ABSTRACT
The great pageant impresario Louis Napoleon Parker reckoned the six pageants that he directed between 1905 and 1909 drew a total audience of upwards of half a million people. Pageants were great festivals of commemoration, and in many cases – as at Sherborne – they were associated with specific anniversaries. Pageants quickly established themselves as an ideal means of commemorating anniversaries connected not so much to individuals but to communities and their institutions – whether schools, parish churches, villages or towns. Pageants and their commemoration of anniversaries gives a valuable insight into the construction of British national identities. Pageants were genuinely popular and their popularity reflected real engagement with the history and anniversaries they commemorated – both on the part of spectators and the local communities who mobilized to effect the organisation of performances. The Warwick pageant was held in the grounds of Warwick Castle, while the Sherborne pageant was staged amid the atmospheric ruins of Sherborne Castle.
