Stages of class: popular theatre and the geography of belonging

Abstract

The music hall indicates a more indirect relationship between the creation and reception of popular art than was the case with ballads and dialect. Popular theatre, and particularly the music halls, came to have a fairly uniform character throughout the country. In terms of organisation and performance one can speak of a ‘national’ form of art. Paradoxically enough, the early century ballads have a kinship here, but even they when compared with the music hall indicate how progressively in the century regional differences might figure somewhat less than national similarities. The case of the music hall therefore brings out the whole question of the relationship between the different social and geographical stages – local, regional and national – upon which the senses of belonging and solidarity were played out at the time. What is evident is something much more complex than the eclipse of the local and the regional by the national. If in some respects regional and introspective, dialect also pointed outwards to broader national horizons as well. The example of dialect in fact illustrates how these different levels or stages might be complementary: rather than disparate aspects of ‘class’ development it is a relationship which is chiefly evident. The changing character of this relationship will be considered in due course: it will be evident that the regional stage was to continue to matter greatly.