Venue

“ Applying the transferor law would not give a plaintiff an opportunity to use a transfer to obtain a law that he could not obtain through his initial forum selection. If it does make selection of the most favorable law more convenient, it does no more than recognize a forum shopping choice that already exists. This fact does not require us to apply the transferee law. Section 1404 (a) , to reiterate, exists to make venue convenient and should not allow the defendant to use inconvenience to discourage plaintiffs from exercising the opportunities that they already have. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Every attraction lay to hand. The dance hall was aglitter, the floor perfect, and the stage equipped to foster all that appealed to the senses. The hotel with its splendid accommodation, its bars, its gaming rooms, its dining hall, its supper rooms, its bustle of elaborate service. ”

“ 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. ”

“ SCENE I. An open Street before the imperial palace. A crowd of men, women, and children discovered, bearing in their hands torches, with clubs, sticks, &c. and the stage entirely lighted by the red glare of their torches cast up against the walls of the building. The confused noise and clamour of a great crowd is heard as the curtain draws up. ”

“ The carved, gilded, and lacquered ceilings, the wonderful paintings on gold-leaf surfaces, the damascened mountings of the screens, the vast audience hall, the private rooms, the No pavilion, and the court where the enemies’ heads were displayed, are all magnificent. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The most vivid impression the visitor gets in looking over that vast hall is the impression of space. A speaker must needs have a voice like O'Connell's, the practical visitor is apt to think, as he sits in the gallery, to fill even the silent spaces of that room ”

“ Imagine a spacious concert-hall, brightly illuminated, every one of the many seats occupied, the boxes filled to the last place, the aisles crowded, by a most variegated audience: men and women, young maidens, youths with downy beard ”

“ Carrying the love of outdoors even to concerts and theatrical performances, the owner of a very beautiful garden has built a theater, of which the stage is a terrace of grass, and the scenery evenly planted trees. ”

“ Picture this sea of golden and brown heads low over the heaped tables—every square foot of pit, galleries and entry packed, lengths of cotton and flannel flung in confusion over all the balconies and from the royal box like war banners—and then suddenly see a man making his way through the crowded packing-cases on the stage to the footlights! ”

“ Hotel is a French term, derived from hostil, a lordly house, a palace. The designation Public House, signifying a house of public resort for refreshment and conviviality, is a modern substitute for Tavern, derived from the Latin taberna, a hut, a wooden booth; frequently also for Inn, or rather, as originally written, Inne, which expressed the Anglo-Saxon for a mansion. And here we may at once observe that by far the majority of our mediæval inns and Hostelries [see Hotel] grew out of the mansions of the nobility during the prolonged absence of their owners. ”

“ 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! ”

“ A garden then glided into the amphitheatre, expanding and advancing without any visible agency, and in a short time admirable designs, formed out of clumps of myrtle and of box, such as ships, towers and castles, men, horses, pyramids and the like, were seen, such as we make of plants in our gardens, while the theatre was filled with sweet melody from the birds among the trees. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A fine night-exhibition in the town is that of the huge spinning-mills which surround it, and of which the thousand windows are lighted up at nightfall, and may be seen from almost all quarters of the city. ”

“ The roomy court of this hotel is unusually luxuriant. The arcade inclosing it is spacious; flowers, as fragrant as the birds are brilliant, fill the air with odors. Every thing is for coolness and rest. ”

“ So I walked to a rising ground a little retired from the crowd, where I saw a booth, which I took to be built on purpose, for the conveniency of taking prospects, and went directly to it; and at the door I saw an old man, of whom I enquired; if he had ever a prospect glass, whereby I might be favoured with a full view of of the royal City, which I supposed to be the metropolis of the world. ”

“ One glittering pageant treads on the heels of another, each more gorgeous and resplendent than the last, until the stage, set to represent a fantastical hall with a bewildering vista of carved columns, golden lions, and rich draperies, is filled with such a kaleidoscopic mass of colors and groupings as only an Oriental mind could conceive. ”

“ Of late, a large unoccupied room, by permission of the owner, has been converted into a theatre; and here, wholly by the exertions of the operatives themselves, a stage has been erected, where plays are acted once a week—the men themselves taking all the parts. ”

“ In an instant twenty or thirty couples are whirling along, floating, like thistles in the wind, around the central pavilion. Their feet scarce touch the smooth-trodden earth. Round and round, in a vortex of life, beauty, and brilliancy they go, a whirlwind of delight. ”

“ I fancy poor Congreve's theatre is a temple of Pagan delights, and mysteries not permitted except among heathens. I fear the theatre carries down that ancient tradition and worship, as masons have carried their secret signs and rites from temple to temple. ”

“ The Court is on its way to the theatre. The theatre and the gardens are brilliantly illuminated. The effect of the thousands of coloured lamps, in all parts of the foliage, is very beautiful. The moon is up, and a million stars! ”

“ The noble amphitheatre of downs, by which the town is surrounded, were seen in all their beauty, and no one unacquainted with what was passing, would have supposed that a morn so auspicious could usher in other than a joyous day. ”

“ The huge organ, the background of the stage—a stage occupied with tiers of seats for choruses and civic worthies—lifted to the dome its shining pipes and sculptured pinnacles, and some genius of music or oratory erected himself in monumental bronze at the base. ”

“ You have your suite of rooms in one or another pavilion, you take your meals there in your own dining-room, and you can shut yourself off, as it were, from the greater part of the establishment and enjoy privacy and quiet. ”

“ The players either acted at a regular theatre or in an inn-yard, and at both places acting took place in the open air. The only solution possible is that the actors rented a large room of one of the inns or taverns and there acted by candlelight, otherwise beginning at such a late hour cannot be accounted for.
[Pg 237]
AS YOU LIKE IT STAGE, PLAYERS, EXITS, ENTRANCES, PLAYS, PARTS, ACTS, SCENE.
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. ”

“ When we first appeared in the gateway of our hotel, equipped for an excursion, the rush of men and animals was so great, that we were forced to retreat until our servant and the porter whipped us a path through the yelling and braying mob. ”

“ And to enjoy such exhibitions as these society crowds into a suburban circus, the loft of a back tenement, a second-hand costumier’s shop, or a fantastic artist’s restaurant, where the performances, in some room consecrated to beery potations, bring together the greasy habitué and the dainty aristocratic fledgling. ”

“ Here the old riding-school, tennis-court, and museum, which form a large building fronting the abbey, have been turned into wards as attractive as bright and simple colour, space, flowers, and exquisite cleanliness can make them. ”

“ At first a cart or table is said to have served as a stage for the actor, a booth being provided at a later time as a background and dressing-room, with some kind of platform for a stage, in the neighbourhood of a spot suitable for dancing and overlooked by a rising ground from which the spectators might be able to hear and see what was going on. ”

“ The old quarters which preserve in our time an aspect so singularly picturesque with their sloping and tortuous streets, the fine hotels of darkened stone sculptured in the Spanish fashion, and the magnificence of the Place of the hôtel de ville were buried behind an enceinte of walls pierced by eight lofty gates flanked with one hundred and twenty-seven round towers at almost equal distance from each other like the balls of a crown. ”

“ In the yard a temporary platform—a few boards, it may be, set on barrel-heads [1] —could be erected for a stage; in the adjacent stables a dressing-room could be provided for the actors; the rabble—always the larger and2 more enthusiastic part of the audience—could be accommodated with standing-room about the stage; while the more aristocratic members of the audience could be comfortably seated in the galleries overhead. ”

“ The rocks which threaten disaster to our intent to devise a room which may serve as theatre, assembly hall, chapel, or whatever, are, if we go to beginnings, the traditional form of the theatre and its traditional décor. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A view of the crowds which patiently wait at the great gateways for their turn to pass through affords a constant source of amusement and delight. The line slowly pushes through the gate like an endless string being threaded through a needle. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Rows of marquees, huts, booths, pavilions, arcades, porticoes—every kind of structure short of a permanent one—cover the green field for the space of a square half-mile, and the crowds of arrivals walk through the town in a mass, and make straight for the exhibition ground. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Still, any theatre gives distinction to a fit-up tour which roams from hall to hall, and the company saved up their correspondence carefully, till they could use the theatre address, as a heading, carelessly. ”

“ The stage equipments, like the stage itself, are of the simplest order, the spectator being required to supply by his imagination most of those adjuncts in the way of scenery, which in our days, are carried to such perfection in the theatres of the West. ”

“ The stage is large, and the house has every necessary convenience of green-room, dressings-rooms, scene-rooms, painters-room, property-rooms, music-room, carpenter’s shop, several rooms occupied by the person who keeps the house, &c. ”

“ It is difficult to render the intensity with which one felt the great sphere of the hotel close round one, covering one in as with high, shining crystal walls, stretching beneath one’s feet an immeasurable polished level, revealing itself in short as, for the time, for the place, the very order of nature and the very form, the only one, of the habitable world. ”