A Book of the Play Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character

Addison devotes a number of "The Spectator" to a description of "The Trunkmaker in the Upper Gallery"--a certain person so called, who had been observed to frequent, during some...

The man who, having witnessed and enjoyed the earliest performance of Thespis and his company, followed the travelling theatre of that primeval actor and manager, and attended a...

Philip Henslowe, who, late in the sixteenth century, was proprietor of the old Rose Theatre, which stood a little west of the foot of London Bridge, at Bankside, combined with h...

For such a triumph as fanaticism enjoyed over the fine arts in England during and for some time after the great Civil War, no parallel can be found in the history of any other n...

The stage, like other professions, is in some sort to be considered as a distinct nation, possessing manners, customs, a code, and, above all, a language of its own. This, by th...

Dr. Barten Holyday, in the notes to his translation of "Juvenal," published at Oxford in 1673, describes the Roman plays as being followed by an exodium "of the nature of a _jig...

The theatrical supernumerary--or the "super," as he is familiarly called--is a man who in his time certainly plays many parts, and yet obtains applause in none. His exits and hi...

Acting, as a distinct profession, seems to have been known in England at least as far back as the reign of Henry VI. There had been theatrical exhibitions in abundance, however,...

The "doubling" of parts, or the allotment to an actor of more characters than one in the same representation, was an early necessity of theatrical management. The old dramatists...

The Lord Chamberlain holds office only so long as the political party to which he is attached remains in power. He comes in and goes out with the ministry. Any peculiar fitness...

From the south-western corner of Lincoln's Inn Fields a winding and confined court leads to Vere Street, Clare Market. Midway or so in the passage there formerly existed Gibbon'...

The bird which saved the Capitol has ruined many a play. "Goose," "to be goosed," "to get the big-bird," signifies to be hissed, says the "Slang Dictionary." This theatrical can...

Wigs have claims to be considered amongst the most essential appliances of the actors; means at once of their disguise and their decoration. Without false hair the fictions of t...

The information that has come down to us in relation to the wardrobe department of the Elizabethan theatre, and the kind of costumes worn by our early actors, is mainly derived...

Lords of Misrule and Abbots of Unreason had long presided over the Yuletide festivities of Old England; in addition to these functionaries King Henry VIII. nominated a Master an...

Addison accounted "thunder and lightning--which are often made use of at the descending of a god or the rising of a ghost, at the vanishing of a devil or the death of a tyrant"-...

The ghost, as a vehicle of terror, a solvent of dramatic difficulties, and a source of pleasurable excitement to theatrical audiences, seems to have become quite an extinct crea...

The question of dress has always been of the gravest importance to the theatrical profession. It was a charge brought against the actors of Elizabeth's time, that they walked ab...

What is called the "legitimate drama" has always found in pantomime just such a rival and a relative as Gloucester's lawfully-begotten son Edgar was troubled with in the person...

When, to heighten the effect of their theatrical exhibitions, Thespis and his playfellows first daubed their faces with the lees of wine, they may be said to have initiated that...

The Act of 1737 for licensing plays, playhouses, and players, and legalising the power the Lord Chamberlain had long been accustomed to exercise, although readily passed by both...

"It is singular," Miss Mitford wrote to Mr. Fields, her American publisher, "that epilogues were just dismissed at the first representation of one of my plays--'Foscari,' and pr...

Vasari, the historian of painters, has much to say in praise of the "perspective views" or scenes executed by Baldassare Peruzzi, an artist and architect of great fame in his da...

It is rather the public than the player that strolls nowadays. The theatre is stationary--the audience peripatetic. The wheels have been taken off the cart of Thespis. Hamlet's...

When the consummate villain of melodrama mysteriously approaches the foot-lights, and, with a scowl at the front row of the pit, remarks: "I must dissemble," or something to tha...

Epilogues went out of fashion with pigtails, the public having at last decided that neither of these appendages was really necessary or particularly ornamental; but a considerab...

Are there, nowadays, any collectors of playbills? In the catalogues of secondhand booksellers are occasionally to be found such entries as: "Playbills of the Theatre Royal, Bath...

It is clear that playgoers of the Shakespearean period dearly loved to see a battle represented upon the stage. The great poet thoroughly understood his public, and how to grati...

The plan of admitting the public to the theatres at "half-price," after the conclusion of a certain portion of the entertainments of the evening, has, of late years, gone out of...

As the performances of the Elizabethan theatres commenced at three o'clock in the afternoon, and the public theatres of the period were open to the sky (except over the stage an...

Mr. Thackeray has described a memorable performance at the Theatre Royal, Chatteries. Arthur Pendennis and his young friend Harry Foker were among the audience; Lieutenants Rodg...

A horse in the highway is simply a horse and nothing more; but, transferred to the theatre, the noble animal becomes a _real_ horse. The distinction is necessary in order that t...

A veteran actor of inferior fame once expressed his extreme dislike to what he was pleased to term "the sham wine-parties" of Macbeth and others. He was aweary of the Barmecide...

There is something to be written about the rise and fall of the pit: its original humility, its possession for a while of great authority, and its forfeiture, of late years, of...

Of old the proprietors of theatres acted towards their patrons upon the principle of "first come, first served." If you desired a good place at the playhouse it was indispensabl...

Among the earlier emotions of the youthful playgoer, whose enthusiasm for dramatic representations is generally of a very fervid and uncompromising kind, must be recognised his...

viol" after act four. In the course of this play, moreover, musical accompaniments of a descriptive kind were introduced, the stage direction on two occasions informing us that...