The highest level of theatre auditorium seating, usually a tier above the balcony, held the cheapest seats, sometimes called "the heavens." In many cases, a theatregoer paid admission for unreserved seating in the gallery, and thus there could be considerable jockeying for position. William A. Brady recalled in his memoirs how as a youth he spent his evenings "scrunched up on the edge of a hard gallery bench" 50 feet above the stage. He paid the 20-cent admission when he had it; otherwise he sneaked past the gallery doorkeeper. "The gallery-patrons had a grudge against the swells down in the orchestra who'd paid as much as seventy cents to get in" and sometimes pelted them with peanuts. Long after the practice of munching peanuts during the performance had been banned, the derogatory term "peanut gallery" persisted. "The proudest moment of my early life," Brady reminisced, "was the time I hit the bass-drum with a marble from the top gallery of Booth's Theatre on 23rd Street during the sleep-walking scene in Macbeth" (1937, 10-11).
See also Gallery gods.
The Historical Dictionary of the American Theater. James Fisher.