But the use of scenery was not the only innovation that carried the Restoration theatre far beyond its Elizabethan prototype.  Play-houses were now regularly roofed; and the stage was artificially lighted by lamps.  The shifting of scenery demanded the use of a curtain; and it became possible for the first time to disclose actors upon the stage and to leave them grouped before the audience at the end of an act.

All of these improvements rendered possible a closer approach to naturalness of representment than had ever been made before.  Palaces and flowered meads, drawing-rooms and city streets, could now be suggested by actual scenery instead of by descriptive passages in the text.  Costumes became appropriate, and properties were more nicely chosen to give a flavor of actuality to the scene.  At the same time the platform receded, and the groundlings no longer stood about it on the sides.  The gallants were banished from the stage, and the greater part of the audience was gathered directly in front of the actors.  Some traces of the former platform system, however, still remained.  In front of the curtain, the stage projected into a wide “apron,” as it was called, lined on either side by boxes filled with spectators; and the house was so inadequately lighted that almost all the acting had to be done within the focus of the footlights.  After the curtain rose, the actors advanced into this projecting “apron” and performed the main business of the act beyond the range of scenery and furniture.

With the “apron” stage arose a more natural form of play than had been produced upon the Elizabethan platform.  The Drama of Rhetoric was soon supplanted by the Drama of Conversation.  Oratory gradually disappeared, set speeches were abolished, and poetic lines gave place to rapid repartee.  The comedy of conversation that began with Sir George Etherege in 1664 reached its culmination with Sheridan in a little more than a hundred years; and during this century the drama became more and more natural as the years progressed.  Even in the days of Sheridan, however, the conventions of the theatre were still essentially unreal.  An actor entered a room by walking through the walls; stage furniture was formally arranged; and each act terminated with the players grouped in a semicircle and bowing obeisance to applause.  The lines in Sheridan’s comedies were indiscriminately witty.  Every character, regardless of his birth or education, had his clever things to say; and the servant bandied epigrams with the lord.

It was not until the nineteenth century was well under way that a decided improvement was made in the physical conditions of the theatre.  When Madame Vestris assumed the management of the Olympic Theatre in London in 1831 she inaugurated a new era in stage conventions.  Her husband, Charles James Mathews, says in his autobiography, “There was introduced that reform in all theatrical matters which has since been adopted in every theatre