Theatrical Pleasures, Plate 2: Contending for a Seat

Theodore Lane

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Lower-middle-class theatergoers struggle here to secure unreserved seats in the pit at London’s Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, while being observed by refined audience members in private boxes above. Two men engaged in fisticuffs cause consternation to those nearby. The titles of dramas lettered on playbills comment on the fracas. Point of Honour and Peeping Tom, on a sheet in the left foreground, suggest the cause of the fight and draw attention to a man in striped trousers looking up a woman’s dress. A second handbill, at the right, lettered The Devil to Pay and Love, Law and Physic, hints at the trials of sitting in the pit and suggests the low taste of the audience since the latter farce was characterized by Cockney humor.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art