There was no generic audience for English melodrama. Audiences varied by theatre and changed as the nineteenth century progressed; their social background ranged from royalty to the working classes. Melodrama provided emotional and visceral thrills for its audiences, but also enabled them to negotiate with modernity and the many problems it engendered. Despite its entertainment value, it did not instil passivity among its spectators. In London it attracted audiences to the West End, East End and to theatres south of the Thames, while it was also very popular in the provinces. Certain theatres were particularly associated with melodrama, such as Drury Lane and the Adelphi theatres in London’s West End in the latter years of the nineteenth century. The Surrey in south London and the Pavilion in east London were particularly renowned for nautical drama, while the Adelphi Theatre was associated with Boucicault’s sensation melodramas in the early 1860s. Although contemporary journalists tended to describe melodrama audiences in very formulaic ways, we should be wary of their constructions. Melodrama audiences were diverse and reacted to the genre in very different ways.