Theatre History Cybercourse

Theatre Lore: The origins of some commonly used expressions in the theatre

Patrick M. Finelli, Ph.D.

As a theatre historian with an online presence, I receive many questions from students and others asking about commonly used expressions in the theatre. Investigating the origins of these terms can be challenging since evidence is so sparse. I have collected some of the most plausible definitions in a preliminary attempt to authenticate their cultural and philological history. This essay is about the origin of the green room. Others will consider superstition and Shakespeare's Scottish play, the act curtain, “break a leg,” the comic and tragic masks, the “trois coups de baton” and the history of harlequin.

The Green Room is the place where actors gather backstage before a performance. We know that the archaic theatre of 5th century B.C. Greece had a “skene” that was a structure upstage of the orchestra or “dancing place.” Textual evidence is found in the Oresteia, written by Aeschylus and produced in 458 at the Theatre of Dionysus. Agamemnon and Clytemnestra “enter the house” while Cassandra remains in the chariot. [1] Since violence happened offstage, the bodies of the victims would be revealed by opening the doors to the skene and rolling out the platform wagon called an “ekkyklema.” [2] Examination of ancient theatre sites in Eretria, Delphi, Ephesus and Priene reveals that the skene became more permanent and elaborate in the Lykurgan and Hellenistic eras. This evidence supports the contention that the backstage area was also used for entrances, exits, costume changes and perhaps waiting actors. Archeological evidence from Orange, Aspendos and Ostia reveals that the Romans also had facilities behind the “scaenae frons,” richly decorated with niches and statuary. The “regia” and “hospitalia” of the Roman theatre led to rooms behind the stage.

The Elizabethan theatre of William Shakespeare featured a “tiring house” where props were stored and the actors waited for their entrance. Henslowe's diary lists an extensive inventory of the tiring house at the Rose Theatre. In Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, Quince chooses the spot where the stage is placed in the wood with the words: “This green plot shall be our stage, this hawthorn brake our tiring-house.” The linkage of “green” and “tiring house” is contained in a citation for the first time, but the term “Green Room” doesn't occur until much later. One theory holds that plants and shrubs were also kept in the tiring room for set dressing and therefore the tiring room was referred to as the “greens” room. There is no evidence that any of these backstage spaces were referred to by the term “Green Room.” However, once theatre goes indoors after the Restoration in 1660 we find textual evidence. 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]

“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]

"Faith I'le go scoure the Scene-room and Engage Some Toy within to save the falling Stage." [8]

Backstage space is often used to store scenery as well as actors waiting to make their entrances. I do not agree with those who claim that “green” is a corruption of “scene.” Rather, it was a room behind the scenes and was clearly painted and/or carpeted in green according to this textual evidence. There were many examples of the color green in Restoration theatres, according to The New York Times and a playbill note from Covent Garden, sent to me by Don Wilmeth at Brown University. The groundcloth on the stage was green, the seats were covered in green and the front curtain was green. The stagehands were called “the greencoat men”. [9] George Vandenhof mentions that the Green Room in Covent Garden was carpeted in green. This might have been a baize cotton fabric napped to imitate felt. The room also contained “chandelier lighting, a comfortable divan and a full length movable swing-glass.” According to Vandenhof, one must remember “the first point to attend to on entering the Green Room, to see if one's dress is in perfect order, well put on by the dresser, hanging well…the actor sits down and enters into conversation with those around which is interrupted every now and then by the shrill voice of the call-boy making his calls.” [10] In the larger early English theatres there was sometimes more than one green room; they were then strictly graded according to the salary of the player, who could be fined for resuming to use a green room above his rank. The expression is most definitely English, since the French use the term foyer des artistes (or des acteurs), in Italian it's called il camerino, das Künstlerzimmer in German and vestaurio in Spanish

There are at least a couple of misconceptions about the origins of this term. One apocryphal account maintains that actors, especially in touring troupes, would have to wait outside the theatre building for their entrance. Since they were out on the grass, the term “in the green room” was an ironic way of describing their location. There is scant evidence to support this contention. The aforementioned reference in Midsummer Night's Dream suggests that the players have to make do with what they have in the woods and does not depict conditions on the English Public Stage.

Another theory holds that the retiring room was painted green since actors coming off the stage needed to adjust their eyes from the green lime that would have been burning at the foot of the stage, in lieu of footlights. This is absolutely false since the first theatre to use gas lighting for the stage was Philadelphia's Chestnut Street Theatre in 1816, the same year Thomas Drummond invented limelight. Drummond's light required hydrogen and oxygen along with gas to heat lime to incandescence. Gas lighting was installed at Covent Garden and Drury Lane in 1817. Pepys complains about candlelight hurting the audience's eyes. Therefore, although the Green Room was painted green, it certainly wasn't to help the actor's eyes adjust.

Footnotes

[1] Lattimore, Richmond, trans., Oresteia, by Aeschylus, ed. By David Grene and Richmond Lattimore (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953) 65.

[2] Lattimore, Richmond, trans., Oresteia, by Aeschylus, ed. By David Grene and Richmond Lattimore (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953) 80.

[5] Shadwell, Thomas A True Widow (1678), The Complete Works of Thomas Shadwell, vol. 3, ed. Montague Summers (London: Benjamin Blom, 1927) 342.

[6] Shadwell, Thomas A True Widow (1678), The Complete Works of Thomas Shadwell, vol. 3, ed. Montague Summers (London: Benjamin Blom, 1927) 346.

[7] Pepys, Samuel, The Diary of Samuel Pepys (1667), vol. Viii, ed. Robert Latham and William Matthews (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974) 463.

[8] Lee, Nathaniel, Mithridates (1678), The Works of Nathaniel Lee, vol. 1, ed. Thomas B. Stroup and Arthur L. Cooke (New Brunswick, N.J.: The Scarecrow Press, 1954) 365.

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