The Variety Stage: A History of the Music Halls from the Earliest Period to the Present Time

By: A. J. Park and Charles Douglas Stuart

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Synopsis: Music hall was a type of British theatrical entertainment that was popular from the early Victorian era, beginning around 1850. It faded away after 1918 as the halls rebranded their entertainment as variety. Perceptions of a distinction in Britain between bold and scandalous Music Hall and subsequent, more respectable Variety differ. Music hall involved a mixture of popular songs, comedy, speciality acts, and variety entertainment. The term is derived from a type of theatre or venue in which such entertainment took place. In North America vaudeville was in some ways analogous to British music hall, featuring rousing songs and comic acts.“To the general reader, as well as to the thoughtful observer of the social institutions of the English people, the story of the rise, progress and present condition of Variety Stage in this country presents features of peculiar attraction.In The History of the Variety Stage they have endeavoured to deal in a bright, chatty and anecdotal manner, not only with the Music Halls of the past and present, but also with the picturesque and variegated profession which has called them into existence, and while presenting to the statistician, the antiquarian, and the student of domestic history, a substantial and painstaking work of research, they have tried to render at the same time a graphic panorama of the variety world as it was and as it is today.”-Preface.