a month later
10 days later

  • mia

  • Post #34

Frisby Wow, I think it must be.

And that playbill also has a young Roscius, and lots of images. If it had dogs too it might win Playbills Bingo!

    • mia

    • Post #35

    Frisby if I tweet this, what's the best way to credit you?

        mia My Twitter name is @i_bananas :)

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          • mia

          • Post #37

          I thought so but I wanted to check!

          • mia

          • Post #38

          That playbill also gives you a sense of touring schedules. In Nov/Dec 1830 the 'ten year old' W. R. Grossmith was in Newcastle on the Monday, Durham on the Tuesday, Stockton on Thursday and Darlington on Friday.

            17 days later

            While working through some of the Old Vic playbills I came across an intriguing announcement 'The Spare Bed is unavoidably postponed, in consequence of Mr Keeley's accident' http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_100022589022.0x000002#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=39&xywh=211%2C2082%2C1337%2C766

            I was so intrigued I've searched in the BNA and found a couple of articles describing the accident;
            On 21 July 1833, John Bull reported that 'in the farce of The Spare Bed... Mr Wood has to fire over the bedstead which contains Keeley, in doing which he levelled the pistol so very low as to cause... immediate contact with the left side of his head... we understand that Mr Keeley was so severely injured... as to engender fears for the sight of his left eye.'
            On 22 July 1833, there was a letter to the Editor of the Guardian and Public Ledger from Mr Wood where he insisted that the pistol had accidentally discharged when he dropped it.

            2 months later

            Although there countless printed books of all kinds reflecting the English of the period, the playbills too contain familiar words whose meaning has shifted: eg laughable, awful, attractive, grotesque, even interesting (an adjective not guaranteed to inspire today). Then there are the semi-obsolete types like burletta, farcetta/farsetta, harlequinade, saynete, comedietta, monopolylogue (!) and one I had to look up - yclept -meaning "by the name of". An answer to those language purists who don't like American spellings can be found here too, with honor, favorite and color quite acceptable in this period. I'm still hoping to come across "Being for the benefit of Mr. Kite...". This such a fun (and addictive) project!

            • mia likes this.
            2 months later

            mia I'm not sure it's a draft playbill; it's possibly a proforma playbill which allowed the manager to write in the relevant date when it was needed (more cost effective for smaller theatres and companies) and this may have been complicated by last minute change to the planned programme which is when the second part was crossed through. Of course it's difficult to be certain without anything to check it against, I've had a quick browse of the other playbills in that set but this appears to be the only one for the theatre in Thornbury. To me it seems unlikely that a theatre manager would have had the printer produce a partially completed playbill to act as a draft, Thomas Dibdin describes how Sarah Baker would cut up old playbills when creating new ones for her theatres in Kent but perhaps she was more thrifty than others.

            I have seen one other proforma playbill in the V&A collection which dates from around 1814 (the date on that playbill doesn't include the year) and was used by a family of performers, on that playbill the location and date had been left blank and these were added by hand later.

              a year later
              16 days later

              LizD84 good question! It's hard to tell - I've asked on twitter to see if anyone has any suggestions

                  6 months later
                  14 days later

                  lizzy that's a great question, thanks for asking! I'll ask on twitter to start with to see if that generates any ideas or leads

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