When Britannia Ruled the Canadian Stage
Mary Shortt recounts how the Canadian theatre fostered and reflected sentiment for the Mother Country between 1850 and 1940.
In 1875 J. H. Barnes, an English actor, was startled by the explosive reaction of a Toronto audience to the expression of British sentiments in 'Twixt Axe and Crown, a play about the first Queen Elizabeth. Thirty-nine years later he recorded in his memoirs:
One of the biggest and most prolonged roars of applause I ever heard in a playhouse was when I finished a passionate heroic speech with the line, 'For England! England's Queen! and England's Law!' It really seemed as if they would never stop applauding.
What seemed so remarkable to Barnes was merely the response that could be expected in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries from British Canadians who cherished as 'home' the land from which they or their forebears had come. Separated from it by thousands of miles, they clung fiercely to its symbols – the monarchy, laws, manners and standards of speech – as their lifeline to the beloved 'Mother Country'. And since at the time theatre was the most powerful medium of mass support for those symbols, Canadian playhouses provided the setting for many heartfelt demonstrations of British loyalty.
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