It is hard to imagine what entertainment was like in the days before the 21st century, yet people have always devised ways to spend their leisure time in pleasant company doing amusing things. In the evening, Jane Austen and her family spent many hours entertaining each other. One popular form of entertainment that the older Austen siblings would have known about was the Toy Theatre, or a juvenile form of miniature theater.
Toy Theatre. Image @Tea at Triannon
This entertainment appeared in the early 1800s, and coincided with the popularity of theater and the rise of the print trade. One can imagine that Aunt Jane was well aware of toy theatres when she spent time with her nephews, for this new toy largely attracted boys.
By 1811 William West of London was printing sheets of stage characters for purchasers to colour, paste on cardboard and cut out, though others treasured them as individual portraits. Single prints in black ink on white paper were called “penny plains” while those with color added by the seller were the “twopence coloured.” West’s first subject was Joseph Grimaldi in “Mother Goose,” a role that brought him fame and lifelong success on the stage. – NYPL Digital Gallery
Image @Curator's Choice
Miniature theaters became fashionable all over Europe, and their tiny elaborate sets mimicked the grand theaters of London, Paris and other world stages. The sets remained popular throughout the 19th century and into the early 20th century, offering children an opportunity to exercise their imaginations and their acting chops. Some children, I imagine, concentrated on honing their acting skills, while others probably enjoyed their roles as directors or scene designers more. New plays were published in the first half of the 19th century.
After the 1860’s no new plays were published but much of the old repertoire was kept in print by a dwindling number of theatrical print publishers and the tradition continued unbroken until 1944 when Miss Louisa Pollock,shut up her father’s famous shop in Hoxton for ever and sold the contents as a going concern. – Toy Theatre Gallery: History
Image @ Rossetti Archives
From Mansfield Park the reader gains a sense of how seriously family theatricals were regarded. In the novel, the men were definitely in control of the enterprise, with the women acquiescing to their direction (the only exception being Fanny). While Jane Austen described a real play, Lover’s Vows, with large, almost life-like sets in Sir Thomas Bertram’s study, wood toy theatres that sat on a tabletop would be taken equally seriously. The children must have spent hours preparing for a performance, arranging sets, learning lines, and dressing and moving their characters before they felt comfortable opening a new play in front of an indulgent and forgiving family.
English Toy Theatre, 1850. Pollock's Museum. Image @Brittanica
Created from printed paper glued to cardboard and then mounted on wooden frames, these theaters could be quite intricate in design. They offered a proscenium, scenery, cut-out characters with codified attitudes and gestures, and a booklet that contained stage and scene directions and dialogue for the actors. Almost all of them depict an orchestra: The clothes worn by the musicians give a good indication of when the theatre was designed.
Early toy theatre prints were made from engraved copper plates, the engravings often from sketches made at the theatre on the night. Sets, costumes, and even the actors’ likenesses were copied, and could often be recognised. – Miniature Theatre: Curator’s Choice
Image @Victoriana
The plays were not necessarily derived from children’s stories: They were adapted from operas, melodramas, history, novels, and pantomimes. Works from Shakespeare, Cervantes, Mozart, and Beethoven were included. Hans Christian Anderson was also an inspiration.
Children could choose “Three-Fingered Jack, the Terror of Jamaica” or “Hamlet” or another of the nearly 300 “juvenile dramas” printed in England between 1811 and 1860. – Dramas to Cut, Color, and Produce
Image @The Museum of Every Day life
The involvement of publishers was enormous, but Pollock’s toy theatres were probably the most famous in Great Britain.
England had over 50 publishers, Germany 54, Spain 14, France 13, Denmark 10, Austria 9, and the United States 5. All of these versions to some degree were derived from the ability to mass produce the printed image, initially from engraved copper plates, followed by color lithography in the mid-19th century. – A Child’s View: 19th Century Paper Theaters
Many printed sheets of cut- out characters survive to this day, both colored and in black and white.
In 1811 William West produces a sheet of the principal characters from the first production on the London stage of ‘Mother Goose’, with Joseph Grimaldi in one of his most celebrated roles of Clown. The popularity of this role led to the publication of sets of sheets of characters, scenery and props, also elaborate prosceniums, the designs based on those of popular London theatres. Books of words, abridged versions of the most popular melodramas and pantomimes to be seen on the London stage.
From this time the popularity of the toy theatre, also known as the ‘Juvenile Drama’, saw the rapid growth in the number of publishers producing versions of plays, with the drawings for the engravings made by such leading artists as Georg e Cruickshank and William Blake. The legacy of the 19th century toy theatre is that of the most complete documentation of the costumes, scenery, and the performance style of the actors of the London Theatres of the period. – The World Through Wooden Eyes: A Penny Plain and Two Pence Coloured
Paper backdrops image @Birds of Ohio
These backdrops for miniature theaters on Birds of Ohio show how much detail the sets provided.
Below is a very rare example from the V&A shows a souvenir from a play first performed at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden in 1800 called Harlequin’s Tour or the Dominion of Fancy. While the souvenir survives, the dialogue for the play does not.
Souvenir, 1800. Image @Victoria & Albert Museum
In a June 2011 The Telegraph article, Sir Roy Strong, former director of the V&A museum and National Portrait Gallery, recalls his toy theatre with great affection:
Image @The Telegraph
This toy theatre … reminds me of one enormously happy period of my childhood. It was given to me after the war and purchased at Benjamin Pollock’s Toyshop, originally in the East End of London [now in Covent Garden]. I played with all the cut–out cardboard figures and scenery, and still have all my toy theatre plays, which are 19th–century dramas, romances and pantomimes. The theatre sits in the archive room and I love it. It’s been with me everywhere.
More on the topic:
- Miniature paper theaters of Martin Englebrecht
- A Child’s View
- Toy Theatre Test Model: A Modern View
- The Play’s the Thing: A History of the Toy Theatre in Three Acts
- Colored Toy Theatre Print
- Theatres and plays to download for free
- The Waterman, PDF downloadable files
- Dramas to Cut, Color, and Produce
Modern characters for The Waterman.
Jane Austen's World 
I used to have one of these paper theatres when I was little of a Shakespearean play!
I would have LOVED something like this as a child. The doll house just did not fulfill my fantasies, but a theatre, with characters and animals and beasts and goblins – now that would have satisfied!
I think it was of Romeo and Juliet. I know what you mean, I was always dissatisfied with my inanimate dolls. I used to make miniature leather-bound books and write stories in them, too – even though they were only about an inch in size!
The work involved is astonishing. How beautiful these sets are. I had never seen one like this before.
I love these. They’re so beautifully detailed. You always have such interesting posts.
Awhile back there was a web site that sold modern copies of the old toy theatres. I couldn’t afford the theatres they offered but bought Lovers’ Vows and Love and Freindship . I bought the penny plain version and have never cut or colored them. I was supposed to color each figure and cut it out then mount it on a stand and move it with a dowel attached.
I ran off copies of the characters so the originals were not cut and we performed both Lovers’ Vows and Love and Freindship at two different JASNA chapter meetings. I
We mounted the characters on small pieces of Styrofoam and moved them with straws ( though skewers would have also worked. Though the directions call for the characters to be colored like figures in a coloring book, a neat handed person could give each figure cloth clothes.
Acting out Lovers’ Vows, even in such a unpolished manner gave us a much better appreciation of the reasons why someone might object to the play.
You have found some lovely examples of the genre.
There is a book giving the history of the toy theatres but I can’t quite remember who wrote it.
who wrote it– obviously. A typo rather than grammatical ignorance.
Nancy, I fixed the spelling. I think your reenactment of Lovers Vows and Love and Freindship is fascinating. One of the sites I listed offers color reproductions of the characters, as well as the plays. Here it is: http://www.toytheatre.info/DownLoad/DownLoad.html
Included is The Waterman, which I would have chosen had I been a tomboy in the 19th century!
This took me back to the first years of the Barbie doll when we made scenes and rooms from old boxes, covered them in leftover wallpaper from our house, made furniture and beds from smaller boxes, these also covered from fabric and trim remnants. We then acted out stories of travel, romance and family, each girl carting her own ‘house’ to the designated play porch of the day. I think back and ask, was there more time then? thanks for sharing!
Thanks for this wonderful article. I did some research on toy theatres for my PhD thesis, and was completely enchanted. I managed to snatch up a modern reprint of an older toy theatre, put it together, and dragged it with me when I had to defend my thesis. You don’t necessarily need to mount the stage pieces to wooden frames, btw – my toy theatre consists merely of cardboard and is quite sturdy as it is.
Many plays contained intricate “special effects” (raining cats and dogs, lightning and thunder, etc.). Of course, you always had to be extremely careful not to set your theatre on fire. *g*
Thank you for describing the article as wonderful, especially when you’ve written your thesis on the topic. I wonder if the wooden frames might have been necessary back in those days? Or was the cardboard sufficiently sturdy?
My thesis was on the history of dragonslaying – I only briefly mention toy theatres (and the toy theatre version of “Harlequin St. George and the Dragon”). :)
I believe all the earlier toy theatres were made of paper and cardboard (if the theatre isn’t too big, cardboard is sturdy enough, and you could use two layers for additional stability), but I also remember having come across wooden constructions. Will have to consult my research books.
Having looked again at the beginning of your article (and the top picture – duh!), I see what you mean by wooden frames. There were (and are) different methods of construction: e.g., a wooden block as in the top picture; a wooden frame from which you could hang the sets; or a cardboard frame from which to hang the sets.
Thank you, Sandra. This modern toy theater uses pantomime to tell a highly effective story in less than 3 minutes! http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=fvwp&v=_6ett9rQvho
I am a paperdoll & paper toy collector of sorts myself. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this post. I love coming across things that teach us about nostalgic or old fashion toys or that teach us how to make them.
There are books from The Toymaker that I think are great and they recently sent me an email about how to make one of these old fashioned mini-paper theatres.
Here is a link to one of the books:
http://www.thetoymaker.com/MSWPortfolio/06MSWPortfolio.html
Thank you for sharing, Trez. The illustrations in the book are absolutely fantastic.
I am stunned that something I would have loved to play with above all else existed in the Regency period and I’ve never heard of it. Marvelous and enlightening article. Thank you!
Wonderful post! Thanks very much for sharing!
At Ten Chimneys, the Lunt-Fontanne estate near Milwaukee, there is an exhibit of old actor cutouts. Alfred Lunt collected them. The colored ones came often came with cutouts of colored foil that could be added to the costumes. Ten Chimneys also has other Lunt-Fontanne costumes, including the incredible plumed hat he wore as Petruchio. It is a marvelous place to visit if you are interested in theatre. The docents are obviously SO happy to be there and show off the estate and its fabulous contents.
I have just spent an hour and could spend several more checking out the links throughout this article. Quite enjoyable for the information.
Really great post! Some of these pictures are breathtaking too. Thanks for sharing this. This period was so rich in art, some people seemed to have all the money to indulge their fancies.
What an interesting read, your extensive knowledge of the toy theatre might help me out I own a 1972 Pollocks toy theatre with various sets and play books. I have enjoyed it for many years and have decided it’s time to let someone else enjoy it. I have absolutely no idea of it’s value and have searched the Internet for help but no luck. I have also emailed Pollocks in Covent Garden but have had no response, do you have any idea how I would find out.
Cheers, Bes
Dear Vic,
I am a French paper theatre (toy theatre) specialist and am writing a book on this subject with the help of other specialists from different countries. I read on your page as well as in some other articles on the internet about Jane Austen’s passion for toy theatre. But I cannot find any references in order to go further. My book contains a bibliography chapter in which is meant to contain historical references. Do you know any text by or about Jane Austen which speaks about her passion for toy theatre?
Your help will be truly appreciated and mentioned in the book.
Best regards,
Alain Lecucq
Such a pity that this article is so one sided and inaccurate.
Toy theaters were published in many countries, but no mention of continental publishers is made even though a theatre from Epinal is shown and a sheet from Schreiber.
No new plays after 1840?
Rubbish Schreiber published up to into the 20th century.
The Danes were still publishing new plays in the 1940’s. As were the Spanish (Seix y Barral)
I think it is also fair to state that the toy theatre is not an English invention but something that happened more or less at the same time through different influences all over Europe.
Hharry Oudekerk
Thank you for your insights, H Ouderkerk. This blog explains Regency life in England during the early 19th century, and while toy theatres were popular throughout Europe and the U.S. through the early 20th century, my focus remains primarily on Regency England.