Introduction: Victorian Pantomime

Abstract:

In 1897 Bernard Shaw claimed that pantomime ‘abuse[s] the Christmas toleration of dullness, senselessness, vulgarity, and extravagance to a degree utterly incbkp_redible to people who have never been inside a theatre’, creating something that is ‘a glittering, noisy void, horribly wearisome and enervating, like all performances which worry the physical senses without any recreative appeal to the emotions and through them to the intellect.’1 Shaw’s dismissal of pantomime perhaps helps to explain at least one of the reasons why such little interest has been shown, subsequently, in Victorian pantomime. Yet throughout the nineteenth century pantomime was one of the most successful and commercially viable forms of popular entertainment and a crucial component of Victorian popular culture. Moreover, pantomime as we know it today, in both form and structure, is very much the legacy of developments that …

Año de publicación:

2010

Keywords:

Fuente:

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