Beyond increasing the quantity of light, stage management has done little since Garrick’s introduction of foot-lights, or “floats,” as they are technically termed, in the way of satisfactorily adjusting the illumination of the stage.  The light still comes from the wrong place:  from below instead of, naturally, from above.  In 1863, Mr. Fechter, at the Lyceum, sank the floats below the surface of the stage, so that they should not intercept the view of the spectator; and his example has been followed by other managers; and of late years, owing to accidents having occurred to the dresses of the dancers when they approached too near to the foot-lights, these have been carefully fenced and guarded with wire screens and metal bars.  Moreover, the dresses of the performers have been much shortened.  But the obvious improvement required still remains to be effected.

George Colman the younger, in his “Random Records,” describes an amateur dramatic performance in the year 1780, at Wynnstay, in North Wales, the seat of Sir Watkin Williams Wynn.  The theatre had formerly been the kitchen of the mansion—­a large, long, rather low-pitched room.  One advantage of these characteristics, according to Mr. Colman, was the fact that the foot-lights, or floats, could be dispensed with:  the stage was lighted by a row of lamps affixed to a large beam or arch above the heads of the performers—­“on that side of the arch nearest to the stage, so that the audience did not see the lamps, which cast a strong vertical light upon the actors.  This,” he writes, “is as we receive light from nature; whereas the operation of the float is exactly upon a reversed principle, and throws all the shades of the actor’s countenance the wrong way.”  This defect, however, appeared to our author to be irremediable; for, as he argues, “if a beam to hold lamps as at Wynnstay were placed over the proscenium at Drury Lane or Covent Garden Theatre, the goddesses in the upper tiers of boxes, and the two and one shilling gods in the galleries, would be completely intercepted from a view of the stage.”  Still, Mr. Colman was not without hope that “in this age of improvement, while theatres are springing up like mushrooms, some ingenious architect may hit upon a remedy.  At all events,” he concludes, “it is a grand desideratum.”

Colman was writing in the year 1830.  It is rather curious to find him describing theatres as “springing up like mushrooms,” when it is considered that, notwithstanding the enormous extension of London, and the vast increase of its population, but one or two theatres were added to it for some thirty years.  Meanwhile, the “ingenious architect,” to whom he looked hopefully to amend the lighting of the stage, has not yet appeared.  But then, one does not meet ingenious architects every day.

A concluding note may be added touching the difficulties that may ensue from the system of lighting the theatres by means of gas.