Returning from the day performance of the pantomime. 1866. Source: Illustrated London News. Click on image to enlarge it.
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The morning performances of the Christmas Pantomime are much to be commended for young children, who ought not to be subjected, even for a single night, to the unwholesome influences of late sitting, foul air, flaring gas, and unwonted excitement from seven o’clock till nearly twelve, or any portion of that time. On the other hand, they may well be supposed to want occupation and amusement during even the shortest days of this holiday season; and it is better for them to be at Drury-lane Theatre from two o’clock till five than romping in the drawing-room, or moping in the nursery, and possibly breaking the windows. The sketch in which our Artist has represented the pleasant sight at the doors of the good old playhouse, when such an audience, composed mainly of boys and girls, with their parents, governesses, and other domestic guardians, are coming out, in a mood of unmixed gratification, fresh and happy as they went in three hours ago, will plead most effectively, we trust, in favour of this rational custom of morning performances. One would like to follow some of these dear children home, and hear them talk with delight, as they will for many days to come, of the wondrous spectacle they have seen.
Related material
- Sitemap for Victorian Pantomime
- Nineteenth-Century British Pantomime
- W. S.Gilbert on “Getting up a Pantomime”
- Alfred Crowquill's Limericks for Eight London Pantomimes, Christmas 1842 (Illustrated London News)
- Illustrations of pantomine (1842)
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Bibliography
“Returning from the day performance of the pantomime.” Illustrated London News. 48 (5 January 1866): 19-20. Hathi Trust Digital Library version of a copy in the University of Michigan Library. Web. 23 December 2015. The text above was created from the Hathi page images with ABBYY FineReader. — George P. Landow
Last modified 23 December 2015