“What’s going on this evening?” demanded my friend of the box-keeper at the Park-street theatre. “I understand Forest has come back.”
“Yes, sir; fresh from England.”
“Is he to play this evening?”
“Here is the bill, sir. He is going to play Othello.”
“Pretty full house?”
“I don’t believe you will find a seat. There was a great rush for tickets this morning. The best boxes were sold at auction to the highest bidder.”
With this piece of information we lost no time in seeking a place, and were fortunate enough to be able to squeeze ourselves into a box on the first tier, filled with little more than eighteen or nineteen people, most of whom seemed to belong to the first society. A stranger always feels agreeably surprised at the neat arrangement of the interior of the Park-street theatre, whose outward appearance resembles much more a Dutch granary than a temple of the Muses. The first tier of boxes displayed, as usual, one of the choicest collections of fine women it had ever been my good fortune to behold in any part of the world: the effect of the second was scarcely inferior to that of the first: while the third, which in America, as in England, is almost exclusively reserved for those unfortunate wretches on whom society wreaks its vengeance for the commission of crimes in which the principal offender escapes but too frequently with impunity,—presented, as yet, nothing but empty benches. In a short time, however, these began to fill with such pale, sad, haggard-looking creatures as seemed to have escaped from Purgatory to seek a few moments’ relief from their torments. Immediately above them was the gallery of the gods, which on this occasion, however, bore a much greater resemblance to the infernal regions, being studded with the grinning visages of negroes, the outlines of whose sable countenances so completely inter-mingled with one another as to present but one huge black mass, from which the white of their eyes and teeth was shooting streaks of light like so many burning tapers from an ocean of darkness. The whole seemed to be a reversion of the unrivalled fiction of Dante,—the angels being below, and the damned occupying the upper regions,—as if it were the purpose of the Americans to invert even the order of the universe.
It was now very nearly seven o’clock; and the impatience of the audience began, very differently from that of Boston, to manifest itself by shrill whistles, loud screams and yells, and the beating of hands and canes. At last the orchestra, composed of very little more than twenty musicians, began to play something like an overture; which, however, was completely drowned in the noise from the pit and gallery, who seemed to look upon the musical prelude as an unnecessary delay of the drama. At last the music stopped, and, amid the loud acclamations of the people,
Enter Roderigo and Iago.