The Comedy and Legacy of Music-Hall Women 1880-1920

Brazen Impudence and Boisterous Vulgarity

Sam Beale

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9783030479411
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Television

This book explores the comedy and legacy of women working as performers on the music-hall stage from 1880–1920, and examines the significance of their previously overlooked contributions to British comic traditions. Focusing on the under-researched female 'serio-comic', the study includes six micro-histories detailing the acts of Ada Lundberg, Bessie Bellwood, Maidie Scott, Vesta Victoria, Marie Lloyd and Nellie Wallace. Uniquely for women in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, these pioneering performers had public voices. The extent to which their comedy challenged Victorian and Edwardian perceptions of women is revealed through explorations of how they connected with popular audiences while also avoiding censorship. Their use of techniques such as comic irony and stereotyping, self-deprecation, and comic innuendo are considered alongside the work of contemporary stand-up comedians and performance artists including Bridget Christie, Bryony Kimmings, Sara Pascoe, ShaziaMirza and Sarah Silverman.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction: Reweaving Women’s Comic Performance History
• 2. Sentiments Unwomanly and Unnatural: Moral Ambiguity, Censorship and Public Perceptions of the Serio-Comic Performer
• 3. I Must Tell You This: Intimacy, Gagging and Comic Licence in Performer-Audience Relationships
• 4. A Comfort and Blessing to Man: Performed Irony and Comic Disruptions of Gender Stereotypes
• 5. I’ve Only Got Myself to Blame: The Victims and Butts of Women’s Comic Self-Deprecation
• 6. I Mustn’t Tell You What I Mean: Comic Innuendo as Performed Censorship
• 7. Every Little Movement Has a Meaning of Its Own: The Comic Embodiment of Gender, Sexuality and the Grotesque
• 8. Serio-Comic Reflections and Projections
• Back Matter