Abstract
On the evening of 26 November 1911 most of the leading members of the London theatre establishment gathered at the Savoy Hotel for a banquet — a ‘Jubilee’ to honour George Edwardes, the lessee/manager of three West End theatres: the Gaiety, Daly’s and, most recently, the Adelphi. Musical comedies, which had charmed the Edwardian age, reigned supreme at all three theatres. Close to two hundred people, ‘representing the highest and best traditions of the stage’, packed the dining room: ‘managers, actor-managers, actors, dramatists, critics, and famous theatre patrons’.1 The chairman for the event was Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree of His Majesty’s Theatre. Sir George Alexander of St James’s Theatre served as the vice-chairman.
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
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
W. Forbes-Winslow, Daly’s: the Biography of a Theatre (London: W. H. Allen, 1944), 99.
Alan Hyman, The Gaiety Years (London: Casell, 1975), 187–8.
Kurt Gänzl, The British Musical Theatre, 2 vols (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).
Kurt Gänzl, The Encyclopedia of the Musical Theatre, 2 vols (New York: Schirmer Books, 1994), 1: 398.
Peter Bailey, Popular Culture and Performance in the Victorian City (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
Len Piatt, Musical Comedy on the West End Stage, 1890—1939 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).
John Hollingshead, Good Old Gaiety: a Historiette and Remembrance (London: Gaiety Theatre, 1903), 72.
William Archer, The Theatrical World of 1895 (London: Walter Scott, 1896), 43.
Andrew Lamb, 150 Years of Popular Musical Theatre (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 116.
Gerald Bordman, The American Musical Theatre (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 118.
W. Macqueen-Pope, Twenty Shillings in a Pound (London: Hutchinson, 1948), 271.
A. E. Wilson, Edwardian Theatre (London: Arthur Barker, 1951), 212.
W. Macqueen-Pope, Shirtfronts and Sables: a Story of the Days When Money Could Be Spent (London: Robert Hale, 1953), 131.
Seymour Hicks, Twenty-Four Years of an Actor’s Life (New York: John Lane, 1911), 185.
W. Macqueen-Pope, Carriages at Eleven: an Account of the Theatre from 1897—1914 (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1947), 7–8.
John Pick, West End: Mismanagement and Snobbery (East Sussex: John Offord, 1983), 17.
J. S. Bratton, ‘Music Hall’, in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance, ed. Dennis Kennedy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), vol. 2, 903.
Joel Kaplan, ‘1895: a Critical Year in Perspective’, in The Cambridge History of British Theatre, ed. Joseph Donohue (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), vol. 2, 425.
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2007 Thomas Postlewait
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Postlewait, T. (2007). George Edwardes and Musical Comedy: the Transformation of London Theatre and Society, 1878—1914. In: Davis, T.C., Holland, P. (eds) The Performing Century. Redefining British Theatre History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230589483_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230589483_5
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-36430-5
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-58948-3
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature & Performing Arts CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)