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  • The Making of the West End Stage: Marriage, Management and the Mapping of Gender in London, 1830–1870 by Jacky Bratton
  • Jim Davis (bio)
The Making of the West End Stage: Marriage, Management and the Mapping of Gender in London, 1830–1870, by Jacky Bratton; pp. vii + 222. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011, £58.00, $103.00.

Jacky Bratton’s monograph provides a revisionist account of the way in which the West End developed as a theatrical centre from 1830 to 1870, breaking with past histories that have been dismissive of the exuberant, iconoclastic, and disruptive nature of what was happening during these years. A champion of popular culture and of the role that women played in developing West End theatrical culture, Bratton rejects a narrative of Victorian theatre history that moves inexorably to the high culture achievements of Henry Irving’s Lyceum or the new drama of George Bernard Shaw and Henrik Ibsen. Instead she provides a detailed and convincing analysis of the West End’s mid-century development, revealing the socioeconomic, political, and gendered factors that were to impact on its growth as a theatrical centre.

Bratton commences by effectively mapping out the terrain of the West End from the perspective of a Victorian woman walking in the city, showing how much there was on offer for her. She also provides the alternative perspective of a Victorian man. The West End, in Bratton’s view, was evanescent, continually in a state of flux. In order to show the range of popular entertainments there, at a time when middle-class anxieties around culture, behaviour, and reception were beginning to emerge, she uses The [End Page 533] Era’s advertising pages to illustrate what was on offer, particularly focussing on the rarely discussed German Reed Entertainments.

Bratton considers the issue of what it actually meant to write for the stage in the mid-nineteenth century, not only in the context of the debate over the dignity of the theatre and the social status of authors, but also with respect to notions of manliness, male identity, and the homosocial sphere of Bohemia. Though excluded from Bohemia and its clubs, women were still part of the burgeoning commercial culture of West End theatre. How did they fit in? Bratton argues that women’s importance increased as men’s role in society became more restricted. She claims that the 1830s and 1840s saw a crisis in category, of both gender and forms of entertainment. In such an unsettled climate, some contemporary plays tightened and confirmed gender boundaries, while cross-dressed roles in others allowed for greater flexibility of thinking. The transvestite attractions of Eliza Vestris’s cross-dressed roles seemed threatening to some: women playing men and boys worked against contemporary assumptions about masculinity. But Bratton also draws attention to the ways in which the experiments with gender representation of Marcia Honner, Marie Wilton, Ellen Tree (Mrs. Charles Kean), Fanny Stirling, Priscilla Horton (Mrs. German Reed), Mary Anne Keeley, and Céline Céleste contributed to their successes. She suggests that the gender boundaries and ethical ideals of Victorian middle-class society were subverted and redefined by these performers, who helped to make the West End a place “where there would be forever license and holiday, bright lights and naughtiness” (144).

By the late nineteenth century the climate had become more misogynistic, but Bratton provides compelling evidence that in the mid-century a considerable number of women were involved in theatre management—far more than subsequent histories have credited. There were restrictions in force that made it difficult for women to borrow or to set up their own businesses, so that their forays into management often relied upon family and personal relationships. Thus the Swanborough family, who were responsible for the development and popularity of burlesque at the Strand Theatre, were particularly beholden to the managerial skills of both Ada Swanborough and her mother. Women managers were sometimes subsidised by rich lovers, as was the case with Louisa Herbert at the St. James’s Theatre. Céleste’s managerial success initially derived from her relationship with actor-manager Ben Webster. But women’s involvement was also achieved through...

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