12 - Benefits: cui bono?

Summary

The music-theatrical benefit is an open acknowledgement of the role that audiences play in the economy of the musical and theatrical worlds. Ostensibly put on as a means to provide performers or other playhouse personnel with a direct reward from audiences, the occasions also serve as a means for performers to reward audiences for their attentiveness, fidelity, and participation throughout the season. To conceive of benefits without audiences is as impossible as it is to conceive of them without performers. As part of the panoply of patronal relationships common before and during the long eighteenth century, the benefit is still with us and plays the same role, notwithstanding the variety of ways in which we chose to cloak it these days. By examining the structure of who, when, where, how much, and how often, through examination of original archival materials, published correspondence, commentary in the London Stage volumes, and other sources, including both straightforward and satirical portrayals in poems, novels, plays, and cartoons, I examine the ecology of the benefit to reveal its extent, its boundaries, and its value.