The interior architectural arrangements of this ancient theatre have been, in their leading features, preserved to the present day. The galleries, or scaffolds, as they were sometimes called, were constructed over each other, occupying three sides of the house, and assuming, according to the plan of the building, a square or semicircular form. Beneath these were small apartments, called rooms, intended for the genteeler part of the audience, and answering, in almost every respect, to our modern boxes. In The Globe, these were open to all who chose to pay for them, but at Blackfriars and other private theatres, there is some reason to conclude, that they were occasionally the property of individuals, who secured their claim through the medium of a key.[210:A]

It has been remarked, that the centre of The Globe, or summer theatre, was open to the weather, and, from the first temporary play-houses having been built in the area of inns or common osteries, this was usually called The Yard. It had neither floor nor benches, and the common people standing here to see the performance, were, therefore, termed by Shakspeare groundlings; an epithet repeated by Decker, who speaks of "the groundling and gallery commoner,

buying his sport by the penny."[211:A] The similar space at Blackfriars was named the Pit, but seems to have differed in no other respect than in being protected by a roof. It was separated from the stage merely by a railing of pales, for there was no intervening orchestra, the music, consisting chiefly of trumpets, cornets, hautboys, lutes, recorders, viols, and organs, being executed by a band of eight or ten performers, who were stationed in an elevated balcony nearly occupying that part of the house which is now denominated the upper stage-box.

The stage itself appears to have been divided into two parts, namely the lower and the upper stage; the former with nearly the same relative elevation with regard to the pit as in the theatres of our own times; the latter, resembling a balcony in shape, was placed towards the rear of the former, having its platform not less than eight or nine feet from the ground. This was a contrivance attended with much conveniency; here was represented the play before the King in Hamlet; here, in several of the old plays, part of the dialogue was carried on, and here, having curtains which drew in front, were occasionally concealed, from the view of the audience, persons whose seclusion might be necessary to the business of the plot.

Curtains also of woollen, or silk, were hung in the front of the greater or lower stage, not suspended, in the modern style, by lines and pullies, but opening in the middle, and sliding on an iron rod.

Beside the accommodation of boxes, pit, and galleries, in the usual parts of the house, two boxes, one on each side, were attached to the balcony or upper stage, and were termed private boxes; but, being inconveniently situated, and, as Decker remarks, "almost smothered in darkness," were seldom frequented, except from motives of eccentricity, by characters higher than waiting-women and gentlemen-ushers.[211:B] Seats, also, at the private theatres, were allowed to be

placed on the stage, and were generally occupied by the wits, gallants, and critics of the day: thus Decker observes,—"by sitting on the stage, you have a signed patent to engross the whole commodity of censure; may lawfully presume to be a girder, and stand at the helm to steer the passage of scenes."[212:A]

The passage in italics which closes this quotation, would seem to be decisive of the long agitated question relative to the use of scenery; Mr. Malone asserting,—"that the stage of Shakspeare was not furnished with moveable painted scenes, but merely decorated with curtains, and arras or tapestry hangings, which, when decayed, appear to have been sometimes ornamented with pictures[212:B];" and Mr. Steevens contending, that where so much machinery as the plays of Shakspeare require, is allowed to have been employed, the less complicated adjunct of scenes could scarcely be wanting; for that where "the column is found standing, no one will suppose but that it was once accompanied by its usual entablature.—In short," he adds, "without characteristic discriminations of place, the historical dramas of Shakspeare in particular would have been wrapped in tenfold confusion and obscurity; nor could the spectator have felt the poet's power, or accompanied his rapid transitions from one situation to another, without such guides as painted canvas only could supply.—But for these, or such assistances, the spectator, like Hamlet's mother, must have bent his gaze on mortifying vacancy; and with the guest invited by the Barmecide, in the Arabian tale, must have furnished from his own imagination the entertainment of which his eyes were solicited to partake."[212:C]

If the machinery accompanying trap-doors, tombs, and cauldrons, the appearance of ghosts, phantoms, and monsters, the descent of gods, the magic evanishment of articles of furniture and provision, and the confliction of the elements, were not strangers to the Shakspearean theatre, it surely would have been an easy matter to have

transferred the frame-work and painted canvas which, according to Holinshed, and even preceding chroniclers, decorated the pageants and tournaments of those days, to the business of the stage. Nor can we, indeed, conceive, as Mr. Steevens has remarked, how the minute inventory of Imogen's bedchamber, and the accurate description of the exterior of Inverness Castle, could have been rendered intelligible or endurable without such assistance.