>LITTERARIA PRAGENSIA 2025 (35) 69
ABSTRACT (en)
In November 1806, the Sans Pareil theatre, later renamed the Adelphi, staged its first evening of entertainment. This consisted of a performance by Jane Scott of her own songs, followed by a series of optical entertainments devised by her father John, proprietor and manager of the theatre. These included a shadow puppet display, a firework display, and a magic lantern show in the manner of a phantasmagoria. This article examines this magic lantern show in the context of John Scott’s career – preexisting and concurrent with his management of the Sans Pareil – as a shopkeeper. The products sold in his establishment at 417 Strand had included magic lanterns since the beginning of the previous decade. I show how Scott’s theatre, constructed next to his shop, was an extension of his commercial endeavours, his use of magic lanterns in the theatre providing both an advertisement for these products and an alternative, economically productive use of them. This commercial exploitation of stage machinery in the theatre’s earliest shows continued to govern the plays which the Sans Pareil would go on to stage, such as the many works written by Jane Scott for the theatre, including her most successful melodrama, The Old Oak Chest, first performed in 1816.
KEYWORDS (en)
advertising, magic lantern, phantasmagoria, theatre management, minor theatres, melodrama
DOI
https://doi.org/10.14712/2571452X.2025.69.6
SOURCES
Altick, Richard D. The Shows of London. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1978.
Baker, H. Barton. History of the London Stage and its Famous Players (1776-1903). London: Routledge, 1904.
Baugh, Christopher. “Scenography and Technology.” In The Cambridge Companion to British Theatre 1730-1830, edited by Jane Moody and Daniel O’Quinn, 43-56. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Bratton, Jacky. “Scott [married name Middleton], Jane Margaret (bap. 1779, d. 1839), theatre manager and actress.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Accessed 24 June 2025. https://www.oxforddnb.com/search?q=Scott+%5Bmarried+name+ Middleton%5D%2C+Jane+Margaret+&searchBtn=Search&isQuickSearch=true.
British Library Newspapers. Gale Primary Sources. Accessed 15 June 2025. https://0-go-gale.com.catalogue.libraries.london.ac.uk/ps/start.do?p=BNCN& userGroupName=ull_ttda.
British Periodicals. ProQuest. Accessed 15 June 2025. https://www.proquest.com/ britishperiodicals?accountid=213250.
Broadbent, R.J. The Annals of the Liverpool Stage. Liverpool: Howell, 1908.
Campbell, A.V. “Forty Years’ Recollections of a London Actor.” Bentley’s Miscellany 27 (January 1850): 481-86.
Casteras, Susan P. James Smetham: Artist, Author, Pre-Raphaelite Associate. Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1995.
Cheltnam, Charles Smith, ed. The Dramatic Year Book for the Year Ending December 31st, 1891. London: Trischler, 1892.
Franceschina, John, ed. Sisters of Gore: Seven Gothic Melodramas by British Women, 1790-1843. New York: Garland, 1997.
Geffarth, Renko. “The Masonic Necromancer: Shifting Identities in the Lives of Johann Georg Schrepfer.” In Polemical Encounters: Esoteric Discourse and its Others, edited by Olav Hammer and Kocku von Stuckrad, 181-97. Leiden: Brill, 2007.
Harvey, William. London Scenes and London People. London: W.H. Collingridge, 1863.
Heard, Mervyn. “Paul de Philipsthal and the Phantasmagoria in England, Scotland and Ireland, Part One: Boo!” The New Magic Lantern Journal 8, no. 1 (1996): 2-7.
Heard, Mervyn. “Paul de Philipsthal and the Phantasmagoria in England, Scotland and Ireland, Part Three: Phew!” The New Magic Lantern Journal 8, no. 4 (1999): 6-13.
Helgerson, Richard. “Weeping for Jane Shore.” The South Atlantic Quarterly 98, no. 3 (1999): 451-76.
Huntingdon, Henry of. The History of the English People, 1000-1154. Translated by Diana E. Greenaway. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Jensen, Oskar, David Kennerley and Ian Newman, eds. Charles Dibdin and Late Georgian Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.
John Johnson Collection. Bodleian Library. University of Oxford. Accessed 10 June 2025. https://www.proquest.com/pamphlets-ephemeral-works/j-scotts-original liquid-true-blue-shelfmark-soap/docview/2823557504/se-2.
Klepac, Richard L. Mr Mathews at Home. London: The Society for Theatre Research, 1979.
Lewis Walpole Library. Yale University. Farmington, CT. Accessed 25 June 2025. https://findit.library.yale.edu/catalog/digcoll:5002658.
Mason, William. Elfrida: A Dramatic Poem. London: J. and P. Knapton, 1752.
Nelson, Alfred L. and Gilbert B. Cross, general editors. The Adelphi Theatre Calendar Project. Updated 2016. Accessed 25 June 2025. https://www.umass.edu/ AdelphiTheatreCalendar/hist.htm.
Prinsep, Valentine Cameron. The Death of Siward the Strong. Painting. Before 1882. GA0926. Southwark Art Collection. Southwark Heritage Centre and Walworth Library. London. Accessed 20 June 2025. https://heritage.southwark.gov.uk/ objects/1109/death-of-siward-the-strong.
ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Guardian and The Observer. Accessed 15 June 2025. https://www.proquest.com/hnpguardianobserver/news?parentSessionId= 23kMSRArmO9Ep%2FOAGXL3XYFcaNz8slGz8Rkup9rErmc%3D&accountid =213250.
Rossell, Deac. “Some Thoughts on the Bull’s-Eye Magic Lantern.” The New Magic Lantern Journal 9, no. 5 (2003): 71-75.
Scott, Jane. “Address, Written and Spoken by Miss Scott, on the Closing of the Sans Pareil Theatre for the Season, on Saturday, April 4.” The Gentleman’s Magazine: and Historical Chronicle (May 1807): 451-52.
Scott, Jane. Manuscript of “The Animated Effigy.” 28 January 1811. LA1660. John Larpent Plays. Huntington Library. San Marino, CA. Accessed 10 June 2025. https://0-www-eighteenthcenturydrama-amdigital-co-uk.catalogue.libraries. london.ac.uk/Documents/SearchDetails/HL_LA_mssLA1660.
Simon, Jacob. “British Artists’ Suppliers, 1650-1950.” National Portrait Gallery. Last updated August 2019. Accessed 25 June 2025. https://www.npg.org.uk/ collections/research/programmes/directory-of-suppliers/.
Thornbury, Walter. “London Theatres and London Actors.” Belgravia: A London Magazine 9 (October 1869): 464-77.
West, Shearer. “Manufacturing Spectacle.” In The Oxford Handbook of the Georgian Theatre, edited by Julia Swindells and David Francis Taylor, 286-303. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.
