ABSTRACT
For late eighteenth-century London theatres, lighting is the facet of production about which we have least information. No detailed lighting accounts like those for the Comédie-Française have hitherto been known for any English theatre of this period. This gap can now be partly filled: a ‘Schedule’ attached to the answer in a 1787 Chancery lawsuit gives two seasons’ worth of the daily accounts of Joseph Hayling, a tinman and purveyor of lamps, who provided light at the King’s Theatre in the Haymarket from about 1768 to 1782. The schedule shows that lightning was one of the items Hayling provided for the King’s Theatre, in much the same forms outlined by Serlio in 1545. Hayling attended rehearsals and performances; supplied oil; cleaned, filled, and lit the lamps; provided special effects that involved live fire; and served as resident tinker, repairing everything from wall sconces and fenders to spring-loaded daggers and French horns.
