A Cheap Theatre — Saturday Night by W. M. Wood engraving. 8.7 cm high x 12.4 cm wide (3 ⅝ by 4 ⅞ inches), framed. Second illustration for the 1868 Illustrated Library Edition of Dickens's The Uncommercial Traveller, Chapter Four, "Two Views of a Cheap Theatre," facing p. 19. First published untitled as the third article in the series for All the Year Round, Volume Two (25 February 1860), page 416. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Above: Harry Furniss's lithographic version of A Cheap Theatre — Saturday Night (1905).
Passage Realized: The Attentive Saturday Night Audience
As the spectators at this theatre, for a reason I will presently show, were the object of my journey, I entered on the play of the night as one of the two thousand and odd hundreds, by looking about me at my neighbours. We were a motley assemblage of people, and we had a good many boys and young men among us; we had also many girls and young women. To represent, however, that we did not include a very great number, and a very fair proportion of family groups, would be to make a gross mis-statement. Such groups were to be seen in all parts of the house; in the boxes and stalls particularly, they were composed of persons of very decent appearance, who had many children with them. Among our dresses there were most kinds of shabby and greasy wear, and much fustian and corduroy that was neither sound nor fragrant. The caps of our young men were mostly of a limp character, and we who wore them, slouched, high-shouldered, into our places with our hands in our pockets, and occasionally twisted our cravats about our necks like eels, and occasionally tied them down our breasts like links of sausages, and occasionally had a screw in our hair over each cheek-bone with a slight Thief-flavour in it. Besides prowlers and idlers, we were mechanics, dock-labourers, costermongers, petty tradesmen, small clerks, milliners, stay-makers, shoe-binders, slop-workers, poor workers in a hundred highways and byways. Many of us — on the whole, the majority — were not at all clean, and not at all choice in our lives or conversation. But we had all come together in a place where our convenience was well consulted, and where we were well looked after, to enjoy an evening’s entertainment in common. We were not going to lose any part of what we had paid for through anybody’s caprice, and as a community we had a character to lose. So, we were closely attentive, and kept excellent order; and let the man or boy who did otherwise instantly get out from this place, or we would put him out with the greatest expedition. [Chapter IV, "Two Views of a Cheap Theatre," 19]
Above: Edward G. Dalziel's Household Edition version of A Cheap Theatre, Sunday Night (1877).
Commentary
"Two Views of a Cheap Theatre," the fourth chapter of The Uncommercial Traveller, contrasts the Saturday night in the lower or upper gallery of the working-class Britannia Theatre, a full evening of pantomime and melodrama at three or four pence, with the abbreviated and much muted church service in the same London auditorium on a wet and muddy Sunday evening.
The 1868 version is less polished and more elemental, and emphasizes the audience over the embellished balcony which dominates the Dalziel composition describing the church service. In particular, Stone focuses on the bluff figure, hands in pockets, standing to the right as he studies a particular female play-goer. Whereas the Household Edition (1877) illustration for this chapter, A Cheap Theatre, Sunday Night, shows a church-going audience of approximately equal numbers of men and women, with the odd child present, the earlier Marcus Stone illustration shows a floating sea of principally male heads in attendance for theatrical entertainments of a Saturday evening. However, his analysis of the motley crew focuses on the first two rows on the main floor, in which four women and a child are evident. Stone expands Dickens's description by having the older woman (possibly the mother or mother-in-law of the young couple in the centre) minding the infant, perhaps trying to keep it quiet. The lounger standing to the right is not looking at them, however; rather, he seems to be studying the young woman immediately behind him in the second row. The two fragmentary texts embedded in the illustration are informative: in the very back (right), "Smoking Strong [Tobacco?] Prohibited"; and the paper in the woman's lap may be a playbill proclaiming "The Triumph of Virtue." Very few members of the audience are not fully engaged in watching the production. The idler (right) in the cap, fustian jacket, corduroy trousers, and flash waistcoat and the woman in the shawl just behind him are not watching whatever is transpiring onstage, but are regarding each other, suggesting a possible assignation after the play. We are studying the audience from the perspective of the orchestra.
Related Material
- Another image of the theatre by Dalziel
- The Balcony Audience at Astley's Amphitheatre by Phiz, complementing Chapter 39, in The Old Curiosity Shop, 3 October 1840.
Scanned images, formatting, captions and commentary by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use these images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned them, and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
Bibliography
Dickens, Charles. The Uncommercial Traveller. Illustrated by Edward Dalziel. The Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1877.
Dickens, Charles. Chapter Four: "Two Views of a Cheap Theatre." The Uncommercial Traveller. Illustrated by George J. Pinwell and "W. M." The Illustrated Library Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1868, rpt., 1895. Pp. 17-23.
Dickens, Charles. The Uncommercial Traveller. With Illustrations by Harry Furniss and A. J. Goodman. London: Chapman and Hall, 1905.
Scenes and Characters from the Works of Charles Dickens; being eight hundred and sixty-six drawings, by Fred Barnard, Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz); J. Mahoney; Charles Green; A. B. Frost; Gordon Thomson; J. McL. Ralston; H. French; E. G. Dalziel; F. A. Fraser, and Sir Luke Fildes; printed from the original woodblocks engraved for "The Household Edition." New York: Chapman and Hall, 1908. Copy in the Robarts Library, University of Toronto.
Created 11 May 2023