Julie Peakman
As we eagerly anticipate theatres’ reopening, Julie Peakman looks at the lives of our thespian ancestors
Julie is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and author of many books specialising in 18th-century culture and sexuality. She looks at our relations who trod the boards on page 57.
The theatre was one of the most popular forms of entertainment outside the home in Victorian Britain, encouraged by the 1843 Theatres Regulation Act. This reversed the powers of the Lord Chamberlain to prohibit certain plays under the 1737 Licensing Act, and empowered local authorities to license new theatres, breaking a monopoly of patent theatres and encouraging new types of performances. Actors now had to become increasingly flexible in their ability to play tragedy and comedy, sing and dance, and act in pantomimes in music halls, comedies and burlesques.
In the early days, the repertoire had been more restrained as theatre managers tended to stick to Shakespeare, using well-known actors in a world dominated by theatrical families such as the Kembles. Now, as theatres opened up in the provinces and the major cities, all classes bought tickets, from the elite to low-paid workers. This meant more opportunities for thespians. Melodrama was especially popular: on 31 March 1851
Queen Victoria remarked in her journal, “I never saw anything more exciting. The Keans [Charles and Ellen] acted beautifully and she acted really wonderfully in the most crucial and alarming moments, literally keeping one in a state of terror and suspense, so that one quite held one’s breath, and was quite trembling when the play came to an end.”
Frank Archer, in his An Actor’s Notebooks (Stanley Paul & Co, 1912, and freely available at archive.org/details/ actorsnotebooks00arch/ page/n5/mode/2up), described how he started off as an actor in his youth around 1861: “I had no salary, and had to work for three years without remuneration, it must be understood that I ‘lived in the house’, as the phrase went, and bed and board were fully provided.”
Actors’ Pay
Actors came from all sorts of backgrounds, and were paid according to their popularity and rank. A lower-grade actor was often expected to perform numerous roles. Even a heavy tragedy might be interspersed with songs or hornpipes, followed by a farce. Actors also needed stamina: during the 1830s, a run of 12 nights was unusual, but demands on actors increased. At the Adelphi Theatre Edinburgh in 1842, the summer season ran 150 nights with 132 different plays performed and a total of 463 performances given. Frequent changes of bill were expected to keep the audiences pouring in, therefore actors needed to be familiar with a wide range of roles and have good memories. Most actors had to contend with long hours, low pay, unsanitary working conditions and unscrupulous managers. Wages were dependent on box-office takings. Charges at the Covent Garden Theatre in London in the early part of the 19th century were 7s 6d for boxes, 4s for the pit, and 2s and 1s for lower and upper galleries. Leading actors took a larger share because they pulled in a larger audience. In small provincial touring companies, takings were divided between the company, with a portion going to each of the actors and a higher percentage to the manager, who also supplied the costumes and scenery.
Financial solvency was a continuous problem for many actors. Some theatre managers left their actors high and dry.
In a complaint published in the Theatrical Times on 1 January 1847, one irate actor exposed the “unprincipled conduct” of Mr Robson Daniels. He had engaged a group of actors from London to come to Boston Theatre some 120 miles away for a period of six weeks, with the promise of further shows to follow and a month’s severance on either party’s side. After four weeks, when the cast assembled to receive their salaries, the manager had made off with the proceeds.
According to the magazine Household Words in 1877, actors would have to entertain all types from “the extreme East-end, the flash, the decorous, the criminal, the honest, the drunken and the sober”. Mrs Stirling, a veteran of Macready’s Company, perhaps best summed up the actor’s life when she told actor Frank Benson in 1882: “You will never be an actor until you have learnt to get through your part – six new ones a week, perhaps – though snow coming through the roof; with an audience of only two or three drunks, who are not listening… while rats trot across the footlights with your pet powder-puff in their mouth; when you have not had a square meal in a month and will probably get no salary on Saturday; when you are sent on for a part of two or three hundred lines with one night’s study, and no proper rehearsal.”
Strict Hierarchy
A strict observance of rank was understood in the company, with major players taking the best area of the stage in order to be better seen and heard. Actors would start off in small roles and work their way up, learning on the job. Women had to learn roles such as heroines, ingénues, flirts,
Solvency was a continuous problem for many actors
chaperones and wicked women, while men played heroes, villains, comedians and fops.
Entering the profession was harder for women, because they were escaping from their allotted role of wife and mother, and rejecting the Victorian idea that women should not make a spectacle of themselves. Female actors were often judged in moral terms, rather than professional ones. As a result critic Anne Jameson complained in 1838, “The idea acting as a profession is incompatible with female virtue and modesty [is]… an insult to the estimable women who have adorned and still adorn the stage.”
Few actors could fill auditoriums, but those who did became stars. Sarah Bernhardt (1844–1923) became the darling of the British public when she gave her first British performance of La Dame aux Camélias at the Shaftesbury Theatre in 1881. Stars also carried the rest of the company, relying on public approbation for their livelihood, and started to perform with partners, attracting even greater audiences. Ellen Terry (1847– 1928), who was considered Britain’s greatest female actor in her day, teamed up with leading male actor Henry Irving (1838– 1905) to play at London’s Lyceum Theatre from 1878 onwards.
By the end of the century, the more serious plays of Ibsen, Zola and eventually Strindberg and Chekhov were produced. Realism, naturalism and modernism gradually took over from melodrama and comedy.