The green room at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, 2007, a room with comfortable chairs, couches, and a television that is predominantly red and yellow in color
16 November 2020
A green room is a place for performers to wait and relax until they are needed on stage. Why it is called green is not known, although there are many guesses. The issue is complicated because in some of the early uses of the phrase we don’t know exactly what they are referring to.
One of the first references to a green room is in Samuel Pepys Diary of 7 October 1666, although the context at first blush does not seem theatrical. Pepys writes that he was called to the Palace of Whitehall that day to meet with the king to discuss the naval budget:
And anon we were called in to the green-room, where the King, Duke of York, Prince Rupert, Lord Chancellor, Lord Treasurer, Duke of Albemarle, G. Carteret, W. Coventry, Morrice.
Part of the Whitehall Palace complex was the Cockpit-in-Court, so named because cockfighting was held there. But it was also used as a theater and for wide assortment of functions, including as a residence for courtiers. After the Restoration of the monarchy and the legal appearance of women on stage, a dressing room for female actors, decorated in green baize, was constructed there in 1662. Pepys may have been referring to a meeting in this room, or perhaps it was to another room elsewhere in the palace. We do not know.
In his 1676 play The Virtuoso, Thomas Shadwell references a green room:
Your Marriage-Bawd, your Canonical-Bawd is worst of all; they betray people for their lives-time. Here, carry her, and lock her up in the green-room; I'll maul your Bawdship.
Again, while the term appears in a play, the context is not theatrical, so again we don’t know exactly what green room means here. But a few years later, in his 1679 play A True Widow, Shadwell makes the first clear reference to an actor’s waiting room by that name. The scene is set in a theater:
Lady Busy. Fie, Mr. Stanmore, that you should say such an ungentile thing! Come, Miss, bear up, and do not cry: how can you endure to see a young Lady's tears, and not melt: Come on; pretty Miss, I am sure you will be kind, and constant to Mr. Stanmore, will you not?
Gartrude. Yes, yes.
Lady Busy. Good. Why look you, Sir, I know you are a worthy Gentleman, and will consider of a Settlement, such as befits a Gentlewoman.
Stanmore. No, Madam: Selfish, this Evening, in a green Room, behind the Scenes, was before-hand with me; she ne'r tells of that: Can I love one that prostitutes her self to that Fellow?
The OED brackets this citation, indicating the editors did not think this clearly referred to a actor’s waiting area, but to my mind it at least clearly refers to some space behind a theatrical stage.
The 1692 divorce proceedings between Henry Howard, the 7th Duke of Norfolk and Mary Mordaunt give us another early instance of the word, again a non-theatrical one. The context of this particular use is quite juicy. Howard was suing his wife for divorce on the grounds that she had slept with Sir John Germain. The testimony of one of the servants, a Thomas Hudson, includes references to Nell Gwyn, actress, prostitute, and mistress to Charles II:
Thomas Hudson saith, That the Duke of Norfolk being at Portsmouth, he was Butler at Windsor, when Germaine, and the Dutchess, and Cornwall went to play; Germaine sent his Footman for clean Linen, which he brought the next Morning; Mrs. Gwin said to the Dutchess, The Dog would have lain with me, but she would not lay the Dog where the Deer laid, for she knew my Lady Dutchess would accept of him; after that he saw a Shirt and a Wascoat in the Closet, which my Ladies Woman and Ann Burton took away. My Lord being absent, we murmured amongst our selves, that my Lord was wrong'd; I told my Lord, whereupon my Master Cragg had me to my Lord Peterborough's Lodging, and threaten'd me, that he would prefer me to his Brother Richards, who turn'd me off in Germany. This was, he thinks, in December or September 1685: Mrs. Gwin spoke this in the Green Room, and he was in a Closet hard by, and the Door open, and so heard it.
The incident in question happened at Windsor, and we don’t know what the green room referred to was. Howard was not granted the divorce in 1692, in large part because his fellow lords found him as guilty of infidelity as she, but the couple eventually divorced in 1700. Mordaunt eventually married Germain.
The term appears again in 1694 in the anonymous play The Adventures of the Helvetian Hero:
The Young Couple's Apartments were fixt, and their Bedchamber assign'd them in that Green Room once her Maiden-Castle or Imprisonment, now the Nuptial Bed-room, abounding with all the Freedom and Delights that Matrimony and the Marriage bed could afford.
The next clear reference to a theatrical waiting area is in Colley Cibber’s 1701 Love Makes a Man:
Yes, Sir, I do know London pretty well, and the Side-box, Sir, and behind the Scenes, ay, and the Green Room too, and all the Girls, and Women-Actresses there.
And we get another in Henry Fielding’s 1736 play Pasquin, which gives us some insight into the hierarchical nature of the London theater of that day:
1st Player. Sir, the Prompter, and most of the Players, are drinking Tea in the Green-Room.
Trapwit. Mr. Fustian, shall we go drink a Dish of Tea with them? Come, Sir, as you have a Part in my Play, you shall drink a Dish with us.
1st Player. Sir, I dare no go into the Green-Room; my Salary is not high enough: I shall be forfeited if I go in there.
After this date, we have many clear references to green room as a theatrical waiting area.
So why the green? We don’t know, but there are two commonly touted explanations that we can dismiss. The first is that actors’ waiting rooms are painted green because the color is psychologically soothing. This explanation relies on twentieth-century psychological theory which would not exist in the seventeenth century. The other clearly false explanation is that the room is called green because actors would be paid there. Besides having no evidence that such rooms were used to conduct financial business, the association of the color green with money comes from U.S. currency being that color. English banknotes are not green as a rule. Besides, back in the day actors would more likely have been paid in coin, not notes.
Perhaps it is named for the female actor’s dressing room in Whitehall Palace. Or maybe to another such room so decorated. The early non-theatrical uses of the term seem to indicate that green room may have had an early sense meaning a woman’s dressing room or boudoir, and over time that extended in theatrical use to include male actors. We’ll probably never know for sure.
Sources:
The Adventures of the Helvetian Hero. London: Randall Taylor, 1694, 137–38. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Cibber, Colley. Love Makes a Man. London: Richard Parker, 1701, 44. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).
Fielding, Henry. Pasquin. London: J. Watts, 1736, 12–13. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
———. Pasquin. O.M. Brack, William Kupersmith, and Curt A. Zimansky, eds. Iowa City: U of Iowa Press, 1973, 54. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2011, s.v. green room, n.
Pepys, Samuel. The Diary of Samuel Pepys, vol. 7 of 10. William Matthews and Robert Latham, eds. Berkeley: U of California Press, 1972, 312. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Shadwell, Thomas. A True Widow. London: Benjamin Tooke, 1679, 61–62. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
———. The Virtuoso. London: T.N. for Henry Herringman, 1676, 62. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
A True Account of The Proceedings Before the House of Lords; (From Jan. 7. 1691. To Feb. 17. Following) Between the Duke and Dutchess of Norfolk. 26. London: 1692, Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Photo credit: Edinburgh Blog, 29 September 2007, used under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.