The Royal Coburg Theatre in 1822, with a mirror screen behind the proscenium arch.

In the Royal Coburg Theatre in 1822, the audience in the foreground is seeing itself reflected in a gigantic mirror screen! This is a reflected image of what Kean would actually see while acting Shakespeare there.The theatre was founded in 1818 by James King, Daniel Dunn and John Serres, then Marine painter to the King who managed to secure the formal patronage of Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg naming it the Royal Coburg Theatre: a "minor" theatre (not one of the two patent theatres) and forbidden to show serious drama. When the theatre passed to George Davidge in 1824 he brought in the famous actor Edmund Kean to play six Shakespeare plays in six nights. This bringing of art to the masses caused Kean to tell the audience during his curtain call "I have never acted to such a set of ignorant, unmitigated brutes as I see before me."

In 1833 it was bought by Daniel Egerton and William Abbott after abolition of the legal distinction between patent and minor theatres, and in 1833 it was renamed the Royal Victorian Theatre after the heir to the throne Princess Victoria. In 1880 under Emma Cons it was run on "strict temperance lines" and became The Royal Victoria Hall And Coffee Tavern - already known as the "Old Vic". With Emma Cons's death in 1912 the theatre passed to her niece Lilian Baylis, who emphasized the Shakespearean repertoire. The Old Vic Company was established in 1929, led by John Gielgud, and has survived as a centre of classic theatre south of the river Thames. In 2003, American actor Kevin Spacey was appointed as new artistic director of the Old Vic Theatre Company. Picture (Library of Congress) and some data courtesy of the Yorck Project, under Creative Commons Attribution-Share- Alike License (Wikipedia).