Refuge at the Foot of the Throne

Abstract

The General Theatrical Fund was a charity in aid of destitute actors. In his after-dinner speech at the 1853 annual meeting, F.H. Berkeley, the Member of Parliament for Bristol, praised the Queen for both her devotion to the theatre and her annual charitable contribution of £100. However excessive it now seems, Berkeley’s laudation tells us that Victoria’s place in theatrical culture was powerfully symbolic. She was the sign and testament of the theatre’s moral fitness, and her example provided the best of all possible rebukes to ignorance and bigotry.

Not only does Her Majesty continually visit theatres where the English drama is performed, but she invites the professors of the drama within her own walls, and commands them to perform the best selections from our dramatic writers, before the rising royal family…Console yourselves, then, that when you are attacked by prejudice and bigotry, you can take refuge at the foot of the throne.

– F.H. Berkeley, an address to the General Theatrical Fund, 1853