Reflecting the Audience: London Theatregoing, 1840-1880 (review)

In this refreshing, jargon-free, and lucid work Jim Davis and Victor Emeljanow provide an examination of the nineteenth-century audience of the British theatre with a specific focus on the period 1840-1880 in London. They look beyond the patent houses to the "minor" but often popular theatres and consider seven venues in four areas of the city as case studies. Various theatrical and personal accounts, as well as census data, newspaper reports, and information about public transportation, among other records, are meticulously scrutinized by the authors, as they examine not only who may have been at the theatres, but how those audiences got there.

The 1840 starting point for the study is critical for its proximity to the Theatrical Licensing Act of 1843, while the particular significance for the 1880 ending date reflects a host of developments in theatrical practice (new plays, new careers in theatre) as well as in numerous civic changes in London. Davis and Emeljanow convincingly refute generalizations about audience composition, decorum, and demographics derived from sources ranging from newspaper notices of the period to twentieth-century scholarship; the authors stress the importance of recognizing the "subtexts running though our source materials and the attendant myths created by them" (161). In looking at the Surrey Theatre, for example, they assert that the common belief that the nautical melodramas attracted working-class neighborhood audiences whose incomes derived from maritime-related trades was only partly true, as a wide range of people from a broad spectrum of class and geographic locales traveled to the Surrey, and that its clientele was more diverse and more fashionable than has been previously assumed.

In several instances the authors argue that what may have been perceived as demographic shifts, were, in fact, managerial response to the changing tastes of audiences. Of particular note in this regard are their incisive arguments investigating and exposing the hyperbole behind the myth of Samuel Phelps's transformation of the Sadler's Wells Theatre. Charles Dickens's journalism in particular was responsible for casting Phelps in the role of a stern schoolmaster who reformed the bad behavior of his audiences. Davis and Emeljanow clarify Phelps's true intent: to establish his own career and repertoire far from the shadow of William Macready, who had managed both companies of the Theatres Royal and for whom Phelps had acted. The freedom that Phelps enjoyed at the Sadler's Wells, in Islington, removed from the mainstream venues, extended to utilizing how the physical arrangement of the house itself determined what material to present. Because there was so little box space, he was dependent upon the greater number of seats in the pit and gallery. It was necessary to offer a play bill that appealed to the widespread desire for popular entertainment, and his heavily Shakespearean repertoire actually provided that diversion. The mixed working class, notably populated by young people and women, responded enthusiastically. The authors detail this as one of the clearest examples of the crux of the book: the rupturing of historiographical practices that accept and perpetuate without really questioning the theatrical mythologies that persist in being received as fact.

A further example refutes previously held assertions about the "reforms" attributed to Marie Wilton at the Queen's, which she renamed the Prince of Wales Theatre. Some of this "social reengineering," as Davis and Emeljanow call it, had actually been initiated by her predecessor, scenic designer Charles James, which was one reason why Wilton was attracted to the playhouse as a management opportunity. She also appropriated already ongoing trends in production and play selection, influenced by the practices of other managers. Accordingly, she really did not transform the Prince of Wales so decisively as she and her husband, Squire Bancroft, have led others to believe.

Davis and Emeljanow pause along the way throughout their investigation to respond to theoretical positions that they believe have misapplied or misread...