More serious is the introduction of another sailor in a hopelessly drunken state and I think that should be cut out — Examiner of Plays

The volume of produced work and the number of venues that existed up and down the country alone say something about the importance and popularity of theatre.

But licenced theatre isn’t the whole picture; there were private clubs where unlicensed work could be seen—George Bernard Shaw's early work got its first airing in these venues—and of course music hall remained well attended.

Not having to get their work past the Lord Chamberlain's office meant they were both freer, not just in relation to the depiction of War-related subjects, but also they could be generally more risqué.

Male impersonators such as Ella Shields, Vesta Tilley and Hetty King enjoyed great success but they would not have been seen outside of a musical hall. Their male counterparts had some crossover with pantomime but not even the likes of Dan Leno crossed over to what might be called 'serious theatre'.

On stage, older or younger actors took the roles of those who had gone to the Front although the Great War Theatre project has also uncovered cases of a woman playing a male role on "the legitimate stage". One, Helen explains is "a melodrama based on true events called Mother's Sailor Boy, set at the Battle of Jutland where 16-year-old First Boy Jack Cornwall stood at his guns whilst everyone around him was shot; it was hugely successful, running for over two years and going all across the country.

"We discovered that Jack was played by a woman because we look at newspaper reviews to see who the actors are. There is nothing in the script so clearly it is not intended and it wasn't commented on which suggests it was quite a standard thing."

At the time of the First World War, the distinction drawn between legitimate theatre and its unlicensed alternatives was one drawn between the highbrow and the lowbrow and, in a society still very much structured along class lines, there was also differentiation by class.

On the audiences of the time, Helen says that, "at this point, there is a distinction between music hall and theatre; they are seen as two different things. There were some people who would go to both but there were certainly others who would only go to the theatre."

With many men at the Front, women were going unchaperoned to the theatre, continuing a trend that had started in the Edwardian period when women were becoming a substantial part of the overall commercial workforce:

Evidence of audiences is really difficult but even more women were going in groups than you would have had before.

And we know, in the London theatres, you would also see a lot of khaki in the audience because the trains that brought home the soldiers were principally coming into Victoria and Waterloo. If you've got a few days, you are going to stay and enjoy yourself in the city.

There are also records of theatres who were giving half-price tickets to soldiers who were in uniform because the theatre could then claim to be doing its duty and you also get theatres giving over performances for wounded soldiers or a particular section of the auditorium given over to the wounded.

This front-of-house patriotism is unsurprising given there was no public- or government-funded theatre at the time. It was not a time to take financial risks and the success of producers such as Oswald Stoll, later to be founder of the Stoll Moss Group and the Royal Variety Performance, depended on bums on seats and, as Helen explained, this is another reason why there aren’t more anti-war or experimental pieces.

Which is not to say there weren’t any. Not all work submitted to the Lord Chamberlain's Office was passed for licence. Copies of Fenner Brockway's 1915 The Devil's Business were seized and destroyed by legal authorities and his second play, The Recruit, was written whilst he was serving two years hard labour for resisting Conscription.

Similarly, the 1916 work by Miles Malleson, Black ‘Ell was not only not performed during the war but was banned under the Defence of Realm Act.