Pictorial Shakespeare, 1880-1890 - eTheses Repository - University ...

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would earn "not more than £1,500 or at the most .£2,000 a year"?
about half the salary of a barrister or a doctor. It should
be remembered that many dramatists were also menbers of a
profession - Gilbert was a barricter, for example, and Burnand
was editor of Punch,
The dramatist's work could bring considerable material
rewards, but it was at the aaie uime subject to conditions.
In a letter to The Times in 1888 Gilbert drew attention to the
resposibilities of p. theatrical manager, whose duty it was
... to keep an audience entertained from
half-past 7 to 11, with carefully-written
and elaborately-constructed stage plays
(represented by actors, who, in many cases,
must be provided with opportunities for the
display of their special abilities) and
probably involving at least three changes of
scene, which must of necessity be effected
v/ithin tho regulation 15 minutes of entr'acte.
(The Times. 2 flay 1888)
The entertainment required by oonagers differed from theatre
to theatre: at its lowoct level it can befound in the plays
presented by Augustus Harris at Drury Lone. Harris, enViucing
in a magazine article over tho democratic nature and didactic
effectiveness of the Drury Lane melodramas, onumorrted the
qualities expected by an average Dmry Lane audience:
They deciond a performance which, muot be, above
all things, dramatic, full of life, novelty,
and rr.over.icnt; treating, as a rule, of the age
in which v;e live, dealing ith characters they
can cyupathise v/ith, and .vritten in a language
they can crcily understand. It must be v;cllmounted,
well-acted, and should appeal rather
to the feelings of the public at large than to
the prejudice of a class.o
It was by the successful meeting of tliece denands that Harris
earned .ernarci Shaw's contor.ot - "Qviite Vie most enthral'.in,-;
memorial ox him would be the publication of Ms accounts"
q
.
' 'he cruc enesc of the "days produced for cuch rn audience
wan a cau;.;e of :iucii discontent among rcoonciblo criticc. i^ahii
ac cui example the opinions of the rovio\?er enoloyed by Vanity
Fair,a fachionablo a.nc not over-cole.:n v;eekly, i;c find tlint in
1882 the playgoer was offered tlireo successive kinds of r:elodrr-
In Jciiuary v;ac tiie -nrociore of Henry ^et-Ji^t'G /aJ:on fro::: Life