Princess's Theatre

“ It is a pathetic little portrait, but the hard work, the early training and the weary hours resulted in well won, nay almost unique success, and an artistic [46] career that has rejoiced the hearts of her fellow creatures, and will for ever live in the history of the stage.
Charles Kean's memorable management of the Princess's Theatre came to an end in 1859, and with it terminated the engagement of the Terry family. ”

“ The philosopher pointed to Maurice and the girls.
The Princess admired it, and the conversation rippled on. "We are come to trouble your bower with a plea for charity! Every year, the Duchess gives a garden party in her beautiful park at Montjoie for the benefit of the 'Orphans of the Fishermen.' There is a little open-air theatre, where some of the greatest actors have appeared. Little rustic booths, shops where you pay a great deal for nothing at all, and a thousand other distractions. We are come, the Duchess and I, drawn by a very pretty star, Esperance. ”

“ The Royalist, a Comedy; acted at the Duke's Theatre 1682. This play, which is collected chiefly from novels, succeeded on the stage; printed in 4to. 1644.
10. The Injured Princess, or the Fatal Wager; a Tragi-Comedy; acted at the Theatre-Royal 1682. The foundation of this play is taken from Shakespear's Cymbeline.
11. A Common-wealth of Women, a Tragi-Comedy; acted at the Theatre Royal 1686, dedicated to Christopher Duke of Albemarle. This play is chiefly borrowed from Fletcher's Sea Voyage. The scene is in Covent Garden. ”

“ At the same time, a bevy of beautiful ladies, their complexions delicately tinted with white and carmine, escorted by lords, old and young, who led them, not by the arm, nor even by the hand, but by the tips of their fingers, began filing out from the Palace Theatre, taking great care to walk sidewise, in order not to disarrange their hoops. ”

“ They are exceedingly fond of theatricals, and every prince and nobleman, who can afford it, has a theatre of his own. No festival of any kind can be held without theatricals. Their plays are generally some fictitious love tale, or history, and some of the actions of the actresses are most lascivious and vulgar, but perhaps not more so than the exhibitions of the stage in Europe and America to-day. ”

“ I made a low bow and kept at a respectful distance, but the Grand Duke came up to me and asked me to walk with him. Before accepting, I thought it right to inform him who I was. ‘I guessed as much,’ said the Prince. ‘From one or two things that last night escaped you, I made no doubt you were a theatrical manager.’ And by a gesture he renewed his invitation to accompany him. In a long conversation he informed me of his intention to establish a French theatre in his capital, for the performance of comedy, drama, vaudeville, and comic operas. ”

“ But all these amusements pale before the growing delight of play-going. To the allegorical morality play—revived to-day by the Elizabethan Stage Society in the representation of "Everyman"—succeeded historical representations, at first crude, but carried to a triumphant height by Shakspere. When Elizabeth ascended the throne there was no theatre: miscellaneous plays were acted in the courtyards of great inns or other open spaces, on temporary stages standing on four legs and protected by an awning in bad weather. But in 1576 a regular playhouse was established and called The Theatre. ”

“ He seemed to have a special appetite for the ladies of the ballet and stared at them fixedly through his opera-glasses, all the time regretting, doubtless, that he could not carry them away to his harem. I was perfectly dazzled by the aspect of the audience in the brilliantly lighted theatre, which presented a most magnificent sight; the gentlemen in brilliant uniforms and the ladies in beautiful toilets and superb jewels, showed to their greatest advantage. ”

“ The play proceeded, and if the rehearsal had had circumstances peculiarly gratifying to me as an individual, as an amateur of art I could not withhold my warmest approbation from this day's performance. The admirable tact and delicacy of the princess's acting, combined with the utter absence of stage-trick and conventionality, gave an unusual and extraordinary charm to her personation of a part that is by no means easy. The honours of the evening were for her and the count, and with justice, for few of the many German theatres I had visited could boast of such able and tasteful actors. ”

“ We have not in this country any such obstacle to universal success as the Theatre Francais, but Providence has given us, for wise purposes no doubt, Private Theatricals (not always so private as they should be) , which domesticate the drama, and supply the stage with some of the most beautiful and best dressed performers the world has ever seen. Whatever they may say of it, it is a gallant and a susceptible age, and all men bow to loveliness, and all women recognize a talent for clothes. ”

“ The brilliantly colored, fantastically clothed girls leaning against the bare brick wall of the theatre, or whispering together in circles, with their arms close about one another, or reading apart and solitary, or working at some piece of fancy-work as soberly as though they were in a rocking-chair in their own flat, and not leaning against a scene brace, with the glare of the stage and the applause of the house just behind them. ”

“ The theatre itself was not altered, except by the platform occupied by the king; it is sufficiently splendid as it stands; but the stage, whose area is much larger than that of the pit, was hung in rich drapery as a vast tent, and garnished to profusion with flags and arms. Along the sides, on a level with the lower row of boxes, extended galleries of crimson velvet, festooned with flowers. These were filled with ladies, and completed a circle about the house of beauty and magnificence, of which the king and his dazzling suite formed the corona. ”

“ It is difficult at the present day to realise such scenes as that presented by the Imperial Theatre during the performance that evening. The comparative smallness of the interior and dimness of the lights, combined with the incomparable splendour and richness in the appearance of the audience which filled every portion of the theatre, even to the gallery of the servants, with undiminished brilliancy, produced an effect of subdued splendour and of a mystic glow of colour which we should look for in vain in any theatre in Europe now. ”

“ In a smaller matter than this, we show the same want of conformity. We go to a theatre in full dress where the ladies of the place go in bonnets, and to the opera in ulsters and travel-worn hats where the élite are in their diamonds and plumes. ”

“ I must not forget to offer some little description of the opera, where, during my stay, through the politeness of Madame H——, I had free access to a private box.
This spacious and splendid theatre is lighted from above by an immense circular lustre of patent lamps. The form of this brilliant light is in the antique taste, and it is said to have cost two thousand pounds sterling. The effect which it produces in the body of the theatre, and upon the scenery, is admirable. It prevents the sight from being divided, and distracted by girandoles. ”

“ It appears, that our ancient theatres were little better than barns, while those of the present day may vie with palaces in extent, splendour, and decoration; and nothing can more strongly exhibit the contrast between the present age and that of Queen Elizabeth, than the difference in the expense of a London theatre. ”

“ The Queen then said with satisfaction that at last she should see no more red coats in the gallery of Versailles.
From 1775 to 1781 were the gayest years of the Queen’s life. In the little journeys to Choisy, performances frequently took place at the theatre twice in one day: grand opera and French or Italian comedy at the usual hour; and at eleven at night they returned to the theatre for parodies in which the best actors of the Opera presented themselves in whimsical parts and costumes. The celebrated dancer Guimard always took the leading characters in the latter performance ”

“ The million toilers from mine, and factory, and workshop, and loom, and office, and field, share with their more wealthy neighbours the feast of reason and imagination spread out in the Crystal Palace.
It is strange indeed to see so many nations assembled and represented on one spot of British ground. In short, it is one great theatre, with thousands of performers, each playing his own part. ”

“ In the common theatre the guests are at home, where the politer forms of good breeding are not so nicely regarded. Every one there falls to, and likes or finds fault, according to his natural taste or appetite. At Court, where the Prince gives the treat and honours the table with his own presence, the audience is under the restraint of a circle where laughter or applause raised higher than a whisper would be stared at. At a public play they are both let loose, even till the actor is sometimes pleased with his not being able to be heard for the clamour of them. ”

“ Even the King’s Theatre, we understand, has manifested signs of decrepitude, and ‘palsied eld,’ and stopped,—we do not say its payments, but its performances. Of all the theatres, we should feel the least compassion for the deserted saloons and tattered hangings of the Italian Opera. We should rather indeed see it flourish, as it has long flourished, in splendour and in honour: we do not like ‘to see a void made in the Drama: any ruin on the face of the land.’ But this would touch us the least. ”

“ When the time for the performance drew near, the scene almost baffled description. All the approaches to the Comédie-Française were so blocked with people that the actors themselves could with difficulty persuade their excited patrons to make way for them. An enormous crowd surged round the theatre, forced the doors, and struggled and fought for the best places in the pit. ”

“ It is a peculiarity of her Majesty’s Theatre that whether the “house” be a good one or a bad one, there are always, before the termination of the first act of the opera, some occupants of the pit who are compelled to content themselves with standing-room.
Opinions are divided as to the place in the enceinte of the magnificent theatre where the greatest enjoyment of the performance can be obtained. To some, a box on the grand tier—vast, roomy, with space for six to sit abreast—is considered the superlative of operatic felicity. ”

“ Henceforth the Miracle play was doomed, and hereafter budded forth a new drama, the full blossom thereof culminating in the immortal works of William Shakespeare.
The construction of the open-air stage, where the Miracle plays were exhibited, totally differed from any kind of stage adopted by Europeans for the last three hundred years. The inn-yard performance presents a greater likeness to our present theatre than the primitive shows represented before our ancestors of the Middle Ages compared with the inn-yard performances. ”

“ Although none of them are spoken of very highly, they will, in all probability, succeed in a certain degree; for a piece scarcely ever has a complete fall at the opera. This theatre has so many resources in the decorations, music, and dancing, that a new piece is seldom destitute of something worth seeing. ”

“ Throughout the kingdom there was a growing predilection for theatrical entertainments—it was the national anticipation of a public theatre.
If Elizabeth, a popular sovereign, in 1572 checked the strollers assuming the character of players, two years afterwards, in 1574, she granted a patent to the servants of the Earl of Leicester1 “to exercise the faculty of playing stage-plays, as well for the recreation of our loving subjects, as for our solace and pleasure;” ”

“ Our theatre merely offers the convenient locale for the tempting exhibition of the heterogeneous wares of art manufacture. How incapable is our stage to gather up each branch of art in its highest and most perfect expression—the drama—it shows at once in its division into the two opposing classes, play and opera; whereby the idealizing influence of music is forbidden to the play, and the opera is forestalled of the living heart and lofty purpose of actual drama. ”

“ The actress, as an established element in the theatre, is comparatively modern. The English stage had been a flourishing public institution for something more than a century when, in the first years of the Restoration, veritable women began regularly to replace those lads and beardless men who in Shakespeare’s day enacted stage heroines. ”

“ From the earliest epoch of the stage in England till the theatres were silenced at the outbreak of the Civil War, female characters had invariably been played by men, and during the same brilliant period of our dramatic history there is but one instance of a sovereign witnessing a performance at a public theatre. ”

“ The tenour of this ordinance was strictly enforced; many young and vigorous actors joined the king’s army, in which for the most part they obtained commissions, and others retired on the scanty pittances they had earned, till on the restoration, the theatre burst forth with new effulgence. The play-bill that announced the opening of the new theatre, in Drury-lane, April 8, 1663, has been already printed in the Every-Day Book. ”

“ On the other hand, the stage never offered so many opportunities for bright young women with dramatic talent to make a living as it does at the present time. Every city, both large and small, can boast of its theatre or opera-house, and in many of the large towns throughout the country there are town-halls arranged with a view to accommodate some of the minor theatrical combinations. ”