How a play is produced/The Furniture Men

by Karel Čapek

Layout 2

The Furniture Men

 

THESE hang out mainly in the furniture-room and the stores, where are gathered together thrones rather the worse for wear, rustic settees, Louis XV and Louis XVI furniture with torn coverings, antique couches, Gothic altars, cupboards, what-nots, hearths and coffins, and in a word everything that people ever sat on, eat at, and lie down upon. Only that an antique couch is not called an antique couch, but “that sofa that figured in Quo Vadis”; a Louis XVI suite is known briefly as “those settees that played in The Statesman’s Trial,” or some other play. Every piece of furniture the theatre possesses has such a name; just as in the wardrobe there hangs “the coat that Mr. Bittner wore in The Bullies,” or may be found “those top-boots that played in Otheller.”