in front of the stage, and from the ceiling dangled a "barrel hoop,"
pierced by half a dozen nails on which were spiked as many candles. It
is not necessary to take the descriptions of these early playhouses
as baldly literal, nor as indicative of something like barbarism.
The "barrel hoop" chandelier of the old theater in Nassau street was
doubtless only a primitive form of the chandeliers which kept their
vogue for nearly a century after the first comedians sang and acted at
the Nassau Street Theater. Illuminating gas did not reach New York till
1823, and "a thousand candles" was put forth as an attractive feature
at a concert in the American metropolis as late as 1845. "The Beggar's
Opera" was only twenty years old when the comedians sent to the colonies
by William Hallam, under the management of his brother, Lewis, produced
it, yet the historic Covent Garden Theater, in which it first saw the
stage lights (candles they were, too), would scarcely stand comparison
with the most modest of the metropolitan theaters nowadays. Its
audience-room was only fifty-four or fifty-five feet deep; there were
no footlights, the stage being illuminated by four hoops of candles,
over which a crown hung from the borders. The orchestra held only
fifteen or twenty musicians, though it was in this house that Handel
produced his operas and oratorios; the boxes "were flat in front and
had twisted double branches for candles fastened to the plaster. There
were pedestals on each side of the boards, with elaborately-painted
figures of Tragedy and Comedy thereon." Hallam's actors went first to
Williamsburg, Va., but were persuaded to change their home to New York
in the summer of 1753, among other things by the promise that they would
find a "very fine 'Playhouse Building'" here. Nevertheless, when Lewis
Hallam came he found the fine playhouse unsatisfactory, and may be said
to have inaugurated the habit or custom, or whatever it may be called,
followed by so many managers since, of beginning his enterprise by
erecting a new theater. The old one in Nassau Street was torn down,