Toy Theatre

Toy Theatre, or Juvenile Drama, collections of theatrical material, popular in the 19th century, which consisted of drawings of actors, scenery, and properties in a successful contemporary play, suitable for cutting out and mounting on cardboard for a performance in which they were drawn on metal long-handled slides across a small model stage, while an unseen assistant recited an extremely condensed version of the text. The sheets which made up the complete set, usually eight to twelve in all, could be bought for a ‘penny plain, twopence coloured’, the colouring being done by hand in bold, vivid hues that are as fresh today as when first applied. These sheets, which may have originated in those sold by theatrical agencies in Paris for the benefit of provincial and foreign managements, were probably first intended, in England at any rate, as theatrical souvenirs. They capture with astonishing fidelity the theatre of Grimaldi, Kean, Kemble, Liston, and Vestris, and the productions of Astley's, Covent Garden, Drury Lane, the Olympic, and the Surrey in the early 19th century. The total repertory of some 300 plays includes melodramas such as Pocock's The Miller and His Men, Lillo's George Barnwell, and Boucicault's The Corsican Brothers, ballad operas such as Dibdin's The Waterman, contemporary versions of Shakespeare, and many long-forgotten pantomimes. At first considerable care was taken to reproduce the costumes, attitudes, and even the features of the actors, as well as the details of wings, backcloth, and scenic accessories; but as the toy theatre increased in popularity the quality of the drawings and reproduction fell off, though trade continued brisk until the 1850s and beyond. The old-style Juvenile Drama never quite disappeared, and as late as 1932 two shops in Hoxton still printed the sheets of the old plays from the original blocks.

Similar toy theatres were popular on the Continent in the 19th century, particularly in Germany, Denmark, and Spain, where the characters moved in grooves rather than on slides, but the plays were usually specially written for children, and not, as in England, taken from the adult repertory.