Act II of _Romeo and Juliet_ Romeo pretty clearly comes in with his

friends in some public place of the city, and then leaps a wall into

an orchard, where he is lost to their sight, and finds himself under

Juliet’s window. He must have a wall to leap. I mentioned _Pyramus and

Thisbe_ just above with intent, for what is _Pyramus and Thisbe_ but a

burlesque of the _Romeo and Juliet_ motive, which would have been all

the more amusing, if a somewhat conspicuous and unusual wall had been

introduced into its model? Another case in point may be the ‘close

walk’ before Labervele’s house in _A Humorous Day’s Mirth_.[303] I have

allowed myself to stray into the field of conjecture.

One other possible feature of action ‘above’ must not be left out of

account. The use of the gallery may have been supplemented on occasion

by that of some window or balcony in the space above it, which De

Witt’s drawing conceals from our view. Here may have been the ‘top’ on

which La Pucelle appears in the Rouen episode of _1 Henry VI_, and the

towers or turrets, which are sometimes utilized or referred to in this

and other plays.[304] It would be difficult to describe the central

boxes of the Swan gallery as a tower.

Before any attempt is made to sum up the result of this long

chapter, one other feature of sixteenth-century staging, which is

often overlooked, requires discussion. In the majority of cases the

background of an out-of-door scene need contain at most a single

_domus_; and this, it is now clear, can be represented either by a

light structure, such as a tent or arbour, placed temporarily upon

the floor of the stage, or more usually by the _scena_ or back wall,

with its doors, its central aperture, and its upper gallery. There

are, however, certain scenes in which one _domus_ will not suffice,

and two or possibly even three, must be represented. Thus, as in

_Richard III_, there may be two hostile camps, with alternating action

at tents in each of them.[305] There may also be interplay, without

change of scene, between different houses in one town or village.

In _Arden of Feversham_, Arden’s house and the painter’s are set

together;[306] in _The Taming of A Shrew_, the lord’s house and the

alehouse for the induction, and Polidor’s and Alphonso’s during the

main play;[307] in _The Blind Beggar of Alexandria_, the houses of

Elimine and Samethis;[308] in _1 Sir John Oldcastle_, Cobham’s gate

and an inn;[309] in _Stukeley_, Newton’s house and a chamber in the

Temple;[310] in _A Knack to Know an Honest Man_, Lelio’s and Bristeo’s

for one scene, Lelio’s and a Senator’s for another, possibly Lelio’s

and Servio’s, though of this I am less sure, for a third.[311] These

are the most indisputable cases; given the principle, we are at liberty

to conjecture its application in other plays. Generally the houses

may be supposed to be contiguous; it is not so in _Stukeley_, where

Old Stukeley clearly walks some little distance to the Temple, and

here therefore we get an example of that foreshortening of distance

between two parts of a city, with which we became familiar in the

arrangement of Court plays.[312] It is not the only example. In

_George a Greene_ Jenkin and the Shoemaker walk from one end to the

other of Wakefield.[313] In _Arden of Feversham_, although this is

an open-country and not an urban scene, Arden and Francklin travel

some little way to Raynham Down.[314] In _Dr. Faustus_, so far as

we can judge from the unsatisfactory text preserved, any limitation

to a particular neighbourhood is abandoned, and Faustus passes

without change of scene from the Emperor’s Court to his own home in

Wittenberg.[315] Somewhat analogous is the curious device in _Romeo and

Juliet_, where the maskers, after preparing in the open, ‘march about

the stage’, while the scene changes to the hall of Capulet, which they

then enter.[316]

I think, then, it must be taken that the background of a public stage

could stand at need, not merely for a single _domus_, but for a ‘city’.

Presumably in such cases the central aperture and the gallery above it

were reserved for any house in which interior action was to proceed,

and for the others mere doors in the scenic wall were regarded as

adequate. I do not find any sixteenth-century play which demands either

interior action or action ‘above’ in more than one house.[317] But a

question arises as to how, for a scene in which the scenic doors had to

represent house doors, provision was made for external entrances and

exits, which certainly cannot be excluded from such scenes. Possibly

the answer is, although I feel very doubtful about it, that there

were never more than two houses, and that therefore one door always

remained available to lead on and off the main stage.[318] Possibly

also entrances and exits by other avenues than the two scenic doors,

which we infer from the Swan drawing, and the central aperture which we

feel bound to add, are not inconceivable. We have already had some hint

that three may not have been the maximum number of entrances. If the

Elizabethan theatre limited itself to three, it would have been worse

off than any of the early neo-classic theatres based upon Vitruvius, in

which the _porta regia_ and _portae minores_ of the scenic wall were

regularly supplemented by the _viae ad forum_ in the _versurae_ to

right and left of the _proscenium_.[319] No doubt such wings could not

be constructed at the Swan, where a space was left on the level of the

‘yard’ between the spectators’ galleries and the right and left edges

of a narrow stage. But they would be feasible in theatres with wider

stages, and the arrangement, if it existed, would make the problem of

seats on the stage easier.[320] It is no more than a conjecture. It has

also been suggested that the heavy columns drawn by De Witt may have

prevented him from showing two entrances round the extreme ends of the

scenic wall, such as are perhaps indicated in some of the Terentian

woodcuts of 1493.[321] Or, finally, actors might have emerged from the

tiring-house into the space on the level of the yard just referred to,

and thence reached the stage, as from without, by means of a short

flight of steps.[322]

Working then from the Swan stage, and only departing in any essential

from De Witt’s drawing by what appears to be, at any rate for theatres

other than the Swan, the inevitable addition of a back curtain, we

find no insuperable difficulty in accounting for the setting of all

the types of scenes recognizable in sixteenth-century plays. The

great majority of them, both out-of-door scenes and hall scenes, were

acted on the open stage, under the heavens, with no more properties

and practicable _terrains_ than could reasonably be carried on by the

actors, lowered from the heavens, raised by traps, or thrust on by

frames and wheels. For more permanent background they had the scenic

doors, the gallery above, the scenic curtain, and whatever the tire-man

might choose to insert in the aperture, backed by an alcove within the

tire-house, which the drawing of the curtain discovered. For entrances

they had at least the scenic doors and aperture. The comparatively few

chamber scenes were set either in the alcove or in a chamber ‘above’,

formed by throwing together two compartments of the gallery. A window

in a still higher story could, if necessary, be brought into play. So,

with all due respect to the obscurities of the evidence, I reconstruct

the facts. It will, I hope, be apparent without any elaborate

demonstration that this system of public staging, as practised by

Burbadge at the Theatre, by Lanman at the Curtain, by Henslowe at the

Rose, and perhaps with some modifications by Langley at the Swan, is

very fairly in line with the earlier sixteenth-century tradition, as

we have studied it in texts in which the Court methods are paramount.

This is only natural, in view of the fact that the same plays continued

to be presented to the public and to the sovereign. There is the same

economy of recessed action, the same conspicuous tendency to dialogue

on a threshold, the same unwillingness to break the flow of an act by

any deliberate pause for resetting. The public theatre gets in some

ways a greater variety of dramatic situation, partly owing to its free

use of the open stage, instead of merely a portico, for hall scenes,

partly owing to its characteristic development of action ‘above’.

This, in spite of the battlements of the Revels accounts, may perhaps

be a contribution of the inn-yard. The main change is, of course, the

substitution for the multiple staging of the Court, with its adjacent

regions for different episodes, of a principle of successive staging,

by which the whole space became in turn available for each distinct

scene. This was an inevitable change, as soon as the Elizabethan love

for history and romance broke down the Renaissance doctrine of the

unity of place; and it will not be forgotten that the beginnings of

it are already clearly discernible in the later Court drama, which of

course overlaps with the popular drama, itself. Incidentally the actors

got elbow-room; some of the Lylyan scenes must have been very cramped.

But they had to put up with a common form setting, capable only of

minor modifications, and no doubt their architectural decorations and

unvarying curtain were less interesting from the point of view of

_spectacle_, than the diversity of ‘houses’ which the ingenuity and

the resources of the Court architects were in a position to produce.

In any case, however, economy would probably have forbidden them to

enter into rivalry with the Revels Office. Whether the Elizabethan type

of public stage was the invention of Burbadge, the ‘first builder of

theatres’, or had already come into use in the inn-yards, is perhaps

an idle subject for wonder. The only definite guess at its origin

is that of Professor Creizenach, who suggests that it may have been

adapted from the out-of-door stages, set up from time to time for the

dramatic contests held by the Rederijker or Chambers of Rhetoric in

Flanders.[323] Certainly there are common features in the division of

the field of action into two levels and the use of curtained apertures

both below and above. But the latest examples of the Flemish festivals

were at Ghent in 1539 and at Antwerp in 1561 respectively; and it would

be something of a chance if Burbadge or any other English builder had

any detailed knowledge of them.[324]

XXI

STAGING IN THE THEATRES: SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

[For _Bibliographical Note_, _vide_ ch. xviii.]

The turn of the century is also a turning-point in the history of the

public theatres. In 1599 the Chamberlain’s men built the Globe, and in

1600, not to be outdone, the Admiral’s men built upon the same model

the Fortune. These remained the head-quarters of the same companies,

when at the beginning of the reign of James the one became the King’s

and the other the Prince’s men. Worcester’s, afterwards the Queen’s,

men were content for a time with the older houses, first the Rose,

then the Curtain and the Boar’s Head, but by 1605 or 1606 they were

occupying the Red Bull, probably a new building, but one of which we

know very little. Meanwhile the earlier Tudor fashion of plays by boys

had been revived, both at Paul’s, and at the Blackfriars, where a

theatre had been contrived by James Burbadge about 1596 in a chamber of

the ancient priory, for the purposes of a public stage.

We cannot on _a priori_ grounds assume that the structural arrangements

of the sixteenth-century houses were merely carried into those of

the seventeenth century without modification; the experience of

twenty-five years’ working may well have disclosed features in the

original plan of James Burbadge which were not altogether convenient

or which lent themselves to further development. On the other

hand, we have not got to take into account the possibility of any

fundamental change or sharp breach of continuity. The introduction

of a new type of stage, even if it escaped explicit record, would

inevitably have left its mark both upon the dramatic construction of

plays and upon the wording of their stage-directions. No such mark

can be discerned. You cannot tell an early seventeenth-century play

from a late sixteenth-century one on this kind of evidence alone;

the handling and the conventions, the situations and the spectacular

effects, remain broadly the same, and such differences as do gradually

become apparent, concern rather the trend of dramatic interest than

the external methods of stage-presentation. Moreover, it is evident

that the sixteenth-century plays did not pass wholly into disuse. From

time to time they were revived, and lent themselves, perhaps with some

minor adaptation, to the new boards as well as to the old. In dealing

with early seventeenth-century staging, then, I will assume the general

continuance of the sixteenth-century plan, and will content myself with

giving some further examples of its main features, and with considering

any evidence which may seem to point to specific development in one

or more particular directions. And on the whole it will be convenient

to concentrate now mainly upon the theatres occupied by the King’s

men. For this there are various reasons. One is that the possession of

Shakespeare’s plays gives them a prerogative interest in modern eyes;

another that the repertories of the other companies have hardly reached

us in a form which renders any very safe induction feasible.

Even in the case of the King’s men, the material is not very ample, and

there are complications which make it necessary to proceed by cautious

steps to somewhat tentative conclusions. The Globe was probably opened

in the autumn of 1599. The first play which we can definitely locate

there is _Every Man Out of his Humour_; but I have decided with some

hesitation to treat _Henry V_ and _Much Ado about Nothing_, for the

purposes of these chapters, as Globe plays.[325] So far as we know,

the Globe was the only theatre used by the company up to the winter

of 1609, when they also came into possession of the Blackfriars. From

1609 to 1613 they used both houses, but probably the Globe was still

the more important of the two, for when it was burnt in 1613 they

found it worth while to rebuild it fairer than before. At some time,

possibly about the end of James’s reign, the Blackfriars began to come

into greater prominence, and gradually displaced the Globe as the main

head-quarters of the London drama. This, however, is a development

which lies outside the scope of these volumes; nor can I with advantage

inquire in detail whether there were any important structural features

in which the new Globe is likely to have differed from the old Globe.

At the most I can only offer a suggestion for the historian of the

Caroline stage to take up in his turn. In the main, therefore, we

have to consider the staging of the Globe from 1599 to 1609, and of

the Globe and the Blackfriars from 1609 to 1613. The plays available

fall into four groups. There are nineteen or twenty printed and

probably produced during 1599–1609, of which, however, one or two were

originally written for private theatres.[326] There are two produced

and printed during 1609–12, and one preserved in manuscript from the

same period.[327] There are ten probably produced during 1599–1603,

but not printed before 1622 or 1623.[328] There are perhaps nine or

ten produced during 1609–13, and printed at various dates from 1619 to

1634.[329] It will be seen that the first group is of much the greatest

value evidentially, as well as fortunately the longest, but that it

only throws light upon the Globe and not upon the Blackfriars; that

the value of the second and fourth groups is discounted by our not

knowing how far they reflect Globe and how far Blackfriars conditions;

and that the original features of the third and fourth groups may

have been modified in revivals, either at the Blackfriars or at the

later Globe, before they got into print. I shall use them all, but,

I hope, with discrimination.[330] I shall also use, for illustration

and confirmation, rather than as direct evidence, plays from other

seventeenth-century theatres. The Prince’s men were at the Fortune

during the whole of the period with which we are concerned, and then on

to and after the fire of 1621, and the reconstruction, possibly on new

lines, of 1623. We know that its staging arrangements resembled those

of the Globe, for it was provided in the builder’s contract that this

should be so, and also that the stage should be ‘placed and sett’ in

accordance with ‘a plott thereof drawen’. Alleyn would have saved me

a great deal of trouble if he had put away this little piece of paper

along with so many others. Unfortunately, the Prince’s men kept their

plays very close, and only five or six of our period got into print

before 1623.[331] From the Queen’s men we have rather more, perhaps

sixteen in all; but we do not always know whether these were given at

the Red Bull or the Curtain. Nor do we know whether any structural

improvements introduced at the Globe and Fortune were adopted at the

Red Bull, although this is _a priori_ not unlikely.[332] From the Swan

we have only _The Chaste Maid of Cheapside_, and from the Hope only

_Bartholomew Fair_.

At the Globe, then, the types of scene presented are much the same as

those with which we have become familiar in the sixteenth century; the

old categories of open-country scenes, battle scenes, garden scenes,

street scenes, threshold scenes, hall scenes, and chamber scenes

will still serve. Their relative importance alters, no doubt, as the

playwrights tend more and more to concern themselves with subjects of

urban life. But there are plenty of battle scenes in certain plays,

much on the traditional lines, with marchings and counter-marchings,

alarums for fighting ‘within’, and occasional ‘excursions’ on the field

of the stage itself.[333] Practicable tents still afford a convenient

camp background, and these, I think, continue to be pitched on the

open boards.[334] The opposing camps of _Richard III_ are precisely

repeated in _Henry V_.[335] There are episodes before the ‘walls’

too, with defenders speaking from above, assaults by means of scaling

ladders, and coming and going through the gates.[336] I find no example

in which a wall inserted on the line of the scenic curtain would not

meet the needs of the situation. Pastoral scenes are also common, for

the urban preoccupation has its regular reaction in the direction of

pastoral. There is plenty of evidence for practicable trees, such as

that on which Orlando in _As You Like It_ hangs his love verses, and

the most likely machinery for putting trees into position still seems

to me to be the trap.[337] A trap, too, might bring up the bower for

the play within the play of _Hamlet_, the pleached arbour of _Much

Ado about Nothing_, the pulpit in the forum of _Julius Caesar_, the

tombstone in the woods of _Timon of Athens_, the wayside cross of

_Every Man Out of his Humour_, and other _terrains_ most easily thought

of as free-standing structures.[338] It would open for Ophelia’s

grave, and for the still beloved ascents of spirits from the lower

regions.[339] It remains difficult to see how a riverbank or the

sea-shores was represented.[340] As a rule, the edge of the stage, with

steps into the auditorium taken for water stairs, seems most plausible.

But there is a complicated episode in _The Devil’s Charter_, with a

conduit and a bridge over the Tiber, which I do not feel quite able

to envisage.[341] There is another bridge over the Tiber for Horatius

Cocles in the Red Bull play of the _Rape of Lucrece_. But this is

easier; it is projected from the walls of Rome, and there must be a

trapped cavity on the scenic line, into which Horatius leaps.[342]

The Hope contract of 1613 provides for the heavens to be supported

without the help of posts rising from the stage. For this there was

a special reason at the Hope, since the stage had to be capable of

removal to make room for bear-baitings. But the advantage of dispensing

with the posts and the obstacle to the free vision of the spectators

which they presented must have been so great, that the innovation may

well have occurred to the builders of the Globe. Whether it did, I do

not think that we can say. There are one or two references to posts in

stage-directions, but they need not be the posts of the heavens.[343]

Possibly, too, there was less use of the descending chair. One might

even fancy that Jonson’s sarcasm in the prologue to _Every Man In

his Humour_ discredited it. The new type of play did not so often

call for spectacular palace scenes, and perhaps some simpler and

more portable kind of ‘state’ was allowed to serve the turn. There

is no suggestion of a descent from the heavens in the theophanies

of _As You Like It_ and _Pericles_; Juno, however, descends in _The

Tempest_.[344] This, although it has practically no change of setting,

is in some ways, under the mask influence, the most spectacular

performance attempted by the King’s men at Globe or Blackfriars during

our period.[345] But it is far outdone by the Queen’s plays of the

_Golden_, _Silver_, and _Brazen Ages_, which, if they were really

given just as Heywood printed them, must have strained the scenic

resources of the Red Bull to an extreme. Here are ascents and descents

and entries from every conceivable point of the stage;[346] divinities

in fantastic disguise;[347] mythological dumb-shows;[348] battles and

hunting episodes and revels;[349] ingenious properties, often with

a melodramatic thrill;[350] and from beginning to end a succession

of atmospheric phenomena, which suggest that the Jacobeans had made

considerable progress in the art of stage pyrotechnics.[351] The Globe,

with its traditional ‘blazing star’, is left far behind.[352]

The critical points of staging are the recesses below and above.

Some kind of recess on the level of the main stage is often required

by the King’s plays; for action in or before a prison,[353] a

cell,[354] a cave,[355] a closet,[356] a study,[357] a tomb,[358] a

chapel,[359] a shop;[360] for the revelation of dead bodies or other

concealed sights.[361] In many cases the alcove constructed in the

tiring-house behind the scenic wall would give all that is required,

and occasionally a mention of the ‘curtains’ or of ‘discovery’ in a

stage-direction points plainly to this arrangement. The ‘traverse’ of

Webster’s plays, both for the King’s and the Queen’s men, appears,

as already pointed out, to be nothing more than a terminological

variant.[362] Similarly, hall scenes have still their ‘arras’ or their

‘hangings’, behind which a spy can post himself.[363] A new feature,

however, now presents itself in the existence of certain scenes,

including some bedchamber scenes, which entail the use of properties

and would, I think, during the sixteenth century have been placed in

the alcove, but now appear to have been brought forward and to occupy,

like hall scenes, the main stage. The usage is by no means invariable.

Even in so late a play as _Cymbeline_, Imogen’s chamber, with Iachimo’s

trunk and the elaborate fire-places in it, must, in spite of the

absence of any reference to curtains, have been disposed in the alcove;

for the trunk scene is immediately followed by another before the door

of the same chamber, from which Imogen presently emerges.[364] But I do

not think that the alcove was used for Gertrude’s closet in _Hamlet_,

the whole of which play seems to me to be set very continuously on

the outer stage.[365] Hamlet does not enter the closet direct from in

front, but goes off and comes on again. A little distance is required

for the vision of the Ghost, who goes out at a visible ‘portal’. When

Hamlet has killed Polonius, he lugs the guts into the neighbour room,

according to the ordinary device for clearing a dead body from the

main stage, which is superfluous when the death has taken place in the

alcove. There is an arras, behind which Polonius esconces himself, and

on this, or perhaps on an inner arras disclosed by a slight parting

of the ordinary one, hangs the picture of Hamlet’s father. Nor do I

think, although it is difficult to be certain, that the alcove held

Desdemona’s death-chamber in _Othello_.[366] True, there are curtains

drawn here, but they may be only bed-curtains. A longish chamber, with

an outer door, seems to be indicated. A good many persons, including

Cassio ‘in a chaire’, have to be accommodated, and when Emilia enters,

it is some time before her attention is drawn to Desdemona behind

the curtains. If anything is in the alcove, it can only be just the

bed itself. The best illustrations of my point, however, are to be

found in _The Devil’s Charter_, a singular play, with full and naïve

stage-directions, which perhaps betray the hand of an inexperienced

writer. Much of the action takes place in the palace of Alexander

Borgia at Rome. The alcove seems to be reserved for Alexander’s study.

Other scenes of an intimately domestic character are staged in front,

and the necessary furniture is very frankly carried on, in one case

by a protagonist. This is a scene in a parlour by night, in which

Lucrezia Borgia murders her husband.[367] Another scene represents

Lucrezia’s toilet;[368] in a third young men come in from tennis and

are groomed by a barber.[369] My impression is that in the seventeenth

century, instead of discovering a bedchamber in the alcove, it became

the custom to secure more space and light by projecting the bed through

the central aperture on to the main stage, and removing it by the

same avenue when the scene was over. As to this a stage-direction in

_2 Henry VI_ may be significant. There was a scene in _1 Contention_

in which the murdered body of the Duke of Gloucester is discovered in

his bedchamber. This recurs in _2 Henry VI_, but instead of a full

direction for the drawing of curtains, the Folio has the simple note

‘Bed put forth’.[370] This is one of a group of formulas which have

been the subject of some discussion.[371] I do not think that either

‘Bed put forth’ or still less ‘Bed thrust out’ can be dismissed as

a mere equivalent of ‘Enter in a bed’, which may admittedly cover a

parting of the curtains, or of such a warning to the tire-man as ‘Bed

set out’ or ‘ready’ or ‘prepared’.[372] There is a difference between

‘setting out’ and ‘thrusting out’, for the one does and the other

does not carry the notion of a push. And if ‘Bed put forth’ is rather

more colourless, ‘Bed drawn out’, which also occurs, is clear enough.

Unfortunately the extant text of _2 Henry VI_ may be of any date up

to 1623, and none of the other examples of the formulas in question

are direct evidence for the Globe in 1599–1613.[373] To be sure of the

projected bed at so early a date, we have to turn to the Red Bull,

where we find it both in the _Golden_ and the _Silver Age_, as well

as the amateur _Hector of Germany_, or to the Swan, where we find it

in _The Chaste Maid of Cheapside_.[374] The _Golden Age_ particularly

repays study. The whole of the last two acts are devoted to the episode

of Jupiter and Danae. The scene is set in

the Darreine Tower

Guirt with a triple mure of shining brasse.

Most of the action requires a courtyard, and the wall and gate of this,

with a porter’s lodge and an alarm-bell, must have been given some kind

of structural representation on the stage. An inner door is supposed to

lead to Danae’s chamber above. It is in this chamber, presumably, that

attendants enter ‘drawing out Danae’s bed’, and when ‘The bed is drawn

in’, action is resumed in the courtyard below.[375]

There are chamber scenes in the King’s plays also, which are neither in

the alcove nor on the main stage, but above. This is an extension of a

practice already observable in pre-Globe days. Hero’s chamber in _Much

Ado about Nothing_ is above.[376] So is Celia’s in _Volpone_.[377] So

is Falstaff’s at the Garter Inn in _The Merry Wives of Windsor_.[378]

In all these examples, which are not exhaustive, a reasonable amount

of space is required for action.[379] This is still more the case in

_The Yorkshire Tragedy_, where the violent scene of the triple murder

at Calverley Hall is clearly located upstairs.[380] Moreover, there

are two plays which stage above what one would normally regard as hall

rather than chamber scenes. One is _Sejanus_, where a break in the

dialogue in the first act can best be explained by the interpretation

of a scene in an upper ‘gallery’.[381] The other is _Every Man Out

of his Humour_, where the personages go ‘up’ to the great chamber at

Court.[382] Elaborate use is also made of the upper level in _Antony

and Cleopatra_, where it represents the refuge of Cleopatra upon a

monument, to which Antony is heaved up for his death scene, and on

which Cleopatra is afterwards surprised by Caesar’s troops.[383] But I

do not agree with the suggestion that it was used in shipboard scenes,

for which, as we learn from the presenter’s speeches in _Pericles_, the

stage-manager gave up the idea of providing a realistic setting, and

fell back upon an appeal to the imagination of the audience.[384] Nor

do I think that it was used for the ‘platform’ at Elsinore Castle in

_Hamlet_;[385] or, as it was in the sixteenth century, for scenes in a

Capitoline senate overlooking the forum at Rome.[386] In _Bonduca_, if

that is of our period, it was adapted for a high rock, with fugitives

upon it, in a wood.[387] I do not find extensive chamber scenes

‘above’ in any King’s play later than 1609, and that may be a fact

of significance to which I shall return.[388] But shallow action, at

windows or in a gallery overlooking a hall or open space, continues to

be frequent.[389] In _The Devil is an Ass_, which is a Blackfriars

play of 1616, a little beyond the limits of our period, there is an

interesting scene played out of two contiguous upper windows, supposed

to be in different houses.[390]

There is other evidence to show that in the seventeenth century as

in the sixteenth, the stage was not limited to the presentation of a

single house only at any given moment. A multiplicity of houses would

fit the needs of several plays, but perhaps the most striking instance

for the Globe is afforded by _The Merry Devil of Edmonton_, the last

act of which requires two inns on opposite sides of the stage, the

signs of which have been secretly exchanged, as a trick in the working

out of the plot.[391] The King’s plays do not often require any marked

foreshortening of distance in journeys over the stage. Hamlet, indeed,

comes in ‘a farre off’, according to a stage-direction of the Folio,

but this need mean no more than at the other end of the graveyard,

although Hamlet is in fact returning from a voyage.[392] In _Bonduca_

the Roman army at one end of the stage are said to be half a furlong

from the rock occupied by Caractacus, which they cannot yet see; but

they go off, and their leaders subsequently emerge upon the rock from

behind.[393] The old device endured at the Red Bull, but even here the

flagrant example usually cited is of a very special type.[394] At the

end of _The Travels of the Three English Brothers_, the action of

which ranges widely over the inhabited world, there is an appeal to

imagination by Fame, the presenter, who says,

Would your apprehensions helpe poore art,

Into three parts deuiding this our stage,

They all at once shall take their leaues of you.

Thinke this England, this Spaine, this Persia.

Then follow the stage-directions, ‘Enter three seuerall waies the

three Brothers’, and ‘Fame giues to each a prospective glasse, they

seme to see one another’. Obviously such a visionary dumb-show

cannot legitimately be twisted into an argument that the concurrent

representation of incongruous localities was a matter of normal

staging. Such interplay of opposed houses, as we get in _The Merry

Devil of Edmonton_, would no doubt seem more effective if we could

adopt the ingenious conjecture which regards the scenic wall as not

running in a straight line all the way, but broken by two angles, so

that, while the central apertures below and above directly front the

spectators, the doors to right and left, each with a room or window

above it, are set on a bias, and more or less face each other from end

to end of the stage.[395] I cannot call this more than a conjecture,

for there is no direct evidence in its favour, and the Swan drawing,

for what that is worth, is flatly against it. Structurally it would,

I suppose, fit the round or apsidal ended Globe better than the

rectangular Fortune or Blackfriars. The theory seems to have been

suggested by a desire to make it possible to watch action within the

alcove from a gallery on the level above. I have not, however, come

across any play which can be safely assigned to a public theatre, in

which just this situation presents itself, although it is common enough

for persons above to watch action in a threshold or hall scene. Two

windows in the same plane would, of course, fully meet the needs of

_The Devil is an Ass_. There is, indeed, the often-quoted scene from

_David and Bethsabe_, in which the King watches the Hittite’s wife

bathing at a fountain; but the provenance of _David and Bethsabe_ is

so uncertain and its text so evidently manipulated, that it would be

very temerarious to rely upon it as affording any proof of public

usage.[396] On the other hand, if it is the case, as seems almost

certain, that the boxes over the doors were originally the lord’s

rooms, it would no doubt be desirable that the occupants of those

rooms should be able to see anything that went on within the alcove.

I do not quite know what weight to attach to Mr. Lawrence’s analogy

between the oblique doors which this theory involves and the familiar

post-Restoration proscenium doors, with stage-boxes above them, at

right angles to the plane of the footlights.[397] The roofed Caroline

theatres, with their side-walls to the stage, and the proscenium arch,

probably borrowed from the masks, have intervened, and I cannot pretend

to have traced the history of theatrical structure during the Caroline

period.

I have felt justified in dealing more briefly with the early

seventeenth-century stages than with those of the sixteenth century,

for, after all, the fundamental conditions, so far as I can judge,

remained unaltered. I seem able to lay my finger upon two directions in

which development took place, and both of these concern the troublesome

problem of interior action. First of all there is the stage gallery. Of

this I venture to reconstruct the story as follows. Its first function

was to provide seating accommodation for dignified and privileged

spectators, amongst whom could be placed, if occasion arose, presenters

or divine agents supposed to be watching or directing the action of

a play. Perhaps a differentiation took place. Parts of the gallery,

above the doors at either end of the scene, were set aside as lord’s

rooms. The central part, with the upper floor of the tiring-house

behind it, was used for the musicians, but was also available for such

scenes as could effectively be staged above, and a curtain was fitted,

corresponding to that below, behind which the recess could be set as

a small chamber. Either as a result of these changes or for other

reasons, the lord’s rooms, about the end of the sixteenth century, lost

their popularity, and it became the fashion for persons of distinction,

or would-be distinction, to sit upon the stage itself instead.[398]

This left additional space free above, and the architects of the Globe

and Fortune took the opportunity to enlarge the accommodation for

their upper scenes. Probably they left windows over the side-doors, so

that the upper parts of three distinct houses could, if necessary, be

represented; and it may be that spectators were not wholly excluded

from these.[399] But they widened the music-room, so that it could now

hold larger scenes, and in fact now became an upper stage and not a

mere recess. Adequate lighting from behind could probably be obtained

rather more easily here than on the crowded floor below. There is an

interesting allusion which I have not yet quoted, and which seems

to point to an upper stage of substantial dimensions in the public

theatres of about the year 1607. It is in Middleton’s _Family of Love_,

itself a King’s Revels play.[400] Some of the characters have been to

a performance, not ‘by the youths’, and there ‘saw Sampson bear the

town-gates on his neck from the lower to the upper stage’. You cannot

carry a pair of town-gates into a mere box, such as the Swan drawing

shows.

Meanwhile, what of the alcove? I think that it proved too dark and

too cramped for the convenient handling of chamber scenes, and that

the tendency of the early seventeenth century was to confine its use

to action which could be kept shallow, or for which obscurity was

appropriate. It could still serve for a prison, or an ‘unsunned lodge’,

or a chamber of horrors. For scenes requiring more light and movement

it was replaced, sometimes by the more spacious upper stage, sometimes

by the main stage, on to which beds and other properties were carried

or ‘thrust out’, just as they had always been on a less extensive scale

for hall scenes. The difficulties of shifting were, on the whole,

compensated for by the greater effectiveness and visibility which

action on the main scene afforded. I do not therefore think it possible

to accept even such a modified version of the old ‘alternationist’

theory as I find set out in Professor Thorndike’s recent _Shakespeare’s

Theater_. The older alternationists, starting from the principle, sound

enough in itself, of continuous action within an act, assumed that all

interior or other propertied scenes were played behind the curtains,

and were set there while unpropertied action was played outside; and

they deduced a method of dramatic construction, which required the

dramatists to alternate exterior and interior scenes so as to allow

time for the settings to be carried out.[401] The theory breaks down,

not merely because it entails a much more constant use of the curtains

than the stage-directions give us any warrant for, but also because

it fails to provide for the not infrequent event of a succession of

interior scenes; and in its original form it is abandoned by Professor

Thorndike in common with other recent scholars, who see plainly enough

that what I have called hall scenes must have been given on the outer

stage. I do not think that they have always grasped that the tendency

of the seventeenth century was towards a decreased and not an increased

reliance upon the curtained space, possibly because they have not as

a rule followed the historical method in their investigations; and

Professor Thorndike, although he traces the earlier employment of the

alcove much as I do, treats the opening and closing of the curtains as

coming in time to be used, in _Antony and Cleopatra_ for example and

in _Cymbeline_, as little more than a handy convention for indicating

the transference of the scene from one locality to another.[402] Such

a usage would not of course mean that the new scene was played wholly

or even partly within the alcove itself; the change might be merely one

of background. But, although I admit that there would be a convenience

in Professor Thorndike’s development, I do not see that there is in

fact any evidence for it. The stage-directions never mention the use

of curtains in such circumstances as he has in mind; and while I am

far from supposing that they need always have been mentioned, and have

myself assumed their use in one scene of _Cymbeline_ where they are

not mentioned, yet mentions of them are so common in connexion with

the earlier and admitted functions of the alcove, that I should have

expected Professor Thorndike’s view, if it were sound, to have proved

capable of confirmation from at least one unconjectural case.

The difficulty which has led Professor Thorndike to his conclusion

is, however, a real one. In the absence of a _scenario_ with notes

of locality, for which certainly there is no evidence, how did the

Elizabethan managers indicate to their audiences the shifts of

action from one place to another? This is both a sixteenth- and a

seventeenth-century problem. We have noted in a former chapter that

unity of place was characteristic of the earlier Elizabethan interlude;

that it failed to impose itself upon the romantic narrative plots

of the popular drama; that it was departed from through the device

of letting two ends of a continuously set stage stand for discrete

localities; that this device proved only a transition to a system in

which the whole stage stood successively for different localities;

and that there are hints of a convention by which the locality of

each scene was indicated with the help of a label, placed over the

door through which the personages in that scene made their exits and

their entrances.[403] The public stage of the sixteenth and early

seventeenth centuries experienced no re-establishment of the principle

of unity; broadly speaking, it presents an extreme type of romantic

drama, with an unfettered freedom of ranging from one to another of any

number of localities required by a narrative plot. But the practice,

or the instinct, of individual playwrights differs. Ben Jonson is

naturally the man who betrays the most conscious preoccupation with the

question. He is not, however, a rigid or consistent unitarian. In his

two earliest plays the scene shifts from the country to a neighbouring

town, and the induction to _Every Man Out of his Humour_ is in part

an apology for his own liberty, in part a criticism of the licence of

others.

_Mitis._ What’s his scene?

_Cordatus._ Mary _Insula Fortunata_, sir.

_Mitis._ O, the fortunate Iland? masse he has bound himself to a

strict law there.

_Cordatus._ Why so?

_Mitis._ He cannot lightly alter the scene without crossing the

seas.

_Cordatus._ He needs not, hauing a whole Ilande to runne through,

I thinke.

_Mitis._ No? howe comes it then, that in some one play we see so

many seas, countries, and kingdomes, past over with such admirable

dexteritie?

_Cordatus._ O, that but shewes how well the Authors can travaile in

their vocation, and out-run the apprehension of their Auditorie.

_Sejanus_ is throughout in Rome, but five or six distinct houses are

required, and it must be doubtful whether such a multiplicity of

houses could be shown without a change of scene.[404] The prologue

to _Volpone_ claims for the author that ‘The laws of time, place,

persons he obserueth’, and this has no more than four houses, all in

Venice.[405] In _Catiline_ the scenes in Rome, with some ten houses,

are broken by two in open country.[406] In _Bartholomew Fair_ a

preliminary act at a London house is followed by four set continuously

before the three booths of the fair. Absolute unity, as distinct from

the unity of a single country, or even a single town, is perhaps only

attained in _The Alchemist_. Here everything takes place, either in a

single room in Lovewit’s house in the Blackfriars, or in front of a

door leading from the street into the same room. Evidently advantage

was taken of the fact that the scene did not have to be changed, to

build a wall containing this door out on to the stage itself, for

action such as speaking through the keyhole requires both sides of the

door to be practicable.[407] There is also a window from which persons

approaching can be seen. Inner doors, presumably in the scenic wall,

lead to a laboratory and other parts of the house, but these are not

discovered, and no use is made of the upper level. Jonson here is a

clear innovator, so far as the English public theatre is concerned; no

other play of our period reproduces this type of permanent interior

setting.

Shakespeare is no classicist; yet in some of his plays, comedies and

romantic tragedies, it is, I think, possible to discern at least an

instinctive feeling in the direction of scenic unity. _The Comedy of

Errors_, with its action in the streets of Syracuse, near the mart,

or before the Phoenix, the Porpentine, or the priory, follows upon

the lines of its Latin model, although here, as in most of Jonson’s

plays, it is possible that the various houses were shown successively

rather than concurrently. _Twelfth Night_, _Much Ado about Nothing_,

and _Measure for Measure_ each require a single town, with two, three,

and five houses respectively; _Titus Andronicus_, _A Midsummer Night’s

Dream_, _The Merry Wives of Windsor_, _As You Like It_, _Troilus and

Cressida_, _Timon of Athens_, each a single town, with open country

environs. _Love’s Labour’s Lost_ has the unity of a park, with perhaps

a manor-house as background at one end and tents at the other; _The

Tempest_ complete pastoral unity after the opening scene on shipboard.

_Hamlet_ would all be Elsinore, but for one distant open-country scene;

_Romeo and Juliet_ all Venice, but for one scene in Mantua. In another

group of plays the action is divided between two towns. It alternates

from Padua to near Verona in _The Taming of the Shrew_, from Verona

to Milan in _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_, from Venice to Belmont in

_The Merchant of Venice_; in _Othello_ an act in Venice is followed

by four in Cyprus. On the other hand, in a few comedies and in the

histories and historical tragedies, where Shakespeare’s sources leave

him less discretion, he shifts his scenes with a readiness outdone by

no other playwright. The third act of _Richard II_ requires no less

than four localities, three of which have a castle, perhaps the same

castle from the stage-manager’s point of view, in the background. The

second act of _1 Henry IV_ has as many. _King John_ and _Henry V_

pass lightly between England and France, _All’s Well that Ends Well_

between France and Italy, _The Winter’s Tale_ between Sicily and

Bohemia, _Cymbeline_ between Britain, Italy, and Wales. Quite a late

play, _Antony and Cleopatra_, might almost be regarded as a challenge

to classicists. Rome, Misenum, Athens, Actium, Syria, Egypt are the

localities, with much further subdivision in the Egyptian scenes. The

second act has four changes of locality, the third no less than eight,

and it is noteworthy that these changes are often for quite short

bits of dialogue, which no modern manager would regard as justifying

a resetting of the stage. Shakespeare must surely have been in some

danger, in this case, of outrunning the apprehension of his auditory,

and I doubt if even Professor Thorndike’s play of curtains would have

saved him.

It is to be observed also that, in Shakespeare’s plays as in those of

others, no excessive pains are taken to let the changes of locality

coincide with the divisions between the acts. If the second and third

acts of _All’s Well that Ends Well_ are at Paris, the fourth at

Florence, and the fifth at Marseilles, yet the shift from Roussillon

to Paris is in the middle and not at the end of the first act. The

shift from Sicily to Bohemia is in the middle of the third act of

_The Winter’s Tale_; the Agincourt scenes begin in the middle of the

third act of _Henry V_. Indeed, although the poets regarded the acts

as units of literary structure, the act-divisions do not appear to

have been greatly stressed, at any rate on the stages of the public

houses, in the actual presentation of plays.[408] I do not think that

they were wholly disregarded, although the fact that they are so often

unnoted in the prints of plays based on stage copies might point to

that conclusion.[409] The act-interval did not necessarily denote

any substantial time-interval in the action of the play, and perhaps

the actors did not invariably leave the stage. Thus the lovers in _A

Midsummer Night’s Dream_ sleep through the interval between the third

and fourth acts.[410] But some sort of break in the continuity of the

performance is a natural inference from the fact that the act-divisions

are the favourite, although not the only, points for the intervention

of presenters, dumb-shows, and choruses.[411] The act-intervals cannot

have been long, at any rate if the performance was to be completed in

two hours. There may sometimes have been music, which would not have

prevented the audience from stretching themselves and talking.[412]

Short intervals, rather than none at all, are, I think, suggested by

the well-known passage in the induction of _The Malcontent_, as altered

for performance at the Globe, in which it is explained that passages

have been added to the play as originally written for Revels boys, ‘to

entertain a little more time, and to abridge the not-received custom of

music in our theatre’.[413] Some information is perhaps to be gleaned

from the ‘plots’ of plays prepared for the guidance of the book-keeper

or tire-man, of which examples are preserved at Dulwich.[414] These

have lines drawn across them at points which pretty clearly correspond

to the beginnings of scenes, although it can hardly be assumed that

each new scene meant a change of locality. The act-divisions can in

some, but not all, cases be inferred from the occurrence of dumb-shows

and choruses; in one, _The Dead Man’s Fortune_, they are definitely

marked by lines of crosses, and against each such line there is the

marginal note ‘musique’. Other musical directions, ‘sound’, ‘sennet’,

‘alarum’, ‘flourish’, come sometimes at the beginning, sometimes in the

middle of scenes.

We do not get any encouragement to think that a change of locality was

regularly heralded by notes of music, even if this may incidentally

have been the case when a procession or an army or a monarch was about

to enter. Possibly the lines on the plots may signify an even slighter

pause than that between the acts, such as the modern stage provides

with the added emphasis of a drop-curtain; but of this there is no

proof, and an allusion in _Catiline_ to action as rapid

As is a veil put off, a visor changed,

Or the scene shifted, in our theatres,

is distinctly against it.[415] A mere clearance of the stage does

not necessarily entail a change of scene, although there are one or

two instances in which the exit of personages at one door, followed

by their return at another, seems to constitute or accompany such

a change.[416] And even if the fact of a change could be signified

in one or other of these ways, the audience would still be in the

dark as to what the new locality was supposed to be. Can we then

assume a continuance of the old practice of indicating localities by

labels over the doors? This would entail the shifting of the labels

themselves during the progress of the play, at any rate if there were

more localities than entrances, or if, as might usually be expected,

more entrances than one were required to any locality. But there would

be no difficulty about this, and in fact we have an example of the

shifting of a label by a mechanical device in the introduction to _Wily

Beguiled_.[417] This was not a public theatre play, and the label

concerned was one giving the title of the play and not its locality,

but similar machinery could obviously have been applied. There is not,

however, much actual evidence for the use either of title-labels or

of locality-labels on the public stage. The former are perhaps the

more probable of the two, and the practice of posting play-bills at

the theatre door and in places of public resort would not render

them altogether superfluous.[418] In favour of locality-labels it is

possible to quote Dekker’s advice to those entering Paul’s, and also

the praise given to Jonson by Jasper Mayne in _Jonsonus Virbius_:

Thy stage was still a stage, two entrances

Were not two parts o’ the world, disjoined by seas.[419]

These, however, are rather vague and inconclusive allusions on which to

base a whole stage practice, and there is not much to be added to them

from the texts and stage-directions of the plays themselves. Signs are

of course used to distinguish particular taverns and shops, just as

they would be in real life.[420] Occasionally, moreover, a locality is

named in a stage-direction in a way that recalls _Common Conditions_,

but this may also be explained as no more than a descriptive touch such

as is not uncommon in stage-directions written by authors.[421] It is

rather against the theory of labels that care is often taken, when a

locality is changed, to let the personages themselves declare their

whereabouts. A careful reader of such rapidly shifting plays as _Edward

I_, _James IV_, _The Battle of Alcazar_, or _King Leir_ will generally

be able to orientate himself with the aid of the opening passages of

dialogue in each new scene, and conceivably a very attentive spectator

might do the same. Once the personages have got themselves grouped in

the mind in relation to their localities, the recurrence of this or

that group would help. It would require a rather careful examination

of texts to enable one to judge how far this method of localization by

dialogue continues throughout our period. I have been mainly struck by

it in early plays. The presenters may also give assistance, either by

declaring the general scene in a prologue, or by intervening to call

attention to particular shifts.[422] Thus in _Dr. Faustus_ the original

scene in Wittenberg is indicated by the chorus, a shift to Rome by

speeches of Wagner and Faustus, a shift to the imperial court by the

chorus, and the return to Wittenberg by a speech of Faustus.[423]

Jonson makes a deliberate experiment with this method in _Every Man Out

of his Humour_, which it is worth while following in detail. It is the

Grex of presenters, Mitis and Cordatus, who serve as guides. The first

act is in open country without background, and it is left to the rustic

Sogliardo to describe it (543) as his lordship. A visit to Puntarvolo’s

is arranged, and at the beginning of the second act Cordatus says, ‘The

Scene is the countrey still, remember’ (946). Presently the stage is

cleared, with the hint, ‘Here he comes, and with him Signior Deliro

a merchant, at whose house hee is come to soiourne. Make your owne

obseruation now; only transferre your thoughts to the Cittie with the

Scene; where, suppose they speake’ (1499). The next scene then is at

Deliro’s. Then, for the first scene of the third act, ‘We must desire

you to presuppose the Stage, the middle Isle in Paules; and that, the

West end of it’ (1918). The second scene of this act is in the open

country again, with a ‘crosse’ on which Sordido hangs himself; we are

left to infer it from the reappearance of the rustic characters. It is

closed with ‘Let your minde keepe companie with the Scene stil, which

now remoues it selfe from the Countrie to the Court’ (2555). After

a scene at Court, ‘You vnderstand where the scene is?’ (2709), and

presumably the entry of personages already familiar brings us back for

the first scene of Act IV to Deliro’s. A visit to ‘the Notaries by the

Exchange’ is planned, and for the second and third scenes the only note

is of the entry of Puntarvolo and the Scrivener; probably a scrivener’s

shop was discovered. Act V is introduced by ‘Let your imagination be

swifter than a paire of oares, and by this, suppose Puntarvolo, Briske,

Fungoso, and the Dog, arriu’d at the court gate, and going vp to the

great chamber’ (3532). The action of the next scene begins in the great

chamber and then shifts to the court gate again. Evidently the two

localities were in some way staged together, and a guide is not called

upon to enlighten us. There are yet two more scenes, according to the

Grex. One opens with ‘Conceiue him but to be enter’d the Mitre’ (3841),

and as action shifts from the Mitre to Deliro’s and back again without

further note, these two houses were probably shown together. The final

scene is introduced by ‘O, this is to be imagin’d the Counter belike’

(4285). So elaborate a directory would surely render any use of labels

superfluous for this particular play; but, so far as we know, the

experiment was not repeated.[424]

When Cordatus points to ‘that’, and calls it the west end of Paul’s,

are we to suppose that the imagination of the audience was helped out

by the display of any pictorial background? It is not impossible. The

central aperture, disclosed by the parting curtains, could easily hold,

in place of a discovered alcove or a quasi-solid monument or rock, any

kind of painted cloth which might give colour to the scene. A woodland

cloth or a battlement cloth could serve for play after play, and for a

special occasion something more distinctive could be attempted without

undue expense. Such a back-cloth, perhaps for use in _Dr. Faustus_, may

have been ‘the sittie of Rome’ which we find in Henslowe’s inventory

of 1598.[425] And something of this kind seems to be required in _2

If You Know not Me, You Know Nobody_, where the scene is before Sir

Thomas Gresham’s newly completed Burse, and the personages say ‘How

do you like this building?’ and ‘We are gazing here on M. Greshams

work’.[426] Possibly Elizabethan imaginations were more vivid than a

tradition of scene-painters allows ours to be, but that does not mean

that an Elizabethan audience did not like to have its eyes tickled

upon occasion. And if as a rule the stage-managers relied mainly upon

garments and properties to minister to this instinct, there is no

particular reason why they should not also have had recourse to so

simple a device as a back-cloth. This conjecture is hardly excluded by

the very general terms in which post-Restoration writers deny ‘scenes’

and all decorations other than ‘hangings’ to the earlier stage.[427]

By ‘scenes’ they no doubt mean the complete settings with shuttered

‘wings’ as well as back-cloths which Inigo Jones had devised for the

masks and the stage had adopted. Even these were not absolutely unknown

in pre-Restoration plays, and neither this fact nor the incidental

use of special cloths over the central aperture would make it untrue

that the normal background of an Elizabethan or Jacobean play was an

arras.[428]

The discussions of the last chapter and a half have envisaged the

plays presented, exclusively in open theatres until the King’s took

over the Blackfriars, by professional companies of men. I must deal

in conclusion, perhaps more briefly than the interest of the problem

would itself justify, with those of the revived boy companies which for

a time carried on such an active rivalry with the men, at Paul’s from

1599 to 1606 and at the Blackfriars from 1600 to 1609. It is, I think,

a principal defect of many investigations into Jacobean staging, that

the identity of the devices employed in the so-called ‘public’ and

‘private’ houses has been too hastily assumed, and a uniform hypothesis

built up upon material taken indifferently from both sources, without

regard to the logical possibility of the considerable divergences to

which varying conditions of structure and of tradition may have given

rise. This is a kind of syncretism to which an inadequate respect for

the historic method naturally tends. It is no doubt true that the

‘standardization’ of type, which I have accepted as likely to result

from the frequent migration of companies and plays from one public

house to another, may in a less degree have affected the private houses

also. James Burbadge originally built the Blackfriars for public

performances, and we know that _Satiromastix_ was produced both at

the Globe and at Paul’s in 1601, and that in 1604 the Revels boys and

the King’s men were able to effect mutual piracies of _Jeronimo_ and

_The Malcontent_. Nor is there anything in the general character of

the two groups of ‘public’ and ‘private’ plays, as they have come down

to us, which is in any obvious way inconsistent with some measure of

standardization. It is apparent, indeed, that the act-interval was of

far more importance at both Paul’s and the Blackfriars than elsewhere.

But this is largely a matter of degree. The inter-acts of music and

song and dance were more universal and longer.[429] But the relation

of the acts to each other was not essentially different. The break in

the representation may still correspond to practically no interval

at all in the time-distribution of the play; and there are examples

in which the action continues to be carried on by the personages in

dumb-show, while the music is still sounding.[430] In any case this

particular distinction, while it might well modify the methods of the

dramatist, need only affect the economy of the tire-house in so far

as it would give more time for the preparation of an altered setting

at the beginning of an act. When _The Malcontent_ was taken over at

the Globe, the text had to be lengthened that the music might be

abridged, but there is no indication of any further alteration, due to

a difficulty in adapting the original situations to the peculiarities

of the Globe stage. The types of incident, again, which are familiar in

public plays, reappear in the private ones; in different proportions,

no doubt, since the literary interest of the dramatists and their

audiences tends rather in the directions, on the one hand of definite

pastoral, and on the other of courtly crime and urban humour, than in

that of chronicle history. And there is a marked general analogy in

the stage-directions. Here also those who leave the stage go ‘in’, and

music and voices can be heard ‘within’. There are the same formulae

for the use of several doors, of which one is definitely a ‘middle’

door.[431] Spirits and so forth can ‘ascend’ from under the stage by

the convenient traps.[432] Possibly they can also ‘descend’ from the

heavens.[433] The normal backing of the stage, even in out-of-door

scenes, is an arras or hanging, through which at Paul’s spectators

can watch a play.[434] At the Blackfriars, while the arras, even more

clearly than in the public theatres, is of a decorative rather than a

realistic kind, it can also be helped out by something in the nature

of perspective.[435] There is action ‘above’, and interior action,

some of which is recessed or ‘discovered’. It must be added, however,

that these formulae, taken by themselves, do not go very far towards

determining the real character of the staging. They make their first

appearance, for the most part, with the interludes in which the

Court influence is paramount, and are handed down as a tradition to

the public and the private plays alike. They would hardly have been

sufficient, without the Swan drawing and other collateral evidence,

to disclose even such a general conception of the various uses and

interplay, at the Globe and elsewhere, of main stage, alcove, and

gallery, as we believe ourselves to have succeeded in adumbrating.

And it is quite possible that at Paul’s and the Blackfriars they may

not--at any rate it must not be taken for granted without inquiry that

they do--mean just the same things. Thus, to take the doors alone, we

infer with the help of the Swan drawing, that in the public theatres

the three main entrances were in the scenic wall and on the same or

nearly the same plane. But the Blackfriars was a rectangular room. We

do not know that any free space was left between its walls and the

sides of the stage. And it is quite conceivable that there may have

been side-doors in the planes of these walls, and at right angles to

the middle door. Whether this was so or not, and if so how far forward

the side-doors stood, there is certainly nothing in the formulae

of the stage-directions to tell us. Perhaps the most noticeable

differentiation, which emerges from a comparative survey of private and

public plays, is that in the main the writers of the former, unlike

those of the latter, appear to be guided by the principle of unity

of place; at any rate to the extent that their _domus_ are generally

located in the same town, although they may be brought for purposes

of representation into closer contiguity than the actual topography

of that town would suggest. There are exceptions, and the scenes in a

town are occasionally broken by one or two, requiring at the most an

open-country background, in the environs. The exact measure in which

the principle is followed will become sufficiently evident in the

sequel. My immediate point is that it was precisely the absence of

unity of place which drove the public stage back upon its common form

background of a curtained alcove below and a curtained gallery above,

supplemented by the side-doors and later the windows above them, and

convertible to the needs of various localities in the course of a

single play.

Let us now proceed to the analysis, first of the Paul’s plays and then

of the Chapel and Revels plays at the Blackfriars; separately, for

the same caution, which forbids a hasty syncretism of the conditions

of public and private houses, also warns us that divergences may

conceivably have existed between those of the two private houses

themselves. But here too we are faced with the fact that individual

plays were sometimes transferred from one to the other, _The Fawn_ from

Blackfriars to Paul’s, and _The Trick to Catch the Old One_ in its turn

from Paul’s to Blackfriars.[436]

Seventeen plays, including the two just named and _Satiromastix_, which

was shared with the Globe, are assigned to Paul’s by contemporary

title-pages.[437] To these may be added, with various degrees of

plausibility, _Histriomastix_, _What You Will_, and _Wily Beguiled_.

For Paul’s were also certainly planned, although we cannot be sure

whether, or if so when, they were actually produced, the curious

series of plays left in manuscript by William Percy, of which

unfortunately only two have ever been published. As the company only

endured for six or seven years after its revival, it seems probable

that a very fair proportion of its repertory has reached us. _Jack

Drum’s Entertainment_ speaks of the ‘mustie fopperies of antiquitie’

with which the company began its career, and one of these is no doubt

to be found in _Histriomastix_, evidently an old play, possibly of

academic origin, and recently brought up to date.[438] The staging

of _Histriomastix_ would have caused no difficulty to the Revels

officers, if it had been put into their hands as a Paul’s play of the

’eighties. The plot illustrates the cyclical progression of Peace,

Plenty, Pride, Envy, War, Poverty, each of whom in turn occupies a

throne, finally resigned to Peace, for whom in an alternative ending

for Court performance is substituted Astraea, who is Elizabeth.[439]

This arrangement recalls that of _The Woman in the Moon_, but the

throne seems to have its position on the main stage rather than above.

Apart from the abstractions, the whole of the action may be supposed

to take place in a single provincial town, largely in an open street,

sometimes in the hall of a lord called Mavortius, on occasion in or

before smaller _domus_ representing the studies of Chrisoganus, a

scholar, and Fourcher, a lawyer, the shop of Velure, a merchant, a

market-cross, which is discovered by a curtain, perhaps a tavern.[440]

Certainly in the ’eighties these would have been disposed together

around the stage, like the _domus_ of _Campaspe_ about the market-place

at Athens. And I believe that this is in fact how _Histriomastix_ was

staged, more particularly as at one point (v. 259) the action appears

to pass directly from the street to the hall without a clearance.

Similarly _The Maid’s Metamorphosis_ is on strictly Lylyan lines. It

is _tout en pastoralle_, in a wood, about whose paths the characters

stray, while in various regions of it are located the cave of Somnus

(II. i. 148), the cottage of Eurymine (IV. ii. 4), and a palace where

‘Phoebus appeares’ (V. ii. 25), possibly above. _Wily Beguiled_ needs

a stage of which part is a wood, and part a village hard by, with some

suggestion of the doors of the houses of Gripe, Ploddall, Churms, and

Mother Midnight. Somewhat less concentration is to be found in _The

Wisdom of Dr. Dodipoll_. Here too, a space of open country, a green

hill with a cave, the harbourage and a bank, is neighboured by the

Court of Alphonso and the houses of Cassimere and of Flores, of which

the last named is adapted for interior action.[441] All this is in

Saxony, but there is also a single short scene (I. iii) of thirty-two

lines, not necessarily requiring a background, in Brunswick. The plays

of William Percy are still, it must be admitted, rather obscure, and

one has an uneasy feeling that the manuscript may not yet have yielded

up all its indications as to date and provenance. But on the assumption

that the conditions contemplated are those of Paul’s in 1599–1606, we

learn some curious details of structure, and are face to face with a

technique which is still closely reminiscent of the ’eighties. Percy,

alone of the dramatists, prefixes to his books, for the guidance of the

producer, a note of the equipment required to set them forth. Thus for

_Cuckqueans and Cuckolds Errant_ he writes:

‘The Properties.

‘Harwich, In Midde of the Stage Colchester with Image of

Tarlton, Signe and Ghirlond under him also. The Raungers Lodge,

Maldon, A Ladder of Roapes trussed up neare Harwich. Highest and

Aloft the Title The Cuck-Queanes and Cuckolds Errants. A Long

Fourme.’

The house at Colchester is the Tarlton Inn, and here the ghost of

Tarlton prologizes, ‘standing at entrance of the doore and right under

the Beame’. That at Harwich is the house of Floredin, and the ladder

leads to the window of his wife Arvania. Thus we have the concurrent

representation of three localities, in three distinct towns of Essex.

To each is assigned one of three doors and, as in _Common Conditions_

of old, entry by a particular door signifies that a scene is to take

place at the locality to which it belongs.[442] One is at liberty to

conjecture that the doors were nominated by labels, but Percy does not

precisely say so, although he certainly provides for a title label.

Journeys from one locality to another are foreshortened into a crossing

of the stage.[443] For _The Aphrodysial_ there were at least two

houses, the palace of Oceanus ‘in the middle and alofte’, and Proteus

Hall, where interior action takes place.[444] For _The Faery Pastoral_

there is an elaborate note:

‘The Properties

‘Highest, aloft, and on the Top of the Musick Tree the Title The

Faery Pastorall, Beneath him pind on Post of the Tree The Scene

Elvida Forrest. Lowest of all over the Canopie ΝΑΠΑΙΤΒΟΔΑΙΟΝ

or Faery Chappell. A kiln of Brick. A Fowen Cott. A Hollowe

Oake with vice of wood to shutt to. A Lowe well with Roape and

Pullye. A Fourme of Turves. A greene Bank being Pillowe to the

Hed but. Lastly A Hole to creepe in and out.’

Having written so far, Percy is smitten with a doubt. The stage of

Paul’s was a small one, and spectators sat on it. If he clutters it up

like this with properties, will there be room to act at all? He has a

happy thought and continues:

‘Now if so be that the Properties of any These, that be outward,

will not serve the turne by reason of concourse of the People

on the Stage, Then you may omitt the sayd Properties which be

outward and supplye their Places with their Nuncupations onely

in Text Letters. Thus for some.’

Whether the master of Paul’s was prepared to avail himself of this

ingenious device, I do not know. There is no other reference to it,

and I do not think it would be safe to assume that it was in ordinary

use upon either the public or the private stage. There is no change

of locality in _The Faery Pastoral_, which is _tout en pastoralle_,

but besides the title label, there was a general scenic label and a

special one for the fairy chapel. This, which had seats on ‘degrees’

(v. 5), occupied the ‘Canopie, Fane or Trophey’, which I take to

have been a discovered interior under the ‘Beame’ named in the other

play, corresponding to the alcove of the public theatres. The other

properties were smaller ‘practicables’ standing free on the stage,

which is presumably what Percy means by ‘outward’. The arrangement must

have closely resembled that of _The Old Wive’s Tale_. The ‘Fowen Cott’

is later described as ‘tapistred with cats and fowëns’--a gamekeeper’s

larder. Some kind of action from above was possible; it may have been

only from a tree.[445]

The plays so far considered seem to point to the use at Paul’s of

continuous settings, even when various localities had to be shown,

rather than the successive settings, with the help of common form

_domus_, which prevailed at the contemporary Globe and Fortune. Perhaps

there is rather an archaistic note about them. Let us turn to the

plays written for Paul’s by more up-to-date dramatists, by Marston,

Dekker and Webster, Chapman, Middleton, and Beaumont. Marston’s hand,

already discernible in the revision of _Histriomastix_, appears to be

dominant in _Jack Drum’s Entertainment_, although neither play was

reclaimed for him in the collected edition of 1633. Unity of locality

is not observed in _Jack Drum_. By far the greater part of the action

takes place on Highgate Green, before the house of Sir Edward Fortune,

with practicable windows above.[446] But there are two scenes (I.

282–428; IV. 207–56) in London, before a tavern (I. 345), which may be

supposed to be also the house where Mistress Brabant lies ‘private’ in

an ‘inner chamber’ (IV. 83, 211). And there are three (II. 170–246;

III. 220–413; V) in an open spot, on the way to Highgate (II. 228)

and near a house, whence a character emerges (III. 249, 310). It is

described as ‘the crosse stile’ (IV. 338), and is evidently quite near

Fortune’s house, and still on the green (V. 96, 228). This suggests to

me a staging closely analogous to that of _Cuckqueans and Cuckolds_,

with Highgate at one end of the stage, London at the other, and the

cross stile between them. It is true that there is no very certain

evidence of direct transference of action from one spot to another,

but the use of two doors at the beginning of the first London scene is

consistent, on my theory, with the fact that one entrant comes from

Highgate, whither also he goes at the end of the scene, and the similar

use at the beginning of the second cross-stile scene is consistent

with the fact that the two entrants are wildly seeking the same lady,

and one may well have been in London and the other at Highgate. She

herself enters from the neighbouring house; that is to say, a third,

central, door. With Marston’s acknowledged plays, we reach an order of

drama in which interior action of the ‘hall’ type is conspicuous.[447]

There are four plays, each limited to a single Italian city, Venice

or Urbino. The main action of _1 Antonio and Mellida_ is in the hall

of the doge’s palace, chiefly on ‘the lower stage’, although ladies

discourse ‘above’, and a chamber can be pointed to from the hall.[448]

One short scene (V. 1–94), although near the Court, is possibly in

the lodging of a courtier, but probably in the open street. And two

(III. i; IV) are in open country, representing ‘the Venice marsh’,

requiring no background, but approachable by more than one door.[449]

The setting of _2 Antonio and Mellida_ is a little more complicated.

There is no open-country scene. The hall recurs and is still the chief

place of action. It can be entered by more than one door (V. 17,

&c.) and has a ‘vault’ (II. 44) with a ‘grate’ (II. ii. 127), whence

a speaker is heard ‘under the stage’ (V. 1). The scenes within it

include several episodes discovered by curtains. One is at the window

of Mellida’s chamber above.[450] Another, in Maria’s chamber, where

the discovery is only of a bed, might be either above or below.[451] A

third involves the appearance of a ghost ‘betwixt the music-houses’,

probably above.[452] Concurrently, a fourth facilitates a murder in a

recess below.[453] Nor is the hall any longer the only interior used.

Three scenes (II. 1–17; III. 1–212; IV. ii) are in an aisle (III.

128) of St. Mark’s, with a trapped grave.[454] As a character passes

(ii. 17) directly from the church to the palace in the course of a

speech, it is clear that the two ‘houses’, consistently with actual

Venetian topography, were staged together and contiguously. _The Fawn_

was originally produced at Blackfriars and transferred to Paul’s. I

deal with it here, because of the close analogy which it presents to

_1 Antonio and Mellida_. It begins with an open-country scene within

sight of the ‘far-appearing spires’ of Urbino. Thereafter all is within

the hall of the Urbino palace. It is called a ‘presence’ (I. ii. 68),

but one must conceive it as of the nature of an Italian colonnaded

_cortile_, for there is a tree visible, up which a lover climbs to

his lady’s chamber, and although both the tree and the chamber window

might have occupied a bit of façade in the plane of the aperture

showing the hall, they appear in fact to have been within the hall,

since the lovers are later ‘discovered’ to the company there.[455]

_What You Will_, intermediate in date between _Antonio and Mellida_

and _The Fawn_, has a less concentrated setting than either of them.

The principal house is Albano’s (I; III. ii; IV; V. 1–68), where

there is action at the porch, within the hall, and in a discovered

room behind.[456] But there are also scenes in a shop (III. ii), in

Laverdure’s lodging (II. ii), probably above, and in a schoolroom (II.

ii). The two latter are also discovered.[457] Nevertheless, I do not

think that shifting scenes of the public theatre type are indicated.

Albano’s house does not lend itself to public theatre methods. Act I

is beneath his wife Celia’s window.[458] Similarly III. ii is before

his porch. But III. iv is in his hall, whence the company go to dinner

within, and here they are disclosed in V. Hence, from V. 69 onwards,

they begin to pass to the street, where they presently meet the duke’s

troop. I do not know of any public play in which the porch, the hall,

and an inner room of a house are all represented, and my feeling is

that Albano’s occupied the back corner of a stage, with the porch and

window above to one side, at right angles to the plane of the hall.

At any rate I do not see any definite obstacle to the hypothesis that

all Marston’s plays for Paul’s had continuous settings. For _What You

Will_ the ‘little’ stage would have been rather crowded. The induction

hints that it was, and perhaps that spectators were on this occasion

excluded, while the presenters went behind the back curtains.

Most of the other Paul’s plays need not detain us as long as Marston’s.

He has been thought to have helped in _Satiromastix_, but that must

be regarded as substantially Dekker’s. Obviously it must have been

capable of representation both at Paul’s and at the Globe. It needs

the houses of Horace, Shorthose, and Vaughan, Prickshaft’s garden

with a ‘bower’ in it, and the palace. Interior action is required in

Horace’s study, which is discovered,[459] the presence-chamber at the

palace, where a ‘chaire is set under a canopie’,[460] and Shorthose’s

hall.[461] The ordinary methods at the Globe would be adequate. On the

other hand, London, in spite of Horace, is the locality throughout,

and at Paul’s the setting may have been continuous, just as well as

in _What You Will_. Dekker is also the leading spirit in _Westward

Ho!_ and _Northward Ho!_, and in these we get, for the first time at

Paul’s, plays for which a continuous setting seems quite impossible.

Not only does _Westward Ho!_ require no less than ten houses and

_Northward Ho!_ seven, but also, although the greater part of both

plays takes place in London, _Westward Ho!_ has scenes at Brentford

and _Northward Ho!_ at Ware.[462] The natural conclusion is that, for

these plays at least, the procedure of the public theatres was adopted.

It is, of course, the combination of numerous houses and changes of

locality which leads me to this conclusion. Mahelot shows us that the

‘multiple’ staging of the Hôtel de Bourgogne permitted inconsistencies

of locality, but could hardly accommodate more than five, or at most

six, _maisons_. Once given the existence of alternative methods at

Paul’s, it becomes rather difficult to say which was applied in any

particular case. Chapman’s _Bussy d’Ambois_ begins, like _The Fawn_,

with an open-country scene, and thereafter uses only three houses,

all in Paris; the presence-chamber at the palace (I. ii; II. i; III.

ii; IV. i), Bussy’s chamber (V. iii), and Tamyra’s chamber in another

house, Montsurry’s (II. ii; III. i; IV. ii; V. i, ii, iv). Both

chambers are trapped for spirits to rise, and Tamyra’s has in it a

‘gulfe’, apparently screened by a ‘canopie’, which communicates with

Bussy’s.[463] As the interplay of scenes in Act V requires transit

through the passage from one chamber to the other, it is natural to

assume an unchanged setting.[464]

The most prolific contributor to the Paul’s repertory was Middleton.

His first play, _Blurt Master Constable_, needs five houses. They are

all in Venice, and as in certain scenes more than one of them appears

to be visible, they were probably all set together.[465] Similarly,

_The Phoenix_ has six houses, all in Ferrara;[466] and _Michaelmas

Term_ has five houses, all in London.[467] On the other hand, although

_A Mad World, my Masters_ has only four houses,[468] and _A Trick to

Catch the Old One_ seven,[469] yet both these plays resemble Dekker’s,

in that the action is divided between London and one or more places in

the country; and this, so far as it goes, seems to suggest settings

on public theatre lines. I do not know whether Middleton wrote _The

Puritan_, but I think that this play clearly had a continuous setting

with only four houses, in London.[470] And although Beaumont’s

_Woman Hater_ requires seven houses, these are all within or hard

by the palace in Milan, and action seems to pass freely from one to

another.[471]

The evidence available does not dispose one to dogmatism. But this

is the general impression which I get of the history of the Paul’s

staging. When the performances were revived in 1599, the master had,

as in the days before Lyly took the boys to Blackfriars, to make the

best of a room originally designed for choir-practices. This was

circular, and only had space for a comparatively small stage. At the

back of this, entrance was given by a curtained recess, corresponding

to the alcove of the public theatres, and known at Paul’s as the

‘canopy’.[472] Above the canopy was a beam, which bore the post of the

music-tree. On this post was a small stand, perhaps for the conductor

of the music, and on each side of it was a music-house, forming a

gallery,[473] which could represent a window or balcony. There were

at least two other doors, either beneath the music-houses or at right

angles to these, off the sides of the stage. The master began with

continuous settings on the earlier sixteenth-century court model, using

the doors and galleries as far as he could to represent houses, and

supplementing these by temporary structures; and this plan fitted in

with the general literary trend of his typical dramatists, especially

Marston, to unity of locality. But in time the romantic element proved

too much for him, and when he wanted to enlist the services of writers

of the popular school, such as Dekker, he had to compromise. It may

be that some structural change was carried out during the enforced

suspension of performances in 1603. I do not think that there is any

Paul’s play of earlier date which could not have been given in the

old-fashioned manner. In any event, the increased number of houses and

the not infrequent shiftings of locality from town to country, which

are apparent in the Jacobean plays, seem to me, taken together, to be

more than can be accounted for on a theory of clumsy foreshortening,

and to imply the adoption, either generally or occasionally, of some

such principle of convertible houses, as was already in full swing upon

the public stage.[474]

I do not think that the history of the Blackfriars was materially

different from that of Paul’s. There are in all twenty-four plays

to be considered; an Elizabethan group of seven produced by the

Children of the Chapel, and a Jacobean group of seventeen produced by

the successive incarnations of the Revels company.[475] Structural

alterations during 1603 are here less probable, for the house only

dated from Burbadge’s enterprise of 1596. Burbadge is said to have

intended a ‘public’ theatre, and it may be argued on _a priori_ grounds

that he would have planned for the type of staging familiar to him

at the Theatre and subsequently elaborated at the Globe. The actual

character of the plays does not, however, bear out this view. Like

Paul’s, the Blackfriars relied at first in part upon revivals. One was

_Love’s Metamorphosis_, already produced by Lyly under Court conditions

with the earlier Paul’s boys, and _tout en pastoralle_.[476] Another,

or if not, quite an archaistic play, was _Liberality and Prodigality_,

the abstract plot of which only needs an equally abstract scene, with

a ‘bower’ for Fortune, holding a throne and scaleable by a ladder (30,

290, 903, 932, 953), another ‘bower’ for Virtue (132), an inn (47,

192, 370), and a high seat for a judge with his clerks beneath him

(1245).[477] The two new playwrights may reasonably be supposed to

have conformed to the traditional methods. Jonson’s _Cynthia’s Revels_

has a preliminary act of open country, by the Fountain of Self-Love,

in Gargaphia. The rest is all at the Gargaphian palace, either in the

presence, or in an ante-chamber thereto, perhaps before a curtain, or

for one or two scenes in the nymphs’ chamber (IV. i-v), and in or

before the chamber of Asotus (III. v).[478] _Poetaster_ is all at Rome,

within and before the palace, the houses of Albius and Lupus, and the

chamber of Ovid.[479] There is certainly no need for any shifting of

scenes so far. Nor does Chapman demand it. _Sir Giles Goosecap_, except

for one open-country scene, has only two houses, which are demonstrably

contiguous and used together.[480] _The Gentleman Usher_ has only

two houses, supposed to be at a little distance from each other, and

entailing a slight foreshortening, if they were placed at opposite ends

of the stage.[481] _All Fools_ adopts the Italian convention of action

in an open city space before three houses.[482]

To the Jacobean repertory not less than nine writers contributed.

Chapman still takes the lead with three more comedies and two tragedies

of his own. In the comedies he tends somewhat to increase the number

of his houses, although without any change of general locality.

_M. d’Olive_ has five houses.[483] _May Day_ has four.[484] _The

Widow’s Tears_ has four.[485] But in all cases there is a good deal

of interplay of action between one house and another, and all the

probabilities are in favour of continuous setting. The tragedies are

perhaps another matter. The houses are still not numerous; but the

action is in each play divided between two localities. The _Conspiracy

of Byron_ is partly at Paris and partly at Brussels; the _Tragedy of

Byron_ partly at Paris and partly at Dijon.[486] Jonson’s _Case is

Altered_ has one open-country scene (V. iv) near Milan. The other

scenes require two houses within the city. One is Farneze’s palace,

with a _cortile_ where servants come and go, and a colonnade affording

a private ‘walk’ for his daughters (II. iii; IV. i). Hard by, and

probably in Italian fashion forming part of the structure of the palace

itself, is the cobbler’s shop of Farneze’s retainer, Juniper.[487]

Near, too, is the house of Jaques, with a little walled backside, and

a tree in it.[488] A link with Paul’s is provided by three Blackfriars

plays from Marston. Of these, the _Malcontent_ is in his characteristic

Italian manner. There is a short hunting scene (III. ii) in the middle

of the play. For nearly all the rest the scene is the ‘great chamber’

in the palace at Genoa, with a door to the apartment of the duchess at

the back (II. i. 1) and the chamber of Malevole visible above.[489]

Part of the last act, however, is before the citadel of Genoa,

from which the action passes direct to the palace.[490] _The Dutch

Courtesan_ is a London comedy with four houses, of the same type as

_What You Will_, but less crowded.[491] In the tragedy of _Sophonisba_,

on the other hand, we come for the first time at Blackfriars to a

piece which seems hopelessly unamenable to continuous setting. It

recalls the structure of such early public plays as the _Battle of

Alcazar_. ‘The scene is Libya’, the prologue tells us. We get the

camps of Massinissa (II. ii), Asdrubal (II. iii), and Scipio (III.

ii; V. iv). We get a battle-field with a ‘mount’ and a ‘throne’ in it

(V. ii). We get the forest of Belos, with a cave’s mouth (IV. i). The

city scenes are divided between Carthage and Cirta. At Carthage there

is a council-chamber (II. i) and also the chamber of Sophonisba (I.

ii), where her bed is ‘discovered’.[492] At Cirta there is the similar

chamber of Syphax (III. i; IV. ii) with a trapped altar.[493] A curious

bit of continuous action, difficult to envisage, comprehends this and

the forest at the junction of Acts IV and V. From a vault within it, a

passage leads to the cave. Down this, in III. i, Sophonisba descends,

followed by Syphax. A camp scene intervenes, and at the beginning of IV

Sophonisba emerges in the forest, is overtaken by Syphax, and sent back

to Cirta. Then Syphax remembers that ‘in this desert’ lives the witch

Erichtho. She enters, and promises to charm Sophonisba to his bed.

Quite suddenly, and without any _Exit_ or other indication of a change

of locality, we are back in the chamber at Cirta. Music sounds within

‘the canopy’ and ‘above’. Erichtho, disguised as Sophonisba, enters the

canopy, as to bed. Syphax follows, and only discovers his misadventure

at the beginning of Act V.[494] Even if the play was staged as a whole

on public theatre methods, it is difficult not to suppose that the two

entrances to the cave, at Cirta and in the forest, were shown together.

It is to be added that, in a note to the print, Marston apologizes

for ‘the fashion of the entrances’ on the ground that the play was

‘presented by youths and after the fashion of the private stage’.

Somewhat exceptional also is the arrangement of _Eastward Ho!_, in

which Chapman, Jonson, and Marston collaborated. The first three acts,

taken by themselves, are easy enough. They need four houses in London.

The most important is Touchstone’s shop, which is ‘discovered’.[495]

The others are the exteriors of Sir Petronel’s house and Security’s

house, with a window or balcony above, and a room in the Blue Anchor

tavern at Billingsgate.[496] But throughout most of Act IV the whole

stage seems to be devoted to a complicated action, for which only one

of these houses, the Blue Anchor, is required. A place above the stage

represents Cuckold’s Haven, on the Surrey side of the Thames near

Rotherhithe, where stood a pole bearing a pair of ox-horns, to which

butchers did a folk-observance. Hither climbs Slitgut, and describes

the wreck of a boat in the river beneath him.[497] It is the boat in

which an elopement was planned from the Blue Anchor in Act III. Slitgut

sees passengers landed successively ‘even just under me’, and then at

St. Katharine’s, Wapping, and the Isle of Dogs. These are three places

on the north bank, all to the east of Billingsgate and on the other

side of the Tower, but as each rescue is described, the passengers

enter the stage, and go off again. Evidently a wild foreshortening is

deliberately involved. Now, although the print obscures the fact, must

begin a new scene.[498] A night has passed, and Winifred, who landed

at St. Katharine’s, returns to the stage, and is now before the Blue

Anchor.[499] From IV. ii onwards the setting is normal again, with

three houses, of which one is Touchstone’s. But the others are now

the exterior of the Counter and of the lodging of Gertrude. One must

conclude that in this play the Blackfriars management was trying an

experiment, and made complete, or nearly complete, changes of setting,

at the end of Act III and again after IV. i. Touchstone’s, which was

discovered, could be covered again. The other houses, except the

tavern, were represented by mere doors or windows, and gave no trouble.

The tavern, the introduction of which in the early acts already

entailed foreshortening, was allowed to stand for IV. i, and was then

removed, while Touchstone’s was discovered again.

Middleton’s tendency to multiply his houses is noticeable, as at

Paul’s, in _Your Five Gallants_. There are eight, in London, with an

open-country scene in Combe Park (III. ii, iii), and one cannot be

confident of continuous setting.[500] But a group of new writers,

enlisted at Blackfriars in Jacobean days, conform well enough to the

old traditions of the house. Daniel’s _Philotas_ has the abstract stage

characteristic of the closet tragedies to the type of which it really

belongs. Any Renaissance façade would do; at most a hall in the court

and the lodging of Philotas need be distinguished. Day’s _Isle of

Gulls_ is _tout en pastoralle_.[501] His _Law Tricks_ has only four

houses, in Genoa.[502] Sharpham’s _Fleir_, after a prelude at Florence,

which needs no house, has anything from three to six in London.[503]

Fletcher’s _Faithful Shepherdess_, again, is _tout en pastoralle_.[504]

Finally, _The Knight of the Burning Pestle_ is, in the strict sense, an

exception which proves the rule. Its shifts of locality are part of the

burlesque, in which the popular plays are taken off for the amusement

of the select audience of the Blackfriars. Its legitimate houses are

only two, Venturewell’s shop and Merrithought’s dwelling, hard by one

another.[505] But the adventures of the prentice heroes take them not

only over down and through forest to Waltham, where the Bell Inn must

serve for a knightly castle, and the barber’s shop for Barbaroso’s

cave, but also to the court of Moldavia, although the players regret

that they cannot oblige the Citizen’s Wife by showing a house covered

with black velvet and a king’s daughter standing in her window all in

beaten gold, combing her golden locks with a comb of ivory.[506] What

visible parody of public stage methods heightened the fun, it is of

course impossible to say.

I do not propose to follow the Queen’s Revels to the Whitefriars, or

to attempt any investigation into the characteristics of that house.

It was occupied by the King’s Revels before the Queen’s Revels, and

probably the Lady Elizabeth’s joined the Queen’s Revels there at a

later date. But the number of plays which can definitely be assigned

to it is clearly too small to form the basis of any satisfactory

induction.[507] So far as the Blackfriars is concerned, my conclusion

must be much the same as for Paul’s--that, when plays began in 1600,

the Chapel revived the methods of staging with which their predecessors

had been familiar during the hey-day of the Court drama under Lyly;

that these methods held their own in the competition with the public

theatres, and were handed on to the Queen’s Revels; but that in

course of time they were sometimes variegated by the introduction,

for one reason or another, of some measure of scene-shifting in

individual plays. This reason may have been the nature of the plot

in _Sophonisba_, the desire to experiment in _Eastward Ho!_, the

restlessness of the dramatist in _Your Five Gallants_, the spirit of

raillery in _The Knight of the Burning Pestle_. Whether Chapman’s

tragedies involved scene-shifting, I am not quite sure. The analogy of

the Hôtel de Bourgogne, where a continuous setting was not inconsistent

with the use of widely distant localities, must always be kept in mind.

On the other hand, what did not appear absurd in Paris, might have

appeared absurd in London, where the practice of the public theatres

had taught the spectators to expect a higher degree of consistency.

I am far from claiming that my theory of the survival of continuous

setting at Paul’s and the Blackfriars has been demonstrated. Very

possibly the matter is not capable of demonstration. Many, perhaps

most, of the plays could be produced, if need be, by alternative

methods. It is really on taking them in the mass that I cannot resist

the feeling that ‘the fashion of the private stage’, as Marston called

it, was something different from the fashion of the public stage. The

technique of the dramatists corresponds to the structural conditions.

An increased respect for unity of place is not the only factor,

although it is the most important. An unnecessary multiplicity of

houses is, except by Dekker and Middleton, avoided. Sometimes one or

two suffice. There is much more interior action than in the popular

plays. One hall or chamber scene can follow upon another more freely.

A house may be used for a scene which would seem absurdly short if the

setting were altered for it. More doors are perhaps available, so that

some can be spared for entrance behind the houses. There is more coming

and going between one house and another, although I have made it clear

that even the public stage was not limited to one house at a time.[508]

One point is, I think, quite demonstrable. Marston has a reference

to ‘the lower stage’ at Paul’s, but neither at Paul’s nor at the

Blackfriars was there an upper stage capable of holding the action of

a complete scene, such as we found at the sixteenth-century theatres,

and apparently on a still larger scale at the Globe and the Fortune.

A review of my notes will show that, although there is action ‘above’

in many private house plays, it is generally a very slight action,

amounting to little more than the use by one or two persons of a window

or balcony. Bedchamber scenes or tavern scenes are provided for below;

the public theatre, as often as not, put them above.[509] I may recall,

in confirmation, that the importance of the upper stage in the plays

of the King’s men sensibly diminishes after their occupation of the

Blackfriars.[510]

There are enigmas still to be solved, and I fear insoluble. Were the

continuous settings of the type which we find in Serlio, with the unity

of a consistent architectural picture, or of the type which we find

at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, with independent and sometimes incongruous

juxtaposed _mansions_? The taste of the dramatists for Italian cities

and the frequent recurrence of buildings which fit so well into a

Serliesque scheme as the tavern, the shop, the house of the _ruffiana_

or courtesan, may tempt one’s imagination towards the former. But

Serlio does not seem to contemplate much interior action, and although

the convention of a half out-of-doors _cortile_ or _loggia_ may help

to get over this difficulty, the often crowded presences and the masks

seem to call for an arrangement by which each _mansion_ can at need

become in its turn the background to the whole of the stage and attach

to itself all the external doors. How were the open-country scenes

managed, which we have noticed in several plays, as a prelude, or even

an interruption, to the strict unity of place?[511] Were these merely

played on the edge of the stage, or are we to assume a curtain, cutting

off the background of houses, and perhaps painted with an open-country

or other appropriate perspective? And what use, if any, can we suppose

to have been made of title or locality labels? The latter would not

have had much point where the locality was unchanged; but Envy calls

out ‘Rome’ three times in the prologue to the _Poetaster_, as if she

saw it written up in three places. Percy may more naturally use them in

_Cuckqueans and Cuckolds_, on a stage which represents a foreshortening

of the distance between three distinct towns. Title-labels seem fairly

probable. _Cynthia’s Revels_ and _The Knight of the Burning Pestle_

bear testimony to them at the Blackfriars; _Wily Beguiled_ perhaps at

Paul’s.[512] And if the prologues none the less thought it necessary

to announce ‘The scene is Libya’, or ‘The scene Gargaphia, which I do

vehemently suspect for some fustian country’, why, we must remember

that there were many, even in a select Elizabethan audience, that could

not hope to be saved by their book.