One of the books
I picked up on my recent trip to England was a facsimile of James Winston's The Theatric Tourist.
Winston, an
actor, theatre manager, and artist, published the book in 1805, including brief
histories and illustrations of the major regional theatres in England during
his day.
Though the title
page boasts the book contains "all the principal provincial theatres in
the United Kingdom," theatres in Scotland and Ireland are noticeably missing. However,
Winston does give accounts of the major theatres in England that were outside
the metropolis.
The most
important of those, of course, was the Theatre-Royal, Bath. "Next to London, Bath should be thought the favorite of the muses," Winston
writes. "No theatre has shone so conspicuously as a nursery for London, as this Bath." He mentions it was that theatre which brought Sarah Siddons "so nearly to perfection."
Andover in
Hampshire was not nearly so blessed. Winston claims that "as Bath enjoys perhaps the most
considerable share of public estimation, so Andover
challenges the most deficient." The town did not have a Theatre Royal,
but the local theatre building had written on it From the Theatre-Royal, Windsor with "Theatre-Royal"
written "in striking characters," Winston tells us, while everything
else was "written so faintly, as to be scarcely legible."
Margate in Kent,
on the other hand, did have a Theatre Royal, and it's still there! Well, parts
of it, anyway. It was originally a rectangular brick building, as pictured here
in The Theatric Tourist:
Later in the
19th century, it was completely remodeled, with one side wall removed and the
stage and auditorium gutted. A new front of house was also added and a stucco
frontage. Here's what it looks like today:
It's interesting
to me which towns were deemed worthy of a patent theatre in 1805 and which were
not. Neither Tunbridge-Wells, nor Reading, nor Brighton had a Theatre Royal in
1805 (though Brighton has one now). Yet Richmond had that honor, and Winston
provides seven pages of text on the Theatre-Royal, Richmond. His illustration
contains a tree which he claims was "planted
by the hand of the Maiden Queen" Elizabeth I.
Unlike the Theatre-Royal,
Margate, the theatre in Richmond remains largely intact from the Georgian era.
It closed down in 1848, sparing it the renovations that the later Victorians made
to so many theatres. Refurbishments in 2003 used painstaking research to try to
recreate a more authentic color scheme, and they even tried to calibrate the
electric lighting to approximate candlelight. Here's what the auditorium looks
like today:
Winston goes on
to discusses other theatres in Newbury, Portsmouth, and Grantham. One thing I
find interesting is that he always lists the prices they charged and how much
the management could take in with a full house. For the theatre in Lewes, that
was seventy pounds, while the theatre in Exeter could hold enough people to
make nearly 100 pounds at the same prices (three shillings for a box seat, two
to sit in the pit, and a single shilling for the gallery). The Theatre-Royal,
Newcastle seemed to have varying prices depending on the time of year. (Prices were raised during the race weeks.) At optimal prices, it could hold enough
people to take in 140 pounds, and its stage was larger than that of the
Haymarket in London. Here's Winston's illustration of its grand exterior:
Winston goes on
to discuss smaller theatres in Edmonton and Maidstone, as well as in Liverpool,
which was not quite the thriving city it would later become. Still, Liverpool
was no place to sniff at, even in the Georgian era. It was there that the Irish
actress Elizabeth Farren came to recognition, acting onstage in Liverpool at the
tender age of fifteen. The Theatre-Royal, Liverpool has since been demolished,
but here's what it looked like in Winston's day:
The theatre in
Windsor was a Theatre Royal, though Winston said it could "scarcely
be said to enjoy a regular season." Its proximity to Windsor Castle
made it a favorite place for the royal family to go see plays. The theatre at
Chichester was not so favored, and Winston spends less than a page of text on
it. He gives a much fuller account of the theatre in Birmingham, which did not
obtain a royal patent until two years after Winston published his book. He
does provide it with a rather lovely illustration, though:
Winston
chronicles other theatres in Manchester, Southampton, and Plymouth. I'll skip
over those, but give a great anecdote he tells about the theatre in Winchester:
In the play of Alexander the Great, for
Keasbury's benefit, some olive leaves that were used for decoration, twisted
and interwoven with little bits of wax, caught fire from the lights. The flames
continuing to blaze, occasioned an intolerable stench, and an universal cry of
fire, which was succeeded by a general panic; but none received so terrible a
shock as the departed Clytus, who, at that time, lay dead before
the audience. As by Galvanic impulse, he instantly revived, and, in his haste,
o'erthrew the son of the immortal Ammon, who measured his extended length on
that dread spot where he had slain his General. However, as soon as the cause
was ascertained, all was restored to order, and the redoubted Clytus quietly
returned, and (hard and uncommon lot) for the second time gave up the ghost.
The last theatre in the book is the Theatre-Royal, Norwich. Winston claims a strolling
company of players performed in Norwich occasionally "from the year
1712." Parliament officially licensed the theatre there in 1768, and
in 1801 William Wilkins remodeled it. Here's the illustration included in The Theatric Tourist:
