Episode 41.
Throwing Flowers at Performers (Part 2)

Question:

Key Points:

• We did an overview of Part 1 of how throwing flowers at performers started
• Throwing "something" at performers started a long, long, long time ago when performers wanted people to throw money at them
• The Victorian Age is named after Queen Victoria, who ruled from 1837-1901.
• In the Victorian Era, people became obsessed with flowers, to the point that they invented florography, which is assigning meaning to different flowers. e.g. chrysanthemums meant friendship, hydrangeas meant heartless, delphinium meant hauty, aster meant daintyness, and roses meant love
• Different colors of flowers had different meanings as well and red meant love
• In the Victorian Era, flowers had value, so performers would accept flowers as a gift of value; sort of like accepting money but not exactly the same
• The Victorian Era was also a time when language was much less emotional, e.g. instead of "I'm so happy to see you", they would say, "You could possibly come over and that would be acceptable."
• The highest type of performance in the Victorian Era was ballet. So, throwing/accepting roses began in ballet. It is still normal today for a ballarina to accept flowers at the end of a performance
• Throwing flowers is essentially a hold over from this Victorian practice