FOOT-LIGHTS.
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 and galleries), much artificial
lighting could not, as a rule, have been requisite. Malone, in his
account of the English stage prefixed to his edition of "Shakespeare,"
describes the stage as formerly lighted by means of two large branches
"of a form similar to those now hung in churches." The pattern of
these branches may be seen in the frontispiece to "Kirkman's
Collection of Drolls," printed in 1672, representing a view of a
theatrical booth. In time, however, it was discovered that the
branches obstructed the view of the spectators, and were otherwise
incommodious; they then gave place to small circular wooden frames
furnished with candles, eight of which were hung on the stage, four on
either side. The frontispiece to the Dublin edition of Chetwood's
"History of the Stage," 1749, exhibits the stage lighted by hoops of
candles in this way, suspended from the proscenium, and with no
foot-lights between the actors and the musicians in the orchestra. It
is probable that these candles were of wax or tallow, accordingly as
the funds of the theatrical manager permitted. Mr. Pepys, in his
"Diary," February 12th, 1667, chronicles a conversation with
Killigrew, the manager of the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane. "He tells
me that the stage is now, by his pains, a thousand times better and
more glorious than ever heretofore. _Now, wax candles and many of
them; then, not above 3 lb. of tallow._ Now, all things civil: no
rudeness anywhere; then, as in a bear-garden," &c. The body of the
house, according to Malone, was formerly lighted "by cressets or large
open lanthorns of nearly the same size with those which are fixed in
the poop of a ship."
The use of candles involved the employment of candle-snuffers, who
came on at certain pauses in the performance to tend and rectify the
lighting of the stage. Goldsmith's Strolling Player narrates how he
commenced his theatrical career in this humble capacity: "I snuffed
the candles; and let me tell you, that without a candle-snuffer the
piece would lose half its embellishment." The illness of one of the
actors necessitated the pressing of the candle-snuffer into the
company of players. "I learnt my part," he continues, "with
astonishing rapidity, and bade adieu to snuffing candles ever after. I
found that nature had designed me for more noble employment, and I was
resolved to take her when in the humour." But the duties of a
candle-snuffer, if not very honourable, were somewhat arduous. It was
the custom of the audience, especially among those frequenting the
galleries, to regard him as a butt, with whom to amuse themselves
during the pauses between the acts. Something of this habit is yet
extant. Even nowadays the appearance of a servant on the stage for the
necessary purposes of the performance--to carry chairs on or off, to
spread or remove a carpet, &c.--is frequently the signal for cries of
derision from the gallery. Of old the audience proceeded to greater
extremities--even to hurling missiles of various kinds at the
unfortunate candle-snuffer. In Foote's comedy of "The Minor," Shift,
one of the characters, describes the changing scenes of his life. From
a linkboy outside a travelling theatre he was promoted to employment
within. "I did the honours of the barn," he says, "by sweeping the
stage and clipping the candles. Here my skill and address were so
conspicuous that it procured me the same office the ensuing winter, at
Drury Lane, where I acquired intrepidity, the crown of all my
virtues.... For I think, sir, he that dares stand the shot of the
gallery, in lighting, snuffing, and sweeping, the first night of a new
play, may bid defiance to the pillory with all its customary
compliments.... But an unlucky crab-apple applied to my right eye by a
patriot gingerbread baker from the Borough, who would not suffer
three dancers from Switzerland because he hated the French, forced me
to a precipitate retreat."
Mr. Richard Jenkins, in his "Memoirs of the Bristol Stage," published
in 1826, relates how one Winstone, a comic actor, who sometimes
essayed tragical characters, appeared upon a special occasion as
Richard III. He played his part so energetically, and flourished his
sword to such good purpose while demanding "A horse! a horse!" in the
fifth act that "the weapon coming in contact with a rope by which one
of the hoops of tallow candles was suspended, the blazing circle (not
the golden one he had looked for) fell round his neck and lodged
there, greatly to his own discomfiture and to the amusement of the
audience." The amazed Catesby of the evening, instead of helping his
sovereign to a steed, is said to have been sufficiently occupied with
extricating him from his embarrassing situation. Winstone, indeed,
seems to have enjoyed some fame on the score of eccentricity. He took
leave of the stage in 1784, being then about eighty years of age. But
he was at this time so afflicted with deafness that it was impossible
for him to "catch the word" from the prompter at the side of the
stage. To assist him, therefore, in the delivery of his farewell
address, one of the performers, provided with a copy of the speech,
was stationed behind the speaker and instructed to keep moving forward
and backward as he did, like his shadow. The effect must certainly
have been whimsical. Winstone had been a pupil of Quin's, and had
played Downright to Garrick's Kitely in "Every Man in his Humour," at
Drury Lane, in 1751. He was a constant attendant at the Exchange
Coffee House, the established resort of the Bristol merchants. "He had
the good fortune at one time to win a considerable prize in the
lottery, and often looked in at the insurance offices, where he
sometimes received premiums as an underwriter of ships and cargoes."
In consequence, he obtained much patronage, and always inserted at the
head of the playbills of his benefit, "By desire of several eminent
merchants."
Garrick, in 1765, after his return from Italy (according to Jackson's
"History of the Scottish Stage"), introduced various improvements in
the theatre, and amongst them, the employment of a row of foot-lights
in lieu of the old circular chandeliers over head. The labours of the
candle-snuffers in front of the curtain were probably brought to a
conclusion soon afterwards, when oil-lamps took the place of candles.
The snuffer then found his occupation gone. Probably the trimming of
the lamps became his next duty; and then, as time went on, he
developed into a "gasman," that most indispensable attendant of the
modern theatre.
Thackeray, in his novel of "The Virginians," has some very apposite
remarks upon the limited state of illumination in which our ancestors
were content to dwell. "In speaking of the past," he writes, "I think
the night-life of society a hundred years since was rather a _dark_
life. There was not one wax-candle for ten which we now see in a
ladies' drawing-room: let alone gas and the wondrous new illuminations
of clubs. Horrible guttering tallow smoked and stunk in passages. The
candle-snuffer was a notorious officer in the theatre. See Hogarth's
pictures: how dark they are, and how his feasts are, as it were,
begrimed with tallow! In 'Mariage à la Mode,' in Lord Viscount
Squanderfield's grand saloons, where he and his wife are sitting
yawning before the horror-stricken steward when their party is over,
there are but eight candles--one on each table and half-a-dozen in a
brass chandelier. If Jack Briefless convoked his friends to oysters
and beer in his chambers, Pump Court, he would have twice as many. Let
us comfort ourselves by thinking that Louis Quatorze in all his glory
held his revels in the dark, and bless Mr. Price and other Luciferous
benefactors of mankind for abolishing the abominable mutton of our
youth."
The first gas-lamp appeared in London in the year 1809, Pall Mall
being the first and for some years the only street so illuminated.
Gradually, however, the new mode of lighting made way, and stole from
the streets into manufactories and public buildings, and, finally,
into private houses. The progress was not very rapid however; for we
find that gas was not introduced into the Mall of St. James's Park
until the year 1822. It is difficult to fix the exact date when gas
foot-lights appeared upon the stage. But in the year 1828 an explosion
took place in Covent Garden Theatre by which two men lost their lives.
Great alarm was excited. The public were afraid to re-enter the
theatre. The management published an address in which it was stated
that the gas-fittings would be entirely removed from the interior of
the house, and safer methods of illumination resorted to. In order to
effect the necessary alterations the theatre was closed for a
fortnight, during which the Covent Garden company appeared at the
English Opera House, or Lyceum Theatre, and an address was issued on
behalf of the widows of the men who had been killed by the explosion.
In due time, however, the world grew bolder on the subject, and gas
reappeared upon the scene. Some theatres, however (being probably
restricted by the conditions of their leases), were very tardy in
adopting the new system of lighting. Mr. Benjamin Webster, in his
speech in the year 1853, upon his resigning the management of the
Haymarket Theatre after a tenancy of fifteen years, mentions, among
the improvements he had originated during that period, that he had
"introduced gas for the fee of £500 a-year, and the presentation of
the centre chandelier to the proprietors."
The employment of gas-lights in theatres was strenuously objected to
by many people. In the year 1829 a medical gentleman, writing from
Bolton Row, and signing himself "Chiro-Medicus," addressed to a public
journal a remonstrance on the subject. He had met with several fatal
cases of apoplexy which had occurred in the theatres, or a few hours
after leaving them, and he had been led, with some success, as he
alleged, to investigate the cause. It appeared to him "that the strong
vivid light evolved from the numerous gas-lamps on the stage so
powerfully stimulated the brain through the medium of the optic
nerves, as to occasion a preternatural determination of blood to the
head, capable of producing headache or giddiness: and if the subject
should at the time laugh heartily, the additional influx of blood
which takes place, may rupture a vessel, the consequence of which will
be, from the effusion of blood within the substance of the brain, or
on its surface, fatal apoplexy." From inquiries he had made among his
professional brethren who had been many years in practice in the
Metropolis, it appeared to him that the votaries of the drama were by
no means so subject to apoplexy or nervous headache _before_ the
adoption of gas-lights. Some of his medical friends were of opinion
that the air of the theatre was very considerably deteriorated by the
combustion of gas, and that the consumption of oxygen, and the new
products, and the escape of hydrogen, occasioned congestion of the
vessels of the head. He thought it probable that this deterioration
of the air might act in conjunction with the vivid light in producing
either apoplexy or nervous headache. He found, moreover, that the
actors were subject not only to headache, but also to weakness of
sight and attacks of giddiness, from the action of the powerfully
vivid light evolved from the combustion of gas; and he noted that the
pupils of the eyes of all actors or actresses, who had been two or
three years on the stage, were much dilated; though this, he thought,
might be attributable to the injurious pigments they employed to
heighten their complexions; common rouge containing either red oxide
of lead or the sulphuret of mercury, and white paint being often
composed of carbonate of lead, all of which were capable of acting
detrimentally upon the optic nerve.
The statements of "Chiro-Medicus" may seem somewhat overcharged; yet,
after allowance has been made for that exaggerated way of putting the
case which seems habitual to "the faculty" when it takes up with a new
theory, a sufficient residuum of fact remains to justify many of the
doctor's remarks. That a headache too often follows hard upon a
dramatic entertainment must be tolerably plain to anyone who has ever
sat in a theatre. Surely a better state of things must have existed a
century ago, when the grandsires and great-grandsires of us Londoners
were in the habit of frequenting the theatres night after night,
almost as punctually as they ate their dinner or sipped their claret
or their punch. To look in at Drury Lane or Covent Garden, if only to
witness an act or two of the tragedy or comedy of the evening, was a
sort of duty with the town gentlemen, wits, and Templars, a hundred
years back, when George III. was king. But gas had not then superseded
wax, and tallow, and oil.
Beyond increasing the _quantity_ of light, stage management has done
little since Garrick's introduction of foot-lights, or "floats," as
they are technically termed, in the way of satisfactorily adjusting
the illumination of the stage. The light still comes from the wrong
place: from below instead of, naturally, from above. In 1863, Mr.
Fechter, at the Lyceum, sank the _floats_ below the surface of the
stage, so that they should not intercept the view of the spectator;
and his example has been followed by other managers; and of late
years, owing to accidents having occurred to the dresses of the
dancers when they approached too near to the foot-lights, these have
been carefully fenced and guarded with wire screens and metal bars.
Moreover, the dresses of the performers have been much shortened. But
the obvious improvement required still remains to be effected.
George Colman the younger, in his "Random Records," describes an
amateur dramatic performance in the year 1780, at Wynnstay, in North
Wales, the seat of Sir Watkin Williams Wynn. The theatre had formerly
been the kitchen of the mansion--a large, long, rather low-pitched
room. One advantage of these characteristics, according to Mr. Colman,
was the fact that the foot-lights, or _floats_, could be dispensed
with: the stage was lighted by a row of lamps affixed to a large beam
or arch above the heads of the performers--"on that side of the arch
nearest to the stage, so that the audience did not see the lamps,
which cast a strong vertical light upon the actors. This," he writes,
"is as we receive light from nature; whereas the operation of the
_float_ is exactly upon a reversed principle, and throws all the
shades of the actor's countenance the wrong way." This defect,
however, appeared to our author to be irremediable; for, as he argues,
"if a beam to hold lamps as at Wynnstay were placed over the
proscenium at Drury Lane or Covent Garden Theatre, the goddesses in
the upper tiers of boxes, and the two and one shilling gods in the
galleries, would be completely intercepted from a view of the stage."
Still, Mr. Colman was not without hope that "in this age of
improvement, while theatres are springing up like mushrooms, some
ingenious architect may hit upon a remedy. At all events," he
concludes, "it is a grand desideratum."
Colman was writing in the year 1830. It is rather curious to find him
describing theatres as "springing up like mushrooms," when it is
considered that, notwithstanding the enormous extension of London, and
the vast increase of its population, but one or two theatres were
added to it for some thirty years. Meanwhile, the "ingenious
architect," to whom he looked hopefully to amend the lighting of the
stage, has not yet appeared. But then, one does not meet ingenious
architects every day.
A concluding note may be added touching the difficulties that may
ensue from the system of lighting the theatres by means of gas.
On December 3rd, 1872, there occurred the strike of some 2400 stokers;
and, as a consequence, the West-end of London was involved in complete
darkness, while in the City the supply of gas was limited to a very
few streets. Upon the theatres this deprivation fell heavily. The
performances were given up in despair at some houses, and carried on
at others in a very restricted manner, by suddenly calling into
requisition the twilight of tallow-candles and oil-lamps. The
following advertisements, among many others of like tenor, appearing
in _The Times_ of the 4th December, are illustrative of the situation
of affairs:
SPECIAL NOTICE.--COURT THEATRE.--This theatre, from its
situation, is in no way affected by the Gas Strike, and will be
open every evening, and brilliantly illuminated.
ST. JAMES'S THEATRE.--The management having received no notice
that, in consequence of the strike, the supply of gas would be
discontinued, found at the last moment no light could be
obtained, and were compelled to inform the crowds at the door
that there would be no performance. _All Tickets_ issued last
night will be available this evening.
GAS.--GAIETY.--SPECIAL NOTICE.--Arrangements (if necessary) have
been made to light this Theatre with lime-lights and oil.