Guest post by Elaine Thornton – Riotous Nights at the Theatre

I do enjoy welcoming back guests and today is no exception, as I welcome back Elaine Thornton, who previously told us about Marylebone Gardens and the Trusler Family and today she is going to tell us more about the riotous nights at the theatre:

On a summer evening in June 1782, Karl Moritz, a German visitor to London, went to the Haymarket Theatre to see Samuel Foote’s play The Nabob. He described his astonishment at the chaotic scene that unfolded around him as he sat in the pit:

‘Every moment a rotten orange whizzed past me or my neighbour; one hit my hat, but I did not dare turn around in case one hit me in the face … In addition to this pelting from the gallery there is a continual racket of shrieking and banging with sticks until the curtain goes up … From time to time I also heard people in the circle quarrelling with those in the gallery.’

The Haymarket was one of three theatres in London authorised to stage ‘spoken drama’ under the Licensing Act of 1737. There had originally been only two such theatres, Drury Lane and Covent Garden, but in 1766, the Haymarket had been granted a licence to stage plays during the summer period, when the two larger theatres were closed. Theatres in the Georgian era were focal centres of urban social life, patronised by all but the poorest sections of society.

The Laughing Audience by Hogarth. British Museum

An evening out at the theatre would last for four or five hours, and consist of both a main play (a tragedy or comedy) and an afterpiece (usually a pantomime, farce or comic opera), interspersed with various entr’acte entertainments. Audience members ranged from the aristocracy in their private boxes to servants and apprentices squeezed into the cheap seats in the gallery. Unlike today’s audiences, however, who expect to sit quietly in a darkened auditorium and focus on the play, Georgian theatregoers saw themselves as participants in a spectacle.

The auditorium lights were kept on during the performance, allowing the more fashionable members of the audience to treat the evening as a social event, nodding and bowing to friends, chattering and exchanging scandal. People came and went during the performance. The rowdier element stamped and shouted their approval, or hissed, threw missiles, and demanded apologies from the actors if displeased.

It was not unknown for this boisterous behaviour to spill over into serious rioting. Theatregoers had a strong sense of their ‘rights’ – and an equally strong propensity to take offence when they thought that those rights had been breached. The resulting disorder often forced the theatre managements to cave in to the audience’s demands.

There had been disturbances at Drury Lane and Covent Garden in 1763, when both theatres had attempted to abolish the tradition of half-price admission for people arriving after the third act of the main play. Covent Garden’s management capitulated quickly enough to avoid any significant violence, but more than £2,000 worth of damage was done at Drury Lane. The Gentleman’s Magazine reported that on the evening of 25 January ‘the Benches were torn up, the Glass Lustres were broke and thrown upon the Stage, and a total Confusion ensued’. In the end, half-price admission was restored at both theatres. The concession was retained into the nineteenth century.

Audiences often objected to theatres hiring foreign artistes. French troupes were particularly unpopular, given that Britain was frequently at war with France during the eighteenth century. In 1738, a French company, newly arrived from Paris, were received on their first night in London with ‘hissing, catcalling, ringing small Bells, knocking out the Candles, pelting etc … notwithstanding the Guard of three Files of Musqueteers, they were forced at last to quit the Stage with precipitation’. The French ambassador, who had been present, had sensibly fled the theatre at the first signs of unrest.

David Garrick by Gainsborough. National Portrait Gallery

A similar incident took place in 1755, when the actor-manager David Garrick invited a troupe of dancers from Paris to perform a new ballet, The Chinese Festival, at Drury Lane. Britain was moving towards war with France, and anti-French feeling was running high. The ballet was received with hisses and shouts of ‘No French dancers!’ from the pit. On subsequent evenings the proceedings descended into fighting between audience factions. The disorder culminated in a chaotic brawl on 18 November, when a contemporary source reported: ‘Broken arms, legs and heads, people half-crushed under the benches, the Chinese dancers hiding in corners’. The crowd also smashed the windows of Garrick’s house. The debâcle cost the theatre around £4,000.

The Pit Door 1784 British Museum

Occasionally, a riot was sparked by the behaviour of rowdy individuals. During a performance at Drury Lane in 1776, two drunken army officers jumped out of their box into the pit, where they began a fight which spilled onto the stage, stopping the performance. The onstage brawl continued for a full half hour. William Hopkins, the Drury Lane prompter, observed in his notes that ‘I thought they would have pull’d the house down’. There was a sequel to this disturbance, however. When the two officers had sobered up the next day, they visited Garrick to apologise for their behaviour, which, they said, was ‘mere frolick, & that they meant no harm to ye author or manager’.

Covent Garden Theatre 1786 British Museum

The high point of theatre rioting came in 1809 with the so-called ‘Old Price’ or ‘OP’ disturbances at Covent Garden. The theatre had burned down the previous year and had been rebuilt quickly, and on a much grander scale. Audiences returning to the new theatre took exception to a number of changes that had been introduced, in particular the raising of admission prices, and the creation of an extra tier of private boxes for the wealthy, which had reduced the number of cheap seats. The situation was exacerbated by the engagement of a foreign singer, the Italian soprano Angelica Catalani, at a high salary.

Old Price Riots 1809 British Museum

The protests quickly became organised, even formalised. At every performance, placards and banners demanding the restoration of the old prices hung from the balconies, and audience members wore OP badges on their hats and jackets. The sound of bugles, horns and bells combined with the clattering of sticks against seats to create an ear-splitting cacophony. There was even an ‘OP dance’, which involved the rhythmical stamping of feet and chanting. The disturbances continued for sixty-seven nights, at varying levels of intensity. The management brought in professional boxers to menace the crowd, which had the predictable effect of inflaming them further. Remarkably, the performances continued throughout the chaos, although the actors could often scarcely make themselves heard.

The Boxes, Covent Garden, 1809 British Museum

The OP riots ended in victory for the protestors. Madame Catalani was dismissed, the number of private boxes reduced, and entry prices lowered. The OP disturbances were both the culmination, and the beginning of the end, of theatre rioting. Disorder became less common in the more sober Victorian era, as changes in theatre practice and in society in general produced quieter, more compliant audiences.

Sources:

Gentleman’s Magazine, vol 8, 1738; vol 33, 1763.

David Little & George M. Kahrl (eds.). The Letters of David Garrick, 3 vols, London, 1963.

Ian MacIntyre, Garrick, London, 1999.

Karl Philipp Moritz, Reisen eines Deutschen in England im Jahre 1782, 1783.

George Winchester Stone, The London Stage 1660-1800, Part 4, Carbondale, 1962.

Featured Image

Drury Lane Ackermann Rudolph Microcosm British Library