With the burgeoning middle class and improved transportation, demand for new theatres and entertainments increased. Installation of street lighting enabled safer night-time travel so that audience numbers grew, production values improved, and programmes ran longer.
Drama and Humour
Many contemporary playwrights’ works contained eccentric comedy mixed with potential tragedy – opposites in subject matter and tone. To please audiences, they presented idealistic happy conclusions, with problems between characters resolved – romantic illusion was preferable to reality.
As noted in The Cambridge Companion to Victorian and Edwardian Theatre, London critic Clement Scott “declared that no matter how sad life is, let us sometimes...dream how happy and beautiful it might be”. The majority of audiences agreed that that “was the true purpose of theatre”.
Filled with mistaken identities and coincidences, the plots comprised some drama with laughter-prompting material ranging from biting humour and witty dialogue to slapstick.
“Money” (1840)
Written by Edward Bulwer-Lytton (a socially aware playwright deeply troubled by the disparity between poor and rich), Money quickly became a favourite. Shedding light on greed and arrogance, the comic satire also offered scenes filled with sentiment and romance.
Having been both poor and rich, Alfred Evelyn, the main character, cites the hypocrisy of society with “...the difference between rich and poor: it takes a whirlwind to move the one – a breath may uproot the other!”. Involved in gambling, he observes that objection to gambling is not based on morality, but on the crime of losing.
“London Assurance” 1841
Dion Boucicault presented his romantic London Assurance in 1841 with great success at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden. The brilliantly funny play with intrigue, an arranged marriage, and a character in disguise, offered two great comic roles – corpulent Sir Harcourt Courtly and eccentric Lady Spanker.
A man of soft heart and considerable vanity, Sir Harcourt, having travelled from his London residence to a more rural setting, proclaims, “I have seen sunrise frequently after a ball, or from the windows of my travelling-carriage, and I always considered it disagreeable”.
Considered a crucial link between the comedy of 18th century playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan and that of Oscar Wilde, the fast-paced material continues to sparkle in modern productions.
“The Game of Speculation” 1851
Under the pseudonym Slingsby Lawrence, journalist G. H. Lewes wrote the highly successful farce, The Game of Speculation, an adaptation of Balzac’s Mercadet. Presenting ingenious swindler Affable Hawk, the play’s themes of fraud and manipulation, and attempts to marry off a daughter to an apparent wealthy suitor, appears to be more drama than comedy.
However, the highly successful farce was perfect for star comedian/collaborator Charles Mathews who presented his lines with “rapidity of precisely enunciated speech, and great energy”. Filled with self interest, Hawk bullies and cajoles his identified marks, renders them willing to give in to his wishes, and boasts of pulling their strings.
“Our Boys” 1875
Henry James Byron’s comedy Our Boys, which debuted January 16, 1875, became the longest-running production for its time, with 1,362 performances.
The three-act play, which contains the famous statement, “Life’s too short for chess”, relates the tale of the snobbish Sir Geoffrey Champneys and the more down-to-earth Mr. Middlewick, and their sons, Talbot and Charles. Wishing to determine their sons’ personal and professional futures, the fathers indulge in hasty judgements, “thick-skinned prejudices”, and wild theories while ignoring the realities of human nature.
Late 19th Century Farces and Satires
Under French influence, farces became more than one or two-act afterpieces on 1870s British theatre stages; they were three-act farces.
Comedies continued the tradition of presenting women in positions inferior to those of men except in matters of household details. Even when husbands strayed from their wives or demanded their daughters’ compliance with marital arrangements, the women acquiesced, and sometimes begged forgiveness if they had expressed opposition.
Late in the Victorian era, those behaviours became less prominent, and female playwrights presented new insights after the turn of the century.
Sources
Michael Flavin, Gambling in the Nineteenth-Century English Novel, Sussex Academic Press 2003
The Broadview Anthology of Nineteenth-Century British Performance, Editor Tracy C. Davis, Broadview Press 2011
The Cambridge Companion to Victorian and Edwardian Theatre Edited by Kerry Powell, 2004
Our Boys, Harold Roorbach Publisher, 1889 Edition
Kathleen Airdrie - Kathleen has thirty years' freelance writing experience covering history, biographical profiles, environmental and social issues
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