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Abstract:
A theatre audience in the 21st century is expected to be quiet and respectful, turning off mobile phones and not disrupting the performance with chatter. However, Georgian theatre culture was quite different: audiences at all social levels were noisy, interactive and rowdy, and would express their approval or disapproval of the performance with applause, catcalls, projectiles or even, in extreme cases, riots.
This talk focuses on the extraordinary events at Covent Garden in 1809 when a rise in ticket prices provoked months of audience protest. The ‘Old Price’ riots turned Britain’s leading theatre into a deafening, colourful and creative carnival which was recorded and celebrated in highly entertaining visual caricatures. The talk will argue that these visual satires played a key role in swaying public opinion and ensuring that the common people were not excluded from Georgian theatre.
Biography:
Ian Haywood is Emeritus Professor of English at Roehampton University, London. He has written extensively on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British literary and visual culture. His publications include The Revolution in Popular Literature (2004), Bloody Romanticism (2006), Romanticism and Caricature (2013), Spain in British Romanticism (2018, co-edited with Diego Daglia), Romanticism and Illustration (2019, co-edited with Mary L. Shannon and Susan Matthews), The Rise of Victorian Caricature (2020) and Queen Caroline and the Power of Caricature in Georgian England (2023). His next book is Frankenstein and Romantic Visual Culture (Bloomsbury 2027). He was President of the British Association for Romantic Studies 2015–19, and co-ordinates the Romantic Illustration Network.