Pageant of London

Flyer for the Festival of Empire advertising the Pageant of London

The Pageant of London was a historical pageant held as part of the Festival of Empire around the Crystal Palace in 1911. A successful and widely advertised attraction of the event, it was held beyond its originally expected run . It was staged by Pageant Master Frank Lascelles, a prolific organiser of historical pageants, sometimes known as the "man who staged the Empire".

Background

Historical pageants, a form of dramatic theatre based on Medieval pageants, had largely been popularised in Britain by Louis Napoleon Parker, who held a number of historical pageants for cities and towns in the early 20th century. The Pageant of London was devised as a similar pageant for the history of London, but was affected by its association with the Festival of Empire, and Frank Lascalles the Pageant Master who came to be known for his Pageants of Empire.

Description

Map of the Festival of Empire, with the site of the Pageant of Empire on the left

The pageant served as an attraction for the festival, as well as a celebration of the "magnificence, glory and honour of the Empire and the Mother Country". It involved scenes representing the history of Britain, with specially modelled sets provided by prominent architects such as Edward Poynter and Aston Webb. Advertised as "2,000 years of History Visualised", it covered British history from pre-Roman times up to the present day. The festival opened on the 12th of may with the first performance held on the 8th of June. They were originally intended to finish in July, but were continued due to their popularity and ran until the 2nd of September.

Music

The accompanying music was directed by W. H. Bell, with a number of prolific composers of the day contributing. Music was provided for the pageant by composers including Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst, Frank Bridge, Cecil Forsyth, Henry Balfour Gardiner, Edward German, John Blackwood McEwen and Haydn Wood. Many of the composers were of a newer generation of British musicians, and a number focused on patriotic music which was noted by an observer to have only recently come to such popularity.

Programme

The pageant was held where the Concert Bowl now stands in Crystal Palace Park. It involved four parts each run on a separate day. The first three parts drew on volunteer actors from all the boroughs of London, with the total number of costumed actors numbering 15,000. The fourth part was dedicated to the connection of London with the rest of the British Empire. The final scene, the Masque Imperial, was "An Allegory of the Advantages of Empire" and represented a climax of the entire pageant. In it, the Genius of the World addresses Britannia and describing her duty to the Empire and the world. Britannia is then declared worthy of celebration by the "Pageant of the Gain of Empire" where the performers of all parts process into the Temple. The Masque was scripted by Francis H. Markoe and the music composed by Frederick Corder. Corder provided a version of Rule, Britannia! to the Pageant of the Gain of Empire.

Scene list:

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

See also

References

  1. 1 2 "The Pageant of London". historicalpageants.ac.uk. Retrieved 2026-10-27.
  2. ↑ "Frank Lascelles". Oxfordshire Blue Plaques Scheme. Oxfordshire Blue Plaques Board.
  3. ↑ Withington, Robert (1918–20). English pageantry; an historical outline. University of California Libraries. Cambridge, Harvard University Press; [etc., etc.] pp. 194–234.
  4. 1 2 3 4 Richards, Jeffrey (2017). Imperialism and music: Britain, 1876-1953. Studies in imperialism (MSI ed.). Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press. pp. 177–210. ISBN 978-0-7190-4506-6.
  5. ↑ Bartie, A., L. Fleming, M. Freeman, T. Hulme, P. Readman, and C. Tupman. The Redress of the Past: Historical Pageants in Twentieth-Century England. 2016.
  6. ↑ Deborah, Sugg Ryan. , "'Pageantitis': Frank Lascelles' 1907 Oxford Historical Pageant, Visual Spectacle and Popular Memory," Visual Culture in Britain 8, no. 2 (2007): 63-82.
  7. 1 2 Piggott, Jan (2012-05-24). "Lascelles, Frank William Thomas Charles Christian Culpeper (1875–1934), pageant master". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/56784. ISBN 978-0-19-861412-8. Retrieved 2026-10-27. (Subscription, Wikipedia Library access or UK public library membership required.)
  8. ↑ Piggott, J.R. (1988). Palace of the People: The Crystal Palace at Sydenham 1854 – 1936. London: Hurst & Company. p. 177.
  9. ↑ Festival of Empire, The Pageant of London Guide, Imperial Exhibition and Pageant of London, Crystal Palace, 1911, official daily programme. London: Bemrose and Sons Ltd. 1911.
  10. ↑ Readman, Paul (2005). "The Place of the Past in English Culture c. 1890-1914". Past & Present (186). [Oxford University Press, The Past and Present Society]: 147–199. doi:10.1093/pastj/gti008. ISSN 0031-2746. JSTOR 3600854.
  11. ↑ Hindmarsh, Paul (1982). Frank Bridge: A Thematic Catalogue, 1900–1941. London: Faber Music. pp. 69–70.
  12. ↑ "Crystal Palace Park". www.cocgb.dircon.co.uk. Archived from the original on 2016-09-24. Retrieved 2026-10-27.
  13. ↑ Ryanc, Deborah S. (2017-03-01), Driver, Felix; Gilbert, David (eds.), "Staging the imperial city: The Pageant of London, 1911", Imperial cities, Manchester University Press, doi:10.7765/9781526117960.00015, ISBN 978-1-5261-1796-0, retrieved 2026-10-27{{citation}}: CS1 maint: work parameter with ISBN (link)

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