Transacting Value on the Transatlantic Stage

Abstract: With the modesty then expected of a daughter of Britain's theatrical royalty, Fanny Kemble attributed the necessity of her 1829 stage debut to the hard circumstance of financial need. As she explained in her journal, hers was not an act of self-promotion; rather, she exposed herself to the scrutiny of London's critical establishment with the hope that interest in her performance might draw much-needed revenue into the cashbox of the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, a venue jointly managed by her father and uncle, Charles and John Philip Kemble. However rhetorically necessary the narrative was for preserving her respectability, Kemble's financial motivation was also very real. The theatre was fiscally impaired, never quite able to square itself in relation to the expensive footing upon which the new building was erected after the fire of 1808. With construction costs high and materials scarce in the midst of the Napoleonic Wars, Charles attempted to raise ticket prices in the new theatre to help cover his expenses, raising instead public ire, in the form of protracted demonstrations known as the Old Price Riots, which bullied him into restoring the original ticket prices.