Harvard Theatre Collection popular entertainment playbills, posters, prints, and clippings

Contains playbills, posters, prints, and clippings from various forms of popular entertainment collected by the Harvard Theatre Collection over time. The bulk of materials relate to the promotion of nineteenth century circuses, variety shows, sideshows, exhibitions, and similar performances, including equestrian and animal acts, menageries and zoological exhibitions, automata exhibitions, and shows involving people with disabilities. Further materials relate to tableaux, pageants, and processions, including photographs and clippings related to the funeral procession of Queen Victoria of England. A collection of material related to Astley’s Amphitheatre includes a remnant of sheet music burned in the fire of 1841. Further materials promote nineteenth century tableaux, panoramas and dioramas, as well as seventeenth century harlequinade and commedia dell’arte materials. Additional posters include those featuring burlesque performances of the late nineteenth century, including traditional burlesques, vaudeville, and fairy revels. Some materials were promotional materials for minstrel shows and similar performances by African Americans or depicting interpretations of African American and other minority groups' cultures.

Most of the materials included are promotional playbills or posters, along with programs and prints, some of which were likely commemorative. Additional materials including related newspaper clippings, illustrated magazine articles, and costume designs. The materials are primarily in English but also in French, German, Italian, Latin, Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch, and were the products of popular entertainment activities throughout the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries across the United States and much of Europe. A few items relate to circuses and other performances in the twentieth century, mainly in the first three decades.