Clement Scott
Clement William Scott (6 October 1841 – 25 June 1904[1]) was an influential English theatre critic for The Daily Telegraph and other journals, and a playwright, lyricist, translator and travel writer, in the final decades of the 19th century.
His style of criticism, acerbic, flowery and (perhaps most importantly) carried out on the first night of productions, set the standard for theatre reviewers through to today.
Scott accumulated enemies among theatre managers, actors and playwrights over the years, picking quarrels with William Archer, Ibsen, George Bernard Shaw and others.
[2] He became the dramatic writer for The Sunday Times in 1863 but held the position for only two years because of the intemperance of his published opinions and his unpopular praise of the French theatre.
[2][3] As well as criticism, Scott wrote plays, including The Vicarage, The Cape Mail, Anne Mié, Odette, and The Great Divorce Case.
He wrote several English adaptations of Victorien Sardou's plays, some of which were written in collaboration with B. C. Stephenson, such as Nos intimes (as Peril) and Dora (1878, as Diplomacy).
[5] Scott and Stephenson also wrote an English version of Halévy and Meilhac's libretto for Lecocq's operetta Le Petit Duc (1878).
After an ill-considered 1898 interview in Great Thoughts, Scott was forced to retire as a theatre critic and moved to Biarritz to write The Drama of Yesterday and Today.
[17] Scott's position on The Daily Telegraph and the support of its proprietor, J. M. Levy, allowed him to pioneer the essay-style review of drama, which came to replace the earlier bare notices.
He wrote his theatre reviews immediately after he saw the opening night of a piece which, together with his short temper and his dislike of critic William Archer, the chief English supporter of Ibsen, tended to involve him often in controversies.
Scott insisted that the paying audience on the first night should expect to see a fully fledged production, and not one where the leading characters did not know all their lines.
Early in his career, he wrote approvingly of the "cup and saucer" realism movement, led by T. W. Robertson, whose plays were notable for treating contemporary British subjects in realistic settings.
