by C. Hastings (London, Duckworth (1901), p. 326).
Some marking and age-toning.
