Playhouse

“ He sees the stream of human life pouring along the streets—its comforts and embellishments piled up in the shops—the houses are proofs of the industry, the public buildings of the art and magnificence of man; while the public amusements and places of resort are a centre and support for social feeling. A playhouse alone is a school of humanity, where all eyes are fixed on the same gay or solemn scene, where smiles or tears are spread from face to face, and where a thousand hearts beat in unison! ”

“ It was once felt that a theatre was not a theatre if it was not adorned with a wealth of gilded cupids, masks, tambours, and daggers, surrounded by stucco wreaths and garlands in high relief, and interspaced with pictured panels of the muses, especially those most at home in a playhouse. And, indeed, about those old houses, their garishness now mellowed, there is a glamor peculiarly of the theatre, and a sweet mustiness in the air bespeaking audiences of perfumed ladies, long since dead, the grease-paint and pomade of a long line of players, old scenery, the fine fustian of the old plays. ”

“ The grey sky has blown over these people for so many generations that it has left them bare as the hills. A playhouse for these people! What defiance of nature's law! And watching the shapely sods of turf melting into white ash I thought of the dim people building the playhouse, obedient to the priest, unsuspicious of a new idea. A playhouse must have seemed to them as useless as a road that leads nowhere. The priest told them that people would come to see the play ”

“ As a result, in the spring of 1600, Henslowe and Alleyn began the erection of a splendid new playhouse, the Fortune, designed to surpass the Globe in magnificence, and to furnish a suitable and permanent home for the Admiral's Men. ”

“ The most thrilling moment, I will confess, which theatres can still give me is that—but it is really sui generis and ineffable—when, having got upstairs, you meet in the narrow lobbies of an old-fashioned playhouse the tuning of the fiddles and the smell—of gas, glue, heaven knows what glories of yester-year—which, ever since one's babyhood, has come to mean "the play." People have expended much genius and more money to make theatrical representation transcend imagination ”

“ Let the first three men who pass by the playhouse door be called in, one of them taken from the highest order of life, a second from the middle order, and the third from the very lowest class—let them hear a tragedy through, or even some parts of a comedy, and let them then give their verdict as on oath, whether what they heard, resembled anything they had ever heard before out of a playhouse, or perchance a madhouse, and they must answer in the negative or perjure themselves. ”

“ A cozy theater stands in the middle of an apple orchard—part of the one-time farm of the proprietress' father. Good taste and the delicate skill of architect and landscape gardener have gone hand in hand for its charm. You go out there and dine leisurely, and then you cross the long shady paths under the apples to the theater. And even if the play in that tiny playhouse were not all that might be expected—although the best of actors play upon its stage—one would be in a broadly generous mood, at having dined and spent the evening in so completely charming a spot. ”

“ It may as well be confest frankly that, even in the twenty-first century, the playhouse is unlikely to be hospitable to an "extraordinarily complicated texture of subtle thoughts and minute sensations" ”

“ After dinner they played all kinds of games. All the uncles and aunts and grown-up cousins played blind-man’s-buff with them.
“HOW MAMA USED TO PLAY.” XI.—OUR RAINY-DAY PLAYHOUSE. We had a number of rainy-day playhouses. When it did not rain very hard, Myra and I would scamper out to our little playhouse made of boards, and listen to the patter of the drops.
It was not a very costly playhouse. It was built in a corner made by the shed and the orchard fence. One side of our playhouse was the shed. Another side was the fence; this open side we used to call our bay-window. ”

“ Yet for us the playhouse signifies more than a physical structure for the presentation of plays. It has become the symbol of an entire art. Its construction initiated a glorious decade during which the company achieved a level of stability and a quality of productivity rarely matched in the history of the theater. So rich was the achievement that virtually all interest in the Elizabethan drama radiates from the work of these years. ”

“ It soon became the favorite resort by night of the playwrights and play-actors, and the swells among the audience, of the playhouse across the street. Gradually the men of letters, living in and visiting the capital, made this café their gathering-place of an afternoon; so that, on any day in the middle years of the eighteenth century, all the men best worth knowing might be found here. ”

“ By the way, grandmother, I don’t know how it is with the player-folks in New York; but here with us, if a man or woman want a bit of plate they’ve only to take a theatre. A playhouse is a short cut to a silversmith’s. There isn’t a London manager who isn’t plated after this fashion, which shows there is no place for true gratitude like the green-room; but I ask your pardon for talking of such matters, knowing what a low place you think the theatre. Parliament, like a goose that has been set upon too many eggs, has risen with half of ’em come to nothing. But this, grandmother, is the old trick. ”

“ The plot of ground on which the old playhouse stood he leased to the several sharers for a period of fifty-one years at an annual rental of £10 13s. 10d. a share, with the express condition that the building to be erected thereon should never be used for any purpose other than the acting of stage-plays. The sharers then proceeded to the task of constructing their playhouse. It was proposed to make the new building larger [459] and handsomer than the old one, and to build it of brick [460] with a tiled roof—possibly an attempt at fireproof construction. ”

“ The usual name for a theatre was the playhouse, a house intended for all kinds of games and sport, such as fencing, bear-fights, bull-fights, jigs, morris-dances, and pantomimes, as well as for dramatic performances. ”

“ Obviously the Queen's Men were seeking permission to play in the city only during the cold winter months; during the balmy spring, summer, and autumn months—for actors the best season of the year—they occupied their commodious playhouse in "the fields." ”

“ The priest brought a bundle of clothes out of the house, and when the distribution was finished, I asked him to come for a walk up the hill and show me the playhouse.
Again he hesitated, and I said, "You must come, Father MacTurnan, for a walk. You must forget the misfortunes of those people for a while." He yielded, and we spoke of the excellence of the road, and he told me that when he had conceived the idea of a playhouse he had arranged with the inspector that the road should go to the top of the hill. ”

“ The Neighborhood Playhouse, opened in February, 1915, is the outcome of the work of the festival and dramatic groups of the Henry Street Settlement. For nine years gifted leaders have devoted themselves to this interest, and the building of the well-appointed little theater was necessary for the further development of the work. In addition to the education incident to performing parts in good plays under cultured instructors, and the music, poetry, and dance of the festival classes, the playhouse [186] offers training in the various arts and trades connected with stage production. ”

“ It is acted at the playhouse in Lincoln's Inn Fields with such success, that the playhouse has been crowded every night. To night is the fifteenth time of acting; and it is thought it will run a fortnight longer. ”

“ Fancy a young man, in the early thirties, owning his own playhouse, performing there in the leading rôles, the author of his play and lyrics, the composer of the music, associate manager of two New York theatres, of another in Chicago, and with a chain of suburban houses! ”

“ Nor is there any pictorial representation of the interior of the playhouse. In the absence of such, I offer the reader a verbal picture of the interior as seen from the stage during the performance of a play. In Middleton and Dekker's The Roaring Girl, acted at the Fortune, Sir Alexander shows to his friends his magnificent house. Advancing to the middle of the stage, and pointing out over the building, he asks them how they like it:279
Goshawk. ”

“ They had never had a real playhouse before, big enough to live in, and this was quite in accordance with their ideals. They were "visiting" and "keeping store" and "cooking," and quarreling, and having a perfectly beautiful time with their two disreputable dolls, utterly regardless of the shadow of foreboding and desolation that grew ever thicker as the hours passed, while [Pg 22] the sun slipped down behind the steep stone-battlemented park opposite, and brought no matting, no furniture, no anything that would make our little nest habitable for the swiftly coming night. ”

“ I am a very constant frequenter of the playhouse, a place to which I suppose the Idler not much a stranger, since he can have no where else so much entertainment with so little concurrence of his own endeavour. At all other assemblies, he that comes to receive delight, will be expected to give it; but in the theatre nothing is necessary to the amusement of two hours, but to sit down and be willing to be pleased. ”

“ Nor are you disposed, like certain good people, to object to the theatre simply as a name. These sticklers for principle would never enter a playhouse for worlds; and I have heard that in a famous city of Massachusetts, not a hundred miles from here, there are persons to whom the theatre is unknown, but who have no objection to see a play in a building which is called a museum, especially if the vestibule leading to the theatre should be decorated with sound moral principles in the shape of statues, pictures, and stuffed objects in glass cases. ”

“ No representation of the exterior of the Fortune has come down to us. In the so-called Ryther Map of London, there is, to be sure, what seems to be a crude representation of the playhouse (see page 278) ; but if this is really intended for the Fortune, it does little more than mark the location. Yet one can readily picture in his imagination the playhouse—a plastered structure, eighty feet square and approximately forty feet high, [446] with small windows marking the galleries, a turret and flagpole surmounting the red-tiled roof, and over the main entrance a sign representing Dame Fortune ”

“ The so-called picture of the Fortune, printed in Wilkinson's Londina Illustrata, and often reproduced by modern scholars, cannot possibly be that of the playhouse erected by Alleyn. For an interesting surmise as to the history of this later building see W.J. Lawrence, Restoration Stage Nurseries, in Archiv für das Studium der Neueren Sprachen und Literaturen (1914) , p. 301.
[484] This playhouse is not to be confused with the famous Bull Tavern in Bishopsgate Street, for many years used as a theatre. ”

“ They, who write ill, and they, who ne'er durst write,
Turn critics, out of mere revenge and spite:
A playhouse gives them fame; ”

“ The child’s love of the drama begins long before there is any thought of a playhouse. To escape from life in order to rediscover it in mimic form, would seem to rank among the earliest of human impulses. ”

“ It is observed, that of late Years there has been a certain Person in the upper Gallery of the Playhouse, who when he is pleased with any Thing that is acted upon the Stage, expresses his Approbation by a loud Knock upon the Benches or the Wainscot, which may be heard over the whole Theatre. ”

“ Probably nothing can be found which will make a more interesting entertainment for a winter evening, than a miniature theatre patterned as nearly as possible after a large playhouse. The construction of the stage, and preparation of miniature scenery, properties, and mechanical effects, furnish good work for disagreeable weather when it becomes necessary to remain indoors, and there is plenty of it, and of great enough variety, to occupy the attention of a number of boys. ”

“ In this period in American history, few travelling companies visiting one-night stands carried their own scenery, depending, rather, on the theatres to supply their needs. Most of the smaller playhouses made meagre providence in this regard, considering one exterior, a wood or a garden, and two interiors, a palace and a hovel, quite ample to fit the exigencies of any known drama. ”

“ An empty house is nevertheless dispiriting—dispiriting to the audience and dispiriting to the performers—so a little paper judiciously used may often bolster up a play in momentary danger of collapse.
“Stalls full.” “Dress Circle full.” “House full.” Such notices are often put outside the playhouse during a performance, and in London they generally mean what they say. In the provinces, however, a gentleman arrived at an hotel, and after dinner went off to the theatre as he had no club. ”

“ And Stephen Gosson, in Plays Confuted (c. 1581) writes: "In the playhouses at London, it is the fashion for youths to go first into the yard, and to carry their eye through every gallery; then, like unto ravens, where they spy the carrion, thither they fly, and press as near to the fairest as they can." The "yard" was unroofed, and all persons there had to stand during the entire performance. The galleries, however, were protected by a roof, were divided into "rooms," and were provided for the most part with seats. ”