The uppermost gallery has a roof, marked 'tectum'. This in the earlier Globe was of thatch, which caused the fire of 1613, and left the unlucky King's men with little but 'wit to cover it with tiles'. I think the Rose was also thatched; but the Fortune and Hope were tiled. In view of the jetties, such a roof would give some protection to those in the galleries, but the groundlings had none. Both the drawing and the maps confirm the statement of Wright that the Globe, Fortune, and Red Bull were 'partly open to the weather', and this was doubtless also the case with their predecessors.[1]
De Witt does not indicate any internal gallery partitions, but the Swan had these by 1614, for they were to be the model for 'two boxes in the lowermost storie fitt and decent for gentlemen to sitt in', which were to be constructed at the Hope. Similarly the Fortune was to have 'ffower convenient divisions for gentlemens roomes, and other sufficient and convenient divisions for twoe pennie roomes, with necessarie seates'. These were to be ceiled with lath and plaster. An earlier example of the technical use of the term 'room' for a division of the auditorium occurs in the draft Theatre lease of 1585, which gave the landlord a right to sit or stand in 'some one of the upper romes', if the places were not already taken up. If the clause, like the rest of the draft, merely reproduced the covenants of the 1576 lease, the term was of long standing. Probably the divisions were of varying sizes. There would not have been much point in cutting up the space available for 'twopennie roomes' into very small sections, but there were also 'priuate roomes', which are perhaps the same as the 'gentlemens roomes' of the contracts.[2] If so, these were probably to the right and left of the stage in the lowest gallery. But the whole question of seating and prices is rather difficult, and it is further complicated by obscurely discerned changes of fashion, which involved the adoption of the very inconvenient custom of sitting on the stage, and the consequent abandonment by the gentry of what was called the lord's room. Prices also, no doubt, tended to grow, at any rate for the better seats; the 'popular' prices always remained low.[3] I do not know whether the professional actors ever contented themselves, after their establishment in London, with merely sending round the hat,
