Victorian Pantomime
Also by Jim Davis JOHN LISTON COMEDIAN LIVES OF THE SHAKESPEAREAN ACTORS, PART II: Edmund Kean (editor ) PLAYS BY H. J. BYRON (editor ) REFLECTING THE AUDIENCE: London Theatregoing, 1840 1880 (with Victor Emeljanow) THE BRITANNIA DIARIES: Selections From the Diaries of Frederick C. Wilton 1863 75 (editor )
Victorian Pantomime A Collection of Critical Essays Edited by Jim Davis
Selection and editorial matter Jim Davis 2010 Individual chapters contributors 2010 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2010 978-0-230-22159-8 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6 10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-30711-1 ISBN 978-0-230-29178-2 (ebook) DOI 10.1057/9780230291782 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Victorian pantomime: a collection of critical essays/edited by Jim Davis. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Pantomime Great Britain History 19th century. I. Davis, Jim, 1949 PN1987.G7V53 2010 792.3'8094109034222 2010023755 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10
Contents List of Table, Figures and Map Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors vii ix x Introduction: Victorian Pantomime 1 Jim Davis Part 1 The Golden Age of Pantomime: The Mid-Victorian Period 19 1 E. L. Blanchard and The Golden Age of Pantomime 21 Jeffrey Richards 2 Arcadias of Pantomime : Ruskin, Pantomime, and The Illustrated London News 41 Sharon Aronofsky Weltman 3 Lewis Carroll, E. L. Blanchard and Frank W. Green 54 Richard Foulkes 4 Harlequin Encore: Sixty Years of the Britannia Pantomime 70 Janice Norwood Part 2 Pantomime, Representation and Ideology 85 5 Pantomime and the Experienced Young Fellow 87 Jacky Bratton 6 Only an Undisciplined [Nation] would have done it : Drury Lane Pantomime in the Late Nineteenth Century 100 Jim Davis 7 Dan Leno: Dame of Drury Lane 118 Caroline Radcliffe Part 3 Provincial Pantomime 135 8 Mapping the Place of Pantomime in a Victorian Town 137 Jo Robinson 9 Local and political hits : Allusion and Collusion in the Local Pantomime 155 Jill A. Sullivan v
vi Contents 10 Holding up the mirror : Readership and Authorship in the Era s Pantomime Reviews from the 1870s 170 Ann Featherstone Part 4 The Legacy of Victorian Pantomime 183 11 Continuity and Transformation in Twentieth-century Pantomime 185 Millie Taylor 12 Victorian Pantomime on Twentieth-century Film 201 David Mayer Select Bibliography 216 Index 221
List of Table, Figures and Map Table 4.1 Authors of Britannia pantomime openings 72 Figures 1 Pantomime as political satire: Linley Sambourne, A Pantomime Rehearsal, Punch, 24 December 1898, p. 290 (collection of Jim Davis) 3 2 Alfred Thompson, A Peep Behind the Scenes on Boxing Night, London Society, vol. XII (The Christmas number for 1867), p. 27 (collection of Jim Davis) 10 2.1 Mason Jackson, Engaging Children for the Christmas Pantomime at Drury Land Theatre, Illustrated London News 51 (7 December 1867): 612 43 2.2 R. Taylor, Going to the Morning Performance of the Pantomime, Illustrated London News 60 (13 January 1872): 48 45 2.3 D. H. Friston, Scene from Jack in the Box at the Drury Lane Theatre, The Illustrated London News 64 (10 January 1874): 28 50 3.1 Scene from the children s pantomime version of Little Goody Two Shoes at the Adelphi Theatre, Illustrated London News (20 January 1877), 63 56 4.1 Scene from Turlututu at the Britannia Theatre, Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News (6 January 1877) (collection of Janice Norwood) 81 5.1 EXPERIENCED YOUNG FELLOW from Punch, 25 February 1860 88 6.1 Feline Soldiers from Dick Whittington, Drury Lane, 1894 5 (collection of Jim Davis) 102 6.2 Herbert Campbell as the New Woman, Dick Whittington, Drury Lane 1894 6 (collection of Jim Davis) 111 vii
viii List of Table, Figures and Map 6.3a/b Little Tich as Man Friday and John D Auban as Noblulu, Robinson Crusoe, Drury Lane 1893 4 (collection of Jim Davis) 112 6.4 Brown, Leclerq and Newland as the Queen, King and Prime Minister of the Cannibal Islands, Robinson Crusoe, Drury Lane 1893 4 (collection of Jim Davis) 113 7.1 Dan Leno as pantomime dame 121 7.2 Dan Leno as Sister Anne in Bluebeard, Drury Lane 1901 125 7.3 Dan Leno as Mother Goose, Drury Lane 1902 128 10.1 Mr Edward Ledger, Judy, 21 January, 1880 (collection of Ann Featherstone) 171 Map 8.1 Excerpt from 1861 plan of the town of Nottingham and its environs, by Edward W. Salmon, showing the position of the two Theatre Royal sites in relation to other key sites in the town (Nottingham City Council Leisure and Culture Services Local Studies Library) 141
Acknowledgements Many of the chapters in this book commenced life at a one-day conference on Victorian Pantomime at the Warwick Arts Centre funded by the Humanities Research Centre of the University of Warwick. I am indebted to everyone who participated in the conference for contributing to discussions that helped to give momentum to this collection of essays. I am also grateful to Paula Kennedy, Benjamin Doyle and Steven Hall at Palgrave Macmillan for their support in bringing this book into existence. Jim Davis ix
Notes on Contributors Jacky Bratton is Professor of Theatre and Cultural History at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her most recent books are New Readings in Theatre History (2003) and The Victorian Clown (with Ann Featherstone, 2006). She has recently completed a project beginning the re-cataloguing of the Lord Chamberlain s collection of nineteenth-century plays held at the British Library, and the web publication of some of the treasures found there. She is engaged on a large-scale project, in collaboration with Dr Ann Featherstone, which aims to produce a series of books and articles rewriting mid-victorian entertainment history on a more inclusive basis. Her book on the early years of London s West End is forthcoming in 2011. Jim Davis is Professor of Theatre Studies at the University of Warwick. He has published widely on nineteenth-century British theatre and his books include John Liston Comedian (1985), The Britannia Diaries (1992), Reflecting the Audience: London Theatregoing 1840 1880 (2001 with Victor Emeljanow), winner of the Theatre Book Prize in 2002, and the volume on Edmund Kean in the Lives of the Shakespearean Actors series (2009). He is currently completing a study of the visual representation of English comic actors from 1780 to 1830. Ann Featherstone is a performance historian in the Department of Drama, University of Manchester. Her research focuses upon popular entertainment in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, particularly music hall, circus, fairgrounds, penny gaffs, and how they were described in the press, journals and literature. As well as academic publications, her first novel, Walking in Pimlico (2009), is set in Victorian concert halls and circuses, and her second, The Newgate Jig (forthcoming), has the background of popular theatre and freak shows. Richard Foulkes is Emeritus Professor of Theatre History, University of Leicester. His publications include: Church and Stage in Victorian England (1997), Performing Shakespeare in the Age of Empire (2002) and Lewis Carroll and the Victorian Stage: Theatricals in A Quiet Life (2005). He has recently edited a collection of essays reappraising Henry Irving, and his volume on Macready for the Lives of the Shakespearean Actors series was published in 2010. He was an Associate Editor for the Oxford x
Notes on Contributors xi Dictionary of National Biography and General Editor of Publications for the Society for Theatre Research. David Mayer, Emeritus Professor of Drama and Research Professor at the University of Manchester, has published extensively on British and American popular entertainment of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in particular on the topics of melodrama and pantomime. His recent writings explore the interstices between the late-victorian stage and early motion pictures. He is founder-director of The Victorian and Edwardian Stage on Film Project at the University of Manchester and was a contributing member to The Griffith Project. His books include Harlequin in his Element: English Pantomime, 1806 18366 (1968), Henry Irving and The Bells (1984), Playing Out the Empire: Ben-Hur and other Toga-Plays and Films (1994), and Stage-struck Filmmaker: D. W. Griffith and the American Theatre e (2009). Janice Norwood, a Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Hertfordshire, has research interests in nineteenth-century theatrical performance, especially that of the theatres of the East End of London. She has published work on the Britannia Theatre, the dramatist C. H. Hazlewood, stage adaptations of Wilkie Collins s novels, the prize fighter Tom Sayers and nineteenth-century productions of Shakespeare. She is currently working on the actress and manager Madame Vestris. Caroline Radcliffe trained in music and acting, working freelance before completing her Ph.D. on Victorian popular theatre at Royal Holloway, University of London. She is a lecturer in Drama and Theatre Arts at the University of Birmingham. Jeffrey Richards is Professor of Cultural History at Lancaster University. He is the author of Sir Henry Irving: a Victorian Actor and His World (2005) and The Ancient World on the Victorian and Edwardian Stage (2009), and co-author (with Katherine Newey, 2010) of John Ruskin and the Victorian Theatre. He is currently engaged with Professor Kate Newey on an AHRC research project on the social and cultural history of Victorian pantomime. Jo Robinson is Head of Drama in the School of English Studies, University of Nottingham, where she teaches nineteenth- and twentieth-century theatre. She was the principal investigator for the three-year AHRCfunded project, Mapping Performance Culture: Nottingham 1857 67, completed in September 2009, in relation to which she is researching issues of performance and spectatorship and developing interdisciplinary
xii Notes on Contributors research on mapping and historiographical representation. The project website is at www.nottingham.ac.uk/mapmoment. Jill A. Sullivan is an Honorary Fellow of the University of Exeter. Her research interests lie within the field of nineteenth-century theatre and popular entertainments, with a particular interest in the development and expression of regional identity through theatre and other visual and performance genres. She is currently completing The Politics of the Pantomime: Regional Identity in the Theatre 1860 1900 (forthcoming in 2011). Millie Taylor began her career as a professional musical director and for almost twenty years toured Britain and Europe with a variety of musicals, and worked for several of the largest pantomime producers in the UK. She is now at the University of Winchester. Recent publications include British Pantomime Performance (2007), Integration and Distance in Stephen Sondheim s Sweeney Todd, Contemporary Theatre Review, 19/1 (2009), and Experiencing Live Musical Theatre Performance: La Cage Aux Folles and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, Popular Entertainment Studies, forthcoming 2010. She is currently working on a book on musical theatre, Musical Theatre, Realism and Entertainment. Sharon Aronofsky Weltman is Professor of English and Director of English Graduate Studies at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. She is author of Performing the Victorian: John Ruskin and Identity in Theater, Science, and Education (2007) and Ruskin s Mythic Queen: Gender Subversion in Victorian Culture (a Choice Outstanding Academic book in 1999). She also has essays either in print or forthcoming on the musical plays Sweeney Todd, The King and I, and Goblin Market and their source texts. Her current project is Victorians on Broadway, a book manuscript that examines the cultural work accomplished by mid to late twentieth-century musical theatre adaptations of Victorian materials.