Theater
2 of the 7 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Theater. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
or Theatre, the'a-ter, a playhouse, a building devoted to dramatic representations. Theater is from a Greek word meaning to see, to view. The Greek theater was an outdoor affair, capable of seating from 10,000 to 40,000 people. Rising seats were cut like steps in a semicircle on the side of a hill. The seats in such an audience room could neither be broken nor set on fire. The spectators sat with their backs to the hill. The stage for the accommodation of the players was built at the foot of the hill in line with the diameter of the circle. This stage was roofed, but it was open in front. An incense altar stood in a semicircular space between the stage and the audience. The Greek chorus of fifteen members, in the Electra, a company of maidens, in the Ajax, a crew of sailors, and in the Antigone, a group of aged Thebans, came in with stately step, passed around the altar, and sang their part at proper intervals. The actors declaimed from the stage, of course. Female characters were represented by boys. Women were not allowed to act. The first actresses were seen on the French and English stage during the seventeenth century. At the conclusion of a play, the audience left the theater by aisles that divided the auditorium into wedge-shaped sections. In a large theater a circular aisle ran around about midway as well. An open-air theater, reproducing the Grecian plan, has been built at Berkeley by a wealthy friend for the University of California. The Roman theater was an imitation of the Grecian. The seats were carried around to form two-thirds of a circle, giving rise to the term amphitheater. Not infrequently they rested on masonry instead of on a hillside. A circle of arches rose around the rear by way of an inclosure. In case of an artificial amphitheater, tunnels, called vomitories, ran outward at the lower levels. The audience room was open to the sky. The stage was roofed. It was in line with a frontal chord rather than a diameter. The earliest of modern theaters were built in Venice, Paris, and London. The first theater in America was built at Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1752. The largest and finest theater in the world is the Grand Opera of Paris. For the stage of Shakespeare, the reader is referred to GLOBE THEATER . The auditorium of modern theaters is constructed usually on the semicircular plan. Galleries rise in tiers around the outer wall. Nomenclature varies. The center of the house is known usually as the dress circle; the portion under the galleries, the parquet; the galleries are numbered from one, the lowest, upward. Private compartments are known as boxes. Lamps in a semicircumference, running around the front edge of the stage, usually in a sunken channel out of sight of the audience, are called footlights. The stage is provided with grooves in which to slide scenes and pulleys for curtains. A fair amount of landscape scenery is considered part of the furniture of standard theaters. Traveling troupes carry special scenery with them. As a preventive of disaster, in case of fire or stampede, the laws of most countries prescribe strict rules for the construction of theaters. The doors must open outward. Regulations fix the number and width of aisles in proportion to the number of sittings. It is forbidden to obstruct the aisles with chairs. In many countries and cities theaters are regarded as educational, and, like schools, are granted state or royal aid. Tickets of admission are expected to defray only a small part of the expense. There are theaters supported in whole or in part at public expense in Budapest, Prague, Munich, Brussels, Antwerp, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Paris, Berlin, Weimar, Dresden, Athens, Mannheim, Lisbon, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Madrid, and in the cities of South America and Mexico generally. There were in 1910 about 3,000 theaters in the United States that booked dramatic productions. There were ninety-eight in New York City, twenty-seven in Chicago, twenty-three in Philadelphia, fifteen in Boston, eleven in Cincinnati, and twelve in St. Louis. About 25,000 actors were employed at an aggregate salary of about $20,000,000. The annual receipts of American theaters were rated in that year at $100,000,000. This amount seems large, but it is only a fraction of the sum taken in at the doors of variety shows, concerts, sleight of hand performances, moving picture shows, and the like.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
or THEATRE, a building devoted to the representation of dramatic spectacles; a playhouse. Among the Greeks and Romans theaters were the chief public edifices next to the temples. The theater of Marcellus at Rome, the external walls of which are still in existence, contained seats for 30,000 spectators. The Greek theaters were semicircular; that part in which the chorus danced and sang was called the orchestra; behind this, and facing the audience, was the stage for the performers who took part in the drama; the back of the stage being filled in by a permanent architecturally decorated scene. Roman thea theaters also formed semi-circles, with seats rising in the form of an amphitheater for the spectators, at the chord of which was the stage (scena), with its permanent decorations. The orchestra, which was the space between the stage and the lowest tier of spectators, was employed by the Greeks for theatrical purposes, whereas the Romans turned it into seats for the senators. The topmost tier was generally crowned with a covered portico. The theaters were either open or were protected against the sun and rain by an awning stretched over them. The scena consisted of the scena in a restricted sense, answering to the modern scene, and the pulpitum or stage. The scene itself, in accordance with a critical canon observed with much solitude by the Grecian dramatists, was very rarely changed during the course of the THEATER or THEATRE same play, though the scena versatilis, the turning scene, and the scena ductilis, the shifting scene, were not altogether unknown. The pulpitum again was divided into proscenium, or space in front of the scene, where the actors stood while actually engaged in the business of the play, and the postscenium, or space behind the scene, to which they retired when they made their exits. Modern theaters are generally constructed on a semi-circular or horse-shoe plan, with galleries running round the walls. Also, a room, hall, or other place, generally with a platform at one end, and ranks of seats, rising as they recede, or otherwise arranged so as to afford the spectators a full and unobstructed view of the platform. Such rooms are used for public lec lectures, anatomical demonlectures, strations, surgical operations, etc.