Part III: The performance of politics

Rethinking the history of British popular culture, 1850–1914

“…Where they might have once talked about the importance of ritual in popular culture, they now focus on categories such as ‘theatricality’ and ‘performativity’. All classes went to the theatre explaining why the stage fed into their imagination, shaping, for example, the language and rituals associated with popular movements (Yeandle et al., 2016). Melodrama has been reclaimed not only as a theatrical form but also as an imaginative resource for understanding the categories through which Victorians constructed their world, explaining the preference for the romantic and sentimental (McWilliam, 2000; Walkowitz, 1992).…”