The Audience
The many-headed Monster of the
؛
—Epistle
ta
Augustus, ١٥١
ا
The vexing but fascinating problem of determining who const
the theatre-going public must now be examined. It was not the hetef
geneous audience that flocked to the Bankside theatres in Shakespe
ء
day, n١r was it the relatively homogeneous elite who generally
the audiences of the Restoration. To generalize further, we may say rh
the spectators at the !.ondon theatres in tlie second quarter of tlie cent
إ؛
were not all members of fashionable society but included a muc
at the
audience
than did t
proportion from the middle
Cas
^'؛؛
f rançaise
despite assertions to the contrary by H. Carrington
Lan
;
،؛؛
the notion that Parisian theatre audipnees were restrict
To refu
upper classes of a severely hierarchal society, Lancaster argues that if I
must have been :
',
150,000
total attendance in a given year were
ئ
Stage history
”.
who
different in
over I٠o
;؛
tliscipline that requires the utmost vigilance, and even 'the form'd
researclier Lancaster fell into a statistical trap here. A hundred
position, they would account for the total 150,000.
٠٢,
To obtain a more reliable estimate of tlie range of tlie spec،3
h.
؛؟
I.ougli employs the excellent metltod of ascertaining tlie total numb
ه
during the run of a moderately successful new play. By
at
ه؛؛
tliis method to the London audiences, we can exclude the extreme
attendance flgures for the first run of The Beggar’s opera on the gf٥
that Gay’s ballad opera attracted a number of visitors who did not gefC
؟
٦١
:: ع,
in the Stventeentb Century
A History ;/French Dramatic Lit
١
Theatre Autlisnces in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (!.otviXon
؛,
1,0
Ibid
22