‘Not for pleasure alone’

Alette Scavenius’s chapter, ‘“Not for pleasure alone”. The dramatic societies and the theatre craze 1770–1850: their background in the Age of Enlightenment and their importance for the emergence of private theatres in Denmark’, deals with the transition to bourgeois drama and comedy, which was important for the later dilettante theatre. Another influence was Schiller’s aesthetics, which were passed on to Knud Lyne Rahbek, a key figure in Danish cultural life. To Rahbek the role of the theatre was to entertain and educate, and the dramatic societies’ private, amateur theatricals became a tool to achieve this aim. Scavenius gives an analysis of the societies’ development and their central role in Danish cultural life. A heavy tax from 1812 was a fatal economic blow, but the societies also experienced competition from professional touring theatre companies. In addition, Rahbek and a later director of the Royal Theatre changed from supporters to harsh critics. This and the Royal Theatre’s loss of monopoly as a public theatre in 1839 led to the decline of the societies in Copenhagen, but they continued in the provinces. Scavenius concludes by describing a theatre-building boom towards the end of the century, both in the capital and in provincial cities.