Our old theatres were of two classes, public and private.  The companies of the private theatres were more especially under the protection of some royal or noble personage.  The audiences they attracted were usually of a superior class, and certain of these were entitled to sit upon the stage during the representation.  The buildings, although of smaller dimensions than the public theatres boasted, were arranged with more regard for the comfort of the spectators.  The boxes were enclosed and locked.  There were pits furnished with seats, in place of the yards, as they were called, of the public theatres, in which the “groundlings” were compelled to stand throughout the performance.  And the whole house was roofed in from the weather; whereas the public theatres were open to the sky, excepting over the stage and boxes.  Moreover, the performances at the private theatres were presented by candle or torch light.  Probably it was held that the effects of the stage were enhanced by their being artificially illuminated, for in these times, at both public and private theatres, the entertainments commenced early in the afternoon, and generally concluded before sunset, or, at any rate, before dark.

As patience and endurance are more easy to the man who sits than to the standing spectator, it came to be understood that a livelier kind of entertainment must be provided for the “groundlings” of the public theatres than there was need to present to the seated pit of the private playhouses.  The “fools of the yard” were charged with requiring “the horrid noise of target-fight,” “cutler’s work,” and vulgar and boisterous exhibitions generally.  These early patrons of the more practical parts of the drama are entitled to be forbearingly judged, however.  Their comfort was little studied, and it is not surprising, under the circumstances, that they should have favoured a brisk and vivacious class of representations.  The tedious playwright did not merely oppress their minds; he made them remember how weary were their legs.

But it is probable that the tastes thus generated were maintained long after the necessity for their existence had departed, and that, even when seats were permitted them, the “groundlings” still held by their old forms of amusement, demanding dramas of liveliness, incident, and action, and greatly preferring spectacle to speeches.  From the philosophical point of view the pit had acquired a bad name, and couldn’t or wouldn’t get quit of it.  Still it is by no means clear that the sentiments ascribed to the pit were not those of the audience generally.

Nevertheless the pit was improving in character.  Gradually it boasted a strong critical leaven; it became the recognised resort of the more enlightened playgoers.  Dryden in his prologues and epilogues often addresses the pit, as containing notably the judges of plays and the more learned of the audience.  “The pit,” says Swift, in the introduction to his “Tale of a Tub,” “is sunk below the stage, that whatever of weighty matter shall be delivered thence, whether it be lead or gold, may fall plump into the jaws of certain critics, as I think they are called, which stand ready open to devour them.”  “Your bucks of the pit,” says an old occasional address of later date, ascribed to Garrick, but on insufficient evidence: