Tag Archive: 0playbills

‘Without a play-bill’, stated The Tatler in September 1830, ‘no true play-goer can be comfortable.  If the performers are new to him, he cannot dispense with knowing who they are: if old, there are the names of the characters to learn, and the relationships of the dramatis personæ: and if he is acquainted with all […]

This was fun to catalogue.  Not only because it’s a triple bill (500 × 735 mm), but because it promotes an extravaganza at London’s Olympic Theatre in April 1853, the highlight of which was a Macbeth burlesque by Francis Talfourd (1828–1862). Multi-production theatricals became increasingly popular throughout the nineteenth century, and this programme of entertainments follows […]

This volume is not an ordinary printed book, but a bound-up collection of 89 playbills, documenting a whole season in the life of the Theatre Royal, Manchester, 16 December 1799 – 24 November 1800. ‘The new season opened on December 16, 1799, with revivals of The Castle Spectre [by “Monk” Lewis] and Rosina [by Frances Brooke].  Three newcomers, […]

On this day, in 1908…  This is an opera bill, printed on silk, for a charity relief performance of Umberto Giordano’s opera Siberia at the Manoel Theatre in Valletta (one of the oldest working theatres in the world), staged just two days after the SS Sardinia, en route from Liverpool to Mecca, sank just outside Malta’s […]