ABSTRACT
IF THE Opera Comique and the Savoy dominated London musicaltheatre activity in the 1870s and ’80s, their position was later weakened with the ascendancy of Daly’s and the Gaiety in the “naughty nineties.” The “sacred lamp of burlesque” had been kept aglow at the Gaiety by John Hollingshead; Daly’s had been built by the American Augustin Daly as a showcase for the Shakespearian actress Ada Rehan. Both theatres would eventually come under the control of impresario George Edwardes, one for the new “musical comedy,” the other for more romantic operettas. King Edward VII was still the dashing Prince of Wales in the last two decades of Victoria’s century, but the types of musical shows favored during his forthcoming reign were already being created during the Edwardesian era.
