A discriminating audience: Touring Shakespeare and mid-nineteenth-century Tasmania

The 1850s were a defining decade for colonial Tasmania, encompassing the cessation of convict transportation, the establishment of a House of Assembly and the jettisoning of the island’s old identity as Van Diemen’s Land. Many Tasmanian settlers were dedicated to the task of raising the cultural standing of the colony and Shakespeare became an integral part of this process. A steady stream of visiting players from America and England brought Shakespeare to Tasmania in the 1850s, including Sarah and James Stark, Eleanor Goddard and John Caple, McKean Buchanan and G.V. Brooke. Newspapers of the period reflect a lively and varied local interaction with their productions. Focusing on the evidence of contemporary reviews, this paper considers the political resonance of Shakespeare in mid-nineteenth- century Tasmania. It suggests that touring Shakespeare productions opened up key opportunities for this geographically and socially marginalised community to assert a new sense of itself as a discriminating audience, ready to engage with complex and profound modes of thinking and expression.