ABSTRACT
The nineteenth century in Britain was a theatrical century: by the middle of the period, the West End of London was the centre of the entertainment industry in the western world. Varieties of live entertainment were to be found throughout the country in theatres, booth theatres, saloons, fairgrounds and, latterly, music halls. The expansion of the periodical press in the 1820s coincided with a flashpoint in public commentaries on the state of the theatre and dramatic literature. The relationship between the periodical press and the theatre was a symbiotic one. In the expansion of the theatrical press, and the increasingly wide coverage of the London theatre in generalist journals, the nature of theatre journalism and criticism changed. In relation to the theatre, the tag ‘National’ was particularly ideologically loaded. Theatre criticism has always offered historians a rich source of information about almost every aspect of theatrical production of the period.
