The Elizabethan Stage, Vol. 3

by E. K. Chambers

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Cf. ch. xxii.

[2] Quarterly Review (April 1908), 446.

[3] A copy at Berlin of the Strassburg Terence of 1496 has the manuscript note to the engraving of the Theatrum, ‘ein offen stat der weltlichkeit da man zu sicht, ubi fiunt chorei, ludi et de alijs leutitatibus, sicut nos facimus oster spill’ (Herrmann, 300). Leo Battista Alberti’s De Re Edificatoria was written about 1451 and printed in 1485. Vitruvius, De Architectura, v. 3–9, deals with the theatre. The essential passage on the scene is v. 6, 8–9 ‘Ipsae autem scenae suas habent rationes explicitas ita, uti mediae valvae ornatus habeant aulae regiae, dextra ac sinistra hospitalia, secundum autem spatia ad ornatus comparata, quae loca Graeci περιάκτους dicunt ab eo, quod machinae sunt in his locis versatiles trigonoe habentes singulares species ornationis, quae, cum aut fabularum mutationes sunt futurae seu deorum adventus, cum tonitribus repentinis [ea] versentur mutentque speciem ornationis in frontes. secundum ea loca versurae sunt procurrentes, quae efficiunt una a foro, altera a peregre aditus in scaenam. genera autem sunt scaenarum tria: unum quod dicitur tragicum, alterum comicum, tertium satyricum. horum autem ornatus sunt inter se dissimili disparique ratione, quod tragicae deformantur columnis et fastigiis et signis reliquisque regalibus rebus; comicae autem aedificiorum privatorum et maenianorum habent speciem prospectusque fenestris dispositos imitatione, communium aedificiorum rationibus; satyricae vero ornantur arboribus, speluncis, montibus reliquisque agrestibus rebus in topeodis speciem deformati’; cf. G. Lanson, in Revue de la Renaissance (1904), 72.

[4] ‘Tu enim primus Tragoediae ... in medio foro pulpitum ad quinque pedum altitudinem erectum pulcherrime exornasti: eamdemque, postquam in Hadriani mole ... est acta, rursus intra tuos penates, tamquam in media Circi cavea, toto consessu umbraculis tecto, admisso populo et pluribus tui ordinis spectatoribus honorifice excepisti. Tu etiam primus picturatae scenae faciem, quum Pomponiani comoediam agerent, nostro saeculo ostendisti’; cf. Marcantonius Sabellicus, Vita Pomponii (Op. 1502, f. 55), ‘Pari studio veterum spectandi consuetudinem desuetae civitati restituit, primorum Antistitum atriis suo theatro usus, in quibus Plauti, Terentii, recentiorum etiam quaedam agerentur fabulae, quas ipse honestos adolescentes et docuit, et agentibus praefuit’; cf. also D’Ancona, ii. 65; Creizenach, ii. 1.

[5] D’Ancona, ii. 74.

[6] D’Ancona, ii. 84; Herrmann, 353; Flechsig, 51. The scenic wall is described in the contemporary narrative of P. Palliolo, Le Feste pel Conferimento del Patriziato Romano a Giuliano e Lorenzo de’ Medici (ed. O. Guerrini, 1885), 45, 63, ‘Guardando avanti, se appresenta la fronte della scena, in v compassi distinta per mezzo di colonne quadre, con basi e capitelli coperti de oro. In ciascuno compasso è uno uscio di grandezza conveniente a private case.... La parte inferiore di questa fronte di quattro frigi è ornata.... A gli usci delle scene furono poste portiere di panno de oro. El proscenio fu coperto tutto di tapeti con uno ornatissimo altare in mezzo.’ The side-doors were in ‘le teste del proscenio’ (Palliolo, 98). I have not seen M. A. Altieri, Giuliano de’ Medici, eletto cittadino Romano (ed. L. Pasqualucci, 1881), or N. Napolitano, Triumphi de gli mirandi Spettaculi (1519). Altieri names an untraceable Piero Possello as the architect; Guerrini suggests Pietro Rossello.

[7] D’Ancona, ii. 128, from Diario Ferrarese, ‘in lo suo cortile ... fu fato suso uno tribunale di legname, con case v merlade, con una finestra e uscio per ciascuna: poi venne una fusta di verso le caneve e cusine, e traversò il cortile con dieci persone dentro con remi e vela, del naturale’; Bapt. Guarinus, Carm. iv:

Et remis puppim et velo sine fluctibus actam

Vidimus in portus nare, Epidamne, tuos,

Vidimus effictam celsis cum moenibus urbem,

Structaque per latas tecta superba vias.

Ardua creverunt gradibus spectacula multis,

Velaruntque omnes stragula picta foros.

[8] D’Ancona, ii. 129.

[9] Ibid. 130.

[10] Ibid. 132, 135. The two Marsigli, with Il Bianchino and Nicoletto Segna, appear to have painted scenes and ships for the earlier Ferrarese productions.

[11] Ibid. 134.

[12] Ibid. 381, from G. Campori, Lettere artistiche inedite, 5, ‘Era la sua forma quadrangula, protensa alquanto in longitudine: li doi lati l’uno al altro de rimpecto, havevano per ciaschuno octo architravi con colonne ben conrespondenti et proportionate alla larghezza et alteza de dicti archi: le base et capitelli pomposissimamente con finissimi colori penti, et de fogliami ornati, representavano alla mente un edificio eterne ed antiquo, pieno de delectatione: li archi con relevo di fiori rendevano prospectiva mirabile: la largheza di ciascheuno era braza quactro vel cerca: la alteza proporzionata ad quella. Dentro nel prospecto eran panni d’oro et alcune verdure, si come le recitationi recerchavano: una delle bande era ornata delli sei quadri del Cesareo triumpho per man del singulare Mantengha: li doi altri lati discontro erano con simili archi, ma de numero inferiore, che chiascheuno ne haveva sei. Doj bande era scena data ad actorj et recitatorj: le doe altre erano ad scalini, deputati per le donne et daltro, per todeschi, trombecti et musici. Al jongere del’ angulo de un de’ grandi et minorj lati, se vedevano quactro altissime colonne colle basi orbiculate, le quali sustentavano quactro venti principali: fra loro era una grocta, benchè facta ad arte, tamen naturalissima: sopra quella era un ciel grande fulgentissimo de varij lumi, in modo de lucidissime stelle, con una artificiata rota de segni, al moto de’ quali girava mo il sole, mo la luna nelle case proprie: dentro era la rota de Fortuna con sei tempi: regno, regnavj, regnabo: in mezo resideva la dea aurea con un sceptro con un delphin. Dintorno alla scena al frontespitio da basso era li triumphi del Petrarcha, ancor loro penti per man del p^o. Mantengha: sopra eran candelierj vistosissimi deaurati tucti: nel mezo era un scudo colle arme per tucto della C^a. M^g.; sopra la aquila aurea bicapitata col regno et diadema imperiale: ciascheuno teneva tre doppieri; ad ogni lato era le insegne. Alli doi maiorj, quelle della S^ta. de N. S. et quelle della Cesarea Maestà: alli minorj lati quelle del C^o. Sig. Re, et quelle della Ill^ma. Sig^a. da Venetia; tra li archi pendevano poi quelle de V. Ex., quelle del Sig. duca Alberto Alemano: imprese de Sig. Marchese et Sig^a. Marchesana: sopre erano più alte statue argentate, aurate et de più colorj metallici, parte tronche, parte integre, che assai ornavano quel loco: poi ultimo era il cielo de panno torchino, stellato con quelli segni che quella sera correvano nel nostro hemisperio.’ Flechsig, 26, thinks that the architect was Ercole Albergati (Il Zafarano).

[13] D’Ancona, i. 485; Mediaeval Stage, ii. 79, 83, 135.

[14] Ferrari, 50; D’Ancona, ii. 1, give examples of these at Ferrara and elsewhere. The Favola d’Orfeo, originally produced about 1471, seems to have been recast as Orphei tragedia for Ferrara in 1486. It had five acts, Pastorale, Ninfale, Eroico, Negromantico, Baccanale; in the fourth, the way to hell and hell itself were shown—‘duplici actu haec scena utitur’.

[15] J. W. Cunliffe, Early English Classical Tragedies, xl; F. A. Foster, in E. S. xliv. 8.

[16] Herrmann, 280, 284; cf. Mediaeval Stage, ii. 208.

[17] Translation by Hans Nithart, printed by C. Dinckmut (Ulm, 1486); cf. Herrmann, 292, who reproduces specimen cuts from this and the other sources described.

[18] Edition printed by Johannes Trechsel (Lyons, 1493); cf. Herrmann, 300. The editor claims for the woodcuts that ‘effecimus, ut etiam illitteratus ex imaginibus, quas cuilibet scenae praeposuimus, legere atque accipere comica argumenta valeat’. Badius also edited a Paris Terence of 1502, with Praenotamenta based on Vitruvius and other classical writers, in which he suggests the use in antiquity of ‘tapeta ... qualia nunc fiunt in Flandria’.

[19] Edition printed by Johannes Grüninger (Strassburg, 1496); cf. Herrmann, 318.

[20] Editions printed by Lazarus Soardus (Venice, 1497 and 1499); cf. Herrmann, 346. The Theatrum and other cuts are also reproduced in The Mask for July 1909.

[21] Flechsig, 84, citing as possibly a stage design an example of idealized architecture inscribed ‘Bramanti Architecti Opus’ and reproduced by E. Müntz, Hist. de l’Art pendant la Renaissance, ii. 299. Bramante was at Rome about 1505, and was helped on St. Peter’s by Baldassarre Peruzzi. But there is nothing obviously scenic in the drawing.

[22] D’Ancona, ii. 394, ‘Ma quello che è stato il meglio in tutte queste feste e representationi, è stato tute le sene, dove si sono representate, quale ha facto uno M^o. Peregrino depintore, che sta con il Sig^re.; ch’ è una contracta et prospettiva di una terra cum case, chiesie, campanili et zardini, che la persona non si può satiare a guardarla per le diverse cose che ge sono, tute de inzegno et bene intese, quale non credo se guasti, ma che la salvaràno per usarla de le altre fiate’.

[23] Ibid., ‘il caso accadete a Ferrara’.

[24] Ibid. 102, ‘La scena poi era finta una città bellissima con le strade, palazzi, chiese, torri, strade vere, e ogni cosa di rilevo, ma ajutata ancora da bonissima pintura e prospettiva bene intesa’; the description has further details. Genga is not named, but Serlio (cf. App. G) speaks of his theatrical work for Duke Francesco Maria of Urbino (succ. 1508). Vasari, vi. 316, says that he had also done stage designs for Francesco’s predecessor Guidobaldo.

[25] Vasari, iv. 600. Some of Peruzzi’s designs for Calandra are in the Uffizi; Ferrari (tav. vi) reproduces one.

[26] D’Ancona, ii. 89, ‘Sonandosi li pifari si lasciò cascare la tela; dove era pinto Fra Mariano con alcuni Diavoli che giocavano con esso da ogni lato della tela; et poi a mezzo della tela vi era un breve che dicea: Questi sono li capricci di Fra Mariano; et sonandosi tuttavia, et il Papa mirando con il suo occhiale la scena, che era molto bella, di mano di Raffaele, et rappresentava si bene per mia fè forami di prospective, et molto furono laudate, et mirando ancora il cielo, che molto si rappresentava bello, et poi li candelieri, che erano formati in lettere, che ogni lettera substenìa cinque torcie, et diceano: Leo Pon. Maximus’.

[27] Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, xxxii. 80:

Quale al cader de le cortine suole

Parer, fra mille lampade, la scena,

D’archi, et di più d’una superba mole

D’oro, e di statue e di pitture piena.

This passage was added in the edition of 1532, but a more brief allusion in that of 1516 (xliii. 10, ‘Vo’ levarti dalla scena i panni’) points to the use of a curtain, rising rather than falling, before 1519; cf. p. 31; vol. i, p. 181; Creizenach, ii. 299; Lawrence (i. 111), The Story of a Peculiar Stage Curtain.

[28] Ferrari (tav. xii) reproduces from Uffizi, 5282, an idealization by Serlio of the piazzetta of S. Marco at Venice as a scenario.

[29] Cf. App. G. Book ii first appeared in French (1545).

[30] De Sommi, Dial. iv (c. 1565, D’Ancona, ii. 419), ‘Ben che paia di certa vaghezza il vedersi in scena una camera aperta, ben parata, dentro a la quale, dirò così per esempio, uno amante si consulti con una ruffiana, et che paia aver del verisimile, è però tanto fuor del naturale esser la stanza senza il muro dinanzi, il che necessariamente far bisogna, che a me ne pare non molto convenirsi: oltre che non so se il recitare in quel loco, si potrà dire che sia in scena. Ben si potrà per fuggir questi due inconvenienti, aprire come una loggia od un verone dove rimanesse alcuno a ragionare’.

[31] Creizenach, ii. 271.

[32] Ferrari, 105, with engravings; A. Magrini, Il teatro Olympico (1847). This is noticed by the English travellers, Fynes Morison, Itinerary, i. 2. 4 (ed. 1907, i. 376), ‘a Theater for Playes, which was little, but very faire and pleasant’, and T. Coryat, Crudities, ii. 7, ‘The scene also is a very faire and beautifull place to behold’. He says the house would hold 3,000. In Histriomastix, ii. 322, the ‘base trash’ of Sir Oliver Owlet’s players is compared unfavourably with the splendour of Italian theatres. A permanent theatre had been set up in the Sala grande of the Corte Vecchia at Ferrara in 1529, with scenery by Dosso Dossi representing Ferrara, for a revival of the Cassaria and the production of Ariosto’s Lena; it was burnt down, just before Ariosto’s death, in 1532 (Flechsig, 23; Gardner, King of Court Poets, 203, 239, 258).

[33] Probably some temporary additions to the permanent decoration of the scena was possible, as Ferrari (tav. xv) gives a design for a scenario by Scamozzi.

[34] Ferrari, 100.

[35] Engravings, by Jean de Gourmont and another, of this type of stage are reproduced by Bapst, 145, 153, and by Rigal in Petit de Julleville, iii. 264, 296; cf. M. B. Evans, An Early Type of Stage (M. P. ix. 421).

[36] Cf. Mediaeval Stage, ii. 217.

[37] Baschet, 6; D’Ancona, ii. 456; H. Prunières, L’Opéra Italien en France (1913), xx; A. Solerti, La rappresentazione della Calandra a Lione nel 1548 (1901, Raccolta di Studii Critici ded. ad A. d’ Ancona), from La Magnifica et Triumphale Entrata del Christianissimo Re di Francia Henrico Secundo (1549).

[38] Cf. ch. xiv (Italians).

[39] D’Ancona, ii. 457.

[40] Brantôme, Recueil des Dames, i. 2 ([OE]uvres, ed. 1890, x. 47), ‘Elle eut opinion qu’elle avoit porté malheur aux affaires du royaume, ainsi qu’il succéda; elle n’en fit plus jouer’. Ingegneri says of tragedies, ‘Alcuni oltra dicio le stimano di triste augurio’.

[41] E. Rigal in Rev. d’Hist. Litt. xii. 1, 203; cf. the opposite view of J. Haraszti in xi. 680 and xvi. 285.

[42] Sainte-Marthe, Elogia (1606), 175.

[43] G. Lanson in Rev. d’Hist. Litt. x. 432. In Northward Hoe, iv. 1, Bellamont is writing a tragedy of Astyanax, which he will have produced ‘in the French court by French gallants’, with ‘the stage hung all with black velvet’.

[44] Lanson, loc. cit. 422. A description of a tragi-comedy called Genièvre, based on Ariosto, at Fontainebleau in 1564 neglects the staging, but gives a picture of the audience as

une jeune presse

De tous costez sur les tapis tendus,

Honnestement aux girons espandus

De leur maîtresse.

B. Rossi’s Fiammella was given at Paris in 1584 with a setting of ‘boschi’.

[45] Lanson, loc. cit. 424.

[46] The plan is in J. A. Du Cerceau, Les Plus Excellens Bastimens de France (1576–9), and is reproduced in W. H. Ward, French Châteaux and Gardens in the Sixteenth Century, 14; cf. R. Blomfield, Hist. of French Architecture, i. 81, who, however, thinks that Du Cerceau’s ‘bastiment en manière de théâtre’ was not the long room, but the open courtyard, in the form of a square with concave angles and semicircular projections on each side, which occupies the middle of the block.

[47] Prunières, Ballet de Cour, 72, 134.

[48] Bapst, 147, reproduces an example. This is apparently the type of French stage described by J. C. Scaliger, Poetice (1561), i. 21, ‘Nunc in Gallia ita agunt fabulas, ut omnia in conspectu sint; universus apparatus dispositis sublimibus sedibus. Personae ipsae nunquam discedunt: qui silent pro absentibus habentur’.

[49] Rigal, 36, 46, 53.

[50] The full text is printed by E. Dacier from B. N. f. fr. 24330 in Mémoires de la Soc. de l’Hist. de Paris (1901), xxviii. 105, and is analysed by Rigal, 247. The designs have recently (1920) been published in H. C. Lancaster’s edition; reproductions, from the originals or from models made for the Exposition of 1878, will be found of Durval’s Agarite in Rigal, f.p., Lawrence, i. 241, Thorndike, 154; of Hardy’s Cornélie in Rigal, Alexandre Hardy (1890), f.p., Bapst, 185; of Pandoste in Jusserand, Shakespeare in France, 71, 75; of Mairet’s Sylvanire in E. Faguet, Hist. de la Litt. Fr. ii. 31; and of Pyrame et Thisbé, Corneille’s L’Illusion Comique, and Du Ryer’s Lisandre et Caliste in Petit de Julleville, Hist. iv. 220, 270, 354.

[51] ‘Il faut un antre ... d’où sort un hermite’ (Dacier, 116), ‘une fenestre qui soit vis à vis d’une autre fenestre grillée pour la prison, où Lisandre puisse parler à Caliste’ (116), ‘un beau palais eslevé de trois ou quatre marches’ (117), ‘un palais ou sénat fort riche’ (117), ‘une case où il y ayt pour enseigne L’Ormeau’ (117), ‘une mer’ (117), ‘une tente’ (121), ‘un hermitage où l’on monte et descend’ (123), ‘une fenestre où se donne une lettre’ (124), ‘une tour, une corde nouée pour descendre de la tour, un pont-levis qui se lâche quand il est nécessaire’ (125), ‘une sortie d’un roy en forme de palais’ (127).

[52] ‘Il faut aussy une belle chambre, une table, deux tabourets, une écritoire’ (117), ‘une belle chambre, où il y ayt un beau lict, des sièges pour s’asseoir; la dicte chambre s’ouvre et se ferme plusieurs fois’ (121), ‘forme de salle garnie de sièges où l’on peint une dame’ (126).

[53] Dacier, 119.

[54] Ibid. 119.

[55] ‘Forme de fontaine en grotte coulante ou de peinture’ (Dacier, 127); ‘Au milieu du théâtre, dit la persepective, doit avoir une grande boutique d’orfèvre, fort superbe d’orfèvrerie et autre joyaux’ (136); ‘Il faut deux superbes maisons ornées de peinture; au milieu du théâtre, une persepective où il y ait deux passages entre les deux maisons’ (137).

[56] ‘Il faut que le théâtre soit tout en pastoralle, antres, verdures, et fleurs’ (116), ‘Il faut ... le petit Chastellet de la rue Saint Jacques, et faire paroistre une rue où sont les bouchers’ (116), ‘en pastoralle à la discrétion du feinteur’ (124), ‘Il faut le théâtre en rues et maisons’ (129, for Rotrou’s Les Ménechmes), ‘La décoration du théâtre doit estre en boutique’ (136), ‘le feinteur doit faire paraitre sur le théâtre la place Royalle ou l’imiter à peu près’ (133).

[57] ‘Il faut que cela soit caché durant le premier acte, et l’on ne faict paroistre cela qu’au second acte, et se referme au mesme acte’ (116), ‘un eschaffaut qui soit caché’ (117), ‘le vaisseau paraist au quatriesme acte’ (120). For the use of curtains to effect these discoveries, cf. Rigal, 243, 253, who, however, traces to a guess of Lemazurier, Galerie Historique, i. 4, the often repeated statement that to represent a change of scene ‘on levait ou on tirait une tapisserie, et cela se faisait jusqu’à dix ou douze fois dans la même pièce’.

[58] It is so, e.g., in the design for Agarite.

[59] ‘Non sic tolerari potest, ut longe lateque dissita loca in unum subito proscenium cogantur; qua in re per se absurdissima et nullo veterum exemplo comprobata nimium sibi hodie quidam indulserunt’; cf. Creizenach, ii. 102. Spingarn, Literary Criticism in the Renaissance, 89, 206, 290, discusses the origin of the unities, and cites Castelvetro, Poetica (1570), 534, ‘La mutatione tragica non può tirar con esso seco se non una giornata e un luogo’, and Jean de la Taille, Art de Tragédie (1572), ‘Il faut toujours représenter l’histoire ou le jeu en un même jour, en un même temps, et en un même lieu’.

[60] Mediaeval Stage, ii. 257; Lawrence (i. 123), Early French Players in England. It is only a guess of Mr. Lawrence’s that these visitors played Maistre Pierre Patelin, a farce which requires a background with more than one domus. Karl Young, in M. P. ii. 97, traces some influence of French farces on the work of John Heywood. There had been ‘Fransche-men that playt’ at Dundee in 1490, and ‘mynstrells of Fraunce’, not necessarily actors, played before Henry VII at Abingdon in 1507.

[61] Halle, i. 176.

[62] Halle, ii. 86.

[63] Mediaeval Stage, ii. 196; cf. ch. xii (Paul’s). Spinelli’s letter is preserved in Marino Sanuto, Diarii, xlvi. 595, ‘La sala dove disnamo et si rapresentò la comedia haveva nella fronte una grande zoglia di bosso, che di mezzo conteneva in lettere d’oro: Terentii Formio. Da l’un di canti poi vi era in lettere antique in carta: cedant arma togae. Da l’altro: Foedus pacis non movebitur. Sotto poi la zoglia si vide: honori et laudi pacifici.... Per li altri canti de la sala vi erano sparsi de li altri moti pertinenti alla pace’.

[64] V. P. iv. 115 translates ‘zoglia di bosso’ as ‘a garland of box’, but Florio gives ‘soglia’ as ‘the threshold or hanse of a doore; also the transome or lintle over a dore’.

[65] Murray, ii. 168; cf. ch. xii (Westminster).

[66] Halle, ii. 109.

[67] Cf. ch. viii.

[68] The memorandum on the reform of the Revels office in 1573, which I attribute to Edward Buggin, tells us (Tudor Revels, 37; cf. ch. iii) that ‘The connynge of the office resteth in skill of devise, in vnderstandinge of historyes, in iudgement of comedies tragedyes and showes, in sight of perspective and architecture, some smacke of geometrye and other thynges’. If Sir George Buck, however, in 1612, thought that a knowledge of perspective was required by the Art of Revels, he veiled it under the expression ‘other arts’ (cf. ch. iii).

[69] Mundus et Infans, Hickscorner, Youth, Johan Evangelist, Magnificence, Four Elements, Calisto and Melibaea, Nature, Love, Weather, Johan Johan, Pardoner and Friar, Four PP., Gentleness and Nobility, Witty and Witless, Kinge Johan, Godly Queen Hester, Wit and Science, Thersites, with the fragmentary Albion Knight. To these must now be added Henry Medwall’s Fulgens and Lucres (N.D., but 1500 <), formerly only known by a fragment (cf. Mediaeval Stage, ii. 458), but recently found in the Mostyn collection, described by F. S. Boas and A. W. Reed in T. L. S. (20 Feb. and 3 April 1919), and reprinted by S. de Ricci (1920).

[70] Wealth and Health, Nice Wanton, Lusty Juventus, Impatient Poverty, Respublica, Jacob and Esau, and perhaps Enough is as Good as a Feast, with the fragmentary Love Feigned and Unfeigned.

[71] Trial of Treasure, Like Will to Like, The Longer Thou Livest, The More Fool Thou Art, Marriage of Wit and Science, Marriage between Wit and Wisdom, New Custom, The Tide Tarrieth no Man, All for Money, Disobedient Child, Conflict of Conscience, Pedlar’s Prophecy, Misogonus, Glass of Government, Three Ladies of London, King Darius, Mary Magdalene, Apius and Virginia, with the fragmentary Cruel Debtor.

[72] For details of date and authorship cf. chh. xxiii, xxiv, and Mediaeval Stage, ii. 439, 443. Albright, 29, attempts a classification on the basis of staging, but not, I think, very successfully.

[73] Cf. e.g. Hickscorner, 544; Youth, 84, 201, 590, 633; Johan Johan, 667; Godly Queen Hester, 201, 635, 886; Wit and Science, 969; Wit and Wisdom, 3, p. 60; Nice Wanton, 416; Impatient Poverty, 164, 726, 746, 861, 988; Respublica, V. i. 38; Longer Thou Livest, 628, 1234; Conflict of Conscience, III. i. 2; et ad infinitum. Characters in action are said to be in place. For the platea cf. Mediaeval Stage, ii. 80, 135, but Kinge Johan, 1377, has a direction for an alarm ‘extra locum’.

[74] Cf. e.g. Wit and Science, 193, ‘Wyt speketh at the doore’; Longer Thou Livest, 523, ‘Betweene whiles let Moros put in his head’, 583, ‘Crie without the doore’, &c., &c.

[75] Cf. ch. vii.

[76] Cf. Mediaeval Stage, i. 216, and for the making of ‘room’ or ‘a hall’ for a mask, ch. v.

[77] Cf. M. L. Spencer, Corpus Christi Pageants in England, 184; Creizenach, ii. 101.

[78] Wallace, ii. 48, ‘The Blackfriars stage was elastic in depth as well as width, and could according to the demands of the given play be varied by curtains or traverses of any required number placed at any required distance between the balcony and the front of the stage’; Prölss, 89; Albright, 58; cf. p. 78.

[79] Volpone, v. 2801 (cf. p. 111); White Devil, V. iv. 70:

‘Flamineo.I will see them,

They are behind the travers. Ile discover

Their superstitious howling.

Cornelia, the Moore and 3 other Ladies discovered, winding Marcello’s coarse’;

Duchess of Malfi, IV. i. 54:

‘Here is discover’d, behind a travers, the artificiall figures of Antonio and his children, appearing as if they were dead.’

[80] Duke of Guise, v. 3 (quoted by Albright, 58), ‘The scene draws, behind it a Traverse’, and later, ‘The Traverse is drawn. The King rises from his Chair, comes forward’.

[81] The Revels Accounts for 1511 (Brewer, ii. 1497) include 10d. for a rope used for a ‘travas’ in the hall at Greenwich and stolen during a disguising. Puttenham (1589), i. 17, in an attempt to reconstruct the methods of classical tragedy, says that the ‘floore or place where the players vttered ... had in it sundrie little diuisions by curteins as trauerses to serue for seueral roomes where they might repaire vnto and change their garments and come in againe, as their speaches and parts were to be renewed’.

[82] There was a traverse in the nursery of Edward V in 1474; cf. H. O. *28, ‘Item, we will that our sayd sonne in his chamber and for all nighte lyverye to be sette, the traverse drawne anone upon eight of the clocke’.

[83] Rimbault, 150, 167. There is an elaborate description of ‘a fayer traverse of black taffata’ set up in the chapel at Whitehall for the funeral of James in 1625 and afterwards borrowed for the ceremony in Westminster Abbey.

[84] The chapel of Ahasuerus come in and sing (860). On the possibility that plays may have been acted in the chapel under Elizabeth, cf. ch. xii.

[85] G. G. Needle, I. iv. 34; II. iv. 20, ‘here, euen by this poste, Ich sat’; Jack Juggler, 908, ‘Joll his hed to a post’.

[86] The manuscript of Misogonus was written at Kettering. The prologue of Mary Magdalene is for travelling actors, who had given it at a university. Thersites contains local references (cf. Boas, 20) suggesting Oxford. Both this and The Disobedient Child are adaptations of dialogues of Ravisius Textor, but the adapters seem to be responsible for the staging.

[87] Cf. ch. xxii.

[88] II. ii. ‘Fowre women bravelie apparelled, sitting singing in Lamiaes windowe, with wrought Smockes, and Cawles, in their hands, as if they were a working’. Supposes, IV. iv, is a dialogue between Dalio the cook, at Erostrato’s window, and visitors outside. At the beginning, ‘Dalio commeth to the wyndowe, and there maketh them answere’; at the end, ‘Dalio draweth his hed in at the wyndowe, the Scenese commeth out’. The dialogue of sc. v proceeds at the door, and finally ‘Dalio pulleth the Scenese in at the dores’. In Two Ital. Gent. 435, ‘Victoria comes to the windowe, and throwes out a letter’. It must not be assumed on the analogy of later plays, and is in fact unlikely, that the windows of these early ‘houses’, or those of the ‘case’ at Ferrara in 1486, were upper floor windows.

[89] There is a reference to a falling curtain, not necessarily a stage one, in Alchemist, IV. ii. 6, ‘O, for a suite, To fall now, like a cortine: flap’. Such curtains were certainly used in masks; cf. ch. vi.

[90] Donne, Poems (ed. Grierson), i. 441; J. Hannah, Courtly Poets, 29. Graves, 20, quotes with this epigram Drummond, Cypress Grove, ‘Every one cometh there to act his part of this tragi-comedy, called life, which done, the courtaine is drawn, and he removing is said to dy’. But of course many stage deaths are followed by the drawing of curtains which are not front curtains.

[91] Inns of Court and University plays naturally run on analogous lines. For the ‘houses’ at Cambridge in 1564 and at Oxford in 1566, cf. ch. vii. The three Cambridge Latin comedies, Hymenaeus (1579), Victoria (c. 1580–3), Pedantius (c. 1581), follow the Italian tradition. For Victoria, which has the same plot as Two Ital. Gent., Fraunce directs, ‘Quatuor extruendae sunt domus, nimirum Fidelis, 1^a, Fortunij, 2^a, Cornelij, 3^a Octauiani, 4^a. Quin et sacellum quoddam erigendum est, in quo constituendum est Cardinalis cuiusdam Sepulchrum, ita efformatum, vt claudi aperirique possit. In Sacello autem Lampas ardens ponenda est’. The earliest extant tragedies, Grimald’s Christus Redivivus (c. 1540) and Archipropheta (c. 1547), antedate the pseudo-Senecan influence. Practical convenience, rather than dramatic theory, imposed upon the former a unity of action before the tomb. Grimald says, ‘Loca item, haud usque eò discriminari censebat; quin unum in proscenium, facilè & citra negocium conduci queant’. The latter was mainly before Herod’s palace, but seems to have showed also John’s prison at Macherus. There is an opening scene, as in Promos and Cassandra, of approach to the palace (Boas, 28, 35). Christopherson’s Jephthah, Watson’s (?) Absalon, and Gager’s Meleager (1582) observe classical unity. The latter has two houses, in one of which an altar may have been ‘discovered’. Boas, 170, quotes two s.ds., ‘Transeunt venatores e Regia ad fanum Dianae’ and ‘Accendit ligna in ara, in remotiore scenae parte extructa’. Gager’s later plays (Boas, 179) seem to be under the influence of theatrical staging. On Legge’s Richardus Tertius vide p. 43, infra.

[92] I do not suggest that the actual ‘templum’ in Serlio’s design, which is painted on the back-cloth, was practicable. The ruffiana’s house was. About the shop or tavern, half-way up the rake of the stage, I am not sure. There is an echo of the ruffiana, quite late, in London Prodigal (1605), V. i. 44, ‘Enter Ruffyn’.

[93] The early editions have few s.ds. Mr. Bond supplies many, which are based on a profound misunderstanding of Lyly’s methods of staging, to some of the features of which Reynolds in M. P. i. 581, ii. 69, and Lawrence, i. 237, have called attention.

[94] Possibly I. i might be an approach scene outside the city, as prisoners are sent (76) ‘into the citie’, but this may only mean to the interior of the city from the market-place.

[95] Action is continuous between II. i, at the cave, and II. ii, in which Sapho will ‘crosse the Ferrie’. Phao told Sibylla (II. i. 14) that he was out of his way and benighted, but this was a mere excuse for addressing her.

[96] The palace itself was not necessarily staged. If it was, it was used with the lunary bank, after visiting which Cynthia goes ‘in’ (IV. iii. 171). She comes ‘out’ and goes ‘in’ again (V. iii. 17, 285), but these terms may only refer to a stage-door. Nor do I think that the ‘solitarie cell’ spoken of by Endymion (II. i. 41) was staged.

[97] Yet Eumenides, who was sent to Thessaly in III. i, has only reached the fountain twenty years later (III. iii. 17), although he is believed at Court to be dead (IV. iii. 54). The time of the play cannot be reduced to consistency; cf. Bond, iii. 14.

[98] In IV. ii. 96 Protea, in a scene before the rock, says to Petulius, ‘Follow me at this doore, and out at the other’. During the transit she is metamorphosed, but the device is rather clumsy. The doors do not prove that a domus of Erisichthon was visible; they may be merely stage-doors.

[99] Possibly The Cobler’s Prophecy is also a Chapel or Paul’s play; it was given before an audience who ‘sit and see’, and to whom the presenters ‘cast comfets’ (39). The domus required for a background are (a) Ralph’s, (b) Mars’s court, (c) Venus’s court, (d) the Duke’s court, (e) the cabin of Contempt. From (a) to (b) is ‘not farre hence’ (138) and ‘a flight shoot vp the hill’ (578); between are a wood and a spot near Charon’s ferry. From (b) to (c) leads ‘Adowne the hill’ (776). At the end (e) is burnt, and foreshortening of space is suggested by the s.d. (1564), ‘Enter the Duke ... then compasse the stage, from one part let a smoke arise: at which place they all stay’. At the beginning (3) ‘on the stage Mercurie from one end Ceres from another meete’. Summer’s Last Will and Testament, which cannot be definitely assigned either to the Chapel or to Paul’s, continues the manner of the old interlude; it has a stage (1570), but the abstract action requires no setting beyond the tiled hall (205, 359, 932, 974) in which the performance was given. The Wars of Cyrus is a Chapel play, but must be classed, from the point of view of staging, with the plays given in public theatres (cf. p. 48).

[100] Act III has the s.d., ‘The storme. Enter Æneas and Dido in the Caue at seuerall times’ (996).... ‘Exeunt to the Caue’ (1059). They are supposed to remain in the cave during the interval between Acts III and IV, after which, ‘Anna. Behold where both of them come forth the Caue’ (1075).

[101] ‘Here the Curtaines draw, there is discouered Iupiter dandling Ganimed vpon his knee’ (1).... ‘Exeunt Iupiter cum Ganimed’ (120). But as Jupiter first says, ‘Come Ganimed, we must about this gear’, it may be that they walk off. If so, perhaps they are merely ‘discouered’ in the wood, and the curtains are front curtains.

[102] So too (897),

This day they both a hunting forth will ride

Into these woods, adioyning to these walles.

[103] At the end of the banquet scene (598), ‘Exeunt omnes’ towards the interior of the palace, when ‘Enter Venus at another doore, and takes Ascanius by the sleeue’. She carries him to the grove, and here he presumably remains until the next Act (III), when ‘Enter Iuno to Ascanius asleepe’ (811). He is then removed again, perhaps to make room for the hunting party. I suppose the ‘another doore’ of 598 to mean a stage-door.

[104] Cf. ch. xxii.

[105] Direct evidence pointing to performance at Court is only available for two of the five, Cambyses and Orestes.

[106] Cambyses, 75, 303, 380, 968, 1041, 1055; Patient Grissell, 212, 338, 966, 1048, 1185, 1291, 1972, 1984, 2069; Orestes, 221, 1108; Clyomon and Clamydes, 1421, 1717, 1776, 1901, 1907, 1931, 1951, 2008, 2058, 2078; Common Conditions, 2, 110, 544, 838, 1397, 1570; &c. Of course, the technical meaning of ‘place’ shades into the ordinary one.

[107] A similar instruction clears the stage at the end (1197) of a corpse, as in many later plays; cf. p. 80.

[108] The s.d. ‘one of their wives come out’ (813) does not necessarily imply a clown’s domus. Cambyses fluctuates between the actor’s notion that personages come ‘out’ from the tiring-house, and the earlier notion of play-makers and audience that they go ‘out’ from the stage. Thus ‘Enter Venus leading out her son’ (843), but ‘goe out Venus and Cupid’ at the end of the same episode (880).

[109] ‘Come, let us run his arse against the poste’ (186); cf. pp. 27, 75.

[110] For later examples cf. p. 99.

[111] Lawrence (i. 41), Title and Locality Boards on the Pre-Restoration Stage.

[112] Lawrence, i. 55. No English example of an inscribed miracle-play domus has come to light.

[113] Gregory Smith, Elizabethan Critical Essays, i. 185, 197 (cf. App. C, No. xxxiv). Sidney’s main argument is foreshadowed in Whetstone’s Epistle to Promos and Cassandra (1578; cf. App. C, No. xix), ‘The Englishman in this quallitie, is most vaine, indiscreete, and out of order; he fyrst groundes his worke on impossibilities: then in three howers ronnes he throwe the worlde: marryes, gets children, makes children men, men to conquer kingdomes, murder monsters, and bringeth Gods from Heaven, and fetcheth Divels from Hel’.

[114] Cf. p. 20.

[115] Gibson had used written titles to name his pageant buildings; cf. Brewer, ii. 1501; Halle, i. 40, 54. The Westminster accounts c. 1566 (cf. ch. xii) include an item for ‘drawing the tytle of the comedee’. The Revels officers paid ‘for the garnyshinge of xiiij titles’ in 1579–80, and for the ‘painting of ix. titles with copartmentes’ in 1580–1 (Feuillerat, Eliz. 328, 338). The latter number agrees with that of the plays and tilt challenges for the year; the former is above that of the nine plays recorded, and Lawrence thinks that the balance was for locality-titles. But titles were also sometimes used in the course of action. Thus Tide Tarrieth for No Man has the s.d. (1439), ‘Christianity must enter with a sword, with a title of pollicy, but on the other syde of the tytle, must be written gods word, also a shield, wheron must be written riches, but on the other syde of the shield must be Fayth’. Later on (1501) Faithful ‘turneth the titles’. Prologues, such as those of Damon and Pythias, Respublica, and Conflict of Conscience, which announce the names of the plays, tell rather against the use of title-boards for those plays. For the possible use of both title- and scene-boards at a later date, cf. pp. 126, 154.

[116] Cf. pp. 60, 63.

[117] In the Latin academic drama the transition between classical and romantic staging is represented by Legge’s Richardus Tertius (1580). This is Senecan in general character, but unity of place is not strictly observed. A s.d. to the first Actio (iii. 64) is explicit for the use of a curtain to discover a recessed interior, ’ A curtaine being drawne, let the queene appeare in y^e sanctuary, her 5 daughters and maydes about her, sittinge on packs, fardells, chests, cofers. The queene sitting on y^e ground with fardells about her’.

[118] Cf. p. 21.

[119] Cf. ch. vii.

[120] Feuillerat, Eliz. 365.

[121] Cf. ch. xi.

[122] There are four presenters, but, in order to avoid crowding the stage, they are reduced to two by the sending of the others to bed within the hut (128).

[123] Albright, 66; Reynolds, i. 11.

[124] Queen’s, Three Lords and Three Ladies of London, 1, 2 Troublesome Reign of King John, Selimus, Looking-Glass for London and England, Famous Victories of Henry V, James IV, King Leir, True Tragedy of Richard III; Sussex’s, George a Greene, Titus Andronicus; Pembroke’s, Edward II, Taming of a Shrew, 2, 3 Henry VI, Richard III; Strange’s or Admiral’s, 1, 2 Tamburlaine, Spanish Tragedy, Orlando Furioso, Fair Em, Battle of Alcazar, Knack to Know a Knave, Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, 1 Henry VI, Comedy of Errors, Jew of Malta, Wounds of Civil War, Dr. Faustus, Four Prentices of London; Admiral’s, Knack to Know an Honest Man, Blind Beggar of Alexandria, Humorous Day’s Mirth, Two Angry Women of Abingdon, Look About You, Shoemaker’s Holiday, Old Fortunatus, Patient Grissell, 1 Sir John Oldcastle, Captain Thomas Stukeley, 1, 2 Robert Earl of Huntingdon, Englishmen for my Money; Chamberlain’s, Edward III, 1 Richard II, Sir Thomas More, Taming of the Shrew, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Romeo and Juliet, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Richard II, King John, Merchant of Venice, 1, 2 Henry IV, Every Man in his Humour, Warning for Fair Women, A Larum for London, Thomas Lord Cromwell (the last two possibly Globe plays); Derby’s, 1, 2 Edward IV, Trial of Chivalry; Oxford’s, Weakest Goeth to the Wall; Chapel, Wars of Cyrus; Unknown, Arden of Feversham, Soliman and Perseda, Edward I, Jack Straw, Locrine, Mucedorus, Alphonsus, 1, 2 Contention of York and Lancaster.

[125] Quarterly Review, ccviii. 446.

[126] I here use ‘scene’ in the sense of a continuous section of action in an unchanged locality, and do not follow either the usage of the playwrights, which tends to be based upon the neo-classical principle that the entrance or exit of a speaker of importance constitutes a fresh scene, or the divisions of the editors, who often assume a change of locality where none has taken place; cf. ch. xxii. I do not regard a scene as broken by a momentary clearance of the stage, or by the opening of a recess in the background while speakers remain on the stage, or by the transference of action from one point to another of the background if this transference merely represents a journey over a foreshortened distance between neighbouring houses.

[127] Albright, 114; Thorndike, 102.

[128] Downfall of R. Hood, V. i.

[129] Alphonsus, 163; K. to K. Honest Man, 71. The friar’s cell of T. G. V. i may be in an urban setting, as Silvia bids Eglamour go ‘out at the postern by the abbey wall’; that of R. J. II. iii, vi; III. iii; IV. i; V. 2 seems to be in rural environs. How far there is interior action is not clear. None is suggested by II. or V. In III. iii (Q₂) the Friar bids Romeo ‘come forth’ (1), and Romeo falls ‘upon the ground’ (69). Then ‘Enter Nurse and knocke’ (71). After discussing the knock, which is twice repeated, the Friar bids Romeo ‘Run to my study’ and calls ‘I come’. Then ‘Enter Nurse’ (79) with ‘Let me come in’. Romeo has not gone, but is still ‘There on the ground’ (83). Q₁ is in the main consistent with this, but the first s.d. is merely ‘Nurse knockes’, and after talking to Romeo, ‘Nurse offers to goe in and turnes againe’ (163). In IV. i (Q₁, and Q₂) the Friar observes Juliet coming ‘towards my Cell’ (17), and later Juliet says ‘Shut the door’ (44); cf. p. 83.

[130] Downfall of R. Hood, III. ii, ‘Curtaines open, Robin Hoode sleepes on a greene banke and Marian strewing flowers on him’ ... ‘yonder is the bower’; Death of R. Hood, I. v; cf. I. iv, ‘Let us to thy bower’.

[131] B. B. of Alexandria, scc. i, iv; Battle of Alcazar, ii. 325, where the presenter describes Nemesis as awaking the Furies, ‘In caue as dark as hell, and beds of steele’, and the corresponding s.d. in the plot (H. P. 139) is ‘Enter aboue Nemesis ... to them lying behinde the Curtaines 3 Furies’.

[132] K. Leir, scc. xxvii-xxxii.

[133] K. Leir, sc. xxiv, ‘Enter the Gallian King and Queene, and Mumford, with a basket, disguised like Countrey folke’. Leir meets them, complaining of ‘this vnfruitfull soyle’, and (2178) ‘She bringeth him to the table’; B. B. of Alexandria, sc. iii.

[134] B. B. of Alexandria, sc. iii.

[135] Locrine, III. i (d.s.), ‘A Crocadile sitting on a riuers banke, and a little snake stinging it. Then let both of them fall into the water’; IV. v. 1756 (a desert scene), ‘Fling himselfe into the riuer’; V. vi. 2248 (a battle-field scene), ‘She drowneth her selfe’; Weakest Goeth to the Wall, I. i (d.s.), ‘The Dutches of Burgundie ... leaps into a Riuer, leauing the child vpon the banke’; Trial of Chivalry, C_{4}^v, ‘yon fayre Riuer side, which parts our Camps’; E₂, ‘This is our meeting place; here runs the streame That parts our camps’; cf. p. 90. A. of Feversham, IV. ii and iii are, like part of Sapho and Phao (cf. p. 33), near a ferry, and ‘Shakebag falles into a ditch’, but the river is not necessarily shown.

[136] Two late testimonies may be held to support the theory. In T. N. K. (King’s, c. 1613), III. i. 31, ‘Enter Palamon as out of a Bush’, but cf. III. vi. 1, ‘Enter Palamon from the Bush’. The Prologue to Woman Killed with Kindness (Worcester’s, 1603) says:

I come but like a harbinger, being sent

To tell you what these preparations mean:

Look for no glorious state; our Muse is bent

Upon a barren subject, a bare scene.

We could afford this twig a timber tree.

Whose strength might boldly on your favours build;

Our russet, tissue; drone, a honey bee;

Our barren plot, a large and spacious field.

These rhetorical antitheses are an apology for meanness of theme, rather than, like the prologues to Henry V, for scenic imperfections, and I hesitate to believe that, when the actor said ‘twig’, he pointed to a branch which served as sole symbol on the stage for a woodland.

[137] Looking-Glass, V. iii. 2059, 2075, ‘Lo, a pleasant shade, a spreading vine ... A Serpent deuoureth the vine’; O. Furioso, 572, ‘Sacrepant hangs vp the Roundelayes on the trees’ (cf. A. Y. L. III. ii. 1, ‘Hang there, my verse, in witness of my love’); B. B. of Alexandria, sc. vi, ‘Here’s a branch, forsooth, of your little son turned to a mandrake tree’; Old Fortunatus, 1–357, where Fortunatus dreams under a tree, 1861–2128, where there are apple-and nut-trees in a wilderness; &c., &c. Simon Forman in 1611 saw Macbeth and Banquo ‘ridinge thorowe a wod’ (N. S. S. Trans. 1875–6, 417), although from the extant text we could have inferred no trees in I. iii.

[138] M. N. D. II-IV. i; Mucedorus, I.; II. iii; III. iii-v; IV. ii, iii; V. i; T. A. Women of Abingdon, scc. vii, ix-xii.

[139] Edw. I, 2391, ‘I must hang vp my weapon vppon this tree’; Alphonsus, II. i. 417, ‘this wood; where in ambushment lie’. For a river cf. p. 51, n. 8 (Locrine).

[140] Hen. V, IV, prol. 49.

[141] 1 Tamb. 705, ‘Sound trumpets to the battell, and he runs in’; 1286, ‘They sound the battell within, and stay’; 2 Tamb. 2922, ‘Sound to the battell, and Sigismond comes out wounded’; 1 Contention, sc. xii. 1, ‘Alarmes within, and the Chambers be discharged, like as it were a fight at sea’.

[142] Alphonsus, II. i, ii; 1 Hen. IV, V. i-iv. The whole of Edw. III, III, IV, V, is spread over Creçy and other vaguely located battle-fields in France.

[143] 1 Contention, sc. xxii. 1, ‘Alarmes to the battaile, and then enter the Duke of Somerset and Richard fighting, and Richard kils him vnder the signe of the Castle in saint Albones’. The s.d. of 2 Hen. VI, V. ii. 66, is only ‘Enter Richard, and Somerset to fight’, but the dialogue shows that the ‘alehouse paltry sign’ was represented.

[144] 1 Contention, sc. xxii, 62 (with the alehouse), ‘Alarmes againe, and then enter three or foure, bearing the Duke of Buckingham wounded to his Tent’; 2 Tamb. IV. i. 3674, ‘Amyras and Celebinus issues from the tent where Caliphas sits a sleepe’ ... 3764 (after Caliphas has spoken from within the tent), ‘He goes in and brings him out’; Locrine, 1423, ‘mee thinkes I heare some shriking noise. That draweth near to our pauillion’; James IV, 2272, ‘Lords, troop about my tent’; Edw. I, 1595, ‘King Edward ... goes into the Queenes Chamber, the Queenes Tent opens, shee is discouered in her bed’ ... 1674, ‘They close the Tent’ ... 1750, ‘The Queenes Tent opens’ ... 1867, ‘The Nurse closeth the Tent’ ... 1898, ‘Enter ... to giue the Queene Musicke at her Tent’, and in a later scene, 2141, ‘They all passe ... to the Kings pavilion, the King sits in his Tent with his pages about him’ ... 2152, ‘they all march to the Chamber. Bishop speakes to her [the Queen] in her bed’; 1 Troilus and Cressida, plot (Henslowe Papers, 142), ‘Enter ... to them Achillis in his Tent’; Trial of Chivalry, C_{4}^v, ‘this is the Pauilion of the Princesse .... Here is the key that opens to the Tent’ ... D, ‘Discouer her sitting in a chayre asleepe’ and a dialogue in the tent follows. The presence of a tent, not mentioned in dialogue or s.ds., can often be inferred in camp scenes, in which personages sit, or in those which end with a ‘Come, let us in’; e.g. Locrine, 564, 1147.

[145] Richard III, V. iii, iv, v (a continuous scene); 1 Hen. IV, V. i, ii, iii, iv (probably similar); cf. p. 51, n. 8 (Trial of Chivalry).

[146] Edw. I, 900, 1082, 2303 (after a battle), ‘Then make the proclamation vpon the walles’ (s.d.); James IV, 2003 (after parley), ‘They descend downe, open the gates, and humble them’; Soliman and Perseda, III. iv; V. iv. 16, ‘The Drum sounds a parle. Perseda comes vpon the walls in mans apparell. Basilisco and Piston, vpon the walles.... Then Perseda comes down to Soliman, and Basilisco and Piston’; 2 Contention, sc. xviii, ‘Enter the Lord Maire of Yorke vpon the wals’ ... (after parley) ‘Exit Maire’ ... ‘The Maire opens the dore, and brings the keies in his hand’; K. John, II. i. 201, ‘Enter a Citizen vpon the walles’ ... ‘Heere after excursions, Enter the Herald of France with Trumpets to the gates’ ... ‘Enter the two kings with their powers at seuerall doores’ ... (after parley) ‘Now, citizens of Angiers, ope your gates’; cf. 1 Troublesome Raigne, scc. ii-x; 2 Contention, sc. xxi; George a Greene, sc. v; Orlando Furioso, I. ii; 2 Tamburlaine, III. iii; Selimus, scc. xii, xxvii-xxxi; Wounds of Civil War, V. ii-iv; Edw. III, I. ii; Death of R. Hood, V. ii; Stukeley, II; Frederick and Basilea and 1 Troilus and Cressida plots (Henslowe Papers, 137, 142), &c. Wall scenes are not always siege scenes. Thus in 2 Troub. Raigne, sc. i, ‘Enter yong Arthur on the walls.... He leapes’ (cf. K. J. IV. iii); in 1 Contention, sc. xvi, ‘Enter the Lord Skayles vpon the Tower walles walking. Enter three or four Citizens below’ (cf. 2 Hen. VI, IV. v). Analogous is 2 Hen. VI, IV. ix (Kenilworth), ‘Enter King, Queene, and Somerset on the Tarras.... Enter Multitudes with Halters about their neckes’.

[147] In Alarum for London, 203, a gun is fired at Antwerp from the walls of the castle; cf. 1 Hen. VI below.

[148] 2 Tamburlaine, V. i, ‘Enter the Gouernour of Babylon vpon the walles’ ... (after parley) ‘Alarme, and they scale the walles’, after which the governor is hung in chains from the walls and shot at; Selimus, 1200, ‘Alarum, Scale the walles’, 2391, ‘Allarum, beats them off the walles; cf. 1 Hen. VI below. Hen. V, III. i-iii (a continuous scene) opens with ‘Alarum: Scaling Ladders at Harflew’. Henry says ‘Once more vnto the breach’, but later a parley is sounded from the town, and ‘Enter the King and all his Traine before the Gates’, where submission is made, and they ‘enter the Towne’. Sometimes an assault appears to be on the gates rather than the walls; e.g. 1 Edw. IV, I. iv-vi; 1 Hen. VI, I. iii.

[149] Cf. p. 106, n. 6. The fullest use of walls is made in 1 Hen. VI, a sixteenth-century play, although the extant text was first printed in 1623. An analysis is necessary. The walls are those of Orleans in I, II, of Rouen in III, of Bordeaux in IV, of Angiers in V. In I. iv, ‘Enter the Master Gunner of Orleance, and his Boy’. They tell how

the English, in the suburbs close entrencht,

Wont through a secret grate of iron barres,

In yonder tower, to ouer-peere the citie.

The Gunner bids the Boy watch, and tell him if he sees any English. Then ‘Enter Salisbury and Talbot on the turrets, with others’, and later ‘Enter the Boy with a Linstock’. The English talk of attacking ‘heere, at the bulwarke of the bridge’, and ‘Here they shot, and Salisbury falls downe’. After an Exeunt which clears the stage, there is fighting in the open, during which a French relieving party ‘enter the Towne with souldiers’, and later ‘Enter on the Walls, Puzel, Dolphin, Reigneir, Alanson, and Souldiers’. In II. i, which follows, a French watch is set, lest English come ‘neere to the walles’. Then ‘Enter Talbot, Bedford, and Burgundy, with scaling Ladders’; Bedford will go ‘to yond corner’, Burgundy ‘to this’, and Talbot mount ‘heere’. They assault, and ‘The French leape ore the walles in their shirts. Enter seuerall wayes, Bastard, Alanson, Reignier, halfe ready, and halfe unready’. They discourse and are pursued by the English, who then ‘retreat’, and in turn discourse ‘here ... in the market-place’, rejoicing at how the French did ‘Leape o’re the Walls for refuge in the field’. Then, after a clearance, comes a scene at the Countess of Auvergne’s castle. In III. ii the Pucell enters before the gates of Rouen, obtains access by a trick, and then ‘Enter Pucell on the top, thrusting out a torch burning’. Other French watch without for the signal from ‘yonder tower’ or ‘turret’, and then follow into the town and expel the English, after which, ‘Enter Talbot and Burgonie without: within, Pucell, Charles, Bastard, and Reigneir on the walls’. After parley, ‘Exeunt from the walls’, and fighting in front leaves the English victorious, and again able to enter the town. In IV. ii ‘Enter Talbot ... before Burdeaux’, summons the French general ‘vnto the Wall’, and ‘Enter Generall aloft’. In V. iii the English are victorious before Angiers, sound for a parley before the castle, and ‘Enter Reignier on the walles’. After parley, Reignier says ‘I descend’, and then ‘Enter Reignier’ to welcome the English.

[150] In Looking-Glass, II. i, ‘Enters Remilia’ and after discourse bids her ladies ‘Shut close these curtaines straight and shadow me’; whereupon ‘They draw the Curtaines and Musicke plaies’. Then enter the Magi, and ‘The Magi with their rods beate the ground, and from vnder the same riseth a braue Arbour’. Rasni enters and will ‘drawe neare Remilias royall tent’. Then ‘He drawes the Curtaines, and findes her stroken with thunder, blacke.’ She is borne out. Presumably the same arbour is used in IV. iii, where Alvida’s ladies ‘enter the bowers’. Both scenes are apparently near the palace at Nineveh and not in a camp. The earlier action of L. L. L. is in a park, near a manor house, which is not necessarily represented. But at IV. iii. 373 the King wishes to devise entertainment ‘in their tents’ for the ‘girls of France’, and Biron says, ‘First, from the park let us conduct them thither’. Presumably therefore V. ii passes near the tents.

[151] Looking-Glass, II. i; IV. iii (supra); Edw. III, II. i. 61, at Roxborough Castle, ‘Then in the sommer arber sit by me’; 2 Hen. IV, V. iii (infra). In Sp. Trag. II. ii. 42, Horatio and Belimperia agree to meet in ‘thy father’s pleasant bower’. In II. iv they enter with ‘let us to the bower’ and set an attendant to ‘watch without the gate’. While they sit ‘within these leauy bowers’ they are betrayed, and (s.d.) ‘They hang him in the Arbor’. In II. v (not really a new scene) Hieronimo emerges from his house, where a woman’s cry ‘within this garden’ has plucked him from his ‘naked bed’, finds Horatio hanging ‘in my bower’, and (s.d.) ‘He cuts him downe’. In III. xii (an addition of the 1602 text) Hieronimo ranges ‘this hidious orchard’, where Horatio was murdered before ‘this the very tree’. Finally, in IV. ii Isabella enters ‘this garden plot’, and (s.d.) ‘She cuts downe the Arbour’.

[152] Sp. Trag. III. xii^a (supra); Shoemaker’s Holiday, sc. ii, ‘this flowry banke’, sc. iv, ‘these meddowes’; 1 Hen. VI, II. iv, ‘From off this brier pluck a white rose with me’, &c. In R. J. II. i (Q₁, but Q₂ has apparently the same setting) Romeo enters, followed by friends, who say, ‘He came this way, and leapt this orchard wall’, and refer to ‘those trees’. They go, and in II. ii (presumably the same scene) Romeo speaks under Juliet’s window ‘ouer my head’. She says ‘The Orchard walles are high and hard to climb’, and he, ‘By loues light winges did I oreperch these wals’, and later swears by the blessed moon, ‘That tips with siluer all these fruit trees tops’.

[153] R. J. II. ii (supra); Sp. Trag. II. v (supra); Look About You, sc. v (a bowling green under Gloucester’s chamber in the Fleet); 1 Oldcastle, I. iii, II. i (a grove before Cobham’s gate and an inn); &c. In 1 Contention, sc. ii. 64, Elinor sends for a conjurer to do a spell ‘on the backside of my orchard heere’. In sc. iv she enters with the conjurer, says ‘I will stand upon this Tower here’, and (s.d.) ‘She goes vp to the Tower’. Then the conjurer will ‘frame a cirkle here vpon the earth’. A spirit ascends; spies enter; and ‘Exet Elnor aboue’. York calls ‘Who’s within there?’ The setting of 2 Hen. VI, I. ii, is much the same, except that the references to the tower are replaced by the s.d. ‘Enter Elianor aloft’. In 2 Hen. VI, II. ii, the scene is ‘this close walke’ at the Duke of York’s. Similarly, scc. i, iv of Humourous Day’s Mirth are before Labervele’s house in a ‘green’, which is his wife’s ‘close walk’, which is kept locked, and into which a visitor intrudes. But in sc. vii, also before Labervele’s, the ‘close walk’ is referred to as distinct from the place of the scene.

[154] 2 Troublesome Raigne, sc. viii, ‘Enter two Friars laying a Cloth’. One says, ‘I meruaile why they dine heere in the Orchard’. We need not marvel; it was to avoid interior action. In 2 Hen. IV, V. iii, the scene is Shallow’s orchard, ‘where, in an arbour, we will eat a last year’s pippin of mine own graffing, with a dish of caraways, and so forth’.

[155] Famous Victories, sc. ii, 5, ‘we will watch here at Billingsgate ward’; Jack Straw, iii (Smithfield); W. for Fair Women, II. 115, ‘here at a friends of mine in Lumberd Street’; IV. 1511, ‘Enter two Carpenters vnder Newgate’; Shoemaker’s Holiday, sc. xi (Tower Street, vide infra); Cromwell, V. ii, iii (Westminster and Lambeth, vide infra); Arden of F. II. ii (Paul’s Churchyard, vide infra); 2 Hen. VI, IV. vi, ‘Enter Iacke Cade and the rest, and strikes his staffe on London stone’; &c.

[156] Span. Tragedy, III. vi. 104, ‘He turnes him off’ (s.d.); Sir T. More, sc. xvii. More is brought in by the Lieutenant of the Tower and delivered to the sheriff. He says (1911), ‘Oh, is this the place? I promise ye it is a goodly scaffolde’, and ‘your stayre is somewhat weake’. Lords enter ‘As he is going vp the stayres’ (s.d.), and he jests with ‘this straunge woodden horsse’ and ‘Truely heers a moste sweet Gallerie’ (where the marginal s.d. is ‘walking’). Apparently the block is not visible; he is told it is ‘to the Easte side’ and ‘exit’ in that direction.

[157] Rich. II, I. iii, ‘The trumpets sound and the King enters with his nobles; when they are set, enter the Duke of Norfolke in armes defendent’. No one is ‘to touch the listes’ (43), and when the duel is stopped the combatants’ returne backe to their chaires againe’ (120).

[158] S. and P. I. iii. There is an open place in Rhodes which a mule and ass can enter. Knights and ladies are welcomed and go ‘forwards to the tilt’ with an ‘Exeunt’ (126). Action continues in the same place. Piston bids Basilisco ‘stay with me and looke vpon the tilters’, and ‘Will you vp the ladder, sir, and see the tilting?’ The s.d. follows (180), ‘Then they go vp the ladders and they sound within to the first course’. Piston and Basilisco then describe the courses as these proceed, evidently out of sight of the audience. The tiltyard may be supposed to run like that at Westminster, parallel to the public road and divided from it by a wall, up which ladders can be placed for the commoner spectators. In V. ii Erastus is arrested in public and tried on the spot before the Marshal. He is bound to ‘that post’ (83) and strangled. The witnesses are to be killed. Soliman says (118),

Lord Marshall, hale them to the towers top.

And throw them headlong downe into the valley;

and we get the s.ds. ‘Then the Marshall beares them to the tower top’ (122), and ‘Then they are both tumbled downe’ (130). Presumably they disappear behind.

[159] James IV, I. ii. 1, ‘Enter Slipper, Nano, and Andrew, with their billes, readie written, in their hands’. They dispute as to whose bill shall stand highest, and then post the bills.

[160] Lord Cromwell, III. i. 41 (in Italy):

Content thee, man; here set vp these two billes,

And let us keep our standing on the bridge,

followed by s.ds., ‘One standes at one end, and one at tother’, and ‘Enter Friskiball, the Marchant, and reades the billes’. In V. ii. 1 (Westminster) Cromwell says, ‘Is the Barge readie?’ and (12) ‘Set on before there, and away to Lambeth’. After an ‘Exeunt’, V. iii begins ‘Halberts, stand close vnto the water-side’, and (16) ‘Enter Cromwell’.

[161] Cf. ch. xix, p. 44. Wounds of Civil War has several such scenes. In I. i. 1, ‘Enter on the Capitoll Sulpitius Tribune ... whom placed, and their Lictors before them with their Rods and Axes, Sulpitius beginneth’ ... (146) ‘Here enter Scilla with Captaines and Souldiers’. Scilla’s party are not in the Capitol; they ‘braue the Capitoll’ (149), are ‘before the Capitoll’ (218), but Scilla talks to the senators, and Marius trusts to see Scilla’s head ‘on highest top of all this Capitoll’. Presently Scilla bids (249) ‘all that loue Scilla come downe to him’, and (258) ‘Here let them goe downe’. In II. i the action is in the open, but (417) ‘yond Capitoll’ is named; III. i seems to be in ‘this Capitoll’ (841). In IV. i Marius and his troops enter before the seated Senate. Octavius, the consul, ‘sits commanding in his throne’ (1390). From Marius’ company, ‘Cynna presseth vp’ (s.d.) to ‘yonder emptie seate’ (1408), and presently Marius is called up and (1484) ‘He takes his seate’. In V. v. 2231 ‘Scilla seated in his roabes of state is saluted by the Citizens’. Similarly in T. A. I. i, ‘Enter the Tribunes and Senatours aloft: and then enter Saturninus and his followers at one doore, and Bassianus and his followers’. Saturninus bids the tribunes ‘open the gates and let me in’ (63) and ‘They goe vp into the Senate house’. Titus enters and buries his sons in his family tomb, and (299) ‘Enter aloft the Emperour’ and speaks to Titus. There is a Venetian senate house in K. to K. an Honest Man, scc. iii, xvii, but I do not find a similar interplay with the outside citizens here.

[162] W. for Fair Women, II. 93 (Lombard Street), ‘While Master Sanders and he are in busy talk one to the other, Browne steps to a corner.... Enter a Gentleman with a man with a torch before. Browne draws to strike’; Arden of F. II. ii. 41, ‘Stand close, and take you fittest standing, And at his comming foorth speed him’.

[163] T. G. IV. ii (cf. IV. iii. 16, ‘Now must we to her window’, and III. i. 35, 114, where Valentine has a rope-ladder to scale Silvia’s window ‘in an upper tower’ and ‘aloft, far from the ground’); IV. iv. 91, ‘That’s her chamber’; R. J. (orchard scenes), II. ii; III. v, ‘Enter Romeo and Juliet at the window’ (Q₁ where Q₂ has ‘aloft’; on the difficulty presented by Juliet’s chamber, cf. p. 94); M. V. II. vi. 1, ‘This is the penthouse vnder which Lorenzo Desired us to make a stand’ ... ‘Jessica aboue’ (s.d.) ... ‘Descend, for you must be my torch-bearer’ ... ‘Enter Jessica’ (having come down within from the casement forbidden her by Shylock and advised by Lancelot in II. v); Englishmen for my Money, sc. ix (where Vandalle, come to woo Pisaro’s daughter in the dark, is drawn up in a basket and left dangling in mid-air, while later (1999) Pisaro is heard ‘at the window’ and ‘Enter Pisaro aboue’); Two A. Women, 1495, ‘Enter Mall in the window’; Sp. Trag. II. ii, where spies ‘in secret’ and ‘aboue’ overhear the loves of Horatio and Belimperia below. Lovers are not concerned in Sp. Trag. III. ii, ‘Enter Hieronimo ... A Letter falleth’; III. ix, ‘Belimperia, at a window’; The Shrew, V. i. 17, ‘Pedant lookes out of the window’.

[164] In T. A. I. i a coffin is brought in, apparently in the market-place, while the Senators are visible in the Capitol (cf. p. 58, n. 2), and (90) ‘They open the Tombe’ and (150) ‘Sound trumpets, and lay the coffin in the Tombe’. R. J. V. iii is in a churchyard with ‘yond yew trees’ (3). A torch ‘burneth in the Capels monument’ (127), also called a ‘vault’ (86, &c.) and ‘the tomb’ (262). Romeo will ‘descend into this bed of death’ (28), and Q₁ adds the s.d. ‘Romeo opens the tombe’ (45). He kills Paris, whose blood ‘stains The stony entrance of this sepulchre’ (141). Juliet awakes and speaks, and must of course be visible. The Admiral’s inventories of 1598 (Henslowe Papers, 116) include ‘j tombe’, ‘j tome of Guido, j tome of Dido’.

[165] George a Greene, sc. xi, ‘Enter a Shoemaker sitting vpon the Stage at worke’, where a shop is not essential; but may be implied by ‘Stay till I lay in my tooles’ (1005); Locrine, II. ii, ‘Enter Strumbo, Dorothy, Trompart cobling shooes and singing’ (569) ... ‘Come sirrha shut vp’ (660); R. and J. V. i. 55, ‘This should be the house. Being holiday, the beggar’s shop is shut. What, ho! apothecary!’ where the elaborate description of the shop which precedes leaves some doubt how far it was represented; Shoemaker’s Holiday, scc. iii, ‘Open my shop windows’; v, ‘Ile goe in’; viii, ‘Shut vp the shop’; xi, ‘Enter Hodge at his shop-board, Rafe, Friske, Hans, and a boy at worke’ (all before or in Eyre’s shop); x, ‘Enter Iane in a Semsters shop working, and Hammon muffled at another doore, he stands aloofe’ (another shop); 1 Edw. IV, IV. iii, ‘Enter two prentizes, preparing the Goldsmiths shop with plate.... Enter mistris Shoare, with her worke in her hand.... The boy departs, and she sits sowing in her shop. Enter the King disguised’.

[166] Arden of F. II. ii. 52,

‘Here enters a prentise.

Tis very late; I were best shute vp my stall,

For heere will be ould filching, when the presse

Comes foorth of Paules.

Then lettes he downe his window, and it breaks Black Wils head’.

[167] Shoemaker’s Holiday, sc. xi, ‘the signe of the Last in Tower-street, mas yonders the house’; 1 Edw. IV, IV. iii, ‘Heres Lombard Streete, and heres the Pelican’. The Admiral’s inventories of 1598 (Henslowe Papers, 117) include ‘j syne for Mother Redcap’.

[168] Cf. ch. xix, p. 11. The introduction of a meal goes rather beyond the neo-classic analogy, but presents no great difficulty. If a banquet can be brought into a garden or orchard, it can be brought into a porch or courtyard. It is not always possible to determine whether a meal is in a threshold scene or a hall scene (cf. p. 64), but in 1 Edw. IV, III. ii, ‘Enter Nell and Dudgeon, with a table couered’ is pretty clearly at the door of the Tanner’s cottage.

[169] In the theatre usage personages go ‘in’, even where they merely go ‘off’ without entering a house (cf. e.g. p. 53, n. 2). The interlude usage is less regular, and sometimes personages go ‘out’, as they would appear to the audience to do.

[170] Soliman and Perseda, II. i. 227, ‘Sound vp the Drum to Lucinaes doore’ (s.d.). Doors are conspicuous in K. to K. Honest Man; thus sc. ii. 82, ‘Enter Lelio with his sword drawen, hee knockes at his doore’; sc. v. 395, ’tis time to knocke vp Lelios householde traine. He knockes’ ... ‘What mean this troup of armed men about my dore?’; sc. v. 519 (Bristeo’s), ‘Come breake vp the doore’; sc. vii. 662, ‘Enter Annetta and Lucida with their worke in their handes.... Here let vs sit awhile’ ... (738) ‘Get you in ... Here put them in at doore’; sc. vii. 894 (Lelio’s), ‘Underneath this wall, watch all this night: If any man shall attempt to breake your sisters doore, Be stout, assaile him’; sc. vii. 828 (a Senator’s), ‘What make you lingering here about my doores?’; sc. ix. 1034 (Lelio’s), ‘Heaue me the doores from of the hinges straight’; sc. xv. 1385 (Lelio’s), ‘my door doth ope’ (cf. p. 62, on the courtyard scene in the same play).

[171] Thus Humorous Day’s Mirth, sc. v (Moren’s), 111, ‘We’ll draw thee out of the house by the heels’ ... 143, ‘Thrust this ass out of the doors’ ... 188, ‘Get you out of my house!’, but 190, ‘Well, come in, sweet bird’; Shoemaker’s Holiday, sc. xii (Lord Mayor’s), ‘Get you in’, but ‘The Earl of Lincoln at the gate is newly lighted’.

[172] James IV, II. i, ‘Enter the Countesse of Arrain, with Ida, her daughter, in theyr porch, sitting at worke’ ... (753) ‘Come, will it please you enter, gentle sir? Offer to Exeunt’; cf. Arden of F. (vide infra) and the penthouse in M. V. II. vi. 1 (p. 58).

[173] Perhaps the best example is in Arden of Feversham. Arden’s house at Aldersgate is described by Michael to the murderers in II. ii. 189:

The dores Ile leaue unlockt against you come,

No sooner shall ye enter through the latch,

Ouer the thresholde to the inner court,

But on your left hand shall you see the staires

That leads directly to my M. Chamber.

Here, then, is III. i. Arden and Francklin talk and go to bed. Michael, in remorse, alarms them with an outcry, and when they appear, explains that he ‘fell asleepe, Vpon the thresholde leaning to the staires’ and had a bad dream. Arden then finds that ‘the dores were all unlockt’. Later (III. iv. 8) Michael lies about this to the murderers:

Francklin and my master

Were very late conferring in the porch,

And Francklin left his napkin where he sat

With certain gold knit in it, as he said.

Being in bed, he did bethinke himselfe,

And comming down he found the dores vnshut:

He lockt the gates, and brought away the keyes.

When the murderers come in III. ii, Will bids Shakebag ‘show me to this house’, and Shakebag says ‘This is the doore; but soft, me thinks tis shut’. They are therefore at the outer door of the courtyard; cf. p. 69, n. 2. Similarly 1 Rich. II, III. ii, which begins with ‘Enter Woodstock, Lancaster, and Yorke, at Plashey’, and ‘heere at Plasshy house I’le bid you wellcome’, is clearly in a courtyard. A servant says (114), ‘Ther’s a horseman at the gate.... He will not off an’s horse-backe till the inner gate be open’. Gloucester bids ‘open the inner gate ... lett hime in’, and (s.d.) ‘Enter a spruce Courtier a horse-backe’. It is also before the house, for the Courtier says, ‘Is he within’, and ‘I’le in and speake with the duke’. Rather more difficult is Englishmen for my Money, sc. iv, ‘Enter Pisaro’ with others, and says, ‘Proud am I that my roofe containes such friends’ (748), also ‘I would not haue you fall out in my house’ (895). He sends his daughters ‘in’ (827, 851), so must be in the porch, and a ‘knock within’ (s.d.) and ‘Stirre and see who knocks!’ (796) suggest a courtyard gate. But later in the play (cf. p. 58, n. 4) the street seems to be directly before the same house.

[174] In K. to K. Honest Man, scc. x-xii (continuous scene at Servio’s), Phillida is called ‘forth’ (1058) and bidden keep certain prisoners ‘in the vpper loft’. Presently she enters ‘with the keyes’ and after the s.d. ‘Here open the doore’ calls them out and gives them a signet to pass ‘the Porter of the gates’, which Servio (1143) calls ‘my castell gates’. In 1 Hen. VI, II. iii, the Countess of Auvergne, to entrap Talbot, bids her porter ‘bring the keyes to me’; presumably Talbot’s men are supposed to break in the gates at the s.d. ‘a Peale of Ordnance’. Rich. III, III. vii, is at Baynard’s Castle. Buckingham bids Gloucester (55) ‘get you vp to the leads’ to receive the Mayor, who enters with citizens, and (95) ‘Enter Richard with two bishops a lofte’. Similarly in Rich. II, III. iii. 62, ‘Richard appeareth on the walls’ of Flint Castle, and then comes down (178) to the ‘base court’. B. Beggar of Alexandria, sc. ii, is before the house of Elimine’s father and ‘Enter Elimine above on the walls’. She is in a ‘tower’ and comes down, but there is nothing to suggest a courtyard.

[175] 1 Sir John Oldcastle, IV. iv, v (a continuous scene), is partly ‘neare vnto the entrance of the Tower’, beyond the porter’s lodge, partly in Oldcastle’s chamber there, with a ‘window that goes out into the leads’; cf. p. 67.

[176] Famous Victories, sc. vi, 60, ‘What a rapping keep you at the Kings Court gate!’; Jack Straw, II. ii (a City gate).

[177] A Shrew, ind. 1, ‘Enter a Tapster, beating out of his doores Slie Droonken’; 1 Oldcastle, V. iii-vii (inn and barn); True Tragedy of Rich. III, sc. viii, ‘Earle Riuers speakes out of his chamber’ in an inn-yard, where he has been locked up; James IV, III. ii (stable); Looking Glass, V. ii. 2037, ‘Enter the temple Omnes’. Selimus, sc. xxi. 2019, has

Thy bodie in this auntient monument,

Where our great predecessours sleep in rest:

Suppose the Temple of Mahomet,

Thy wofull son Selimus thus doth place.

Is the third line really a s.d., in which case it does not suggest realistic staging, or a misunderstood line of the speech, really meant to run, ‘Supposed the Temple of great Mahomet’?

[178] Patient Grissell, 755–1652, reads like a threshold scene, and ‘Get you in!’ is repeated (848, 1065, 1481), but Grissell’s russet gown and pitcher are hung up and several times referred to (817, 828, 1018, 1582). Old Fortunatus, 733–855, at the palace of Babylon, must be a threshold scene as the Soldan points to ‘yon towre’ (769), but this is not inconsistent with the revealing of a casket, with the s.d. (799) ‘Draw a Curtaine’. We need not therefore assume that M. V. II. vii, ix, in which Portia bids ‘Draw aside the Curtaines’ and ‘Draw the Curtain’, or III. ii are hall scenes, and all the Belmont scenes may be, like V. i, in a garden backed by a portico; or rather the hall referred to in V. i. 89, ‘That light we see is burning in my hall’, may take the form of a portico.

[179] Cf. p. 58, n. 2.

[180] Thus in Rich. II, V. iii, iv (a continuous scene), Aumerle has leave to ‘turne the key’ (36). Then ‘The Duke of Yorke knokes at the doore and crieth, My leige ... Thou hast a traitor in thy presence there’. Cf. 1 Troublesome Raigne, sc. xiii. 81:

He stayes my Lord but at the Presence door:

Pleaseth your Highnes, I will call him in.

[181] Famous Victories, scc. iv, v (a continuous scene), ‘Jayler, bring the prisoner to the barre’ (iv. 1).... ‘Thou shalt be my Lord chiefe Justice, and thou shalt sit in the chaire’ (v. 10); Sir T. More, sc. ii. 104, ‘An Arras is drawne, and behinde it (as in sessions) sit the L. Maior.... Lifter the prisoner at the barre’; Warning for Fair Women, II. 1180, ‘Enter some to prepare the judgement seat to the Lord Mayor....(1193) Browne is brought in and the Clerk says, ‘To the barre, George Browne’; M. V. IV. i; 1 Sir John Oldcastle, V. x; &c.

[182] Bacon and Bungay, scc. vii, ix (Regent House), where visitors ‘sit to heare and see this strange dispute’ (1207), and later, ‘Enter Miles, with a cloth and trenchers and salt’ (1295); Shoemaker’s Holiday, sc. xv (Leadenhall); Englishmen for my Money, sc. iii (Exchange).

[183] 1 Troublesome Raigne, sc. xi, in a convent, entails the opening of a coffer large enough to hold a nun and a press large enough to hold a priest; 2 Troublesome Raigne, sc. iii, before St. Edmund’s shrine, has a numerous company who swear on an altar. Alphonsus, IV. i, begins ‘Let there be a brazen Head set in the middle of the place behind the Stage, out of the which cast flames of fire’. It is in the ‘sacred seate’ of Mahomet, who speaks from the head, and bids the priests ‘call in’ visitors ‘which now are drawing to my Temple ward’.

[184] T. of a Shrew, scc. ix, xi, xiii; Sir T. More, scc. ix, ‘Enter S^r Thomas Moore, M^r Roper, and Seruing men setting stooles’; xiii, ‘Enter ... Moore ... as in his house at Chelsey’ ... (1413) ‘Sit good Madame [in margin, ‘lowe stooles’] ... (1521) ‘Entreate their Lordships come into the hall’. E. M. I. III. i, ii (a continuous scene), is at Thorello’s house, and in III. iii. 1592 it is described with ‘I saw no body to be kist, vnlesse they would haue kist the post, in the middle of the warehouse; for there I left them all ... How? were they not gone in then?’ But I. iv. 570, also at Thorello’s, has ‘Within sir, in the warehouse’. Probably the warehouse was represented as an open portico.

[185] Cf. p. 63, nn. 3, 4.

[186] Sir T. More, scc. ix, xiii (stools, vide supra); x, where the Council ‘sit’ to ‘this little borde’ (1176); R. J. I. v (stools, vide supra); James IV, I. i. 141, ‘Enstall and crowne her’; Sp. Tragedy, I. iii. 8, ‘Wherefore sit I in a regall throne’; 1 Rich. II, II. ii. 81, ‘Please you, assend your throne’; 1 Tamburlaine, IV. ii. 1474, ‘He [Tamburlaine] gets vp vpon him [Bajazet] to his chaire’; Dr. Faustus, 1010 (addition of 1616 text), ‘His Maiesty is comming to the Hall; Go backe, and see the State in readinesse’; Look About You, sc. xix, ‘Enter young Henry Crowned ... Henry the elder places his Sonne, the two Queenes on eyther hand, himselfe at his feete, Leyster and Lancaster below him’; this must have involved an elaborate ‘state’.

[187] Bacon and Bungay, sc. ix. (vide supra); T. of a Shrew, sc. ix. 32, ‘They couer the bord and fetch in the meate’; 1 Edw. IV, IV. ii, ‘They bring forth a table and serue in the banquet’; Patient Grissell, 1899, ‘A Table is set’; Humorous Day’s Mirth, scc. viii, x-xii (Verone’s ordinary), on which cf. p. 70.

[188] 1 Rich. II, IV. ii; Death of R. Hood, II. ii; R. J. I. v, where a servant says, ‘Away with the joint-stools, remove the court-cupboard’, and Capulet ‘turn the tables up’; cf. ch. vi.

[189] M. N. D. v (cf. III. i. 58); Sir T. More, sc. ix; Sp. Tragedy, IV. iii, iv (a continuous scene), on which cf. p. 93, n. 1.

[190] 2 Tamburlaine, III. iii. 2969, ‘The Arras is drawen, and Zenocrate lies in her bed of state, Tamburlaine sitting by her: three Phisitians about her bed, tempering potions. Theridamas, Techelles, Vsumcasane, and the three sonnes’.... (3110, at end of sc.) ‘The Arras is drawen’; Selimus, sc. x. 861, ‘I needs must sleepe. Bassaes withdraw your selues from me awhile’.... ‘They stand aside while the curtins are drawne’ (s.d.) ... (952) ‘A Messenger enters, Baiazet awaketh’; Battle of Alcazar, d.s. 24, ‘Enter Muly Mahamet and his sonne, and his two young brethren, the Moore sheweth them the bed, and then takes his leaue of them, and they betake them to their rest’ ... (36) ‘Enter the Moore and two murdrers bringing in his unkle Abdelmunen, then they draw the curtains and smoother the yong princes in the bed. Which done in sight of the vnkle they strangle him in his Chaire, and then goe forth’; Edw. I, sc. xxv. 2668, ‘Elinor in child-bed with her daughter Ione, and other Ladies’; True Tragedy of Rich. III, sc. i, ‘Now Nobles, draw the Curtaines and depart ... (s.d.) The King dies in his bed’; sc. xiii, where murderers are called ‘vp’, and murder of princes in bed is visible; Famous Victories, sc. viii. 1, ‘Enter the King with his Lords’ ... (10), ‘Draw the Curtaines and depart my chamber a while’ ... ‘He sleepeth ... Enter the Prince’ (s.d.) ... ‘I wil goe, nay but why doo I not go to the Chamber of my sick father?’ ... (23) ‘Exit’ [having presumably taken the crown] ... (25) ‘King. Now my Lords ... Remoue my chaire a little backe, and set me right’ ... (47) ‘Prince [who has re-entered]. I came into your Chamber ... And after that, seeing the Crowne, I tooke it’ ... (87) ‘Draw the Curtaines, depart my Chamber, ... Exeunt omnes, The King dieth’. In the analogous 2 Hen. IV, IV. iv, v (a continuous scene divided, with unanimity in ill-doing, by modern editors in the middle of a speech), the King says (IV. iv. 131), ‘Beare me hence Into some other chamber’, Warwick (IV. v. 4), ‘Call for the Musick in the other Roome’, and the King ‘Set me the Crowne vpon my Pillow here’. The Prince enters and the Lords go to ‘the other roome’; he takes the crown and ‘Exit’. Later (56) the Lords say, ‘This doore is open, he is gone this way’, and ‘He came not through the chamber where we staide’. The Prince returns and the Lords are bidden ‘Depart the chamber’. Later (233) the King asks the name of ‘the lodging where I first did swound’, and bids ‘beare me to that Chamber’. Then the scene, and in F₁ the act, ends. In 1 Contention, sc. x. 1, ‘Then the Curtaines being drawne, Duke Humphrey is discouered in his bed, and two men lying on his brest and smothering him in his bed. And then enter the Duke of Suffolke to them’. He bids ‘draw the Curtaines againe and get you gone’. The King enters and bids him call Gloucester. He goes out, and returns to say that Gloucester is dead. Warwick says, ‘Enter his priuie chamber my Lord and view the bodie’, and (50), ‘Warwicke drawes the curtaines and showes Duke Humphrey in his bed’. The analogous 2 Hen. VI, III. ii, omits the murder coram populo and begins ‘Enter two or three running ouer the Stage, from the Murther of Duke Humfrey’. It then follows the earlier model until (132) the King bids Warwick ‘Enter his Chamber’ and we get the brief s.d. (146) ‘Bed put forth’, and Warwick speaks again. The next scene is another death scene, which begins in 1 Contention, sc. xi, ‘Enter King and Salsbury, and then the Curtaines be drawne, and the Cardinal is discouered in his bed, rauing and staring as if he were madde’, and in 2 Hen. VI, III. iii, ‘Enter the King ... to the Cardinal in bed’, ending (32) ‘Close vp his eyes, and draw the Curtaine close’. In 1 Rich. II, V. i, Lapoole enters ‘with a light’ and murderers, whom he bids ‘stay in the next with-draweing chamber ther’. Then (48), ‘He drawes the curtayne’, says of Gloucester ‘He sleepes vppon his bed’, and Exit. Gloucester, awaked by ghosts, says (110), ‘The doores are all made fast ... and nothing heere appeeres, But the vast circute of this emptie roome’. Lapoole, returning, says, ‘Hee’s ryssen from his bed’. Gloucester bids him ‘shutt to the doores’ and ‘sits to wright’. The murderers enter and kill him. Lapoole bids ‘lay hime in his bed’ and ‘shutt the doore, as if he ther had dyd’, and they (247) ‘Exeunt with the bodye’. In Death of R. Hood, ii, ind., the presenter says ‘Draw but that vaile, And there King John sits sleeping in his chaire’, and the s.d. follows, ‘Drawe the curten: the King sits sleeping ... Enter Queene ... She ascends, and seeing no motion, she fetcheth her children one by one; but seeing yet no motion, she descendeth, wringing her hands, and departeth’. In R. J. IV. iii, iv, v (continuous action), Juliet drinks her potion and Q₁, has the s.d. (IV. iii. 58) ‘She fals vpon her bed within the Curtaines’. Action follows before the house, until the Nurse, bidden to call Juliet, finds her dead. Then successively ‘Enter’ Lady Capulet, Capulet, the Friar, and Paris, to all of whom Juliet is visible. After lament, the Friar, in Q₂ (IV. v. 91), bids them all ‘go you in’, but in Q₁, ‘They all but the Nurse goe foorth, casting Rosemary on her and shutting the Curtens’. The Nurse, then, in both texts, addresses the musicians, who came with Paris. On the difficulty of this scene, in relation to II. ii and III. v, cf. p. 94.

[191] Wounds of Civil War, III. ii, 913, ‘Enter old Marius with his keeper, and two souldiers’. There is (965) ‘this homely bed’, on which (972) ‘He lies downe’ (s.d.), and when freed (1066) ‘from walls to woods I wend’. In Edw. II, 2448–2568 (at Kenilworth), keepers say that the King is ‘in a vault vp to the knees in water’, of which (2455) ‘I opened but the doore’. Then (2474) ‘Heere is the keyes, this is the lake’ and (2486), ‘Heeres a light to go into the dungeon’. Then (2490) Edward speaks and, presumably having been brought out, is bid (2520) ‘lie on this bed’. He is murdered with a table and featherbed brought from ‘the next roome’ (2478), and the body borne out. In 1 Tr. Raigne, sc. xii, Hubert enters, bids his men (8) ‘stay within that entry’ and when called set Arthur ‘in this chayre’. He then bids Arthur (13) ‘take the benefice of the faire evening’, and ‘Enter Arthur’ who is later (131) bid ‘Goe in with me’. K. J. IV. i has precisely analogous indications, except that the attendants stand (2) ‘within the arras’, until Hubert stamps ‘Vpon the bosome of the ground’. In Rich. III, I. iv, Clarence talks with his keeper, and sleeps. Murderers enter, to whom the keeper says (97), ‘Here are the keies, there sits the Duke a sleepe’. They stab him, threaten to ‘chop him in the malmsey but in the next roome’ (161, 277), and bear the body out. In Rich. II, V. v (at Pontefract) Richard muses on ‘this prison where I liue’. He is visited by a groom of his stable (70), ‘where no man neuer comes, but that sad dog, That brings me foode’. Then (95) ‘Enter one to Richard with meate’ and (105) ‘The murderers rush in’, and (119) the bodies are cleared away. Sir T. More, sc. xvi, ‘Enter Sir Thomas Moore, the Lieutenant, and a seruant attending as in his chamber in the Tower’; Lord Cromwell, V. v, ‘Enter Cromwell in the Tower.... Enter the Lieutenant of the Tower and officers.... Enter all the Nobles’; Dead Man’s Fortune, plot (Henslowe Papers, 134), ‘Here the laydes speakes in prysoun’; Death of R. Hood, IV. i:

Brand. Come, come, here is the door.

Lady Bruce. O God, how dark it is.

Brand. Go in, go in; it’s higher up the stairs....

He seems to lock a door.

In Old Fortunatus, 2572, Montrose says of Ampedo, ‘Drag him to yonder towre, there shackle him’. Later (2608) Andelocia is brought to join him in ‘this prison’ and the attendants bid ‘lift in his legs’. The brothers converse in ‘fetters’. In 1 Oldcastle, IV. iv, v (a continuous scene), ‘Enter the Bishop of Rochester with his men, in liuerie coates’. They have brought him ‘heere into the Tower’ (1965) and may ‘go backe vnto the Porters Lodge’ or attend him ‘here without’. But they slip away. The Bishop calls the Lieutenant and demands to see Oldcastle. A message is sent to Oldcastle by Harpoole. Then (1995), ‘Enter sir Iohn Oldcastle’, and while the Bishop dismisses the Lieutenant, Harpoole communicates a plot ‘aside’ to Oldcastle. Then the Bishop addresses Oldcastle, and as they talk Oldcastle and Harpoole lay hands upon him. They take his upper garments, which Oldcastle puts on. Harpoole says (2016) ‘the window that goes out into the leads is sure enough’ and he will ‘conuay him after, and bind him surely in the inner room’. Then (2023) ‘Enter seruing men againe’. Oldcastle, disguised as the Bishop, comes towards them, saying, ‘The inner roomes be very hot and close’. Harpoole tells him that he will ‘downe vpon them’. He then pretends to attack him. The serving-men join in, and (2049) ‘Sir John escapes’. The Lieutenant enters and asks who is brawling ‘so neare vnto the entrance of the Tower’. Then (2057) ‘Rochester calls within’, and as they go in and bring him out bound, Harpoole gets away; cf. p. 62, n. 2. Look About You, sc. v, is a similar scene in the Fleet, partly in Gloucester’s chamber (811), the door of which can be shut, partly (865) on a bowling green. Analogous to some of the prison scenes is Alarum for London, sc. xii, in which a Burgher’s Wife shows Van End a vault where her wealth is hid, and (1310) ‘She pushes him downe’, and he is stoned there.

[192] Bacon and Bungay, I. ii. 172, ‘Enter frier Bacon’, with others, says ‘Why flocke you thus to Bacon’s secret cell?’, and conjures; II. ii is in a street, but Bacon says (603) ‘weele to my studie straight’, and II. iii begins (616), ‘Bacon and Edward goes into the study’, where Edward *sits and looks in ‘this glasse prospectiue’ (620), but his vision is represented on some part of the stage; in IV. i. 1530, ‘Enter Frier Bacon drawing the courtaines, with a white sticke, a booke in his hand, and a lampe lighted by him, and the brazen head and Miles, with weapons by him’. Miles is bid watch the head, and ‘Draw closse the courtaines’ and ‘Here he [Bacon] falleth asleepe’ (1568). Miles ‘will set me downe by a post’ (1577). Presently (1604), ‘Heere the Head speakes and a lightning flasheth forth, and a hand appeares that breaketh down the Head with a hammer’. Miles calls to Bacon (1607) ‘Out of your bed’; IV. iii. 1744 begins ‘Enter frier Bacon with frier Bungay to his cell’. A woodcut in Q₂ of 1630, after the revival by the Palsgrave’s men, seems to illustrate II. iii; the back wall has a window to the left and the head on a bracket in the centre; before it is the glass on a table, with Edward gazing in it; Bacon sits to the right. Miles stands to the left; no side-walls are visible. In Locrine, I. iii. 309, ‘Enter Strumbo aboue in a gowne, with inke and paper in his hand’; Dr. Faustus, ind. 28, ‘And this the man that in his study sits’, followed by s.d. ‘Enter Faustus in his Study’, 433, ‘Enter Faustus in his Study ... (514) Enter [Mephastophilis] with diuels, giuing crownes and rich apparell to Faustus, and daunce, and then depart’, with probably other scenes. In T. A. V. ii. 1, ‘Enter Tamora, and her two sonnes disguised’ ... (9) ‘They knocke and Titus opens his studie doore’. Tamora twice (33, 43) bids him ‘come downe’, and (80) says, ‘See heere he comes’. The killing of Tamora’s sons follows, after which Titus bids (205) ‘bring them in’. In Sir T. More, sc. viii. 735, ‘A table beeing couered with a greene Carpet, a state Cushion on it, and the Pursse and Mace lying thereon Enter Sir Thomas Moore’.... (765) ‘Enter Surrey, Erasmus and attendants’. Erasmus says (779), ‘Is yond Sir Thomas?’ and Surrey (784), ‘That Studie is the generall watche of England’. The original text is imperfect, but in the revision Erasmus is bid ‘sitt’, and later More bids him ‘in’ (ed. Greg, pp. 84, 86). Lord Cromwell has three studies; in II. i, ii (continuous action at Antwerp), ‘Cromwell in his study with bagges of money before him casting of account’, while Bagot enters in front, soliloquizes, and then (II. ii. 23) with ‘See where he is’ addresses Cromwell; in III. ii (Bologna), the action begins as a hall scene, for (15) ‘They haue begirt you round about the house’ and (47) ‘Cromwell shuts the dore’ (s.d.), but there is an inner room, for (115) ‘Hodge [disguised as the Earl of Bedford] sits in the study, and Cromwell calls in the States’, and (126) ‘Goe draw the curtaines, let vs see the Earle’; in IV. v (London), ‘Enter Gardiner in his studie, and his man’. E. M. I. I. iii, is before Cob’s house, and Tib is bid show Matheo ‘vp to Signior Bobadilla’ (Q₁ 392). In I. iv ‘Bobadilla discouers himselfe on a bench; to him, Tib’. She announces ‘a gentleman below’; Matheo is bid ‘come vp’, enters from ‘within’, and admires the ‘lodging’. In 1 Oldcastle, V. i. 2086, ‘Enter Cambridge, Scroope, and Gray, as in a chamber, and set downe at a table, consulting about their treason: King Harry and Suffolke listning at the doore’ ... (2114) ‘They rise from the table, and the King steps in to them, with his Lordes’. Stukeley, i. 121, begins with Old Stukeley leaving his host’s door to visit his son. He says (149), ‘I’ll to the Temple to see my son’, and presumably crosses the stage during his speech of 171–86, which ends ‘But soft this is his chamber as I take it’. Then ‘He knocks’, and after parley with a page, says, ‘Give me the key of his study’ and ‘methinks the door stands open’, enters, criticizes the contents of the study, emerges, and (237) *‘Old Stukeley goes again to the study’. Then (244) ‘Enter Stukeley at the further end of the stage’ and joins his father. Finally the boy is bid (335) ‘lock the door’. In Downfall of R. Hood, ind., ‘Enter Sir John Eltham and knocke at Skeltons doore’. He says, ‘Howe, maister Skelton, what at studie hard?’ and (s.d.) ‘Opens the doore’. In 2 Edw. IV, IV. ii, ‘Enter D. Shaw, pensiuely reading on his booke’. He is visited by a Ghost, who gives him a task, and adds, ‘That done, return; and in thy study end Thy loathed life’.

[193] Old Fortunatus, 1315–1860, is before or in the hall of a court; at 1701, ‘A curtaine being drawne, where Andelocia lies sleeping in Agripines lap’. In Downfall of R. Hood, ind., is a s.d. of a court scene, presumably in a hall, and ‘presently Ely ascends the chaire ... Enter Robert Earl of Huntingdon, leading Marian: ... they infolde each other, and sit downe within the curteines ... drawing the curteins, all (but the Prior) enter, and are kindely receiued by Robin Hood. The curteins are again shut’.

[194] Jew of Malta, i. 36, ‘Enter Barabas in his Counting-house, with heapes of gold before him’. Later his house is taken for a nunnery; he has hid treasure (536) ‘underneath the plancke That runs along the vpper chamber floore’, and Abigail becomes a nun, and (658) throws the treasure from ‘aboue’. He gets another house, and Pilia-Borza describes (iii. 1167) how ‘I chanc’d to cast mine eye vp to the Iewes counting-house’, saw money-bags, and climbed up and stole by night. Arden of Feversham, I., III. v, IV. i, V. i are at Arden’s house at Feversham. From I. I should assume a porch before the house, where Arden and his wife breakfast and (369) ‘Then she throwes down the broth on the grounde’; cf. 55, ‘Call her foorth’, and 637, ‘Lets in’. It can hardly be a hall scene, as part of the continuous action is ‘neare’ the house (318) and at 245 we get ‘This is the painters [Clarke’s] house’, who is called out. There is no difficulty in III. v or IV. i; cf. III. v. 164, ‘let vs in’. But V. i, taken by itself, reads like a hall scene with a counting-house behind. Black Will and Shakebag are hidden in a ‘counting-house’, which has a ‘door’ and a ‘key’ (113, 145, 153). A chair and stool are to be ready for Mosbie and Arden (130). Alice bids Michael (169) ‘Fetch in the tables, And when thou hast done, stand before the counting-house doore’, and (179) ‘When my husband is come in, lock the streete doore’. When Arden comes with Mosbie, they are (229) ‘in my house’. They play at tables and the murderers creep out and kill Arden, and (261), ‘Then they lay the body in the Counting-house’. Susan says (267), ‘The blood cleaueth to the ground’, and Mosbie bids (275) ‘strew rushes on it’. Presently, when guests have come and gone, (342) ‘Then they open the counting-house doore and looke vppon Arden’, and (363) ‘Then they beare the body into the fields’. Francklin enters, having found the body, with rushes in its shoe, ‘Which argueth he was murthred in this roome’, and looking about ‘this chamber’, they find blood ‘in the place where he was wont to sit’ (411–15).

[195] In 1 Hen. IV, II. iv, Henry calls Poins (1) ‘out of that fat roome’ and bids him (32) ‘Stand in some by-roome’ while the Prince talks to the Drawer. The Vintner (91) bids the Drawer look to guests ‘within’, and says Falstaff is ‘at the doore’. He enters and later goes out to dismiss a court messenger who is (317) ‘at doore’ and returns. He has a chair and cushion (416). When the Sheriff comes, Henry bids Falstaff (549) ‘hide thee behind the Arras, the rest walke vp aboue’. Later (578) Falstaff is found ‘a sleepe behind the Arras’. This looks like a hall scene, and with it III. iii, where Mrs. Quickly is miscalled (72) ‘in mine owne house’ and Falstaff says (112) ‘I fell a sleepe here, behind the Arras’, is consistent. But in 2 Hen. IV, II. iv, Falstaff and Doll come out of their supper room. The Drawer announces (75) ‘Antient Pistol’s belowe’, and is bid (109) ‘call him vp’ and (202) ‘thrust him downe staires’. Later (381) ‘Peyto knockes at doore’; so does Bardolph (397), to announce that ‘a dozen captaines stay at doore’. This is clearly an upper parlour. In Look About You, scc. ix, x (continuous action), Gloucester, disguised as Faukenbridge, and a Pursuivant have stepped into the Salutation tavern (1470), and are in ‘the Bel, our roome next the Barre’ (1639), with a stool (1504) and fire (1520). But at 1525 the action shifts. Skink enters, apparently in a room called the Crown, and asks whether Faukenbridge was ‘below’ (1533). Presumably he descends, for (1578) he sends the sheriff’s party ‘vp them stayres’ to the Crown. This part of the action is before the inn, rather than in the Bell. Humorous Day’s Mirth, scc. viii, x-xii, in Verone’s ordinary, with tables and a court cupboard, seems to be a hall scene; at viii. 254 ‘convey them into the inward parlour by the inward room’ does not entail any action within the supposed inward room.

[196] W. for Fair Women, II. 601. The scene does not itself prove interior action, but cf. the later reference (800), ‘Was he so suted when you dranke with him, Here in the buttery’.

[197] In Jew of Malta, V. 2316, Barabas has ‘made a dainty Gallery, The floore whereof, this Cable being cut, Doth fall asunder; so that it doth sinke Into a deepe pit past recouery’, and at 2345 is s.d. ‘A charge, the cable cut, A Caldron discouered’.

[198] Cf. pp. 51, 53, 55–6, 58–9, 62.

[199] A. E. Richards, Studies in English Faust Literature: i. The English Wagner Book of 1594 (1907). The book was entered in S. R. on 16 Nov. 1593 (Arber, ii. 640). A later edition of 1680 is reprinted as The Second Report of Dr. John Faustus by W. J. Thoms, Early Prose Romances (1828), iii. Richards gives the date of the first edition of the German book by Fridericus Schotus of Toledo as 1593. An edition of 1714 is reprinted by J. Scheible, Das Kloster, iii. 1. This has nothing corresponding to the stage-play of the English version.

[200] 1 Contention, sc. i. 1 (court scene), sc. xx. 1 (garden scene); Locrine, III. vi. 1278 (battle scene); &c., &c.

[201] Henslowe Papers, 130, ‘To them Pride, Gluttony Wrath and Couetousness at one dore, at an other dore Enuie, Sloth and Lechery’ (l. 6) ... ‘Enter Ferrex ... with ... soldiers one way ... to them At a nother dore, Porrex ... and soldiers’ (26) ... ‘Enter Queene, with 2 Counsailors ... to them Ferrex and Porrex seuerall waies ... Gorboduk entreing in The midst between’ (30) ... ‘Enter Ferrex and Porrex seuerally’ (36). I suppose that, strictly, ‘seuerally’ might also mean successively by the same door, and perhaps does mean this in Isle of Gulls, ind. 1 (Blackfriars), ‘Enter seuerally 3 Gentlemen as to see a play’.

[202] e. g. Alphonsus, II. i. 1 (battle scene); Selimus, 2430 (battle scene); Locrine, V. v. 2022, 2061 (battle scene); Old Fortunatus, 2675 (threshold scene); &c., &c. Archer, 469, calculates that of 43 examples (sixteenth and seventeenth century) taken at random, 11 use ‘one ... the other’, 21 ‘one ... an other’, and 11 ‘several’.

[203] Selimus, 658, ‘at diuerse doores’; Fair Em, sc. ix, ‘at two sundry doors’; James IV, II. ii. 1, ‘one way ... another way’; Look About You, 464, ‘two waies’; Weakest Goeth to the Wall, 3, ‘one way ... another way’; Jew of Malta, 230, ‘Enter Gouernor ... met by’. Further variants are the seventeenth-century Lear (Q₁), II. i. 1, ‘meeting’, and Custom of Country, IV. iv, ‘at both doors’.

[204] 1 Rich. II, I. i, ‘at seuerall doores’.

[205] Fair Em, sc. iv, ‘Enter Manvile ... Enter Valingford at another door ... Enter Mountney at another door’; Patient Grissell, 1105, ‘Enter Vrcenze and Onophrio at seuerall doores, and Farneze in the mid’st’; Trial of Chivalry, sign. I_{3}^v, ‘Enter at one dore ... at the other dore ... Enter in the middest’. Examples from seventeenth-century public theatres are Four Prentices of London, prol., ‘Enter three in blacke clokes, at three doores’; Travels of 3 English Brothers, p. 90, ‘Enter three seuerall waies the three Brothers’; Nobody and Somebody, 1322, ‘Enter at one doore ... at another doore ... at another doore’; Silver Age, V. ii, ‘Exeunt three wayes’. It may be accident that these are all plays of Queen Anne’s men, at the Curtain or Red Bull. For the middle entrance in private theatres, cf. p. 132.

[206] Downfall of R. Hood, I. i (ind.), after Eltham has knocked at Skelton’s study door (cf. p. 69), ‘At euery doore all the players runne out’; Englishmen for my Money, 393, ‘Enter Pisaro, Delion the Frenchman, Vandalle the Dutchman, Aluaro the Italian, and other Marchants, at seuerall doores’; cf. the seventeenth-century 1 Honest Whore, sc. xiii (Fortune), ‘Enter ... the Duke, Castruchio, Pioratto, and Sinezi from severall doores muffled’.

[207] Locrine, IV. ii. 1460 (not an entry), ‘Locrine at one side of the stage’; Sir T. More, sc. i. 1, ‘Enter at one end John Lincolne ... at the other end enters Fraunces’; Stukeley, 245, ‘Enter Stukeley at the further end of the stage’, 2382, ‘Two trumpets sound at either end’; Look About You, sc. ii. 76, ‘Enter ... on the one side ... on the other part’. Very elaborate are the s.ds. of John a Kent, III. i. The scene is before a Castle. A speaker says, ‘See, he [John a Cumber] sets the Castell gate wide ope’. Then follows dialogue, interspersed with the s.ds. ‘Musique whyle he opens the door’.... ‘From one end of the Stage enter an antique ... Into the Castell ... Exit’.... ‘From the other end of the Stage enter another Antique ... Exit into the Castell’.... ‘From under the Stage the third antique ... Exit into the Castell’.... ‘The fourth out of a tree, if possible it may be ... Exit into the Castell’. Then John a Cumber ‘Exit into the Castell, and makes fast the dore’. John a Kent enters, and ‘He tryes the dore’. John a Cumber and others enter ‘on the walles’ and later ‘They discend’. For an earlier example of ‘end’, cf. Cobler’s Prophecy (p. 35, n. 1), and for a later The Dumb Knight (Whitefriars), i, iv. In 2 Return from Parnassus (Univ. play), IV. i begins ‘Sir Radericke and Prodigo, at one corner of the Stage, Recorder and Amoretto at the other’.

[208] Cf. p. 98.

[209] Soliman and Perseda, I. iv. 47, ‘Enter Basilisco riding of a mule’ ... (71) ‘Piston getteth vp on his Asse, and rideth with him to the doore’; cf. 1 Rich. II (quoted p. 61, n. 3), and for the private stage, Liberality and Prodigality, passim, and Summer’s Last Will and Testament, 968. W. J. Lawrence, Horses upon the Elizabethan Stage (T. L. S. 5 June 1919), deprecates a literal acceptance of Forman’s notice of Macbeth and Banquo ‘riding through a wood’, attempts to explain away the third example here given, and neglects the rest. I think some kind of ‘hobby’ more likely than a trained animal. In the Mask of Flowers, Silenus is ‘mounted upon an artificiall asse, which sometimes being taken with strains of musicke, did bow down his eares and listen with great attention’; cf. T. S. Graves, The Ass as Actor (1916, South Atlantic Quarterly, XV. 175).

[210] Knack to Know an Honest Man, sc. ix. 1034 (cf. p. 60, n. 3).

[211] Leir, 2625 (open country scene near a beacon), ‘Mumford followes him to the dore’; cf. p. 60, supra.

[212] Cf. ch. xviii, p. 544.

[213] 2 Angry Women, sc. x. 2250, ‘A plague on this poast, I would the Carpenter had bin hangd that set it vp for me. Where are yee now?’; Englishmen for my Money, scc. vii-ix (continuous scene), 1406, ‘Take heede, sir! hers a post’ ... (1654) ‘Watt be dis Post?... This Post; why tis the May-pole on Iuie-bridge going to Westminster.... Soft, heere’s an other: Oh now I know in deede where I am; wee are now at the fardest end of Shoredich, for this is the May-pole’.... (1701) ‘Ic weit neit waer dat ic be, ic goe and hit my nose op dit post, and ic goe and hit my nose op danden post’.

[214] 3 Lords and 3 Ladies, sign. I_{3}^v.

[215] Cf. p. 57, n. 4, and for Kempe, ch. xviii, p. 545.

[216] Cf. p. 57, n. 5; p. 58, n. 1.

[217] Cf. p. 64, n. 3; p. 67, n. 1.

[218] Graves, 88.

[219] Cf. ch. xix, p. 42; Mediaeval Stage, ii. 86, 142. Heywood, Apology (1608), thinks that the theatre of Julius Caesar at Rome had ‘the covering of the stage, which we call the heavens (where upon any occasion their gods descended)’.

[220] Battle of Alcazar, 1263 (s.d.), ‘Lightning and thunder ... Heere the blazing Starre ... Fire workes’; Looking Glass, 1556 (s.d.), ‘A hand from out a cloud, threatneth a burning sword’; 2 Contention, sc. v. 9 (s.d.), ‘Three sunnes appeare in the aire’ (cf. 3 Hen. VI, II. i. 25); Stukeley, 2272 (s.d.), ‘With a sudden thunderclap the sky is on fire and the blazing star appears’.

[221] 1 Troublesome Raign, sc. xiii. 131 (s.d.), ‘There the fiue Moones appeare’. The Bastard casts up his eyes ‘to heauen’ (130) at the sight, and the moons are in ‘the skie’ (163), but the episode follows immediately after the coronation which is certainly in ‘the presence’ (81). Perhaps this is why in K. J., IV. ii. 181, the appearance of the moons is only narrated.

[222] The Admiral’s inventories of 1598 (Henslowe Papers, 117) include ‘the clothe of the Sone and Moone’.

[223] Alphonsus, prol. (1), ‘After you haue sounded thrise, let Venus be let downe from the top of the stage’; epil. (1916), ‘Enter Venus with the Muses’ ... (1937), ‘Exit Venus; or if you can conueniently, let a chaire come down from the top of the Stage and draw her vp’. In Old Fortunatus, 840, Fortunatus, at the Soldan’s court, gets a magic hat, wishes he were in Cyprus, and ‘Exit’. The bystanders speak of him as going ‘through the ayre’ and ‘through the clouds’. Angels descend from heaven to a tower in the Wagner Book play (cf. p. 72).

[224] One of the 1616 additions to the text of Dr. Faustus (sc. xiv) has the s.d. ‘Musicke while the Throne descends’ before the vision of heaven, and ‘Hell is discouered’ before that of hell. On the other hand, in Death of R. Hood, ii, ind. (cf. p. 66), the king is in a chair behind a curtain, and the fact that the queen ‘ascends’ and ‘descends’ may suggest that this chair is the ‘state’. However this may be, I do not see how any space behind the curtain can have been high enough to allow any dignity to the elaborate states required by some court scenes; cf. p. 64, n. 5. The throne imagined in the Wagner Book (cf. p. 72) had 22 steps. Out-of-door scenes, in which the ‘state’ appears to be used, are Alphonsus, II. i. 461 (battle scene), ‘Alphonsus sit in the Chaire’ (s.d.); II. i (a crowning on the field); Locrine, IV. ii. 1490 (camp scene), ‘Let him go into his chaire’ (s.d.); Old Fortunatus, sc. i. 72 (dream scene in wood), ‘Fortune takes her Chaire, the Kings lying at her feete, shee treading on them as shee goes vp’ ... (148), ‘She comes downe’.

[225] Henslowe, i. 4, ‘Itm pd for carpenters worke & mackinge the throne in the heuenes the 4 of Iune 1595 ... vij^li ij^s’.

[226] E. M. I. (F₁), prol. 14,

One such to-day, as other plays should be;

Where neither chorus wafts you o’er the seas,

Nor creaking throne comes down the boys to please.

[227] Cf. p. 89.

[228] Cf. vol. ii, p. 546.

[229] Mettenleiter, Musikgeschichte von Regensburg, 256; Herz, 46, ‘ein Theater darinnen er mit allerley musikalischen Instrumenten auf mehr denn zehnerley Weise gespielt, und über der Theaterbühne noch eine Bühne 30 Schuh hoch auf 6 grosse Säulen, über welche ein Dach gemacht worden, darunter ein viereckiger Spund, wodurch die sie schöne Actiones verrichtet haben’; cf. ch. xiv and C. H. Kaulfuss-Diesch, Die Inszenierung des deutschen Dramas an der Wende des sechzehnten und siebzehnten Jahrhunderts (1905).

[230] Prölss, 73; Brodmeier, 5, 43, 57; cf. Reynolds, i. 7, and in M. P. ix. 59; Albright, 151; Lawrence, i. 40.

[231] Cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Vennor. The only extant Swan play is Middleton’s Chaste Maid in Cheapside of 1611. Chamber scenes are III. i, ii, iii; IV. i; V. ii. Some of these would probably have been treated in a sixteenth-century play as threshold scenes. But III. ii, a child-bed scene, would have called for curtains. In Chaste Maid, however, the opening s.d. is ‘A bed thrust out upon the stage; Allwit’s wife in it’. We cannot therefore assume curtains; cf. p. 113. The room is above (ll. 102, 124) and is set with stools and rushes. In V. iv, two funeral processions meet in the street, and ‘while all the company seem to weep and mourn, there is a sad song in the music-room’.

[232] Florio, Dictionary, ‘Scena ... forepart of a theatre where players make them readie, being trimmed with hangings’ (cf. vol. ii, p. 539); Jonson, Cynthia’s Revels, ind. 151, ‘I am none of your fresh Pictures, that use to beautifie the decay’d dead Arras, in a publique Theater’; Heywood, Apology, 18 (Melpomene loq.), ‘Then did I tread on arras; cloth of tissue Hung round the fore-front of my stage’; Flecknoe (cf. App. I), ‘Theaters ... of former times ... were but plain and simple, with no other scenes, nor decorations of the stage, but onely old tapestry, and the stage strew’d with rushes’.

[233] 1 Hen. VI, I. i. 1, ‘Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night!’; Lucr. 766 (of night), ‘Black stage for tragedies and murders fell’; Warning for Fair Women, ind. 74, ‘The stage is hung with blacke, and I perceive The auditors prepar’d for tragedie’; II. 6, ‘But now we come unto the dismal act, And in these sable curtains shut we up The comic entrance to our direful play’; Daniel, Civil Wars (Works, ii. 231), ‘Let her be made the sable stage, whereon Shall first be acted bloody tragedies’; 2 Antonio and Mellida (Paul’s, 1599), prol. 20, ‘Hurry amain from our black-visaged shows’; Northward Hoe, IV. i (of court play), ‘the stage hung all with black velvet’; Dekker (iii. 296), Lanthorne and Candlelight (1608), ‘But now, when the stage of the world was hung with blacke, they jetted vppe and downe like proud tragedians’; Insatiate Countess, IV. v. 4 ‘The stage of heaven is hung with solemn black, A time best fitting to act tragedies’; Anon., Elegy on Burbage (Collier, Actors, 53), ‘Since thou art gone, dear Dick, a tragic night Will wrap our black-hung stage’; cf. Malone in Variorum, iii. 103; Graves, Night Scenes in the Elizabethan Theatres (E. S. xlvii. 63); Lawrence, Night Performances in the Elizabethan Theatres (E. S. xlviii. 213). In several of the passages quoted above, the black-hung stage is a metaphor for night, but I agree with Lawrence that black hangings cannot well have been used in the theatre to indicate night scenes as well as tragedy. I do not know why he suggests that a ‘prevalent idea that the stage was hung with blue for comedies’, for which, if it exists, there is certainly no evidence, is ‘due to a curious surmise of Malone’s’. Malone (Var. iii. 108) only suggests that ‘pieces of drapery tinged with blue’ may have been ‘suspended across the stage to represent the heavens’—quite a different thing. But, of course, there is no evidence for that either. According to Reich, Der Mimus, I. ii. 705, the colour of the siparium in the Indian theatre is varied according to the character of the play.

[234] Cf. p. 30; vol. i, p. 231. On the removal of bodies W. Archer (Quarterly Review, ccviii. 454) says, ‘In over a hundred plays which we have minutely examined (including all Shakespeare’s tragedies) there is only a small minority of cases in which explicit provision is not made, either by stage-direction or by a line in the text, for the removal of bodies. The few exceptions to this rule are clearly mere inadvertences, or else are due to the fact that there is a crowd of people on the stage in whose exit a body can be dragged or carried off almost unobserved’. In Old Fortunatus, 1206, after his sons have lamented over their dead father, ‘They both fall asleepe: Fortune and a companie of Satyres enter with Musicke, and playing about Fortunatus body, take him away’. Of course, a body left dead in the alcove need not be removed; the closing curtains cover it.

[235] Cf. p. 26.

[236] Cf. p. 51, n. 3 (Downfall of R. Hood, ‘curtaines’ of bower ‘open’); p. 51, n. 4 (Battle of Alcazar, cave behind ‘curtaines’); p. 53, n. 5 (Edw. I, tent ‘opens’ and is closed, and Queen is ‘discouered’); p. 55, n. 1 (Looking-Glass, ‘curtaines’ of tent drawn to shut and open); p. 63, n. 1 (Old Fortunatus, M. V., ‘curtaines’ drawn to reveal caskets); p. 63, n. 4 (Sir T. More, ‘arras’ drawn); p. 65, n. 3 (2 Tamburlaine, ‘arras’ drawn; Selimus, ‘curtins’ drawn; Battle of Alcazar, ‘curtains’ drawn; Famous Victories, ‘curtains’ drawn; 1 Contention, ‘curtains’ drawn and bodies ‘discouered’; 1 Rich. II, ‘curtayne’ drawn; Death of R. Hood, ‘vaile’ or ‘curten’ drawn; R. J., ‘curtens’ shut); p. 67, n. 1 (Friar Bacon, ‘courtaines’ drawn by actor with stick; Lord Cromwell, ‘curtaines’ drawn); p. 68, n. 1 (Old Fortunatus, ‘curtaine’ drawn; Downfall of R. Hood, ‘curteines’ drawn and ‘shut’).

[237] M. W. III. iii. 97; cf. p. 66, n. 1 (K. J.), p. 68, n. 3 (1 Hen. IV).

[238] So probably in Dr. Faustus, 28, where the prol. ends ‘And this the man that in his study sits’, and the s.d. follows, ‘Enter Faustus in his study’.

[239] The ‘groom’ of the seventeenth-century Devil’s Charter (cf. p. 110) might be a servitor.

[240] Cf. p. 53, n. 5 (Edw. I; Trial of Chivalry); p. 65, n. 3 (1 Contention); p. 67, n. 1 (E. M. I.). In James IV, V. vi. 2346, ‘He discouereth her’ only describes the removal of a disguise.

[241] Prölss, 85; Albright, 140; Reynolds, i. 26; cf. p. 65, n. 3 (Battle of Alcazar); p. 67, n. 1 (Dr. Faustus).

[242] W. Archer in Quarterly Review, ccviii. 470; Reynolds, i. 9; Graves, 88; cf. Brereton in Sh. Homage, 204.

[243] Cf. p. 65, n. 3 (2 Tamburlaine).

[244] Cf. p. 64, n. 2 (Alphonsus).

[245] Cf. p. 85.

[246] Cf. vol. ii, p. 539.

[247] W. Archer in Quarterly Review, ccviii. 470; Graves, 13.

[248] Cf. p. 73. T. Holyoke, Latin Dict. (1677), has ‘Scena—the middle door of the stage’.

[249] Lawrence, ii. 50. A window could also be shown in front, if needed, but I know of no clear example; cf. Wegener, 82, 95.

[250] Cf. p. 51, n. 2 (R. J.).

[251] Cf. p. 67, n. 1 (Stukeley).

[252] Stratford Town Shakespeare, x. 360; cf. Wegener, 56, 73; Neuendorff, 124; Reynolds, i. 25.

[253] Cf. p. 65, n. 3.

[254] Cf. vol. ii, p. 520.

[255] Of the examples cited on p. 80, n. 3, bed-curtains could only suffice for Selimus, Battle of Alcazar, 1 Rich. II, and possibly R. J. and Bacon and Bungay; in the others either there is no bed, or there is a clear indication of a discovered chamber. The curtains in Sp. Trag. need separate consideration; cf. p. 93, n. 1.

[256] The s.ds. of 2 Hen. VI, in so far as they vary from 1 Contention, may date from the seventeenth century; cf. ch. xxi, p. 113.

[257] Henslowe Papers, 130.

[258] Prölss, 96; Reynolds, i. 24, 31; Albright, 111.

[259] Cf. p. 63, n. 4.

[260] Dr. Faustus, 1007 sqq., is apparently a hall scene, but in 1030 (an addition of 1616 text), ‘Enter Benuolio aboue at a window’, whence he views the scene with a state. On the play scene, with a gallery for the court, in Sp. Trag. IV. ii, cf. p. 93.

[261] Famous Victories, sc. viii; 2 Hen. IV, IV. iv, v; 1 Contention, scc. x, xi; 2 Hen. VI, III. ii, iii (cf. p. 65, n. 3); Edw. II, 2448–2565; 1 Tr. Raigne, xii; K. J. IV. i (cf. p. 66, n. 1); Lord Cromwell, III. ii (cf. p. 67, n. 1); Downfall of R. Hood, ind. (cf. p. 68, n. 1); Arden of Feversham, V. i (cf. p. 68, n. 2); 1 Hen. IV, II. iv; Humorous Day’s Mirth, viii (cf. p. 68, n. 3).

[262] Cf. p. 64, n. 6. W. Archer (Quarterly Review, ccviii. 457) suggests that convention allowed properties, but not dead or drunken men, to be moved in the sight of the audience by servitors. But as a rule the moving could be treated as part of the action, and need not take place between scenes.

[263] Rich. II, I. iii; 2 Edw. IV, II. iv, ‘This while the hangman prepares, Shore at this speech mounts vp the ladder ... Shoare comes downe’. The Admiral’s inventories of 1598 (Henslowe Papers, 116) include ‘j payer of stayers for Fayeton’.

[264] The dissertations of Reynolds (cf. Bibl. Note to ch. xviii) are largely devoted to the exposition of this theory.

[265] Cf. p. 52, n. 2. The Admiral’s inventories of 1598 (Henslowe Papers, 116) include ‘j baye tree’, ‘j tree of gowlden apelles’, ‘Tantelouse tre’, as well as ‘ij mose banckes’.

[266] Cf. p. 51, n. 3.

[267] Looking Glass, II. i. 495, ‘The Magi with their rods beate the ground, and from vnder the same riseth a braue Arbour’; Bacon and Bungay, sc. ix. 1171, ‘Heere Bungay coniures and the tree appeares with the dragon shooting fire’; W. for Fair Women, ii. 411, ‘Suddenly riseth vp a great tree betweene them’. On the other hand, in Old Fortunatus, 609 (ind.), the presenters bring trees on and ‘set the trees into the earth’. The t.p. of the 1615 Spanish Tragedy shows the arbour of the play as a small trellissed pergola with an arched top, not too large, I should say, to come up and down through a commodious trap.

[268] 1 Contention, sc. ii (cf. p. 56, n. 3); John a Kent, III. i (cf. p. 74, n. 3); &c.

[269] Looking Glass, IV. ii, s.d. ‘Jonas the Prophet cast out of the Whales belly vpon the Stage’.

[270] Dr. Faustus, 1450, s.d. (addition of 1616 text), ‘Hell is discouered’; cf. p. 72 for the description of the imaginary stage in the Wagner Book. The Admiral’s inventories of 1598 (Henslowe Papers, 116) include ‘j Hell mought’.

[271] Arden of Feversham, IV. ii, iii.

[272] Cf. p. 51.

[273] Cf. p. 43.

[274] Cf. p. 76.

[275] Of the late woodcuts, Roxana shows ‘above’ two compartments, clearly with spectators; Messalina one, closed by curtains; The Wits a central one closed by curtains, and three on each side, with female spectators. In view of their dates and doubtful provenances (cf. Bibl. Note to ch. xviii), these are no evidence for the sixteenth-century public theatre, but they show that at some plays, public or private, the audience continued to sit ‘over the stage’ well in to the seventeenth century.

[276] Cf. vol. ii, p. 542.

[277] Cf. p. 45.

[278] Henslowe Papers, 139.

[279] James IV, 106, 605, 618, 1115.

[280] Looking Glass, 152, 1756.

[281] T. of a Shrew, scc. ii, xvi. In T. of the Shrew, sc. ii of the Induction is ‘aloft’ (1), and the presenters ‘sit’ to watch the play (147), but they only comment once (I. i. 254) with the s.d. ‘The Presenters aboue speakes’, and Sly is not carried down at the end.

[282] Cf. p. 57, n. 4. The main induction ends (38) with, ‘Why stay we then? Lets giue the Actors leaue, And, as occasion serues, make our returne’.

[283] Revenge says (I. i. 90), ‘Here sit we downe to see the misterie, And serue for Chorus in this Tragedie’, and the Ghost (III. xv. 38), ‘I will sit to see the rest’. In IV. i Hieronimo discusses with his friends a tragedy which he has promised to give before the Court, and alludes (184) to ‘a wondrous shew besides. That I will haue there behinde a curtaine’. The actual performance occupies part of IV. iii, iv (a continuous scene). In IV. iii. 1, ‘Enter Hieronimo; he knocks up the curtaine’. We must not be misled by the modern French practice of knocking for the rise of the front curtain. The tragedy has not yet begun, and this is no front curtain, but the curtain already referred to in IV. i, which Hieronimo is now hammering up to conceal the dead body of Horatio, as part of the setting which he is arranging at one end of the main stage. The Duke of Castile now enters, and it is clear that the Court audience are to sit ‘above’, for Hieronimo begs the Duke (12) that ‘when the traine are past into the gallerie, You would vouchsafe to throw me downe the key’. He then bids (16) a Servant ‘Bring a chaire and a cushion for the King’ and ‘hang up the Title: Our scene is Rhodes’. We are still concerned with Court customs, and no light is thrown on the possible use of title-boards on the public stage (cf. p. 126). The royal train take their places, and the performance is given. Hieronimo epilogizes and suddenly (IV. iv. 88) ‘Shewes his dead sonne’. Now it is clear why he wanted the key of the gallery, for (152) ‘He runs to hange himselfe’, and (157) ‘They breake in, and hold Hieronimo’.

[284] Cf. p. 87, n. 3.

[285] Locrine, I. iii; Sp. Trag. II. ii, III. ii, ix; T. A. V. ii; T. G. IV. ii, iv; R. J. II. ii, III. v; M. V. II. vi; Englishmen for my Money, sc. ix; Two Angry Women, 1495; cf. p. 56, n. 3, p. 58, n. 4, p. 67, n. 1.

[286] Cf. p. 66, n. 1, p. 67, n. 1, p. 68, n. 2, p. 68, n. 3.

[287] In R. J. II. ii Romeo is in the orchard, and (2) ‘But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?’ The lovers discourse, he below, she ‘o’er my head’ (27). Presently (F₁; Q₁, is summary here) Juliet says ‘I hear some noise within’ (136), followed by s.d. ‘Cals within’ and a little later ‘Within: Madam’, twice. Juliet then ‘Exit’ (155), and (159) ‘Enter Juliet again’. Modern editors have reshuffled the s.ds. In III. v, Q₂ (reproduced in F₁), in addition to textual differences from Q₁, may represent a revised handling of the scene. Q₁ begins ‘Enter Romeo and Juliet at the window’. They discuss the dawn. Then ‘He goeth downe’, speaks from below, and ‘Exit’. Then ‘Enter Nurse hastely’ and says ‘Your Mother’s comming to your Chamber’. Then ‘She goeth downe from the Window’. I take this to refer to Juliet, and to close the action above, at a point represented by III. v. 64 of the modern text. Then follow ‘Enter Juliets Mother, Nurse’ and a dialogue below. Q₂ begins ‘Enter Romeo and Juliet aloft’. Presently (36) ‘Enter Madame [? an error] and Nurse’, and the warning is given while Romeo is still above. Juliet says (41) ‘Then, window, let day in, and let life out’, and Romeo, ‘I’ll descend’. After his ‘Exit’ comes ‘Enter Mother’ (64), and pretty clearly discourses with Juliet, not below, but in her chamber. Otherwise there would be no meaning in Juliet’s ‘Is she not downe so late or vp so early? What vnaccustomd cause procures her hither?’ Probably, although there is no s.d., they descend (125) to meet Capulet, for at the end of the scene Juliet bids the Nurse (231) ‘Go in’, and herself ‘Exit’ to visit Friar Laurence.

[288] Cf. p. 65, n. 3.

[289] Cf. p. 58, n. 2.

[290] Cf. p. 119.

[291] Arden of Feversham, III. i (p. 61, n. 3), and Death of R. Hood, IV. i (p. 66, n. 1), require stairs of which the foot or ‘threshold’ is visible. For the execution scene in Sir T. More, sc. xvii (p. 57, n. 2), the whole stairs should be visible, but perhaps here, as elsewhere, the scaffold, although More likens it to a ‘gallerie’, was to be at least in part a supplementary structure. The Admiral’s inventory of 1598 (Henslowe Papers, 116; cf. ch. ii, p. 168) included ‘j payer of stayers for Fayeton’. In Soliman and Perseda, I. iii (p. 57, n. 4), where the back wall represents the outer wall of a tiltyard, ladders are put up against it.

[292] Albright, 66; Lawrence, ii. 45. I am not prepared to accept the theory that in R. J. III. v Romeo descends his ladder from behind; cf. p. 94, n. 2. The other examples cited are late, but I should add the ‘window that goes out into the leads’ of 1 Oldcastle, 2016 (p. 66, n. 1).

[293] Jew of Malta, V. 2316; cf. p. 68, n. 5.

[294] E. M. I. I. v, ‘Bobadilla discouers himselfe: on a bench’.

[295] Cf. p. 54, nn. 2–5.

[296] See the conjectural reconstruction in Albright, 120.

[297] Jonsonus Virbius (1638).

[298] Cf. p. 72.

[299] 1 Hen. VI, II. i (p. 54, n. 5). This arrangement would also fit I. ii, in which a shot is fired from the walls at ‘the turrets’, which could then be represented by the back wall. On a possible similar wall in the Court play of Dido, cf. p. 36.

[300] W. Archer (Quarterly Review, ccviii. 466) suggests the possible use of a machine corresponding to the Greek ἐκκύκλημα (on which cf. A. E. Haigh, Attic Theatre³, 201), although he is thinking of it as a device for ‘thrusting’ out a set interior from the alcove, which does not seem to me necessary.

[301] Henslowe Papers, 118. The ‘j payer of stayers for Fayeton’ may have been a similar structure; cf. p. 95, n. 4. Otway, Venice Preserved (1682), V, has ‘Scene opening discovers a scaffold and a wheel prepared for the executing of Pierre’.

[302] Henslowe Papers, 116.

[303] Cf. p. 56, nn. 2, 3. The courtyard in Arden of Feversham, III. i, ii, might have been similarly staged.

[304] 1 Hen. VI, I. ii (a tower with a ‘grate’ in it), III. ii (p. 55); 1 Contention, sc. iii (p. 56); Soliman and Perseda, V. ii. 118 (p. 57); Blind Beggar of Alexandria, sc. ii (p. 62); Old Fortunatus, 769 (p. 63).

[305] Cf. p. 54.

[306] Arden of Feversham, sc. i, begins before Arden’s house whence Alice is called forth (55); but, without any break in the dialogue, we get (245) ‘This is the painter’s house’, although we are still (318) ‘neare’ Arden’s, where the speakers presently (362) breakfast.

[307] T. of A Shrew, sc. xvi (cf. p. 92), see. iii, iv, v (a continuous scene). T. of The Shrew, I. i, ii, is similarly before the houses both of Baptista and Hortensio.

[308] Blind Beggar, scc. v, vii. The use of the houses seems natural, but not perhaps essential.

[309] 1 Oldcastle, II. i. 522, 632.

[310] Cf. p. 67, n. 1.

[311] K. to K. Honest Man, sc. v. 396, 408, 519, 559; sc. vii. 662, 738, 828, 894; sc. xv. 1385, 1425, 1428; cf. Graves, 65.

[312] Cf. pp. 25, 33.

[313] George a Greene, sc. xi. 1009, ‘Wil you go to the townes end.... Now we are at the townes end’.

[314] A. of Feversham, III. vi. 55, ‘See Ye ouertake vs ere we come to Raynum down’.... (91) ‘Come, we are almost now at Raynum downe’.

[315] Dr. Faustus, 1110, ‘let vs Make haste to Wertenberge ... til I am past this faire and pleasant greene, ile walke on foote’, followed immediately by ‘Enter a Horse-courser’ to Faustus, evidently in his ‘chaire’ (1149) at Wittenberg.

[316] R. J. I. iv. 113, where, in Q₁, Romeo’s ‘on lustie Gentlemen’ to the maskers is followed by ‘Enter old Capulet with the Ladies’, while in Q₂, Benvolio responds ‘Strike drum’, and then ‘They march about the Stage, and Seruingmen come forth with Napkins’, prepare the hall, and ‘Exeunt’, when ‘Enter all the guests and gentlewomen to the Maskers’.

[317] In T. of The Shrew, V. i. 17, ‘Pedant lookes out of the window’, while the presenters are presumably occupying the gallery, but even if this is a sixteenth-century s.d., the window need not be an upper one.

[318] The s.d. to Sp. Trag. III. xi. 8, where ‘He goeth in at one doore and comes out at another’, is rather obscure, but the doors are probably those of a house which has just been under discussion, and if so, more than one door was sometimes supposed to belong to the same house.

[319] Cf. pp. 3, 4, 11.

[320] See my diagrams on [pp. 84–5.]

[321] W. Archer in Universal Review (1888), 281; J. Le G. Brereton, De Witt at the Swan (Sh. Homage, 204); cf. p. 7.

[322] Serlio’s ‘comic’ and ‘tragic’ scenes (cf. App. G) show steps to the auditorium from the front of the stage.

[323] Creizenach, iii. 446; iv. 424 (Eng. tr. 370), with engravings from printed descriptions of 1539 and 1562.

[324] The contest of 1561 is described in a long letter to Sir Thomas Gresham (Burgon, i. 377) by his agent at Antwerp, Richard Clough. It might be possible to trace a line of affiliation from another of Gresham’s servants, Thomas Dutton, who was his post from Antwerp temp. Edw. VI, and his agent at Hamburg c. 1571 (Burgon, i. 109; ii. 421). The actor Duttons, John and Laurence, seem also to have served as posts from Antwerp and elsewhere (cf. ch. xv).

[325] Thomas Lord Cromwell and A Larum for London, dealt with in the last chapter, might also be Globe plays.

[326] Henry V, Much Ado about Nothing, Merry Wives of Windsor, Hamlet, King Lear, Troilus and Cressida, Pericles, Every Man Out of his Humour, Sejanus, Volpone, Yorkshire Tragedy, London Prodigal, Fair Maid of Bristow, Devil’s Charter, Merry Devil of Edmonton, Revenger’s Tragedy, Miseries of Enforced Marriage, and perhaps 1 Jeronimo; with the second version of Malcontent, originally a Queen’s Revels play, and Satiromastix, the s.ds. of which perhaps belong rather to Paul’s, where it was also played.

[327] Catiline, Alchemist; Second Maid’s Tragedy.

[328] Julius Caesar, Twelfth Night, As You Like It, All’s Well that Ends Well, Measure for Measure, Othello, Macbeth, Coriolanus, Antony and Cleopatra, Timon of Athens.

[329] Cymbeline, Winter’s Tale, Tempest, Henry VIII, Duchess of Malfi, Two Noble Kinsmen, Maid’s Tragedy, King and no King, Philaster, and perhaps Thierry and Theodoret.

[330] I have only occasionally drawn upon plays such as Bonduca, whose ascription in whole or part to 1599–1613 is doubtful; these will be found in the list in App. L.

[331] 1 Honest Whore, When You See Me You Know Me, Whore of Babylon, Roaring Girl, and possibly Two Lamentable Tragedies. The extant text of Massacre at Paris may also represent a revival at the Fortune.

[332] Nobody and Somebody, Travels of Three English Brothers, Woman Killed With Kindness, Sir Thomas Wyat, Rape of Lucrece, Golden Age, If It Be Not Good the Devil is in It, White Devil, Greene’s Tu Quoque, Honest Lawyer, and probably 1, 2 If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody, Fair Maid of the Exchange, Silver Age, Brazen Age. How to Choose a Good Wife from a Bad is probably a Rose or Boar’s Head play.

[333] Hen. V, IV. iv-viii; T. C. V. iv-x; J. C. V. i-v; Lear, IV. iii, iv, vii; V. i-iii; A. C. III. vii-x, xii; IV. i, iii, v-xiv; V. i, &c.

[334] Hen. V, IV. viii; J. C. IV. ii, iii; T. C. I. iii; II. i, iii; III. iii; IV. v; V. i, ii, apparently with tents in one or other scene of Agamemnon (I. iii. 213), Ulysses (I. iii. 305), Ajax (II. i), Achilles (II. iii. 84; III. iii. 38; V. i. 95), and Calchas (V. i. 92; V. ii); Devil’s Charter, IV. iv. 2385, ‘He discouereth his Tent where her two sonnes were at Cardes’; and in s.d. of Prol. 29 (not a battle scene) ‘Enter, at one doore betwixt two other Cardinals, Roderigo ... one of which hee guideth to a Tent, where a table is furnished ... and to another Tent the other’.

[335] Hen. V, III. vi, vii; IV. i-iii.

[336] Hen. V, III. i. 1, ‘Scaling Ladders at Harflew’; III. iii. 1, ‘Enter the King and all his Traine before the Gates’.... (58) ‘Flourish, and enter the Towne’; Cor. I. iv. 13, ‘Enter two Senators with others on the Walles of Corialus’.... (29) ‘The Romans are beat back to their Trenches’.... (42) ‘Martius followes them to their gates, and is shut in’.... (62) ‘Enter Martius bleeding, assaulted by the enemy’.... ‘They fight and all enter the City’, and so on to end of sc. x; Tim. V. iv. 1, ‘Enter Alcibiades with his Powers before Athens.... The Senators appeare vpon the wals’; IV. i; Devil’s Charter, II. i; IV. iv; Maid’s Tragedy, V. iii.

[337] A. Y. L. III. ii. 1; Philaster, IV. iv. 83, ‘Philaster creeps out of a bush’ (as shown in the woodcut on the t.p. of the Q.); T. N. K. III. i. 37, ‘Enter Palamon as out of a bush’; V. i. 169, ‘Here the Hynde vanishes under the Altar: and in the place ascends a Rose Tree, having one Rose upon it’.

[338] Ham. III. ii. 146 (Q₁) ‘Enter in a Dumb Show, the King and the Queene, he sits downe in an Arbor’, (Q₂, F₂) ‘he lyes him downe vpon a bancke of flowers’; M. Ado, I. ii. 10; III. i. 7, 30; J. C. III. ii. 1, ‘Enter Brutus and goes into the Pulpit’; Tim. V. iii. 5; E. M. O. III. ii.

[339] Ham. V. i; Macb. IV. i; Devil’s Charter, prol.; Catiline, I. i, &c.; I do not know whether hell-mouth remained in use; there is nothing to point to it in the hell scene of The Devil is an Ass, I. i.

[340] Pericles, II. i. 121, ‘Enter the two Fisher-men, drawing vp a Net’.

[341] Devil’s Charter, III. v. Caesar Borgia and Frescobaldi murder the Duke of Candie (vide infra). Caesar says ‘let vs heaue him ouer, That he may fall into the riuer Tiber, Come to the bridge with him’; he bids Frescobaldi ‘stretch out their armes [for] feare that he Fall not vpon the arches’, and ‘Caesar casteth Frescobaldi after’.

[342] Rape of Lucrece (ed. Pearson), p. 240. It is before ‘yon walles’ of Rome. Horatius has his foot ‘fixt vpon the bridge’ and bids his friends break it behind him, while he keeps Tarquin’s party off. Then ‘a noise of knocking downe the bridge, within’ and ‘Enter ... Valerius aboue’, who encourages Horatius. After ‘Alarum, and the falling of the Bridge’, Horatius ‘exit’, and Porsenna says ‘Hee’s leapt off from the bridge’. Presently ‘the shout of all the multitude Now welcomes him a land’.

[343] Devil’s Charter, III. v, Frescobaldi is to waylay the Duke of Candie. ‘He fenceth’ (s.d.) with ‘this conduct here’ (1482), and as the victim arrives, ‘Here will I stand close’ (1612) and ‘He stands behind the post’ (s.d.); cf. Satiromastix (p. 141, n. 4).

[344] Tp. IV. i. 72.

[345] Tp. III. iii. 17, ‘Solemne and strange Musicke: and Prosper on the top (invisible:) Enter severall strange shapes, bringing in a Banket; and dance about it with gentle actions of salutations, and inuiting the King, &c. to eate, they depart’.... (52) ‘Thunder and lightning. Enter Ariell (like a Harpey) claps his wings upon the Table, and with a queint device the Banquet vanishes’.... (82) ‘He vanishes in Thunder: then (to soft Musicke) Enter the shapes againe, and daunce (with mockes and mowes) and carrying out the Table’; IV. i. 134, ‘Enter Certaine Nimphes.... Enter certaine Reapers (properly habited:) they ioyne with the Nimphes, in a gracefull dance, towards the end whereof, Prospero starts sodainly and speakes, after which to a strange hollow and confused noyse, they heauily vanish’.... (256) ‘A noyse of Hunters heard. Enter divers Spirits in shape of Dogs and Hounds, hunting them about: Prospero and Ariel setting them on’. Was the ‘top’ merely the gallery, or the third tiring-house floor (cf. p. 98) above? Ariel, like Prospero, enters ‘invisible’ (III. ii. 48). Is this merely the touch of an editor (cf. ch. xxii) or does it reflect a stage convention? The Admiral’s tiring-house contained in 1598 (Henslowe Papers, 123) ‘a robe for to goo invisibell’.

[346] G. A. V, ‘Iris descends ... Iupiter first ascends upon the Eagle, and after him Ganimed’.... ‘Enter at 4 severall corners the 4 winds’; S. A. II, ‘Thunder and lightning. Iupiter discends in a cloude’.... ‘Iuno and Iris descend from the heavens’; III, ‘Enter Iuno and Iris above in a cloud’.... ‘Enter Pluto, his Chariot drawne in by Divels’.... ‘Mercury flies from above’.... ‘Earth riseth from under the stage’.... ‘Earth sinkes’.... ‘The river Arethusa riseth from the stage’; IV, ‘Iupiter taking up the Infant speakes as he ascends in his cloud’; V, ‘Hercules sinkes himselfe: Flashes of fire; the Diuels appeare at every corner of the stage with severall fireworkes’.... ‘Exeunt three wayes Ceres, Theseus, Philoctetes, and Hercules dragging Cerberus one way: Pluto, hels Iudges, the Fates and Furies downe to hell: Iupiter, the Gods and Planets ascend to heaven’; B. A. I, ‘When the Fury sinkes, a Buls head appeares’; V, ‘Enter Hercules from a rocke above, tearing down trees’.... ‘Iupiter above strikes him with a thunderbolt, his body sinkes, and from the heavens discends a hand in a cloud, that from the place where Hercules was burnt, brings up a starre, and fixeth it in the firmament’.

[347] G. A. II, ‘Enter Iupiter like a Nimph, or a Virago’; IV, ‘Enter Iupiter like a Pedler’; S. A. II, ‘Enter ... Iupiter shapt like Amphitrio’; IV, ‘Enter Iuno in the shape of old Beroe’.... ‘Enter Iupiter like a woodman’; B. A. V, ‘Enter ... Hercules attired like a woman, with a distaffe and a spindle’.

[348] S. A. III, ‘The Nurses bring yong Hercules in his Cradle, and leave him. Enter Iuno and Iris with two snakes, put them to the childe and depart: Hercules strangles them: to them Amphitrio, admiring the accident’; B. A. IV, ‘Enter Vulcan and Pyragmon with his net of wire.... Vulcan catcheth them fast in his net.... All the Gods appeare above and laugh, Iupiter, Iuno, Phoebus, Mercury, Neptune’.

[349] G. A. II, ‘A confused fray, an alarme.... Lycaon makes head againe, and is beat off by Iupiter and the Epirians, Iupiter ceazeth the roome of Lycaon’; II, ‘Enter with musicke (before Diana) sixe Satires, after them all their Nimphs, garlands on their heads, and iavelings in their hands, their Bowes and Quivers: the Satyrs sing’.... ‘Hornes winded, a great noise of hunting. Enter Diana, all her Nimphes in the chase, Iupiter pulling Calisto back’; III, ‘Alarm. They combat with iavelings first, after with swords and targets’; S. A. III, ‘Enter Ceres and Proserpine attired like the Moone, with a company of Swaines, and country Wenches: They sing’.... ‘A confused fray with stooles, cups and bowles, the Centaurs are beaten.... Enter with victory, Hercules’; B. A. IV, ‘Enter Aurora, attended with Seasons, Daies, and Howers’; V, ‘Hercules swings Lychas about his head, and kils him’.

[350] G. A. I, ‘Enter Saturn with wedges of gold and silver, models of ships and buildings, bow and arrowes, &c.’; II, ‘Vesta and the Nurse, who with counterfeit passion present the King a bleeding heart upon a knives point, and a bowle of bloud’.... ‘A banquet brought in, with the limbes of a man in the service’; B. A. V, ‘Enter to the sacrifice two Priests to the Altar, sixe Princes with sixe of his labours, in the midst Hercules bearing his two brazen pillars, six other Princes, with the other six labours’.

[351] G. A. V, ‘Pluto drawes hell: the Fates put upon him a burning Roabe, and present him with a Mace, and burning crowne’; S. A. II, ‘Jupiter appeares in his glory under a Raine-bow’; IV, ‘Thunder, lightnings, Jupiter descends in his maiesty, his Thunderbolt burning’.... ‘As he toucheth the bed it fires, and all flyes up’; V, ‘Fire-workes all over the house’.... ‘Enter Pluto with a club of fire, a burning crowne, Proserpine, the Judges, the Fates, and a guard of Divels, all with burning weapons’; B. A. II, ‘There fals a shower of raine’. Perhaps one should remember the sarcasm of Warning for Fair Women, ind. 51, ‘With that a little rosin flasheth forth, Like smoke out of a tobacco pipe, or a boys squib’.

[352] Revenger’s Tragedy (Dodsley⁴), p. 99; it recurs in 2 If You Know Not Me (ed. Pearson), p. 292.

[353] T. N. IV. ii; M. for M. IV. iii; Fair Maid of Bristow, sig. E 3; Philaster, V. ii.

[354] Tp. V. i. 172, ‘Here Prospero discouers Ferdinand and Miranda, playing at Chesse’.

[355] Tim. IV. iii.; V. i. 133.

[356] M. Wives, I. iv. 40, ‘He steps into the Counting-house’ (Q₁); 2 Maid’s Tragedy, 1995, 2030, ‘Locks him self in’.

[357] M. D. of Edmonton, prol. 34, ‘Draw the Curtaines’ (s.d.), which disclose Fabel on a couch, with a ‘necromanticke chaire’ by him; Devil’s Charter, I. iv. 325, ‘Alexander in his study’; IV. i. 1704, 1847; v. 2421, 2437; V. iv. 2965; vi. 3016, ‘Alexander vnbraced betwixt two Cardinalls in his study looking vpon a booke, whilst a groome draweth the Curtaine.... They place him in a chayre vpon the stage, a groome setteth a Table before him’.... (3068), ‘Alexander draweth the Curtaine of his studie where hee discouereth the diuill sitting in his pontificals’; Hen. VIII, II. ii. 63, after action in anteroom, ‘Exit Lord Chamberlaine, and the King drawes the Curtaine and sits reading pensiuely’; Catiline, I. i. 15, ‘Discouers Catiline in his study’; Duchess of Malfi, V. ii. 221 (a ‘cabinet’); cf. Massacre at Paris (Fortune), 434, ‘He knocketh, and enter the King of Nauarre and Prince of Condy, with their scholmaisters’ (clearly a discovery, rather than an entry).

[358] 2 Maid’s Tragedy, 1725, ‘Enter the Tirant agen at a farder dore, which opened, bringes hym to the Toombe wher the Lady lies buried; the Toombe here discovered ritchly set forthe’; (1891) ‘Gouianus kneeles at the Toomb wondrous passionatly’.... (1926), ‘On a sodayne in a kinde of Noyse like a Wynde, the dores clattering, the Toombstone flies open, and a great light appeares in the midst of the Toombe’.

[359] W. T. V. iii; D. of Malfi, III. iv. 1, ‘Two Pilgrimes to the Shrine of our Lady of Loretto’.

[360] E. M. O. IV. iii-v; cf. Roaring Girl (Fortune) (ed. Pearson, p. 50), ‘The three shops open in a ranke: the first a Poticaries shop, the next a Fether shop; the third a Sempsters shop’; Two Lamentable Tragedies (? Fortune), I. i, ‘Sit in his shop’ (Merry’s); I. iii, ‘Then Merry must passe to Beeches shoppe, who must sit in his shop, and Winchester his boy stand by: Beech reading’; II. i, ‘The boy sitting at his maisters dore’.... ‘When the boy goeth into the shoppe Merrie striketh six blowes on his head and with the seaventh leaues the hammer sticking in his head’.... ‘Enter one in his shirt and a maide, and comming to Beeches shop findes the boy murthered’; IV. iv, ‘Rachell sits in the shop’ (Merry’s); Bartholomew Fair (Hope), II-V, which need booths for the pig-woman, gingerbread woman, and hobby-horse man.

[361] Revenger’s Tragedy (Dodsley⁴), i, p. 26, ‘Enter ... Antonio ... discovering the body of her dead to certain Lords and Hippolito; pp. 58, 90 (scenes of assignation and murder in a room with ‘yon silver ceiling’, a ‘darken’d blushless angle’, ‘this unsunned lodge’, ‘that sad room’); D. of Malfi, IV. i. 55, ‘Here is discover’d, behind a travers, the artificiall figures of Antonio and his children, appearing as if they were dead’; ii. 262, ‘Shewes the children strangled’; cf. White Devil (Queen’s), V. iv. 71, ‘They are behind the travers. Ile discover Their superstitious howling’, with s.d. ‘Cornelia, the Moore and 3 other Ladies discovered, winding Marcello’s coarse’; Brazen Age (Queen’s), III, ‘Two fiery Buls are discouered, the Fleece hanging over them, and the Dragon sleeping beneath them: Medea with strange fiery-workes, hangs above in the Aire in the strange habite of a Coniuresse’.

[362] Cf. p. 25. I am not clear whether Volpone, V. 2801, ‘Volpone peepes from behinde a trauerse’ is below or above, but in either event the traverse in this case must have been a comparatively low screen and free from attachment at the top, as Volpone says (2761), ‘I’le get up, Behind the cortine, on a stoole, and harken; Sometime, peepe ouer’.

[363] M. Ado, I. iii. 63; M. Wives, III. iii. 97, ‘Falstaffe stands behind the aras’ (Q₁); Ham. II. ii. 163; III. iv. 22; D. of Malfi, I. ii. 65; Philaster, II. ii. 61, ‘Exit behind the hangings’ ... (148), ‘Enter Galatea from behind the hangings’.

[364] Cy. II. ii. 1, ‘Enter Imogen, in her Bed, and a Lady’ ... (11) ‘Iachimo from the Trunke’, who says (47) ‘To th’ Truncke againe, and shut the spring of it’ and (51) ‘Exit’; cf. II. iii. 42, ‘Attend you here the doore of our stern daughter?’; cf. Rape of Lucrece (Red Bull), p. 222 (ed. Pearson), ‘Lucrece discovered in her bed’.

[365] Ham. III. iv; cf. p. 116. Most of the scenes are in some indefinite place in the castle, called in II. ii. 161 ‘here in the lobby’ (Q₂, F₁) or ‘here in the gallery’ (Q₁). Possibly the audience for the play scene (III. ii) were in the alcove, as there is nothing to suggest that they were above; or they may have been to right and left, and the players in the alcove; it is guesswork.

[366] Oth. V. ii. 1, ‘Enter Othello with a light’ (Q₁), ‘Enter Othello and Desdemona in her bed’ (F₁). It is difficult to say whether Maid’s Tragedy, V. i. 2 (continuous scene), where Evadne’s entry and colloquy with a gentleman of the bedchamber is followed by s.d. ‘King abed’, implies a ‘discovery’ or not.

[367] D. Charter, I. v. 547, ‘Enter Lucretia alone in her night gowne untired, bringing in a chaire, which she planteth upon the Stage’ ... (579) ‘Enter Gismond di Viselli untrussed in his Night-cap, tying his points’ ... (625) ‘Gismond sitteth downe in a Chaire, Lucretia on a stoole [ready on the stage for a spectator?] beside him’ ... (673) ‘She ... convaieth away the chaire’. Barbarossa comes into ‘this parler here’ (700), finds the murdered body, and they ‘locke up the dores there’ and ‘bring in the body’ (777), which is therefore evidently not behind a curtain.

[368] D. Charter, IV. iii. 2005, ‘Enter Lucretia richly attired with a Phyal in her hand’ ... ‘Enter two Pages with a Table, two looking glasses, a box with Combes and instruments, a rich bowle’. She paints and is poisoned, and a Physician bids ‘beare in her body’ (2146).

[369] D. Charter, IV. v. 2441, ‘Exit Alexander into his study’ ... ‘Enter Astor and Philippo in their wast-cotes with rackets’ ... ‘Enter two Barbers with linen’ ... ‘After the barbers had trimmed and rubbed their bodies a little, Astor caleth’ ... ‘They lay them selves upon a bed and the barbers depart’ ... ‘Bernardo knocketh at the study’. They are murdered and Bernardo bidden to ‘beare them in’ (2589).

[370] Cf. p. 66.

[371] Albright, 142; Graves, 17; Reynolds (1911), 55; Thorndike, 81.

[372] Cf. ch. xxii.

[373] In The Faithful Friends (possibly a Jacobean King’s play), iv. 282, Rufinus says, ‘Lead to the chamber called Elysium’; then comes s.d. ‘Exit Young Tullius, Phyladelphia and Rufinus. Then a rich Bed is thrust out and they enter again’, and Tullius says ‘This is the lodging called Elysium’. Later examples are Sir W. Berkeley, The Lost Lady (1638), V. i, ‘Enter the Moor on her bed, Hermione, Phillida, and Irene. The bed thrust out’; Suckling, Aglaura (1646), V, ‘A bed put out. Thersames and Aglaura in it.... Draw in the Bed’; Davenport, City Night Cap (1661, Cockpit), II. i, ‘A bed thrust out. Lodovico sleeping in his clothes; Dorothea in bed’.

[374] Silver Age, IV, ‘Enter Semele drawne out in her bed’; Hector of Germany, I. i, ‘a bed thrust out, the Palsgrave lying sick on it, the King of Bohemia, the Duke of Savoy, the Marquis Brandenburg entering with him’; Chaste Maid in Cheapside, III. ii. 1, ‘A bed thrust out upon the stage; Allwit’s wife in it’. This appears from ‘call him up’ (102) to be on the upper stage. Golden Age, I, ‘Enter Sibilla lying in child-bed, with her child lying by her, and her Nurse, &c.’ has the Cymbeline formula, but presumably the staging was as for Danae.

[375] Golden Age, IV, ‘Enter foure old Beldams’, and say ‘The ‘larme bell rings’; it is Acrisius; they will ‘clap close to the gate and let him in’. He bids them watch ‘your percullist entrance’, says ‘Danae is descended’, speaks of ‘the walkes within this barricadoed mure’. She returns ‘unto her chamber’ and he ‘Exit’. The beldams will ‘take our lodgings before the Princesse chamber’ and ‘Exit’. Then ‘Enter Iupiter like a Pedler, the Clowne his man, with packs at their backes’. They are evidently outside the gate. ‘He rings the bell’ and persuades the beldams to let him ‘into the Porters lodge’. They will ‘shut the gate for feare the King come and if he ring clap the Pedlers into some of yon old rotten corners’. Then ‘Enter Danae’, whom Jupiter courts. She says ‘Yon is my doore’ and ‘Exit’. The beldams will ‘see the Pedlers pack’t out of the gate’, but in the end let them ‘take a nap upon some bench or other’, and bid them good-night. Jupiter ‘puts off his disguise’ and ‘Exit’. Then ‘Enter the foure old Beldams, drawing out Danae’s bed: she in it. They place foure tapers at the foure corners’. Jupiter returns ‘crown’d with his imperiall robes’, says ‘Yon is the doore’, calls Danae by name, ‘lyes upon her bed’ and ‘puts out the lights and makes unready’. Presently ‘The bed is drawne in, and enter the Clowne new wak’t’, followed by ‘Enter Iupiter and Danae in her night-gowne’. He puts on his cloak, and ‘Enter the foure Beldams in hast’, say ‘the gate is open’, and dismiss the pedlars.

[376] M. Ado, III. iv. Presumably the action is at the window, as there is a ‘new tire within’ (13) and Hero withdraws when guests arrive (95). It is of course the same window which is required by Don John’s plot, although it is not again in action (cf. II. ii. 43; iii. 89; III. ii. 116, iii. 156; IV. i. 85, 311).

[377] Volpone, II. v-vii. In the piazza, under the same window, is II. i-iii, where ‘Celia at the windo’ throws downe her handkerchiefe’ (1149).

[378] M. W. II. ii; III. v, in both of which persons ‘below’ are bidden ‘come up’; possibly V. i; cf. IV. v, 13, 22, 131, where persons below speak of the chamber as above.

[379] E. M. O. V. iv-vi, at the Mitre; M. Devil of Edmonton, I. i; Miseries of Enforced Marriage, III. i; and for other theatres, Massacre at Paris (Fortune), 257 ‘Enter the Admirall in his bed’, 301 ‘Enter into the Admirals house, and he in his bed’, with 310 ‘Throw him downe’; Two Lamentable Tragedies (Fortune), parts of I. iii, ‘Then being in the upper Rome Merry strickes him in the head fifteene times’, II. i, iii; 1 If You Know Not Me (? Queen’s), p. 240 (ed. Pearson), ‘Enter Elizabeth, Gage, and Clarencia aboue’. Elizabeth bids Gage ‘Looke to the pathway that doth come from the court’, perhaps from a window at the back (cf. p. 96), and he describes a coming horseman.

[380] Yorkshire Tragedy, scc. iii, v, vii, while the intermediate episodes, scc. iv, vi, are below. It is all really one scene.

[381] Sejanus (F₁), i. 355–469 (cf. 287), an episode breaking the flow of the main action, a hall scene, of the act; it must be apart from the hall, not perhaps necessarily above.

[382] E. M. O. V. ii, preceded and followed by scene near the court gate at the foot of stairs leading to the great chamber; V. i has ‘Is this the way? good truth here be fine hangings’ and ‘courtiers drop out’, presumably through the arras and up the stairs. Then a presenter says, ‘Here they come’, and the courtiers enter, presumably above.

[383] A. and C. IV. xv. 1, ‘Enter Cleopatra, and her Maides aloft’, with (8) ‘Look out o’ the other side your monument’ ... (37) ‘They heave Anthony aloft to Cleopatra’; V. ii; cf. 360, ‘bear her women from the monument’.

[384] Pericles, III. i (prol. 58, ‘In your imagination hold This stage the ship’); V. i (prol. 21, ‘In your supposing once more put your sight Of heavy Pericles; think this his bark’). The other scenes (1 Contention, sc. xii; A. and C. II. vii; Tp. I. i) have nothing directly indicating action ‘above’.

[385] Ham. I. i, iv, v; cf. I. ii. 213, ‘upon the platform where we watch’d’. There would be hardly room ‘above’ for the Ghost to waft Hamlet to ‘a more removed ground’ (I. iv. 61), and the effect of I. v. 148, where ‘Ghost cries under the Stage’, would be less. On the other hand, in White Devil (Queen’s), IV. iv. 39 the s.d. ‘A Cardinal on the Tarras’ is explained by Flamineo’s words, ‘Behold! my lord of Arragon appeares, On the church battlements’.

[386] J. C. III. i; Cor. II. ii, ‘Enter two Officers, to lay Cushions, as it were, in the Capitol’; Sejanus (F₁), iii. 1–6; v. 19–22; Catiline, IV. ii, V. iv, vi; also Rape of Lucrece (Red Bull), pp. 168–73 (ed. Pearson). There is a complete absence of s.ds. for ‘above’; cf. p. 58. But in J. C. III. i and Catiline, V. vi, at least, action in the senate house is continuous with action in the street or forum without, and both places must have been shown, and somehow differentiated.

[387] Bonduca, V. i, ‘Enter Caratach upon a rock, and Hengo by him, sleeping’; V. iii, ‘Enter Caratach and Hengo on the Rock’. Hengo is let down by a belt to fetch up food. It is ‘a steep rock i th’ woods’ (V. ii); cf. the rock scene in Brazen Age, V (cf. p. 109).

[388] Cf. p. 153. Duchess of Malfi, III. ii, with (173) ‘call up our officers’ is a possible exception.

[389] E. M. O. II. i (where personages standing ‘under this Tarras’ watch action under a window); Devil’s Charter, III. ii, ‘Alexander out of a Casement’; M. Devil of Edmonton, V. ii. 59, ‘D’yee see yon bay window?’ Miseries of Enforced Marriage (Dodsley⁴), iv, p. 540 (‘Here’s the sign of the Wolf, and the bay-window’); T. N. K. II. i, ii; Catiline, III. v; Philaster, II. iv; Second Maiden’s Tragedy, V. i. 2004, ‘Leonella above in a gallery with her love Bellarius’ ... (2021) ‘Descendet Leonela’; Duchess of Malfi, V. v; Hen. VIII, V. ii. 19, ‘Enter the King, and Buts, at a Windowe above’, with ‘Let ’em alone, and draw the curtaine close’ (34); Pericles, II. ii (where Simonides and Thaisa ‘withdraw into the gallerie’, to watch a tilting supposed behind, as in the sixteenth-century Soliman and Perseda; cf. p. 96). So, too, in T. N. K. V. iii, the fight between Palamon and Arcite takes place within; Emilia will not see it, and it is reported to her on the main stage.

[390] D. an Ass, II. vi. 37, ‘This Scene is acted at two windo’s as out of two contiguous buildings’ ... (77) ‘Playes with her paps, kisseth her hands, &c.’ ... vii. 1 ‘Her husband appeares at her back’ ... (8) ‘Hee speaks out of his wives window’ ... (23) ‘The Divell speakes below’ ... (28) ‘Fitz-dottrel enters with his wife as come downe’.

[391] M. Devil of Edmonton, V. i, ii; Catiline, V. vi (where apparently three houses are visited after leaving the senate house); cf. the cases of shops on p. 110, n. 10.

[392] Ham. V. i. 60.

[393] Bonduca, V. iii.

[394] Three English Brothers, ad fin. A court scene in Sir T. Wyatt ends (ed. Hazlitt, p. 10) with s.d. ‘pass round the stage’, which takes the personages to the Tower. Similarly in 1 If You Know Not Me (ed. Pearson, p. 246) a scene at Hatfield ends ‘And now to London, lords, lead on the way’, with s.d. ‘Sennet about the Stage in order. The Maior of London meets them’, and in 2 If You Know Not Me (p. 342) troops start from Tilbury, and ‘As they march about the stage, Sir Francis Drake and Sir Martin Furbisher meet them’.

[395] W. Archer in Quarterly Review, ccviii. 471; Albright, 77; Lawrence, i. 19; cf. my analogous conjecture of ‘wings’ on p. 100.

[396] David and Bethsabe, 25, ‘He [Prologus] drawes a curtaine, and discouers Bethsabe with her maid bathing ouer a spring: she sings, and David sits aboue vewing her’.

[397] Lawrence, i. 159 (Proscenium Doors: an Elizabethan Heritage).

[398] Cf. vol. ii, p. 534.

[399] At the Globe the windows appear to have been bay windows; cf. p. 116, n. 7. Lawrence, ii. 25 (Windows on the Pre-Restoration Stage), cites T. M. Black Book (1604), ‘And marching forward to the third garden-house, there we knocked up the ghost of mistress Silverpin, who suddenly risse out of two white sheets, and acted out of her tiring-house window’. It appears from Tate Wilkinson’s Memoirs (Lawrence, i. 177) that the proscenium balconies were common ground to actors and audience in the eighteenth century.

[400] Family of Love, I. iii. 101.

[401] The theory is best represented by C. Brodmeier, Die Shakespeare-Bühne nach den alten Bühnenanweisungen (1904); V. Albright, The Shakespearian Stage (1909).

[402] Thorndike, 106.

[403] Cf. pp. 41, 126, 154.

[404] Palace of Tiberius (Acts I, II, III), Senate house (III, V), Gardens of Eudemus (II), Houses of Agrippina (II, IV), Sejanus (V), Regulus (V).

[405] Houses of Volpone (I, II, III, V), Corvino (II), Would Be (V), Law court (IV, V).

[406] Houses of Catiline (I, IV), Fulvia (II), Cicero (III, IV, V), Lecca (III), Brutus (IV), Spinther (V. vi), Cornificius (V. vi), Caesar (V. vi), Senate house (IV, V), Milvian Bridge (IV).

[407] Alchemist, III. v. 58, ‘He speakes through the keyhole, the other knocking’. Hen. VIII, V. ii, iii (continuous scene) also requires a council-chamber door upon the stage, at which Cranmer is stopped after he has entered through the stage door.

[408] Daborne gave Tourneur ‘an act of y^e Arreignment of London to write’ (Henslowe Papers, 72).

[409] Cf. ch. xxii.

[410] M. N. D. III. ii. 463 (F₁), ‘They sleep all the Act’; i. e. all the act-interval (cf. p. 131). So in Catiline the storm with which Act III ends is still on at the beginning of Act IV, and in Alchemist Mammon and Lovewit are seen approaching at the ends of Acts I and IV respectively, but in both cases the actual arrival is at the beginning of the next act.

[411] F. A. Foster, Dumb Show in Elizabethan Drama before 1620 (E. S. xliv. 8).

[412] Jonson has a ‘Chorus—of musicians’ between the acts of Sejanus, and the presenter of Two Lamentable Tragedies bids the audience ‘Delight your eares with pleasing harmonie’ after the harrowing end of Act II. Some other examples given in Lawrence, i. 75 (Music and Song in the Elizabethan Drama), seem to me no more than incidental music such as may occur at any point of a play. Malone (Var. iii. 111) describes a copy of the Q₂ of R. J. in which the act endings and directions for inter-act music had been marked in manuscript; but this might be of late date.

[413] Malcontent, ind. 89.

[414] Henslowe Papers, 127.

[415] Catiline, I. i.

[416] Second Maidens Tragedy, 1719, ‘Exit’ the Tyrant, four lines from the end of a court scene, and 1724 ‘Enter the Tirant agen at a farder dore, which opened, bringes hym to the Toombe’ (cf. p. 110, n. 8). So in Woman Killed with Kindness (Queen’s), IV. ii, iii (continuous scene), Mrs. Frankford and her lover retire from a hall scene to sup in her chamber, and the servants are bidden to lock the house doors. In IV. iv Frankford enters with a friend, and says (8) ‘This is the key that opes my outward gate; This the hall-door; this the withdrawing chamber; But this ... It leads to my polluted bedchamber’. Then (17) ‘now to my gate’, where they light a lanthorn, and (23) ‘this is the last door’, and in IV. v Frankford emerges as from the bedchamber. Probably sc. iv is supposed to begin before the house. They go behind at (17), emerge through another door, and the scene is then in the hall, whence Frankford passes at (23) through the central aperture behind again.

[417] Wily Beguiled, prol. The Prologus asks a player the name of the play, and is told ‘Sir you may look vpon the Title’. He complains that it is ‘Spectrum once again’. Then a Juggler enters, will show him a trick, and says ‘With a cast of cleane conveyance, come aloft Jack for thy masters advantage (hees gone I warrant ye)’ and there is the s.d. ‘Spectrum is conveied away: and Wily beguiled, stands in the place of it’.

[418] Most of the examples in Lawrence, i. 43 (Title and Locality Boards on the Pre-Restoration Stage) belong to Court or to private theatres; on the latter cf. p. 154, infra. But the prologue to 1 Sir John Oldcastle begins ‘The doubtful Title (Gentlemen) prefixt Upon the Argument we have in hand May breede suspence’. The lost Frankfort engraving of English comedians (cf. vol. ii, p. 520) is said to have shown boards.

[419] Cunningham, Jonson, iii. 509; Dekker, G. H. B. (ed. McKerrow), 40, ‘And first observe your doors of entrance, and your exit; not much unlike the players at the theatres; keeping your decorums, even in fantasticality. As for example: if you prove to be a northern gentleman, I would wish you to pass through the north door, more often especially than any of the other; and so, according to your countries, take note of your entrances’.

[420] 1 Contention, sc. xxii, ‘Richard kils him under the signe of the Castle in St. Albones’; Comedy of Errors (the Phoenix, the Porpentine), Shoemaker’s Holiday (the Last), Edw. IV (the Pelican), E. M. O. (the Mitre), Miseries of Enforced Marriage (the Mitre, the Wolf); Bartholomew Fair (the Pig’s Head); &c.

[421] Wounds of Civil War, III. iv, ‘Enter Marius solus from the Numidian mountaines, feeding on rootes’; 3 Hen. VI, IV. ii, ‘Enter Warwick and Oxford in England’, &c.; cf. ch. xxii.

[422] Warning for Fair Women, ind. 86, ‘My scene is London, native and your own’; Alchemist, prol. 5, ‘Our scene is London’; cf. the Gower speeches in Pericles.

[423] Dr. Faustus, 13, 799, 918, 1111.

[424] I cite Greg’s Q₂, but Q₁ agrees. Jonson’s own scene-division is of course determined by the introduction of new speakers (cf. p. 200) and does not precisely follow the textual indications.

[425] Henslowe Papers, 116.

[426] 2 If You Know Not Me (ed. Pearson), p. 295.

[427] Cf. App. I, and Neuendorff, 149, who quotes J. Corey, Generous Enemies (1672), prol.:

Coarse hangings then, instead of scenes, were worn.

And Kidderminster did the stage adorn.

Graves, 78, suggests pictorial ‘painted cloths’ for backgrounds.

[428] ‘Scenes’ were used in the public performances of Nabbes’s Microcosmus (1637), Suckling’s Aglaura (1637), and Habington’s Queen of Arragon (1640); cf. Lawrence, ii. 121 (The Origin of the English Picture-Stage); W. G. Keith, The Designs for the First Movable Scenery on the English Stage (Burlington Magazine, xxv. 29, 85).

[429] For Paul’s, C. and C. Errant (after each act), ‘Here they knockt up the Consort’; Faery Pastorall; Trick to Catch the Old One (after I and II), ‘music’; What You Will, II. ii. 235 ‘So ends our chat;—sound music for the act’; for Blackfriars, Gentleman Usher, III. i. 1, ‘after the song’; Sophonisba (after I), ‘the cornets and organs playing loud full music for the act’, (II) ‘Organ mixt with recorders, for this act’, (III) ‘Organs, viols and voices play for this act’, (IV) ‘A base lute and a treble violl play for the act’, with which should be read the note at the end of Q₁, ‘let me intreat my reader not to taxe me for the fashion of the entrances and musique of this tragedy, for know it is printed only as it was presented by youths and after the fashion of the private stage’; K. B. P. (after I), ‘Boy danceth. Musicke. Finis Actus primi’, (II) ‘Musicke. Finis Actus secundi’, (III) ‘Finis Actus tertii. Musicke. Actus quartus, scoena prima. Boy daunceth’, (IV) Ralph’s May Day speech; cf. infra and vol. ii, p. 557. I do not find any similar recognition of the scene as a structural element in the play to be introduced by music; in 1 Antonio and Mellida, III. ii. 120, the s.d. ‘and so the Scene begins’ only introduces a new scene in the sense of a regrouping of speakers (cf. p. 200).

[430] For Paul’s, Histriomastix, III. i. 1, ‘Enter Pride, Vaine-Glory, Hypocrisie, and Contempt: Pride casts a mist, wherein Mavortius and his company [who ended II] vanish off the Stage, and Pride and her attendants remaine’, (after III) ‘They all awake, and begin the following Acte’, (after V) ‘Allarmes in severall places, that brake him off thus: after a retreat sounded, the Musicke playes and Poverty enters’; 2 Antonio and Mellida, III. i. 1, ‘A dumb show. The cornets sounding for the Act’, (after IV) ‘The cornets sound for the act. The dumb show’; What You Will, III. i. 1, ‘Enter Francisco ... They clothe Francisco whilst Bidet creeps in and observes them. Much of this done whilst the Act is playing’; Phoenix (after II), ‘Towards the close of the musick the justices three men prepare for a robberie’; for Blackfriars, Malcontent, II. i. 1, ‘Enter Mendoza with a sconce, to observe Ferneze’s entrance, who, whilst the act is playing, enters unbraced, two Pages before him with lights; is met by Maquerelle and conveyed in; the Pages are sent away’; Fawn, V. i. 1, ‘Whilst the Act is a-playing, Hercules and Tiberio enters; Tiberio climbs the tree, and is received above by Dulcimel, Philocalia, and a Priest; Hercules stays beneath’. The phrase ‘whilst the act is playing’ is a natural development from ‘for the act’, i. e. ‘in preparation for the act’, used also for the elaborate music which at private houses replaced the three preliminary trumpet ‘soundings’ of the public houses; cf. What You Will, ind. 1 (s.d.), ‘Before the music sounds for the Act’, and 1 Antonio and Mellida, ind. 1, ‘The music will sound straight for entrance’. But it leads to a vagueness of thought in which the interval itself is regarded as the ‘act’; cf. the M. N. D. s.d. of F₁, quoted p. 124, n. 3, with Middleton, The Changeling (1653), III. i. 1, ‘In the act-time De Flores hides a naked rapier behind a door’, and Cotgrave, Dict. (1611), ‘Acte ... also, an Act, or Pause in a Comedie, or Tragedie’.

[431] For Paul’s, Histriomastix, i. 163, ‘Enter Fourcher, Voucher, Velure, Lyon-Rash ... two and two at severall doores’; v. 103, ‘Enter ... on one side ... on the other’; v. 192, ‘Enter ... at one end of the stage: at the other end enter ...’; vi. 41, ‘Enter Mavortius and Philarchus at severall doores’; vi. 241, ‘Enter ... at the one doore. At the other ...’; 1 Antonio and Mellida, iv. 220 (marsh scene), ‘Enter ... at one door; ... at another door’; 2 Antonio and Mellida, v. 1, ‘Enter at one door ... at the other door’; Maid’s Metamorphosis, II. ii. 1 (wood scene), ‘Enter at one door ... at the other doore, ... in the midst’; III. ii. 1 (wood scene), ‘Enter ... at three severall doores’; Faery Pastoral, III. vi, ‘Mercury entering by the midde doore wafted them back by the doore they came in’; IV. viii, ‘They enterd at severall doores, Learchus at the midde doore’; Puritan, I. iv. 1 (prison scene), ‘Enter ... at one dore, and ... at the other’, &c.; for Blackfriars, Sir G. Goosecap, IV. ii. 140, ‘Enter Jack and Will on the other side’; Malcontent, V. ii. 1, ‘Enter from opposite sides’; E. Ho!, I. i. 1, ‘Enter ... at severall dores ... At the middle dore, enter ...’; Sophonisba, prol., ‘Enter at one door ... at the other door’; May Day, II. i. 1, ‘Enter ... several ways’; Your Five Gallants, I. ii. 27, ‘Enter ... at the farther door’, &c.

[432] For Paul’s, 2 Antonio and Mellida, IV. ii. 87, ‘They strike the stage with their daggers, and the grave openeth’; V. i. 1, ‘Balurdo from under the Stage’; Aphrodysial (quoted Reynolds, i. 26), ‘A Trap door in the middle of the stage’; Bussy d’Ambois, II. ii. 177, ‘The Vault opens’ ... ‘ascendit Frier and D’Ambois’ ... ‘Descendit Fryar’ (cf. III. i; IV. ii; V. i, iii, iv); for Blackfriars, Poetaster (F₁) prol. 1, ‘Envie. Arising in the midst of the stage’; Case is Altered, III. ii, ‘Digs a hole in the ground’; Sophonisba, III. i. 201, ‘She descends after Sophonisba’ ... (207) ‘Descends through the vault’; V. i. 41, ‘Out of the altar the ghost of Asdrubal ariseth’.

[433] Widow’s Tears (Blackfriars), III. ii. 82, ‘Hymen descends, and six Sylvans enter beneath, with torches’; this is in a mask, and Cupid may have descended from a pageant. When a ‘state’ or throne is used (e.g. Satiromastix, 2309, ‘Soft musicke, Chaire is set under a Canopie’), there is no indication that it descends. In Satiromastix, 2147, we get ‘O thou standst well, thou lean’st against a poast’, but this is obviously inadequate evidence for a heavens supported by posts at Paul’s.

[434] C. and C. Errant, V. ix, ‘He tooke the Bolle from behind the Arras’; Faery Pastoral, V. iv (wood scene), ‘He tooke from behind the Arras a Peck of goodly Acornes pilld’; What You Will, ind. 97, ‘Let’s place ourselves within the curtains, for good faith the stage is so very little, we shall wrong the general eye else very much’; Northward Ho!, IV. i, ‘Lie you in ambush, behind the hangings, and perhaps you shall hear the piece of a comedy’. In C. and C. Errant, V. viii. 1, the two actors left on the stage at the end of V. vii were joined by a troop from the inn, and yet others coming ‘easily after them and stealingly, so as the whole Scene was insensibly and suddenly brought about in Catastrophe of the Comoedy. And the whole face of the Scene suddenly altered’. I think that Percy is only trying to describe the change from a nearly empty to a crowded stage, not a piece of scene-shifting.

[435] Cynthia’s Revels (Q), ind. 149, ‘Slid the Boy takes me for a peice of Prospective (I holde my life) or some silke Curtine, come to hang the Stage here: Sir Cracke I am none of your fresh Pictures, that use to beautifie the decay’d dead Arras, in a publique Theater’; K. B. P. II. 580, ‘Wife. What story is that painted upon the cloth? the confutation of Saint Paul? Citizen. No lambe, that Ralph and Lucrece’. In Law Tricks, III. i, Emilia bids Lurdo ‘Behind the Arras; scape behind the Arras’. Polymetes enters, praises the ‘verie faire hangings’ representing Venus and Adonis, makes a pass at Vulcan, and notices how the arras trembles and groans. Then comes the s.d. (which has got in error into Bullen’s text, p. 42) ‘Discouer Lurdo behind the Arras’, and Emilia carries it off by pretending that it is only Lurdo’s picture.

[436] I think it is possible that Sophonisba, with its ‘canopy’ (cf. p. 149) was also originally written for Paul’s.

[437] 1, 2 Antonio and Mellida, Maid’s Metamorphosis, Wisdom of Dr. Dodipoll, Jack Drum’s Entertainment, Satiromastix, Blurt Master Constable, Bussy D’Ambois, Westward Ho!, Northward Ho!, Fawn, Michaelmas Term, Phoenix, Mad World, My Masters, Trick to Catch the Old One, Puritan, Woman Hater.

[438] Jack Drum’s Ent. v. 112.

[439] Histriomastix, i. 6, ‘now sit wee high (tryumphant in our sway)’; ii. 1, ‘Enter Plenty upon a Throne’; iii. 11, ‘If you will sit in throne of State with Pride’; v. 1, ‘Rule, fier-eied Warre!... Envy ... Hath now resigned her spightfull throne to us’; vi. 7, ‘I [Poverty] scorne a scoffing foole about my Throne’; vi. 271 (s.d.), ‘Astraea’ [in margin, ‘Q. Eliza’] ‘mounts unto the throne’; vi. 296 (original ending), ‘In the end of the play. Plenty Pride Envy Warre and Poverty To enter and resigne their severall Scepters to Peace, sitting in Maiestie’.

[440] Histriomastix, i. 163, ‘Enter ... Chrisoganus in his study’ ... (181) ‘So all goe to Chrisoganus study, where they find him reading’; ii. 70, ‘Enter Contrimen, to them, Clarke of the Market: hee wrings a bell, and drawes a curtaine; whereunder is a market set about a Crosse’ ... (80) ‘Enter Gulch, Belch, Clowt and Gut. One of them steppes on the Crosse, and cryes, A Play’ ... (105) ‘Enter Vintner with a quart of Wine’; v. 192, ‘Enter Lyon-rash to Fourchier sitting in his study at one end of the stage: At the other end enter Vourcher to Velure in his shop’.

[441] Dr. Dodipoll, I. i. 1, ‘A Curtaine drawne, Earl Lassingbergh is discovered (like a Painter) painting Lucilia, who sits working on a piece of cushion worke’. In III. ii a character is spoken of after his ‘Exit’ as ‘going down the staires’, which suggests action ‘above’. But other indications place the scene before Cassimere’s house.

[442] C. and C. Errant, I. i, ‘They entered from Maldon’; I. iv, ‘They entered from Harwich all’.

[443] C. and C. Errant, I. ii, ‘They met from Maldon and from Harwich’, for a scene in Colchester; III. i, ‘They crossd: Denham to Harwich, Lacy to Maldon’.

[444] Reynolds (M. P. xii. 248) gives the note as ‘In the middle and alofte Oceanus Pallace The Scene being. Next Proteus-Hall’. This seems barely grammatical and I am not sure that it is complete. A limitation of Paul’s is suggested by the s.d. (ibid. 258) ‘Chambers (noise supposd for Powles) For actors’, but apparently ‘a showre of Rose-water and confits’ was feasible.

[445] Faery Pastoral, p. 162, ‘A Scrolle fell into her lap from above’.

[446] Jack Drum, II. 27, ‘The Casement opens, and Katherine appeares’; 270, ‘Winifride lookes from aboue’; 286, ‘Camelia, from her window’.

[447] I give s.ds. with slight corrections from Bullen, who substantially follows 1633. But he has re-divided his scenes; 1633 has acts only for 1 Antonio and Mellida (in spite of s.d. ‘and so the scene begins’ with a new speaker at III. ii. 120); acts and scenes, by speakers, for 2 Antonio and Mellida; and acts and scenes or acts and first scenes only, not by speakers and very imperfectly, for the rest.

[448] 1 Ant. and Mell. I. 100, ‘Enter above ... Enter below’ ... (117) ‘they two stand ... whilst the scene passeth above’ ... (140) ‘Exeunt all on the lower stage’ ... (148) ‘Rossaline. Prithee, go down!’ ... (160) ‘Enter Mellida, Rossaline, and Flavia’; III. ii. 190 ‘Enter Antonio and Mellida’ ... (193) ‘Mellida. A number mount my stairs; I’ll straight return. Exit’ ... (222) ‘Feliche. Slink to my chamber; look you, that is it’.

[449] IV. 220, ‘Enter Piero (&c.) ... Balurdo and his Page, at another door’.

[450] 2 Ant. and Mell. I. ii. 194, ‘Antonio. See, look, the curtain stirs’ ... (s.d.) ‘The curtains drawn, and the body of Feliche, stabb’d thick with wounds, appears hung up’ and ‘Antonio. What villain bloods the window of my love?’

[451] III. ii. 1, ‘Enter ... Maria, her hair loose’ ... (59) ‘Maria. Pages, leave the room’ ... (65) ‘Maria draweth the curtain: and the ghost of Andrugio is displayed, sitting on the bed’ ... (95) ‘Exit Maria to her bed, Andrugio drawing the curtains’.

[452] V. ii. 50, ‘While the measure is dancing, Andrugio’s ghost is placed betwixt the music-houses’ ... (115) ‘The curtaine being drawn, exit Andrugio’.

[453] V. ii. 112, ‘They run all at Piero with their rapiers’. This is while the ghost is present above, but (152) ‘The curtains are drawn, Piero departeth’.

[454] III. i. 33, ‘And, lo, the ghost of old Andrugio Forsakes his coffin’ ... (125) ‘Ghosts ... from above and beneath’ ... (192) ‘From under the stage a groan’; IV. ii. 87, ‘They strike the stage with their daggers, and the grave openeth’. The church must have been shown open, and part of the crowded action of these scenes kept outside; at IV. ii. 114, ‘yon bright stars’ are visible.

[455] Fawn, IV. 638, ‘Dulcimel. Father, do you see that tree, that leans just on my chamber window?’ ... (V. 1) ‘whilst the Act is a-playing, Hercules and Tiberio enters; Tiberio climbs the tree, and is received above by Dulcimel, Philocalia, and a Priest: Hercules stays beneath’. After a mask and other action in the presence, (461) ‘Tiberio and Dulcimel above, are discovered hand in hand’.

[456] W. You Will, IV. 373, after a dance, ‘Celia. Will you to dinner?’ ... (V. 1) ‘The curtains are drawn by a Page, and Celia (&c.) displayed, sitting at dinner’.

[457] II. 1, ‘One knocks: Laverdure draws the curtains, sitting on his bed, apparelling himself; his trunk of apparel standing by him’ ... (127) ‘Bidet, I’ll down’; II. ii. 1, ‘Enter a schoolmaster, draws the curtains behind, with Battus, Nous, Slip, Nathaniel, and Holophernes Pippo, schoolboys, sitting, with books in their hands’.

[458] I. 110, ‘He sings and is answered; from above a willow garland is flung down, and the song ceaseth’.

[459] Satiromastix, I. ii. 1, ‘Horrace sitting in a study behinde a curtaine, a candle by him burning, bookes lying confusedly’.

[460] V. ii. 23, where the ‘canopie’, if a Paul’s term, may be the equivalent of the public theatre alcove (cf. pp. 82, 120). The ‘bower’ in IV. iii holds eight persons, and a recess may have been used.

[461] Shorthose says (V. i. 60) ‘Thou lean’st against a poast’, but obviously posts supporting a heavens at Paul’s cannot be inferred.

[462] Westward Ho! uses the houses of Justiniano (I. i), Wafer (III. iii), Ambush (III. iv), the Earl (II. ii; IV. ii), and a Bawd (IV. i), the shops of Tenterhook (I. ii; III. i) and Honeysuckle (II. i), and inns at the Steelyard (II. iii), Shoreditch (II. iii), and Brentford (V). Continuous setting would not construct so many houses for single scenes. There is action above at the Bawd’s, and interior action below in several cases; in IV. ii, ‘the Earle drawes a curten and sets forth a banquet’. The s.ds. of this scene seem inadequate; at a later point Moll is apparently ‘discovered’, shamming death. Northward Ho! uses the houses of Mayberry (I. iii; II. ii) and Doll (II. i; III. i), a garden house at Moorfields (III. ii), Bellamont’s study (IV. i), Bedlam (IV. iii, iv), a ‘tavern entry’ in London (I. ii), and an inn at Ware (I. i; V. i). Action above is at the last only, interior action below in several.

[463] B. d’Ambois, II. ii. 177, ‘Tamyra. See, see the gulfe is opening’ ... (183) ‘Ascendit Frier and D’Ambois’ ... (296) ‘Descendit Fryar’; IV. ii. 63, ‘Ascendit [Behemoth]’ ... (162) ‘Descendit cum suis’; V. i. 155, ‘Ascendit Frier’ ... (191) ‘Montsurry. In, Ile after, To see what guilty light gives this cave eyes’; V. iv. 1, ‘Intrat umbra Comolet to the Countesse, wrapt in a canapie’ ... (23) ‘D’Amboys at the gulfe’.

[464] The Q of 1641, probably representing a revival by the King’s men, alters the scenes in Montsurry’s house, eliminating the characteristic Paul’s ‘canapie’ of V. iv. 1 and placing spectators above in the same scene. It is also responsible for the proleptic s.d. (cf. ch. xxii) at I. i. 153 for I. ii. 1, ‘Table, Chesbord and Tapers behind the Arras’.

[465] Blurt Master Constable has (a) Camillo’s (I. i; II. i) with a hall; (b) Hippolyto’s (III. i) where (136) ‘Violetta appears above’, and (175) ‘Enter Truepenny above with a letter’; (c) a chapel (III. ii) with a ‘pit-hole’ dungeon, probably also visible in II. i and III. i; (d) Blurt’s (I. ii) which is ‘twelve score off’; (e) Imperia’s, where is most of the action (II. ii; III. iii; IV. i, ii, iii; V. ii, iii). Two chambers below are used; into one Lazarillo is shown in III. iii. 201, and here in IV. ii he is let through a trap into a sewer, while (38) ‘Enter Frisco above laughing’ and (45) ‘Enter Imperia above’. At IV. iii. 68 Lazarillo crawls from the sewer into the street. In IV. i and IV. iii tricks are played upon Curvetto with a cord and a rope-ladder hanging from a window above.

[466] Phoenix has (a) the palace (I. i; V. i) with hall; (b) Falso’s (I. vi; II. iii; III. i); (c) the Captain’s (I. ii; II. ii); (d) a tavern (I. iv; IV. iii) with interior action; (e) a law court (IV. i); (f) a jeweller’s (III. ii; IV. i, ii, iii) with interior action. It will be observed that (f) is needed both with (d) and (e). There is no action above.

[467] M. Term has (a) Paul’s (I. i, ii); (b) Quomodo’s shop, the Three Knaves (II. iii; III. iv; IV. i, iii, iv; V. i); (c) a tavern (II. i); (d) a law court (V. iii); (e) a courtesan’s (III. i; IV. ii). All have interior action and (b) eavesdropping above in a balcony (II. iii. 108, 378, 423; III. iv). Much action is merely in the streets.

[468] A Mad World has (a) Harebrain’s (I. ii; III. i; IV. iv); (b) Penitent Brothel’s (IV. i), with interior action; (c) a courtesan’s (I. i; II. iii, vi; III. ii; IV. v), with a bed and five persons at once, perhaps above, in III. ii; (d) Sir Bounteous Progress’s in the country (II. i; II. ii, iv, v, vii; III. iii; IV. ii, iii; V. i, ii). The action here is rather puzzling, but apparently a hall, a lodging next it, where are ‘Curtains drawn’ (II. vii. 103), the stairs, and a ‘closet’ or ‘matted chamber’ (IV. ii. 27; IV. iii. 3) are all used. If the scenes were shifted, the interposition of a scene of only 7 lines (II. iii) at London amongst a series of country scenes is strange.

[469] A Trick to Catch has (a) Lucre’s (I. iii, iv; II. i, ii; IV. ii, iii; V. i); (b) Hoard’s (III. ii; IV. iv; V. ii); (c) a courtesan’s (III. i); (d) an inn (III. iii); (e) Dampit’s (III. iv; IV. v); and away from London, (f) Witgood Hall, with (g) an inn (I. i, ii); (h) Cole Harbour (IV. i). Nearly all the action is exterior, but a window above is used at (b) in IV. iv, and at (e) there is interior action both below in III. iv and perhaps above (cf. III. iv. 72), with a bed and eight persons at once in IV. v.

[470] Puritan has (a) the Widow’s (I. i; II. i, ii; III. i, ii; IV. i, ii, iii; V. i, ii), with a garden and rosemary bush; (b) a gentleman’s house (III. iv); (c) an apothecary’s (III. iii); (d) a prison (I. iv; III. v). There is interior action below in all; action above only in (a) at V. ii. 1, ‘Enter Sir John Penidub, and Moll aboue lacing of her clothes’ in a balcony.

[471] Woman Hater has (a) the Duke’s palace (I. i, iii; IV. i; V. ii); (b) the Count’s (I. iii); (c) Gondarino’s (II. i; III. i, ii); (d) Lazarillo’s lodging (I. i, ii); (e) a courtesan’s (II. i; IV. ii, iii; V. ii); (f) a mercer’s shop (III. iv); (g) Lucio’s study (V. i). There is interior action below in (a), (e), (f), and (g), where ‘Enter Lazarello, and two Intelligencers, Lucio being at his study.... Secretary draws the Curtain’. A window above is used at (e), and there is also action above at (c), apparently in a loggia within sight and ear-shot of the street.

[472] The term is used in The Faery Pastoral, Satiromastix, and Bussy d’Ambois (vide supra); but also in Sophonisba (vide infra), which is a Blackfriars play.

[473] I take it that it was in this stand that Andrugio’s ghost was placed ‘betwixt the music-houses’ in 2 Antonio and Mellida.

[474] The four plays which seem most repugnant to continuous staging, Westward Ho!, Northward Ho!, A Mad World, my Masters, and A Trick to Catch the Old One, are all datable in 1604–6.

[475] Elizabethan Plays: Love’s Metamorphosis, Liberality and Prodigality, Cynthia’s Revels, Poetaster, Sir Giles Goosecap, Gentleman Usher, and probably All Fools; Jacobean Plays: M. d’Olive, May Day, Widow’s Tears, Conspiracy of Byron, Tragedy of Byron, Case is Altered, Malcontent, Dutch Courtesan, Sophonisba, Eastward Ho!, Your Five Gallants, Philotas, Isle of Gulls, Law Tricks, Fleir, Faithful Shepherdess, Knight of the Burning Pestle. In addition Fawn and Trick to Catch an Old One, already dealt with under Paul’s, were in the first case produced at, and in the second transferred to, Blackfriars.

[476] Cf. p. 34.

[477] Lib. and Prod. 903, ‘Here Prod. scaleth. Fortune claps a halter about his neck, he breaketh the halter and falles’; 1245, ‘The Judge placed, and the Clerkes under him’.

[478] The fountain requires a trap. There is no action above. I cite the scenes of Q₁, which are varied by Jonson in F₁.

[479] In the prol. 27, Envy says, ‘The scene is, ha! Rome? Rome? and Rome?’ (cf. p. 154). The only action above is by Julia in IV. ix. 1, before the palace, where (F₁) ‘Shee appeareth above, as at her chamber window’, and speaks thence.

[480] Sir G. G. has, besides the London and Barnet road (III. i), the houses of (a) Eugenia (I. i-iii; II; IV. i) and (b) Momford (I. iv; II; III. ii; IV. iii; V). Both have action within, none above. In IV. ii. 140 persons on the street are met by pages coming from Momford’s ‘on the other side’, but (b) is near enough to (a) to enable Clarence in II to overhear from it (as directed in I. iv. 202) a talk between Momford and Eugenia, probably in her porch, where (ii. 17) ‘Enter Wynnefred, Anabell, with their sowing workes and sing’, and Momford passes over to Clarence at ii. 216. Two contiguous rooms in (b) are used for V. i, ii (a single scene). One is Clarence’s; from the other he is overheard. They are probably both visible to the audience, and are divided by a curtain. At V. ii. 128 ‘He draws the curtains and sits within them’. Parrott adds other s.ds. for curtains at 191, 222, 275, which are not in Q₁.

[481] Gent. Usher has (a) Strozza’s (I. i; IV. i, iii; V. ii), where only a porch or courtyard is needed, and (b) Lasso’s (I. ii; II; III; IV. ii, iv; V. i, iii, iv), with a hall, overlooked by a balcony used in V. i. 1 and V. iii. 1, and called ‘this tower’ (V. iii. 5).

[482] The visible houses of All Fools are (a) Gostanzo’s, (b) Cornelio’s, and (c) the Half Moon tavern, where drawers set tables (V. ii. 1), but not necessarily inside. Both (a) and (b) are required in II. i and IV. i, and (a), (b), and (c) in III. i.

[483] M. d’Olive has (a) a hall at Court (II. ii); (b) Hieronyme’s chamber, also at Court (V. ii); (c) d’Olive’s chamber (III. ii; IV. ii); (d) Vaumont’s (I; II. i; IV. i; V. i); (e) St. Anne’s (III. i); of which (b) and (d) are used together in V. i, ii (a continuous scene), and probably (c) and (e) in III. i. There is action within at (a), (c), and (d), and above at (d), which has curtained windows lit by tapers (I. 48), at one of which a page above ‘looks out with a light’, followed by ladies who are bidden ‘come down’ (V. i. 26, 66).

[484] May Day has (a) Quintiliano’s, (b) Honorio’s, (c) Lorenzo’s, and (d) the Emperor’s Head, with an arbour (III. iii. 203). The only interior action is in Honorio’s hall (V). Windows above are used at Lorenzo’s, with a rope-ladder, over a terrace (III. iii), and at Quintiliano’s (III. ii). The action, which is rather difficult to track, consists largely of dodging about the pales of gardens and backsides (II. i. 180; III. iii. 120, 185; IV. ii. 83, 168). Clearly (a), (c), and (d) are all used in the latter part of II. i, where a new scene may begin at 45; and similarly (b), (c), and (d) in III. iii, and (b) and (c) in IV. ii.

[485] Widow’s Tears has (a) Lysander’s (I. i; II. i; III. i); (b) Eudora’s (I. ii; II. ii, iv; III. ii; IV. i); (c) Arsace’s (II. iii); all of which are required in I. iii; and (d), a tomb (IV. ii, iii; V). There is interior action in a hall of (b), watched from a ‘stand’ (I. i. 157; I. iii. 1) without, and the tomb opens and shuts; no action above.

[486] In the Conspiracy the Paris scenes are all at Court, vaguely located, and mainly of hall type, except III. iii, which is at an astrologer’s; the only Brussels scene is I. ii, at Court. The Tragedy is on the same lines, but for V. ii, in the Palace of Justice, with a ‘bar’, V. iii, iv, in and before the Bastille, with a scaffold, and I. ii and III. i at Dijon, in Byron’s lodging. In II. i. 3 there is ‘Music, and a song above’, for a mask.

[487] C. Altered, I. i. 1, ‘Iuniper a Cobler is discouered, sitting at worke in his shoppe and singing’; IV. v. 1, ‘Enter Iuniper in his shop singing’.

[488] C. A. I. v. 212; II. i; III. ii, iii, v, ‘Enter Iaques with his gold and a scuttle full of horse-dung’. ‘Jaques. None is within. None ouerlookes my wall’; IV. vii. 62, ‘Onion gets vp into a tree’; V. i. 42. In I. v action passes directly from the door of Farneze to that of Jaques.

[489] Malc. I. i. 11, ‘The discord ... is heard from ... Malevole’s chamber’ ... (19) ‘Come down, thou rugged cur’ ... (43) ‘Enter Malevole below’.

[490] Malc. V. ii. 163. This transition is both in Q₁ and Q₂, although Q₂ inserts a passage (164–94) here, as well as another (10–39) earlier in the scene, which entails a contrary transition from the palace to the citadel.

[491] Dutch C. has (a) Mulligrub’s (I. i; II. iii; III. iii) with action in a ‘parlour’ (III. iii. 53); (b) Franceschina’s (I. ii; II. ii; IV. iii, v; V. i), with action above, probably in a loggia before Franceschina’s chamber, where she has placed an ambush at V. i. 12, ‘She conceals them behind the curtain’; (c) Subboy’s (II. i; III. i; IV. i, ii, iv; V. ii), with a ring thrown from a window above (II. i. 56); (d) Burnish’s shop (III. ii; V. iii), with an inner and an outer door, for (III. ii. 1) ‘Enter Master Burnish [&c.] ... Cocledemoy stands at the other door ... and overhears them’.

[492] Soph. I. ii. 32, ‘The Ladies lay the Princess in a fair bed, and close the curtains, whilst Massinissa enters’ ... (35) ‘The Boys draw the curtains, discovering Sophonisba, to whom Massinissa speaks’ ... (235) ‘The Ladies draw the curtains about Sophonisba; the rest accompany Massinissa forth’.

[493] Soph. III. i. 117, ‘The attendants furnish the altar’.... (162) ‘They lay Vangue in Syphax’ bed and draw the curtains’ ... (167) Soph. ‘Dear Zanthia, close the vault when I am sunk’ ... (170) ‘She descends’ ... (207) ‘[Syphax] descends through the vault’.

[494] Soph. IV. i, ‘Enter Sophonisba and Zanthia, as out of a cave’s mouth’ ... (44) ‘Through the vaut’s mouth, in his night-gown, torch in his hand, Syphax enters just behind Sophonisba’.... (126) ‘Erichtho enters’ ... (192) ‘Infernal music, softly’ ... (202) ‘A treble viol and a base lute play softly within the canopy’ ... (212) ‘A short song to soft music above’ ... (215) ‘Enter Erichtho in the shape of Sophonisba, her face veiled, and hasteth in the bed of Syphax’ ... (216) ‘Syphax hasteneth within the canopy, as to Sophonisba’s bed’ ... (V. i. 1) ‘Syphax draws the curtains, and discovers Erichtho lying with him’ ... (24) ‘Erichtho slips into the ground’ ... (29) ‘Syphax kneels at the altar’ ... (40) ‘Out of the altar the ghost of Asdrubal ariseth’. There is no obvious break in IV. Erichtho promises to bring Sophonisba with music, and says ‘I go’ (181), although there is no Exit. We must suppose Syphax to return to his chamber through the vault either here or after his soliloquy at 192, when the music begins.

[495] E. Ho!, I. i. 1, ‘Enter Maister Touchstone and Quick-silver at severall dores.... At the middle dore, enter Golding, discovering a gold-smiths shoppe, and walking short turns before it’; II. i. 1, ‘Touchstone, Quick-silver[cf above and below, but Touchstone diff]; Goulding and Mildred sitting on eyther side of the stall’.

[496] At the end of II. ii, which is before Security’s, with Winifred ‘above’ (241), Quick-silver remains on the stage, for II. iii, before Petronel’s. The tavern is first used in III. iii, after which III. iv, of one 7–line speech only, returns to Security’s and ends the act. Billingsgate should be at some little distance from the other houses.

[497] E. Ho!, IV. i. 1, ‘Enter Slitgut, with a paire of oxe hornes, discovering Cuckolds-Haven above’.

[498] Clearly IV. i. 346–64 (ed. Schelling) has been misplaced in the Q_q; it is a final speech by Slitgut, with his Exit, but without his name prefixed, and should come after 296. The new scene begins with 297.

[499] E. Ho!, IV. i. 92, ‘Enter the Drawer in the Taverne before [i.e. in III. iii], with Wynnyfrid’; he will shelter her at ‘a house of my friends heere in S. Kath’rines’ ... (297) ‘Enter Drawer, with Wynifrid new attird’, who says ‘you have brought me nere enough your taverne’ and ‘my husband stale thither last night’. Security enters (310) with ‘I wil once more to this unhappy taverne’.

[500] Y. F. Gallants has (a) Frippery’s shop (I. i); (b) Katherine’s (I. ii; V. ii); (c) Mitre inn (II. iii); (d) Primero’s brothel (II. i; III. iv; V. i); (e) Tailby’s lodging (IV. i, ii); (f) Fitzgrave’s lodging (IV. iii); (g) Mrs. Newcut’s dining-room (IV. vii); (h) Paul’s (IV. vi). There is action within in all these, and in V. i, which is before (d), spies are concealed ‘overhead’ (124).

[501] In Isle of Gulls the park or forest holds a lodge for the duke (I. i), a ‘queach of bushes’ (II. ii), Diana’s oak (II. ii; IV. iv), Adonis’ bower (II. ii; V. i), a bowling green with arbours (II. iii-v), and the house of Manasses (IV. iii).

[502] Law Tricks has (a) the palace (I. i; II; IV. i, ii; V. ii), within which (p. 64, ed. Bullen) ‘Discover Polymetes in his study’, and (p. 78) ‘Polymetes in his study’; (b) an arrased chamber in Lurdo’s (III. i), entered by a vault (cf. p. 148, supra); (c) Countess Lurdo’s (III. ii); (d) the cloister vaults (V. i, ii) where (p. 90) ‘Countesse in the Tombe’. Action passes direct from (a) to (d) at p. 89.

[503] Fleir has (a) the courtesans’ (I. 26–188; II; III. 1–193; IV. 1–193); (b) Alunio’s (IV. 194–287); (c) Ferrio’s (V. 1–54); (d) a prison (V. 55–87); (e) a law court (V. 178–end); (f) possibly Susan and Nan’s (I. 189–500). Conceivably (c), (d), (e) are in some way combined: there is action within at (b), ‘Enter Signior Alunio the Apothecarie in his shop with wares about him’ (194), (d) ‘Enter Lord Piso ... in prison’ (55), and (e); none above.

[504] The action of F. Shepherdess needs a wood, with rustic cotes and an altar to Pan (I. ii, iii; V. i, iii), a well (III. i), and a bower for Clorin (I. i; II. ii; IV. ii, v; V. ii, v), where is hung a curtain (V. ii. 109).

[505] K. B. P. I. 230, ‘Enter Rafe like a Grocer in ’s shop, with two Prentices Reading Palmerin of England’; at 341 the action shifts to Merrithought’s, but the episode at Venturewell’s is said to have been ‘euen in this place’ (422), and clearly the two houses were staged together. Possibly the conduit head on which Ralph sings his May Day song (IV. 439) was also part of the permanent setting.

[506] K. B. P. II. 71–438; III. 1–524; IV. 76–151.

[507] The certain plays are Epicoene, Woman a Weathercock, Insatiate Countess, and Revenge of Bussy. I have noted two unusual s.ds.: W. a W. III. ii, ‘Enter Scudmore ... Scudmore passeth one doore, and entereth the other, where Bellafront sits in a Chaire, under a Taffata Canopie’; Insatiate C. III. i, ‘Claridiana and Rogero, being in a readiness, are received in at one anothers houses by their maids. Then enter Mendoza, with a Page, to the Lady Lentulus window’. There is some elaborate action with contiguous rooms in Epicoene, IV, V.

[508] Cf. pp. 98, 117.

[509] I have noted bedchamber scenes as ‘perhaps above’ at Paul’s in A Mad World, my Masters and A Trick to Catch the Old One, but the evidence is very slight and may be due to careless writing. In A Mad World, III. ii. 181, Harebrain is said to ‘walke below’; later ‘Harebrain opens the door and listens’. In A Trick, III. iv. 72, Dampit is told that his bed waits ‘above’, and IV. v is in his bedchamber.

[510] Cf. p. 116.

[511] Cf. Dr. Dodipoll, 1 Antonio and Mellida, The Fawn, and Bussy d’Ambois for Paul’s, and Sir Giles Goosecap and Fleir for Blackfriars. The early Court plays had similar scenes; cf. p. 43.

[512] C. Revels, ind. 54, ‘First the Title of his Play is Cynthias Revels, as any man (that hath hope to be sau’d by his Booke) can witnesse; the Scene Gargaphia’; K. B. P. ind. 10, ‘Now you call your play, The London Marchant. Downe with your Title, boy, downe with your Title’. For Wily Beguiled, cf. p. 126.

[513] Duff, xi.

[514] Ch. ix; cf. Mediaeval Stage, ii. 221.

[515] Pollard, Sh. F. 2. ‘Cum priuilegio’ is in the colophons of Rastell’s 1533 prints of Johan Johan, The Pardoner and the Friar, and The Wether, and ‘Cum priuilegio regali’ in those of his undated Gentleness and Nobility and Beauty and Good Properties of Women.

[516] Procl. 114, 122, 155, 176. The texts of 1529 and 1530 are in Wilkins, Concilia, iii. 737, 740; that of 1538 in Burnet, Hist. of Reformation, vi. 220; cf. Pollard, Sh. F. 6, and in 3 Library, x. 57. I find ‘Cum priuilegio ad imprimendum solum’ in the colophon of Acolastus (1540) and in both t.p. and colophon of Troas (1559); also ‘Seen and allowed &c.’ in the t.p. of Q₂ of Gorboduc (c. 1570), ‘Perused and Alowed’ at the end of Gammer Gurton’s Needle (1575), and ‘Seen and allowed, according to the order appointed in the Queenes maiesties Injunctions’ in the t.p. of The Glass of Government (1575). Otherwise these precautions became dead letters, so far as plays were concerned.

[517] Procl. 295 (part only in Wilkins, iv. 1; cf. Pollard, Sh. F. 7). The ‘daye of the printe’ is in the t.ps. of Thyestes (1560), Oedipus (1563), Gordobuc (1565), Four Ps (1569), and the colophon of Promos and Cassandra (1578); the year and month in the t.p. of King Darius (1565). Earlier printers had given the day in the colophons of Mundus et Infans (1522), Johan Johan (1533), and The Pardoner and the Friar (1533).

[518] Dasent, ii. 312; Procl. 395 (text in Hazlitt, E. D. S. 9; cf. Pollard, Sh. F. 8).

[519] Procl. 427 (cf. Pollard, Sh. F. 9); Procl. 461 (text in Wilkins, Concilia, iv. 128; Arber, i. 52); Procl. 488 (text in Arber, i. 92).

[520] Arber, i. xxviii, xxxii.

[521] Duff, xi.

[522] 1 Eliz. c. 1 (Statutes, iv. 1. 350).

[523] App. D, No. ix.

[524] App. D, No. xii.

[525] App. D, No. xiii.

[526] Procl. 638, 656, 659, 687, 688, 702, 740, 752, 775; Arber, i. 430, 452, 453, 461, 464, 474, 502; cf. McKerrow, xiii. A draft Bill by William Lambarde prepared in 1577–80 for the establishment of a mixed body of ecclesiastics and lawyers as Governors of the English Print (Arber, ii. 751) never became law.

[527] Pollard, Sh. F. 15; F. and Q. 4. Mr. Pollard stresses the difficulty of obtaining the hands of six Privy Councillors. Perhaps this is somewhat exaggerated. Six was the ordinary quorum of that body, which sat several times a week, while many of its members resided in court, were available for signing documents daily, and did in fact sign, in sixes, many, such as warrants to the Treasurer of the Chamber, of no greater moment than licences (cf. ch. ii). The signatures were of course ministerial, and would be given to a licence on the report of an expert reader. In any case the Injunction provides alternatives.

[528] Arber, iii. 690; Pollard, Sh. F. 23, ‘From 19^o Elizabethe [1576–7] till the Starre-chamber Decree 28^o Elizabeth [1586], many were licensed by the Master and Wardens, some few by the Master alone, and some by the Archbishop and more by the Bishop of London. The like was in the former parte of the Quene Elizabeth’s time. They were made a corporacon but by P. and M. Master Kingston, y^e now master, sayth that before the Decree the master and wardens licensed all, and that when they had any Divinity booke of muche importance they would take the advise of some 2 or 3 ministers of this towne’.

[529] The references in the following notes, unless otherwise specified, are to the vols. and pages of Arber’s Transcript.

[530] i. 106; ii. 879.

[531] i. 17, ‘No member or members of this Company shall hereafter knowingly imprint or cause to be imprinted any book, pamphlet, portraicture, picture or paper whereunto the law requires a license, without such license as by the law is directed for the imprinting of the same (1678)’; 22, ‘By ancient usage of this company, when any book or copy is duly entred in the register-book of this company, to any member or members of this company, such person to whom such entry is made, is, and always hath been reputed and taken to be proprietor of such book or copy, and ought to have the sole printing thereof (1681)’; 26, ‘It hath been the ancient usage of the members of this company, for the printer or printers, publisher or publishers of all books, pamphlets, ballads, and papers, (except what are granted by letters pattents under the great seal of England) to enter into the publick register-book of this company, remaining with the clerk of this company for the time being, in his or their own name or names, all books, pamphlets, ballads, and papers whatsoever, by him or them to be printed or published, before the same book, pamphlet, ballad, or paper is begun to be printed, to the end that the printer or publisher thereof may be known, to justifie whatsoever shall be therein contained, and have no excuse for the printing or publishing thereof (1682)’.

[532] Typical examples are i. 75 (1557–8), ‘To master John Wally these bokes called Welth and helthe, the treatise of the ffrere and the boy, stans puer ad mensam, another of youghte charyte and humylyte, an a. b. c. for cheldren in englesshe with syllabes, also a boke called an hundreth mery tayles ij^s’; 77 (1557–8), ‘To Henry Sutton to prynte an enterlude vpon the history of Jacobe and Esawe out of the xxvij chapeter of the fyrste boke of Moyses called Genyses and for his lycense he geveth to the howse iiij^d’; 128 (1559–60), ‘Recevyd of John Kynge for his lycense for pryntinge of these copyes Lucas urialis, nyce wanton, impaciens poverte, the proude wyves pater noster, the squyre of low degre and syr deggre graunted ye x of June anno 1560 ij^s’. The last becomes the normal form, but without the precise date.

[533] i. 155, 177, 204, 205, 208, 209, 231, 263, 268, 269, 272, 299, 302, 308, 312, 334, 336, 343, 378, 382, 385, 398, 399, 415. It is possible that the wardens, intent on finance, did not always transcribe into their accounts notes of authorizations. Only half a dozen of the above are ascribed to the archbishop, yet a mention of ‘one Talbot, servant of the archbishop of Canterbury, a corrector to the printers’ in an examination relative to the Ridolfi plot (Haynes-Murdin, ii. 30) shows that he had enough work in 1571 to justify the appointment of a regular deputy.

[534] ii. 35, 301. Collins remained clerk to 1613, when he was succeeded by Thomas Mountfort, who became a stationer (McKerrow, 196), and is of course to be distinguished from the prebendary of Paul’s and High Commissioner of a similar name, who acted as ‘corrector’ (cf. p. 168).

[535] i. 451 sqq.

[536] ii. 302, 359, 371, 377, 378, 414, &c.

[537] ii. 440, 444.

[538] ii. 334, ‘vnder the hande of Master Recorder’; 341, ‘vnder thandes of Doctour Redman and the wardens’; 342, ‘master Recorder and the wardens’; 346, ‘the lord maiour and the wardens’; 357, ‘sub manibus comitum Leicester et Hunsdon’; 372, ‘master Crowley’; 375, ‘master Vaughan’; 386, ‘master Secretary Wilson’; 403, ‘master Thomas Norton [Remembrancer]’; 404, ‘the Lord Chancellor’; 409, ‘master Cotton’; 417, ‘by aucthoritie from the Counsell’; 434, 435, ‘pervsed by master Crowley’; 447, ‘master Recorder’. For Talbot, cf. supra.

[539] ii. 304; cf. ii. 447 (1586), ‘Entred by commaundement from master Barker in wrytinge vnder his hand. Aucthorised vnder the Archbishop of Canterbury his hand’. ‘Licenced’, as well as ‘authorised’ or ‘alowed’, now sometimes (ii. 307, 447) describes the action of a prelate or corrector.

[540] ii. 366.

[541] ii. 428.

[542] ii. 424, ‘alwaies provided that before he print he shall get the bishop of London his alowance to yt’; 424, ‘upon condicon he obtaine the ordinaries hand thereto’; 429, ‘provyded alwaies and he is enioyned to gett this booke laufully alowed before he print yt’; 431, ‘yt is granted vnto him that if he gett the card of phantasie lawfullie alowed vnto him, that then he shall enioye yt as his owne copie’; 431, ‘so it be or shalbe by laufull aucthoritie lycenced vnto him’; 444, ‘to be aucthorised accordinge to her maiesties Iniunctions’. The wardens’ hands are not cited to any of these conditional entries.

[543] ii. 307, 308, 336, 353, 430, 438, 439.

[544] App. D, No. lxxvii; cf. Strype, Life of Whitgift, i. 268; Pierce, Introduction to Mar Prelate Tracts, 74. Confirmations and special condemnations of offending books are in Procl. 802, 812, 1092, 1362, 1383 (texts of two last in G. W. Prothero, Select Statutes, 169, 395).

[545] ii. 459, ‘Master Hartwell certifying it to be tollerated’; 460, ‘authorised or alowed as good vnder thand of Doctour Redman &c.’; 461, ‘certified by Master Hartwell to be alowed leavinge out the ij staues yat are crossed’; 464, ‘master Crowleys hand is to yt, as laufull to be printed’; 475, ‘aucthorised by tharchbishop of Canterbury as is reported by Master Cosin’; 479, ‘which as master Hartwell certifyithe by his hande to the written copie, my Lordes grace of Canterbury is content shall passe without anie thinge added to yt before it be pervsed’; 487, ‘sett downe as worthie to be printed vnder thand of Master Gravet’; 489, ‘Master Crowleys hand is to yt testyfying it to be alowable to ye print’; 491, ‘vnder the Bishop of London, Master Abraham Fraunce, and the wardens hands’; 493, ‘Master Hartwells hand beinge at the wrytten copie testifyinge his pervsinge of the same’; 493, ‘alowed vnder D^r Stallers hand as profitable to be printed’, &c.

[546] Lambe notes (iii. 690) in 1636 that on 30 June 1588, ‘the archbishop gave power to Doctor Cosin, Doctor Stallard, Doctor Wood, master Hartwell, master Gravett, master Crowley, master Cotton, and master Hutchinson, or any one of them, to license books to be printed: Or any 2 of those following master Judson, master Trippe, master Cole and master Dickens’. It will be observed that most of the first group of these had already acted as ‘correctors’, together with William Redman and Richard Vaughan, chaplains respectively to Archbishop Grindal and Bishop Aylmer. William Hutchinson and George Dickens were also chaplains to Aylmer. Hutchinson was in the High Commission of 1601. Richard Cosin was Dean of the Arches and a High Commissioner. Abraham Hartwell was secretary and Cole chaplain (Arber, ii. 494) to Archbishop Whitgift. Hutchinson, William Gravett, William Cotton, and George Dickins were or became prebendaries of St. Paul’s. Thomas Stallard was rector of All Hallows’ and St. Mary’s at Hill; Henry Tripp of St. Faith’s and St. Stephen’s, Walbrook. Most of this information is from Hennessy. Crowley was presumably Robert Crowley, vicar of St. Giles, Cripplegate, and himself a stationer, although his activity as a Puritan preacher and pamphleteer makes his appointment an odd one for Whitgift. Moreover, he died on 18 June 1588. There may have been two Robert Crowleys, or the archbishop’s list may have been drawn up earlier than Lambe dates it.

[547] Amongst the correctors who appear later in the Register are Richard Bancroft, John Buckeridge, and Michael Murgatroyd, secretaries or chaplains to Whitgift, Samuel Harsnett, William Barlow, Thomas Mountford, John Flower, and Zacharias Pasfield, prebendaries of St. Paul’s, William Dix, Peter Lyly, chaplain of the Savoy and brother of the dramatist, Lewis Wager, rector of St. James’s, Garlickhithe, and dramatist, John Wilson, and Gervas Nidd. Mountford and Dix were in the High Commission of 1601. I have not troubled to trace the full careers of these men in Hennessy and elsewhere. Thomas Morley (Arber, iii. 93) and William Clowes (ii. 80) seem to have been applied to as specialists on musical and medical books respectively.

[548] ii. 463, 464, 508, 509, ‘Alowed by the Bishop of London vnder his hand and entred by warrant of Master [warden] Denhams hand to the copie’.

[549] A typical entry is now

‘xiii^to die Augusti [1590].

Richard Jones. Entred vnto him for his Copye The twooe commicall discourses of Tomberlein the Cithian shepparde vnder the handes of Master Abraham Hartewell and the Wardens. vj^d.’

[550] iii. 677. A number of satirical books were condemned by name to be burnt, and direction given to the master and wardens, ‘That no Satyres or Epigrams be printed hereafter; That noe Englishe historyes be printed excepte they bee allowed by some of her maiesties privie Counsell; That noe playes be printed excepte they bee allowed by suche as haue aucthoritie; That all Nasshes bookes and Doctor Harvyes bookes be taken wheresoeuer they maye be found and that none of theire bookes be euer printed hereafter; That thoughe any booke of the nature of theise heretofore expressed shalbe broughte vnto yow vnder the hands of the Lord Archebisshop of Canterburye or the Lord Bishop of London yet the said booke shall not be printed vntill the master or wardens haue acquainted the said Lord Archbishop or the Lord Bishop with the same to knowe whether it be theire hand or no’.

[551] Hunting of Cupid (R. Jones, 26 July 1591), ‘provyded alwayes that yf yt be hurtfull to any other copye before lycenced, then this to be voyde’; Merchant of Venice (J. Robertes, 22 July 1598), ‘prouided, that yt bee not prynted by the said James Robertes or anye other whatsoeuer without lycence first had from the Right honorable the lord chamberlen’; Blind Beggar of Alexandria (W. Jones, 15 Aug. 1598), ‘vppon condition that yt belonge to noe other man’; Spanish Tragedy (transfer from A. Jeffes to W. White, 13 Aug. 1599), ‘saluo iure cuiuscunque’; Cloth Breeches and Velvet Hose (J. Robertes, 27 May 1600), ‘prouided that he is not to putt it in prynte without further and better aucthority’; A Larum for London (J. Robertes, 29 May 1600), ‘prouided that yt be not printed without further aucthoritie’; Antonio and Mellida (M. Lownes and T. Fisher, 24 Oct. 1601), ‘prouided that he gett laufull licence for yt’; Satiromastix (J. Barnes, 11 Nov. 1601), ‘vppon condicon that yt be lycensed to be printed’; Troilus and Cressida (J. Robertes, 7 Feb. 1603), ‘to print when he hath gotten sufficient aucthoritie for yt’; When You See Me, You Know Me (N. Butter, 12 Feb. 1605), ‘yf he gett good alowance for the enterlude of King Henry the 8^th before he begyn to print it. And then procure the wardens handes to yt for the entrance of yt: He is to haue the same for his copy’; Westward Hoe (H. Rocket, 2 March 1605), ‘prouided yat he get further authoritie before yt be printed’ (entry crossed out, and marked ‘vacat’); Dutch Courtesan (J. Hodgets, 26 June 1605), ‘provyded that he gett sufficient aucthoritie before yt be prynted’ (with later note, ‘This is alowed to be printed by aucthoritie from Master Hartwell’); Sir Giles Goosecap (E. Blount, 10 Jan. 1606), ‘prouided that yt be printed accordinge to the copie wherevnto Master Wilsons hand ys at’; Fawn (W. Cotton, 12 March 1606), ‘provided that he shall not put the same in prynte before he gett alowed lawfull aucthoritie’; Fleire (J. Trundle and J. Busby, 13 May 1606), ‘provided that they are not to printe yt tell they bringe good aucthoritie and licence for the doinge thereof’ (with note to transfer of Trundle’s share to Busby and A. Johnson on 21 Nov. 1606, ‘This booke is aucthorised by Sir George Bucke Master Hartwell and the wardens’).

[552] Buck’s hand first appears to Claudius Tiberius Nero (10 Mar. 1607), and thereafter to all London (but not University) plays up to his madness in 1622, except Cupid’s Whirligig (29 June 1607), which has Tilney’s, Yorkshire Tragedy (2 May 1608), which has Wilson’s, some of those between 4 Oct. 1608 and 10 March 1609, which have Segar’s, who is described as Buck’s deputy, and Honest Lawyer (14 Aug. 1615), which has Taverner’s.

[553] i. 45, 69, 93, 100, &c.; ii. 821, 843. In 1558–9, only, the heading is ‘Fynes for defautes for Pryntynge withoute lycense’.

[554] See the case of Jeffes and White in 1593 given in ch. xxiii, s.v. Kyd, Spanish Tragedy.

[555] i. 93, 100; ii. 853 (21 Jan. 1583), ‘This daye, Ric. Jones is awarded to paie x^s for a fine for printinge a thinge of the fall of the gallories at Paris Garden without licence and against commandement of the Wardens. And the said Jones and Bartlet to be committed to prison viz Bartlet for printing it and Jones for sufferinge it to be printed in his house’.

[556] ii. 824, 826, 832, 837, 849, 851.

[557] ii. 850.

[558] The testimony only relates strictly to the period 1576–86, which is nearly coincident with the slack ecclesiastical rule of Archbishop Grindal (1576–83). Parker (1559–75) may have been stricter, as Whitgift (1583–1604) certainly was.

[559] i. 95, ‘Master Waye had lycense to take the lawe of James Gonnell for a sarten dett due vnto hym’; 101, ‘Owyn Rogers for ... kepynge of a forren with out lycense ys fyned’.

[560] ii. 62.

[561] i. 322.

[562] v. lxxvi, ‘we do will and commande yowe that from hence forthe yowe suffer neither booke ballett nor any other matter to be published ... until the same be first seene and allowed either by us of her M^tes pryvie Counsell or by thee [sic] Commissioners for cawses ecclesyastical there at London’.

[563] The fee seems at first to have been 4d. for ‘entraunce’ (i. 94), with a further sum for books above a certain size at the rate of ‘euery iij leves a pannye’ (i. 97); plays ran from 4d. to 12d. But from about 1582 plays and most other books are charged a uniform fee of 6d., and only ballads and other trifles escape with 4d. Payments were sometimes in arrear; often there is no note of fee to a title; and in some of these cases the words ‘neuer printed’ have been added. On the other hand, the receipt of fees is sometimes recorded, and the title remains unentered; at the end of the entries for 1585–6 (ii. 448) is a memorandum that one of the wardens ‘brought in about iiij^s moore which he had receved for copies yat were not brought to be entred into the book this yere’. A similar item is in the wardens’ accounts for 1592–3 (i. 559). Fees were charged for entries of transferred as well as of new copies.

[564] Various formulae are used, such as ‘assigned vnto him’ (ii. 310, 351), ‘turned ouer to him’ (ii. 369), ‘putt ouer vnto him’ (ii. 431), ‘sold and sett ouer vnto him’ (ii. 350), ‘which he affyrmeth yat he bought of’ (ii. 351), ‘by assent of’ (ii. 415), ‘by thappointment of’ (ii. 667), ‘by the consent of’ (ii. 608), ‘which he bought of’ (ii. 325), &c. A transfer of ‘plaiebookes’ from Sampson Awdeley to John Charlewood on 15 Jan. 1582 (ii. 405) included, besides two plays, Youth and Impatient Poverty, which had been formerly registered, four others, Weather, Four Ps, Love, and Hickscorner, which had been printed before the Register came into existence. I suppose that Charlwood secured copyright in these, but was there any copyright before the entry of 1582?

[565] ii. 377. ‘Tollerated vnto him but not vnder the wardens handes’, 472, ‘beinge broughte to enter by John Woulf without the wardens handes to the copy’. Even in the seventeenth century ballads are sometimes entered without any citation of hands, and in 1643 it was the clerk and not the wardens whom Parliament authorized to license ‘small pamphletts, portratures, pictures, and the like’ (v. liv).

[566] ii. 365, ‘Translated by a French copie whereat was the bishop of Londons hand and master Harrisons’; 440, ‘by commaundement from master warden Newbery vnder his own handwrytinge on the backside of ye wrytten copie’; 443, ‘vnder his hand to the printed copie’; 449, ‘by warrant of master warden Bisshops hand to the former copie printed anno 1584’; 449, ‘by warrant of master warden Bishops hand to the wrytten copie’; 457, ‘by warrant of the wardens handes to thold copie’; 521, ‘with master Hartwelles hand to the Italyan Booke’; 534, ‘alowed vnder master Hartwelles hand, entred by warrant of the subscription of the wardens’, &c.

[567] ii. 434, ‘entred vpon a special knowen token sent from master warden Newbery’; 437, ‘allowed by tharchbishop of Canterbury, by testymonie of the Lord Chenie’; 460, ‘by the wardens appointment at the hall’; 504, ‘by warrant of a letter from Sir Ffrauncis Walsingham to the master and wardens of the Cumpanye’; 523, ‘alowed by a letter or note vnder master Hartwelles hand’; 524, ‘reported by master Fortescue to be alowed by the archbishop of Canterbury’; 633, ‘The note vnder master Justice Ffenners hand is layd vp in the wardens cupbord’; iii. 160, ‘John Hardie reporteth that the wardens are consentinge to thentrance thereof’, &c.

[568] An inventory of 1560 (i. 143) records ‘The nombre of all suche Copyes as was lefte in the Cubberde in our Counsell Chambre at the Compte ... as apereth in the whyte boke for that yere ... xliiij. Item in ballettes ... vij^e iiij^x and xvj’. From 1576 to 1579 ‘and a copie’ is often added to the notes of fees. The wardens accounts from 1574 to 1596 (i. 470, 581) regularly recite that they had ‘deliuered into the hall certen copies which haue been printed this yeare, as by a particular booke thereof made appearithe’.

[569] ii. 452, ‘Receaved of him for printinge 123 ballades which are filed vp in the hall with his name to euerie ballad’. The order of 1592 about Dr. Faustus (cf. ch. xxiii) suggests preliminary entry of claims in a Hall book distinct from the Clerk’s book.

[570] ii. 414, ‘Graunted by the Assistants’; 449, ‘entred in full court’; 462, ‘entred in plena curia’; 465, ‘intratur in curia’; 477, ‘by the whole consent of thassistantes’; 535, ‘aucthorysed to him at the hall soe that yt doe not belonge to any other of the Cumpanye’; 535, ‘This is allowed by the consent of the whole table’; 663, ‘in open court’; 344, ‘memorandum that this lycence is revoked and cancelled’; 457, ‘This copie is forbydden by the Archbishop of Canterbury’, with marginal note ‘Expunctum in plena curia’; 514, ‘so yat he first gett yt to be laufully and orderly alowed as tollerable to be printed and doo shewe thaucthoritie thereof at a Court to be holden’; 576, ‘Cancelled out of the book, for the vndecentnes of it in diuerse verses’; iii. 82, ‘Entred ... in full court ... vppon condicon that yt be no other mans copie, and that ... he procure it to be aucthorised and then doo shew it at the hall to the master and wardens so aucthorised’.

[571] The register indicates that even at the time of entry the fee sometimes remained unpaid. But probably it had to be paid before the stationer could actually publish with full security of copyright.

[572] Cf. p. 173.

[573] I note twenty-two cases (1586–1616) in which the earliest print known falls in a calendar year later than the next after that of entry: Spanish Tragedy, 1592–4 (N.D. probably earlier); Soliman and Perseda, 1592–9 (N.D. probably earlier); James IV, 1594–8; Famous Victories, 1594–8; David and Bethsabe, 1594–9; King Leire, 1594–1605 (re-entry 1605); Four Prentices, 1594–1615 (one or more earlier editions probable); Jew of Malta, 1594–1633 (re-entry 1632); Woman in the Moon, 1595–7; George a Greene, 1595–9; Merchant of Venice, 1598–1600 (conditional entry); Alarum for London, 1600–2 (conditional entry); Patient Grissell, 1600–3 (stayed by Admiral’s); Stukeley, 1600–5; Dr. Faustus, 1601–4; Englishmen for my Money, 1601–16; Troilus and Cressida, 1603–9 (re-entry 1609); Westward Ho!, 1605–7 (conditional entry cancelled); Antony and Cleopatra, 1608–23, (re-entry 1623); 2 Honest Whore, 1608–30 (re-entry 1630); Epicoene, 1610–20 (earlier edition probable); Ignoramus, 1615–30 (re-entry 1630). The glutting of the book-market in 1594 accounts for some of the delays.

[574] ii. 829 (1599), 833 (1601), 835 (1602), 837 (1603).

[575] I find no entries of Enough is as Good as a Feast (N.D.), Thyestes (1560), Hercules Furens (1561), Trial of Treasure (1567), God’s Promises (1577), perhaps reprints; of Orestes (1567); or of Abraham’s Sacrifice (1577) or Conflict of Conscience (1581), perhaps entered in 1571–5. The method of exhaustions suggests that Copland’s Robin Hood (N.D.) is the ‘newe playe called —— ’ which he entered on 30 Oct. 1560, and that Colwell’s Disobedient Child (N.D.) is the unnamed ‘interlude for boyes to handle and to passe tyme at christenmas’, which he entered in 1569–70.

[576] His plays were Sir Thomas Wyat (1607), Every Woman in her Humour (1609), Two Maids of Moreclack (1609), Roaring Girl (1611), White Devil (1612), and Insatiate Countess (1613).

[577] In Nice Wanton a prayer for a king has been altered by sacrificing a rhyme into one for a queen. The prayer of Impatient Poverty seems also to have been for Mary and clumsily adapted for Elizabeth. Wager’s Enough is as Good as a Feast may be Elizabethan or pre-Elizabethan. Jacob and Esau (1568), entered in 1557–8, is pre-Elizabethan.

[578] Reprints of 1559–85 include Heywood’s Weather and Four Ps, printed in England before the establishment of the Stationers’ Register, and Bale’s Three Laws and God’s Promises, printed, probably abroad, in 1538. John Walley, who seems to have printed 1545–86, failed to date his books. I cannot therefore say whether his reprints of the pre-Register Love and Hickscorner, or the prints of Youth and Wealth and Health (if it is his), which he entered in 1557–8, are Elizabethan or not.

[579] Cf. App. L.

[580] Cf. App. B. I classify as follows: (a) Companies of Men: (i) Morals (3), Delight, Beauty and Housewifery, Love and Fortune; (ii) Classical (7), Tully, A Greek Maid, Four Sons of Fabius, Sarpedon, Telomo, Phillida and Corin, Rape of the Second Helen; (iii) Romantic (17), Lady Barbara, Cloridon and Radiamanta, Predor and Lucia, Mamillia, Herpetulus the Blue Knight and Perobia, Philemon and Philecia, Painter’s Daughter, Solitary Knight, Irish Knight, Cynocephali, Three Sisters of Mantua, Knight in the Burning Rock, Duke of Milan and Marquess of Mantua, Portio and Demorantes, Soldan and Duke, Ferrar, Felix and Philiomena; (iv) Farce (1), The Collier; (v) Realistic (2), Cruelty of a Stepmother, Murderous Michael; (vi) Antic Play (1); (vii) Episodes (2), Five Plays in One, Three Plays in One; (b) Companies of Boys: (i) Morals (6), Truth, Faithfulness and Mercy, ‘Vanity’, Error, Marriage of Mind and Measure, Loyalty and Beauty, Game of Cards; (ii) Classical (12), Iphigenia, Ajax and Ulysses, Narcissus, Alcmaeon, Quintus Fabius, Siege of Thebes, Perseus and Andromeda, ‘Xerxes’, Mutius Scaevola, Scipio Africanus, Pompey, Agamemnon and Ulysses; (iii) Romantic (4), Paris and Vienna, Titus and Gisippus, Alucius, Ariodante and Genevora; (c) Unknown Companies: (i) Morals (5), As Plain as Can Be, Painful Pilgrimage, Wit and Will, Prodigality, ‘Fortune’; (ii) Classical (2), Orestes, Theagenes and Chariclea; (iii) Romantic (1), King of Scots; (iv) Farces (2), Jack and Jill, Six Fools. The moral and romantic elements meet also in the list of pieces played by companies of men at Bristol from 1575 to 1579: The Red Knight, Myngo, What Mischief Worketh in the Mind of Man, The Queen of Ethiopia, The Court of Comfort, Quid pro Quo (Murray, ii. 213).

[581] Love and Fortune was printed in the next period.

[582] Mary Magdalen; Conflict of Conscience. ‘Compiled’ goes back to Bale, Heywood, and Skelton. Earlier still, Everyman is not so much a play as ‘a treatyse ... in maner of a morall playe’.

[583] The prologue of Mary Magdalen has ‘we haue vsed this feate at the uniuersitie’.

[584] Wynkyn de Worde calls Mundus et Infans a ‘propre newe interlude’, and the advertising title-page is well established from the time of Rastell’s press.

[585] Conflict of Conscience; cf. Damon and Pythias, the prologue of which, though it had been a Court play, ‘is somewhat altered for the proper use of them that hereafter shall haue occasion to plaie it, either in Priuate, or open Audience’. The castings, for four, five, or six players, occur in King Darius, Like Will to Like, Longer Thou Livest, Mary Magdalen, New Custom, Tide Tarrieth for No Man, Trial of Treasure, Conflict of Conscience. I find a later example from the public stage in Fair Maid of the Exchange, which has ‘Eleauen may easily acte this comedie’, and a division of parts accordingly. There are pre-Elizabethan precedents, while Jack Juggler is ‘for Chyldren to playe’, the songs in Ralph Roister Doister are for ‘those which shall vse this Comedie or Enterlude’, and The Four Elements has directions for reducing the time of playing at need from an hour and a half to three-quarters of an hour, and the note ‘Also yf ye lyst ye may brynge in a dysgysynge’. Similarly Robin Hood is ‘for to be played in Maye games’. That books were in fact bought to act from is shown by entries in the accounts of Holy Trinity, Bungay, for 1558 of 4d. for ‘the interlude and game booke’ and 2s. for ‘writing the partes’ (M. S. ii. 343). A book costing only 4d. must clearly have been a print.

[586] There are prayers in All for Money, Apius and Virginia, Common Conditions, Damon and Pythias, Disobedient Child (headed ‘The Players ... kneele downe’), King Darius, Like Will to Like, Longer Thou Livest, New Custom, Trial of Treasure (epilogue headed ‘Praie for all estates’). Mary Magdalen and Tide Tarrieth for No Man substitute a mere expression of piety. I do not agree with Fleay, 57, that such prayers are evidence of Court performance. The reverence and epilogue to the Queen in the belated moral of Liberality and Prodigality (1602), 1314, is different in tone. The Pedlar’s Prophecy, also belated as regards date of print, adds to the usual prayer for Queen and council ‘And that honorable T. N. &c. of N. chiefly: Whom as our good Lord and maister, found we haue’. No doubt any strolling company purchasing the play would fill up the blanks to meet their own case. Probably both the Queen and estates and the ‘lord’ of a company were prayed for, whether present or absent, so long as the custom lasted; cf. ch. x, p. 311; ch. xviii, p. 550.

[587] Cf. e. g. Mary Magdalen (which refers on the title-page to those who ‘heare or read the same’), 56, 1479, 1743; Like Will to Like, sig. C, ‘He ... speaketh the rest as stammering as may be’, C ij, ‘Haunce sitteth in the chaire, and snorteth as though he were fast a sleep’, E ij^v, ‘Nichol Newfangle lieth on the ground groning’, &c., &c.

[588] Three Ladies of London (1584), Three Lords and Three Ladies of London (1590), Pedlar’s Prophecy (1595), Contention of Liberality and Prodigality (1602). Lingua (1607) is a piece of academic archaism. I cannot believe that the manuscript fragment of Love Feigned and Unfeigned belongs to the seventeenth century. Of course there are moral elements in other plays, such as Histriomastix, especially in dumb-shows and inductions.

[589] There is little evidence as to the price at which prints were sold; what there is points to 6d. for a quarto. A ‘testerne’ is given in the epistle as the price of Troilus and Cressida, and in Middleton, Mayor of Quinborough, v. i, come thieves who ‘only take the name of country comedians to abuse simple people with a printed play or two, which they bought at Canterbury for sixpence’. The statement that the First Folio cost £1 only rests on Steevens’s report of a manuscript note in a copy not now known; cf. McKerrow in Sh. England, ii. 229.

[590] Cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Shakespeare.

[591] Cf. App. L. In the above allocation Leir and Satiromastix, to each of which two companies have equal claims, are counted twice.

[592] Greg, Henslowe, ii. 148, gives a full list; cf. ch. xiii, s.vv. Queen’s, Sussex’s, Strange’s, Admiral’s, Pembroke’s, Worcester’s.

[593] Cf. App. M. Can Moseley have been trying in some way to secure plays of which he possessed manuscripts from being acted without his consent? On 30 Aug. 1660 (Variorum, iii. 249; Herbert, 90) he wrote to Sir Henry Herbert, denying that he had ever agreed with the managers of the Cockpit and Whitefriars that they ‘should act any playes that doe belong to mee, without my knowledge and consent had and procured’.

[594] Printed from Addl. MS. 27632, f. 43, by F. J. Furnivall in 7 N. Q. (1890), ix. 382. Harington died in 1612. An earlier leaf (30) has the date ‘29^th of Jan. 1609’. The latest datable play in the collection is The Turk (1610, S. R. 10 Mar. 1609). There are four out of six plays printed in 1609, as well as The Faithful Shepherdess (N.D.), of which on this evidence we can reasonably put the date of publication in 1609 or 1610.

[595] Cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Heywood.

[596] M. S. C. i. 364; Variorum, iii. 159. The King’s men played The Malcontent, probably after its first issue in 1604, as a retort for the appropriation of Jeronimo by its owners, the Queen’s Revels. The earliest extant print of 1 Jeronimo is 1605, but the play, which is not in S. R., may have been printed earlier. The Chapel boys seem to have revived one at least of Lyly’s old Paul’s plays in 1601. The Chamberlain’s adopted Titus Andronicus, which had been Sussex’s, and Shakespeare revised for them Taming of A Shrew and The Contention, which had been Pembroke’s, and based plays which were new from the literary, and in the case of the last also from the publisher’s, standpoint on the Troublesome Reign of John and the Famous Victories of Henry V, which had been the Queen’s, and upon King Leir. But of course Sussex’s, Pembroke’s, and the Queen’s had broken.

[597] Henslowe, i. 119.

[598] A single printer, Thomas Creede, entered or printed ten plays between 1594 and 1599, all of which he probably acquired in 1594, although he could not get them all in circulation at once. These include four (T. T. of Rich. III, Selimus, Famous Victories, Clyomon and Clamydes) from the Queen’s; it is therefore probable that some of those on whose t.ps. no company is named (Looking Glass, Locrine, Pedlar’s Prophecy, James IV, Alphonsus) were from the same source. The tenth, Menaechmi, was not an acting play.

[599] Pollard, Sh. F. 44; cf. ch. ix.

[600] The Folio editors of Shakespeare condemn the Quartos, or some of them, as ‘stolne, and surreptitious copies’; ‘piratical’, although freely used by Mr. Pollard and others, is not a very happy term, since no piracy of copyright is involved. The authorized Q₂ of Roxana (1632) claims to be ‘a plagiarii unguibus vindicata’.

[601] Introduction, xxxvi of his edition.

[602] R. B. McKerrow in Bibl. Soc. Trans. xii. 294; J. D. Wilson, The Copy for Hamlet 1603 and the Hamlet Transcript 1593 (1918).

[603] C. Dewischeit, Shakespeare und die Stenographie (Sh.-Jahrbuch, xxxiv. 170); cf. Lee, 113, quoting Sir G. Buck’s Third Universitie of England (1612; cf. ch. iii), ‘They which know it [brachygraphy] can readily take a Sermon, Oration, Play, or any long speech, as they are spoke, dictated, acted, and uttered in the instant’.

[604] Pollard, Sh. F. 48; F. and Q. 64. More recently A. W. Pollard and J. D. Wilson have developed a theory (T. L. S. Jan.–Aug. 1919) that the ‘bad quartos’ rest upon pre-Shakespearian texts partly revised by Shakespeare, of which shortened transcripts had been made for a travelling company in 1593, and which had been roughly adapted by an actor-reporter so as to bring them into line with the later Shakespearian texts current at the time of publication. Full discussion of this theory belongs to a study of Shakespeare. The detailed application of it in J. D. Wilson, The Copy for Hamlet 1603 and the Hamlet Transcript 1593 (1918), does not convince me that Shakespeare had touched the play in 1593, although I think that the reporter was in a position to make some slight use of a pre-Shakespearian Hamlet. And although travelling companies were doubtless smaller than the largest London companies (cf. chh. xi and xiii, s.v. Pembroke’s), there is no external evidence that special ‘books’ were prepared for travelling. For another criticism of the theory, cf. W. J. Lawrence in T. L. S. for 21 Aug. 1919. Causes other than travelling might explain the shortening of play texts: prolixity, even in an experienced dramatist (cf. t.p. of Duchess of Malfi), the approach of winter afternoons, an increased popular demand for jigs.

[605] Cf. G. Wither, Schollers Purgatory (c. 1625), 28, ‘Yea, by the lawes and Orders of their Corporation, they can and do setle upon the particuler members thereof a perpetuall interest in such Bookes as are Registred by them at their Hall, in their several Names: and are secured in taking the ful benefit of those books, better then any Author can be by vertue of the Kings Grant, notwithstanding their first Coppies were purloyned from the true owner, or imprinted without his leave’.

[606] Pollard, F. and Q. 10. Mr. Pollard seems to suggest (F. and Q. 3) that copyright in a printed book did not hold as against the author. He cites the case of Nashe’s Pierce Pennilesse, but there seems no special reason to assume that in this case, or in those of Gorboduc and Hamlet, the authorized second editions were not made possible by an arrangement, very likely involving blackmail, with the pirate.

[607] Letter in Grosart, Poems of Sidney (1877), i. xxiii. Pollard, F. and Q. 8, says that on other occasions Sidney’s friends approached the Lord Treasurer and the Star Chamber.

[608] Pollard, F. and Q. 7, 11. I am not sure that the appearance of Bacon’s name can be regarded as a recognition of the principle of author’s copyright. He may have been already in the High Commission; he was certainly in that of 1601.

[609] Pollard, Sh. F. 49, 51, speaks of Burby as ‘regaining the copyright’ by his publications, and as, moreover, saving his sixpences ‘as a license was only required for new books’. But surely there was no copyright, as neither Danter nor Burby paid for an entry. I take it that when, on 22 Jan. 1607, R. J. and L. L. L. were entered to Nicholas Ling, ‘by direccõn of a Court and with consent of Master Burby in wrytinge’, the entry of the transfer secured the copyright for the first time.

[610] Arber, iii. 37. The ink shows that there are two distinct entries.

[611] Fleay, L. and W. 40; Furness, Much Ado, ix.

[612] Pollard, F. and Q. 66; Sh. F. 44.

[613] Roberts did not print the 1603 Hamlet, although he did that of 1604; but it must have been covered by his entry of 1602, and this makes it a little difficult to regard him (or Blount in 1609) as the ‘agent’ of the Chamberlain’s.

[614] Pollard, F. and Q. 66; Sh. F. 45.

[615] There are analogies in Taming of the Shrew, 2, 3 Henry VI, and King John, which were not entered in S. R. with the other unprinted plays in 1623, and were probably regarded as covered by copyright in the plays on which they were based, although, as a matter of fact, the Troublesome Reign was itself not entered.

[616] Pollard, Sh. F. 53.

[617] They had risks to run. The Star Chamber fined and imprisoned William Buckner, late chaplain to the archbishop, for licensing Prynne’s Histriomastix in 1633 (Rushworth, Historical Collections, ii. 234).

[618] M. S. C. i. 364; Variorum, iii. 159.

[619] Moseley’s Epistle to F₁ (1647) of Beaumont and Fletcher says, ‘When these Comedies and Tragedies were presented on the Stage, the Actours omitted some Scenes and Passages (with the Authour’s consent) as occasion led them; and when private friends desir’d a Copy, they then (and justly too) transcribed what they Acted’.

[620] See Epistles to Armin, Two Maids of Moreclack; Chapman, Widow’s Tears; Heywood, Rape of Lucrece, Golden Age; Marston, Malcontent; Middleton, Family of Love.

[621] Jonson, E. M. O. (1600), ‘As it was first composed by the Author B. I. Containing more than hath been publikely spoken or acted’; Barnes, Devil’s Charter (1607), ‘As it was plaide.... But more exactly reuewed, corrected, and augmented since by the Author, for the more pleasure and profit of the Reader’; Webster, Duchess of Malfi (1623), ‘with diuerse things Printed, that the length of the Play would not beare in the Presentment’.

[622] Pollard, Sh. F. 57; F. and Q. 117.

[623] The editors of the Shakespeare F₁ claim that they are replacing ‘stolne, and surreptitious copies’ by plays ‘absolute in their numbers, as he conceiued them’, and that ‘wee haue scarse receiued from him a blot in his papers’; and those of the Beaumont and Fletcher F₁ say they ‘had the Originalls from such as received them from the Authors themselves’ and lament ‘into how many hands the Originalls were dispersed’. The same name ‘original’ was used for the authoritative copy of a civic miracle-play; cf. Mediaeval Stage, ii. 143.

[624] The manuscripts of Sir John Barnevelt (Addl. MS. 18653), Believe As You List (Egerton MS. 2828), The Honest Man’s Fortune (Dyce MS. 9), The Faithful Friends (Dyce MS. 10), and The Sisters (Sion College MS.) appear to be play-house copies, with licensing corrections, and in some cases the licences endorsed, and some of them may be in the authors’ autographs; cf. Pollard, Sh. F. 59; Mönkemeyer, 72. Several of the copies in Egerton MS. 1994, described by F. S. Boas in 3 Library (July 1917), including that of 1 Richard II, are of a similar type.

[625] Sir Henry Herbert noted in his office-book in 1633 (Variorum, iii. 208), ‘The Master ought to have copies of their new playes left with him, that he may be able to shew what he hath allowed or disallowed’, but it was clearly not the current practice. In 1640 (Variorum, iii. 241) he suppressed an unlicensed play, and noted, ‘The play I cald for, and, forbiddinge the playinge of it, keepe the booke’, which suggests that only one copy existed.

[626] Greg, Henslowe Papers, 155, prints it; cf. 1 Antonio and Mellida, ind. 1, ‘Enter ... with parts in their hands’; Wily Beguiled, prol. 1, ‘Where are these paltrie Plaiers? stil poaring in their papers and neuer perfect?’ By derivation, the words assigned to an actor became his ‘part’; cf. Dekker, News from Hell (1606, Works, ii. 144), ‘with pittifull action, like a Plaier, when hees out of his part’.

[627] In 1623 Herbert re-allowed The Winter’s Tale, ‘thogh the allowed booke was missinge’, and in 1625 The Honest Man’s Fortune, ‘the originall being lost’ (Variorum, iii. 229).

[628] Cf. App. N.

[629] The handing over of ‘papers’ is referred to in several letters to Henslowe; cf. Henslowe Papers, 56, 69, 75, 76, 81, 82.

[630] He sends Henslowe an instalment ‘fayr written’, and on another occasion says, ‘I send you the foule sheet and y^e fayr I was wrighting as your man can testify’ (Henslowe Papers, 72, 78).

[631] Pollard, Sh. F. 62.

[632] Birth of Hercules, 3, ‘Notae marginales inseruiant dirigendae histrion[ic]ae’; Nashe, Summer’s Last Will and Testament, 1813, ‘You might haue writ in the margent of your play-booke, Let there be a fewe rushes laide in the place where Back-winter shall tumble, for feare of raying his cloathes: or set downe, Enter Back-winter, with his boy bringing a brush after him, to take off the dust if need require. But you will ne’re haue any wardrobe wit while you live. I pray you holde the booke well, that we be not non plus in the latter end of the play.’

[633] ‘Exit’ and ‘Exeunt’ soon became the traditional directions for leaving the stage, but I find ‘Exite omnes’ in Peele, Edw. I, 1263.

[634] Mönkemeyer, 73.

[635] T. N. K. I. iii. 69, ‘2 Hearses ready with Palamon: and Arcite: the 3 Queenes. Theseus: and his Lordes ready’, i.e. ready for I. iv, which begins 42 lines later; and again I. iv. 29, ‘3 Hearses ready’, for I. v, beginning 24 lines later. So too Bussy D’Ambois (1641, not 1607 ed.), I. i. 153, ‘Table, Chesbord and Tapers behind the Arras’, ready for I. ii.

[636] A Shrew, ind. i, ‘San.’ for speaker; The Shrew (F₁), ind. i. 88, ‘Sincklo’ for speaker; 3 Hen. VI (F₁), I. ii. 48, ‘Enter Gabriel’; III. i. 1, ‘Enter Sinklo, and Humfrey’; R. J. (Q₂), IV. v. 102, ‘Enter Will Kemp’; M. N. D. (F₁), V. i. 128, ‘Tawyer with a Trumpet before them’; 1 Hen. IV (Q₁), I. ii. 182 (text, not s.d.), ‘Falstaffe, Haruey, Rossill, and Gadshil, shall rob those men that we haue already waylaid’ (cf. II. ii); 2 Hen. IV (Q₁), V. iv. 1, ‘Enter Sincklo and three or foure officers’; M. Ado (F₁), II. iii. 38, ‘Enter Prince, Leonato, Claudio and Iacke Wilson’; M. Ado (Q and F), IV. ii, ‘Cowley’ and ‘Kemp’ for speakers; T.N.K. v. 3, ‘T. Tucke: Curtis’, IV. ii. 75, ‘Enter Messenger, Curtis’; 1 Antonio and Mellida, IV. i. 30, ‘Enter Andrugio, Lucio, Cole, and Norwood’; for other examples, cf. pp. 227, 271, 285, 295, 330, and vol. iv, p. 43. The indications of speakers by the letters E. and G. in All’s Well, II. i; III. i, ii, vi, may have a similar origin. The names of actors are entered in the ‘plots’ after those of the characters represented (cf. Henslowe Papers, 127).

[637] Alphonsus, prol. 1, ‘after you haue sounded thrise’; 1938, ‘Exit Venus. Or, if you can conueniently, let a chaire come down from the top of the stage’; James IV, 1463, ‘Enter certaine Huntsmen, if you please, singing’; 1931, ‘Enter, from the widdowes house, a seruice, musical songs of marriages, or a maske, or what prettie triumph you list’; Three Lords and Three Ladies of London, sig. C, ‘Here Simp[licitie] sings first, and Wit after, dialoguewise, both to musicke if ye will’; Locrine, I. i. 1, ‘Let there come foorth a Lion running after a Beare or any other beast’; Death of R. Hood, III. ii, ‘Enter or aboue [Hubert, Chester]’; 2 Hen. VI, IV. ii. 33, ‘Enter Cade [etc.] with infinite numbers’; IV. ix. 9, ‘Enter Multitudes with Halters about their Neckes’; T. A. I. i. 70, ‘as many as can be’; Edw. I, 50, ‘Enter ... and others as many as may be’; Sir T. More, sc. ix. 954, ‘Enter ... so many Aldermen as may’; What You Will, v. 193, ‘Enter as many Pages with torches as you can’.

[638] Mönkemeyer, 63, 91.

[639] Pollard, Sh. F. 79.

[640] e.g. R. J. (Q₁), III. i. 94, ‘Tibalt vnder Romeos arme thrusts Mercutio in and flyes’; III. ii. 32, ‘Enter Nurse wringing her hands, with the ladder of cordes in her lap’; IV. v. 95, ‘They all but the Nurse goe foorth, casting Rosemary on her and shutting the Curtens’.

[641] Cf. ch. xxi, pp. 133, 136.

[642] Pollard, Sh. F. 71; Van Dam and Stoffel, William Shakespeare, Prosody and Text, 274; Chapters on English Printing, Prosody, and Pronunciation.

[643] R. B. McKerrow, introd. xiv, to Barnes, Devil’s Charter.

[644] Pollard, Sh. F. 74; cf. his introd. to A New Shakespeare Quarto (1916).

[645] Epistles to Heywood, Rape of Lucrece; Marston, Malcontent, Fawn; Middleton, Family of Love. In Father Hubburd’s Tales Middleton says, ‘I never wished this book a better fortune than to fall into the hands of a truespelling printer’. Heywood, in an Epistle to Apology for Actors (1612), praises the honest workmanship of his printer, Nicholas Okes, as against that of W. Jaggard, who would not let him issue errata of ‘the infinite faults escaped in my booke of Britaines Troy, by the negligence of the Printer, as the misquotations, mistaking of sillables, misplacing halfe lines, coining of strange and neuer heard of words’.

[646] ‘Proofs’ and ‘revises’ had come into use before 1619, for Jaggard, criticized by Ralph Brooke for his ill printing of Brooke’s Catalogue of Nobility (1619), issued a new edition as A Discoverie of Errors in the First Edition of the Catalogue of Nobility (1622), regretting that his workmen had not given Brooke leave to print his own faulty English, and saying, ‘In the time of this his vnhappy sicknesse, though hee came not in person to ouer-looke the Presse, yet the Proofe, and Reuiewes duly attended him, and he perused them (as is well to be iustifyed) in the maner he did before’; cf. p. 261.

[647] Cf. pp. 106, 107, 117, 127.

[648] e.g. Cynthia’s Revels (F₁), ‘The Scene Gargaphie’; Philaster (F₂), ‘The scene being in Cicilie’; Coxcomb (F₂), ‘The Scene; England, France’ (but in fact there are no scenes in France!).

[649] The Marriage of Wit and Wisdom has no acts, but nine scenes. The latish Jacob and Esau, Respublica, Misogonus, Conflict of Conscience have acts and scenes.

[650] Ralph Roister Doister, Gammer Gurton’s Needle, Gorboduc, Gismund of Salerne, Misfortunes of Arthur, Jocasta, Supposes, Bugbears, Two Italian Gentlemen, Glass of Government, Promos and Cassandra, Arraignment of Paris; so, too, as a rule, University plays. Dido and Love and Fortune, like the later private theatre plays, show acts only.

[651] Devil’s Charter, Duchess of Malfi, Philotas, Sir Giles Goosecap, The Turk, Liberality and Prodigality, Percy’s plays, The Woman Hater, Monsieur Thomas, 2 Antonio and Mellida.

[652] Acts and scenes are marked in Tamburlaine and Locrine; acts, or one or more of them only, sometimes with the first scene, in Jack Straw, Battle of Alcazar, Wounds of Civil War, King Leire, Alphonsus, James IV, Soliman and Perseda, Spanish Tragedy, John a Kent and John a Cumber; a few scenes without acts in Death of Robin Hood. These exceptions may indicate neo-classic sympathies in the earlier group of scholar playwrights; some later plays, e.g. of Beaumont and Fletcher, have partial divisions. The acts in Spanish Tragedy and Jack Straw are four only; Histriomastix, a private theatre play, has six. Where there are no formal divisions, they are sometimes replaced by passages of induction or dumb-shows.

[653] Cf. ch. xxi.

[654] Pollard, F. and Q. 124; Sh. F. 79.

[655] Creizenach, 248.

[656] Melville’s Diary (Bannatyne Club), 22.

[657] R. Hudson, Memorials of a Warwickshire Parish, 141.

[658] Lodge, Defence of Plays, 7.

[659] Collier, Memoirs of Alleyn, 133.

[660] Plays Confuted, 167

[661] School of Abuse, 40.

[662] Lodge, Defence of Plays, 28.

[663] Plays Confuted, 165.

[664] Repentance (Grosart, xii. 177).

[665] Grosart, xii. 134.

[666] Ibid. viii. 128.

[667] Ibid. vii. 7.

[668] App. M; cf. E. Köppel (Archiv, cii. 357); W. Bang (E. S. xxviii. 229).

[669] Grosart, vi. 86, 119.

[670] Grosart, vi. 31.

[671] Sig. A 3^v. Farewell to Folly was entered on S. R. on 11 June 1587 (Arber, ii. 471), but the first extant edition of 1591 was probably the first published, and the use of the term ‘Martinize’ in the preface dates it as at least post-1589 (cf. Simpson, ii. 349).

[672] Grosart, xi. 75.

[673] Strange News (Nashe, i. 271); cf. Pierce Penniless; his Supplication to the Devil (Nashe, i. 198) and Have With You to Saffron Walden (Nashe, iii. 130). The passage about ‘make-plays’ is in an Epistle only found in some copies of The Lamb of God (Nashe, v. 180).

[674] This allusion is not in the extant 1592 editions of the pamphlet (Grosart, xi. 206, 258).

[675] Ed. Grosart, i. 167.

[676] Ed. McKerrow, i. 247.

[677] Ed. Gosart, ii. 222, 322.

[678] Ed. McKerrow, iii. 131.

[679] Arber, ii. 620.

[680] App. C, No. xlviii.

Transcriber’s Notes:
1. Obvious printers’, punctuation and spelling errors have been corrected silently.
2. Original spelling has been retained where appropriate.
3. Some hyphenated and non-hyphenated versions of the same words have been retained as in the original.
4. The heading hierarchy used follows the original publication and consequently in some chapters the h2 level has been skipped.