NineteenthCentury
Theatre
Influences
 17th c. French Neo-Classical and English
Restoration drama of wit and manners
became 18th theatre of sensibility
 18th –19th c. German Romantic Theatre
 Revival of Shakespeare
 Rise of “star system”: actor-managers
 Technical advances in staging and lighting
th
18
th
–19
c. German
Romantic Theater
 “Stürm und Drang”
 Looked to Shakespeare
for models
 Sweeping historical and
tragic dramas
 Began to emphasize
historical accuracy in
costumes and settings
 Improved theatrical
effects -- footlights,
revolving stages,
theatrical machinery
Schiller and Goethe
English
Romantic
Theatre
 Closet drama: drama meant more to be read
than performed
 Popular in the early 19th c. when melodrama
and burlesque dominated the theater, and
poets attempted to raise dramatic standards:
 George Gordon Lord Byron: Manfred, 1817
 Percy Bysshe Shelley’s The Cenci and
Prometheus Unbound, 1819
 Robert Browning’s Strafford (1837) and Pippa
Passes (1841)
Melodrama: 19th C.
 Comes from "music drama" – music
was used to increase emotions or to
signify characters (signature music).
 Theatre of sentimentality -- emotional
appeal
 Simplified moral universe: good and
evil embodied in stock characters
Heroes and villains -- and lily-pure
heroines
 Sensationalistic: fires, explosions,
drownings, etc.
 Episodic form: the villain poses a
threat, the hero or heroine escapes,
etc.—with a happy ending
 Wide popular appeal
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
dramatizations based on
novel by
Harriet Beecher Stowe
 George L. Aiken’s was the most popular--1853. Six acts,
done without an afterpiece – established the singleplay format. 325 performances in New York.
 In the 1870’s, at least 50 companies doing it in the U.S.
 In 1899: 500 companies.
 In 1927: 12 still doing it.
 12 movie versions since 1900.
 The most popular melodrama in the world until the
First World War.
Domestic Melodrama
Equestrian
Melodrama
Nautical Melodrama
The Water Tank at Sadler’s Wells Theatre – 50,000 gallons of water
Gothic
Melodrama
Comic or Light Opera
Predecessors
Italian Opera Buffa
French Opera Comique
English Ballad Opera:
Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera
German Singspiele
English Pantomime
Viennese Operetta
Conventions
Combination of spoken dialogue and songs
A frivolous, sentimental story, often employing parody
and satire
 Light, pleasant music sometimes including popular music
of the day
Richard D’oyly Carte
Gilbert and Sullivan together to
write an opera afterpiece: Trial by
and
Jury
the Savoy Theatre
 1876: Formed the Comic Opera
 1875: D’oyly Carte brought
Company and leased the Opera
Comique Theatre
 1877-1881: Great successes with
The Sorcerer, H.M.S. Pinafore,
Patience and The Pirates of
Penzance
 1878 on: touring companies
(A,B,C, D) throughout the UK,
Ireland, North America, Europe,
and South Africa
 1881: Built the Savoy Theatre – the
first London theatre to be lit with
electric lights
Gilbert and Sullivan
 First collaborated in 1871 on


Author
Sir William
Schwenk
Gilbert
1836-1911


Thespis, an ‘Original Grotesque
Opera’
After success of The Sorcerer and
H.M.S. Pinafore partnered with
Richard D’oyly Carte to form Mr.
D’Oyly Carte’s Opera Company.
Success of company attributed to
D’Oyly Carte’s business acumen
and diplomacy as well as artistic
control exercised by Gilbert and
Sullivan.
Sullivan knighted in 1883 by
Queen Victoria.
Gilbert knighted in 1907 by King
Edward VII.
Composer
Sir Arthur
Seymour
Sullivan
1842-1900
Light
 1817: first gas lit theatre
 Smelled bad
 Very hazardous – many theatres
burnt down as the gas lighting set
the wood and canvas scenery on
fire
 1826: limelight was invented
 A block of quicklime heated by
oxygen and hydrogen produced a
bright sharp light.
 Used in hand-operated spotlights
 1881: London’s Savoy Theatre
opened with electric lights
 The auditorium was still lit for most
of this period, which also had an
effect on the lighting effects on-stage.
Lighting control desk at the Paris Opera, 1893
The Well-Made Play
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
A plot based upon a withheld secret
Slowly accelerating action and suspense sustained by such
contrivances as precisely timed entrances and exits, letters
which miscarry, and mistakes in identity,
A battle of wits between two adversaries
A reversal in the action followed by a climactic, "obligatory"
scene representing the nadir and then the zenith of the hero's
fortunes as a result of the disclosure of the withheld secret
A logical, credible denouement
Tendency to have the action center upon a stage prop, e.g. a
letter, a fan or a glass of water
A nugget of morality which would appease the ordinary man's
sense of guilt at enjoying himself, e.g. the lesson that
momentous consequences may follow from quite trivial
events.
Alexandre Dumas fils
1824-95
Dramas of Illicit Love
1852: Lady of the
Camellias –
dramatization of 1848
novel –
Verdi’s La Traviata
1853: Diana de Lys
1855: Le Demi-Monde
1857: The Money Question
1858: The Natural Son
1859: A Prodigal Father
Oscar Wilde
1854-1900
Middle Class Satire
1892: Lady
Windermere's Fan
1893: A Woman Of
No Importance
1894: Salome
1895: An Ideal
Husband
1895: The Importance
Of Being Earnest
Actor-Managers
 Star performers who held the license to the theatres,
arranged the performances and hired the other actors.
 Introduced reforms and innovations:
 full rehearsals for the company
 raised status of actors
 revived Shakespearean plays
 toured extensively
 offered powerful management role to women
 Demands of complicated technical effects (storms, fires,
elaborate lighting) led actors to give artistic control to stage
managers who could coordinate all production aspects
 Stage manager's function became increasingly important
until he was eventually elevated to the status of régisseur, or
director.
1849:
competing
productions
of Macbeth.
Riot erupted
leaving 23
dead and 100
wounded
Edwin Forrest, American
1806-72
William Macready, English
1793-1873
Edmund Kean, English, 1787-1833
Samuel Drummond (1765-1844)
Edmund Kean as Richard III (1814)
Sarah Bernhardt, French, 1844-1923
Henry Irving, English, 1838-1905
Eleanora Duse, Italian, 1859-1924
Edwin Booth, American, 1833-93
James O’Neill, American, 1849-1920
November 25, 1864,
"Julius Caesar," Winter
Garden, New York: The
first and last appearance
together of Junius Brutus
Booth, Jr. (right) and two
of his sons, John Wilkes
(left) and Edwin
(middle).
Realism and Naturalism
 Intellectual reaction
against popular theatre
 Theatre of social
problems
 Influenced by emerging
disciplines of psychology
and sociology
 Emerging importance of
director
Realistic stage conventions
 Proscenium stage
 Audience as “fourth
wall”
 Change in acting
conventions
 Continued
improvement in
stagecraft: electric
lighting, set design,
costumes, etc.
Independent Theatre Movement
 Led by young intellectuals, disillusioned
with the literary stagnation of the stage, the
actor-manager system and indulgence with
scenic spectacle
 Wanted to promote new Realistic and
Naturalistic playwrights
 Often ran into trouble with censors
 Dedicated to bringing serious drama to the
working and middle class
Independent Theatres
Théâtre-Libre founded by André Antoine in 1887
in Paris
Freie Bühne founded by Otto Brahm in 1894 in
Berlin
Independent Theatre Club founded by Jacob
Grein in 1891 in London
 The Stage Society founded in 1899 in London
Moscow Art Theatre founded by Konstantin
Stanislavsky and Vladimir NemirovichDanchenko in 1898 in Moscow
The Abbey Theatre founded by William Butler
Yeats and Lady Augusta Gregory in 1903 in
Dublin
Realism
vs. Naturalism
 Middle class
 Pragmatic
 Psychological
 Mimetic art
 Objective, but ethical
 Sometimes comic or
satiric
 How can the individual
live within and influence
society?
 “Well-made play”
 Henrik Ibsen, George
Bernard Shaw
 Middle/Lower class
 Scientific
 Sociological
 Investigative art
 Objective and amoral
 Often pessimistic,
sometimes comic
 How does society/the
environment impact
individuals?
 “Slice of life”
 August Strindberg, Anton
Chekhov, John Millington
Synge
 Realistic Social Dramas
Henrik Ibsen
Norwegian,
1828-1906
 Romantic Dramas
Brand
Peer Gynt
The Pillars of Society
A Doll's House
Ghosts
An Enemy of the People
The Wild Duck
Rosmersholm
The Lady from the Sea
Hedda Gabler
Symbolic Dramas
The Master Builder
Little Eyolf
John Gabriel Borkman
 When We Dead Awaken
August Strindberg
 Naturalistic Plays : 1880s
The Father
Miss Julie
Creditors
 Dreamplays : turn of the century
To Damascus
 A Dream Play
The Ghost Sonata
 Historical Dramas: turn of the
century
Gustavus Vasa
Erik XIV
Charles XII
Swedish, 1849-1912
storyteller, dramatist
Anton Chekhov  Physician,
Plays:
Russian
1860-1904
 That Worthless Fellow
 Platonov
 On the Harmful Effects of
Tobacco
 Ivanov
 The Bear
 A Marriage Proposal
 The Wood Demon
 For the Moscow Art Theatre:
 The Seagull
 Uncle Vanya
 The Three Sisters
 The Cherry Orchard
 Fabian, Drama critic, Nobel Prize Winner
The Quintessence of Ibsenism,
 Playwright: Over 50 plays
 1890s: Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant:
Widower’s Houses, The Philanderer,
Mrs. Warren’s Profession ,Arms and the
Man ,Candida, You Never Can Tell
 1890s: Three Plays for Puritans: The
Devil’s Disciple, Caesar and Cleopatra
and Captain Brassbound’s Conversion
(1900).
 Early 20th C: Man and Superman ,
Major Barbara, Androcles and the Lion
and Pygmalion (My Fair Lady)
 Later Plays: St. Joan, Heartbreak
House, The Millionairess
George Bernard
Shaw
Anglo-Irish,
1856-1950
John Millington Synge
1871-1909
 Irish poet and playwright discovered by
W.B. Yeats.
 Plays of Irish peasant life:
 In the Shadow of the Glen, (1903), a comedy
 Riders to the Sea (1904), a tragedy
 The Well of the Saints (1905), a comedy
 The Playboy of the Western World (1907), a comedy,
caused riots
 The Tinker's Wedding, published in 1908 but not
produced for fear of further riots
 Deirdre of the Sorrows, a mythic tragedy unfinished at
the time of his death