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JANICE NORWOOD: I'm Doctor Janice Norwood from the University of Hertfordshire, where I'm a visiting research fellow in literature. And I'm a theatre historian with interests in 19th century

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theatre, popular culture, and visual culture. Well, the first thing to say about 19th century audiences is that you need to be very careful about talking about them in general terms, because you need to consider the particular

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time that you're talking about and the particular venue that you're talking about. So an audience in Covent Garden in 1880 would be very different from one much earlier in the century,

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for example. Or if you're talking about a theatre in a regional area of the country tree or the East End of London, might be very different from a West End venue.

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So you need to be think about how the geography affects the audience, and also what's being put on at the time. So if it's a particular play that's being put on, it might draw a different kind of audience

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than a different day with a different production would. So having said all that, there are some general things that we can say. So in the early part of the 19th century,

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audiences were pretty much made up of different classes, different groups of people, according to how much they paid to go to the theatre and where they were sitting. So traditionally, you had the boxes,

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which is where the wealthiest people were seated. And then in the pit area, you had probably the professional people, middle class type of people. And then the cheapest seats would be up in the gallery.

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And there would be different entrances depending on where you were sitting. So it wasn't just a question of how much money you paid, you actually were going into a different part of the theatre.

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As the century went on, there were various changes made, and it depended on the particular venue. But we got the introduction of the stalls, for example. So instead of having wooden benches, which was traditionally

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where you sat in the pit, we had the introduction of stalls, which were much more comfortable seats in the first part of the bit nearest to the stage. And then that became the prime place

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to sit apart from being in a private box. So there were developments and changes throughout the whole period. Also, of course, it depended to a certain extent

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on where you were. So for example, in the minor theatres, you often got a much more local audience, though not exclusively local.

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And it might depend, for example, on how accessible the theatre was. So the growth of the railways, for example, would make a difference, because, suddenly, you

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might be able to draw people in from the suburbs coming in later in the century. Or you might find that there were omnibus routes that were very-- make your place very accessible.

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And this is where something like playbills can be really useful, because you can find out all sorts of information from those items. So, for example, the manager might make an announcement

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on his Playbill that coaches can-- carriages can be parked outside, for example. Pick you up at 11:00. Or they might actually point out at what time the last train

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leaves, which would give you an indication of where people were coming from to go to that theatre. A large cross-section of the population had access to the theatre.

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Obviously, not the very poorest, for whom a few pennies in the gallery would be too much to pay. But nevertheless, there is evidence that lots of people from all ranks went right up to Queen Victoria herself, who,

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early on, went to the theatre quite frequently. And later on, particularly after Albert died, she no longer did so, but she had theatricals brought to her at Windsor Castle.

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So favourite performers would come to the castle and put on particular plays. So Henry Irving and Ellen Terry performed in front of her, for example, later on in the century.

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Audience behaviour is an interesting area to consider. There's a sort of general assumption that early on-- and it's a hangover from the 18th century, and the Regency audiences--

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were quite rowdy, and it would be very noisy. You wouldn't necessarily hear an awful lot that was on stage. That's probably something of a generalisation. But it's certainly true as the 19th century goes on in many

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of the West End of London theatres, we would get more of a sort of self-policing. There's an expectation of audience behaviour that this is something more respectable to do, and therefore,

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you behaved well. There are particular occasions, of course, where we can glimpse the audience because we know that there were misbehaviour going on.

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And the classic case of that is in 1809 at the Covent Garden Theatre, when John Philip Kemble introduced the new Theatre, because the old one had burnt down.

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And in the process of the rebuilding, he had restructured the Theatre somewhat so that he reduced the numbers of places in the pit and introduced more boxes.

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So places where it was more expensive to sit. And at the same time, he raised the prices altogether. So in September, when he opened the new Theatre, there was a disruption and what was called the Old Price riots.

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And this rumbled on for about three months with performances being interrupted all the time. They couldn't perform properly until, eventually, he had to cave in.

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He didn't reconfigure the auditorium, but he did go back to the old prices. So we can see that is a somewhat exceptional case of audience behaviour because of the shape of the auditorium itself.

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And there are some other examples from later in the century. So for example, the Bancrofts at the Haymarket, when they opened that, a similar thing happened.

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And it meant that the poorest seats were even more restricted. And again, it created some unrest amongst the audience early on. The actors and actresses had had a fairly bad reputation previous

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to the 19th century. And there's been a long association between actresses and prostitution, not helped by the fact that undoubtedly, many of the actresses

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did end up marrying stage door Johnnies and things like that. So there was that element to it. But that is only an unfair characterization of them. But certainly, in the early 19th century, it wasn't respectable.

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If you had been born into a well-to-do family, your family would not have wanted you to go on the stage. Which is one of the reasons why there are theatrical families who, generation after generation, go

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on the stage because that's how they've been brought up. But it's also how they learn their craft. So coming into the stage might be more difficult if you don't come from that kind of background.

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But as the century wears on, the Theatre becomes more respectable, partly because it's seen, at least in many of the West End theatres, to be sort of fitting in with the Bourgeois taste.

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And you might still need, if you were a woman, to go with a-- be chaperoned. If you were a young woman, probably wouldn't be somewhere you went on your own.

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But nevertheless, it wasn't a thought to be terrible just because you were going to the Theatre, or that you were performing in Theatre. So the Theatre became more respectable.

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And the sort of icing on the cake for that was the fact that Sir Henry Irving was knighted and became the first member of the profession to achieve that. And that, for the profession itself, was a sort of big step

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forward. And the fact that the Queen sort of endorsed the Theatre, and then the Prince of Wales would come. And you quite often see on programmes, for example,

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the particular performance might be in the presence of-- and they would list some minor members of the royal family, for example. So you can see how that more respectable element

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is coming into to the Theatre. So an evening's entertainment at the Theatre would be very different to how it is now, where we tend to go to the Theatre

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to see a particular play. For a large part of the 19th century, an evening's entertainment consisted of a variety of different entertainments.

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So, for example, you might get-- if it was a pantomime, you might get some of a pantomime, then you might get some sort of other activities, and then a small farce at the end of the evening.

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Or you had two melodramas interspersed with some kinds of singing, or dancing, or sometimes acrobatics. All kinds of elements introduced into the evening.

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Which is one of the reasons why coming at 9:00 might be the beginning of another whole entertainment. So it wasn't that you'd missed the first half of a play. You'd be coming into a self-contained play

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of some kind. So the evening itself was made up of multiple elements. Now, obviously, there were some plays that would be particularly popular

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and that were played over and over again. And typically, the way in the earlier part of the 19th century, in the middle of the 19th century, we had companies that would have a group of actors who would be

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employed for the season. And they would appear in a whole variety of different productions, like the more repertory system that we think of now.

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And in the regions, we would get-- particularly during the summer, we would get major stars from the London stage, and other actors, going out to the regions and performing in local theatres

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there. So a major star would be slotted in to the stock company into that, and she would say, now I'm going to perform in the Lady of Leon.

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And the company would already know that play. And so they would take the minor parts, and she would take the major parts. And so you would travel around the country doing that.

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And of course, travel further afield. So people went to the United States, they went to India, the Colonies, as they were then, they went to Australia, and performed all over.

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And often they saw that as a way of making particular a lot of money. So that was very popular. And whereas for a while, it was individual performers

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do that, towards the end of the century, we get whole companies that go out. So Henry Irving, for example, goes to America with his company and takes scenery and all sorts of things with them.

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So it becomes a huge business, the logistics of moving things around. You can imagine trying to move all those costumes, all those people and things.

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And then obviously, the fact that the infrastructure is improving across the 19th century in the UK, in Australia, in America makes it more and more possible to do those kinds of things.

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Even though it was still-- particularly, if you were going to Australia, that's quite an undertaking, just because it would take you a long time to get there. And it's still quite dangerous to travel.

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There were disasters. Someone like GV Brook drowned on one of his trips out. Another development during the 19th century was the growth of the musical.

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Now, for a while, that was tended to be associated with a more lower class audience who enjoyed going to watch an entertainment and smoking and drinking at the same time as they were doing that.

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In fact, the situation is slightly more complicated than that. Because as the music halls went on, particularly in the West End, they actually began

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to attract a more middle class audience as well. And we can see, for example, the swells visiting the music halls there. And if we look at what the kinds of performance that were put on

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in the musical as opposed to the Theatre, they were similar in some ways, but they weren't able to put on whole full-length plays. But they did cut down versions of things.

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And obviously, singing was a huge part of the entertainments in the musical. And we can see that, in fact, that all kinds of classes are mocked in music songs, for example.

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Whether it's Champagne Charlie or other kinds of songs. So there is a possibly-- I wouldn't like to say more rowdy element, but certainly potentially a less educated audience going on

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earlier on. But that's not always the case. But there was a big debate in the 1860s-- 1866, there was a parliamentary commission,

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which was looking into whether the music halls should be able to put on Theatre productions in the same way that the theatres did. And of course, there were lots of Theatre managers

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who were very anti that because they thought that they would lose customers to them. Probably, it's the case that, in certain areas, people went to both.

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You don't have to do one or the other. So it's, as every, it's more complicated than we might initially think. The key watershed in 19th century Theatre is 1843,

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when something called the Theatre Regulations Act came in. Previous to that, the only places in London where you were allowed to put on what was called legitimate drama were the patent theatres.

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And those were the theatres royal of Covent Garden and Drury Lane. And in the summer, at the Haymarket. Everywhere else, you weren't allowed

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to put on Shakespeare, for example. After 1843, the Lord Chamberlain's office got the job of licencing theatres. And if you were licenced to put on legitimate drama,

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you could put it on. And this meant that more people had access to a wider range of performances. But it also meant that the Lord Chamberlain's examiners of plays

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effectively censored everything, because you had to send your play script into his office before you could actually put anything on the stage. So there were various things that he disapproved of.

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You couldn't blaspheme. You couldn't make references to the current Royal Family. Those sorts of things obviously weren't allowed. But he also had a rather different standard for certain

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theatres, because he was very worried that the working classes might be inflamed if they saw plays featuring labourers rising up against unjust overseers, for example. And so he would be more strict on some of those theatres than

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he would somewhere like Covent Garden, which was thought to have more of an upper class, educated audience. The other thing that really affects what people could see

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is, who were the managers at the time? And certain theatres were known for certain types of performances at particular times. So, for example, Madame Vestris, who

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was a very interesting actress who had come to notoriety really, first as opera-- as a singer. And then for cross-dressed roles in which she

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showed her very fine legs off. But she became a really well-respected Theatre manager and managed a number of theatres, including at the Olympic Theatre in London in the 1830s,

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where she put on a lot of what called classical burlesques. So these are musical and dialogue entertainments that were based on classical mythology. So you can see that the kind of audiences

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that she would attract there would be the educated audience. Because if you don't get all the allusions to mythology, you're not going to get the fun out of the piece. So that was one kind of production associated

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with a particular performer, a particular manager, and a particular Theatre. Similarly, from 1844, I think it was, Samuel Phelps took over Sadler's Wells Theatre.

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And he put it on an unprecedented amount of Shakespearean productions there. It's a bit of a mythology to say that he totally created a new audience for it.

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But nevertheless, that was something that he was known for there. Similarly, in the 1850s, Charles Kean and his wife Ellen, together, put on a lot of Shakespearean productions,

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and other things as well. But he was known particularly for his archaeologically sound production. So in other words, all the mise en scene, all the things,

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the costumes, the scenery was said to be as exact as they could get it to the period in which the play was meant to be set. And much was made of this sort of archaeological interest

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in the piece. And other managers at different times were known for putting on particular types of production. But across the 19th century, the two standard types

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of performance that were the most popular were melodrama and the pantomime. Pantomime, usually at Christmas, but could also be at Easter with something that

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was put on for weeks at a time. And was really important to the finance of the Theatre. And that is as true if you were at Drury Lane as it was if you were in a minor Theatre in the East End

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of London, or in Manchester, or Liverpool, or anywhere else. So pantomime is a particularly British institution, and goes back to the time of Grimaldi. And developed out of the Italian commedia dell'arte.

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And had what was called the harlequinade as part of it, in which you get the characters like Pantaloon and Harlequin, who are essentially-- it's quite slapstick type of material, really.

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And that developed to have a pantomime opening, which was based on some kind of story. Later on, it becomes the classic fables Jack and the Beanstalk. Those sorts of stories.

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But in the 19th century, could be much more inventive and one off type subjects as well. At least early on. So you would get these wonderful entertainments full of puns,

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rhyming couplets for fun. And there was often something called the transformation scene, in which there was fantastic stage scenery, and we'd be transported to under the sea, or fairyland,

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or some magical kingdom. So the visuals were really important to it. As the century went on, we got more and more stars coming in from music hall, singing songs in that.

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So there's a sort of bleeding between the other forms of Theatre and the mainstream theatrical tradition. So pantomime was traditionally put on at Christmas, not necessarily for children.

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Though, by the end of the century, there were particular performances put on for children. And then we get the tradition that we now

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have where you have often kind of two levels going on. There's the sort of slapstick fun and jokes that appeal to children, and there's sort of other slightly more risque things

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that only the adults would understand. And the other interesting thing about pantomime is that, often, the writers would be writing for a particular Theatre,

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and there would be lots of topical allusions. So if something had happened in the locality or there'd been some kind of-- I don't know-- government corruption, or some event

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in the news, this would find itself reflected in the pantomime stories as well. And the audience would enjoy laughing at some stupid politician, or local bigwig, or recognising something that went

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on in their local community. And actually, local communities are, for many of the theatres, one of the interesting ways that we can see something about the audience.

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So 19th century theatres often had what they call benefit nights. So these are nights where the proceeds from the evening's entertainment after the Theatre had taken

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their slice for running costs, went to the person whose benefit it was for. So this might be the star performer would have a benefit night.

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It might be for the manager, stage manager, or something. But also there were sort of charitable ones that would be put on. So there'd been some local disaster.

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There was a widow left with so many children, there might be a benefit night put on for them. So again, we can see how the Theatre is interacting with their local community through the benefit

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nights, and those kind of entertainments as well. Another way we can see a particular section of society going to a different kind of production is from 1843 to '54, the St. James's Theatre in London.

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A French companies were brought over to perform plays in French on the London stage. Now, clearly you're probably not going to go and watch that if you don't

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understand the French language. Maybe a few people might. But by and large, that is attracting an educated audience to that.

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And each season was popular. So there must have been enough people around who wanted to see these French stars and the performances in French.

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We need to remember that London, and other cities in the UK and abroad, are not the same throughout the century. So as time goes on, we see more and more people moving into the urban areas from the rural districts.

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And the actual population makeup changes. We also get all sorts of different jobs coming in. So we have more of the clerks, more of the office workers. Their shops become more important.

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So there's more people working in shops and Oxford Street, and places like that. So we can actually see some of this reflected, particularly, in the melodramas.

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So early on in the century, one of the most popular types of melodramas were often featuring rural communities. And we had the land-- typically, wicked landowner and the poor labourer, or some who

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had somehow or other either being threatened with losing his home, or his job, or his family, or whatever. And it was very much that the landowning class versus the more modest members of the rural community.

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Then we see more and more stories that are actually set in the urban areas. And we get plays featuring servant girls, or a play like the Work Girls of London, for example,

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where we see different kinds of activities. So we see what it was like to live in the centre of a big urban area. And we also see-- and you can see this on some

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of the playbills-- that canny managements often made the scenery reflect actual local places. So you would get parts of London appearing on stage,

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which the audience would be able to recognise as being a scene from outside their doors. So now we have-- again, in melodrama, we still have a class element to--

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friction between the classes is only one of the drivers of the action in melodrama. But the location has changed. I mean, these are just broad sweeps, obviously.

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It's not quite as easily cut as that. It never is. But certainly that's one way that we can see a change in the kinds of plays that were being put on,

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and how it represents class.