Entertainment

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 551.

Popular forms of entertainment varied by social class. Victorian Britain,(like the periods before it), was interested in literature (see Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle and William Makepeace Thackeray), theatre and the arts (see Aesthetic movement and Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood), and music, drama, and opera were widely attended.

*** Michael Balfe was the most popular British grand opera composer of the period, while the most popular musical theatre was a series of fourteen comic operas by Gilbert and Sullivan, although there was also musical burlesque and the beginning of Edwardian musical comedy in the 1890s. Drama ranged from low comedy to Shakespeare (see Henry Irving). ***

There were, however, other forms of entertainment. Gentlemen went to dining clubs, like the Beefsteak club or the Savage club. Gambling at cards or casinos were wildly popular during this period. Brass bands and 'The Bandstand' became popular in the Victorian era. It was common to hear the sound of a brass band walking through the parks.

The Victorian era marked the golden age of the British circus.The most known was Astley's Amphitheatre in Lambeth, London. (Travelling circuses, like Pablo Fanque's, dominated the British provinces, Scotland, and Ireland).

Another form of entertainment involved 'spectacles' where paranormal events, such as hypnoses, communication with the dead (by way of mediumship or channelling), ghost conjuring were carried out to the delight of crowds and participants. Such activities were more popular at this time than in other periods of recent Western history.

Natural history became increasingly an "amateur" activity. Particularly in Britain and the United States, this grew into specialist hobbies such as the study of birds, butterflies, seashells (malacology/conchology), beetles and wild flowers. Amateur collectors played an important role in building the large natural history collections of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.