Reading Theatre History from Account Books

Abstract

A surprisingly large number of account books and related financial documents survive for the patent theatres of eighteenth-century London, but they remain largely unused by theatre historians. Daily receipts now known from ninety-plus books covering more than sixty seasons were printed in The London Stage a generation ago.1 However, the sources of this information, which range from prompters’ diaries to full-length daybooks, often contain further, unused particulars, chiefly about companies at Drury Lane and Covent Garden theatres. Some opera sources also exist. Access to these volumes is not difficult: most of the records are preserved in the Folger and the British Library, where the MSS have been available for many decades. They vary greatly in what they were originally designed to do and what they provide, which can make comparisons between companies or across seasons or genres problematic. Scholars have occasionally traced the success or failure of a single play, followed a playwright’s earnings, or calculated a performer’s benefit gains. To date, however, the accounts have almost never been used systematically, perhaps because the sheer bulk of financial material and the amount of detail are intimidating. I believe that many of the utilization problems can be solved, and that these books have much to tell us.