THE Boston Theatre is the largest of the houses in which Irving has
played on this side of the Atlantic. It is claimed that it is the
largest in the Union, though many persons say that the Opera House at
the Rocky Mountain city of Denver is the handsomest of all the American
theatres. The main entrance to the Boston house is on Washington
street. It has not an imposing exterior. The front entrance is all that
is visible, the rest being filled up with stores; but the hall is very
spacious, and the vestibule, _foyer_, lobbies, and grand staircase
beyond, are worthy of the broad and well-appointed auditorium. The
promenade saloon is paved with marble, and is forty-six feet by
twenty-six feet, and proportionately high. Upon the walls, and here and
there on easels, are portraits of Irving, Booth, McCullough, Salvini,
and other notable persons. The promenade and entrance hall cover one
hundred feet from the doors to the auditorium, which, in its turn, is
ninety feet from the back row to the foot-lights. The stage is one
hundred feet wide and ninety feet deep; and the interior of the house
from front to back covers three hundred feet, the average width being
about one hundred feet. In addition to the parquette, which occupies
the entire floor (as the stalls do at the English Opera Comique,
and, by a recent change, also at the Haymarket), there are three
balconies, severally known as the dress circle, the family circle, and
the gallery. The house will seat three thousand people. It is built on
a series of arches, or supporting columns, leaving the basement quite
open, giving, so far as the stage is concerned, great facilities for
the manipulation of scenery and for storage, and allowing space for
offices, drill-rooms for supers, and other purposes.
“It is a magnificent theatre,” said Irving; “the auditorium superb, the
stage fine; the pitch of the auditorium in harmony with the stage, by
which I mean there is an artistic view of the stage from every seat;
the gas managements are perfect, and the system of general ventilation
unique; but the dressing-rooms are small and inconvenient. For anything
like quiet acting, for work in which detail of facial expression,
significant gesture, or delicate asides, are important, the theatre is
too large.”
“Are you acquainted with the history of the stage in Boston?” I asked
him, “or of this theatre in particular?”
“Only from what I have read or heard in a cursory way,” he said;
“but one can readily understand that our Puritan ancestors would
bring with them to these shores their hatred of plays and players.
The actors persevered in their terrible occupation in New England,
notwithstanding a local ordinance to prevent stage plays and other
theatrical entertainments, passed in 1750. Otway’s ‘Orphan’ was, I am
told, the first piece done in Boston. It was played at the British
Coffee-house, ‘by a company of gentlemen,’ and this gave rise to
the passing of the act in question. Some five or ten years later a
number of Tories got up an association to promote acting and defy this
statute. They revolted in favor of art; and in these days of political
tolerance that is a good thing to remember. The members of this society
were chiefly British officers, who, with their subalterns and private
soldiers, formed the acting company. I believe one of them wrote the
first piece they attempted to give in public. It was called ‘The
Blockade of Boston’; but the entertainment was stopped by a _ruse_,—a
sudden report that fighting had begun at Charlestown; a call to arms,
in fact. For many years no more efforts were made to amuse or instruct
the people with semi-theatrical entertainments or stage plays. The
next attempt was a theatre, or, more properly speaking, a variety
show, in disguise. The house was called ‘The New Exhibition Room,’
and the entertainment was announced as ‘a moral lecture.’ One Joseph
Harper was the manager. The programme of the first night included
tight-rope dancing, and various other athletic feats; ‘an introductory
address’; singing, by a Mr. Woods; tumbling, by Mr. Placide; and, in
the course of the evening, ‘will be delivered the Gallery of Portraits;
or, the World as it Goes, by Mr. Harper. Later, ‘Venice Preserved’
was announced as a moral lecture, ‘in which the dreadful effects of
conspiracy will be exemplified.’ Mr. Clapp’s book on Boston contains
several curious instances of this kind. Shakespeare, it seems, filled
the stage as ‘a moral lecturer’; and a familiar old English drama was
played as ‘a moral lecture, in five parts, wherein the pernicious
tendency of libertinism will be exemplified in the tragical history
of George Barnwell; or, the London Merchant.’ Eventually, in the year
1793, I think, or thereabouts, Harper was arrested on the stage while
playing Richard in one of Shakespeare’s moral illustrations of the
bane of ambition and the triumph of virtue over vice. The audience
protested, and destroyed a portrait of the governor of the city,
which hung over the stage-box. They also tore down the State arms,
and trampled upon them. At the hearing of the charge against Harper a
technical flaw in the indictment procured his discharge. After this,
however, the ‘Exhibition Room’ did not flourish; but a bold and earnest
movement, a year or two later, resulted in the building of the Federal
Street Theatre, sometimes also called the Boston, and sometimes Old
Drury, after the London house. From this time the stage in Boston is a
fact; and one feels at home in reading over the names of the actors who
have been well known here,—Macready, Charles Kemble and Fanny Kemble,
Charlotte Cushman, Ellen Tree, John Vandenhoff, Sheridan Knowles, John
Gilbert, Fanny Ellsler, the Booths, our friend Warren, and others. The
present theatre, the Boston,[26] in which we are acting, has been
built about thirty years. The grand ball given to the Prince of Wales
when he visited this country took place here, the auditorium being
boarded for the occasion.”