2 - With Several Entertainments of Singing and Dancing: London Theatre Benefits, 1700–1725

Summary

The practice of granting benefit evenings to theatre personnel became established in the late 1690s as a device for making up salaries that the two struggling companies could not afford to pay in full, but by 1720 a benefit evening had regularized into a standard element of a performer’s contract. Before the advent of London’s first daily newspaper, The Daily Courant, in March 1702, information about benefits is frustratingly scrappy. However, by early 1704 both companies were placing regular daily advertisements that increasingly included the entertainments of singing, dancing, and instrumental music that were offered on benefit nights. This chapter will look at the whole range of musical entertainments in benefits for actors and actresses as well as in those for specialist singers and dancers, and will consider to what extent the benefits reflected the personalities and circumstances of the beneficiaries.