Signs extending over a door would be readily seen from the opposite end of the stage whether or not the doors were oblique. What this interpretation comes down to is that insistence on opposite doors reveals a realistic conception of staging. Out of oblique doors characters emerge already facing each other or the action. They can respond “naturally” and “realistically.” But, if the doors are flush with the façade, an “unnatural” formal entrance results.
The last argument for oblique doors is historical. Lawrence claims that they were introduced into the Globe from the second Blackfriars theater (1598–1600). Adams argues that they were developed when the Theatre’s frame was adapted for the Globe. Neither offers sufficiently convincing proof to counter-balance the evidence of the Swan drawing which clearly shows flush doors. Therefore, though either oblique or flush doors could accommodate the Globe plays, flush doors were more likely to have been employed.
We can also dismiss the notion occasionally put forth that the doors consistently represented entrances from particular places, such as Olivia’s house in Twelfth Night or Page’s and Ford’s houses in The Merry Wives of Windsor. The difficulty of maintaining a continuing identification of one place with one entrance is obvious in the latter play. The comedy opens with the entrance of Justice Shallow, Sir Hugh Evans, and Slender. Their point of entry (marked A for identification) is unspecified and therefore might be in the center. Having been insulted by Falstaff, whom he expects to find at Page’s house, Shallow calls upon the Windsor worthy who emerges from his house (entry B). The remaining entrances and exits in scene i and in the brief scene ii maintain these associations. Scene iii occurs at the Garter. It is possible to confine all in-goings and out-goings to one door (entry C). But with scene iv all previous associations are shattered. The place is Dr. Caius’ house. Entry A, B, or C must represent Caius’ house. The neutral entry A can be selected. But in the course of the scene Simple is forced to hide from Caius. He cannot exit at A, for Caius is about to enter at that point. Thus he must choose B (Page’s house) or C (the Garter). A continuation of this analysis would only confirm how hopeless it is to expect any correlation between an entry and a specific locality for more than one scene. Further evidence exists in Twelfth Night that the doors did not have locational significance. At the conclusion of Act I, scene v, Olivia sends Malvolio after Cesario to tell “him” that she’ll have none of “his” ring. After an intervening scene, Malvolio encounters Cesario. His first line is, “Were not you ev’n now with the Countess Olivia?” Simple realism would demand that Malvolio, endeavoring to catch Cesario, would follow “him” on stage. That is how the scene is frequently staged. However, the stage direction specifies, “Enter Viola and Malvolio at several doors” (II, ii). Professor Reynolds has reconstructed the staging of Troilus and Cressida so that one stage door represents Troy, the other the Grecian camp.[10] An enclosed recess, with the curtain drawn, becomes Cressida’s home and with the curtain closed, Achilles’ tent. But, as Irwin Smith has reminded me privately, this arrangement is “proved wrong by the stage direction to Act IV, scene i, which specifies entrance at two doors,” although the location of the scene is wholly within Troy. The fact is that every other Globe play lacks that neat division of place which enables us to assign one location to one door and another to the other door. Too often there is a major shift in location during the course of a play, such as, from the court to the forest in As You Like It, from Venice to Cyprus in Othello, from the castle to the field in Lear. Such a shift prevents the localizing of the stage door for any appreciable period.
As good evidence as that of Reynolds can be offered for a theory that actors almost always obeyed the convention of entering at one door and leaving at the other, regardless of location. In Hamlet, for instance, there are only three instances when such a convention would be violated: when Polonius is sent for the ambassadors and players in II, ii, and when the Prologue leaves to usher in the players in III, ii. I offer this suggestion not as a theory but as a warning against such reconstructed staging as Reynolds proposes.
The critical part of any study of an Elizabethan playhouse concerns the “third entry,” “the place in the middle,” “the booth,” “the inner stage,” “the discovery-space.” The abundance of terms testifies to the uncertainty concerning this area. Every aspect of it is open to controversy: function, dimensions in all directions, the presence of curtains, and location. But that there is some space between the stage doors, capable of being enclosed or secluded, is granted by all scholars. Objection has been raised to calling this area an “inner stage,” first because the term never appeared in Elizabethan texts, and secondly because it suggests a purpose that it did not have, namely, to house entire scenes. Increasingly the term “discovery-space” has been utilized, notably by Richard Hosley, but this has the disadvantage of suggesting too limited a function for the space. Since the area we are concerned with, whether recessed or not, had to be enclosed, almost certainly by curtains, I have chosen to refer to the “enclosure” of the Globe stage.
Any investigation of the enclosure is obliged to include an investigation of Elizabethan stage properties. For a long time it was suggested that a principal purpose of the enclosure was to mask the placement of furniture and other properties. While it is becoming increasingly evident that we must regard such a presumption with skepticism, nevertheless, the presence of a property has so often been cited as evidence for the use of an enclosure that it is necessary to review the handling of stage properties at the Globe before considering the enclosure directly. Aside from their connection with the problem of the enclosure, furthermore, stage properties deserve attention, for their appearance in a play can be more readily ascertained than any other element of production and as a result can provide clues to the methods of staging.
Anyone who has had occasion to produce a Shakespearean play realizes how few properties are needed for any single play. Yet even when we are cautious, we tend to overproperty a play. Even properties clearly alluded to may not exist on stage. Several times in Julius Caesar characters speak of Caesar having been struck down at the base of Pompey’s statue (III, i, 115; III, ii, 193), even in the very scene where the action takes place. Yet the description is merely a paraphrase of Plutarch.[11] The Romans are beaten back to their trenches in their first assault against Corioles (I, iv). Once more the trenches are not on-stage but in Plutarch.
Consequently, in examining the Globe plays, I have tried to guard against seeing a stage property where none exists. Only when use is clearly demonstrable in action or stage direction can we assume that a property was introduced. Some instances exist where smaller properties were added to give verisimilitude to a scene, as Fabell’s necromantic instruments in The Merry Devil of Edmonton, prologue, and Horace’s papers in Satiromastix (I, iii), but larger properties which require placement or setting were charily employed. It is to these set properties that I shall refer.
In the fifteen Globe plays written by Shakespeare I count sixty-five uses of properties, in the twelve non-Shakespearean plays, sixty-eight.[12] In the former plays the presence of fifteen of these “props” is difficult to verify. Such a property would be the “hedge-corner” around which the soldiers hide before pouncing on Parolles (All’s Well, IV, i) or the “tree” upon which Orlando hangs his verses (As You Like It, III, ii). Since the hedge and the tree might very well be represented by the stage posts, I must omit consideration of them. In the twelve non-Shakespearean plays there are seventeen such properties. Consequently, in one category we are left with fifty properties and in the other with fifty-one, or one hundred and one altogether, an average of almost four properties a play. That this is not a slim list for a ten-year period is supported by the few properties inventoried by Henslowe in 1598. The heading of the inventory claims that all the properties are listed. Of set properties there are only twenty-one.[13] To these we may add chairs and tables which are not included. Nor are curtains mentioned unless “the cloth of the Sone & Mone” is a hanging of some sort rather than rudimentary scenery, as Malone suggested. In any case the list substantiates the conclusion that Elizabethan stage production employed few properties and reinforces the warning that we should not insist upon finding others where they do not appear.
How were the properties introduced onto the stage? Some were discovered. When Lychorida bids Pericles look upon his dead bride, she probably draws a curtain to reveal Thaisa on the bitter “child-bed” of which Pericles speaks (III, i). Other properties were brought on. For the fencing match between Hamlet and Laertes, though the 1604 Quarto stage direction notes, “A table prepared ...,” the Folio specifies that following the King, Queen, and others, there enter “other Attendants with Foyles, and Gauntlets, a Table and Flagons of wine on it” (V, ii). But many instances are not so clear, instances where at most we can assume that a property was probably brought on stage or probably discovered. Another small category exists. There are several instances where properties are taken off stage, although there is no evidence to indicate how they came to be on stage. Caesar, at the finale of Antony and Cleopatra, commands his soldiers to “Take up [Cleopatra’s] bed,/and bear her women from the monument” (V, ii, 359-360). To my mind this suggests that the prop had been previously brought on.