​The year is 1881 in London. A blacksmith and a fish curer are having a conversation in a busy square in District 11, just north of the New Kent Road.

Blacksmith: Alright George, ye go to the theatre last night?
Fish Curer: I did indeed, mate. Me and the missus went to that "String of Pearls or The Barber Friend of Fleet Street."
Blacksmith: Oh right, that was on at the Britannia. Didn't stay for that show, left just after "Idolators"... the ale and steak pies went to me head! So I went to bed!
Fish Curer: Ah you missed a good'un. Well, back to work now, mate. Need to smoke them trout to earn a few bob...

Now, anyone reading this conversation in 2017 would take it to be quite a mundane exchange between two tradesmen. However, this particular dialogue offers the reader clues to discovering about a formative period of 19th century London theatre. First, the topic in conversation is the Britannia theatre in Hoxton, which was arguably one of the most popular buildings around London in the late 1800s. Secondly, theatres in those days offered multiple shows per night, in addition to providing heaps of steak pies and gallons of ale to feed hungry hordes hackling in the audience. Thirdly, a consensus had indeed been recorded in 1881, documenting the origins and professions of all the inhabitants in District 11 near the New Kent Road. According to our guest speaker this week, Dr Janice Norwood from the School of Humanities at the University of Hertfordshire, thousands of spectators from all walks of life would crowd into the theatre halls to feast on the finest food and mull over the moving melodrama in 19th century London.

Dr Norwood, who was awarded her PhD studying the Britannia theatre, shared her knowledge on how the world of 19th century theatre was more complex and fascinating than we could ever imagine. The shows would often showcase a monumental, man-made, mechanical set, which moved with the help of the backstage crew in what was a masterpiece of theatrical engineering. For example, one show at the Britannia had a gigantic wooden ship which moved from side to side, accompanied by oars which rotated into the synthetic blue waves, but splashing the audience with real water! On the other hand, real fires were not an unusual experience in theatrical shows, to the terror of the jam-packed audience in the stalls. Notable performers at the Britannia in the 1800s included the famous Sara Lane (aka the "Queen of Hoxton"), acrobatic cross-dressing men, and a little boy who repeatedly walked in a circle on stage (covering over a mile in distance)! Later in the session, Dr Norwood provided us with A4 posters of theatrical leaflets of Britannia shows from 1869 (evidence that multiple fonts, word sizes and random punctation on posters didn't stop the stampede of theatregoers at that time, but rather encouraged it), which fuelled our imagination further.

Given such rich facts and interesting stories shared in our session, the People's Company re-enacted possible conversations amongst the local theatregoers of 19th century London. Within groups, we devised our own improvisations using local dialects, juxtapositioning of unlikely characters and melodramatic plays within plays. We were proud to introduce three new talented actors to our group, including Adriana from Italy, Tamir from Mongolia and Euan from England. The creative efforts of all performers collectively constructed a solid bridge of understanding and infused inspiration amongst the group.

​
​Members of the Southwark Pensioners Centre recently visited the Coronet and rekindled memories of cinema going. This building used to be an ABC cinema and Coronet cinema from 1932-1999. The conversation ranged from the bulging attractions of cinemascope to the sexiness of Betty Grable, feasting on walnut whips to the comedic value of Chaplin.

Joseph May: "It brought back memories for me. Taken when I was younger, with mum or dad, or one of my many brothers and sisters. And when I was a teenager. I remember the colours, the golds, the reds. The ABC. It was spotless. And you either went upstairs or down here, depending upon what seats you could afford. It might be me, being romantic, but there was adventure and excitement. Your going to see a certain film or person. It might have been the company you were with. To me it was just magical. I could still see the people still sitting there. It was a people's place. It was just people there, to see whatever they want to see. You just went in on a film. You didn't see it from the beginning. This is where I came in. This is the story of my life."

The Coronet is currently a live music and events venue that is scheduled to close its doors for the last time on New Year's Eve. The building will be demolished as part of the regeneration of the Elephant and Castle shopping centre.

The Melodramatic Elephant in the Haunted Castle is an arts project about the history of the Coronet from 1872-2017. It will be staged at the Coronet on the 8 November with a follow-up art exhibition from 11-23 November 2017.

​Constantine Gras:  "This film is a creative record of a drawing improvisation for Marie Henderson, Victorian actress of melodrama, 1841-1882. She was a theatrical star of the Britannia Theatre in the East End, before becoming actress-manageress of the Elephant and Castle Theatre. When the E&C theatre burnt down in 1878, the press reported that Marie went mad as a result of losing her costumes. She was in reality suffering from the unknown and untreatable effects of syphilis. Marie Henderson died in Bedlam mental hospital in 1882 and is buried in an unmarked grave at Brompton Cemetery. 
This is the first time I've attempted to psychically engage with my subject of research akin to method acting. Drawing is a durational and psychological process. I make use of line and colour in the medium of oil pastels to render the invisible visible. I have also used a technique of reverse image making using a mirror to search for a lost soul in the passage of history. The drawing started as a sketch presented to the People's Theatre Company ensemble in which a sheet of paper was placed on the ground between the actors and myself. I attempted to draw everything in reverse for me, but normal for them. This was like stumbling in the dark of a haunted castle. There was a historical precedent to my folly as I was inspired by Pepper's Ghost, a holographic ghost effect involving glass, that was produced in 1863 with Marie Henderson acting in one of the first productions. Drawing myself into that glass darkly, I seek out a dim and distant life force. It may not have any corporeal form. Yet we can still feel the after shock of pain and tragedy in a mind reduced to delusional ramblings. However let us also celebrate the brilliance of a woman who shone out amongst her peers and brought play and joy to the lives of her local working class audiences." 
​

Barton Williams: "Ahhh an English Summer is upon us and hence a small class size tonight of People's Company candidates, a sum of seven people ended the year tonight with a sense of inspiration, motivation and determination. Clearly size doesn't matter when it comes to performing!
Tonight saw the screening of several week's videos captured beautifully by Constantine's camera. The highlight, the final art piece by Constantine where mirror madness captures anyone's imagination whilst morphing us into the historical facts of the Coronet theatre.
Next, the curtains were pulled back dramatically to reveal the original art murals by Constantine completed over the last few months. One can only define the unveiling of Constantine's artwork as simply amazing. A myriad of historical timelines images, a snapshot of surrealism versus Marie Anderson's psychic battles with her illness and the clever use of mirrored images.
Fuelled by a visual smorgasbord of artwork from Constantine and expertly facilitated by John Whelan, the Company then got busy performing some improvisation work around Marie Henderson's theatre, now a cinema, being transformed into a bomb shelter during WW2.
Sheer terror, ghosts and historical facts were all played with tonight, in a collection of dynamic ensemble movements. At the end of the night the People's Company were certainly more empowered on the facts of the Coronet theatre and the reasons why Marie Anderson's legacy needs to be performed and never forgotten!"

The People's Company will be taking a short summer break and returning in full force on Tuesday September 5th starting at 7.00pm 2017 at Southwark Playhouse.

At the People's Company workshop on the 18th July 2017, the workshop revolved around the life story of the Victorian actress Marie Henderson.
Marie Henderson was born in the 1840s into a theatrical family and came to prominence first in Liverpool before moving to the Britannia theatre in East London. She ended her career as the actress-manageress of the Elephant and Castle Theatre from 1875-1880. She put on a programme of melodramatic plays ranging from adaptions of best-seller novels like Lady Audley's Secret to more rip-roaring plays like Faith, Hope and Charity. The working class audiences of Southwark loved to boo and cheer at heroes and heroines locked in a  moral struggle of good versus evil. 
The Elephant and Castle theatre burnt down in 1878 and was completely rebuilt. It was the first work of famed theatrical architect, Frank Matcham. Marie Henderson suffered ill health and the press reported that this was due to the shocking effect of the fire and losing her company's costumes which were not insured. She died in 1882 at Bedlam mental hospital and we know from her medical records that Marie was suffering from the unknown and untreatable effects of syphilis. An actress who gained critical acclaim and was adored by theatre audiences, who could recite thousands of line from hundreds of plays, was reduced to only being able to utter these lines in her final days: yes, jolly and oh dear! 

During the session the People's Company made a drawing sketch based on one of the reviews of Faith, Hope and Charity. This play was first staged in 1863 at the Britannia Theatre and introduced the first use of Dr Pepper's Ghost, a holographic effect created by mirrors. Marie Henderson starred in the Liverpool version of this play staged in the same year. In the play, the character of the Widow is cheated out of her fortune and dies. She then returns as a ghost (cue mirror effect) and haunts the aristocratic villain. One of the last roles Marie Henderson ever played at the Elephant and Castle theatre was in Faith, Hope and Charity. 

The ghostly presence of Marie Henderson is our guiding muse for The Melodramatic Elephant in the Haunted Castle. This is a performance piece and an art exhibition.
The play will be staged at the Coronet on the 8 November 2017.
The exhibition will take place at Artworks Gallery from 11-23 November 2017 
​

​The Mercury, 21 July 1863: review of the Britannia theatre's new drama called The Widow and Orphans - Faith, Hope and Charity:
It is a domestic drama, with three murders, one suicide, two conflagrations, four robberies, one virtuous lawyer, 23 angels, and a ghost. There are three heroines in the piece, Faith, Hope and Charity - the first, an elderly lady, widow of a clergyman, and in straitened circumstances; and the other two, her daughters, pretty and poor, and of course models of perfection. The plot turns upon the possession of the lease of a house which Sir Gilbert Northlaw, a proud and scheming baronet, class representative of the bloated aristocracy, has acquired by fraud from the clerical widow. Before the parchment is restored to the right owner, a number of violent incidents take place, which, although in no perceptible connection with the story, yet seems to charm the audience to an immense degree, as evinced by frequent thundering applause. A burning house, in particular, gives rise to tremendous excitement in the gallery. The scene shows a woman getting out of the window and walking along the outer ledge to a tree where a man takes her in his arms, after which the tree, by some magic means, bows to the ground with its human burthen. Various minor accidents, murders and manslaughter, follow, till at length the lease is stolen by an honest man from the pocket of the wicked baronet. With a fine feeling of virtue, the audience show their appreciation of this act of pickpocketing by three rounds of applause. But the aristocratic villain is not yet defeated, for it turns out that the lease which the honest man has stolen is but a duplicate after all, and that the fiendish nobleman remains in possession of the original. This discovery breaks the heart of Faith and sets Hope and Charity a-crying so loud that all the bystanders get into convulsions. The question of the lease appears still as undecided as ever when the curtain falls over the terrestrial part of the drama, to open again, after a few minutes interval, for the spiritual portion. All the souls of all the people murdered, slain, burned, and bruised in the new and original drama are now carried up to heaven by a regiment of little angels, in flaxen hair and short petticoats. Midway between heaven and earth they make a halt, which allows time for the inspection of the tableau, and the due seasoning of the mind in its contemplation. It is evident that the impression created upon the audience is of the deepest, preparing all eyes and ears for the still greater things to come. There are now no more discharges of ginger-beer artillery from above and behind, the sucking of oranges and cracking of nuts have ceased entirely, and even the numerous babies have left off crying. Presently the vast house sinks into obscurity, only a few flickering gas jets being left here and there to create a faint twilight. Once again Sir Gilbert Northlaw steps on the stage, closely followed by - a skeleton. The apparition is certainly striking. It gradually and almost imperceptibly evolves itself out of the air, and after various movements vanishes with the rapidity of a flash of lightening. A second time, it comes and goes as before, and immediately after appears a female form, the exact counterpart of Faith, the widow. Closely as the eye may watch the operation of the whole proceeding, it is impossible to detect the source of the fine optical delusion. There the figure certainly stands, walks, and talks, but disappears as instantaneously as if fashioned out of the mere vapor of the air. On the second appearance of widow Faith, of rather widow Faith’s ghost, Sir Gilbert Northlaw takes courage, and rising from his seat, attacks her with a sword. But the sharp steel, aimed a a walking and speaking human figure, meets no resistance but the empty air, and the would-be murderer is mocked by a load of sardonic ha, ha, ha! This is the crisis of the spectacle. While the baronet is making desperate efforts to grasp the widow, the spectre vanishes in the twinkling of an eye, leaving the echo of a mocking voice, resounding from afar. Whatever the means by which this curious scene is effected, it is undoubtedly a most clever and wonderfully striking bit of stage effect. Those in want of a new sensation can do nothing better at the present moment that to pay a visit to the Britannia Theatre and to the “Patent Ghost.” 

Oil pastel drawing made by The People's Company Ensemble and Constantine Gras
Faith, Hope and Charity illustrates Dr Pepper's ghost effect.
An actress stands in the orchestra pit, unseen by the audience and her ghostly image is projected onto the stage with the use of a mirror. 

​Many thanks to Professor Jim Davis and Dr Janice Norwood for providing a fascinating overview of theatrical melodrama, its rich diversity and defining characteristics. We discover that melodrama was one of the most popular forms of entertainment in the 19th century. Although it was often dismissed as a cultural product, there is a growing awareness of its importance in theatrical history and how it influenced both film and TV. Jim persuasively argues that our modern perception of the world, based on a diet of sensational news stories and happy endings, is perhaps a modern spin on the conventions of melodrama. The role of Victorian women actresses in melodrama is a fascinating topic that Janice addresses in her interview. 

​

Professor Jim Davis  
​Theatre Studies, University of Warwick

​
​I was born and grew up in Bristol. From a very early age I went to the theatre including the Bristol Old Vic. My interest in 19th century theatre really developed when I was an English student at Oxford and I thought it might be an interesting area to pursue especially as there was very little work on it at the time. Nobody did popular theatre or looked at the Victorian period. But now there are a lot of people working in depth and it is a growing area. I was a very bad actor when I was a student and that helped me realise that I certainly wasn’t able to become an actor which I probably wanted to be when I was younger. I really got hooked on theatre more than academia in a sense but somehow I’ve ended up turning my hobby into my day job.

The first use of the word melodrama or mélodrame in French was to signify a dramatic piece of music. So from the start, the melo in melodrama actually implies drama with music.The first time the word melodrama was used in English is to describe a play in 1802 and its Thomas Holcroft’s  A Tale of Mystery which was based on a French melodrama.

Melodrama was very much influenced by the French revolution. This was regarded as a peoples revolution and the melodrama which was performed after this in France was seen as a peoples drama. The old order, classical theatre and the church became far less important. It was said by some commentators, including those who wrote melodrama, that melodrama was the new morality. A sort of bible for secular times. That was one way in which ideas of melodrama were being thought about in France and I think that explains the moral notion that melodrama teaches a lesson in some sort of way. 

So melodrama becomes a descriptive term for plays that seem to contain certain conventions and features that recur from play to play. So there is quite a broad spectrum: dramas with nautical themes, dramas about industry or fallen women. The generic term melodrama tends to have been applied to a huge range of 19th century plays. Melodrama became the most popular form of play throughout the 19th century and probably is the most performed genre of drama not only in Britain, but also in Europe, in Australasia and in North America. So we are actually talking about a genre that has had an extraordinarily wide impact historically.

The other big background influence is the industrial revolution. It’s very interesting that as people moved to cities, there has to be more entertainment and certainly when people are working long hours, they prefer perhaps to go and see a melodrama rather than something a little heavier. So melodrama becomes popular because there is an urban audience developing for that form of drama. In the agrarian past, people lived in the countryside, perhaps more idyllically or regarded in a more idealised way. So you often find in melodrama, that it’s the villagers who are heroes and they are usually put upon by the wealthy squires or viscous landlords. Good versus evil becomes the country versus town. The town in so many melodramas seems to be the root of all evil.

Constantine working on melodramatic story boards based on improvisations made by the People's Theatre Ensemble. Murder in the Bathroom is a country house who dun the murder in the bath. The butler apparently and the incriminating evidence is the loo paper still attached to the heel of his shoe! Lullaby for Baby Timmy is about a wedding ceremony thrown into disarray when a baby turns up. The art work for the latter story includes smoking chimneys and a grimy urban location.
​

I have to say that in teaching melodrama, what I’ve realised is that as soon as you define a genre, you find hundreds of examples that don’t fit. So what I have to say has to be very carefully circumscribed. But in principle, you expect a melodrama to feature a hero, a heroine and a villain. The problems the hero and heroine confront have been caused or perpetrated by the villain, who is the key motivator of action. Melodramatic characters often suffer and go through a number of problems that they have to solve or escape from and ideally in melodrama it ends happily and all is put right again. In melodrama you don’t find the moral ambiguities of tragedy. It’s a manichean world in which good and evil are confronting each other. In  a sense, melodrama provides a rather simplistic world view. 

Later in the century when you get plays like The Bells which was a famous melodrama, in which Henry Irving played Mathias, the protagonist is actually both the villain and hero. The interest is much more on his psychological situation than any straight forward rendition of good versus evil, So  if you start looking for exceptions, you can easily find them and some melodramas are quite complex in the way they develop their key or principle characters. It’s not all simple black and white, good versus evil, But certainly in an awful lot of melodramas, the basic plot line is of good versus evil, heroes versus villains. Heroines are sometimes passive and the victim of the villain, but at other times heroines can be quite feisty. I think working class audiences preferred their heroines to be feisty rather than passive. 

Sensation scenes were important to melodrama. You would have elaborate effects on stage. For instance Ben Hur’s chariot race which is run on a treadmill. In The Streets of London, there’s a fire and the fire engine comes on stage to put it out. You get train crashes. Before silent cinema, you get the first ever play with someone tied to a railway line and the train coming on towards them. It was all exciting stuff. 

Photographic print of Act 3, Scene 6 from The Whip, Drury Lane Theatre, 1909
Gabrielle Enthoven Collection, Museum number: S.211-2016
© Victoria and Albert Museum

​Music is also integral to melodrama and does very much the same sort of thing that film music does or even Wagner. Music creates atmosphere and mood. It’s a motif for individual characters. There’s what is called “hurry music” which is when anything exciting is happening and you need some lively music to get people worked up. And of course there’s music to express more sentimental moments as well. 

Melodrama was on the whole a drama of everyday life for the people watching it. We talk about realism and we might well say, I’ve seen a soap opera on TV recently that was very realistic. My view is that melodrama was the realism of its own day. It’s not some exaggerated ridiculous form that we now look at rather contemptuously or patronizingly. It’s actually reflecting to the people that went to see it, the world they lived in. Just as soap opera has its cliches and heightened moments, its still got a sense of reality about it and the same is true of melodrama as well. It’s reflecting back, sometimes in a heightened way, the realism of everyday life and it is generating strong emotional reactions from its audiences because of its highly charged scenes. 

Melodrama in theatre terms is a really important part of our theatrical past, There is a tendency to say don’t be so melodramatic, that its all exaggeration and excess. But 19th century theaters were large. You don't want to go to the theatre and see a play where the actor isn't making themselves clear through gesture and vocal delivery. It you were in an audience of three to four thousand it’s not like sitting in a black box theatre. So the notion that it’s over the top and exaggerated, only makes sense if you totally ignore the fact that these are huge theater's that need a strong declamatory, visually clear type of performance, So the burlesque notion of melodrama is one that I would question. 

There are two distinct ways of seeing melodrama. One is to see melodrama as very much saying the world is not that bad because it all ends happily in the end. And however miserable you are, however poverty stricken you are, things do come all right. So it can be seen as a very coercive form or even an escapist form. But there is another way of looking at melodrama. Certainly some of the plays performed at theaters like Surrey and Coburg in South London, at the Britannia in the East End, and other theaters not in the West End, melodrama often has social commentary built into it. They often illustrate the ways in which people are exploited or unfairly treated and can be quite vociferous about the injustice of industrial conditions or even to the appalling situation that women are in. So within melodrama one can also argue there is quite a subversive strand. 

I sometimes think that a working class audience struggling to make a living doesn't necessarily see a happy ending as anything other than ironic, The notion that people are so simple minded that they don’t see the irony and that real life is not like melodrama, is a suspect notion. So on the one hand we have this simplistic notion of good versus evil, but actually built into melodrama can be quite a lot of social critique and a form of theatre that is not just escapist. Not just simple minded, but might actually make one think about or even question the conditions one lives in. 

Film and TV have been influenced by melodramatic conventions in the way they entertain us. You could argue that news bulletins on TV are constructed as melodrama. You have something sensational or visually spectacular to hold your attention, like the twin towers for instance. And you often find a news bulletin ends with a happy ever after story, So however awful the news, somebody's cat is saved from the tree. We all live happily ever after. Melodrama is also a way of seeing the world that has becomes so ingrained in the way we react or the way the media sometimes brings us news stories. We are not even aware any more how central the melodramatic conventions and narratives and storylines are to the way we think and perceive the world. 

Dr Janice Norwood
School of Humanities, University of Hertfordshire

I was also born and lived in Bristol until I was eight. I went to Warwick University where I had a great time studying English and Theatre Studies. After I left, I went into book publishing. I had three children and worked freelance. Later on I did an M.A. in Victorian studies which lead to my dissertation on the social protest melodrama. I ended up doing my PHD on the Britannia theatre in Hoxton. I already had a link with the East End of London because my family were dockers there. 

So the 19th century is my specialist area with a focus on the Britannia and East End theatre in general. More recently, I’ve been working on a project about a number of 19th century actresses, not the big names, like Ellen Terry. I’m talking about the women who just made a living out it and what their experiences were like. How they could combine having a family and working? What happens when you get old? All those sorts of things. 

The Britannia theatre is quite unusual because it was run by one family and particularly Sara Lane who virtually for the whole of its time was the actress-manageress. After she died in 1899, it passed to her nephew and then in the early 20th century it was struggling to make money for a variety of reasons. It became a cinema for a short while and then it was bombed out in the war. Now there’s some council flats on the site. Also there’s a block round the corner called Sara Lane flats. So Constantine and John, why don’t you campaign for one of your new blocks of flats on the site of the Coronet to be called Marie Henderson? It’s important that people should know something about their heritage. 
​

Interior View of the Britannia Theatre, Hoxton
Museum number: E.4884-1923
© Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Melodrama is the standard and most popular form of theatre in the 19th century. This type of theatre had a very bad press in the past. I suppose it’s always been the case of theatre is not what it used to be and it was felt that the national drama was at an all time low. Nevertheless theatre was very popular and places like the Britannia had huge audiences going regularly. What they were going to see was melodrama. Even Drury Lane and Covent Garden, the two big patent theatre’s of the time, were putting on melodramas.

Melodrama developed into sensation melodrama in the 1860s and is linked with fiction like Wilkie Collins’s ‘The Woman in White'. This also attracted very bad press. As opposed to serious drama which is intellectual, sensation drama appeals to the emotions and that has always been sniffed at by the high and mighty. Melodrama typically had at least one scene of sensation in it. So for example in The Colleen Bawn there is a scene where a woman is being thrown into the lake and the hero has to dive in to rescue her. On stage this is very spectacular. Then in other melodramas you get all the sensation scenes like when the train is coming across the stage and someone is tied to the tracks. This happens in theatre long before it happens in silent film.

Another feature of melodrama is the tableau with that frozen moment when the actors stop. Sometimes they are recreating a well known painting, but often it’s a moment where you see an emotional response being encapsulated or perhaps the hierarchical relationships of characters. The audience has a chance to take in that static moment. And of course the music is supporting that as well. It’s not the same as Brecht where he is asking you to reflect on the tableaux. In melodrama it is all aimed at an emotional response. 

Self reflection on an artist as performer:
Face, voice and hand gestures in the drawing out of an image 
2014, oil pastels. 

In melodrama you also find numerous adaptions of novels. If you think of somewhere like the Britannia, the audience is probably not going to have read these lengthy novels and the melodrama is the first time they will encounter those stories. And there are big changes between the novels and what you see on the stage. I’ve written about the Woman in White, the Wilkie Collins novel, in which Collins did his own adaption for the stage. But there would be a different version at the Britannia and another one somewhere else. You get writers like Colin Henry Hazelwood at the Britannia who will write with his local audience in mind and for a particular stock company where he knows who the actors are and will need to write a very good part for Sara Lane. The play that he wrote or adapted might then get sold to Liverpool or Manchester or somewhere in the provinces, depending on how he sold the rights. He is what we would call, in a not very helpful way, a hack writer. People like Hazelwood would only get money if they sell their work. And Hazelwood would be living in the Hoxton area in awful penury. He’s no different from people who are attending the theatre. Also the actors of the Britannia would be living in that local area. So they are going to be aware of the kind of issues that might face ordinary people. Not that I think people necessarily want to see their own experiences on the stage all the time. But you can see in the playbills that quite often scenes are set in a Shoreditch church yard and there are views of Hoxton High Street. So the plays are showing the world that their audience knew. And of course with melodrama, nine times out of ten, the baddie is an aristocrat. Or perhaps if your talking about women’s piece work being featured in the play, artificial flower sellers for example, it would be the middle man whose exploiting them. So it’s always the person higher up the chain who is the baddie. 

There is an old idea that by going to see a melodrama in which good always triumphs over evil, that the audience end up feeling better about themselves in some way. That idea is a bit passé now, The bottom line is if it wasn’t going to entertain them, they are not going to pay their money. Especially if you are a working person and you don’t have an awful lot of disposable income. At the Britannia where the majority of the audience comes from the local area, you have got to get them coming back, week after week, or the theatre didn’t make any money. So you can’t preach to the audience.  

Remember that during this period all the plays that are put on, go to the Lord Chamberlain’s office for licensing. One of the things that he crosses out is blasphemy or any reference or representation of the royal family. This censorship of theatre goes on until 1968. There was also a particular fear that places like the Britannia because they’ve got a large working class audience, perhaps they were more susceptible to seditious argument. There is evidence that the Lord Chamberlain’s office were looking more closely at the plays at these theatres. You’d also get busy bodies from the general public writing into the Chamberlain's office saying: do you realise they are putting on a play about so and so? There was a limit to what could be expressed in melodrama.

Sheet music for The Belle of Belgrave Square
Or Lady Audley's Kitchen Maid's Secret
Museum number: S.338-2012
© Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Lady Audley’s Secret was a hugely popular novel written by Mary Elizabeth Braddon in 1862. It also became a big sensation play at the time. Hazelwood did one of the adaptations at the Britannia. It has a very good female part and Marie Henderson when she was at the Britannia or Elephant and Castle would have played this as well as the leading part in Aurora Floyd, which is another of Braddon’s novels. The play must have been of interest to the audience because Lady Audley herself is a woman pretending to be something that she is not. She had a husband and thinking that he’s dead, she marries again. Bigamy! The novel created  a stir because of the idea that underneath this nice conventional society there’s a beautiful woman who actually has a dark secret and she’s leading men astray and attempting to kill, not one, but two men. It keys into anxieties about women in the period. The stage adaptions are very truncated and quite formulaic. But that doesn't seem to have stopped them being hugely popular at the time. 

From the 18th century there had been an association between actresses and prostitutes and you get lots of accounts of backstage Johnnies or aristocrats hanging around the actresses. If you were a young actress, you would have to negotiate with people who are trying to use you for various ends. It must have been difficult touring as a young woman, especially if you were on your own. This is where if you came from a family of performers you were probably in a safer environment. I imagine actresses were very conscious of their image and whether they might be though of as being associated with prostitutes. There are a lot of writings about the actress Sarah Siddons, of her as a mother and how she became associated with virtuous womanhood. Ellen Terry, on the other hand, is very interesting because she had children born out of wedlock. But that doesn’t seem to have tarred her. But in the 19th century there is a sense of a better reputation for the acting trade. Henry Irving finally gets the first knighthood for an actor.

I think quite a number of performers must have been traumatised by accidents and fires which were common in the theatre. There are accounts of ballet girls who either died or were severely burnt because their costumes caught fire from the gas lamps. What happens to them after this? What if you witness this? It’s got to have a profound effect on you. The thing that has struck me from my research and I noticed when I was reading your blog about Marie Henderson, is that something terrible happens in their own family, say a sister dies, or a husband dies. What happens? The actors and actresses are not being paid unless they go back on stage. Or what if they’ve been ill and they are forced to work very quickly. And when they are touring, you think they might want to be home with their family. But no, they’ve got to go on tour to Bolton this week or Edinburgh next week. I think all these would have some kind of effect on performers. Fire, in particular, is such a terrifying thing. It is very common for theaters to be burning down in the 19th century. People are frightened because they know audiences have died in fires and on occasions been trampled when someone raised a false alarm. 

I’ve just been looking at Emily Eliza Sanders who became Lady Don. She married a baronet who had run through all his money and went on the stage. They went out to Australia where he died. She came back and at one point took over the Theatre Royal in Nottingham. She then became ill and couldn’t perform and that was one of the reasons why she went bankrupt. Eliza had to sell all her costumes and there was a court case which raised the issue of how was she going to make a living without the costumes. Those sort of things are important. If you read accounts from autobiographies of actresses when they’ve not got much money, one of the difficulties is because they are responsible for their own costumes. Even in a lowly part, you have to have a couple of changes of costumes, so you can play whatever you are put into. If you rip your costume on stage, you have got to sort that out really quickly. Or become adept at putting different trimmings on to try and make it look different from when you wore it last week. 

Actresses like Julia Seaman and Alice Marriott play the heavy woman in Victorian theatre. The heavy woman is a type of acting role and includes tragic parts. These particular ones also play Hamlet. It requires quite a ponderous deep voice and if you think of the size of the Britannia, long before you were miked up, you have got to project to connect to the audience in the gallery. This is another reason why the big gestures in melodrama are important. If someone’s just doing a small gesture, it’s not as easy to read. 

Sarah Lane, Julia Seaman and Marie Henderson

Marie Henderson is one of a number of actresses who came to the Britannia for a few years to take a particular type of role and who consolidated her talent there. She had the leading lady role. For this you’ve got to be attractive to look at. Being young is very helpful as ever. Then when you got to this position, you would be able to specialise in certain roles. An awful lot of actresses aspired to this and some made it and some didn’t. I guess it’s partly talent, partly luck such as playing the leading lady role in a hit play. 

There’s also a theatrical network you have to negotiate. I’ve been reading a lot of letters from a theatre manager in Newcastle. He would write to someone in Brighton and ask about Miss Smith: I see she has been on your stage and what is she like? The reply back might be: don’t touch her with a barge pole, or, yes I recommend her. These networks here had women at a disadvantage. Especially at the higher level in the West End because the critics and managers are in the gentleman's club and women aren’t allowed in there. So women have to get on in other ways. That’s why I think having a husband in this period might be quite useful. If you arrived with your husband at a meeting, that potential association of you being free and easy is not registered. It’s interesting that a lot of actresses performed as Miss Henderson did, using their maiden name, even if they’ve been married for 40 years. Maybe because they made their name that way and they didn’t want to change it with each new husband. 

A women as a manager of a theatre is quite standard. We can regard them as the figure head and the man as the named lessee on the papers. That was the case at the Britannia with Sara Lane. Samuel Lane was the original lessee and Sara came in to the theatre as an actress. When his first wife died, he married Sara. But she was the key figure long before he died in 1871. She was directing everything. So there are quite a lot of female managers, but many managements were short lived. That is why the Britannia is really unusual given Sara Lane’s length of time. Marie Henderson and her husband John Aubrey at the Elephant and Castle Theatre were there for 5 years. Lady Don’s experience was just one season and this is much more common. 

Theatre is one of the very rare places in Victorian society where women could earn as much as men and they could have more agency. Also just in terms of being able to move around the country and perform in different places. I’m sure that was one of the attractions for many women. ​
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