Political Extravaganza: A Phase of Nineteenth-Century British Theater

Abstract

The nineteenth-century popular theater in England is generally presumed to have been innocent of politics, and indeed of almost any other concern which could be mistaken for intellectual substance. Among other disabilities, the nineteenth-century theater dwelt under an official censorship which had been instituted, in response to the burlesques and extravaganzas of Fielding and Gay, specifically to keep politics off the stage. Nevertheless, our presumptions and the censorship notwithstanding, politics, both topical and general, had an important place in the nineteenth-century English theater; and the normal vehicle for topical political satire in the theater was the Burlesque-Extravaganza.