Literature / Stage-Land

Stage-Land by Jerome K. Jerome (most famous for Three Men in a Boat) can be best described as a Victorian version of TV Tropes. It's an extremely snarky overview of the character types in Victorian stage plays and the Idiot Plot they are usually involved in.

The work is in the public domain and can be found at Project Gutenberg.

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Stage-Land contains examples of:

• Aesop Amnesia: The Villain never learns anything from his previous inevitable defeats and continues with the same machinations over and over again.
• Affably Evil: The evil Comic Man is so genial and lighthearted in his villainy that it's impossible to really hate him.
• Always Lawful Good: The Irishman and the Irish Servant-Girl are always good.
• Arbitrarily Large Bank Account: In Stage-Land, it's considered good manners to tip someone with your entire purse. Only the bad guys use mere sovereigns for their tips.
• Arcadia: The Peasants are all clean, youthful, peaceful and happy. The narrator calls them "sylph-like" and "child-like".
• Artistic License – Geography: In-Universe. There isn't another soul to be seen in the streets when the residents of Stage-Land go there, even if the street is in the center of London and it's noon in summer. In a particularly egregious example, the Hero goes to Trafalgar Square when he wants to be alone, and the Lawyer arranges meetings there when he wants to discuss some particularly delicate matter.
• Artistic License – Ships:
  • Sailing looks weird because the waves randomly appear on different sides of the ship.
  • In a lifeboat, only one character would row, using a single scull for that.
• The Baby of the Bunch: Everyone in Stage-Land dotes on the Child and showers the latter with affection.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension:
  • The Comic Man keeps quarrelling with his wife or girlfriend all the time, but both of them enjoy it.
  • The Comic Lovers (not to be confused with the Comic Man) take it up to eleven. The narrator says that "they are more than rude — they are abusive".
• Blaming the Victim: Among the few clear Stage-Land laws is the fact that if someone's name is forged on a check, then the one whose name was forged is sentenced to ten years' penal servitude.
• Born Unlucky: The Heroine's life consists of nothing but problems. It seems to be In the Blood, because her father, the Good Old Man, is chronically unlucky too and either dies naturally or is murdered by the end of the first act.
• Butt-Monkey: The Villain is always on the receiving end of jokes and insults or gets beaten up, and he can never defend himself properly.
• Captain Obvious: When the Lawyer talks to his client, he starts by saying "You had a father. You had a mother, too, if I am informed correctly". The client is astonished by the Lawyer's knowledge.
• Card-Carrying Villain: For the Villain, doing evil is a reward in itself (since he gets no other profits from his villainy, really), and he proudly admits it.
• Character Catchphrase: The Lawyer's favorite phrase is "Ah!"
• Damned by Faint Praise:
  • After a whole chapter of describing how Unintentionally Unsympathetic the Comic Man appears In-Universe, the narrator concludes it with:
    Still, with all his faults we like the comic man. He is not always in trouble and he does not make long speeches.
  • The narrator explains that the Detective would be an ordinary man outside of Stage-Land, but he appears a genius compared to the rest of Stage-Land's residents.
• Damsel Scrappy: In-Universe. The narrator is extremely annoyed by how the Hero and the Heroine are incapable of solving their own problems, and among the female characters, prefers the Adventuress who "can do something to help herself besides calling for 'George.'".
• Defiled Forever: Sometimes, the village clergyman's daughter used to be in love with the Villain — before he refused to marry her after having her as a mistress for a while.
• Dirty Cop: The Policeman, unlike the Detective, is on the Villain's side.
• Dress-Coded for Your Convenience: The Villain always wears a clean collar. The narrator lampshades that it's a good thing such rules don't hold up in real life.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: The inconvenient husband dies suddenly in the final act for no discernible reason.
• Easily-Overheard Conversation: Villainous characters, when they don't outright reveal their plans to the disguised Detective, discuss their villainy very loudly in public gardens.
• Empathic Environment:
  • The moon always shines on the Hero and the Heroine, occasionally on the Comic Man, and never on the Villain.
  • If the Heroine is outdoors, she will be caught in a snowstorm that will follow her around the stage, even if the other end of the stage is completely dry.
  • If a ship is capsizing, it's surrounded by unending thunder and lightning.
• Foe Yay Shipping: In-Universe. The narrator says that the best course of action for the Heroine would be to get rid of the Hero and marry the Villain, and for the Hero to marry the Adventuress.
• Good Is Dumb: The Hero is always fantastically stupid and gullible, an easy prey to the Villain's machinations.
• Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: The Villain and the Adventuress smoke cigarettes, which shows that they're the antagonists.
  A cigarette on the stage is always the badge of infamy.
• Happy Ending Override: The narrator muses that, knowing the Hero's lack of common sense, he will quickly lose his estate again after it's returned to him in the finale.
• Hate at First Sight: The Heroine has loathed the Villain from the first moment she saw him.
• Have a Gay Old Time: There is a lot of "love-making" going on in Stage-Land, but this lovely detail about the Hero stands out in particular^note It, of course, simply means that he confesses his love to the heroine while embracing her from behind:
  The hero has his own way of making love. He always does it from behind.
• Heel–Face Turn: If the Comic Man is evil, he changes his ways at the last moment, turns on the Villain, and is Easily Forgiven.
• Hollywood Economics: In-Universe. The Comic Man manages to make a living somehow despite giving away all the goods in his shop for free.
• Hollywood Law: The narrator has offered a reward of fifty to sixty thousand pounds to anyone who could explain the workings of stage law to them. The reward remains unclaimed to this day. There are a few points that do seem clear, such as that Tear Up the Contract works.
• Iconic Outfit: The Hero always, and we mean always, wears patent-leather boots which are always spotlessly clean.
• Informed Poverty: The Adventuress dresses extremely well, despite always complaining about being "stone broke".
• Innocent Awkward Question: The Child's main function is to innocently ask unsettling questions: for example, they asks their mama about where their papa is, when both the characters and the audience are aware that the latter is doing hard labor or on death row, or a heartbroken girl about why she doesn't get married.
• Kangaroo Court:
  • The evidence of one Obviously Evil witness is enough to get someone convicted (and a testimony from the less evil but just as unreliable Comic Man is enough to get the conviction lifted, even years later).
  • The trials take place in the parlor of the victim's house, with the Villain acting as judge, jury, and counsel at the same time.
• Kiddie Kid: The Comic Lovers are supposed to be around sixteen but act like seven-year-olds.
• Love at First Sight: The Villain has been in love with the Heroine ever since setting his eyes on her.
• Love Makes You Evil: The Villain's Mad Love for the heroine is what motivates him to commit every crime in the book.
• Mirror Character: The narrator strongly suspects that the Good Old Man is the previous generation's Hero grown old, so similar the two are in their Good Is Dumb nature.
• Mood Whiplash: The Lawyer always chooses to arrive during some cheerful and happy scene and announce that his client has lost all his fortune.
• Mr. Exposition: In Stage-Land, telling their life story to strangers is a common habit of the characters.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: The Irishman performs all sorts of magnificent feats such as fighting alone against seventeen opponents, but all of it is done offstage and relayed to the audience via Take Our Word for It.
• Older Than They Look: In Stage-Land, people frequently don't look their age in the slightest, with an eighteen-year-old girl really being an elderly matriarch.
• Oops! I Forgot I Was Married:
  • The husbands of the Adventuress tend to show up unexpectedly in the finale to foil her plans of winning over the Hero.
  • The Hero can likewise have a wife that he had married years ago and forgotten about.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Donning a cloak and a hat is enough to get one perfectly disguised in Stage-Land. Only the Detective isn't fooled by it.
• Pining After Protagonist's Parent: The Lawyer was in love with the Heroine's late mother and calls her a sainted woman.
• The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything:
  • The Hero doesn't do any work except hang about and get into trouble.
  • The Peasants never have to do any work and spend their life in merriment and peaceful reflections.
  • The Sailor barely does anything aboard his ship and spends most of the time talking with the captain.
• Platonic Writing, Romantic Reading: In-Universe. The narrator has never met any real pairs of siblings that could be mistaken for lovers; however, in Stage-Land, brothers and sisters are always a lot more affectionate, so a Relative Error is natural.
• Prone to Tears: The Heroine is nearly always crying. As the narrator remarks, she weeps so much over her child in particular that it's strange the child doesn't have rheumatism.
• Purity Sue: In-Universe. The narrator wishes the Heroine would show the many faults she claims to have.
  Her excessive goodness seems somehow to pall upon us.
• Redemption Equals Death: When an antagonist repents, they die immediately.
• Rejection Affection:
  • The Heroine constantly says that she utterly loathes the Villain, which only makes him love her more.
  • When the Comic Man makes love to the servant girls, they slap him, but it doesn't discourage him, quite the contrary.
• Relative Error: If the Heroine has a brother, he inevitably gets mistaken for her lover, and she doesn't point out that error at once so that she can suffer throughout the entire drama.
• Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: Many characters, but especially the Adventuress, are often believed to be dead, only to be revealed as alive and well.
• The Scapegoat: The Hero's "chief aim in life is to be accused of crimes he has never committed".
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: The narrator advises the Villain to go abroad when the last act begins and not return until it's finished, for his own safety.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: The Hero's talent (and hobby) is making very long, very flowery speeches.
• Sorting Algorithm of Mortality: The narrator briefly muses of the chances to die in Stage-Land, with "the young man coming home to see his girl" as the least likely victim and "the inconvenient husband" and the Adventuress as the likeliest ones.
• Stupid Evil: The Villain is the only one who understands stage law, but apart from that, he fits the trope, since he always makes one impractical choice after another and basically prepares his own downfall.
• Strong Family Resemblance: The Heroine has her mother's hair.
• Super-Strength: The Hero's standard minimum in a fight is knocking down three men at once.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • When the narrator tries to aggressively flirt with a maidservant the way he's seen characters do onstage, he is charged with assault and told to write an apology and pay a fifty-pound fine unless he wants the case to be taken to court.
  • When the narrator tries to practice stage "repartee" on his real-life acquaintances, he is likewise brought before the magistrate for using foul language and fined two pounds.
• The Thing That Would Not Leave: When the Comic Man's wife offers lodgings to the Hero and Heroine, they take over the entire house. The Comic Man, however, is aghast at the very suggestion of charging them.
• Took a Level in Cynic: Previously, the Villain used to put a lot more hope in the future, but now his optimism seems to have waned.
• Villainous Crush: The Villain is hopelessly in love with the Heroine and the Adventuress with the Hero.
• What Does He See in Her?:
  • The narrator is rather baffled by the Villain's enduring love for the tearful, whiny Heroine.
  • Likewise, the narrator is mystified about the reasons that induced the Adventuress to marry her undeserving husbands (sic, plural).
• World of Dumbass: The book is entirely devoted to snarking about the nonsensical plots of Victorian theatre and the complete lack of common sense displayed by its stock characters. When the narrator gets to the Detective, he offers the following praise:
  Possibly in real life he would not be deemed anything extraordinary, but by contrast with the average of stage men and women, any one who is not a born fool naturally appears somewhat Machiavellian.
• Younger Than They Look: In Stage-Land, people frequently don't look their age in the slightest, with the fat old gentleman really being a carefree young man.

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