Disrupting the Quotidian: Hoaxes, Fires, and Non-theatrical Performance in Nineteenth-century London

Abstract

In this essay Jim Davis considers two examples of everyday non-theatrical performance in nineteenth-century London: hoaxes and fires. Whereas an element of hoaxing can be perceived in some contemporary performance events and in the practice of ‘invisible theatre’, usually with some ethical intention, hoaxes in early nineteenth-century London were perpetrated for the sake of creating disruption and making dupes of unsuspecting witnesses. A more visible form of disruption and spectacle was created by fires and firefighting itself, which, at least after Captain Eyre Massie Shaw took control of the London fire brigade, became a form of public performance. Although hoaxes were common in pantomime and farce, and conflagrations often strengthened the impact of sensation melodramas, the disruptive effects of extra-theatrical hoaxes and fires on everyday life created a less reassuring and more dystopian sense of the metropolis. An earlier version of this paper was originally delivered at ‘The Audience through Time’ conference at Queen Mary College, University of London, in December 2011. Jim Davis is Professor of Theatre Studies at the University of Warwick. His his most recent books are Victorian Pantomime: a Collection of Critical Essays (2010) and Lives of the Great Shakespearian Actors: Edmund Kean (2009). He is also joint author of Reflecting the Audience: London Theatregoing 1840–1880 (2001).