[Victorian Web Home —> Visual Arts —> Illustration —> George Cruikshank —> Next]
Private Theatres
George Cruikshank
1836
Etching on copper
10.4 x 9.4 cm vignetted
"Private Theatres" — the thirteenth chapter in "Scenes," by Charles Dickens in Sketches by Boz, facing p. 88.
[Click on image to enlarge it and mouse over text for links.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
The characters in the tragedy are all dressed, and their own clothes are scattered in hurried confusion over the wooden dresser which surrounds the room. That snuff-shop-looking figure, in front of the glass, is Banquo: and the young lady with the liberal display of legs, who is kindly painting his face with a hare’s foot, is dressed for Fleance. The large woman, who is consulting the stage directions in Cumberland's edition of Macbeth, is the Lady Macbeth of the night; she is always selected to play the part, because she is tall and stout, and looks a little like Mrs. Siddons— at a considerable distance. That stupid-looking milksop, with light hair and bow legs— a kind of man whom you can warrant town-made— is fresh caught; he plays Malcolm to-night, just to accustom himself to an audience. He will get on better by degrees; he will play Othello in a month, and in a month more, will very probably be apprehended on a charge of embezzlement. The black-eyed female with whom he is talking so earnestly, is dressed for the "gentlewoman." It is her first appearance, too — in that character. The boy of fourteen who is having his eyebrows smeared with soap and whitening, is Duncan, King of Scotland; and the two dirty men with the corked countenances, in very old green tunics, and dirty drab boots, are the "army."— "Private Theatres," p. 92.
Until 1875 theatres were the chief form of entertainment for Londoners of all social classes, and Dickens as a young man knew the theatres of The City (central London) extremely well, even agreeing (in the months prior to his bursting on the literary scene as "Boz") to an audition which he was fortuitously compelled to cancel because of a head cold. That was in March 1832, when the twenty-year-old law clerk, hoping to begin a career on the stage, had written to George Bartley, the manager of the Covent Garden Theatre.
The article entitled "Private Theatres" originally appeared as "Sketches of London No. 19" in The Evening Chronicle on 11 August 1835, under the pseudonym "Boz," which Dickens had been using in that journal since August 1834. It is a
Satirical account of the foolishly vain and incompetent amateurs who pay to act major roles in small neighbourhood theatres in London; takes the reader behind the scenes before a performance of Macbeth in such a theatre. — The Dickens Index, p. 207.
The official restrictions prohibiting the production of "legitimate" drama and Shakespeare protected the two patent theatres in London, Drury Lane and Covent Garden, but did not apply to the minor, unlicensed playhouses of the new, working class areas of the metropolis, notably the "Surrey side" theatres such as the Adelphi as long the plays produced had musical accompaniment:
The very restrictions that forbade the new theatres to do Shakespeare or other straight plays perhaps partly inspired the brilliant ingenuity and inventiveness of entertainment at this time. Unlicensed premises relied on silent or musically-accompanied action, physical theatre, animals and acrobatics, and thus both melodrama and the Victorian pantomime were developed. Without poetry and declamation, much more was needed from scenery and visual effects, and these were also essential in the major theatres, because lighting and auditorium design, making it easy to see and hear the players, did not keep up with the increasing size of theatres. And audiences, in the first half of the century, were not passive or still: the auditorium was as well-lit as the stage, a place of social meeting and greeting, coming and going; the night was long — up to five hours, with several different pieces on offer — and an extra influx of people who had already been enjoying a night out arrived at about nine, getting in at half price, and needing to be instantly involved in the event. — http://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/19th-century-theatre#sthash.HRKyStbX.dpuf
Since the licensing regulations did not apply to private theatres, such places were free to do Shakespeare, even if they did it badly. One can see in the Cruikshank illustration of the cramped Green Room, probably directly under the small stage (note the trapdoor in the centre of the heavily-beamed ceiling), that the actors are wearing traditional Caledonian dress rather than the street clothes favoured in eighteenth-century productions of Shakespeare. Macbeth in such "authentic" costumes had become popular after William Macready's mounting a Drury Lane production in 1827 with considerable attention to appropriate costuming. A truly Cruikshankian touch is the woman studying her script just minutes before curtain time.
Historical accuracy in sets and costumes became more common with the increasing availability of works of historical research, such as The History of British Costume (1834) by J. R. Planché (1795-1880). This new knowledge of the past, combined with the nineteenth-century fascination with antiquity, convinced a number of theater artists to mount historically accurate productions; they included the English actor-managers Charles Kemble (1775-1854), William Charles Macready, and Charles Kean (1811-1868); the American actor-manager Edwin Booth; and the duke of Saxe-Meiningen. In the Saxe-Meiningen productions, as we have seen, costumes were carefully researched and authentic materials were used regardless of the cost or difficulty of obtaining them; and performers were not allowed to alter their costumes. — Ben Martin, "Historical Accuracy," Theatre in the Nineteenth Century.
Although the vogue for private theatres in London lasted about twenty years (1770-1790), such minor theatres continued to operate well into the nineteenth century, and Dickens opened his own private stage (reconfiguring his children's nursery at great expense) in for his amateur production of the melodrama The Frozen Deep at Tavistock House in January 1857.
As Frederic G. Kitton notes, Cruikshank had to re-engrave this illustration for the Chapman and Hall serialisation, and the subsequent 1839 anthology:
During the following year (1837) Macrone published a Second Series of the "Sketches" in one volume, uniform in size and character with its predecessors, and containing ten etchings by Cruikshank; for the second edition of this extra volume two additional illustrations were done, viz., "The Last Cab-Driver" and "May-day in the Evening." It was at this time that Dickens repurchased from Macrone the entire copyright of the "Sketches," and arranged with Chapman & Hall for a complete edition, to be issued in shilling monthly parts, octavo size, the first number appearing in November of that year. The completed work contained all the Cruikshank plates (except that entitled "The Free and Easy," which, for some unexplained reason, was cancelled) and the following [twelve] new subjects: "The Parish Engine," "The Broker's Man," "Our Next-door Neighbours" [sic], "Early Coaches," "Public Dinners," "The Gin-Shop," "Making a Night of It," "The Boarding-House," "The Tuggses at Ramsgate," "The Steam Excursion," "Mrs. Joseph Porter," and "Mr. Watkins Tottle." — "George Cruikshank, p. 4.
Above: Fred Barnard's realistic character study of an amateur comedian for the same sketch, His line is genteel comedy — his father's coal and potato. He does Alfred Highflier in the last piece, and very well he'll do it — at the price. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Ackroyd, Peter. Dickens: A Biography. London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1990.
Bentley, Nicolas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens Index. New York and Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1990.
Bratton, Jacky. "Theatre in the 19th c." British Library Newsletter: Discovering Romantics & Victorians. Accessed 10 April 2017. http://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/19th-century-theatre#sthash.HRKyStbX.dpuf
Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Checkmark and Facts On File, 1999.
Dickens, Charles. "Private Theatres," Chapter 13 in "Scenes." Sketches by Boz. Illustrated by George Cruikshank. London: Chapman and Hall, 1836; rpt., 1890. Pp. 88-92.
Dickens, Charles."Private Theatres," Chapter 13 in "Scenes." Sketches by Boz. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. The Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1876. vol. 13, p. 56-59.
Dickens, Charles. "Private Theatres," Chapter 13 in "Scenes." Sketches by Boz Illustrative of Every-day Life and Every-Day People. Ed. J. A. Hammerton. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. London: Educational Book, 1910. Vol. 1, p. 112-118.
Dickens, Charles, and Fred Barnard. The Dickens Souvenir Book. London: Chapman & Hall, 1912.
Hartnoll, Phyllis. The Oxford Concise Companion to the Theatre. Oxford and New York: Oxford U. P., 1972.
Hawksley, Lucinda Dickens. Chapter 3, "Sketches by Boz." Dickens Bicentenary 1812-2012: Charles Dickens. San Rafael, California: Insight, 2011. Pp. 12-15.
Kitton, Frederic G. "George Cruikshank." Dickens and His Illustrators. London: Chapman & Hall,1899. Rpt. Honolulu: U. Press of the Pacific, 2004. Pp.1-28.
Martin, Ben. "Historical Accuracy." Theatre History: Nineteenth Century. Accessed 10 April 2017. http://homepage.smc.edu/martin_ben/TheaterHistory/nineteenth.htm
Slater, Michael. Charles Dickens: A Life Defined by Writing. New Haven and London: Yale U. P., 2009.
Last modified 10 April 2017