Holly's Introduction and Example Intro

I include my sample introduction first: it comes from a rather silly book that I like a lot entitled The Superior Person's Book of Words by Peter Bowler. It's a small compendium of very good words for very specific situations, and what I like about it is that it clearly shows the author's style and conveys his information, but it isn't straightforward or "normal" as introductions go. It's unique to him and the specific project of this small volume, and I love that. The two pages are here and here.

THE OVERTURE

The scene is the fictional hamlet of Binghampton, where a large chorus dressed as peasants is preparing for a celebration, singing as they work. What starts as a simple enough bucolic scene is disrupted by the entrance of the boisterous Bing brothers, Lucifer and Oliver, and their beautiful and resourceful cook, Emma. Soon, the trio travel to London to explore the big city, find love, and create some minor chaos. When censor Ernest A. Bendall formally approved this play, The Bing Boys Are Here, on April 12, 1916, he explained, “the incoherent action provides opportunities for all sorts of songs, dances, topical allusions, and personalities... These are all good-natured, and suggest, like the rest of the piece, hearty simple-minded fun with a minimum of point.”

Most contemporary critics and current scholars refer to the British theater of the First World War in a similar fashion: the war plays are brutal and bloodthirsty, the spy plays are melodramatic and racist, and the musical comedies and revues have “a minimum of point” or are “a wee bit on the brainless side." For them, the productions mounted on the London stage over those four years manifested a degradation of theatrical standards: they represented a new kind of vulgar, vapid product that catered to wartime audiences’ desire for escapism. A commentator in The Era summed up the theater of the period, stating, “There has been trash on the stage ever since the stage came into existence; it is nothing new; but this is the first time there has been what you might call a Trash Monopoly, a Trash Trust.” On the most part, this material has been quickly acknowledged in disgust and quickly dismissed. I agree that this the theater of this period is brutal, melodramatic, and vapid. However, for several reasons, I believe it deserves more thorough attention.

Firstly, it is worth acknowledging that London theatre attendance remained as high during the war as it had been before. High, middle, and lower class Londoners all continued to pay to see the theater in times of war austerity because it played a vital role in their lives.  Producer Charles Hawtrey wrote in his memoirs that, during the war years, “the authorities… considered it very important that the theatres should carry on.” If this theater was so important to those on the home front, the historian has the duty to interrogate why this was so. Recent historiography has added significantly to the literature on the cultural importance of the war plays and of the spy plays, but little scholarship has been developed on the theatrical precedent for and cultural relevance of “fluffy” musical revues and musical comedies. This is an oversight I am desirous to redress.

Secondly, in characterizing the musical revue and musical comedy as “fluffy” and unworthy of cultural investigation, prior historiography has glossed over the complex business strategy executed by producers and managers that made their “fluff” successful. Memoirs by theatrical managers describe how they innovated the form of the musical revue to respond to changing conditions of actor availability, how they altered their curtain times to better accommodate wartime curfews, and how they adjusted their seating plans and pricing structures to respond to the composition of wartime audiences.

This thesis will argue that the theater of the First World War was consciously curated, and there was an underlying value structure in escapist musicals: a celebration of the individual, entrepreneurialism, and self-promotion, which appealed to the dominant culture of London in the 1910s. By studying the business mindset of the theatre, in its economic strategy, and business mindset in the theater, in its themes of individualism and self-promotion, we can come to see the cultural continuity and the social value of this theatre. These musicals cannot be dismissed as “brainless,” and their themes did not arise from nowhere, but came from the contemporary individualist culture. Moreover, the popularity of these themes can help us understand home front audiences in a more nuanced fashion. In times of wartime austerity, when faced with the government appeals to give to charity and live simply, London citizens still flocked to see the Bing Boys clearly steal half a sovereign from their landlady, Mrs. Marshall, to spend on their own enjoyment. The success of the individual producer/manager-driven theater industry and of the themes of individualism within that theatre reflect the importance of individualism for the audiences that patronized it.

This thesis will start with The Opening Number, setting the stage of the London theatre world in the early 1910s. To do so, it will perform an extensive analysis of the theatrical forms and entertainment alternatives at the time, study the development of the form of the musical revue, and examine how the musical revue was perceived by contemporary theatre critics. Next, this thesis will dive into The Tenor Solo, exploring how individual producers and managers made the business choices they did to best appeal to their audiences. A study of home front audience composition and its purchasing power will add more depth to an analysis of the deliberate pricing systems and budgets producers created to maximize profit. In The Patriotic Interlude, I will examine how light musical comedies and revues described and treated the war, using it lightly or sincerely as the moment required. In The Beauty Chorus, this thesis will examine both representations of women on stage as objects of desire and representations of women as audience members driving theatrical trends. The contrast between the characterization of women by composers of musical comedies and that by contemporary commentators can illustrate the complex position of women at the time: they were desirable objects for an individual to pursue and but threatening agents when pursuing their own desires. In The Cross-Talk, this thesis will engage with some of the most successful musical revues of the era to analyze how their structures are created around the idea of self over others. Finally, in The Bioscope, this thesis will conclude by commenting on the place of this social, cultural, and economic history in light of the increased interest in this material in this field.

(I would really write more here, but I know that I'm too tired right now to do it well!)