Abstract
Goron investigates ways in which the late-nineteenth-century West End musical stage was affected by ‘respectable’ values. A brief historical summary of the development of West End theatre between 1843 and 1881 addresses the genesis of the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company within the booming leisure marketplace of late-Victorian London. Goron explores changes in middle-class leisure habits, and the consequent development of theatrical entertainments to meet the needs of a ‘respectable’ market sector. The chapter also explores the profit-driven ‘gentrification’ of the West End and the pricing out of working-class audiences, which occurred alongside attempts to raise the social standing of theatre practitioners. Popular musical theatre genres such as burlesque and operetta are examined to assess their relationship to existing ‘middle-class’ anti-theatrical prejudice. This chapter also explores ways in which Gilbert, Sullivan and Carte positioned their product in the theatrical marketplace through a deliberate rejection of earlier musical theatre forms and conformity to ‘high-art’ tastes.
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- 1.
‘Victorian slang for a flamboyant disregard of the conventional, the expected and the customary’ (Schoch 2003, p. xxxiii).
- 2.
An increased emphasis on long-term private schooling, university education and delaying marriage until means were sufficient to support a family meant that affluent middle-class male heirs were given more freedom from work and immediate domestic responsibility—and therefore more leisure time—than their fathers (Bailey 1998, p. 15).
- 3.
‘Chambermaids, soubrettes and Burlesque Actresses’, Illustrated Times, 23 April 1864.
- 4.
‘A Word about Our Theatres’, Fraser’s Magazine 57, February 1858, p. 233.
- 5.
Daily Telegraph, 15 July 1869.
- 6.
‘Workers and Their Work: Mr W.S. Gilbert’, Daily News, 21 January 1885.
- 7.
In 1865 prices ranged from 5s to 1s.
- 8.
It should be noted that a certain amount of cross-dressing, which was strictly banned at the Savoy, did take place in the Howard Paul entertainments. Mrs Howard Paul was famous for using the unusually low range of her singing voice to impersonate the famous tenor Sims Reeves. Jacky Bratton remarks that the critical response to this feat was usually complimentary, although the impersonation itself was sometimes thought odd (2011, p. 84). The ‘high art’ connotations of the impersonation—Reeves was, after all, a renowned oratorio singer—may have assisted its acceptability. However, Rutland Barrington complained about feeling ‘oppressed and unhappy’ appearing in drag as ‘Miss Althea’, who appeared in a sketch as one of two ‘old maids’ when on tour with the Pauls. He adds that he ‘very shortly ceased to be womanly in appearance’ (Barrington 1908, p. 10).
- 9.
Edmund Yates, ‘Bygone Shows’, Fortnightly Review, May 1866, p. 645.
- 10.
WSG had written at least seven pieces which could be described as burlesques or as ‘extravaganzas’—a dramatic form similar to the burlesque, based on fairy tales or fables.
- 11.
Pall Mall Gazette, 26 November 1888.
- 12.
Thus The Sorcerer was subtitled ‘An entirely new and original Modern Comic Opera’, The Pirates of Penzance ‘A new and original Melo-Dramatic Opera’, Ruddigore ‘A new and original Supernatural Opera’, etc.
- 13.
Undated leaflet, promoting October and November 1879 tours (DC/TM).
- 14.
Further discussion of notions of ‘Englishness’ in the Savoy operas can be found in Oost, 2009, pp. 47–51, and Cannadine, 1992, pp. 12–32.
- 15.
After-dinner speech at the O.P. Club, delivered by W.S. Gilbert on 30 December 1906.
- 16.
There are a few necessary exceptions to these provisos. Katisha’s make-up in The Mikado is exaggerated, but no more so than any of the other ‘Japanese’ characters therein. Some physical business was allowed by Gilbert, but more often than not ‘slapstick’ was censured and removed after it had crept into long runs or was discovered in touring productions—see Chapter 7 for a full discussion on interpolated material.
- 17.
Era, 9 December 1877.
- 18.
The Graphic, 10 April 1880.
- 19.
Era, 25 August 1878.
- 20.
Ibid.
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Goron, M. (2016). The West End: ‘Middle-Class’ Values and Commercialisation. In: Gilbert and Sullivan's 'Respectable Capers'. Palgrave Studies in British Musical Theatre. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59478-5_3
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