[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 ... vijli ijs’.
[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.