Cultural Identity in British Musical Theatre, 1890–1939: Knowing One’s Place (Palgrave Studies in British Musical Theatre)

Annotation This book examines the performance of 'Britishness' on the musical stage. Covering a tumultuous period in British history, it offers a fresh look at the vitality and centrality of the musical stage, as a global phenomenon in late-Victorian popular culture and beyond. Through a re-examination of over fifty archival play-scripts, the book comprises seven interconnected stories told in two parts. Part One focuses on domestic and personal identities of 'Britishness', and how implicit anxieties and contradictions of nationhood, class and gender were staged as part of the popular cultural condition. Broadening in scope, Part Two offers a revisionary reading of Empire and Otherness on the musical stage, and concludes with a consideration of the Great War and the interwar period, as musical theatre performed a nostalgia for a particular kind of 'Britishness', reflecting the anxieties of a nation in decline Front Matter ....Pages i-xv The British Musical in Seven Stories (Ben Macpherson)....Pages 1-28 Front Matter ....Pages 29-29 Nation: Modernity and Mythology (Ben Macpherson)....Pages 31-61 Femininity: Cinderellas and Caretakers (Ben Macpherson)....Pages 63-90 Manliness: Domesticity and Defence (Ben Macpherson)....Pages 91-117 Front Matter ....Pages 119-119 Empire: Ornamentalism and Orientalism (Ben Macpherson)....Pages 121-153 Conflict: Continuity and Change (Ben Macpherson)....Pages 155-180 Peace: Nostalgia and Nationhood (Ben Macpherson)....Pages 181-208 The English Musical in Many Stories (Ben Macpherson)....Pages 209-214 Back Matter ....Pages 215-245