Transpontine Theaters and Working-Class Audiences

Abstract

The attention to the working class as the subject of dramatic representation began with George Lillo’s The London Merchant, or The History of George Barnwell (Drury Lane, June 22, 1731). Reflecting an awareness of the growing number of apprentices, clerks, and factory workers that made up the audience, the advent of domestic tragedy signaled an attempt to depict the conflicts and struggles that were part of their lives. The emotional crises that had long been depicted on the stage as occurring only among nobility were now transferred to domestic drama to reveal the plight and suffering of the lower classes. George Barnwell is an apprentice who ignores his own conscience, makes an imprudent choice, and becomes ensnared in vice. Although still popular on the stage in the early nineteenth century, Lillo’s tragedy was too much a product of the period in which it was written, too moralizing, and too patronizing for individuals experiencing current factory conditions. In order to attract audiences not just among the local merchants but also among the larger working-class population, theater managers brought to the stage more and more plays celebrating the bravery and heroic valor of bricklayers and stonemasons, watermen and stevedores—the laborers who were building and maintaining the metropolis.¹ At the same time, the theaters needed to maintain the support of wealthier patrons.