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LIVING PICTURES AND PEEP SHOWS 15
traveling companies known as "repertoire troupes" toured the county seats and larger towns, appearing in "opera houses" and halls that were usually dark except for their sporadic visits. Ten, twenty, and thirty cents became generally standardized as their admittance fees, and the "rep troupes" acquired the nickname of "ten-twent-thirts."
The great public that existed beyond all theater doors received scant attention either from dramatists and managers who looked to the intellectual, or at least the sophisticated and well-to-do classes for patronage, or from the amusement purveyors who catered to those enjoying the frivolity of vaudeville or girl-andmusic shows. Operas and plays were produced to please the elect who were to pay for them, and variety programs and light musical concoctions for the gayety-seekers who deplored a lack of tunefulness in grand opera and avoided the intellectual labor demanded by classical dramas and many of the "problem plays" endorsed by the intelligentsia between 1890 and 1910.
The moral views of very large sections of the American populace and the clerical ban upon theater-going were concentrated almost entirely on the subject of sex, although the portrayal of gambling and drinking and other vices was regarded as objectionable. Discussions of sex and exposures of feminine limbs were distinctly taboo, and for women and girls to appear on the stage in low-necked evening gowns was accepted in most homes as prima facie evidence of "looseness," to use one of the mildest phrases of the period. Stage girls presenting themselves in tights were past redemption; one-piece bathing suits were unknown either in the theater or on the beaches; even ballet dancers and chorus girls wore corsets almost as stiff as armor-plate.
However, so insistent was the hunger for entertainment and the desire for the delights of play-acting, that as the nineteenth century drew to a close more and more young people, broaderminded and more daring than their forebears, crept through the barriers erected by religious prejudice and enjoyed for themselves the plays presented by repertoire troupes. "Uncle Tom's Cabin," accepted as an exception to the evils of the stage, was a