[PLAYBILL] Thespians. St. George’s Hall, 8 Sept[embe]r. 1880. Our Wife … Patient Penelope.

[Perth, WA : s.n.], 1880. Broadsheet, 210 x 145 mm, lithograph-printed in violet recto only, on cheap white paper, with two vignette illustrations; some light foxing and creasing, else good condition.

Perth playbill for two theatrical pieces; the characters in each play are listed in French and Classical Greek, respectively (the names of the performers are not listed).

A rare ephemeral printing dating from a time before there was any homegrown professional theatre in Western Australia (the first purpose-built professional theatre in Perth, the Theatre Royal, did not open until 1897).

Provenance: UK trade, ex UK private collection. Originally contained in a nineteenth-century commonplace album which was almost certainly compiled by a British immigrant to Western Australia in the 1870s-80s, possibly Mrs. Elizabeth Wilkinson (Clarke) (1844-1929), wife of Captain George Faulkner Wilkinson (1837-1884).