WHAT BLEST GENIUS?: The Jubilee That Made Shakespeare

In the mid-18th century the actor, dramatist, theatre manager - and shameless self-promotor - David Garrick was the most famous man in Britain after the king. Garrick had built his career around the performance and promotion of Shakespeare, and while the Bard was highly acclaimed 150 years after his death in 1616 it took one event to lift him from one great writer amongst many to the "Blest Genius of the Isle", a national icon and literary deity - and this event was Garrick's Shakespeare Jubilee of 1769. Held at Stratford-upon-Avon in September, among the 3,000 attendees were the rich and powerful, the fashionable and curious, eligible ladies and fortune hunters and a horde of journalists, profiteers and hangers-on. For three days they paraded through garlanded streets, listened to songs, poetry and oratorios and enjoyed masked balls in a unique cultural event that was to elevate Shakespeare to the throne of genius. Except it was a disaster. Poorly planned, it imposed an army of Londoners on a backwater hamlet of hostile and superstitious locals who were both unable and unwilling meet their demands. The rain fell in sheets, flooding tents, dampening the much-vaunted fireworks, turning the town into a quagmire and this along with corruption, a poor press, dubious relics and even a giant sea turtle should have seen the event consigned to the bin marked greatest PR disasters. Yet, against all the odds, it was not, Garrick and company somehow wresting a triumph from the catastrophe it clearly was. This is the whole wonderful story, rich with wit, humour, gossip and political intrigue, told from the dual perspectives of organiser Garrick and attendee James Boswell. Packed with minute and often hilarious detail, Stott's recounting of the absurd and chaotic events of those three days is an absolute joy to read. 270pp, b/w illus.