History and Description of the Parish of Clerkenwell (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1828 Excerpt: ...addressing themselves to the balcony, and turning their backs upon a great part of "Historia Histrionica; an historical account of the English Stage" a tract reprinted in Dodsley's Collection, and originally published in 1699: its author is said to have been James Wright, barrister at law, who also wrote tf The Antiquities of Rutlandshire," several poems, and other pieces. + Ibid. This area answered to the pit in the private playhouses, which in them was furnished with seats. the real audience. From beneath this balcony the performers made their entrances and exits, through a pair of curtains which opened in the middle, and might be drawn backwards and forwards on an iron rod. Matted walls or tapestry were the general interior decorations. When these theatres began to be entirely covered in, as they seem to have been in the time of Charles I., candle-light performances also were adopted: the lights for which purpose at the Red-Bull, appear from Kirkman's view to have been candles, disposed partly in branches hung from the roof, and partly in little flat candlesticks, each holding two lights, which ranged along the front of the stage. We need only further observe, that this house originally, no doubt, was one of those open to the weather so far as regarded the central area; and that, most likely, it was completely roofed at-the re-building before 1633. The site was probably that now occupied by Messrs. Nicholson's distillery. On the right, as we proceed, is School-house Yard, formerly called Honey-Coat Yard. It derived its present name from having been the site of the Clerkenwell Charity Schools, which, in 1760, were removed to the corner of Jerusalem Passage. Robert Seymour, who wrote in 1735, says, " In HoneyCoat Yard are two Charity-S...