Nineteenth Century British Theatre

Kenneth Richards, Peter Thomson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317400172
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literatura
• Subtopic: Arte dramático

Originally published in 1971. Nineteenth-century theatre in England has been greatly neglected, although serious study would reveal that the roots of much modern drama are to be found in the experiments and extravagancies of the nineteenth-century stage. The essays collected here cover a range of topics within the world of Victorian theatre, from particular actors to particular theatres; from farce to Byron's tragedies, plus a separate section about Shakespearean productions.

PART ONE The Theatre

1CLIVE BARKER

A Theatre for the People

DOI: 10.4324/9781315681443-5

The early nineteenth century was a period of radical and often turbulent social change. The period from 1780 to 1880 has been described by one historian as encompassing ‘the origins of Modern English Society’ [1]. It is therefore appropriate that any contemporary examination of nineteenth-century British theatre should examine some of the social factors that affected the theatre during this period.

Theatre scholarship has often proceeded as though there were two concepts of time, Social time and Theatre time. The theatre has usually been seen as a development in time set apart from the movement of society. The value of such studies is considerable and I intend no disrespect. The undistracted concentration of a scholar upon one aspect of theatrical history has obvious merit in a field where the object of our studies is ephemeral and essentially beyond recall. The critical task of assessing the performance of an actor in a role and the effect of his performance upon an audience demands the painstaking and microscopic examination of secondary and tertiary sources and evidence and poses very fine problems of judgment in assessing the validity and value of this evidence. The task of relating theatrical events directly to the movement and circumstances of the society in which the performance took place is almost certainly at this point in time too much to expect of any single scholar. The library shelves and bibliographies are stuffed with works that have attempted a broad comprehensive coverage of an age in a form and at a length which gives the writer no opportunity critically to examine his material and which traps him into making generalizations and disguised value judgments which either confuse or exasperate the reader or worse still give the impression of authoritative truth. Worse still are the magpie popular theatre historians who trade uncritically in detail. For some reason which should be a source of concern if not shame to us, a very high proportion of the standard works of reference on the theatre seem to have been written by popular theatre historians and not scholars.

There is an imperative need for theatre studies which go beyond the theatre. As theatre studies move away from textual criticism to the study of the play in performance as the only means of understanding any dramatic work and the evaluation of its content and effect, so they must continue to move towards the study of the play in performance in the movement of society in its time, for precisely the same reasons.

If the events from 1780 to 1880 can be described as the origins of modern British society then they can also be called with some justification the origins of the modern British theatre. I am sure that nineteenth-century British theatre history is at the start of a highly productive period because nineteenth-century history studies are already into a highly productive period. The body of social and cultural evidence which is available to the theatre historian grows almost weekly. G. Kitson Clark, in The Making of Victorian England, says:

The tools for any reconstruction of English nineteenth-century history must be forged from the great mass of evidence which is now available for the student – the very large and varied collections of documents, reams of newspapers local and national, ephemeral literature, the results of Government enquiries etc. It is I believe a larger mass than exists for any country in any previous century…. Upon that mass an almost comparably large swarm of research students has settled, and part of the work of anyone trying to deal with nineteenth-century history must be an attempt, probably an unsuccessful attempt, to cover the relevant work which is being done on his subject; he must also gain for himself some direct experience of the varied evidence which is now so profusely available. [2]

The prospect is daunting but some indication of the possible results can be seen in the recently published Survey of London, which deals with the Co vent Garden and Drury Lane Theatres [3] and which makes use of material not previously used by theatre historians, and in London Theatres and Music Halls 1850–1950, edited by Diana Howard [4], which reveals a wealth of material on theatre architecture in the files of the Greater London Council Architect's Department.

The problems of social studies of the theatre are the problems of the comprehensive social histories that they form part of and should contribute to. Harold Perkin, in The Origins of Modem English Society 1780–1880, makes a case for social history as a vertebrate discipline built around a central organizing theme, the history of society qua society, of social structure in all its manifold and constantly changing ramifications.

Comprehensive history of this kind, however limited its success, obviously cannot be the unaided work of one historian. Ideally, perhaps, it should be a teamwork, with many specialists, and not only historians, contributing their expertise, though the whole at the end best refined in the reverberating furnace of a single mind. [5]

It is clear that the day has gone when one man could sit at his desk and write definitively about nineteenth-century history. The day might come again but the task now is for explorative studies, wide-ranging and hypercritical of previous authorities.

It must be clear from this lengthy exposition and its general tone that I am about to deal with my failure and my inability to blind you with a sequence of startling revelations about popular theatre in the 1830s. We did have our team of researchers, and we did begin to swarm over the material Dr Kitson Clark lists. Eleven students of the Department of Drama and Theatre Arts working under my supervision contributed to the study. There was certainly no shortage of material produced. Perhaps I do not have the reverberating furnace sort of single mind that Professor Perkin thinks is called for to refine the material, but I think we discovered the enormity of the task that faces any student of theatre history who lets his eye wander outside the stage door.

The problems are complicated and numerous, but it is so necessary and so obviously valuable to tackle them that I have thought it worth while to dwell on them and construct this paper round them rather than to take one particular aspect arising out of research. I could quite easily have concentrated on the 1832 House of Commons Select Committee to Enquire into the state of the Law Affecting Dramatic Literature. We discovered a virgin volume of the evidence presented to this committee, and published by the University of Ulster, on the law shelves of the university library [6]. The evidence constitutes a comprehensive first-hand account of the problems facing the London theatres in one particular year seen from the point of view of involved parties, and is probably unique in the annals of theatrical history. The preliminary notes of the student covering it take up almost the length of this paper. But the reason I have not concentrated on it is that most of the evidence is nearly impossible to evaluate except in a much wider context. One of the principle lay witnesses was Francis Place, the middle-class radical, and this immediately leads into an examination of the Reform movement, since 1832 was, of course, the year of the First Reform Bill [7]. To what extent the reform of the theatre coincided, directly or indirectly, with electoral reforms, is the first question that must be asked. Alfred L. Crauford wrote a novel in 1933 called Sam and Sallie, subtitled ‘a romance of the stage’ [8]. Crauford prefaces his book by saying that whereas most novelists disclaim any resemblance in their characters to any real person living or dead, he makes no such apology. In fact if his characters did not resemble real persons there would be no point in writing it. Still, the book is a novel and therefore open to critical mistrust.

Crauford's book is biography in fictional form of the lives of Sam and Sara Lane, proprietors of the Britannia Theatre, Hoxton from 1841 until Sara Lane's death in 1899. Crauford can be given a great deal of credibility as he was the nephew of Sam and Sara Lane and was manager of the theatre for the last quarter of the century. The novel, where it touches on fact, can often be verified from other sources and Crauford shows little desire to fictionalize the story of the two people, and as a novel the book fails totally for this reason. Being a good theatre man he amalgamates minor characters and occasionally telescopes events and he is careless over details, but his intention appears to be to present the love and life story of two theatre people in a very favourable and sympathetic light — which was not difficult since both Sam and Sara Lane were widely respected both in and out of the theatre.

Early in the novel there is a curiously detailed passage which requires either confirmation or explanation, or both. Sam Lane was a Devonshire lad who came up to London in the mid-1830s to seek his fortune. He worked in the Royal Union Saloon in Shoreditch High Street and in 1839 ‘came into possession’ of it. In defiance of the law, Lane maintained a company not only playing burletta but straight drama. One night in 1839 during a performance:

An inspector with a dozen constables pushed their way through the entrance doors and up on to the stage. He arrested Sam and ordered him to drop the curtain and dismiss the audience despite the money. The audience rose up on Sam's side. The players were not allowed to change their costumes. A huge hostile crowd met the policemen (and the thirteen actors) as they dragged them to Worship Street Police Station and threw them into prison.

The culprits are brought before the bench and found guilty.

My decision is that all these persons who have aided and abetted you in your illegal performances shall pay a fine of 10s. each….As for you Samuel Lane, you have wantonly broken the law and you did it with your eyes open. The Houses of Parliament in their wisdom have decreed that theatrical performances shall be entirely restricted to the Patent Theatres of London. For years you have been filling your pockets by this illicit trade and I must inflict a penalty commensurate with your offence. I might make the penalty so heavy that it would be to your utter ruin, but if I refrain from this, it is in the hope that you will never again attempt a similar infringement.

Lane is fined £250 and his licence confiscated.

The Union affair had made a considerable sensation, not only in the neighbourhood, but throughout London. The newspapers had related the matter very fully, giving details of the sensational parade through the streets of the woebegone players, all in their war-paint; and also the subsequent proceedings at the police courts. Public opinion strongly supported the actors and there was comment in the House of Commons. Sam was now approached by some Chartist agitators. The so-called Peoples Charter was drawn up in 1838 and was a protest on behalf of the working man against the hardship of his lot. They were therefore ready to support any discontent that would be likely to enflame the populace and add some backing to their movement. They urged Sam to put himself at the head of an open-air meeting….Accordingly, one day, when Parliament was sitting, a mob of some hundreds of men, with Sam and some Chartist leaders at their head, marched from Shoreditch, through the City and the Strand to Westminster bearing banners with large letters: ‘ONE LAW FOR THE RICH, ANOTHER FOR THE POOR.’ ‘WORKERS WANT THEATRES’ ‘FREEDOM FOR THE PEOPLES AMUSEMENTS.’ [9]

The meeting attracts a large and ugly crowd who hear an impassioned speech from a Chartist. Sam's speech is interrupted by the police, but as a sequel Sam meets Tom Holmes, M.P. for Hackney, who raises the matter in the House of Commons. Holmes introduces a Private Members Bill which is defeated 242–51 and more meetings follow. The novel then asserts that one of the first acts of Peel's Ministry was to introduce a relieving act amending the Law of Theatrical Amusements.

The story moves on to 1841 when Lane takes over the Britannia Saloon in Hoxton, and is soon up to his old games. However, at the time for renewal of the licences, one antagonist of the theatres on the council of Magistrates brings up evidence of certain saloons substituting the elevating educational plays of Shakespeare for the blood and thunder melodramas. He considers the dignity of labour is sufficient reward for the working class and persuades the other magistrates to refuse licences [10].

Sam re-opens as a variety house selling beer tickets and not charging for the entertainment. In parliament an important and valuable advocate of freedom takes the lead in advocating the sweeping away of the monopoly held by the Patent Theatres. This is Bulwer Lytton. Sam attaches himself to Lytton and organises another mammoth march down Whitehall bearing banners such as ‘Freedom for the Theatres’. They are joined by the employees of other saloons. The demonstration makes its effect. Opinion has impressed itself, and at a by-election in London the renewal of saloon licences is made an issue and more pressure is brought to bear on the Government. The Theatres Regulation Act of 1843 is brought in. Ten further theatres and seven saloons are given full licences and the stage is free. ‘It was felt to be a political victory won for the people, another shackle cast off and another step on the road to freedom’ [11]. The story contains a number of simple errors. Lytton was not in Parliament from 1841–50 (which hasn't stopped other more serious writers calling the 1843 Act Bulwer's Bill). The Britannia licence was refused in 1842 not 1841. The sequence of events is obviously tailored for a clearer narrative, but is it to be disregarded because of this? On a closer examination some major deficiencies appear. We can find no trace whatsoever in 1839 House of Commons of Tom Holmes nor his Bill defeated in such numerical detail 242 to 51. We can find no record of the Chartist marches with Sam Lane down Whitehall, although it may well be that we have either not looked in the right places, or have not the right information to tell us where to look. A.E. Wilson repeats the story about Tom Holmes and the marches in East End Entertainment, but his wording clearly suggests that he took it straight from the novel since he also records that the performance for which Lane was fined was an illegal ‘Black-eyed Susan’, as in the novel, whereas the court accounts give a less class-conscious sounding bill — ‘History of Lumpkins Journey’ and ‘The Three Lovers Plot and Counter-plot’. But should the story be discarded, when it contains one element at least which is not covered anywhere else – that is, Chartist agitation for the reform of the Theatre? It is for this reason that we have thought it worth pursuing.

Various historical events change their significance as they are viewed from the perspective of other times. In our time the issue that has aroused most discussion in the area of theatre reform has been the abolition of the censorship, and most recent writing on the 1843 Act has natura...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Members of the Symposium
• Part One The Theatre
• Part Two The Drama
• Part Three Shakespearean Production in the Nineteenth Century