Shakespeare in the Early Sydney Theatre

Summary

A great many of Australia’s first colonists were drawn from that section of eighteenth-century society described by moralists of the day as ‘undesirables who frequent play-houses’. As well as a genuine love of the drama—sometimes as onlookers, sometimes as performers of the more menial theatrical characters and tasks—they had a love for the easy pickings and the good times to be had in theatre company. But while most of them gave up, or were forced to give up their evil ways on arrival at Port Jackson, none of them lost his or her love of the theatre. They had been brought up with it; it was almost the sole and certainly the most popular form of public amusement available to them.

In all the theatres left behind them by these men and women the fare had been basically the same. There was always the solid core of old favourites, including the many rewritten or otherwise arranged versions of Shakespeare's Richard III, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, and Romeo and Juliet, and the comedies such as the Garrick version of The Taming of the Shrew. No wonder that in their idle moments—and there were to be plenty of these, as well as hungry ones—the thoughts of Australia's unwilling first colonists should turn to the theatre.