York Guides

By the end of Tate Wilkinson's period of management, York's fortunes as a fashionable social centre were declining and the decline continued in the 19th century. It was increasingly possible for the gentry to winter in London, with improved transport, and evidence of York's decay can be seen everywhere. The Races, the Ainsty Hunt and the Assemblies all declined in prestige and importance and, with the loss of audience this entailed, the Theatre declined too. Wilkinson reacted by shortening the length of his York winter seasons by four to five weeks and by spending these weeks in other towns on his circuit; Leeds, Doncaster, Wakefield and Pontefract. What is usually seen as the 'golden age' in the history of the York Theatre Royal may perhaps be seen as the beginning of a decline. It was not until the country's railway system was established that York began to prosper again and its Theatre enter a new phase.

Tate Wilkinson followed a policy dictated by audience demand. He put on the latest London successes as soon as he could get a script - often pirated - and made trips to London specially to keep abreast of current successes. As has already been said, he hired a succession of stars to attract greater audiences. He staged 'novelties' - tight rope dancers, animal acts, bird imitators, tumblers - and pandered to the audience's taste for the spectacular in scenery and machinery . When he died on 25 August, 1803, his son, John Wilkinson, who had acted in the company, succeeded to the management. Tate Wilkinson had said of him in The Wandering Patentee:

it was more his strong inclination that led me to give way to his bent for the stage, than my wish or approbation; for long experience had and has convinced me of the many disagreeables, and the perpetual dangers of rocks, shoals, storms, and tempests, with which every theatrical bark is continually endangered. I would therefore have wished him to have steered another course, more likely to attain the harbour of content, and not have had him venture on the hazardous sea of a theatre, where once embarked, the ship cannot be stopped, but must ride out the storm or perish.

John Wilkinson perished. He tried to emulate his father's policy but, faced with dwindling audiences, with an increasing desperation. He hired more and more stars - including Master Betty, the 13 year old child prodigy tragic actor who played Romeo and Hamlet, among other roles, in York in July 1806 - and let the Theatre to more and more visiting shows when the company was playing elsewhere on the circuit. He produced an increasing number of spectacular pantomimes and melodramas, with scenery catering for the Romantic love of the wild and the grand. There are occasional reflections of the war with France in the York repertoire as, for example, in 1809, when, as well as the usual sprinkling of patriotic songs and addresses, 'military hornpipes', appearances of military bands and military bespeaks, there was a recitation, on 10 May, The Soldier's Grave, to the Memory of Lieutenant General Sir John Moore, who had led the British force at Corunna in January of that year, and on 18 April a pantomime, Harlequin's Invasion, was staged with 'a Representation of A Sea Fight between the French and the English'. The ever-increasing size of productions was eventually to contribute to the ruin not only of this management, but others including those of some London theatres. John Wilkinson staged elaborate spectacles in the hope of attracting a bigger audience but, although York's population was growing, the theatre-going public did not increase. York's prosperity was still declining. Charles Mathews, the comedian famous for his 'At Homes', wrote to his wife from York in 1811. 'you know York is a bad town - and now is empty - and more than usually poor'.26 He called it 'deserted York'. In May 1813, John Wilkinson went bankrupt, and his company was dismissed.