ABSTRACT
The debates over melodrama, which started with its first performances at the start of the nineteenth century, were part of a larger discussion of the ‘decline of the drama’. This theme permeated critical writing and theatre theory throughout the nineteenth century. In the 1830s, the debate was led by Edward Bulwer Lytton, playwright, novelist, essayist and, from 1831, Member of Parliament. The recommendations of and the evidence to the 1832 Select Committee offer a snapshot of a range of thinking about the state of the theatre as an industry in London during a period of rapid change in both its aesthetic values and its economics. Mid-century theatre criticism and commentary about the state of the drama continued some of the complaints from the early century. The issue of the decline of the drama was always framed by the notion of the concept of the ‘national Drama’.
