Frederick Brown and Montreal's Doomed Theatre Royal, 1825–26

Extract

The health and vigour of a theatre in a provincial town in North America in the nineteenth century may in part be judged from the dimensions and technical facilities of its building, the number of competent performers, and the support of its patrons. Late in 1825, Montreal acquired a well-equipped theatre with a professional company in residence, and one would have assumed that the publicity and excitement surrounding the new enterprise would ensure its success during its first year of operation. The Theatre Royal, however, did not draw full houses even though its management had spared no expense “in obtaining the first performers or in getting up the most attractive pieces.” The small size of the city's population, the linguistic division of the province into English and French sections, the opposition of the Roman Catholic Church to the theatre, the shareholders' preference for a legitimate theatre in English over the more popular combination of circus and light drama, and the political strife engendered by the bitter English-French conflict in Quebec in the 1820s can be cited here as some of the factors that doomed the theatre in Montreal. Some of these — the small size of the town, for instance — made theatre building an unprofitable business in many provincial centres in North America; the elements of language, politics, and religion, however, were peculiar to Quebec. The prospects of theatre managers in Montreal at this time were governed by highly complex forces that did not influence the work of others trying to start provincial theatres elsewhere in Canada and the United States. Focusing on the demographic, linguistic, and religious features of Quebec in 1825–26, this study examines the difficulties of operating an English-language theatre in a country without a common culture and also stresses economic mismanagement as a factor in the failure of the Theatre Royal.