The great social changes occurring in the early and mid-Victorian period affected the comedy and farce of the time as much as they did the more serious forms of drama, or any kind of artistic expression; this is equally true of the late Victorian and Edwardian periods. Chief among these changes was the vast expansion of urban populations and a substantial growth in audience numbers; the development of a railway system that brought audiences to London and actors and companies to the provinces; the growing sophistication and developing taste of a middle-class audience co-existing with a huge demand for regular entertainment from a much larger working- and lower-middle-class audience. All this contributed to a considerable increase, especially from the 1860s, in the number of theatres in London; the growth of theatres built for touring companies and neighborhood theatres and music halls catering to local populations and local class taste; the extinction by law of the monopoly on “legitimate” drama held by Drury Lane and Covent Garden and the consequent loss of their traditional primacy and importance for the drama and for actors.