Quo vadis on the Stage

Abstract

In contrast to the applause and attendance figures generated by the several film adaptations which followed from 1913, theatrical renderings of Quo vadis were ridiculed, and stage runs were conspicuously brief. Theatre was not able to realise the strongly physical episodes the novelist had imagined and that motion pictures could supply. Although posters advertising the play depicted Lygia’s ordeal in the arena and her rescue by the strong-man Ursus grappling with a maddened aurochs, this crucial ‘sensation scene’ was never brought before theatre audiences. At best, stage versions of Quo vadis were disappointing, at worst they were dismal failures. On the English-speaking stage, three separate iterations of Quo vadis, not adapted until 1900, followed Wilson Barrett’s 1895 play The Sign of the Cross by five years and followed William Young’s theatrical version of Ben-Hur by a year. It wasn’t merely that these earlier plays had consumed the oxygen that might have given life to Quo vadis, it was also that stage versions of Quo vadis relied on similar configurations of characters found in The Sign of the Cross, of Christian-Pagan conflict, and of plots of martyrdom at the whims of despotic Roman emperors and their lubricious wives. Even Wilson Barrett’s adaptation failed to generate much enthusiasm and was readily replaced by his money-spinning biblical dramas and toga-plays. This study will consider adaptations by Jeanette L. Gilder, by Stanislav Stange, and Wilson Barrett. It will account for more successful stage versions of the novel performed in the Roman Catholic countries Italy and France.