Melodrama and the Working Class

Abstract

When we recollect some of the great moments and events of nineteenth-century theatre, the new stars created overnight, the hit play, the outstanding production, our minds go to Edmund Kean’s Shylock at Drury Lane in 1814, Madame Vestris at the Olympic in the 1830s, the four-year run of the comedy Our Boys at the Vaudeville in the 1870s, Henry Irving’s first night as Mathias in The Bells at the Lyceum in 1871 and later his production of Faust there in 1885, Charley’s Aunt at the Royalty in the 1890s, and Mrs Patrick Campbell in The Second Mrs Tanaueray at the St James’s in 1893. All these successes of the nineteenth century had one thing in common: they all occurred at West-End London theatres (although it is perhaps anachronistic to refer to Drury Lane in 1814 as ‘West-End’). Not surprisingly, then, we think of the West End of London when we discuss ‘the Theatre’ in the nineteenth century. The best-known dramatists of the Victorian period — Boucicault, Robertson, Gilbert, Pinero, Jones — all wrote for the West End; the best actors performed there, and the best plays opened there, touring to the West-End-thirsty provinces and Empire and the United States after a long London run. We also know that the backbone of the Victorian West-End audience was the middle class, a class that strengthened its hold on the West-End theatre as it strengthened its own respectability and that of the actor-managers who served it.1KeywordsWorking ClassFactory OwnerCasino ManagerVictorian PeriodTheatre AudienceThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.