Stealing thunder and breaking legs, sayings we get from the theatre.

The English language is peppered with phrases that come from the world of theatre. I'm not talking about the sayings that have been lifted from Shakespeare's plays; these are idioms that came about because of the theatre. Phrases such as:

Steal my Thunder

I should thank my friend, David Barry, (left) for this one, as he first told me about it. David has spent his entire life in theatre and film, having been a child actor who successfully transitioned to adult roles. He worked with people like Laurence Olivier and Paul Schofield but perhaps is best known as Frankie Abbott, the class hard man (Ahem!) in the sitcom, Please Sir!

These days, as well as acting, David is a novelist. There is a link to his website at the bottom of this post.

We were at a writing evening when he told me about the dramatist, John Dennis (1658-1734.)

Dennis seems to have been an argumentative sort of man, as he was expelled from Caius College, Cambridge, after wounding a fellow student with a sword. He also fell out publicly with people such as Alexander Pope.

In 1709, for his play, “Appius and Virginia,” he invented a new technique to imitate the sound of thunder. The play was performed at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, where it flopped and was taken off in favour of Macbeth. Dennis went to a performance of Macbeth and discovered they'd used the thunder machine, without his permission.

He is said to have cried out: “that is my thunder, by God; the villains will not let my play run, and yet they steal my thunder!”

Break a leg.

Everyone knows it is bad luck to wish an actor good luck, but why do we say, “break a leg”? There are a couple of theories about this.

The first is that when an actor took a bow, they bent their knee, and therefore, “broke” the line of their leg. So, if you “broke a leg,” you had reached the point of taking a bow and had, therefore, been a success.

Another theory is that it refers to the leg line in a theatre. The leg line is the edge of the stage just beyond the point where the audience can see. If an actor did not perform in that night's show, they had to stay behind the leg line, and so, did not get paid. If you broke the leg line, that meant you'd been part of the show, and therefore would be paid.

At first, “break a leg” was something that was exclusively used to wish an actor well. These days, it is used in many situations to wish someone luck as they do something new.

In the limelight

In the 1800s, stages were lit by burning lime, which gives off a bright, white light, so the performers could be clearly seen. The more central you were to the performance, the closer you would be to the burning lime, so that you would be, “in the limelight.” Ambitious actors craved “the limelight,” i.e., the bigger roles.

You might be interested to know that limelight was not used until 1836. In “Acting the Nabob,” Ben and Alice’s performances would probably have been illuminated by oil lamp, although the Lyceum first used gas lighting in 1815.

Acting the Nabob is published by The Wild Rose Press, and can be found here.

If you'd like to know more about David Barry and his books, you can find details here.