hings must have existed a
century ago, when the grandsires and great-grandsires of us Londoners
were in the habit of frequenting the theatres night after night,
almost as punctually as they ate their dinner or sipped their claret
or their punch. To look in at Drury Lane or Covent Garden, if only to
witness an act or two of the tragedy or comedy of the evening, was a
sort of duty with the town gentlemen, wits, and Templars, a hundred
years back, when George III. was king. But gas had not then superseded
wax, and tallow, and oil.

Beyond increasing the _quantity_ of light, stage management has done
little since Garrick's introduction of foot-lights, or "floats," as
they are technically termed, in the way of satisfactorily adjusting
the illumination of the stage. The light still comes from the wrong
place: from below instead of, naturally, from above. In 1863, Mr.
Fechter, at the Lyceum, sank the _floats_ below the surface of the
stage, so that they should not intercept the view of the spectator;
and his example has been followed by other managers; and of late
years, owing to accidents having occurred to the dresses of the
dancers when they approached too near to the foot-lights, these have
been carefully fenced and guarded with wire screens and metal bars.
Moreover, the dresses of the performers have been much shortened. But
the obvious improvement required still remains to be effected.

George Colman the younger, in his "Random Records," describes an
amateur dramatic performance in the year 1780, at Wynnstay, in North
Wales, the seat of Sir Watkin Williams Wynn. The theatre had formerly
been the kitchen of the mansion--a large, long, rather low-pitched
room. One advantage of these characteristics, according to Mr. Colman,
was the fact that the foot-lights, or _floats_, could be dispensed
with: the stage was lighted by a row of lamps affixed to a large beam
or arch above the heads of the performers--"on that side of the arch
nearest to the stage, so that the audience did not see the lamps,
which cast a strong vertical light upon the actors. This," he writes,
"is as we receive light from nature; whereas the operation of the
_float_ is exactly upon a reversed principle, and throws all the
shades of the actor's countenance the wrong way." This defect,
however, appeared to our author to be irremediable; for, as he argues,
"if a beam to hold lamps as at Wynnstay were placed over the
proscenium at Drury Lane or Covent Garden