Music Hall

Music hall was Britain's dominant form of popular theatrical entertainment from the 1850s to the early twentieth century, staged in purpose-built halls where working-class audiences sang along with comic songs, sentimental ballads and character turns. Performers such as *Marie Lloyd*, *Dan Leno* and *Harry Champion* built acts around catchphrases, costume and direct address, accompanied by a house orchestra and a chairman who introduced each turn. Its songs, sold as sheet music and later preserved on early gramophone records, chronicled courtship, drink, rent and seaside holidays, and laid the foundations of British popular music and comedy.