Lighting and Wiredrawers
Even after the Office of the Revels had ceded much of its production work to the professional theater companies who performed at court, they held onto the task of lighting every aspect of the room, including the stage; since public theaters like the Globe were open-air affairs, the wire-drawers employed by the court could be considered the English theaters’ first lighting designers.
Astington, English Court Theater, 97, 105-6.
The crew from the Office of the Revels installed the lights before the team from the Office of the Works put up the far more valuable tapestries; it is interesting to imagine the hanging of our Circumcision going up while the chandeliers already dangled from their wire works. (Astington.)
For lighting in the Renaissance, see Thornton, Seventeenth Century Interior Decoration, 268-81; and Martin Mortimer, The English Glass Chandelier (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Antique Collector’s Club, 2000). Much of the Revels accounts for the Stuart period consist of lighting costs. Such lighting notations look like this: “Braunches [candelabra or chandeliers] viz’ twoe great braunches made with armes to take of wth boste panes [reflectors?] wyres [for hanging] and guilte garnished with twoe Crownes upon them … and for xiiijen newe ordinary braunches of double plate with xven lights a pece at xls for ech braunche xxviijli.” The entry goes on to list white plates, cande plates, wire rods, paste boards, pendants, “tassels & frendge to garnishe the braunches,” candlesticks, “hookes to streyn wyres,” lanterns, as well as “a Curtayne of Taffata for the musicke house.” This inventory gives a sense of the equipage required to “m/r” (“make ready”) a royal entertainment space. Jacobean and Caroline Revels Accounts, 1603-1642, Malone Society Collections, Volume XIII (Oxford: University Printing House, 1986), 83.4. This particular account is for 1621-23.
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