The Shadow of Great Britain

For London citizens, the theater is far more than a place for literary youths to unwind.

It serves as a salon for high society to exchange glances, comment on new plays, and form influential connections, a classroom for middle-class families to cultivate ”art appreciation skills,” and also a place where the working class, after a day of labor, can shed their aprons, don coarse woolen coats, and laugh heartily in the back seats.

In those upscale theaters at Covent Garden and Drury Lane, box seat prices often range from six to nine shillings, and might even require booking days in advance through a butler. Yet in more down-to-earth venues, like small theaters in Soho District or cantinas at taverns on Strand Street, a shilling is enough to sit on wooden benches and listen to a whole night of street jokes or adapted versions of Shakespeare.

Of course, if you’re unwilling to pay even a shilling, you might consider the cheapest penny tickets.

For just one or two pennies, you can stand in the rear standing section, squeezed between newsboys, apprentices, and shoeshiners, munching on cold meat pies while heckling at the flaws in actors’ lines.

If actors perform too poorly, they’re subjected to all sorts of thrown objects.

But if the villain actor performs too well, that might not be a good thing either, as he could even be attacked on the spot.

In most theaters, dining has long been part of the theater program.

During intermission, bartenders in theaters don aprons and weave through aisles hawking fried chicken, raisins, nuts, and small beers.

Higher-end theaters might have small wine kiosks set up in the lobby, offering port wine and cheese for box seat patrons to relax their minds.

Or, if you dislike the taste of theater snacks, gentlemen with deeper pockets can dine at cafes on Oxford Street or Pall Mall Street before the show and then take their seats with the residual aroma of a cigar.

Poorer audiences tend to favor the three-pence-a-piece braised offal stalls outside theaters, dining before lining up to enter.

Tragedies, operettas, ballets, pantomimes, popular plays, even comedic sketches—they span from Covent Garden to Strand Street, from St. James to Paddington, from the Royal Theater in the West District to the cheap circus tents in the East District, with roughly fifty thousand people entering theaters each night in London. Every ticket sold might decide the fate of a playwright, an actor, or even a politician.

Just as stonemasons carve each statue, blacksmiths forge each suit of armor, the prosperity of British theater culture is not a day’s achievement.

From the Globe Theater premiering countless Shakespeare works during the Elizabeth I era to the two major theaters granted royal monopoly after Charles II restored the monarchy, then to the opera craze of the eighteenth century, for three hundred years, London’s stage has been the most distinct, most tumultuous, and most controversial cultural engine of this empire.

Despite the 1737 Theatrical Licensing Act imposing layers of restrictions on London theaters, as societal ethos loosened during the reigns of George IV and King William IV, and entertainment demands from the middle class surged, new theaters inevitably sprouted quietly on street corners like mushrooms after rain.

And as the population swelled and the middle class rose, the repertoire of theater performances became unprecedentedly diverse.

On one hand, audience tastes began to diversify, with some favoring lofty grand productions and others loving distant adventures.

On the other hand, technological progress rendered theaters more ’controllable.’ Bright gas lamps replaced dim oil lamps, mechanical sets displaced manual curtains, and advancements in piano and strings made music not just an interlude but a leading attraction to draw audiences.

Thus, London in 1837 was dubbed by many foreign travelers as ”the pinnacle of European theater civilization.”

French actors come here to learn emotion control, Italian singers strive to stand out on London stages, and even hypocritical yet sincere Americans begin imitating London’s tiered ticket pricing and promotional mechanisms, attempting to transform New York’s Broadway into the ”New World’s Drury Lane.”

It’s no exaggeration to say that in this new era under Queen Victoria’s reign, London theater culture is entering an unprecedented peak.

And the company most qualified to seize this era’s dividend, its name is self-evident.

The chairman of the Empire Publishing Company, Sir Arthur Hastings, recently made a bold statement at the company’s board meeting: ”With the Belgian telegraph construction project’s big picture already set, Empire Publishing plans to fully enter the theater performance sector within the next five years. We aim to not only orchestrate paper-based creations by writers but also bring the stages of London and Paris under our control.”

While accepting an exclusive interview with an Economist journalist, Sir Arthur, in a concise and restrained speech of less than twenty words, settled the outlines of two deals: ”The cooperation case with Mr. Dumas’s Paris Historical Theatre has been negotiated, and the company is currently planning to reorganize the board of London St. James Theatre.”

The announcement immediately sparked heated discussions in London Financial City.

Some mocked that Empire Publishing Company finally won’t even let acting be a free pursuit.

Others jested that the new advertising beside the St. James Theatre might soon bear Sir Arthur Hastings’ portrait like those at Scotland Yard.

But industry observers see more clearly, noting that Empire Publishing securing the Paris Historical Theatre isn’t surprising since many on Fleet Street know that the owner of the Historical Theatre, Alexander Dumas, is a director on Empire Publishing’s board; this cooperation is merely a predestined strong alliance.