John Bowen compliments Richard W. Schoch "for remaining so good-humoured through this amiable study of Queen Victoria's theatre- going, for the royal family's private theatricals that make up much of the story sound perfectly ghastly. There were tableaux vivants, for example, in which the little princes and princesseswould be dragooned into personating the Four Seasons, or in which Ladies of the Household (dressed as classical maidens) were "arranged in stately poses around an elevated bust of the Queen". These tableaux -- no words, no action, but some very long costume changes -- would go on for two or three hours and were, Schoch explains, "exhausting to watch even for sympathetically disposed spectators".
The plays staged at court sound equally dreadful. Victoria would take charge, choosing the play, "improving" the script, and casting the actors. She also had the unfortunate habit of "providing plot summaries viva voce during the performance". The royal princesses were always to have the best parts and had to be treated with deference fitting to their royal station, regardless of the role they played. Professional actors were not allowed to turn their backs on the Queen, even when in character, and court protocol dictated that the audience neither applaud nor laugh.
It hadn't always been like this. In their early years, the royal couple went to the theatre a good deal, and to many different kinds of show. Victo- ria could enjoy a Lancashire clog dance at the dingy little Olympic theatre, for example, and the lion-tamer Van Amburgh was a particular favourite. After a performance of Planche's The Discreet Princess, she confessed to her journal that a song "terminating with the refrain 'Diddle doo, diddle dum', quite haunts us". But after Albert's death, everything changed: Victoria never went to the theatre again.
Bibliography
Bowen, John. [Review of] Richard A Schoch's Quen Victoria and the Theatre of Her Age. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Times Literary Supplement (18 June 2004): 36-37.
Last modified 13 December 2004