The Victorian National Theatre

Henry Irving once compared the business of theatre management to Monte Carlo. There was the possibility of riches but also the likelihood of going bust. He might have been describing Frederick Chatterton, manager of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, between 1862 and 1879. He took seriously the honour of running the West End’s oldest theatre with a history that included the performances of Garrick and the plays of Sheridan. Following the Theatre Regulation Act of 1843, Drury Lane no longer enjoyed a monopoly on staging ‘legitimate drama’ in the capital (a privilege it had shared with a small group of patent theatres). In the age of free trade, anyone was allowed to play Shakespeare or any kind of spoken word drama, subject to the approval of the Lord Chamberlain. Yet the spell of Drury Lane’s status as what was in effect a national theatre persisted and it was one that

Art · Art history · Boom · Bust · Capital (architecture · Drama · Economics · Honour · Literature · Monopoly · Performance art · Political science · Political theatre · Privilege (computing · Sociology · Spell · Theatre director · Visual arts · Engineering · Irish and British Studies · Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Literary Criticism · Theater, Performance, and Music History · History · Law