Abstract
Goron presents a pioneering analysis of the social make-up of the Savoy audience. He questions whether this group can be seen as being unified through a shared ideology, or whether social ‘fissures’ within a socially divided auditorium undermine societal cohesion. Analysis of the social make-up of typical first-night audience behaviour, and issues such as the expansion of the lower middle classes and the theatre-going habits of young men and women, are used to create as full a picture as possible of a ‘typical’ Gilbert and Sullivan audience in late-Victorian London.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
See Chapter 2 for an explanation of ‘hierarchical’ readings of class structure.
- 2.
Assessments of capacity and seat distribution differ among sources and within contemporary theatre plans. The variation in capacity is relatively slight—between 1272 and 1294. Kevin Chapple, Savoy Theatre general manager and archivist, echoes the numbers noted in the Era of 1 October 1881, which derive from the Savoy management. These figures are at variance with those supplied by Howard (1986, pp. 214–15). Her information is taken directly from architectural plans now held in the London Metropolitan Archive (Public Record Office LC 7/79 9). For this reason, I take Howard’s figures to be the most accurate. However, the variance could be explained by the fact that some small alterations in the seating layout took place between the submission of the plans and the final build. This 22-seat discrepancy does not affect the quantitative-evidence based conclusions of this chapter in any significant way.
- 3.
Lack of information has led me to estimate that 11 boxes would be priced at 3 guineas, the topmost 6, which were smaller, at 2 guineas, while I have assumed that the royal box would be generally unused.
- 4.
The 3s bookable upper circle is much nearer in price to the unreserved seats than the 6s dress circle. I have chosen to count it among the ‘expensive’ seats. However, its proximity in price to seats possibly occupied by a ‘lower-middle-class’ audience sector could suggest an even greater number of lower-income customers.
- 5.
The Prince of Wales and the Court Theatre where several of Gilbert’s early plays were premiered.
- 6.
Illustrated London News, 2 December 1882.
- 7.
All the Year Round, 19 May 1877.
- 8.
Era, 5 August 1877.
- 9.
Use of ‘galleryite’ as a search term in the British Library’s nineteenth Century Newspaper and Periodical collection reveals a single usage before 1865.
- 10.
Era, 18 June 1887.
- 11.
The Theatre, 1 March 1880, p. 139.
- 12.
Its mixture of popular English comedy, ‘French’ farce and opera bouffe, and melodramatic Dickens and Hardy adaptations might have been geared towards the young, educated, male pit crowd who frequented burlesque performances (Mander and Mitchenson 1976, p. 66).
- 13.
Hollingshead characterises them as habitués of the burlesque—the ‘fast fashionable audience [whose] amplitude of shirt front and wristband [and] strident tones and echoing laugh’ proclaim them as ‘gentlemen whose days are given to commercial pursuits in the city and whose evenings are entirely devoted to enjoyment at the West-end’ (Hollingshead 1877, pp. 274–5).
- 14.
Era, 29 December 1906.
- 15.
It is worth remembering that pit, amphitheatre and gallery all contained continuous bench seating rather than chairs and so shared equal levels of comfort. The advantages of the pit were that it was nearer to the stage, less crowded, nearer main entrances and exits, and more or less within proximity of the wealthy.
- 16.
Judy, 19 December 1877, p. 102.
- 17.
Illustrated London News, 12 January 1884.
- 18.
This was certainly the case in the early 1900s. Rutland Barrington remarks that a matinee performance of The Mikado during the 1908–1909 repertory revivals was ‘literally crowded with children, whose laughter was something to live for’ (1911, p. 30).
- 19.
Young Folks Paper, 30 June 1888. Young Folks was a weekly children’s literary magazine published between 1871 and 1897. It serialised R.L. Stevenson’s most famous novels, including Treasure Island. As part of its ‘Literary Olympic and Tournament’, Young Folks devoted its back pages to publishing stories and poems contributed by its readers.
- 20.
Young Folks Paper, 30 June 1888, p. 414.
- 21.
Presumably, Gissing refers back a year or two to The Gondoliers, which opened in December 1889, and ran until June 1891. Although the novel was published in 1893, there was no ‘new’ Gilbert and Sullivan work until the opening of Utopia, Limited in October 1893, which post-dated the publication of the novel.
- 22.
See also Schoch (2003, p. 343).
- 23.
‘The Evolution of “The Mikado”’ in the Pall Mall Gazette, 24 August, 1885.
- 24.
The staunch republicanism of the eponymous heroes in The Gondoliers is, perhaps, an exception. It does raise, albeit in a comically absurd form, an image of social levelling, with aristocrats performing menial duties while their inferiors live in luxury. However, I would maintain that the impact of implied social criticism is reduced by the exoticised romance of the eighteenth-century Venetian setting, as well as the generally ironic approach to issues of equality in this opera.
- 25.
According to Best, taxable incomes above £150 per year (the minimum tax threshold) underwent a 33 per cent rise between 1851 and 1881.
- 26.
Daily Express, 10 December 1906.
- 27.
There was one major exception. During the Pinafore craze of 1879, the ‘Second London Company’ played Shoreditch and Camden Town for six weeks (Rollins and Witts 1962, p. 30).
- 28.
This may have been a move to ensure revenue, as the Savoy was running a repertoire predominantly consisting of revivals immediately after the closure of The Grand Duke. A similar touring repertoire would have reinforced the popularity of the brand during uncertain times.
- 29.
Perkin estimates that around 10 per cent of families (the broad middle classes) had an income of between £100 and £5000 per annum (1969, p. 420). The remainder of families below this level made do with annual incomes of between £22 10s (those classified as paupers) and an average of £85 6s (clerical and higher-skilled manual workers).
- 30.
Reynolds Newspaper, 8 October 1893.
References
Bancroft, M., & Bancroft, S. (1909). Recollections of sixty years. London: John Murray.
Barrington, R. (1911). More Rutland Barrington — By himself. London: G. Richards.
Cellier, F., & Bridgeman, C. (1914). Gilbert, Sullivan and D’Oyly Carte. London: Pitman.
Hollingshead, J. (1877). Some theatres and their audiences. In C. Dickens (Ed.), All the year round. London: Chapman & Hall.
Hullah, J. (1842). Wilhelm’s method of teaching singing. London: Kilkenny. reprinted 1983.
Mudie-Smith, C. (1903). The religious life of London. London: Hodder and Stoughton.
Scott, C. (1875). A plea for the pit. The Era Almanack.
Spence, E. F. (1910). Our stage and its critics. London: Methuen.
Bailey, P. (1998). Popular culture and performance in the Victorian City. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Best, G. (1971). Mid-Victorian Britain. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
Booth, M. R. (1991). Theatre in the Victorian Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bradley, I. (2005). Oh Joy! Oh Rapture! The enduring phenomenon of Gilbert and Sullivan. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Croll, A. (2007). Popular leisure and sport. In C. Williams (Ed.), A companion to nineteenth century Britain. Oxford: Blackwell.
Crossick, G. (1977). The lower middle class in Britain 1870–1914. London: Croom Helm.
Crowther, A. (2000). Contradiction contradicted—The plays of W.S. Gilbert. London: Associated University Presses.
Dark, S., & Grey, R. (1923). W.S. Gilbert; His life and letters. London: Methuen.
Davis, J., & Emeljanow, V. (2001). Reflecting the audience: London theatregoing, 1840–1880. Hatfield: University of Hertfordshire Press.
Gissing, G., 1893, reprinted 2008. The Odd Women. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Howard, D. (1986). London theatres and music halls. London: Library Association Publishing.
Joseph, T. (1994). The D’Oyly Carte Opera Company 1875–1982. Bristol: Bunthorne Books.
Mander, J., & Mitchenson, J. (1976). The lost theatres of London. New English Library.
Oost, R. B. (2009). Gilbert and Sullivan: Class and the Savoy Tradition, 1875–1896. Farnham: Ashgate.
Perkin, H. (1969). The origins of modern English society 1780–1880. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Perkin, H. (1989). The rise of professional society: England since 1880. London: Routledge.
Pick, J. (1983). The West End: Mismanagement and Snobbery. Eastbourne: John Offord.
Potter, J. (1998). Vocal authority—Singing style and ideology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Price, R. (1977). Society, status and Jingoism, the social roots of lower middle class patriotism, 1870–1900. In G. Crossick (Ed.), The lower middle class in Britain. London: Croom Helm.
Rollins, C., & Witts, R. (1962). The D’Oyly Carte Opera company in Gilbert and Sullivan Operas. A record of productions 1875 – 1961. London: Michael Joseph.
Schoch, R. W. (2003). Victorian theatrical Burlesque. Burlington: Ashgate.
Schoch, R. W. (2004). Theatre and mid-Victorian society. In J. Donohue (Ed.), The Cambridge history of British theatre (Vol. 2, pp. 1660–1895). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Smither, H. (2000). A history of the Oratorio: Vol. 4: The Oratorio in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (1st ed.). Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Thompson, F. M. L. (1988). The rise of respectable society. London: Fontana.
White, J. (2008). London in the nineteenth century (2nd ed.). London: Vintage.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2016 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Goron, M. (2016). Savoy Audiences 1881–1909. In: Gilbert and Sullivan's 'Respectable Capers'. Palgrave Studies in British Musical Theatre. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59478-5_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59478-5_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-59477-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-59478-5
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)