Music hall

Music hall was a form of British stage entertainment that thrived from the early Victorian period until roughly the end of World War I. It blended popular songs, comedy, specialty acts, and variety performances. The name comes from the type of venue where it was staged. In North America, vaudeville was a similar tradition, known for lively songs and comic routines.

The entertainment began in the 1830s in the saloon bars of pubs. As it grew more popular, some public houses were torn down in the 1850s to make way for dedicated music hall theatres. These new venues were built so audiences could eat, drink alcohol, and smoke tobacco while watching the show, with the cheapest seats in the gallery. This set them apart from conventional theatres, where the audience sat in stalls and used a separate bar. Major halls were mostly in London, early examples being the Canterbury Music Hall in Lambeth, Wilton's Music Hall in Tower Hamlets, and The Middlesex in Drury Lane, also called the Old Mo. By the mid-19th century, the demand for new, catchy songs was so high that professional songwriters were hired to supply material for stars like Marie Lloyd, Dan Leno, Little Tich, and George Leybourne. Over the next forty years, audiences could also see male and female impersonators, lions comiques, mime artists, impressionists, trampoline acts, and comic pianists such as John Orlando Parry and George Grossmith.

The Music Hall Strike of 1907 was a major industrial conflict between artists and stage hands on one side and theatre managers on the other. By the start of the First World War, the halls had recovered and were used for charity events supporting the war effort. After the war, music hall continued but lost popularity to jazz, swing, and big-band dance music. Licensing rules also changed, banning drinking in the auditorium. A new form called variety emerged, and many music hall performers could not adapt. They were seen as old-fashioned, and as many halls closed, music hall ended, giving way to modern variety.

Music halls originated in 18th-century London and grew from the entertainment in pub saloon bars during the 1830s. These replaced earlier semi-rural amusements at fairs and suburban pleasure gardens like Vauxhall Gardens and Cremorne Gardens, which declined due to urban development. From the mid-19th century, music halls spread to provincial cities such as Bristol.