Fantasies of Empire: The Empire Theatre of Varieties and the Licensing Controversy of 1894 (review)

{ 180 } BOOK REV IEWS zens rather than paid professionals. Jerry Dickey’s“Mamet’s Actors: A Life in the Theatre and Other Writings on the Art of Acting” brings Mamet into a similar discussion. Mamet longs for an authenticity in acting that the deliberate deception of American method acting prevents. Jon D. Rossini’s “The Contemporary Ethics of Violence: Cruz, Solis, and Homeland Security” reminds us that virtually all the matters discussed above are far more than merely academic issues. Recalling the government custody of José Padilla and the self-refuting argument that he must be silenced in order to preserve freedom, Rossini reminds us that violence originates from and is propagated through such twisted logic. Rossini uses works by Octavio Solis and Nilo Cruz to argue that participation in the American narrative, rather than exclusion , is the only effective way to overcome cycles of violence. Along those lines, understanding the world about us and properly acting on that understanding are what is needed during these tumultuous times. Bonnie Marranca closes the collection with “The Solace of Chocolate Squares: Thinking about Wallace Shawn,” presenting Shawn’s unique passion for values that combines the moral, political, and aesthetic. Codifying the National Self is a solid addition to the sorts of discussions necessary in a world grown closer together and torn further apart than at any time in recent memory. —WILLIAM W. DEMASTES Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge Fantasies of Empire: The Empire Theatre of Varieties and the Licensing Controversy of 1894. By Joseph Donohue. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2005. xi + 290 pp. $44.95 cloth. The real question here is, will Professor Joseph Donohue forgive Wilde fans for not remembering that in act 1 of The Importance of Being Earnest, Algernon suggests to Jack that after dinner they might “trot round to the Empire at ten”? After all, for his award-winning 1995 book Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest: A Reconstructive Critical Edition of the Text of the First Production, St. James’s Theatre, London, 1895, Donohue painstakingly researched the reference and contextualized Algy’s remark in a footnote for readers of the play. Fantasies of Empire: The Empire Theatre of Varieties and the Licensing Controversy of 1894, Donohue’s new work, owes its genesis to that very footnote. \ { 181 } BOOK REV IEWS One of Victorian London’s favorite music halls, the Empire Theatre of Varieties offered its patrons a lively series of entertainments, including popular song, ballet, and living pictures. When stage offerings became wearisome and thirsts demanded slaking, patrons could retire to the promenades. “American bars” dispensed alcoholic refreshments, including “Port Wine Sangaree,” “Corpse Revivers,” and “Bosom Caressers” (44). Patrons of manager George Edwardes’s Leicester Square edifice also took pleasure in the opportunities for social interaction , conversation, and ogling—both of stage performers and theatregoers— that were facilitated by the Empire’s promenades. Ultimately, those promenades would become the source of contention. In the summer of 1894, moral reformer Laura Ormiston Chant made a series of five visits to the Empire, determined to investigate the“character & want of clothing in the ballet” (31) and the presence of women soliciting in the theatre . Just after 9 p.m. each evening, Chant was distressed to see numerous unescorted young women filling the Empire’s promenades, “very much painted” and all “more or less gaudily dressed” (58). Hence, when the Empire Theatre of Varieties’ license came up for its normally routine renewal in October 1894, Chant and members of the National Vigilance Society successfully lobbied for the London County Council to either deny the license or insist upon changes in the Empire’s business practices. While the council opted for changes, a slightly altered business-as-usual approach was soon restored. Predictably, the popular press vilified Chant and her supporters throughout the controversy as “Prudes on the Prowl.” Or, as the Music Hall and Theatre Review opined, Chant and the National Vigilance Society represented the “unsworn babblings of neurotic females ” (129). Across a prologue and five chapters, Donohue tells an immensely compelling story. Besides having scoured the period’s newspapers and periodicals, he relies upon the records of the London County Council for much of his narrative...