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193:. The scenery of this noted resort was made up of flats and drops of the simplest construction, the properties were cheap, worn, and few in number, the costumes flimsy and tinselled, and the auditorium, before the rising of the curtain, usually filled with the stifling leakage of gas. The boxes were painted in white and gold, with the first and second tiers divided into a series of screened lock-boxes.
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In 1810 he became stage manager, and remained permanently connected with the one playhouse as actor, stage manager, and manager for 38 years. It was his privilege to introduce nearly all the noted
British players of his day to American audiences. From 1821 until 1840 Simpson was working-manager to
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comprised a five-act tragedy, a comedy, and an olio diversion, that terminated at twelve or one o'clock. The old Park
Theatre was a wooden, barn-like structure, fronting about eighty feet on Park row, and rising to the height of sixty or seventy feet, painted in imitation of blocks of granite.
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has truly pictured, it was not an uncommon thing to see men rise on the front rows of the dress-circle in their shirt-sleeves, and between the acts turn their backs to the audience, while their better-halves sat munching apples and peeling oranges. Not seldom the entertainments of an evening
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A separate stairway led to the third tier and the gallery. This third tier was an assembling-place for the dissolute of both sexes; one half the gallery was patronized by boys, servants, and sailors, and the remainder was devoted to the accommodation of
Negroes. What is now known as the
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was called the pit. It was fitted with hard wooden benches, and the admission to it was half-price. Here the bachelors, critics, and wits of the day found their places. Drinking bars, united with apple, pie, and peanut stands, were connected with the pit and the upper tier of boxes.
186:, the lessee of the theatre, but on the death of Price he assumed the sole management. During his career he went through several trials of adversity, and finally retired, 6 June 1848, under discouragement and in reduced circumstances.
178:. As a comedian, Simpson was studious and painstaking, and in his delineations intelligent and respectable, but there was ever attached to his representations a hardness of manner that interfered with his popularity.
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144:manager. He made his theatrical début at the
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253:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography
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