Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1882-04-06
AN OLD PLAY HOUSE.
The Comforts of Forty Years Ago as Compared with
the Elegance of To-day.


No public building not indecently
dirty or unhealthily exposed could be
less suited to the assemblage of elegant
people for elegant pleasure than the
Park Theatre. 1t was in all respects
the very reverse of the splendid house
which had just opened and closed under
the management of the Cavaliere Riva-
finoli. Its boxes were like pens for
beasts. Across them were stretched
benches, consisting of mere board
covered with faded red moreen, a mar
rover board, shoulder-high, being
stretched behind to serve for back.
But one seat on each of the three or four
benches was without even this luxury,
in order that the seat itself might be
raised upon its hinges for people to pass
in. These sybaritic Enclosures were
kept under lock and key, by fee-ex-
pecting creature, who was ALWAYS half
drunk except when he was wholly drunk.
The pit, which was in our modern thea
tiers become the paterre Tor, as it is often
strangely called, the parqueD, the most
desirable part of the house, was in the
Park Theater hardly superior to that in
which the JaeQuerie of old stood upon
the bare ground (pdr tefre), and thus
gave the place its French name. The
floor was dirty and broken into holes:
the seats were bare, backless benches.
Women were never seen in the pit; and
although the excellence of the position
(the best in the house) and the cheap
ness of admission (half dollar) took
gentlemen there, few went there who
could afford to study comfort and luxury
IN their amusements. The place was
peryadcd with evil smells; and not I'M
commonly, in the midst of perform
ance, rats ran out of the holes in the
floor and across into the orchestra.
This delectable place was approached
by a long under ground passage, with
bare whitewashed walls, dimly lighted.
except at sort of booth, at which vile
fluids and viler solids were sold. As to
the house itself, it was the dingy abode
of dreariness. The gallery was occu-
pied by bowling roughs, who might
have taken lessons in behavior from the
negroes who occupied a part of this tier,
which was rallied off for their particular
use.
Such was the principal tneater in New
York in 1910, and Tor ten years after
ward. 1t had been called, in memory
of its London counterpart, Old Drury,
which name was derisively modified in
to Old Dreary. Yet here there was usu-
ally good and sometimes great acting
of good plays and great singing of good
operas. Shakspere was heard ten times
in New York then for once that he is
heard now; and the stock company of
the Park Theater would, at days no.
tice, perform firstrate comedy in very
satisfactory style, with completeness in
all parts. Here, too, was seen such
ballet-dancing as never before was seen
i'll America, and perhaps never before or
after in the world since the days of
Herodias; for here. in May, 1910, Fanny
Elssler appeared before house into
which not another hand, not to say
another body, could have been squeezed
by hydraulic pressure. And here she
danced the gay NEWCOMERS of that
day into a frenzy that made it seem as
if their brains were as light as her heels
Large and naturally strong, training
had given her the limbs of an athlete,
and she encompassed the stage with vast,
sweeping bounds. To this physical
superiority she added fine although
not beautiful face, and an arch. coquet-
tish manner Century for april.