BLACKFRIARS THEATRE BUILDING eee {is 
a railing, between the termination of the lower gallery and the 
wings of the stage where the gallants were wont to sit in full 
view. 
Allowing 10% feet for the width of each gallery,t with a cor- 
responding but more elastic space on the stage at right and left 
for gallants, there was still a minimum width of 25 feet for the 
actors,—as great a space as sometimes used on the modern stage.? 
The full 46 feet might have been used on occasion.* But such 
practice could have been but rarely necessary or expedient. 
Hence the use of these wings rather as a source of revenue from 
social fops whose prime object was not to see the acting but to 
display their fine dress, especially to those in the high-priced 
seats of the first gallery, or to patronize the house with their 
grand presence. 
From the available evidences there is no reason to suppose a 
stage at Blackfriars much smaller than the public theatres had, 
as has hitherto been done.* 
The Fortune stage, certainly one of the largest in London, 
extended to the middle of the yard,—a distance of 4o feet. But 
a tiring-house at the rear took off 12% feet, leaving a depth of 
2714 feet for the acters. 
The construction of Blackfriars necessitated a different ar- 
rangement for tiring-house and stage. The accompanying sug- 
gestive plat of the seating capacity of Blackfriars,> drawn to 
scale and with reference to known details, shows the possibility 
of an ample stage of 25 feet in depth, with a passage of four feet 
at the rear connecting the two lower rooms of the tiring-house. 
With an expandable stage approximately 25 feet deep and 
*The galleries in the Globe and 
Fortune were 12% feet wide from 
the outside of the building, or about 
12 feet inside, with a 10-inch “juttey 
forwards” in the two upper galler- 
ies—See Fortune contract, u. s., 29°. 
See further, infra, plats, 50-51. 
*The modern proscenium opening 
ranges from about 20 to 40 feet,— 
the latter serving for the most elab- 
orate grand opera, and the former 
in plays and “shows” in the smaller 
theatres. In the chief American cit- 
ies the average is about 30 to 35 
feet, ranging down to 20 and up to 
40 or more.—See Julius Cohn’s Off- 
cial Theatrical Guide (1907), XII, 
passim. 
*An actor at the extreme limits 
of the stage would have been cut 
off from the view of only those on 
the same side in the two upper gal- 
leries. Sometimes in a modern the- 
atre he is cut off from all specta- 
tors on that side of the house. 
“Cf. supra, 43. 
5Infra, 50-51. 
161 
