The British Dandy on the Popular Musical Stage (1867–1915)

In his monograph The British Pop Dandy, Stan Hawkins recognises that every age ‘has possessed its own brand of dandies, and general characteristics distinguish one period from the other’ (2009: 15). Hawkins places his study in historical context but concentrates on the dandy of British post-industrial society. That allows me to supplement his work with an account of the British dandy in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. My focus is the dandy on the musical stage, beginning with the sensational success of George Leybourne’s ‘Champagne Charlie’. Although the music-hall ‘swell’ was laughed at, the character appealed strongly to aspirational young men who nurtured hopes of a professional career. Further brief case studies are designed to reveal the complexities of the dandy persona on the musical stage. I compare the aesthetic dandies Oscar Wilde and Reginald Bunthorne (the poet in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Patience, 1881), and then examine the dandy philanderer (the ‘masher’) in musical comedy of the 1890s. Next, I survey the cross-dressing dandy performances of Vesta Tilley and others, before turning to the blackface dandy and the later emergence of the black dandy entertainer.