Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 17, 2025
In the summer of 1861, he visited England, and played an engagement at the Haymarket Theater in London, where he was favorably received by the British playgoers. At the close of this engagement, he spent a year on the continent, in travel and in the study of his profession.
English playgoers in the early 'fifties did not emulate the Japanese, who go to the theater early in the morning and stay there until late at night, still less the Chinese, whose plays begin one week and end the next, but they thought nothing of sitting in the theater from seven to twelve.
Here the critics were to be found. The pit could make or mar the destiny of plays, and the reputation of players. Dozens of regular playgoers knew the traditions of the theatre better than many actors and actresses. They were sticklers for the preservation of the stage "business" to which they had been accustomed.
A trumpet flourish warned playgoers that the curtain was about to rise, and between the acts a small company of musicians helped the interval to pass.
Pepys most devoted of playgoers notes occasionally of particular plays, that 'the machines are fine and the paintings very pretty. In October 1667, he records that he sat in the boxes for the first time in his life, and discovered that from that point of view 'the scenes do appear very fine indeed, and much better than in the pit, to which part of the house he ordinarily resorted.
The result has been a prodigious increase of salaries, without any corresponding gain in revenue, for although the much-"boomed" artist may attract people to a particular theatre, it is not to be assumed that the quantity of playgoers is increased, or that more money is spent on the whole by the public because of all this advertising.
Many articles have been written pointing out that the judgment of the pit is sounder than the opinion of other parts of the house, that the pitites are the real, serious, reflective, critical playgoers whose views are worth more than those of the playgoers either in the gallery or the most costly seats.
To a collaboration of this sort, ordinary playgoers never give a thought, content to take the performance as they see it, and ready often to credit the actor, not only with the inventions of the stage-manager, but even with those of the author also.
Asquat on the cuckstool he folded out his paper, turning its pages over on his bared knees. Something new and easy. No great hurry. Keep it a bit. Our prize titbit: Matcham's Masterstroke. Written by Mr Philip Beaufoy, Playgoers' Club, London. Payment at the rate of one guinea a column has been made to the writer. Three and a half. Three pounds three. Three pounds, thirteen and six.
When, in the middle of the seventeenth century, Sir William Davenant, manager of the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, discarded the 'traverses' and tapestries which had theretofore been accepted as sufficient for the purposes of stage illusion, and substituted regular scenes 'painted in perspective, without doubt there were to be found many conservative old playgoers who lifted up their voices against the startling innovation, and prophesied the approaching downfall of the drama.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking