File 646 826 T374
Acquired August 2020
An engraved admission ticket with the St. Paul’s Cathedral in a rondel in the center flanked on the left with an figure of a boy in a niche with the words “Naked & ye clothed us” below and on the right a girl, also in a niche, with the words “Ignorance & ye instructed us” below. Above the rondel is engraved in frame: Date et dabitur vobis.
File 646 821 P314+
Acquired June 2019
An admission ticket to a performance on 30 November 1789 at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, the residence of the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough. Such private theatricals at country houses became increasingly popular during the eighteenth century, with plays starting in earnest at Blenheim in 1786 and becoming so successful that a greenhouse was converted into a proper theater.
File 66 789 F78
Acquired July 2019
An admission ticket to a performance at Dalby Theatre 14 July 1803, the private playhouse of Edward Hartopp at his seat Little Dalby Hall in Leicestershire. Edward Hartopp’s private theatricals seem to have been staged sporadically from 1777, becoming larger and more elaborate at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Catalog Record & Digital Collection
File 767 P69b D213 803.1
Acquired June 2016
An admission ticket to a performance at Dalby Theatre 19 July 1803, the private playhouse of Edward Hartopp at his seat Little Dalby Hall in Leicestershire. Edward Hartopp’s private theatricals seem to have been staged sporadically from 1777, becoming larger and more elaborate at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Catalog Record & Digital Collection
File 767 P69b D213 803.1
Acquired June 2016
Bartolozzi, Francesco, 1727-1815
Wynnstay Theatre / H. Bunbury inv. ; F. Bartolozzi sculp.
Published: [England? : s.n.], 1785.
Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn (1749-1789), politician and patron of the arts, held summer performances at his estate at Wynnstay, in North Wales. Bunbury incorporates into the design of this admission ticket the titles for the 1785 season: The Confederacy, As You Like It, The Agreeable Surprise, Venice Preserved, and Harlequin’s Invasion. The titles are shown on banners held by the figures of Tragedy, Comedy, Pantomime, and Farce or draped over the branches of the tree. Bunbury uses Farce dressed as a harlequin holding a club labelled “invasion” to form a rebus of Garrick’s play. In the background, the four figures are identified on the sails of a windmill. In the banner at the top of the oval is the name of the theatre and the year “1785” ; at the top and bottom of the oval are the masks of comedy and tragedy.
Wynnstay Theatre: 1 print on laid paper : stipple engraving in brown ink
Subjects (Library of Congress): Wynnstay Theatre; Theater–Wales.
Material: Stipple engravings; Rebuses; Ephemera; Admission ticket.
Lewis Walpole Library new acquisition: 2009