"How Long Has This Been Going On?"
During the 19th Century, the theatre was still viewed by most of Western civilization as a collection of undesirables. Hotels and boarding houses would reassure potential guests with billboards announcing "We Don't Let To Theatricals!" In the world of extremes that was and is the theatre, eccentrics and social outcasts have always had a natural home. Gays of the 1800's would have had something resembling a safe haven in theatre. In a business where actress Sarah Bernhardt blithely announced that she slept in a coffin, no one really cared if a supporting actor was "that way," or if a dresser twinkled with admiration as he assisted the leading man into a costume.

Even though there is no known documentation of a visible homosexual presence in variety or minstrelsy, it is reasonable to suggest that a closeted element existed in these early forms of musical theatre. If contemporary gays can survive in the military and the church, their predecessors could certainly have contended with the indignities of heavy makeup, lousy acoustics and rowdy audiences. (Hmmm . . . sounds like Wigstock.)

"The Overture Is About To Start"
Did you know that the Broadway musical and the term "homosexuality" were invented almost simultaneously? A coincidence, but one that theatre queens can delight in.

The year after The Black Crook took New York by storm, Germany's Karl Ulrichs became the first person in modern times to publicly announce an attraction to his own sex (he called it "urning"). Months later, in 1867, German-Hungarian sexologist Karl Maria Kertbeny introduced the word "homosexuality" in an anonymously published pamphlet. Many were scandalized, but others saw this as the first ray of light in the intellectual darkness

Gilbert & Sullivan
Continental operettas inspired the British, whose musical theatre had been as rough and tumble as its American counterpart. Beginning in the 1870's, lyricist William Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan perfected English operetta, making it wittier and more inventive than the continental version had ever hoped to be. Although marketed as "comic operas," they were musicals. The remarkable G&S collection included H.M.S. Pinafore (1878) The Mikado (1885), Pirates Of Penzance (1880) and The Gondoliers (1889). In their popular hit Patience (1881), Gilbert and Sullivan gave us the first flaming lead character in a musical; Reginald Bunthorne.

Bunthorne was a biting spoof of the sexually ambiguous aesthetes (Oscar Wilde, James Whistler, etc.) who scandalized Victorian society. This humorous fop appeared on stage in a dark velvet suit, with outrageous hair and a lily clutched in his limp-wristed hand. The mincing walk, the flailing wrists, the simpering expression. To placate Victorian sensibilities, Bunthorne pursues women, even though he's more of a lady than his amorous targets. In the carefully worded "Am I Alone And Unobserved," Bunthorne confesses the motivation for his aesthetic pretensions --

And everyone will say
As you walk your flowery way
If he's content
With a vegetable love
That would certainly not suit me,
Why, what a most particularly
Pure young man
This pure young man must be.

When Bunthorne is spurned by the women who once worshipped him, he is content to cling to the only dependable things in his life -- his affectations and a limp lily. Straight or gay, Bunthorne is the most outrageous male character the mainstream musical stage would see until La Cage Aux Folles (Herman 1983). According to The Alyson Almanac (New York: Alyson Publications, 1990), Sullivan "made no secret of his homosexuality." But I must note that in my decades of research, I have not found any evidence to back this claim.

Gays of a certain class were a visible presence in some Victorian audiences. We have documentation of a recognizable claque of musical theatre queens at one of Gilbert and Sullivan's gala opening nights. The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News described the following scene in "the pit" (to Americans: the front orchestra seats) at the 1884 London premiere of Gilbert and Sullivan's Princess Ida, –

The young men were all excitement, and greedily looked out at the arrivals in the stalls . . . Each young man was armed with a large pair of opera glasses, in some cases rising to the proportions of telescopes lashed together. These were leveled all round with eager competition to criticize the poor wretches in the stalls; and certainly where the young men gain their various and curious experiences and information from is a mystery to me, but they gabbled away until Sir Arthur took his seat in the orchestra, and then they settled down for the night's business, where we will leave them.

Gays and Broadway
The American musical comedy was thriving by the 1880s. Harrigan and Hart's musical farces were distinctly American in their sound and point of view – one which saw minority groups fighting like hell but always resolving things in the end. Where were the queens? The sad answer is that we are not sure. The theatrical veterans of this era were gone before public discussion of homosexuality was possible.

In Gay New York (New York: Basic Books, 1994), George Chauncey documents the long-ignored story of New York City's homosexual community before World War Two. He confirms that there were stirrings of a visible homosexual presence in the late 19th Century, but these were always soon suppressed due to unrelenting public outrage. Mainstream society could accept the existence of prostitution, grinding poverty and blatant political corruption, but it did not tolerate "deviant" lifestyles. Outside of a few scattered "bohemian" enclaves, homosexuals were forced to remain invisible. That situation would soon change.