A Cultural History of Theatre in the Age of Empire

Peter Marx

• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9781350277717
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350135468
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 19th Century History
• Index: History

The 19th century ushered in an unprecedented boom in technology, the unification of European nations, the building of global empires and stabilization of the middle classes. The theatre of the era reflected these significant developments as well as helped to catalyse them. Populist theatre and purposebuilt playhouses flourished in the ever-growing urban and cosmopolitan centres of Europe and in expanding global networks.

This volume provides a comprehensive and interdisciplinary overview of the cultural history of theatre from 1800 to 1920. Highly illustrated with 51 images, the ten chapters each take a different theme as their focus: institutional frameworks; social functions; sexuality and gender; the environment of theatre; circulation; interpretations; communities of production; repertoire and genres; technologies of performance; and knowledge transmission.

CHAPTER ONE

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Institutional Frameworks

Britain and Germany, 1800 to 1920

ANSELM HEINRICH

During the long nineteenth century different concepts of managing, organizing and overseeing theatrical entertainments were being discussed across Europe: differences which became manifest in particular in varying ideas about funding the performing arts. Increasingly from the turn of the eighteenth century onwards commentators established a binary between theatre as trade versus theatre as art. The different institutional frameworks established across Europe related to the different concepts of what theatre’s function in society was supposed to be. At the two ends of the spectrum were Britain, where theatre was largely seen as a commercial enterprise, and Germany, where theatre was increasingly regarded as an educational tool, which needed financial support from the taxpayer. These differences became more pronounced in the early twentieth century with more and more German theatres being in receipt of regular subsidies from the state as well as local authorities. The development from relatively similar to fundamentally different theatre systems, the seriousness of the debates, and the effect these debates had on their respective societies, make Germany and Britain particularly fascinating case studies in this context.

The foundation of the Comédie Française in Paris in 1680 established the national theatre as a royal institution as part of a programme of both centralization and control. While issues of governance were put into question after 1789 the principle of setting national standards and artistic principles remained important in French theatrical discourse throughout the nineteenth century – a basic agreement missing from German and British contexts where discussions around the frameworks of theatrical production appear to have been more fluid, pronounced and existential. Both British and German commentators frequently looked up to the French who already in the seventeenth century seemed to have created a confident, influential and well-equipped national theatre which successfully set national standards of productions and was generously funded by the French state. In many ways, the opposite may be said of the American theatre which throughout the nineteenth century borrowed from continental Europe in search for its identity. The fact that, as Don B. Wilmeth and Tice L. Miller claim, this process ‘did not reach its full potential until after WW I’ largely puts the American scene outside of the frame of the investigation here.¹

Approaches to funding theatres in Britain only changed during the Second World War when subsidies were first paid linked to the country’s war effort.² However, monies earmarked for a future national theatre in 1949 were slow in coming forward and a purpose-built playhouse only opened in 1976. Paying subsidies to theatres still seems alien, almost frivolous, to a large segment of the British public today, and they remain heavily scrutinized. Some commentators have claimed that this animosity may be explained by Britain’s theatre history. After all, the country’s ‘national poet’ seemed to operate successfully within a commercial framework. Indeed, Richard Foulkes suggests that Shakespeare’s international fame was due to an economic theatre model capable of exporting his plays around the world – a success story which, according to Foulkes, could not have been accomplished by a subsidized theatre system.³

During the period under consideration theatre expanded significantly in both countries and in part due to legislation which stressed the theatre’s economic role in society. By the early 1800s it had become apparent in Britain that the 1737 Licensing Act, which had tightened censorship and restricted theatrical performances to patent playhouses, was impractical and new legislation was needed to deal with the growing number of ‘illegitimate’ but often tolerated theatres. Both the British 1843 Theatres Regulation Act and the German 1869 Gewerbefreiheit Law regulated theatre as a trade and both led to a phenomenal increase of places of entertainment.

In the following I will look at the 1832 and 1866 British Select Committees, the 1843 Theatres Act, and the parliamentary debates around the 1913 National Theatre Bill. For Germany I will look at the 1869 Gewerbefreiheit bill, the 1919 Weimar Constitution, which put theatre and cinema under Reich jurisdiction, and, particularly, municipal frameworks of governing theatres. The focus on these legal frameworks will be embedded in a discussion of the wider socio-political context from which they originated.

DISCOURSES

In Victorian and Edwardian Britain, and in a society focused on the primacy of individual economic success, and the individual in opposition to the collective, discussing theatre in an essay on ‘institutional frameworks’ would have seemed an odd undertaking. Theatres were largely seen as private affairs and not as necessarily contributing to the common good. Even worse, for Victorian Britain’s Christian majority the theatre was often regarded as morally suspect. Many were intensely suspicious, saw play-going as a distraction from religion and as a promoter of frivolity, vanity and female forwardness. In a typical comment of the time Reverend William Adamson replied to the question whether it was ‘possible to reform the theatre, and make it the centre of an elevating influence’, that this ‘has been tried again and again, without success […] The reason being, the evil is essential, not accidental; and if this is the case, permanent reformation is impossible’.⁴ John Bennett entitled his 1838 Dublin sermon – which was subsequently published – ‘The Evil of Theatrical Amusements’, and there were numerous similar publications.⁵ Theatres were ‘linked to prostitution, juvenile delinquency, idleness, drunkenness and frivolity’ – in fact they were the ‘antithesis of the Victorian world view which prized respectability, gentility, decency, education and uplift’, as Jeffrey Richards has argued.⁶ In many quarters and until at least the later decades of the nineteenth century, theatre was ‘regarded as the lowliest of the arts, if one at all’.⁷

At the same time the various forms of theatrical entertainments became immensely popular. Simon Shepherd and Peter Womack have posited that in the Victorian period ‘there were probably more performances in more theatres seen by more people than at any other period, including the present’.⁸ It also helped that actor-managers like Henry Irving and Herbert Beerbohm Tree strove to make the theatre ‘respectable’, and worthy of middle-class patronage.⁹ Irving’s Lyceum Theatre was referred to as ‘a national theatre […] without a subsidy’.¹⁰ Theatres underwent substantial renovation programmes creating richly decorated auditoria with comfortable seating, expensive carpets and curtains, and the latest stage technology. Acting professionalized and ticket prices were raised. To many commentators it appeared as if the theatre had attracted the middle class back into its confines, and Matthew Arnold saw ‘our community turning to the theater with eagerness’ again.¹¹ ‘Virtuous’ entertainment with Shakespeare and Molière as well as educational melodramas, Toga Plays and Pantomime represented a powerful tool to ‘better’ the lower middle and working classes. It is worth keeping in mind though that even when the influential actor-managers of late Victorian and Edwardian Britain referred to the theatre’s important role in nation building (e.g. Wilson Barrett) they had a commercial model in mind, not a subsidized one. Charles Wyndham and Henry Irving cherished their independence and decidedly turned against the ‘fostering of a State nurse’.¹² They claimed that theatre ‘must be carried on as a business or it will fail as an art’.¹³ The Era concurred and declared that ‘free trade is good in the long run whatever people may say’,¹⁴ and John Hollingshead, manager and lessee of the Gaiety Theatre, spoke of ‘the English suspicion of institutionalised bureaucracy in state-funded theatres’.¹⁵ When Herbert Beerbohm Tree opened the new Her Majesty’s in 1897 the undertaking was celebrated as a successful counter-model to subsidized continental theatres.¹⁶ Instead of putting up a building which ‘rivals the parliament house, or the cathedral as a public building [like] in some Continental cities’ Tree had not only kept the costs down but had also built ‘quite the handsomest theatre in London [which] must go altogether to the credit of Mr Tree’s public spirit and artistic conscience’.¹⁷

By that time the German discourse had already internalized Friedrich Schiller’s dictum of the theatre as a ‘moral institution’ and as contributing to a general cultural education...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• List Of Illustrations
• List Of Tables
• Notes On Contributors
• Series Preface
• Editor’s Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Cartographing the Long Nineteenth Century
• 1 Institutional Frameworks: Britain and Germany, 1800 to 1920
• 2 Social Functions: The Social Function of Theatre
• 3 Sexuality and Gender
• 4 The Environment of Theatre
• 5 Circulation: Theatrical Mobility and its Professionalization in the Nineteenth Century
• 6 Interpretations: The Interpretation of Theatre
• 7 Communities of Production
• 8 Repertoire and Genres
• 9 Technologies of Performance
• 10 Knowledge Transmission: Media and Memory
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright