Audiobook · read by volunteers
Stage Land
Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927)
Read by David Muncaster · 14 chapters · 1 h 54
About the book
The hero is always noble, the villain always wicked and the comic man always comic: Jerome K. Jerome pokes affectionate fun at the stage conventions of his day. In these fourteen short essays, he describes the curious inhabitants of Stage Land, from the hero and the villain to the heroine and beyond, and shows how their habits bear no relation to life as we know it. Each chapter takes one stock character and examines his habits with a straight face. The humour is light, quick and full of recognisable types, and the book is dedicated to the earnest student of drama, that respectable but unnecessarily retiring person. About an hour and fifty minutes, read by one LibriVox volunteer. A treat for theatre lovers and for admirers of the author of Three Men in a Boat.
Introduction
Jerome Klapka Jerome, who lived from 1859 to 1927, was an English writer and humorist. He is best known for Three Men in a Boat, published in 1889, and he began his career as a clerk and then an actor and journalist, which gave him a good knowledge of the theatre he later mocked.
Stage Land, published in 1890, is a comic look at the curious habits and customs of the inhabitants of that country. Each of its chapters takes a familiar type from the melodramas of the day, among them the hero, the villain and the heroine, and describes how that character behaves on the stage and how unlike real people those behaviours are. The book is dedicated to that highly respectable but unnecessarily retiring individual, of whom we hear so much but see so little, the earnest student of drama.
The collection is classed as essays and short works, humour and literary criticism. It belongs to a long line of affectionate satire of the theatre, and many of its jokes still work because the types it mocks, though rooted in the late nineteenth-century stage, live on in films and television. Some references will be unfamiliar to modern listeners, but the comic idea is easy to grasp.
The recording has fourteen parts and is read by a single LibriVox volunteer. It lasts about one hour and fifty minutes. Today it is worth hearing for its light touch, its sharp observation and as a reminder that the clichés of popular entertainment have been mocked for as long as they have existed.
Public domain
Jerome K. Jerome died in 1927: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text