'Oscar Asche is one of a number of Edwardian actor-managers who have been largely ignored by theatre historians in favour of the dominant figure of Herbert Beerbohm-Tree. Asche was one of that generation of directors, which also included Lewis Waller, Sir John Martin-Harvey, and Arthur Bourchier, who regarded the staging of pictorial productions of Shakespeare as a sign of status – a claim to be taken seriously in his profession. He had an adventurous career, representative in many respects of the energy and enterprise that characterized the Edwardian theatre – yet his work also exemplified attitudes and practices that would be discounted by a generation of playgoers enthused by different ways of interpreting Shakespearean drama, a new theatrical aesthetic, and the broader social and educational aims of the non-commercial stage. After his death in 1936, he was remembered more as the author of one of the new century's most successful romantic fantasies – Chu Chin Chow – than as a Shakespearean actor-manager.'
Source: Abstract.
