more than probably, some manuscripts of Shakespeare's plays.

Above the stage and on the top of the building rose a small room or gable with a flag bearing the sign of the theatre attached to it, and with an open arch through which the trumpeter of the company announced by appropriate soundings, to the assembled audience that they would not have long to wait, and to the belated comers that they should make haste, the performance being about to begin.

The rusticity of a wooden structure,2 a thatched roof and a pit open to the sky, must not mislead us as to the interior aspect of these theatres. They were very pleasant to look at, painted in brilliant colours, with turned columns of wood, stained so well in imitation of marble that the most cunning, "nasutissimi," those with sharpest nose, said John de Witt, were imposed upon and thought they were real marble. The old Theatre itself was called "gorgeous," in the sermon, it is true, of a hostile preacher who may have sought to exaggerate its splendour; 3 but foreign visitors used the same terms.

At the Rose the flag was in silk, and had cost 28s. 8d. (1602); "Henslowe's Diary," Greg, ii. 48.

* A structure, more exactly, in which wood was predominant. The foundations, up to a certain height, were "of pyles, brick, lyme, and sand" (contract for the Fortune). Judging from the contemporary engravings, the outside must have received a coat of mortar, giving it the appearance of masonry. According to John de Witt the walls of the Swan were made " coacervato lapide pyrritide," of a concrete of flint; and commentators have found some difficulty in reconciling this testimony with many others (Hentzner's, for example: Quæ omnia lignea sunt "), stating that English theatres were wooden buildings. But it is not improbable that the Swan consisted in a strong wooden frame of carpenter's work, the intervals between the timber being filled with concrete. Such a structure could well be called by some a wooden one, and by others one with concrete walls. Old houses built in this fashion are still numerous in villages; they are often called wooden houses, though bricks, stones, and mortar are as much used in the construction as timber.

Stockwood, 1578, in Ordish," Early London Theatres," 1894, p. 64.

These buildings are of conspicuous beauty, "visendæ pulchritudinis," said de Witt. Coryat, when at Venice in 1608, admired the wonders of the city, but not its theatres; he had seen finer ones in London: "I was at one of their playhouses, where I saw a comedie acted; the house is very beggarly and base, in comparison of our stately playhouses in England." All the accounts which have reached us show that the painter's part was a considerable one in English playhouses: "The Theater, or some other paintid stage," writes Harvey to Spenser in 1579, "paintid" being the most characteristic epithet he bethought himself of. Whether for building or repairing, the painter had much to do: "Pd unto the paynters, xxvjs. . . . Pd the wages of the plasterer, iiijs. . . . Pd for paynting my stage, xjs.," writes, now and then, Henslowe, in his "Diary," 1591-2. The carpenter who undertook the building of the Fortune was careful to specify, for the matter was of importance, that he should not "be charged with anye manner of paynteinge in or aboute the saide frame, howse or stadge, or anie parte thereof." His words plainly show that painting would be used in each and every part of the building.

On a stage thus arranged, with spectators surrounding the players on all sides, scenery offered a offered a difficult problem. The perusal of the considerable mass of documents which have come down to us concerning London theatres allows us to sum up in a word what was then customary: not much scenery as we understand it, but many "practicables" and accessories. A few pieces of tapestry or arras, some draperies or hangings constituted, in many cases, the main part of what we would have called scenery. An arras at the furthest end of the scene usually covered the door or doors giving access

* "Crudities," 1611; Glasgow, 1905, i. p. 386.

* Not to be seen in the sketch by John de Witt, who represents his theatre as empty as possible, in order to better show the structure. But the arras

to the comedians' rooms; this was the main coulisse, the principal means of access and exit for players; the place too where stood the author when he came, as nervous as to-day, to be present at a first performance of his work: "I am looking, lest the poet hear me . . . behind the arras," says the stage-keeper in the Induction to "Bartholomew Fair." There, sometimes, when things went wrong, was the writer heard to curse the players, the prompter, and the musicians, "stamp at the book-holder, swear for our properties, curse the poor tire-man"; and even kick the stage-keeper "three or four times about the tiring house." Behind the same arras stood the prompter, book in hand, with a large sheet stuck before him on which were inscribed in big letters the principal stage directions, entrances, exits, and what properties were to be kept ready. This was also the principal place of concealment : in the "Cuck-queanes . . . Errants," a gold bowl which had disappeared is suddenly produced again, the actor, forming the background, divided into two for the admittance of players, and with the "lords' room "above it, may be seen in the frontispiece to "Roxana " by W. Alabaster, 1632; same arras in the frontispiece to Richards's "Messallina," 1640 (both reproduced e.g. by G. Reynolds, "Some Principles of Elizabethan Staging," Chicago, 1905). Same arras, also divided in the middle, with a player coming in through the opening, in an interior view used as a frontispiece for "The Wits," 1663 (Lawrence, "The Elizabethan Playhouse," I. 18, 32): the stage, with standing spectators on three sides, and the lords' room at the back, offers the same arrangement as that of the Swan in John de Witt's drawing. This was the normal one in London, and in Paris also, in the sixteenth century. See Gourmont's engraving, reproduced in Bapst, "Essai sur l'histoire du Théâtre," 1893, p. 152, and the numerous cuts in "P. Terentii. . . Comœdiæ," Paris, 1552, fol.

Inductions to Jonson's "Bartholomew Fair" and to "Cynthia's Revels." As now too, the poet was admitted free, but he did not always wish to be known until he had ascertained whether the play was a success-" You must take no money of him. . . . He is the author.-Littlewit. Peace, speak not too loud, I would not have any notice taken that I am the author, till we see how it passes."-"Bartholomew Fair," v. 3.

2

A few have been preserved, one

for a play which we possess: Peele's "Battell of Alcazar," ab. 1588-9. See Greg, Henslowe Papers," 127 ff.; Halliwell, "The Theatre Plats of Three Old English Dramas," 1860, fol.

according to the stage direction, drawing it "from behind the arras," the arras which, of course, was sure to be there. Behind the arras, too, Polonius concealed himself in order to be killed as "a rat," and Falstaff fell asleep, and the snorings of the "oily rascal" kept the audience in merriment.

Arrases appear as an indispensable item in the inventories of companies. Henslowe's players complained, in 1614, that he kept for himself arrases which they had purchased with their own money. They were used both for practical and ornamental purposes, and though such subjects would in many cases clash with that of the play, they usually represented mythological or historical personages and scenes. In the preface of the "New Inn," Jonson complains of having been condemned by gallants who never listened to his play : "As the stage furniture or arras clothes they were there; as spectators, away: for the faces in the hangings, and they, beheld alike." When the tapestry wore out or lost its colours, it would be economically repaired with paint.3

Draperies or hangings were kept ready according to the subject, so as to be displayed at need, or folded up. By this modest process, the bed-chamber of Imogen was revealed in Shakespeare's "Cymbeline," with the trunk for traitor Iachimo, the bed with the young princess asleep in it, and a tapestry on the furthest wall which represented the meeting of Antony and Cleopatra, an almost contemporary event. When Iachimo has taken note of all the particulars that were to mislead the credulous husband, "the scene closes," that is to say, the hangings fall again, and the play continues on what is left open of the stage,

Ab. 1600, Roxburghe Club, 1824, p. 87.

"Articles of Grievance," 1615; "Henslowe Papers," p. 86.

3 “I am none of your fresh pictures that use to beautify the decayed dead arras in a public theatre."-"Cynthia's Revels," Induction.

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this space being supposed to represent "an Ante-chamber adjoining Imogen's apartment." Dekker recommends his gallant to "creep from behind the arras," and to plant him. self so suddenly on the stage that it will seem he has dropped out of the hangings." Jonson represents one of these gentlemen complaining of the players, while occupying himself the space which should be theirs: "'Slid, the boy"-one of the boy-actors at the Blackfriars"takes me for a piece of perspective, I hold my life, or some silk curtain come to hang the stage here." I

These draperies were also used to represent the sky and to conceal the pulleys by which any "property" might be hoisted or lowered. This property was sometimes a skeleton or a corpse dangling from a rope (a frequent sight), sometimes a great wooden eagle bearing King Jove, as in "Cymbeline," where the Thunderer, after his speech, is raised again toward the "shadowe or cover" of the stage-"to my palace crystaline," he says; and the characters in the play left below exclaim:

The marble pavement closes, he is enter'd

His radiant roof.

On other occasions, a throne, with a prophet or a goudess on it, was lowered and raised again: "Exit Venus, or if you can conveniently, let a chaire come downe from the top of the stage and draw her up."2 Empty thrones were alternately lowered and raised before the eyes of Faustus in Marlowe's play, to give him an idea of the joys of Paradise which he had lost. The doctor was greatly impressed; and, having considered these gilded swinging machines, upon which he knew that he would never sit, he

'Cynthia's Revels," Induction. Sir E. K. Chambers' supposition of an alcove inserted for such scenes within the tiring house back of the stage ("Elizabethan Stage," iii. 82) is hard to accept owing to the obscurity of the place, especially for spectators with the glare of the day in their eyes.

"Alphonsus King of Arragon," by Greene, in fine; 1st ed. 1599.