To begin with the second kind of evidence first. Eight scenes in the Globe plays contain references to people or action below without directly relating to any action below.[29] Three of these occur in one play, A Yorkshire Tragedy. All the other five take place in taverns, and supposedly the characters are in upper rooms. Since the scenes in A Yorkshire Tragedy cast an interesting light on these references, I shall examine them first. In scene iii a servant announces to the Husband that “a gentleman from the University staies below to speake with you.” For the moment, we can imagine the scene is above. At the news the Husband leaves his wife to greet the visitor. The wife remains alone to deliver a soliloquy. In scene iv, after conversing with the gentleman, the Master of the College, the Husband suggests that the guest “spend but a fewe minuts in a walke/about my grounds below, my man heere shall attend you.” Presumably the scene is still above. After the departure of the guest, the Husband kills one of his children and, crying that he will kill the other, he exits with the bloody child.
Scene v commences with the direction, already referred to, “Enter a maide with a child in her armes, the mother by her a sleepe.” The Husband rushes in and endeavors to snatch the babe from the maid’s arms. When she resists, he assaults her.
Are you gossiping, prating sturdy queane, Ile breake
your clamor with your neck down staires:
Tumble, tumble, headlong.
Throws her down.
[Sig. C3r]
Thus, three consecutive scenes purport to be upstairs though certainly scenes iv and v must be in different parts of the “house.” Adams places scene v in the “chamber.”[30] What then becomes of the previous scene which, according to the dialogue, also took place upstairs? Somewhere an allusion to “below” does not reflect physical facts. Or is it that all the scenes fail to reflect physical facts and merely reflect the convention that most domestic and tavern rooms were situated in an upper story? None of the other scenes mentioned demands the actual use of an above, and in the tavern scene of Miseries of Enforced Marriage the scene concludes with one of the characters calling on all his friends to follow him to another room in the tavern, an unnecessary exit if a curtain in the above could close upon them. One is forced to conclude, therefore, that though a scene may contain references to being above, it was played below unless the action proves otherwise.
Of scenes upon the walls there are five.[31] Here the stage directions are straightforward. Action takes place between those on the walls and those below, in two cases involving sizable groups and much interchange. In The Devil’s Charter (IV, iv) a sustained assault upon the walls, involving ladders, takes place.
All window scenes—there are four[32]—contain a reference to “window” or “casement” in a stage direction. All of them involve interchanges by one person with characters below. However, the shape of the window, whether bay or otherwise, is not disclosed.