For over a hundred years a wildly held assumption has ruled the debate on the social composition of theatre audiences. This assumption states that in the period from the late eighteenth century to the Great War (1773 -1914) theatre audience was largely elite, till the French Revolution chased them to opera. The drama performances were sought by petty bourgeois and unskilled labour force, till, in 1870, the re-conquest of the stage by the upper bourgeoisie set in. In this study for the first time a large empirical research is presented to test this ‘master narrative’. Based on thorough archival research from the past twenty years, combined with robust statistical analysis, the conclusion with respect to this still dominant narrative can be short: it is to be fully rejected.

Banned, marginalised, tolerated or neglected, puppets were a major form of entertainment of the subordinate classes in the nineteenth century. Showmen travelled from one end of Europe to the other bringing everything from biblical plays to melodramas and variety to audiences who experienced them as their only form of dramatic entertainment. The first study of its kind in English, Popular Puppet Theatre in Europe is less a history than a comparative study, highlighting a significant aspect of social and cultural history from a national and transnational perspective. It examines the showmen, their audiences, the performance context, and the technical and practical aspects of the puppets and their stages.