1649 R. LOVELACE Poems 78 The other [comedy] for the Gentlemen oth' Pit. 1682 DRYDEN Mac Flecknoe 11 Let Cully Cockwood, Fopling charm the Pit. 1709-10 R. STEELE Tatler No. 145¶2She in a Front Box, he in the Pit next the Stage. 1781 R. B. SHERIDAN Critic III. i, Speak more to the pit..¶the soliloquy always to the pit, that's a rule. 1829 E. BULWER-LYTTON Disowned xxxviii, The pit is crowded. 1876 W. SMITH Hist. Eng. Lit. 121 The designation parterre, still given by the French to the pit. 1922 W. S. MAUGHAM On Chinese Screen xlvii. 186 Declaiming the blank verse of Sheridan Knowles with an emphasis to rouse the pit to frenzy. 1979 J. PICK Privileged Arts 9 The Bancrofts..reordered their theatre building (the pit was done away with and neat rows of seats appeared for the middle classes in its stead).

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During the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, the theatrical space was divided into three and sometimes four and five general seating areas--the pit, the boxes, the galleries (in different cases, upper and lower), and sometimes stage seating. Each seating area occupied a distinct price point, and therefore distinct classes of people occupied each. According to Joanna Phillips, Restoration seating prices remained fairly stable until the 18th century:

PIT, or main floor - half crown, sunken below ground level, benches appeared after 1660, flaps (hinged sections of benches) used instead of aisles to increase seating capacity, floor of the auditorium was raked, pit took various shapes-- semicircle, broad fan, rectangle, magnet shape, entered by doors in the side walls near the stage

Galleries - 18 pence for middle gallery, 1 shilling for upper gallery rose above the boxes, usually in the back of the theatre only

Boxes - 4 shillings, multitiered boxes rose above the pit on all three sides, some with as many as 7 rows of seats per box.

Different classes and personalities tended to occupy each form of seating. Pit audiences, according to Rupert Speirs, paid "half a crown" for a seat but "would not be expected to keep to that seat throughout the performance. Here the Restoration audience consisted of gallants and beaux and was by far the noisiest and rowdiest area of the auditorium. The audience here seemed to have no respect for the actors or the rest of the audience, lacking any sense of decorum." You can see the rowdiness of pit audiences even in the early 19th century in Cruickshank's 1836 caricature of the theatrical audience.