Posters and Playbills: Theatre Advertising in the Nineteenth Century

An evening at the theatre was the main form of entertainment in London in the Nineteenth Century and competition between rival theatres was fierce. These days, a popular West End show can run for months or even years but, in the Victorian era, audiences wanted constant novelty. The best way of getting the crowds in was to have a regularly (often nightly) changing bill. Printing playbills and posters to advertise the latest performances kept the printers of London very busy during this period.

Printing the Playbills

Playbills have fallen out of fashion, but they were the main form of advertising in the first half of the Nineteenth Century. They were a simple list of the coming attractions written in attractive fonts. Large copies were displayed as posters in the streets and smaller versions were also handed out as handbills. Most theatres had new playbills printed daily. Printers used the letterpress technique which involves clamping reverse-cut letters into a frame. When dipped in ink and printed onto paper, the titles of the plays would be spelled out. As you can imagine with this fiddly process, mistakes were frequent!

Woodcut Illustrations

A large percentage of the theatregoing public was illiterate, so those that could read would read the playbills aloud to others. The earliest illustrations were simple woodcuts. This element of visual interest proved popular and soon theatres were competing to produce illustrated playbills featuring pictures of the acts themselves. Illustrated playbills were attractive to everyone and the illiterate could choose which play they wanted to see by looking at the pictures. 

The Demise of the Playbill

As colour lithographic printing improved, the large playbill was replaced by the poster. Large colour lithograph posters depicting scenes from tragedies, comedies and romances proved a more effective marketing tool than the playbill. Handbills faced a similar decline as discerning and increasingly literate audiences wanted more information than was provided by a list of coming attractions and the theatre programme evolved to meet their demands. Small printing firms that had relied on the theatres closed as they could not afford the newest printing technologies that the bigger firms were using to increase their trade.

The great thing about modern printing technology is that it can do everything the old machines could do and more! If you want to recreate the look of a Nineteenth Century playbill or colourful lithographic poster to advertise your latest production, we can do that for you – without all the fiddly messing around with letterpresses! 

To find out more about our print services, call our office on 01603 488001 or email sales@col-print.co.uk.

Read more about Nineteenth Century playbills at the East London Theatre Archive.