6 - The African Tragedian

Summary

The Royal Coburg Theatre was much closer to the West End than the Royalty Theatre had been, but it was situated south of the Thames in a rural industrial region of Lambeth. The theater historians Jim Davis and Victor Emeljanow record that it was built as a “speculative venture … in the wake of the opening of Waterloo Bridge in 1817,” the investors believing that the bridge would lead to rapid development of upscale housing and profitable commercial enterprise. The theater, still in business today as the Old Vic, was therefore built in an elaborate, ornate style suited to what was envisioned as its target audience—the upper and middle classes of fashionable London. Large sums of money were spent enhancing its interior with a handsomely decorated box entrance, a beautifully painted saloon with French windows, an auditorium overloaded with ornament and embellished with strong contrasts of colors in the style of a minor French theater, and most remarkable of all, a curtain consisting of a number of large plates of looking-glass, framed in gold, capable of reflecting the entire audience. The Times called it the “handsomest theatre of its size in London, and we believe we might add in England.”

The Coburg, like the Royalty, was legally constrained from staging standard tragedies and comedies, so it had to rely on a repertoire made up of burlettas, melodramatic spectacles, broad farces, pantomimes, and ballets. In July 1824 a theater journal observed that

the Coburg is the very haunt and refuge of the melo-dramatic muse; there, murder “bares her red arm” with most appalling vividness—there, the genius of robbery reigns triumphant on his festive throne—there, the sheeted ghosts “do squeak and gibber” across the frighted stage—and all the sublimities of horror are to be found there in their “most high and palmy state.”—We have an infinite reverence for the gifted persons who invent, arrange, and perform these terrific pieces of business; and whenever we feel inclined “to sup full of horrors,” always direct our steps to this house, sure of being sent away in a fit state for believing all sorts of unbelievable things, and of trembling at every thing which ought not to be trembled at.