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Encyclopedia entry: music-halls
- Article from:
- The Oxford Companion to British History
- Author:
Copyright© The Oxford Companion to British History 2002, originally published by Oxford University Press 2002. (Hide copyright information)
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music-halls
flourished in the second half of the 19th cent., but were under competition before 1914 from picture houses and after 1922 from radio. They have been subjected to deadening Marxist analysis as ‘the dominant form of cultural production in the context of a modernizing capitalist society’ and were indeed socially conditioned, since they provided mass entertainment in the new large industrial towns. They developed from a variety of sources—from the music and acrobatics offered at pleasure gardens like
Vauxhall
and
Ranelagh
and from sing-songs at local taverns. The Eagle, in City Road, London (commemorated in ‘Pop goes the weasel’), was an early ...