page_title: Herbert Campbell
section_title: Pantomimes at Drury Lane
hierarchical_section_title: Herbert Campbell / Biography / Pantomimes at Drury Lane
caption_attribution_description: English: Dan Leno, Johnny Danvers and Herbert Campbell taken in the late 1890s.
context_page_description: Herbert Campbell, born Herbert Edward Story, was an English comedian and actor who appeared in music hall, Victorian burlesques and musical comedies during the Victorian era. He was famous for starring, for many years, in the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane's annual Christmas pantomimes, predominantly as a dame.
  Born in Lambeth, Campbell started his performing career appearing in amateur bands and quickly toured London's music hall's during the early 1860s. He decided to leave after a few years and adopted the stage name Herbert Campbell. He joined the minstrel performers Harman and Elston and the trio became known as Harmon, Campbell and Elston. In 1868, Campbell decided to pursue a solo career as a comic vocalist and quickly established himself as a popular music hall comedian.
  In 1871 he made his first pantomime appearance in King Winter at the Theatre Royal, Liverpool and became a leading pantomime dame over the next decade. In 1882 he formed a successful association with the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, where he appeared alongside Dan Leno in the annual Christmas pantomime, every year until his death in 1904 at age 59.
context_section_description: In 1882, Augustus Harris, the manager of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, cast Campbell in a series of pantomimes which was to last until his death. From 1888 he was joined every year by Dan Leno, and their partnership became popular with audiences.  As a result, his career excelled, owing much to their contrasting styles. The physical comparisons between Campbell and Leno were very different. Campbell weighed 256 pounds, was over six-foot tall and vocally, like "a powerful accordion which some miracle-worker had got into tune" alongside the diminutive and whimsical Leno.  The English essayist and parodist Max Beerbohm thought of Campbell as "the offspring of some mystical union between beef and thunder" and regularly took French visitors to see him "as a liberal education in the character of this island".
  
  In the pantomimes, Leno and Campbell would often deviate from the script, improvising freely.  Some critics, including the writer E. L. Blanchard felt that the employment of music-hall performers was corrupting pantomime.  However, the public felt differently, regarding the Drury Lane spectaculars as the pinnacle of Christmas entertainment. This view was also shared by critics, one of whom wrote:
   I am inclined to think "the cake" for frolicsome humour is taken by the dapper newcomer, Mr. Dan Leno, who is sketched as the galvanic baroness in the wonderfully amusing dance which sets the house in a roar.  The substantial 'babes', Mr. Herbert Campbell and Mr. Harry Nicholls, would have no excuse if they did not vie in drollery with the light footed Dan Leno.
  Among the productions were:  Babes in the Wood (1888), Jack and the Beanstalk (1889 and 1899), Beauty and the Beast (1890 and 1900), Humpty Dumpty (1891 and 1903), Little Bo-peep (1892), Robinson Crusoe (1893), Dick Whittington and His Cat (1894), Cinderella (1895), Aladdin (1896) and the Forty Thieves (1898).
caption: Leno (top), Johnny Danvers (middle) and Herbert Campbell
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