THEATRONOMICS: The Business of Theatres, 1732-1809

Eighteenth-century literary studies has taken a ‘theatrical turn’ over the past twenty-five years and the century historically associated with the ‘rise of the novel’ now acknowledges the centrality of the theatre to Georgian cultural and political life. However, we have virtually ignored its remarkable financial archive.

Account-books, ledgers, and ephemeral manuscript folios contain rich data on ticket sales, audience members, revenues, actor salaries, repayments to investors, costume, scenery and other costs: this is richly detailed source material that needs to be understood. THEATRONOMICS places money at the heart of eighteenth-century theatrical culture.

This project will apply financial and econometric analysis to this data to write a new history of eighteenth-century theatrical culture (1732-1809).

Manuscript data for Covent Garden and Drury Lane—the two major theatres of Europe’s biggest city—will be transcribed, digitized, and analysed using econometric methods in order to incorporate the theatres’ underlying commercial operations to our research.

Our central goal is the application of economic methodologies so that new perspectives on the careers of managers, playwrights, actors, and plays emerge.

When we look at the hard financial data underpinning the performance scheduling decisions; the productivity and profitability of actors; the amounts spent on scenery, costumes, scenery, and candles; and the socioeconomic profiles of the audience, we will have a transformative understanding of the ‘back end’ of the theatre business.

By synthesizing this complex data, THEATRONOMICS will further enable us, by interacting with other datasets, to ask new interdisciplinary questions about the place of theatre within the ecology of London.

THEATRONOMICS’s insistence on gazing through the financial lens of cultural production gives us an innovative and sustainable basis for the next generation of eighteenth-century theatre studies.