The Theatre Royal in Bath was opened on 27th October 1750 but
at the time it had no boxes. When it opened the space was simply a stage and
the audience watched from a sloped floor which rose by roughly seven feet from
the front of the Theatre to the back.
The elite who visited Bath must have still thought the then new Theatre
a bit less than genteel in comparison to the venues they frequented in London.
They could not reserve a space nor escape the local less well born who might
attend. But still they managed to engineer an improvement to their theatre
visit. They would send their servants to theirearly and have them stand in a
space and then arrive once the play had started. Of course that meant
disturbance for everyone else as people forced a path through the crowd to get
in and their servants then forced back through the crowd to get out. And let’s
remember there were probably at least two dozen or more aristocrats or gently
born patrons reserving spaces.
But then a Theatre excursion was very different in the 1700s and 1800s,
it was quite normal for people to talk through a whole play and the servants
reserving spaces in Bath were often known to shout across the hall to one
another if they were bored with waiting for their employers to arrive.
But not only would the elite in the audience arrive late they may also
only attend for a particular scene which their favorite actor or actress
played in. And of course the actors and actresses were as human then as
they are now and treated their late arrivals and early leavers in the same
manner a comedian would treat a heckler now, welcoming them or bidding them
goodbye in a range of responses dependent on their mood.
There is one instance of an actor in Bath becoming outraged with a
member of his audience. Well off people could sit on chairs at the side of
stage during a performance as there were no boxes, and on this occasion the
gentleman was so bored he walked across the stage to speak to his friend on the
other side. Swords were drawn over the issue.
Perhaps you can imagine the atmosphere in the Theatre too. There were no
windows and no air vents. It would have been hot with so many people crowded in
and the air would have smelt of sweat and been quite thin by the end of a
performance, probably not a comfortable or pleasant experience – really it’s no
wonder they only stayed for elements of a play. The Theatre was lit with tallow
candles, both burning on the stage and about the auditorium which meant members
of the audience had hot wax dripping on their clothes and heads.
It is not surprising then that improvement commenced quite quickly,
boxes were added along both edges of theatre andat the side of it too so the
chairs could be removed from the stage itself. Then in 1774 an entrance lobby
was added on the front of the building and a crush room serving refreshment,
and above this seven more grand boxes facing the stage, were added, stretching
back in a fan shape, with five rows of benches, seating five occupants on each
bench. It cost three shillings for a box seat and two shillings for the pit.
The other addition was a carriage forecourt in which the elite
might be deposited at the door easily without needing to walk through the
street.
And it was in its completely renovated state that Jane Austen visited
it, perhaps sitting with her family on the benches in one of the boxes.
Jane Lark
The second novel in Jane Lark’s historical Marlow Intrigues series is
now also available.
Jane
Lark, a writer of authentic, passionate and emotional Historical and New Adult Romance
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