Two boards and a passion! Perhaps these words sum up all that was essential to the Shakespearean theater. Heightening of passion coincided with the “climax,” and as for the Elizabethan stage, it was, as G. F. Reynolds remarked, a platform “upon which the story of the play was acted.”[1] And so it was, a flat expanse of boards, somewhat exposed to the weather, roughly eleven hundred square feet.

The story that was acted may be best described as romantic, not because it dealt with romance, although it often did, but because it was centrifugal in impulse, ever threatening to veer from its path. Whatever direct progression narrative possessed in the medieval drama, whether moving from Adam’s sin to Christ’s judgment or from Everyman’s ignorance to his salvation, such progression no longer existed in the Elizabethan age. Instead, the unfolding of the drama took place in a world half of man, and therefore unpredictable, half of God, and therefore moral, and was composed half of history, half of legend; half remote fantasy, half immediate reality. Such a world was wide indeed, and the poet-playwright, its creator, was shackled by neither time nor place. What he demanded of a stage was space for the unimpeded flow of scene after scene, for the instantaneous creation of any place in this world or the next. Even when a ghost in mufti made his way out the stage door in broad daylight, the poet insisted he vanished—yes, even into thin air.

Between the poet’s insistence and the stage’s realization lies the entire secret of Elizabethan staging. About the stage’s realization there is some evidence and little knowledge. Stage directions, a much-debated sketch of a playhouse, a tantalizing incomplete building contract, other assorted fragments, invite the scholar to tilt at theory. About the poet’s insistence there can be little question. Texts of play after play document the demands that the writers made upon the “unworthy scaffold.” Prudence suggests, therefore, that we proceed from play to stage, discovering first what those demands were and then, if we can, how they were satisfied. To understand what the demands were in respect to the environment of an action, it is necessary to consider the following questions: how exactly was a scene located, how consistently was the location maintained, and how relevant was the location to the dramatic impact of the scene?

I. LOCALIZATION IN SHAKESPEARE’S GLOBE PLAYS

In Shakespeare’s Globe plays many scenes are given an exact setting. By exact I wish to convey the notion that the action is supposed to occur in or at a particular place, such as a room, hall, gateway, garden, bridge, and that this place remains consistent throughout the scene. For example, in the scene where Martius, yet to win his name of Coriolanus, assaults the gates of Corioles (I, iv), the location is specific, consistent, and dramatically relevant. At one point in the same play Coriolanus prepares to enter the house of his enemy, Aufidius. The scene (IV, iv) takes place before Aufidius’ door. Here exactness of location intensifies dramatic suspense because, as we watch Coriolanus pass through the doorway, we know he is putting himself at the mercy of his greatest antagonist. Many examples of such types of placement come to mind: Brutus’ orchard, Gertrude’s closet, Timon’s cave, etc. Such scenes have come to be called “localized.”

Usually the opposite of the “localized” setting is the “unlocalized.” In this type of setting no impression of place is projected. Location is irrelevant to the progression of the scenes. Clear-cut instances of this occur in Macbeth, II, iv, and III, vi. In the first of these scenes Ross and an old man comment on the unnatural state of the world, then Macduff brings them news of Duncan’s burial and Macbeth’s election to the throne. In the second scene, Lennox and a gentleman comment upon the web of tyranny and the hope that lies in England with Malcolm. Aside from the section containing Macduff’s news, neither of these scenes contributes to the flow of the narrative. Rather they are comments upon the action and essentially perform a choral function.

That these two types of scenes are present in Elizabethan plays has long been recognized. Some scholars, such as V. E. Albright, E. K. Chambers, and J. C. Adams, have tended to divide all scenes of a play into one or the other type, the localized, usually interior and more or less realistic, the unlocalized, exterior, neutral, and somewhat less realistic. This division, according to Albright, derives from the sedes and platea of the medieval stage.[2] What had been physically separate areas earlier became united on one stage in the Tudor period. But, the argument runs, the Elizabethan dramatists continued to juxtapose the two types of scenes, stringing them in a more or less alternating order along the thread of narrative.

To what extent can this dichotomy be supported by the evidence from the Globe? Naturally there is no sharp distinction between these two types of localization. The differentiation depends upon the sequence a scene assumes in the narrative. Consequently, there are scenes which clearly fit into one or the other category. But even if all the localized and unlocalized scenes are counted, the total amounts to only 136. Since there are 345 scenes in my enumeration of the fifteen Shakespearean Globe plays, 209 remain to be accounted for.[3]

Is it true, as William Archer, Harley Granville-Barker, and George F. Reynolds have pointed out, that much localization was vague, that place faded elusively like a mirage before a traveler, and that often the Elizabethans treated the stage as stage? “Scene after scene,” asserts Granville-Barker, “might pass with the actors moving to all intents merely in the ambit of the play’s story and of their own emotions: unless, the spell broken, they were suddenly and incongruously seen to be upon a stage.”[4] Many a scene gives just such an impression, and yet, in almost every scene that is not unlocalized, the characters do not actually act in a dislocated void but are known to be in some more or less specific region. Even when attention is directly called to the stage-as-stage, stage-as-fictional-world still remains. In such moments the audience experiences a double image.

It is a commonplace that the public stages of the Elizabethan period contained “Asia of the one side, and Affricke of the other.” Though contemptuous in intent, in effect this phrase of Sidney’s isolates one of the characteristics of Elizabethan scene setting. Perhaps, as some scholars have thought, the Elizabethans utilized place cards to inform the audience of the general location of a scene. But whether they did or not, they were in the habit of specifying a place at large but not a particular section of it. In such cases the stage stands for rather than represents the fictional locale, the confines of which cannot be reasonably encompassed within the limits of the stage. In this type of locale, placement is general rather than precise—for example, the city of Troy in Troilus and Cressida, not a particular part of it. Rome as a whole rather than some portion of it is often the setting in Coriolanus (I, i; IV, ii; IV, vi). Free movement within such a locale occurs readily as in Julius Caesar (III, i), where action takes place first in the street and then in the Capitol. Sequences of action which would be incongruous in a localized setting assume dramatic power in a generalized setting. In the very same place, Othello’s castle, occur the private conflict of Othello and Desdemona and the public encounter of Cassio and Bianca (III, iv). Actually, in this type of setting, dramatic impact proceeds from the general rather than the specific nature of the locale. Without a doubt we know when the scene is Rome and when Egypt in Antony and Cleopatra. Dramatically that is all we need to know. To endeavor to isolate the whereabouts of Octavius’ meeting with Antony (II, ii) would reduce the stature of that meeting. All of Rome is their stage just as in medieval practice all of paradise might be the setting for Adam and Eve. Among the 345 scenes of Shakespeare’s Globe plays, 142 are clearly of this sort and 67 tend toward this sort, accounting together for fully 60 per cent of the scenes.

A. H. Thorndike described three types of localization too: the definitely localized, the vaguely localized, and the unlocalized.[5] At first my analysis may seem to repeat his. However, there is a fundamental difference. The generalized locale is not vague; it is extensive, it is symbolic, and dramatically it is concrete. The audience is not expected to identify the stage with a particular location but to understand that it functions as a token of Troy or the Danish palace or the Forest of Arden. Regularly editors have been reducing the generalized location to a localized setting congruent with realistic dimensions. This practice merely betrays the scope of Elizabethan drama. The real distinction between scene loci was not, as others have assumed, a separation of interior from exterior or realistic from conventional but a gradation from the unlocalized through the generalized to the localized setting.

Before investigating whether or not the Globe stage utilized stage decor to set these scenes, it is advisable to consider to what degree and by what methods location was conveyed by the playwright himself. It might be well to state at the outset that in extremely few cases is place projected through properties or other decor. Of all the scenes in Shakespeare’s Globe plays I count only seventeen in which this occurs, a mere 5 per cent. The most frequently recurring methods used by Shakespeare to indicate location are by announcement: a character tells us where he is (“This is the forest of Arden,” As You Like It, II, iv); by foreshadowing a location: a character in one scene tells us where he or others will be next (“To the Monument,” Antony and Cleopatra, IV, xiv); and by identifying a character with a place (early in All’s Well, the Countess becomes identified with Rossillion; whenever she appears thereafter, the scene, we know, is Rossillion). Some of these methods are used in combination. For example, we learn in the second scene of Othello that the Duke is in council, to whose presence Othello, Brabantio, and others are summoned. This is foreshadowing. In the next scene when we see a meeting in progress between the Duke and Senators, we can guess we are at the council, and when Othello and Brabantio enter shortly, we are sure of it. Of course, there are other methods employed to indicate place, but these three are the principal ones. Announcements help to locate 129 of the scenes (37.3 per cent), presence of characters, 128 of the scenes (37.1 per cent), and foreshadowing, 61 of the scenes (17.7 per cent).

Though the chorus is used only occasionally to indicate place, it tells us most about Elizabethan playwrights’ attitudes toward setting the scenes. Fortunately, the Globe plays include two examples of this technique, one from the beginning and one from the end of the decade. In Every Man Out of His Humour Ben Jonson introduces three choral figures, Asper, Mitis, and Cordatus. At the end of the induction Asper leaves the stage to assume the role of Macilente; Mitis and Cordatus remain to comment upon the action. Cordatus, who knows the play, is able to inform Mitis where the action takes place. For some scenes he indicates a generalized locale. “The Scene is the country still,” he remarks to Mitis (Chorus to II, i) or “Onely transferre your thoughts to the city, with the Scene; where, suppose they speake” (Chorus to II, iv). Sometimes he is more specific. Upon the entrance of Cavaliere Shift (III, i), Mitis asks,

At one time, where the presence of characters identifies the location, Cordatus queries Mitis, “You understand where the Scene is?” (Chorus to IV, i). Jonson, desirous of specifying particular London sites despite the fiction of Italian-named characters, is experimenting along the lines of Shakespeare who shortly before tried a similar method in Henry V. Shakespeare returned to this device in Pericles. Gower, the chorus, relates portions of Pericles’ adventures directly and in accompaniment to several dumb shows. In passing he often sets the locale. The first scene, he tells us, is “this Antioch ... this city” (17-18). Preparatory to the commencement of III, i, Gower asks the audience,

Imagine! Suppose! Both Jonson and Shakespeare call upon the audience to visualize the place of action. Clearly neither conventional nor realistic setting is introduced. Only words, in these instances delivered directly, in most instances conveyed in the midst of dramatic action, are the means for informing the audience where the scene takes place.

II. THE PARTS OF THE STAGE

What the Choruses make evident is that the stage was not altered for individual scenes. As a consequence, the stage structure itself, not scenery, served as the frame for the action. What this structure was and how it was used has been debated for years, and yet despite the lively and continuous debate, there actually exists a broad band of agreement About the size of the stage, for instance, there is little dispute. It is deduced from the Fortune contract. Without a doubt the platform, one side of which was attached to the stage wall or façade, was large, probably about 25 by 45 feet, and bare. Whether or not the supporting trestles were seen by the audience, as Hodges claims, matters little in a consideration of the use of the stage. What is important is that the stage extended to the middle of the yard, that consequently a large portion of the audience stood or sat on either side of the actors, and that the actors had to master the techniques of playing on this open stage. Some disagreement exists concerning the shape of the stage which, according to John C. Adams, was not rectangular but tapered inward toward the front. However, the weight of the evidence is against this theory, and most scholars are inclined to accept the rectangular shape.

Upon what other points is there general agreement? For one, that there were two pillars, located halfway between the stage wall and the front edge of the platform, which supported a shadow or cover over part of the stage. For another, that at platform level the stage wall contained two doors at least and probably a third entry or enclosed space and on an upper level, some sort of acting area. Where there are disputes, they arise over three matters: (1) what details complete this generally accepted scheme, (2) how the parts of the stage were employed, and (3) what temporary structures, if any, supplemented the basic façade. To examine these issues, it will be necessary to review each part of the stage in the light of the Globe repertory.

The Globe plays confirm the presence of at least two entrance doors at some distance from each other. On several occasions there is need for two characters to enter simultaneously from separate entrances and after some conversation come together. For the existence of a third entry the Globe plays offer no conclusive proof. No stage direction specifying an entry from a middle door, such as can be found in non-Globe plays, appears. However, certain scenes do suggest the use of a third entrance. In Macbeth (V, vii) Malcolm, who has presumably come through one door (A), is invited into the castle of Dunsinane by Siward. At his exit (through B presumably) Macbeth enters. Either he can come from the door (A) through which Malcolm entered, which is dramatically unconvincing, or from the door (B) of Dunsinane, which is awkward, or from a third entrance, evidence for which is not conclusive. Still, another sort of evidence does occur, which supports the idea of a third entry. In all cases, save one, where simultaneous entrances take place, the stage direction either reads “Enter A at one door, and enter B at another” or “at another door” or “Enter A and B severally,” or “at several doors.” In all the Globe plays, Shakespearean and non-Shakespearean, there are twenty-two instances of such stage directions.[6] The only exception is Pericles (IV, iv), “Enter Pericles at one doore, with all his trayne, Cleon and Dioniza at the other. Cleon shewes Pericles the tombe, whereat, Pericles makes lamentatton [sic].” The explanation for the article, “the” other door, if a third did exist, may be that the third entry was used to display the tomb. The presence of a word such as “another” in all other stage directions implies that when one door was used, more than one other entrance remained, and that, therefore, a third mode of entry was regularly employed on the Globe stage.

Regarding the position of the main entrance doors on either side of the stage, the Globe plays are equally unhelpful. Authority for oblique doors partly facing each other rests on three items of evidence that have been set forth. (1) The phrase “Enter A and B at opposite doors,” which appears in some of the Jacobean plays, proves, according to W. J. Lawrence, that the doors faced each other.[7] (2) Certain plays need facing doors in the action.[8] (3) The historical development of the playhouses explains the genesis of the oblique doors.[9] Concerning the first item, I need only point out that in no stage direction in the Globe plays does the phrase “at opposite doors” appear. Nor does it appear in any pre-Globe Shakespearean play. The second item invites subjective judgment. Lawrence insists that the last scene of The Merry Devil of Edmonton, a Globe play, could not be played unless the doors were oblique. However, cross-observation in that scene concerns the exchange of signs over the doors to two inns in Waltham.

Signs extending over a door would be readily seen from the opposite end of the stage whether or not the doors were oblique. What this interpretation comes down to is that insistence on opposite doors reveals a realistic conception of staging. Out of oblique doors characters emerge already facing each other or the action. They can respond “naturally” and “realistically.” But, if the doors are flush with the façade, an “unnatural” formal entrance results.

The last argument for oblique doors is historical. Lawrence claims that they were introduced into the Globe from the second Blackfriars theater (1598–1600). Adams argues that they were developed when the Theatre’s frame was adapted for the Globe. Neither offers sufficiently convincing proof to counter-balance the evidence of the Swan drawing which clearly shows flush doors. Therefore, though either oblique or flush doors could accommodate the Globe plays, flush doors were more likely to have been employed.

We can also dismiss the notion occasionally put forth that the doors consistently represented entrances from particular places, such as Olivia’s house in Twelfth Night or Page’s and Ford’s houses in The Merry Wives of Windsor. The difficulty of maintaining a continuing identification of one place with one entrance is obvious in the latter play. The comedy opens with the entrance of Justice Shallow, Sir Hugh Evans, and Slender. Their point of entry (marked A for identification) is unspecified and therefore might be in the center. Having been insulted by Falstaff, whom he expects to find at Page’s house, Shallow calls upon the Windsor worthy who emerges from his house (entry B). The remaining entrances and exits in scene i and in the brief scene ii maintain these associations. Scene iii occurs at the Garter. It is possible to confine all in-goings and out-goings to one door (entry C). But with scene iv all previous associations are shattered. The place is Dr. Caius’ house. Entry A, B, or C must represent Caius’ house. The neutral entry A can be selected. But in the course of the scene Simple is forced to hide from Caius. He cannot exit at A, for Caius is about to enter at that point. Thus he must choose B (Page’s house) or C (the Garter). A continuation of this analysis would only confirm how hopeless it is to expect any correlation between an entry and a specific locality for more than one scene. Further evidence exists in Twelfth Night that the doors did not have locational significance. At the conclusion of Act I, scene v, Olivia sends Malvolio after Cesario to tell “him” that she’ll have none of “his” ring. After an intervening scene, Malvolio encounters Cesario. His first line is, “Were not you ev’n now with the Countess Olivia?” Simple realism would demand that Malvolio, endeavoring to catch Cesario, would follow “him” on stage. That is how the scene is frequently staged. However, the stage direction specifies, “Enter Viola and Malvolio at several doors” (II, ii). Professor Reynolds has reconstructed the staging of Troilus and Cressida so that one stage door represents Troy, the other the Grecian camp.[10] An enclosed recess, with the curtain drawn, becomes Cressida’s home and with the curtain closed, Achilles’ tent. But, as Irwin Smith has reminded me privately, this arrangement is “proved wrong by the stage direction to Act IV, scene i, which specifies entrance at two doors,” although the location of the scene is wholly within Troy. The fact is that every other Globe play lacks that neat division of place which enables us to assign one location to one door and another to the other door. Too often there is a major shift in location during the course of a play, such as, from the court to the forest in As You Like It, from Venice to Cyprus in Othello, from the castle to the field in Lear. Such a shift prevents the localizing of the stage door for any appreciable period.

As good evidence as that of Reynolds can be offered for a theory that actors almost always obeyed the convention of entering at one door and leaving at the other, regardless of location. In Hamlet, for instance, there are only three instances when such a convention would be violated: when Polonius is sent for the ambassadors and players in II, ii, and when the Prologue leaves to usher in the players in III, ii. I offer this suggestion not as a theory but as a warning against such reconstructed staging as Reynolds proposes.

The critical part of any study of an Elizabethan playhouse concerns the “third entry,” “the place in the middle,” “the booth,” “the inner stage,” “the discovery-space.” The abundance of terms testifies to the uncertainty concerning this area. Every aspect of it is open to controversy: function, dimensions in all directions, the presence of curtains, and location. But that there is some space between the stage doors, capable of being enclosed or secluded, is granted by all scholars. Objection has been raised to calling this area an “inner stage,” first because the term never appeared in Elizabethan texts, and secondly because it suggests a purpose that it did not have, namely, to house entire scenes. Increasingly the term “discovery-space” has been utilized, notably by Richard Hosley, but this has the disadvantage of suggesting too limited a function for the space. Since the area we are concerned with, whether recessed or not, had to be enclosed, almost certainly by curtains, I have chosen to refer to the “enclosure” of the Globe stage.

Any investigation of the enclosure is obliged to include an investigation of Elizabethan stage properties. For a long time it was suggested that a principal purpose of the enclosure was to mask the placement of furniture and other properties. While it is becoming increasingly evident that we must regard such a presumption with skepticism, nevertheless, the presence of a property has so often been cited as evidence for the use of an enclosure that it is necessary to review the handling of stage properties at the Globe before considering the enclosure directly. Aside from their connection with the problem of the enclosure, furthermore, stage properties deserve attention, for their appearance in a play can be more readily ascertained than any other element of production and as a result can provide clues to the methods of staging.

Anyone who has had occasion to produce a Shakespearean play realizes how few properties are needed for any single play. Yet even when we are cautious, we tend to overproperty a play. Even properties clearly alluded to may not exist on stage. Several times in Julius Caesar characters speak of Caesar having been struck down at the base of Pompey’s statue (III, i, 115; III, ii, 193), even in the very scene where the action takes place. Yet the description is merely a paraphrase of Plutarch.[11] The Romans are beaten back to their trenches in their first assault against Corioles (I, iv). Once more the trenches are not on-stage but in Plutarch.

Consequently, in examining the Globe plays, I have tried to guard against seeing a stage property where none exists. Only when use is clearly demonstrable in action or stage direction can we assume that a property was introduced. Some instances exist where smaller properties were added to give verisimilitude to a scene, as Fabell’s necromantic instruments in The Merry Devil of Edmonton, prologue, and Horace’s papers in Satiromastix (I, iii), but larger properties which require placement or setting were charily employed. It is to these set properties that I shall refer.

In the fifteen Globe plays written by Shakespeare I count sixty-five uses of properties, in the twelve non-Shakespearean plays, sixty-eight.[12] In the former plays the presence of fifteen of these “props” is difficult to verify. Such a property would be the “hedge-corner” around which the soldiers hide before pouncing on Parolles (All’s Well, IV, i) or the “tree” upon which Orlando hangs his verses (As You Like It, III, ii). Since the hedge and the tree might very well be represented by the stage posts, I must omit consideration of them. In the twelve non-Shakespearean plays there are seventeen such properties. Consequently, in one category we are left with fifty properties and in the other with fifty-one, or one hundred and one altogether, an average of almost four properties a play. That this is not a slim list for a ten-year period is supported by the few properties inventoried by Henslowe in 1598. The heading of the inventory claims that all the properties are listed. Of set properties there are only twenty-one.[13] To these we may add chairs and tables which are not included. Nor are curtains mentioned unless “the cloth of the Sone & Mone” is a hanging of some sort rather than rudimentary scenery, as Malone suggested. In any case the list substantiates the conclusion that Elizabethan stage production employed few properties and reinforces the warning that we should not insist upon finding others where they do not appear.

How were the properties introduced onto the stage? Some were discovered. When Lychorida bids Pericles look upon his dead bride, she probably draws a curtain to reveal Thaisa on the bitter “child-bed” of which Pericles speaks (III, i). Other properties were brought on. For the fencing match between Hamlet and Laertes, though the 1604 Quarto stage direction notes, “A table prepared ...,” the Folio specifies that following the King, Queen, and others, there enter “other Attendants with Foyles, and Gauntlets, a Table and Flagons of wine on it” (V, ii). But many instances are not so clear, instances where at most we can assume that a property was probably brought on stage or probably discovered. Another small category exists. There are several instances where properties are taken off stage, although there is no evidence to indicate how they came to be on stage. Caesar, at the finale of Antony and Cleopatra, commands his soldiers to “Take up [Cleopatra’s] bed,/and bear her women from the monument” (V, ii, 359-360). To my mind this suggests that the prop had been previously brought on.

I have carefully examined the one hundred and one properties for evidence of method of introduction. The chart below summarizes my analysis.

In both Shakespearean and non-Shakespearean plays the percentages are about the same. Clearly the number of properties brought on greatly outnumber those which are discovered. Yet enough properties are discovered to make the presence of an enclosure certain.

Tables are usually brought out. In all the Globe plays tables are used seventeen times. Ten of these are banquet tables, seven of which are specifically directed to be brought out.[14] Of the rest two are probably brought out, and one may or may not have been brought out.[15] Since it was customary in Elizabethan life for banquet tables to be portable, it has been objected that the use of an enclosure is not disproved by such evidence. Instead we are asked to regard the practice as a bit of realistic business. This objection, however, does not explain why, as in Macbeth, III, iv, a banquet is sometimes prepared in front of the audience before the arrival of the principal characters. In any case the evidence concerning the table as stage property shows that the introduction of banquet tables does not depend upon an enclosure.

Of the other seven tables, four are definitely brought out, one is probably brought out, the introduction of one is undetermined, and one seems to have been discovered.[16] This last property is referred to in the stage direction in Othello, I, iii, “Enter Duke and Senators, set at a Table with lights and Attendants.” The Quarto (1622) for this play is late, so that the discovery may depict a later method. In contrast to all other cases in the Globe plays, this is the sole instance where a table is discovered.

Tracing the introduction of seats is more difficult. There are infrequent references to chairs in stage directions. Only occasionally is a chair, or more usually a stool, named in the dialogue. More often there is the invitation of one character to another to sit down. Twenty-two instances of seating occur in Shakespeare’s Globe plays, twenty-one in the non-Shakespearean plays. One type of seat is always brought in, that is the chair for an invalid. Two such chairs are definitely introduced by Shakespeare, one for Lear, the other for Cassio when wounded. A third might be intended for the King of France when he calls, “Give me some help here, ho!” (All’s Well, II, i). One such chair containing the Wife, is brought in in A Yorkshire Tragedy; a similar type, a sedan chair apparently, is introduced in Volpone (V, ii).

An entire category of seats is represented by the simple joint-stool. It appears for Goneril in Lear’s arraignment of his daughters (III, vi), it serves for Volumnia and Virgilia as they sew (Coriolanus, I, iii), and it holds the Ghost of Banquo (Macbeth, III, iv). These stools are elusive though. Seldom are they specifically directed to be brought on. An illuminating instance occurs in The Devil’s Charter. Lucretia Borgia is plotting the death of her husband, Gismond. The stage direction at the beginning of Act I, scene v, reads, “Enter Lucretia alone in her nightgowne untired bringing in a chaire, which she planteth upon the Stage.” She prepares the trap-chair for her husband, and when he arrives “Gismond sitteth downe in a Chaire, Lucretia on a stoole beside him.” But where did the “stoole” come from? If an attendant had accompanied her, why did Lucretia have to carry the chair? Obviously she must have entered alone. Therefore, unless one suggests that she also carried on a stool, hitherto unmentioned, the only possibility left is to suppose that the stool was already on the stage. Once one grants that stools may have been left on the stage, many scenes and directions become clear. When banquets are brought on stage, no mention is made of accompanying seats. Furthermore, when the type of seat at banquets is named, it turns out to be a stool. In various plays the actors sit in places that in reality would be devoid of seats, for example, on the watch in Hamlet (I, i), at the city gates in Measure for Measure (V, i), Antony somewhere after a defeat (Antony and Cleopatra, III, x). It is not too far a leap to assume that it was regular practice at the Globe playhouse to have stools distributed about the stage for the use of the actors.

Two other types of seats appear in the Shakespearean plays: the “chair” and the state. The chair is only mentioned once. It is the one to which Gloucester is bound before he is blinded. There is no indication whether it is brought on or discovered, one’s decision in the matter being determined by where one places the scene on the stage. The state too is mentioned specifically only once. After the banquet is brought out, Macbeth tells the assembled guests, “Our hostesse keeps her state, but in best time/ We will require her welcome.” (III, iv). This implies that Lady Macbeth sits apart from the company, perhaps in the enclosure. The state may have been placed there when the banquet was prepared or it may have been discovered. Significantly no action takes place at the state. Several other scenes would permit the use of a state. In each case there is evidence that the scenes proper take place on the stage platform. Though a curtain could be utilized to reveal the state in these cases, I incline to the theory that the state was brought or thrust out.

Of all properties beds are most frequently discovered. There are eleven instances in the Globe plays where beds or cushions for sleeping are introduced. In three the bed is definitely and in three others probably discovered, but in only two of these scenes is action sustained around the beds. The other scenes merely contain references to them or display someone reclining. Three other instances afford insufficient evidence to judge whether the beds are discovered or not and the remaining two provide curious evidence. The Devil’s Charter and Antony and Cleopatra were written about the same time. In both plays people die from the bite of an asp; in the former play they are murdered (IV, v), in the latter they commit suicide (V, ii), but in both cases the scenes conclude with the order to take up the beds and bear in the bodies. Extended action takes place about the beds, perhaps offering the explanation for the beds being forward on the platform.[17]

The question of whether or not heavy properties were discovered is answered by a type of property which keeps recurring in the Globe plays. This may very well be the counterpart of “a payre of stayres for Fayeton” in Henslowe’s inventory. In a well reasoned article Warren Smith has demonstrated the likelihood that scaffolding of some sort was introduced as a property on the Globe stage.[18] Not the upper level of the stage façade, but such a scaffold, he contends, was the pulpit in Julius Caesar (III, ii), a place to see the warriors in Troilus and Cressida (I, ii), the monument in Antony and Cleopatra (IV, xvi), the platform in Hamlet (I, i). Though his argument does not fit Hamlet or completely explain Antony and Cleopatra, its basic premise is verified by two non-Shakespearean Globe plays.

In the last scene of Fair Maid of Bristow, Vallenger, the prodigal, is about to be executed for the supposed murder of Sentloe. By this point in the play Vallenger has been spiritually redeemed from sin. About to die, he delivers a brief speech,

Presumably he reaches the top, as do his alleged accomplices, for shortly thereafter the King calls, “Dispatch them executioner: dispatch.” Clearly some scaffold has been revealed or brought out for this scene. It is one which the actors can mount before an audience. It also had to be large enough to accommodate four people. From other evidence Smith suggests a platform of this sort would be three or four steps high. Despite its size a subsequent line indicates that it was moved about in front of the audience.

Before the execution can take place, Sentloe reveals that he is not really dead, but has pretended to be in order to subject Vallenger to a rigorous trial of soul and thus force him to purge his offenses. Amidst the joyful reunion of Vallenger and his wife, the King commands,

Presumably the scaffold is withdrawn from the stage. In all likelihood a scaffold large enough to hold four people was too large to fit through a doorway. Therefore, we must assume that it was removed through the enclosure.

The forward placement of the scaffold is attested by another Globe play. Enamored of Corvino’s wife, Volpone disguised as a mountebank mounts his bank under the window where he might glimpse the lady (II, ii). Dramatically and physically his bank could only be placed on the platform. That he has actually gone up on some structure which, however, is lower than window height, is proved, first, when “Celia at the windo’ throwes downe her handkerchiefe,” and secondly, when Corvino, the jealous husband, rushes out of his door and shouts to Volpone to “Come downe” (II, iii). Here too there is no stage direction for the setting up and taking down of a scaffold, but the reiteration of Corvino’s “will you downe, sir? downe?” establishes its existence. Perhaps, in this case too, actors or attendants erected or thrust out some frame. Once it is established that such a scaffold was brought out upon the Globe stage, it becomes clear that it appears in some of the scenes cited by Smith. How its use affected staging is properly reserved for a later chapter.

Out of the total properties of one hundred and one, I have already accounted for seventy-six. The remaining twenty-five are divided amongst miscellaneous properties such as tombs, tents, greenery of some sort, and others. Only two scenes require tombs, a dumb show in Pericles (IV, iv) and the discovery of Timon’s body (V, iii). How the tombs were revealed to the audience is not readily determined so that this subject had best be deferred to a consideration of the enclosure.

Tents are even more difficult to treat. Even when the action calls for a tent, it is uncertain whether a property or merely the enclosure is being employed. Frequent allusions to tents can be found in Troilus and Cressida, but there is no scene where more than one tent must be used. But how was that represented? When Ulysses says of Achilles, “We saw him at the opening of his tent” (II, iii), did the audience see a property tent or the flap of the enclosure curtain turned back? No interior is required in any of these scenes so that we are not dealing with a discovery proper. Some evidence for a property tent can be found in The Devil’s Charter. Caesar Borgia leads an army against the town of Furly whose defense is led by the Countess Katherine (IV, iv). Unless she surrenders, Caesar will slay her two young boys, whom he has captured; when she refuses, he orders the children to execution. Then, after having scaled the walls and taken Katherine prisoner, Caesar “discovereth his Tent where her two sonnes were at Cardes,” and says, “Behold thy children living in my Tent.” But where is the tent? In the enclosure? A difficulty arises, if we suppose so, for it places the tent under the very walls which Caesar attempted and finally overran. Moreover, since the dumb show which opens the play requires two property tents, it is likely that Caesar’s tent was brought in by his soldiers and set up on stage.

Similarly, it is difficult to distinguish when prop trees are used and when stage posts. Although property trees were regularly employed on the Elizabethan stage, no tree definitely appears on the Globe stage. In A Warning for Fair Women, a Lord Chamberlain’s play published in 1599, a tree springs up in the midst of the stage (Sig. E3^v). But whether or not this was the normal method for introducing the tree prop is uncertain. The rest of the properties must be considered individually. Some are discovered, most brought on. But the study of any one of these properties, if necessary, can be more profitably undertaken in connection with staging methods.

Two inferences can be drawn from this survey of properties on the Globe stage. One is that more often than not properties, even heavy ones, were carried onto the stage. As a consequence, it was not one of the functions of the enclosure to permit the setting of furniture or other properties.[19] The other is that the same class of properties is often introduced in the same way. Beds are likely to be discovered. Tables, scaffolds, and invalid chairs are brought out. These habits may have stemmed from solid theatrical necessity. On the other hand it is possible that they may have embodied a symbolic significance.

Therefore, since the presence of stage properties cannot guide us in deciding when the enclosure was used, some other means must be discovered. References to an interior setting, Richard Hosley has shown, are not reliable. Fortunately, however, several Globe plays contain scenes in which stage directions or incontestable stage business establishes the use of an enclosure. One of these, The Devil’s Charter, supplies unusually valuable evidence.

Barnabe Barnes prepared his text of The Devil’s Charter for the printer with much care. He supplied full stage directions, which show theatrical, not literary marks, and seems to have described an actual production, for the epilogue directly addresses spectators, albeit not of the public playhouse (Sig. M3^v). The enclosure, or study, as he terms the area, is employed three times in his play. It will pay to examine these scenes minutely. In two scenes a stage direction opens the scene with the words, “Alexander in his study (or studie) ...,” “with bookes, coffers, his triple Crown upon a cushion before him” (I, iv); “beholding a Magicall glasse with other observations” (IV, i). Alexander speaks a long soliloquy in the first scene, then his two sons enter, later a servant. At the most there are four characters in the scene. Whether Alexander remains in the study throughout the first scene is not indicated. In the second scene Alexander also delivers an extended soliloquy, but here a direction specifies after his sixth line, “Alexander commeth upon the Stage out of his study with a booke in his hand.” He conjures forth a devil in order to discover who killed his son Candie. He is shown a symbol of the murder: his other son, Caesar, pursuing the ghost of Candie. The specters enter at one door and “vanish in at another doore” (G2^r 19). On the heels of the apparition of Caesar, Caesar himself arrives, outfaces his father, and parts reconciled to him. The last direction is, “Exit Alexander into the studie.” Clearly the study supplied a novel scene opening and provided access to the platform or stage, but was not utilized for extended presentation.

The third study scene, in this instance containing two disclosures, occurs at the end of the play. Alexander is about to face the consequences of his charter with the devil. The scene commences, “Alexander unbraced betwixt two Cardinalls in his study looking upon a booke, whilst a groome draweth the Curtaine” (V, vi). Alexander speaks eight lines, then “They [the two Cardinals] place him in a chayre upon the stage, a groome setteth a Table before him.” After chastising himself, “Alexander draweth the Curtaine of his studie [the one which the groom opened and presumably closed] where hee discovereth the divill sitting in his pontificals.” He disputes with the devil, and later “They sit together,” where is not indicated, and finally Alexander’s soul is carried down. In two of the scenes there is incontestable evidence that the action is brought out of the enclosure early in the scene. Furthermore, these three are the only study scenes in a play of twenty-two scenes.

Yet the study is mentioned at one other time. At one point Alexander plots the death of two young men, with one of whom he has had a homosexual affair. The murder scene (IV, v) begins with the direction, “Enter Alexander out of his studie.” After he has his servant Bernardo prepare a soporific for the young men, he departs with the injunction that when the intended victims are asleep, Bernardo give him notice “at [his] study doore.” The young men come in from tennis, have a rubdown by barbers, call for refreshment. The soporific takes effect, and they lie down to nap both upon one bed. Bernardo “knocketh at the study,” at which Alexander comes forth “upon the stage” with his asp to slay his paramour. After the act is completed and the murderer has departed, Bernardo summons two Cardinals to see the dead youths who, he asserts, expired from drinking too much when overexerted. Bemoaning the fate of these two hopes of “Phaenza,” the Cardinals bid Bernardo “Beare them in.”

Several characteristics should be noted. First, the enclosure or study, when it is actually used, is revealed by the drawing of a curtain. But if a curtain hangs before the enclosure, upon what does Bernardo knock? Either upon the side wall, and then Alexander enters from behind the curtain, or upon a door, and a new area is presumed to represent the study. Hosley has suggested that one of the two side doorways, with the doors fully opened, might have served as the enclosure. This possibility must be excluded, however, for Act IV, scene i requires two doors for the passage of the specters of Caesar and Candie at a time when the enclosure or study is in use.[20]

Second, the direction that Alexander “commeth upon the Stage out of his study” indicates that the enclosure is recessed. With this conclusion most of the scenes utilizing the enclosure would agree. One complication is raised by Volpone, V, ii. Here Volpone must be behind a curtain, yet be able to “peepe over.” There may be any one of three explanations. Perhaps the curtains did not reach the top of the recess. Richard Southern refers to such an arrangement at a booth theater in Brussels in 1660.[21] Another possibility is that the enclosure projected from the stage façade. Lastly, the curtain, called a “traverse” in the Folio, may have been hung especially for this scene and thus may not be the enclosure curtain. Of all the choices the last seems to accord best with the evidence.

Altogether thirteen or fourteen instances of discovery can be found in the non-Shakespearean Globe plays. To what degree do they substantiate Hosley’s contention that the enclosure was used to disclose “a player or object invested with some special interest or significance”?[22] So many persons and things of interest, not so disclosed, appear in the Globe plays, that it is impossible to use such a yardstick. True, of the total thirteen or fourteen discoveries, six involve the sudden display of a figure or figures or, in one instance, of a striking object, Volpone’s wealth. But among the other discoveries are mundane representations of a person reading, casting accounts, lying asleep. Yet, a certain pattern becomes apparent. For the moment let us consider twelve instances, excluding the two that occur in Jonson’s plays. In the twelve instances of discovery, six reveal a person writing or studying or reading; in four scenes the person is alone; in two, a subordinate or two attends upon the central figure.[23] Three of the remaining discoveries reveal a person or persons sleeping.[24] Two discoveries reveal dead bodies.[25] There remains one discovery to be accounted for, that already described in The Devil’s Charter, where Alexander draws the curtain to find the devil sitting “in his pontificals.” Just before revealing the devil, Alexander cries,