John Bull in blackface

Abstract

For a mid-twentieth century historian of the music hall, blackface minstrelsy was the ‘oddest form of entertainment imaginable’. He found it ‘incomprehensible’ why people during the Victorian period had delighted in the ‘extraordinary spectacle of the apparently sane white man blacking his face and hands with burnt cork, painting his lips and eyes to resemble those of an African nigger, and then, to complete the incongruity, attiring himself in English evening dress while he sang ditties allegedly emanating from the cotton plantations of Ole Virginny!’ (Felstead 1946, p. 55). There are a number of things to be said about this evaluation, the first being that its severe disparagement of one of the most popular cultural forms of the Victorian period in Britain was, during that period, exceptionally rare. Indeed, the lack of criticism attests to its enduring popularity. From their first wave of success in the late 1830s and early 1840s, minstrel acts, troupes and shows figured as a staple item of the popular stage throughout the remaining decades of the century. What began with its early boom in the second quarter of the century continued to prove attractive to successive generations across all social classes, and among men and women of the large urban centres, provincial towns and outlying rural areas alike.