Chronicle Summer 2024

29 ST EDWARD’S CHRONICLE

THE EARLY YEARS OF DRAMA TEDDIES THE WILFRID COWELL ERA AT

By School Archivist, Chris Nathan

In July 1874, the first School Plays were performed on St. Edward’s Day with 16 boys taking part in two short playlets, enacted at one end of a classroom. Entitled A Race for £300 a Year and Ici on Parle Françai s, the content was considered ‘racy’ and the main actors were Prefects, older boys and two members of the teaching staff.

moved more quickly than the dramatic in the earliest days, with concerts being given at both summer and winter Gaudies by the mid 1870s. The first major theatrical undertaking was The Critic by Richard Sheridan in 1879 in the School Dining Hall, as Big School was still being built. The first few performances turned out to be something of a disaster, with one of the main players ‘encountering

Separately, the School was beginning to experiment with music, including a small orchestra and even a brass band. The School Choir was already formed and primed for when the Chapel was completed in 1877. In fact, the musical side of the School

Arthur Miller as Macbeth 1894

with costumes made on site by the wives of staff and parents and the lights and scenery by the School electricians and carpenters. In the Winter Term of 1880, William Hammerton Antrobus Cowell, aged 24 years, joined the School as a humble Assistant Master. Over the next 57 years he would ‘bestride the reigns of six Wardens’ and in the process would become the longest-serving teacher in the School’s history. While filling many disparate roles at the School, he would be best remembered for his part in producing, or co-producing, no less than 62 School productions, mainly Shakespeare, usually at the end of the Winter Term, performed before huge

an accident’ on opening night and a scenery malfunction delaying the

We must speak out, speak clearly and speak down the room and

start by an hour and a half on the following day. Eventually the patient audience were treated to an excellent rendering by a cast consisting of pupils and staff, under the direction of George Churcher, a teacher who had joined the Common Room shortly after the School’s arrival in

all will be well. WILFRID COWELL, 1891

Summertown. The whole production was home grown,