Playroom

“ Now in that neighborhood people live twelve hundred to the block, so children are not scarce. They flocked in far beyond the capacity of the playroom at first, but in time settled down to about twenty-four steadies. ”

“ So that was settled, and when Bobby came back from town and Meg had finished practicing her scales and Dot's three new dresses had all been tried on, the children went upstairs to their playroom to select the toys they thought they would want to take with them.
"I think we ought to take the things Aunt Polly gave us," announced Meg. "They're new, and we haven't played with them much. She might think we didn't like 'em if we left them at home."
"All right, we will," decided Bobby. "And I'll take my ball and bat. Guess I won't break Aunt Polly's windows. There must be lots of room on a farm." ”

“ These, with cheerful, sunny playrooms, provided with simple toys and furnished with bright decorations varying with the season, will contribute the maximum of pleasure for this life of perpetual infancy. ”

“ With what unction, from an actor’s lips, falls his manifold and glowing praise of theatres! What a pretty picture, a broad wash of rose-purple and white, he can make of the interior seen from the wings! “There’s such a hurry of pleasure to transport us; the bustle, noise, gallantry, equipage, garters, feathers, wigs, bows, smiles, ogles, love, music, and applause!” And again, in another mood: “The playhouse is the element of poetry, because the region of beauty; the ladies, methinks, have a more inspiring, triumphant air in the boxes than anywhere else. ”

“ But the advantage of the small theatre exactly is that you are looking through a small window. Has not every one noticed how sweet and startling any landscape looks when seen through an arch? This strong, square shape, this shutting off of everything else is not only an assistance to beauty; it is the essential of beauty. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.
This especially is true of the toy theatre; that, by reducing the scale of events it can introduce much larger events. ”

“ So when recess comes, don’t hang about in the hallways or on the stairs or in the basement, but run right out of doors into the playground and shout and throw your arms about and run races to fill your lungs full of fresh, sweet air and stretch all your muscles, after the confinement and sitting still. Don’t saunter about and whisper secrets or tell stories, but get up some lively game that doesn’t take long to play, such as tag or steal-sticks or soak-ball, or duck-on-a-rock or skipping or hopscotch. ”

“ There is nothing superfluous in school-room, work-room, or play-room—indeed, one might almost say that they are unfurnished, except for desks and forms and plain deal tables. The play-room is a lower portion of the old slaughter-house, with a high ceiling, to a beam in which is fixed a pair of ropes terminating in two large wooden rings by which the youthful gymnasts swing and perform all kinds of evolutions, while a set of parallel bars are among the few accessories. ”

“ If the little playhouse is without any mechanical convenience, if its stage is cramped and mean, it can still achieve visual beauty through light. This force brings into the playhouse the most vibrant, subtle and affecting gift of the physical world, barring only the human presence. ”

“ It is easy to sit in one of these empty benches and see, as a shadow out of the past, a lively scene presented on the now deserted stage—the voice of eloquence rings clear out of the dead centuries, the play-house resounds with the applause of the shades that fill the seats about me—and, then, the curtain of mystery is dispelled by the bright sunlight that floods all the landscape, and I see nothing but ruins everywhere. ”

“ You will be able to make a great many discoveries and inventions, if you think what you want, and then think what to make it out of. But the best and most wonderful thing about a play-house is, that if we have to, we can make one anywhere, or out of anything. Once, two little girls wrote home about [13] a visit they had paid, "We had two rag dolls and we played house." Even one little girl, without so much as a rag doll, can have a play-house. She has only to imagine, that is, pretend, and there it is—with rooms, and staircases, and people, and everything needful. It can be big or little ”

“ This gaming-hall is furnished with elegant dining, ball, and reading-rooms, and adjoining the building is an extensive and elegantly laid out park and pleasure-ground, where a fine band play during the afternoon, and throngs frequent its delightful alleys, walks, and arbors. ”

“ Another point, that has cost me some melancholy reflections, is the present state of the playhouse; the encouragement of which hath an immediate influence upon the poetry of the kingdom; as a good market improves the tillage of the neighbouring country, and enriches the ploughman. Neither do we of this town seem enough to know or consider the vast benefit of a playhouse to our city and nation: That single house is the fountain of all our love, wit, dress, and gallantry. ”

“ Puzzle games that long ago were sold by the vendors of cheap novelties on the streets of big cities lie around on tables in heaps to amuse the guests, while at circular tables, placed at one end of the room, elderly, stout persons sit playing at the game of puff-ball. The room, about one hundred feet long by thirty feet wide, is furnished with gilded chairs and lounges and tables, and along the top of the walls, doing duty as a frieze, are a series of poorly painted portraits. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ In a second, we can build it into a wigwam, or a palace, or a cave, or a great castle, or it can be just the house we live in when we are at home.
Sometimes, when we have played a good while in the play-house, we feel tired, and if it isn't a nap we want, perhaps it is that we would like to go and play in a play-house somebody else has made. ”

“ The jolliest indoor games for boys and girls demand a floor, and the home that has no floor upon which games may be played falls so far short of happiness. It must be a floor covered with linoleum or cork carpet, so that toy soldiers and such-like will stand up upon it, and of a color and surface that will take and show chalk marks; the common green- colored cork carpet without a pattern is the best of all. ”

“ The best playground is the home yard, where mother can keep an oversight; where other children can come so she knows the playmates, and where the child is kept in sympathy with home influences. For indoor play, there should be a room kept sacred to the uses of childhood. In this way both adults and children have more freedom, with less conflict of comfort and convenience. For children under three or four years this room will naturally be the nursery ”

“ The play-house is merely the scene of its purposed and deliberate exhibition as a professional art. In its different kinds, with its different degrees of consciousness and complexity, as a matter of instinct and culture it is practised everywhere. Freeing our minds from prejudices on the one side, and from indifference on the other, let us, then, approach the subject with an earnest effort to learn the truth and to see what its lessons are. ”

“ There was that immediate bareness and roughness which seems the first characteristic of the theatre behind the scenes, where the theatre is one of the simplest and frankest of workshops, in which certain effects are prepared to be felt before the footlights. Nothing of the glamour of the front is possible; there is a hard air of business in everything; and the work that goes to the making of a play shows itself the severest toil. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There are many effective ways of making a toy theatre, and the planning and designing of one is a pleasant piece of work. This chapter gives a few suggestions to future theatre builders, who must adopt those that appeal most to them. A large stage is the most necessary part, so that there is plenty of room to set up the scenes and room for the actors. ”

“ Upon such a floor may be made an infinitude of imaginative games, not only keeping boys and girls happy for days together, but building up a framework of spacious and inspiring ideas in them for after life. The men of tomorrow will gain new strength from nursery floors. ”

“ We like a play-house in proportion to the number of happy human faces it contains (and a play-house seldom contains many wretched ones) —and again we like a play best when we do not see the faces of the actors too near. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Hundreds of residences have been converted into amateur play-houses, where would-be female stars tear their hair, rave and split the air with their arms, and stalk majestically across imaginary stages to the imaginary music of imaginary orchestras, and amid burst of imaginary applause and showers of imaginary boquets. ”

“ In one corner of the room was a high pile of boxes, with shelves in them, on which were piled loose papers and more books and things. Such big boxes they were, and so deep, and such piles and piles of things in them! This afterwards became my playhouse and my hiding-place. ”

“ I am often asked in these days to subscribe money for a playground, attendant guardians and new-fangled apparatus for play. At such times I am glad that I was young when I was! No playground could ever make up for the splendid freedom of those old Boston streets, where the children of my time were turned loose to amuse themselves. When the old games, played by the girls of Athens and Rome, grew stale, we invented new games of our own. ”

“ It is hardly necessary to say that all these arrangements for a play depend, in the first place, on the requirements of the play itself and its legitimate business, which may demand a table, a bureau, a piano, a fireplace, etc. And here we would say to the youthful actor, Select your play at first with a view to its requiring little change of scene, and not much furniture. A young actor needs space ”

“ Very few halls ostensibly built to house amateur play-giving are adequate for the purpose.—Often the stage is merely a shallow platform without curtains to separate the actors from the audience, and the ceiling and walls surrounding the stage are so finished that the necessary screws for hanging curtains, may not be driven into them. The amateur manager reaches the depths of despair when he finds that even the floor of the shallow platform offered him, is of polished hardwood and may not be marred by the screws of stage braces. ”

“ We formed our stage by removing all the bedding from the beds on one side of Chamber, and laying the bed-boards [4] on them for a floor. A cord was fastened [74] across the room a few feet from the wall, from which lengths of paper-hangings were suspended to give it some appearance of a room, and (the toys being removed) to give room for the actors to pass from one side to the other without being seen by the audience; in front of all a green drop, or rather draw-curtain, was suspended.
THE PLAY IN SEVENTH. ”

“ Fig. 431.—Wrap the ball with fine cord.
The decorations of the pole may be added to or curtailed as circumstances permit, and if flowers are scarce paper flowers may be mingled with the natural ones, and the difference will hardly be noticed. When
The Game
is held in the house the room is cleared of as much furniture as possible. The prettily decorated May-pole stands in the middle of the floor, and the children join hands and dance around it to the accompaniment of the piano or an appropriate song sung by all. Beginning with slow time, the music grows faster ”