![]() The staple fare of these theatres was melodrama, a class conscious dramatic form which featured ‘types’ not psychologised characters, and which always relied on music for its effects. This relationship continued into popular circuses, pantomimes, touring theatres and ‘penny gaffs’. Such performers forged a temporary but important kind of community with their audiences which implied the spectators’ complicity in the song’s action. The later music halls made stars of performers like Sam Cowell and ‘hits’ of songs like ‘The Ratcatchers Daughter’. Popular songs, too, often exhibited a new kind of class consciousness, especially those performed in taverns and song-and-supper rooms. It created the working class and altered for ever popular culture, as manifested in itinerant Punch and Judy shows, rural mumming plays and new and revived fairgrounds. The Industrial Revolution was a highly significant moment in human history, an upheaval affecting the social, domestic and work lives of the whole British population.
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