Description

[004537] [Private Theatre Tickets] Little Dalby Hall Theatre Tickets. ?Melton Mowbray: No Publisher. First Edition. Various. Unbound. Ephemera. Good. Three tickets for various productions at Dalby Theatre: 1. Macbeth with High Life Below Stairs, approximately 55mm x 76mm in size, dated 21st July, with an image of a woman holding a dagger and a chalice; 2. The Wonder with Atheling Castle, approximately 54mm x 77mm in size, dated July 14th, with an image of a dancing woman holding a mask; and 3. The Castle Spectre with a farce called Transformed or No?, approximately 65mm x 57mm in size, dated July 9th, with a coloured image of a partially clothed woman in the clouds holding a banner in which the plays and dates are inscribed, n.d. but probably very late eighteenth century or very early nineteenth century

All three slightly trimmed, each with play titles and date to front in ink, and with ‘Admission Ticket Not Transferable’ to reverse, lightly browned, Castle Spectre with soiling to top left hand corner, but generally clean

Dalby theatre was the private playhouse of Edward Hartropp (1758-1808) at Little Dalby Hall, Leicestershire, it was demolished in 1945

High Life Below Stairs, was a comedy by James Townley; The Wonder was a play by Susanna Centlivre, set in Lisbon; Atheling Castle was possibly based on the gothic novel by Ann Radcliffe, The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne, first published in 1789; The Castle Spectre was by Matthew Gregory Lewis (Monk Lewis), first performed in 1797; and Transformed or No? has eluded our searches

The BM has all three of these tickets (with others) pasted on to a sheet of paper (C,2. 1535-1543), Yale has both Macbeth, (with the same image used for another play Isabella, with Lover’s Quarrels), and Castle Spectre, but not as far as we can tell The Wonder