Victorian drama

The Victorian Age witnessed the emergence of “show business”, that is playwriting, staging and acting on a commercial basis, and the “star system”, great actors in rich costumes and spectacular acting, who became the favourites of the audiences and were paid high sums of money. Many theatres were rebuilt or refurbished with technological innovations such as gas or electric lighting, stage machinery, authentic props, spectacle (chariot races, for instance), backcloths by artists of reputation (creating a three-dimensional setting), music. Here tickets were expensive. The general effect was an illusion of reality, which the front curtain enhanced as it opened on a “real-life scene”. Victorian drama was more visual than aural (as it had been in Elizabethan times). The audience was mainly the middle class, “perfectly commonplace people” and audience demand was for entertainment and relaxation. They enjoyed the so-called “well-made plays” (A form of French theatre developed in the 1800s.