Change of venue

“ This is the space ordinarily known as the ‘yard’, a name which it may fairly be taken to have inherited from the inn-yards, surrounded by galleries and open overhead, in which, in the days before the building of the Theatre in 1576, more or less permanent play-houses had grown up. [1664] Spectators in the yard always stood, and the more unstable psychology of a standing, as compared with a seated, crowd must always be taken into account in estimating the temperament of an Elizabethan audience. ”

“ The great interchange of travel throughout the year from one city to another strengthens the radiating influence of the hotels, while the movement from residences to flats and apartments, concentrates population and augments the power of capital to-attract.
Change is a law of life, and as long as human activity continues to alter the. ”

“ I think, then, it must be taken that the background of a public stage could stand at need, not merely for a single domus, but for a ‘city’. Presumably in such cases the central aperture and the gallery above it were reserved for any house in which interior action was to proceed, and for the others mere doors in the scenic wall were regarded as adequate. I do not find any sixteenth-century play which demands either interior action or action ‘above’ in more than one house. ”

“ This stage may last for years—in some places it has been known to last thirty or forty without any change, beyond the opening of new hotels—and it becomes marked by crowds of people, who go back every year in the character of old boarders, get the best rooms, and are on familiar terms of friendship with the proprietor and the older waiter-girls. ”

“ Life and the world are fine, but not as an abiding place; as an arena—yes, an arena gorgeously curtained with sea and sky, mountains and broad prospects, decorated with all the delicate magnificence of leaf tracery and flower petal and feather, soft fur and the shining wonder of living skin, musical with thunder and the singing of birds; but an arena nevertheless, an arena which offers no seats for idle spectators, in which one must will and do, decide, strike and strike back—and presently pass away. ”

“ The ‘private’ house, roofed and lit, and with its seats arranged in tiers along three sides of a long room, and the ‘public’ house, generally circular, with covered stage and galleries, and a central yard or ‘pit’ open to the day, co-existed for more than half a century, and finally merged in the post-Restoration type [356] of theatre which has come down to our own day. The distinction between ‘private’ and ‘public’ is an unessential one, depending probably upon some difference in the methods of paying for admission necessitated by the regulations of the City or the Privy Council. ”

“ Not the least striking effect of the restoration of the King was the revival of the English theatres. They had been closed and the players silenced for three-and-twenty years, and in that space a new generation had arisen, to whom the entertainments of the stage were known but by name. The theatres were now re-opened, and with every advantage which stage properties, new and improved scenery, and the costliest dresses, could lend to help them forward. ”

“ Its distance from stage-coach communication--nine miles--could easily be abridged by a wagon road over a practically level country. Indeed, all the conditions for a thriving settlement were already there. It was natural, therefore, that the most sanguine anticipations were indulged by the more youthful of the twenty members of this sacred compact. The sites of a hotel, a bank, the express company's office, stage office, and court-house, with other necessary buildings, were all mapped out and supplemented by a theatre, a public park, and a terrace along the river bank! ”

“ Pageantry has been numbered among the chartered rights of the citizens, from the days of “mysteries,” when the itinerant stage, with its sacred drama provided by the church, was the only theatre known, through the age of tournaments, the season of royal visits, Elizabethan processions, and triumphal arches, of guilds, of Georges and dragons, down to the last relic of the spirit of olden times—the chairing of its members; and not even the scant nourishment offered in this nineteenth century, has yet sufficed to starve and wither the seeds thus sown and fostered in the very nature of the people. ”

“ If theatre managers would only give the public the chance of as good a seat as can be got at the Trocadero or the Pavilion, at the same price, and manage the ventilation of their houses so as not to bake the gods and freeze the ‘pitites,’ I venture to think that fewer people would go to the music halls. ”

“ The people are coming by the moving ways towards this ward from every part of the city—the markets and theatres are densely crowded. You are just in time for them. They are clamouring to see you. And abroad they want to see you. ”

“ The locality is charming, the open booths round the garden exhibiting every variety of merchandise, and the numerous tables in the open air round which little parties are sitting, talking, drinking, eating, and smoking, while others are parading up and down, present a scene of remarkable gaiety, and when the concert began all the world flocked into the magnificent rooms, where everybody ranges about from high to low without paying anything. ”

“ But the principle is endangered, when action within a city is diversified by one or more ‘approach’ episodes, in which the edge of the stage or the steps leading up to it must stand for a road or a wood in the environs (Promos and Cassandra, Sapho and Phao, Dido) . ”

“ At least one door opening into another room is absolutely necessary, if no better arrangement can be made. The best stage, of course, is like that of a theatre, raised, with space at the back and sides, for the players to retire to, and issue from. ”

“ But what union, or what concert, can there be among persons, no one of whom will have set eyes on any other from the first moment of his entrance? Undermining walls, forcing iron bars, requires commonly a concert, always a length of time exempt from interruption. ”

“ We are driven past a gloomy convent, past innumerable shops, past drinking places, billiard rooms, and the thick, dead walls of houses, with large windows, grated like dungeons, and large gates, showing glimpses of interior court-yards, sometimes with trees and flowers. But horses and carriages and gentlemen and ladies and slaves, all seem to use the same entrance. The windows come to the ground, and, being flush with the street, and mostly without glass, nothing but the grating prevents a passenger from walking into the rooms. ”

“ As these disappear, the numberless nightly exhibitions, lecture-rooms, mechanics' institutes, concerts, theatres, and casinos, pour forth their motley hordes, of whom a large and hungry section find their way to the pie-house as the only available resource—the public-houses being shut up for the night, and the lobster-rooms, oyster saloons, "shades," "coal-holes," and "cider-cellars," too expensive for the multitude. ”

“ The whole town has an air of almost depressing opulence, an appearance which culminates in the great place which surrounds the Grand-Theatre, - an establishment in the highest style, encircled with columns, arcades, lamps, gilded cafes. ”

“ Fancy eighty thousand people on ascending galleries, protected from the sun by a canopy of spangled silk; an arena three acres large carpeted with sand, cinnabar and borax, and in that arena death in every form, on those galleries colossal delight. ”

“ The large hall to which I have alluded has been removed, and a new central entrance inclusive of the lounge has been driven right through the middle, greatly enhancing the appearance and conveniences of the hotel. The old south-west staircase has also been done away with, and the empty space on the ground floor let out as a shop. The erection of the arcade with a spacious verandah on the top forms one of the most striking and effective of the new improvements that have been initiated. ”

“ There could be no more impractical plan for a place to speak than a circle with a big fire in the middle of it, and that is the plan of all the council grounds. The audience must be seated on the circumference of the circle, and the Master of Ceremonies must stand necessarily with his face to the fire and his back to part of his audience, or his back to the fire and consequently also to the part of the audience on the other side of the fire. ”

“ Dog tents in Grant Park, sprung up overnight like brown mushrooms. Men—mere boys, most of them—awkward in their workaday clothes of office and shop, drilling, wheeling, marching at the noon hour. And parades, and parades, and parades. At first Jock, and, in fact, the entire office staff—heads of departments, writers, secretaries, stenographers, office boys—would suspend business and crowd to the windows to see the pageant pass in the street below. Stirring music, khaki columns, flags, pennants, horses, bugles. ”

“ The fact is that every other Globe play lacks that neat division of place which enables us to assign one location to one door and another to the other door. Too often there is a major shift in location during the course of a play, such as, from the court to the forest in As You Like It, from Venice to Cyprus in Othello, from the castle to the field in Lear. Such a shift prevents the localizing of the stage door for any appreciable period. ”

“ Their ancient meeting hall, too sacred to allow the keeping of official records of their meetings, will be the sight of the town and will be patronized by the loafers to whom the rights of men mean a Maypole, the tricolor, free gin, and a brass band. Why go on with a minute recital? The end of the world has come. ”

“ The station club-house, frequented by all the civil and military swells and their families, was a low down, mud-walled, tawdry affair, with a dingy, thatched grass roof, the building having been erected during years by additions, so was without form or comeliness, becoming more disreputable in appearance in proportion as our building grew in size and beauty. ”

“ No open-air amusement could be much freer from those noisy, crowding conditions which spoil most modern pleasures; no Archery Meeting could be more select, the number of friends accompanying the members being restricted by an award of tickets, so as to keep the maximum within the limits of convenience for the dinner and ball to be held in the castle. ”

“ CHAPTER VI THE first requisite of a high-class theater is, apparently, an unspeakable alley running to the stage-door. An alley seems to stand to a theater in the same relation that a power-site does to a mill or a harbor to a dock, the rule being, first find your alley, measure it carefully to see that it is narrow enough and dark enough and dirty enough, then, being sure of your facts, go ahead and build. ”

“ In the first place, the balcony and galleries of our theatres are far less filled than they used to be before vaudeville and the picture show provided at much less expense and with greater comfort entertainment to many as satisfactory as the theatre itself. This decrease in attendance at the theatres naturally jeopardizes the chances of many a play which can be produced only if the manager feels reasonably sure of large houses or a public more general than usually frequents the orchestra. ”

“ Even those hotels could go up now only on one condition—namely, that the base of the visiting population, that foundation of which innumerable units are the strength, should at once be immensely broadened. For every individual who could afford to put up at a palace, they must rake in scores, hundreds of people who could not. The real foundation of the hotels must be row on row, acre on acre, of Ham-and-Egg Terraces. ”

“ Thus did it come to pass that each night, when the stars are high and the Street Sweepers sit in the City Theatre, we, Equality 7-2521, steal out and run through the darkness to our place. It is easy to leave the Theatre; when the candles are blown and the Actors come onto the stage, no eyes can see us as we crawl under our seat and under the cloth of the tent. ”

“ The City, the Inns of Court, and the middle Part of the Town, which were the most constant Support of a Theatre, and chiefly to be relied on, were now too far out of the Reach of an easy Walk, and Coach-hire is often too hard a Tax upon the Pit and Gallery. ”

“ In order to reform the vices of this town which, as we have said, has so mighty an influence on the whole kingdom, it would be very instrumental to have a law made, that all taverns and alehouses should be obliged to dismiss their company at twelve at night, and shut up their doors; and that no woman should be suffered to enter any tavern or alehouse, upon any pretence whatsoever. ”

“ The producer of a play must therefore obtain playing dates in a number of suitable road-show towns, arranged so as to minimize lay-offs and travel between engagements. Successful operation of a theatre in a road-show town requires scheduling legitimate attractions so as to keep the theatre as continuously occupied as possible during the theatrical season. Playing dates of a road-show town must therefore be arranged so as to meet the needs of both the producer and the theatre operator. ”