ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the very features which have previously been lauded as typical innovations of Edwardian suffrage theatre were actually prefigured in a politically-conservative entertainment culture of the late-Victorian middle classes, which developed out of a widespread enthusiasm for private theatricals in the nineteenth century. It shows how a mixed entertainment format was popularised in the 1890s through a genteel variety theatre, which was widely employed at both commercial performances and charitable fundraisers. Private theatricals were established as a cultural phenomenon in British society in the late eighteenth century when their popularity developed into a “craze”, as Sybil Rosenfeld noted. The treatment of the New Woman in the collections of plays which female authors published for the amateur performance market and which served as source books for professional reciters illustrated the conservative gender politics of the texts, mirroring the representation of the New Woman on the stage.
