Scope and Content Note
The papers of Margaret Webster (1905-1972) cover the period 1837-1974, although the bulk of the material dates from 1937 to 1970, the period of her American theatrical career. Focusing on Webster as an actor and director and as a member of an acting family, the collection is source material for American theater history from 1905 to 1970, with special emphasis on the 1937-1970 period, and for British theater history from 1886 to 1937. The collection is organized into four series: Family Papers, Professional File, Speeches and Writings File, and Scrapbooks and Notebooks.
By far the largest portion of the papers consists of prompt copies of plays and operas with related technical and publicity materials. Webster was renowned as a Shakespearean director and authority, and approximately half of the prompt books are of Shakespearean plays with the works of Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, Henrik Ibsen, George Bernard Shaw, Noel Coward, Thornton Wilder, and Tennessee Williams also represented. Prompt copies of several operas in the 1950-1960 period include annotated librettos and musical scores.
Much of the collection, including correspondence, was used by Webster in compiling two family biographies, The Same Only Differentand Don't Put Your Daughter on the Stage, and, to a less extent, her technical work, Shakespeare Without Tears(Shakespeare Today in the English version). Annotations by the author on individual documents are extensive.
The collection is organized into four interrelated series: Family Papers, Professional File, Speeches and Writings File, and Scrapbooks and Notebooks. All of the series contain material on Webster's personal and professional life, with strong emphasis on the latter.
The Family Papers series includes extensive but incomplete correspondence between Webster and her actor parents, Dame May Whitty and Benjamin Webster, from 1913 to 1948, as well as correspondence between the couple from 1886 to 1926. Almost all of the letters are annotated by Webster. A small number of family papers, including notes, correspondence, legal documents, and printed matter, provide biographical and genealogical information on the Webster and Whitty families as well as on the professional experiences of Webster's parents, particularly on the British stage. Diaries, memoirs, and writings in this series provide similar information.
The Professional File Series contains material on theatrical activities, organizations, and productions, primarily from Webster's American period, 1937-1970. The theater productions section is organized into operas, plays, and Shakespearean plays, and contains prompt copies, correspondence, notes, clippings, programs, and printed matter related to specific productions. Included are lighting and set diagrams, electrical surveys, property plots, actors' movements and directions, and occasional notes for a playwright, composer, or manager. Although plays are arranged alphabetically by title, the names of writers, composers, or significant correspondents are included in the finding aid under folder title headings.
Other items in the Professional File series deal with professional organizations and projects. Files on ANTA (American National Theater and Academy), Actors Equity Association and blacklisting relate particularly to committees in which Webster was directly involved. The file on South Africa dates from her tour as a Department of State specialist, 1961-1962, and includes material on South African theater and apartheid. Files on the American Repertory Theater delineate her attempts with Eva Le Gallienne and Cheryl Crawford to activate repertory theater in New York in the late 1940s. Clippings, memoranda, and correspondence from this period trace the financing of repertory theater before the advent of subsidies and foundation grants. Files on the Margaret Webster Shakespeare Company (also known as Marweb Productions) concern additional attempts at experimental theater through the bus-truck touring company, which covered forty states in an effort to present Shakespeare to the vast audiences of middle America.
The Speeches and Writings File contains lecture arrangements and scripts, articles about the theater, manuscripts and galleys of books, and research notes. Notes unidentified as to writing are in the Professional File under subject headings or in the Family Papers. The bulk of the papers in the writings series relate to two books, The Same Only Differentand Don't Put Your Daughter on the Stage, but many other writings are on theater history and theory, Shakespeare, Bernard Shaw, and other theater personalities.
Files on “A Bronte Anthology” include the script and technical specifications for Webster's one-woman performance on the lectures circuit. The play Royal Highness, which was adapted from Felix Saltern, is represented in three draft versions.
The scrapbooks in the last series contain newspaper clippings on Webster's professional activities from 1929 to 1949, as well as photographs and other printed materials, including articles by Webster.
Correspondence in the collection, except for family, is minimal, but includes the letters of Brooks Atkinson, Marlon Brando, Dame Sybil Thorndike, Noel Coward, Lynn Fontanne and Alfred Lunt, Graham Greene, Eva Le Gallienne, George Bernard Shaw, Walter Slezak, and Alexander Woollcott.