As Norman Atkins put it: “This was the true Hardy, portrayed by people who lived and breathed the atmosphere of Egdon Heath and Wessex”.
[4][5] Hardy's novels and short stories are filled with examples of folklore – customs, songs, superstitions, witches and mummers plays.
In 1908, members of the Society came together to perform a dramatisation of Hardy's novel, The Trumpet-Major, adapted and produced by local chemist, Harold Evans.
He corresponded with various would-be adapters over the years, including Robert Louis Stevenson in 1886 and Jack Grein and Charles Jarvis in the same decade.
In 1908, Harold Evans, a leading member of the Dorchester Debating and Dramatic Society, approached Hardy to ask if he could adapt The Trumpet-Major for the stage.
[7] At first, Hardy played down his association with the adaptation, writing to friends that no-one should print that it was by his authority and that it “no doubt will be a hash of a story, as none of the young men have any skill in dramatizing that I know of.” As late as October 1908, he wrote to Harold Child, drama critic of The Times,“I have nothing to do with the production, except in answering casual questions now & then… I imagine that, as a play, the action will not be very coherent, but the humours of the characters may be amusing.”[9] At the same time, his letter offered Child accommodation overnight at Max Gate (at no little inconvenience to Hardy and his household) to come and review the play, and, even while disclaiming his involvement, Hardy was simultaneously extolling the reasons for its appeal, both in its unique relationship with the novel: “the great grandparents of the actors… were the real actors more or less in the scenes depicted”; and in the high social status of the principals: “the Mayor of Dorchester plays Cripplestraw, the Mayor's sister Matilda Johnson, a former Mayor's son is the trumpet major himself, & Anne is a former Mayor's daughter.”.
His expressed reluctance to attend is at odds with the “intense joy” he showed, watching the Players bring his work to life that year.
This time Hardy was able to attend (having missed the 1908 performances due to illness), travelling there by train with Albert Evans and his family.
She had no dramatic training, but her simple sincerity and native Dorset dialect made her a good fit for Marty.
According to Florence Hardy, “the other members of the company are being a little upset by all the applause being given to her, and Mrs. Tilley says ‘We'd better send Miss Bugler to London alone on the 27th as the rest of us are not wanted’.”.
The Players had a dearth of young, male actors, and Stevens was far too old for his part as Damon Wildeve in Return of the Native.
Harold Child in The Times: “In Mrs Gertrude Bugler [The Hardy Players] have a lady who, one might almost say, was born to act the part of Tess”.
That's all I wanted.”[23] In 2005, the last surviving member of the Hardy Players, Gertrude Bugler's younger sister Augusta (Norrie) Woodhall turned 100 years old.
The manuscript for Tilley's 1920 adaptation of The Return of the Native, in which Gertrude Bugler had played Eustasia Vye, had just recently come to light.
For a performance on her 100th birthday, 18 December, Norrie adapted a humorous scene from Under the Greenwood Tree, in which she also played a part.
[27] In 2010, the New Hardy Players, championed by their founder and last surviving member of the original troupe, Norrie Woodhall, raised money to buy a large collection of the play manuscripts, which are now held in the Dorset Museum.
The collection contained working papers relating to all the Hardy Players’ productions, including revised and annotated scripts (often the prompt copies), actors’ parts, programmes, posters and miniature mock-up scenery.
With the support of the University of Exeter and the County Museum, by April 2010, the New Hardy Players had raised nearly £60,000, enough to buy the manuscripts.
It states:“All that the works of Mr Hardy owe to the ancient dialect, customs, and folklore, the quaint rustic wit & wisdom, the home-crafts & field crafts, … not only are these things dear to the cast, but they are able to represent them on stage by the instinct of relationship.
For they are local men & women who, pursuing their daily rounds amid the Dorset dialect & scenery, have been long familiarised with the speech, the dwellings & the habits of the characters portrayed in the novels.
“By endeavouring to represent the old-world life of Wessex the players are undoubtedly performing a valuable literary & historical work… [They] not only help to preserve a rich and philologically interesting dialect that may, under modern conditions of life, all too quickly disappear, but to awaken in their audiences an interest in local history & literature & encourage the study of what William Barnes, the Dorsetshire poet so admirably termed ‘speechcraft’.”[29]Further details of the productions can be found on the University of Ottawa website[30]