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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
  • Nicholas Daly (bio)
The Making of the West End Stage: Marriage, Management and the Mapping of Gender in London, 1830–1870 By Jacky Bratton; pp. 230. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2011. $87.42 cloth.

This study sets out to present the history of the London stage between the Parliamentary Select Committee on the Theatres of 1832 and that of 1866. In this period, the centre of gravity—and levity—of the stage shifted from Covent Garden to the magic rectangle of the West End, creating a theatre district of international importance, at once a “portal, a gateway to elsewhere” (45) and a major site of the entertainment business. In six chapters, Brat-ton charts the formation of this concrete and imaginary space through its representation in the theatrical press, its personnel, and its performances. She argues persuasively that women played a key role in its formation not only as performers but also as managers: her account of the careers of Eliza Vestris, Mary Ann Keeley, Madame Céleste, Marie Wilton, and others clearly proves her case.

Anyone with an interest in nineteenth-century drama should read this book, which compresses a prodigious knowledge of its topic. There are important major arguments here about gender, performance, and history, including a historicization of the proliferation of cross-dressed parts in this period, and there are useful lessons in theatre research, such as what one can deduce about Victorian entertainment from the pages of The Era. But there are also gems of information on particular performers and particular venues: we learn, for example, of the genteel performances of the German Reeds and of the colourful life of Louisa Herbert, painted by Dante Gabriel Rossetti as his “No. 1 stunner” before she went on to play the pre-Raphaelite Lady Audley in George Roberts’s adaptations of Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s novel. We also learn that what is now the London Trocadero has had many identities as a place of entertainment: tennis court, circus, theatre, Argyll Rooms dance hall, and restaurant, among others.

As with any study of such scope, there are weaknesses, of course. In particular, the book contains something of a gap between the title and the content, since marriage does not play a major part until we are a hundred pages or so in. There are at times similar mission drifts within chapters, particularly the last; in addition to carrying on the argument about the role of women in shaping the West End stage, the last chapter pursues a number of other issues, including the importance of Dickens in theatre history. This is all interesting and original, but it makes for a bumpy read. Some of these problems presumably stem from the difficulty of turning the complex stuff of performance history into neat chapter divisions and presenting a broad survey while also maintaining an argument about gender. Chapter 1, for example, charts the terrain of the West End by giving us the journeys of not one but two imaginary pedestrians—one male, one female—and [End Page 127] offers us historical as well as spatial information; the resulting material is all relevant but risks burying the reader in detail. In terms of sources, Bratton has built up her rich, layered account from diaries, memoirs, newspapers, and manuscript plays, as well as from books by Tracy Davis and Peter Bailey, among others. But other work on the nineteenth-century theatre—that of the late Jane Moody or Lynn Voskuil, for example—could usefully be referenced: the last fifteen years or so have seen the appearance of quite a bit of work on this period, particularly on melodrama. In terms of production, this is an attractively presented book, but a few curious errors seem to have evaded the copy-editing process, including the consistent misspelling of Shaftesbury Avenue.

Such gripes aside, this is an important study, one from which I learned a great deal. It presents a highly informative survey of the nascent West End and provides compelling evidence for the central role of women in the creation of that extraordinary...

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