Heroic Rebels and Highwaymen

Abstract

Never before in the history of the metropolis had playing to the crowd been a more challenging and difficult task. In the course of theater history, there had been previous periods in which class tensions emerged. In Shakespeare’s day, the groundlings paid little and complained little about their place in the pit. In Restoration theater, the relationship was seldom more harmonious than an often sullen détente. When Garrick stepped forth on stage, the class divisions were clearly sorted by respective places within the theater. As mentioned in the Introduction, mid-eighteenth-century prologues and epilogues not only addressed the crowds directly, but addressed them as specific constituencies, depending on whether they were seated in the upper galleries or the middle galleries, whether in the pit or in the boxes. That distribution of the classes had ceased to be as reliable a determinate in the theaters of the early nineteenth century. Not only were such factors as wealth, education, church affiliation, and social standing being reconfigured, so too were questions of heritage. The majority of the audience were not native-born Londoners, the majority at several of the theaters were not even British. If the performers were to make a serious effort to play to the crowd, they would have to consider the diversity of national background.