3E9Dq53%3sgDq53I]E3Dq%3%2C3E3S3DG53%3g3Dq53S3EaDq%:%
INTRODUCTION
THE LONDON STAGE
1776-1800
N the final quarter of the eighteenth century evidence becomes
available by which to specify in abundant detail the physical
facilities of London theatres — entrance, lobby, auditorium,
and stage — with which the reader may be generally familiar
from the accounts, often based upon inference and deduction from small
bits of evidence, of the same areas described in Parts I, II, III, and IV of
this Work. Hence this introductory essay, while describing the new, reviews
ln authoritative detail some of the known. In format it marshals the evidence
not so much under the seventeen topics adhered to by the editors of the
earlier volumes as in the form of a fully explained trip to the theatre (a
plausible composite of five thousand trips to more than a dozen theatres)
viewing the entrance, the ticket purchase, the seating, the jostling company,
the music, the prologue, curtain, mainpiece, entr’acte singing and dancing,
epilogue and afterpiece, and the final curtain. In the course of the exposition,
the acting styles, the lighting, scenery, costume, variety, artistry, blunders,
and successes are told with a concentration on specific documentation.
1 lie whole draws to conclusion with comment upon management of finances,
players, plays and audiences, and ends with speculation as to social history.
1 he basic thesis — if such an account can be said to have a thesis — is that
the London stage during this quarter-century displays the record of managerial
and actor attempts to cope with the problem of bigness. Expansion in size
>f not in comfort, in profit if not in perfection, affected every aspect of
dramatic and theatrical production.