Theater Gallery

Edmund Kean in Richard III, 1822

Edmund Kean in Richard III, 1822.. Mr. Edmund Kean as Richard, Duke of Gloucester, later King Richard the Third, in Shakespeare's Richard III at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane. Handcolored stipple copperplate engraving by Robert Cooper after a painting by George Clint. From D. Terry's British Theatrical Gallery, London, Henry Berthoud Jr., 1825

© Florilegius / Mary Evans

William Kempe dancing the Morris

William Kempe, or Kemp, dancing the Morris.
English actor and dancer specialising in comic roles and one of original players in early dramas by William Shakespeare. Roles associated with his name include Falstaff

© Lebrecht

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Fire sprinklers, 19th century

Fire sprinklers. This system of sprinklers was designed to extinguish fires, and here has been installed in a theatre in 19th-century France. The water, supplied through the pipe at right to a reservoir at top, is being used to put out fires on the wooden beams below. A public demonstration of this system took place in the Theatre des Varietes, Paris, on 23 June 1887. This system was capable of spraying 9000 litres of water every minute. It was installed at a time when several large fires had prompted changes from gas to electric lighting. Artwork from the first volume (first period of 1888) of the French popular science weekly La Science Illustree

© SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY