Staging Modern Monarchs. Royalty at the World Exhibitions of 1851 and 1867

In 1792 Thomas Paine compared the monarchy with something kept behind a curtain, ‘about which there is a great deal of bustle and fuss, and a wonderful air of seeming solemnity; but when, by any accident, the curtain happens to be open—and the company see what it is, they burst into laughter.’ According to Paine, a passionate republican who was involved in the American Revolution, nothing of this could happen in the representative system of government. Like the nation itself, this kind of government ‘presents itself on the open theatre of the world in a fair and manly manner’. Whatever ‘its excellences or defects, they would be visible to all’, he argued. ‘It exists not by fraud and mystery; it deals not in cant and sophistry; but inspires a language that, passing from heart to heart, is felt and understood.’1 Paine fiercely rejected the hereditary system of the monarchy, ‘a silly and contemptible thing’, and its lack of rationality; he accused monarchs and their adherents of deceiving the public by impressing their imaginations with spectacle and pedigree.
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