Music Hall: Encyclopedia II - Music Hall - Origins

Music Hall - Origins

Music Hall in London had its beginnings in the entertainments provided at summer fairs such as the Bartholomew Fair from the 17th century onward. Many of these were suppressed under the strict puritan rule of the Commonwealth. Upon the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, restrictions on public entertainment were relieved by patents for play-acting granted to Thomas Killigrew and William Davenant by Charles II. The fairs, much cheaper entertainment within the reach of poor working people, were also tolerated again. The patentees had commodious new playhouses built at Drury Lane and Dorset Garden, well-equipped for specialty entertainment and offering music, dancing, and circus-type entr'actes from the first, as well as plays. By the early 18th century, Londoners' interest in music, dancing, singing, jugglers, rope-dancers, high-kickers, and fair-booth burlesque, had all but driven out legitimate drama.

Inns and taverns developed into independent places of amusement and laid the foundations of the middle-class and lower middle-class institution of the music hall, originally evolving from the "song and supper" rooms of the 1850s. The heyday of Music Hall lasted from the 1850s to the Second World War, when other forms of popular music evolved and Music Hall began to be replaced by films as the most popular form of entertainment.

British Music Hall was similar to American vaudeville, featuring rousing songs and comic acts, while in the United Kingdom the term vaudeville referred to more lowbrow entertainment that would have been termed burlesque in the United States.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Origins", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki