The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 17.0370 Friday, 28 April 2006
[1] From: David Frankel <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 27 Apr 2006 12:15:06 -0400
Subj: RE: SHK 17.0364 Rushes on the Elizabethan Stage
[2] From: Sidney Berger <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 27 Apr 2006 13:00:16 -0500
Subj: Re: SHK 17.0364 Rushes on the Elizabethan Stage
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: David Frankel <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 27 Apr 2006 12:15:06 -0400
Subject: 17.0364 Rushes on the Elizabethan Stage
Comment: RE: SHK 17.0364 Rushes on the Elizabethan Stage
The following comes from Patrick Finelli's mini-essay on the Green Room
at http://www.connectedcourseware.com/ccweb/grnrm.htm:
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first reference is in
Colley Cibber's Love Makes a Man (1701)
"I do know London pretty well, and the Side-box, Sir, and behind the
scenes ay, and the Green-Room and all the Girls and Women-Actresses
there." [3]
Fielding provides further evidence about backstage activities in 1736:
"Sir, the Prompter and most of the players are drinking tea in the
Green-room." [4]
Incontrovertible evidence that the room's identity is derived from its
location is found in Shadwell's earlier play, A True Widow (1678) after
Gartrude favors Selfish with her love and beauty backstage in return for
a song. The conceited Selfish greets the retired gentleman Bellamour with:
I am the happiest Man, I think, that ever the Sun shin'd on: I have
enjoyed the prettiest Creature, just now, in a Room behind the Scenes. [5]
The transition in nomenclature is clear before the end of the act when
the suitor Stanmore reveals that Selfish told him about deflowering
Gartrude. The place and the action are unmistakable:
"Selfish, this Evening, in a green Room, behind the Scenes, was
before-hand with me; she n'er tells of that: Can I love one that
prostitutes her self to that fellow?" [6]
Samuel Pepys describes an encounter with Nell Gwyn and others in the
Scene-room at the Drury Lane Theatre Royal in 1667:
I to my tailors and there took up my wife and Willet, who stayed there
for me, and to the Duke of York's playhouse; but the House so full, it
being a new play The Coffee-House, that we could not get in, and so to
the King's House; and there going in, met with Knepp and she took us up
into the Tireing-rooms and to the women's Shift, where Nell was dressing
herself and was all unready; and is very pretty, prettier then I
thought; and so walked all up and down the House above, and then below
into the Scene-room, and there sat down and she gave us fruit and here I
read the Qu's to Knepp while she answered me, through all her part of
Flora's Figarys, which was acted today. [7]
C. David Frankel
Assistant Director of Theatre
School of Theatre and Dance
University of South Florida
[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Sidney Berger <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 27 Apr 2006 13:00:16 -0500
Subject: 17.0364 Rushes on the Elizabethan Stage
Comment: Re: SHK 17.0364 Rushes on the Elizabethan Stage
I believe the tradition of the "Green Room" was begun by noted
eighteenth century actor, David Garrick who chose that space for his
actors to greet their guests. In that way, he avoided civilians
traipsing through the backstage area. It was called the Green Room
because the walls happened to be of that color.
Sidney Berger
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