The theatre of England between 1558 and 1642 is known as the Elizabethan theatre or the English Renaissance theatre.
It was the era of William Shakespeare (active 1585 – 1613) and several other greats.
The most prominent theory on the origination of the term ‘box office’ attributes it to this era.
The theory suggests that during this period, theatres admitted the general public into the ground level “pit” without charge.
The affluent people, however, were expected to pay for their tickets as they got to sit in private boxes to watch theatre.
And tickets for these private boxes were sold at an ‘office’, called box office (and it was also designed like a secure box for handling cash).
These box tickets were the biggest source of revenue.
And that’s how the collections came to be known as box office collections.
While this may make sense, this attribution becomes questionable when we consider that the first evidence of the use of the term comes from the 1780s (around 150 years after the Elizabethan theatre).
But with the lack of any other theory, this is accepted as the source of origination of box office.
