Box (theatre)

“ The vast boxes are divided by partitions which slope down from the wall to the front of the box, so enabling one to have a good view of the persons seated on the front row; consequently, the theatre looks like a great gallery, and so acquires an air of lightness which makes it very beautiful to look upon. ”

“ These boxes, like those of a typical Japanese theatre, do not contain chairs, but are floored with thick straw mats on which are cushions for the occupants to squat on. The only division between the boxes is a railing about a foot high. Above the main floor are two galleries running all the way around the building. The Imperial box is in the first gallery. People in the galleries sit in chairs, in front of which are narrow shelf-like tables from which luncheon may be eaten—for wrestling matches, like the old-style theatrical performances, last practically all day. ”

“ Box′-keep′er, an attendant who opens the doors of boxes at theatres or other places of public amusement; Box′-lobb′y, the lobby leading to the boxes in a theatre; Box′wood, wood of the box-tree.—In the wrong box, in a false position, in a scrape.—To be in a box, to be in a fix; To box Harry, to take a beefsteak, mutton-chop, or bacon and eggs with tea or ale, instead of the regulation dinner of the commercial traveller; To box the compass, to name the 32 points in their order and backwards, hence to make a complete roundabout in any opinion. ”

“ When a box has been taken, let the tickets be sent to all the persons who are to have seats in it, and not retained by the taker of the box till the whole party has assembled at the door of the theatre. ”

“ Those who have gone into the private boxes once and find the girls obliging enough to sit on their knees and ask them to treat will go there again if they can possibly get the fifty cents that is asked as an admission fee.
Sometimes a party of really Christian men unfamiliar with city ways will get into a variety dive by mistake, and what is more, into the boxes. The glaring sign over the front of the house which simply announces that the place is a theatre attracts them to the box-office. ”

“ A small stage limits the choice of plays considerably.
A pretty and useful theatre can be made thus. Get a wooden box 83⁄4 inches wide, about 1 foot long and 21⁄4 inches deep. (The theatre described in this chapter was made from a wooden box containing Fry's Nut Milk Chocolate—this box is exactly the right size.) This box forms the basis of the platform; stand it bottom upward, nail to the back of it a piece of wood, G H C D, which is 1 foot square (see Fig. 548) . The platform, A B L M, is a piece of stiff cardboard or wood, A B is length of box, L M is 2 feet. ”

“ In the pit, it is worth mentioning that each visitor has his stall, which he reaches easily and comfortably by passages formed down the centre and round the theatre. The boxes nearly all contain ten persons, and are separated from each other by light colonnades and partitions. To each box is attached a room, to which people withdraw between the acts, and, instead of the balconies which in our theatres conceal a great part of the ladies' toilets, the boxes have only a ledge a few inches in height, which allows the splendid dresses of the audience to be fully admired. ”

“ The theatre-goer takes a check for his shoes, and racks hanging full of wooden clogs are the ornaments of the foyer. Within the building are booths for the sale of fruits, tea, sweets, tobacco, toys, hair-pins, photographs of the stars, and other notions, so that a box-party need not leave the house in pursuit of any creature comforts. ”

“ And high in Heaven, in the first row of the boxes, sit the dear little angels, and keep their lorgnettes on us comedians here down below, and the blessed Lord himself sits seriously in his great box, and, perhaps, finds it dull, or calculates that this theatre cannot be kept up much longer because this one gets too high a salary, and that one too little, and that they all play much too badly. ”

“ In most of the countries of southern Europe, and in all their old colonial possessions, the theatre is one of the necessaries of life, and a box is as indispensable as a dwelling. It forms a neutral ground upon which all can meet without the requirements of a forced hospitality, and consequently it affords all the pleasures of general society without the necessity of expensive entertainment. ”

“ At eight o'clock in the inner vestibule of the Auditorium Theatre by the window of the box office, Laura Dearborn, her younger sister Page, and their aunt—Aunt Wess'—were still waiting for the rest of the theatre-party to appear. ”

“ The butchers, the bakers, the candlestick makers, the milliners, the druggists, the jewelers, the stationers, the grocers, and the dry goods firms, as well as all the others, are constantly sending boxes to your home. The shoe stores, and the book stores, and the toy stores, and ever so many others, are throwing boxes away just because nobody seems to realize what magic there lies in them for the children.
When Happy Thought, Nimblefingers, and Play first told me about boxcraft, I did not find any trouble in securing the kind of box that I needed for the toy-making. ”

“ You turned the box round swiftly five or six times; the wonderful unsolved machinery worked, and Leotard swung and leapt, backwards, forwards, now astride the bar, now flying free; iron-jointed, supple-sinewed, unceasingly novel in his invention of new, unguessable attitudes; while above, below, and around him, a richly-dressed audience, painted in skilful perspective of stalls, boxes, dress-circle, and gallery, watched the thrilling performance with a stolidity which seemed to mark them out as made in Germany. ”

“ New Yorkers of highest fashion almost never occupy a box at the theater. At the opera the world of fashion is to be seen in the parterre boxes (not the first tier) , and in boxes at some of the horse shows and at many public charity balls and entertainments, but those in boxes at the theater are usually "strangers" or "outsiders." ”

“ A box by the year is downright slavery; it puts you on exhibition and makes a chaperone a necessity. There are some small pleasures which the bourgeois indulge in at small expense and without inconvenient display. To-day, for instance, I am to take my wife to the Comédie-Française. We have hired a closed box on the ground floor."
"Ah! what a pleasure it must be to go there! You are not seen at all, are you? You enjoy the play, you can laugh or cry without being hooted by the gallery. Have you a place for me, Monsieur Thierry?"
"I have two; I intended to offer one to my aunt." ”

“ In order still further to heighten the effect of the trick, the handkerchief is sometimes caused to reappear in the innermost of a nest of boxes which has throughout the entertainment been hung up in full view of the audience, and the outermost of which is carefully corded and sealed. The performer in this case, after firing at the supposed box (for the audience are, of course, ignorant that there are more than one) , directs his assistant to take it down from its elevated position, and to place it on the table. ”

“ Mark yonder, that roomy box on the grand tier, which a quiet, plainly-dressed party has just entered. There is a matronly lady in black, with a few bugle ornaments in her coiffure. She ensconces herself in a corner, her back towards the audience, screens herself with a curtain, and then calmly proceeds to take a review of the front rows of the stalls, and the occupants of the proscenium boxes. It is not considered etiquette to take more than a cursory glimpse of the matronly lady in black through your opera-glass. ”

“ Many ingenious contrivances are now used in the form of changing boxes—as they are called—by which plates may easily be transferred to the camera without danger of exposing them to any accidental gleam of light. The jealousy with which a tourist naturally guards his treasured dry plates has more than once roused the suspicions of the acute Custom-house officer, who, in his zeal for the welfare of the revenue, has unwittingly spoilt the produce of many days' careful work, by insisting upon opening the strange-looking box! ”

“ With59 prominent citizens, or other people who like to keep their attendance at the music hall a secret, this is an advantage not to be denied. Occupants of stage boxes, far from being denied the privileges of quenching their thirst, are granted every facility for so doing. There is a neat table in the rear of the box and an obsequious waiter stands steadily at the door ready to minister to the wants of patrons. ”

“ No one can dispute that the best theater seats are those in the center of the orchestra. A box in these days of hatlessness has nothing to recommend it except that the people can sit in a group and gentlemen can go out between the acts easily, but these advantages hardly make up for the disadvantage to four or at least three out of the six box occupants who see scarcely a slice of the stage. ”

“ He sent his servant to secure one of the two stage-boxes on the grand tier.—And this is another strange feature of Paris. Whenever success, on feet of clay, fills a house, there is always a stage-box to be had ten minutes before the curtain rises. The managers keep it for themselves, unless it happens to be taken for a passion a la Nucingen. This box, like Chevet's dainties, is a tax levied on the whims of the Parisian Olympus. ”

“ Mrs. Jeep owned one; Keziah and Patty Ingles the between-maid shared another. One was a spare room for chance servant visitors, and the end one over Pamela's and Hughie's rooms was what is called a "box" room. Here was "luggage"--big, old-fashioned trunks, leather portmanteaux, large hat boxes. Neat piles of cardboard boxes--the sort that drapers and dressmakers send out--all sizes, and tidy stacks of brown paper--sacking--cords--all the odds and ends necessary for packing of any kind. ”

“ It is quite permissible, if the occupant of a stage box desires, to send the waiter around behind the scenes to inquire whether this or that fair actress will not deign to imbibe something at your expense, an attention which she duly acknowledges by stepping daintily up beneath the box and, as she quaffs the soothing beverage, nodding her thanks to the donor. A spirit of good nature prevails throughout the entire performance and when it is all over nobody has been hurt very much by his contact with this strange element of life in a great city. ”

“ On levée days and drawing-rooms the fashionable world went to the Opera in their Court dresses, feathers, and diamonds, and all—a very moving spectacle. Those who only took a box in order to keep up appearances, and because it was necessary for one in society to have a box, used to sell seats—commonly called bones, because a round numbered bone was the ticket of admission—to their friends ”

“ John took a box at the opera. There is some sense in taking a box at the opera when you owe two quarters of your rent of thirty pounds a year. To have a box all the year round with your visiting-card pinned to the door, that is needless, unforgiveable extravagance, for it does not then belong to you, but to your friends.
When John took the stage-box on the third tier, it was bread and butter, dinners and teas, that he laid down in payment for the little slip of paper. ”

“ A figure is seen habited as a Turk, and seated, with its legs crossed, at a large box apparently of maple wood, which serves it as a table. The exhibiter will, if requested, roll the machine to any portion of the room, suffer it to remain altogether on any designated spot, or even shift its location repeatedly during the progress of a game. The bottom of the box is elevated considerably above the floor by means of the castors or brazen rollers on which it moves, a clear view of the surface immediately beneath the Automaton being thus afforded to the spectators. ”

“ Box Five is just like all the other grand tier boxes. There is nothing to distinguish it from any of the others. M. Moncharmin and M. Richard, ostensibly highly amused and laughing at each other, moved the furniture of the box, lifted the cloths and the chairs and particularly examined the arm-chair in which "the man's voice" used to sit. But they saw that it was a respectable arm-chair, with no magic about it. Altogether, the box was the most ordinary box in the world, with its red hangings, its chairs, its carpet and its ledge covered in red velvet. ”

“ Behind the pit and under the lower tier of boxes is an area for the lower classes of men; the gallery is the part appropriated to women of the lowest order. The Viceroy's box was on the left side of the stage, and the nearest to it: thus his Excellency gave his right side to no one; it was neatly fitted up, with a crimson velvet canopy over it, and hangings of the same colour on the outside, with a state chair, and others for his family, gentlemen in waiting, and pages. The box for the cabildo is in the centre, in the front of the stage. ”

“ The room is lit by a lamp, and at first sight presents no sinister aspect unless it comes from four boxes nailed against the walls some five or six feet from the floor. In appearance they are not dissimilar to large grocery boxes, but it is disquieting to note that one of them has been [42] mended with the board we saw lately in MR. BODIE’S studio. When our POLICEMAN comes, as come we may be sure he will, the test of his acumen will be his box action.
The persons in the room at present have either no acumen or are familiar with the boxes. ”

“ Inside the store, a long hat-pin box makes a counter. Flowers, leaves, pretty pebbles, shells, and little toys such as you may find among your own playthings may be displayed upon the counter.
A roly-poly tumble toy will make a clerk for the store, or, if you like, you may find both clerk and customers in magazine pictures, and you can mount them on thin cardboard and cut them out. There is no end to the plays you can invent when your store is finished. Polly Ann of shoe-box cottage, Boxville, has just come to the store to buy a loaf of bread. ”