Winn, Peter Charles2024-08-152024-08-1519761976https://hdl.handle.net/1828/20168The purpose of this thesis is to examine the value of the Sage Collection of Juvenile Drama at the University of Victoria as a primary source of Nineteenth Century theatre history research material; to provide a history of the Sage Collection itself: and to provide sufficient information about a significant portion of the collection so that informative museum displays may be mounted. Chapter I is concerned solely with the history of the collection and with an explanation of the collection's physical condition. Chapter II begins the task of examining the value of the collection with a discussion of the way in which English Juvenile Drama in general is said to have reflected the live theatre of early Nineteenth Century London. The present state of scholarship in the field is examined, and the significance of the Sage Collection within the context of other collections and library resources in Canada is assessed. In Chapter III the field is narrowed to issues associated with the publishers of Juvenile Drama who are best represented in the Sage Collection: the English publishers of the mid-Nineteenth Century, and in particular J.K. Green. Green's early history and business methods are examined to see to what extent the publisher can be expected to provide faithful records of specific live productions in his Juvenile plays. Chapter IV, which forms the body of the thesis, is concerned with a chronological play-by-play analysis of Green's work with special attention being paid to some twenty-six plays which were wholly original to Green. The method employed in each analysis is as follows: (1) the originality of the play is determined; (11) an effort is made to discover which live production (if any) provided Green with his model; (111) Green's play is examined to see to what extent it was faithful to the live production; and (iv) the Juvenile play is finally examined for information about the live production that might not be obtainable from any other source. Chapter V summarises the findings of Chapter IV and an assessment is made of evidence that seems to prove that Green made faithful copies of at least nineteen specific live productions. The most important value of the Sage Collection, however, is found not in the specific detail that it can provide of specific productions but in the way in which it represents a spectrum of all the most typical and successful genres of popular theatre in the early and mid-Nineteenth Century. It is suggested, there­fore, that the collection be used as a teaching aid and to direct theatre historians into avenues of wider research, rather than be regarded solely as an object of research in itself.343 pagesAvailable to the World Wide WebThesis