The Elizabethan Stage, Vol. 3

by E. K. Chambers

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.