[381] Sejanus (F1), i. 355–469 (cf. 287), an episode breaking the flow of the main action, a hall scene, of the act; it must be apart from the hall, not perhaps necessarily above.
[382] E. M. O. V. ii, preceded and followed by scene near the court gate at the foot of stairs leading to the great chamber; V. i has ‘Is this the way? good truth here be fine hangings’ and ‘courtiers drop out’, presumably through the arras and up the stairs. Then a presenter says, ‘Here they come’, and the courtiers enter, presumably above.
[383] A. and C. IV. xv. 1, ‘Enter Cleopatra, and her Maides aloft’, with (8) ‘Look out o’ the other side your monument’ ... (37) ‘They heave Anthony aloft to Cleopatra’; V. ii; cf. 360, ‘bear her women from the monument’.
[384] Pericles, III. i (prol. 58, ‘In your imagination hold This stage the ship’); V. i (prol. 21, ‘In your supposing once more put your sight Of heavy Pericles; think this his bark’). The other scenes (1 Contention, sc. xii; A. and C. II. vii; Tp. I. i) have nothing directly indicating action ‘above’.
[385] Ham. I. i, iv, v; cf. I. ii. 213, ‘upon the platform where we watch’d’. There would be hardly room ‘above’ for the Ghost to waft Hamlet to ‘a more removed ground’ (I. iv. 61), and the effect of I. v. 148, where ‘Ghost cries under the Stage’, would be less. On the other hand, in White Devil (Queen’s), IV. iv. 39 the s.d. ‘A Cardinal on the Tarras’ is explained by Flamineo’s words, ‘Behold! my lord of Arragon appeares, On the church battlements’.
[386] J. C. III. i; Cor. II. ii, ‘Enter two Officers, to lay Cushions, as it were, in the Capitol’; Sejanus (F1), iii. 1–6; v. 19–22; Catiline, IV. ii, V. iv, vi; also Rape of Lucrece (Red Bull), pp. 168–73 (ed. Pearson). There is a complete absence of s.ds. for ‘above’; cf. p. 58. But in J. C. III. i and Catiline, V. vi, at least, action in the senate house is continuous with action in the street or forum without, and both places must have been shown, and somehow differentiated.
[387] Bonduca, V. i, ‘Enter Caratach upon a rock, and Hengo by him, sleeping’; V. iii, ‘Enter Caratach and Hengo on the Rock’. Hengo is let down by a belt to fetch up food. It is ‘a steep rock i th’ woods’ (V. ii); cf. the rock scene in Brazen Age, V (cf. p. 109).
[388] Cf. p. 153. Duchess of Malfi, III. ii, with (173) ‘call up our officers’ is a possible exception.
[389] E. M. O. II. i (where personages standing ‘under this Tarras’ watch action under a window); Devil’s Charter, III. ii, ‘Alexander out of a Casement’; M. Devil of Edmonton, V. ii. 59, ‘D’yee see yon bay window?’ Miseries of Enforced Marriage (Dodsley4), iv, p. 540 (‘Here’s the sign of the Wolf, and the bay-window’); T. N. K. II. i, ii; Catiline, III. v; Philaster, II. iv; Second Maiden’s Tragedy, V. i. 2004, ‘Leonella above in a gallery with her love Bellarius’ ... (2021) ‘Descendet Leonela’; Duchess of Malfi, V. v; Hen. VIII, V. ii. 19, ‘Enter the King, and Buts, at a Windowe above’, with ‘Let ’em alone, and draw the curtaine close’ (34); Pericles, II. ii (where Simonides and Thaisa ‘withdraw into the gallerie’, to watch a tilting supposed behind, as in the sixteenth-century Soliman and Perseda; cf. p. 96). So, too, in T. N. K. V. iii, the fight between Palamon and Arcite takes place within; Emilia will not see it, and it is reported to her on the main stage.
[390] D. an Ass, II. vi. 37, ‘This Scene is acted at two windo’s as out of two contiguous buildings’ ... (77) ‘Playes with her paps, kisseth her hands, &c.’ ... vii. 1 ‘Her husband appeares at her back’ ... (8) ‘Hee speaks out of his wives window’ ... (23) ‘The Divell speakes below’ ... (28) ‘Fitz-dottrel enters with his wife as come downe’.
[391] M. Devil of Edmonton, V. i, ii; Catiline, V. vi (where apparently three houses are visited after leaving the senate house); cf. the cases of shops on p. 110, n. 10.
[392] Ham. V. i. 60.
[393] Bonduca, V. iii.
[394] Three English Brothers, ad fin. A court scene in Sir T. Wyatt ends (ed. Hazlitt, p. 10) with s.d. ‘pass round the stage’, which takes the personages to the Tower. Similarly in 1 If You Know Not Me (ed. Pearson, p. 246) a scene at Hatfield ends ‘And now to London, lords, lead on the way’, with s.d. ‘Sennet about the Stage in order. The Maior of London meets them’, and in 2 If You Know Not Me (p. 342) troops start from Tilbury, and ‘As they march about the stage, Sir Francis Drake and Sir Martin Furbisher meet them’.
[395] W. Archer in Quarterly Review, ccviii. 471; Albright, 77; Lawrence, i. 19; cf. my analogous conjecture of ‘wings’ on p. 100.
[396] David and Bethsabe, 25, ‘He [Prologus] drawes a curtaine, and discouers Bethsabe with her maid bathing ouer a spring: she sings, and David sits aboue vewing her’.
[397] Lawrence, i. 159 (Proscenium Doors: an Elizabethan Heritage).
[398] Cf. vol. ii, p. 534.
[399] At the Globe the windows appear to have been bay windows; cf. p. 116, n. 7. Lawrence, ii. 25 (Windows on the Pre-Restoration Stage), cites T. M. Black Book (1604), ‘And marching forward to the third garden-house, there we knocked up the ghost of mistress Silverpin, who suddenly risse out of two white sheets, and acted out of her tiring-house window’. It appears from Tate Wilkinson’s Memoirs (Lawrence, i. 177) that the proscenium balconies were common ground to actors and audience in the eighteenth century.
[400] Family of Love, I. iii. 101.
[401] The theory is best represented by C. Brodmeier, Die Shakespeare-Bühne nach den alten Bühnenanweisungen (1904); V. Albright, The Shakespearian Stage (1909).
[402] Thorndike, 106.
[403] Cf. pp. 41, 126, 154.
[404] Palace of Tiberius (Acts I, II, III), Senate house (III, V), Gardens of Eudemus (II), Houses of Agrippina (II, IV), Sejanus (V), Regulus (V).
[405] Houses of Volpone (I, II, III, V), Corvino (II), Would Be (V), Law court (IV, V).
[406] Houses of Catiline (I, IV), Fulvia (II), Cicero (III, IV, V), Lecca (III), Brutus (IV), Spinther (V. vi), Cornificius (V. vi), Caesar (V. vi), Senate house (IV, V), Milvian Bridge (IV).
[407] Alchemist, III. v. 58, ‘He speakes through the keyhole, the other knocking’. Hen. VIII, V. ii, iii (continuous scene) also requires a council-chamber door upon the stage, at which Cranmer is stopped after he has entered through the stage door.
[408] Daborne gave Tourneur ‘an act of ye Arreignment of London to write’ (Henslowe Papers, 72).
[409] Cf. ch. xxii.
[410] M. N. D. III. ii. 463 (F1), ‘They sleep all the Act’; i. e. all the act-interval (cf. p. 131). So in Catiline the storm with which Act III ends is still on at the beginning of Act IV, and in Alchemist Mammon and Lovewit are seen approaching at the ends of Acts I and IV respectively, but in both cases the actual arrival is at the beginning of the next act.
[411] F. A. Foster, Dumb Show in Elizabethan Drama before 1620 (E. S. xliv. 8).
[412] Jonson has a ‘Chorus—of musicians’ between the acts of Sejanus, and the presenter of Two Lamentable Tragedies bids the audience ‘Delight your eares with pleasing harmonie’ after the harrowing end of Act II. Some other examples given in Lawrence, i. 75 (Music and Song in the Elizabethan Drama), seem to me no more than incidental music such as may occur at any point of a play. Malone (Var. iii. 111) describes a copy of the Q2 of R. J. in which the act endings and directions for inter-act music had been marked in manuscript; but this might be of late date.
[413] Malcontent, ind. 89.
[414] Henslowe Papers, 127.
[415] Catiline, I. i.
[416] Second Maidens Tragedy, 1719, ‘Exit’ the Tyrant, four lines from the end of a court scene, and 1724 ‘Enter the Tirant agen at a farder dore, which opened, bringes hym to the Toombe’ (cf. p. 110, n. 8). So in Woman Killed with Kindness (Queen’s), IV. ii, iii (continuous scene), Mrs. Frankford and her lover retire from a hall scene to sup in her chamber, and the servants are bidden to lock the house doors. In IV. iv Frankford enters with a friend, and says (8) ‘This is the key that opes my outward gate; This the hall-door; this the withdrawing chamber; But this ... It leads to my polluted bedchamber’. Then (17) ‘now to my gate’, where they light a lanthorn, and (23) ‘this is the last door’, and in IV. v Frankford emerges as from the bedchamber. Probably sc. iv is supposed to begin before the house. They go behind at (17), emerge through another door, and the scene is then in the hall, whence Frankford passes at (23) through the central aperture behind again.
[417] Wily Beguiled, prol. The Prologus asks a player the name of the play, and is told ‘Sir you may look vpon the Title’. He complains that it is ‘Spectrum once again’. Then a Juggler enters, will show him a trick, and says ‘With a cast of cleane conveyance, come aloft Jack for thy masters advantage (hees gone I warrant ye)’ and there is the s.d. ‘Spectrum is conveied away: and Wily beguiled, stands in the place of it’.
[418] Most of the examples in Lawrence, i. 43 (Title and Locality Boards on the Pre-Restoration Stage) belong to Court or to private theatres; on the latter cf. p. 154, infra. But the prologue to 1 Sir John Oldcastle begins ‘The doubtful Title (Gentlemen) prefixt Upon the Argument we have in hand May breede suspence’. The lost Frankfort engraving of English comedians (cf. vol. ii, p. 520) is said to have shown boards.
[419] Cunningham, Jonson, iii. 509; Dekker, G. H. B. (ed. McKerrow), 40, ‘And first observe your doors of entrance, and your exit; not much unlike the players at the theatres; keeping your decorums, even in fantasticality. As for example: if you prove to be a northern gentleman, I would wish you to pass through the north door, more often especially than any of the other; and so, according to your countries, take note of your entrances’.
[420] 1 Contention, sc. xxii, ‘Richard kils him under the signe of the Castle in St. Albones’; Comedy of Errors (the Phoenix, the Porpentine), Shoemaker’s Holiday (the Last), Edw. IV (the Pelican), E. M. O. (the Mitre), Miseries of Enforced Marriage (the Mitre, the Wolf); Bartholomew Fair (the Pig’s Head); &c.
[421] Wounds of Civil War, III. iv, ‘Enter Marius solus from the Numidian mountaines, feeding on rootes’; 3 Hen. VI, IV. ii, ‘Enter Warwick and Oxford in England’, &c.; cf. ch. xxii.
[422] Warning for Fair Women, ind. 86, ‘My scene is London, native and your own’; Alchemist, prol. 5, ‘Our scene is London’; cf. the Gower speeches in Pericles.
[423] Dr. Faustus, 13, 799, 918, 1111.
[424] I cite Greg’s Q2, but Q1 agrees. Jonson’s own scene-division is of course determined by the introduction of new speakers (cf. p. 200) and does not precisely follow the textual indications.
[425] Henslowe Papers, 116.
[426] 2 If You Know Not Me (ed. Pearson), p. 295.
[427] Cf. App. I, and Neuendorff, 149, who quotes J. Corey, Generous Enemies (1672), prol.:
Graves, 78, suggests pictorial ‘painted cloths’ for backgrounds.
[428] ‘Scenes’ were used in the public performances of Nabbes’s Microcosmus (1637), Suckling’s Aglaura (1637), and Habington’s Queen of Arragon (1640); cf. Lawrence, ii. 121 (The Origin of the English Picture-Stage); W. G. Keith, The Designs for the First Movable Scenery on the English Stage (Burlington Magazine, xxv. 29, 85).
[429] For Paul’s, C. and C. Errant (after each act), ‘Here they knockt up the Consort’; Faery Pastorall; Trick to Catch the Old One (after I and II), ‘music’; What You Will, II. ii. 235 ‘So ends our chat;—sound music for the act’; for Blackfriars, Gentleman Usher, III. i. 1, ‘after the song’; Sophonisba (after I), ‘the cornets and organs playing loud full music for the act’, (II) ‘Organ mixt with recorders, for this act’, (III) ‘Organs, viols and voices play for this act’, (IV) ‘A base lute and a treble violl play for the act’, with which should be read the note at the end of Q1, ‘let me intreat my reader not to taxe me for the fashion of the entrances and musique of this tragedy, for know it is printed only as it was presented by youths and after the fashion of the private stage’; K. B. P. (after I), ‘Boy danceth. Musicke. Finis Actus primi’, (II) ‘Musicke. Finis Actus secundi’, (III) ‘Finis Actus tertii. Musicke. Actus quartus, scoena prima. Boy daunceth’, (IV) Ralph’s May Day speech; cf. infra and vol. ii, p. 557. I do not find any similar recognition of the scene as a structural element in the play to be introduced by music; in 1 Antonio and Mellida, III. ii. 120, the s.d. ‘and so the Scene begins’ only introduces a new scene in the sense of a regrouping of speakers (cf. p. 200).
[430] For Paul’s, Histriomastix, III. i. 1, ‘Enter Pride, Vaine-Glory, Hypocrisie, and Contempt: Pride casts a mist, wherein Mavortius and his company [who ended II] vanish off the Stage, and Pride and her attendants remaine’, (after III) ‘They all awake, and begin the following Acte’, (after V) ‘Allarmes in severall places, that brake him off thus: after a retreat sounded, the Musicke playes and Poverty enters’; 2 Antonio and Mellida, III. i. 1, ‘A dumb show. The cornets sounding for the Act’, (after IV) ‘The cornets sound for the act. The dumb show’; What You Will, III. i. 1, ‘Enter Francisco ... They clothe Francisco whilst Bidet creeps in and observes them. Much of this done whilst the Act is playing’; Phoenix (after II), ‘Towards the close of the musick the justices three men prepare for a robberie’; for Blackfriars, Malcontent, II. i. 1, ‘Enter Mendoza with a sconce, to observe Ferneze’s entrance, who, whilst the act is playing, enters unbraced, two Pages before him with lights; is met by Maquerelle and conveyed in; the Pages are sent away’; Fawn, V. i. 1, ‘Whilst the Act is a-playing, Hercules and Tiberio enters; Tiberio climbs the tree, and is received above by Dulcimel, Philocalia, and a Priest; Hercules stays beneath’. The phrase ‘whilst the act is playing’ is a natural development from ‘for the act’, i. e. ‘in preparation for the act’, used also for the elaborate music which at private houses replaced the three preliminary trumpet ‘soundings’ of the public houses; cf. What You Will, ind. 1 (s.d.), ‘Before the music sounds for the Act’, and 1 Antonio and Mellida, ind. 1, ‘The music will sound straight for entrance’. But it leads to a vagueness of thought in which the interval itself is regarded as the ‘act’; cf. the M. N. D. s.d. of F1, quoted p. 124, n. 3, with Middleton, The Changeling (1653), III. i. 1, ‘In the act-time De Flores hides a naked rapier behind a door’, and Cotgrave, Dict. (1611), ‘Acte ... also, an Act, or Pause in a Comedie, or Tragedie’.
[431] For Paul’s, Histriomastix, i. 163, ‘Enter Fourcher, Voucher, Velure, Lyon-Rash ... two and two at severall doores’; v. 103, ‘Enter ... on one side ... on the other’; v. 192, ‘Enter ... at one end of the stage: at the other end enter ...’; vi. 41, ‘Enter Mavortius and Philarchus at severall doores’; vi. 241, ‘Enter ... at the one doore. At the other ...’; 1 Antonio and Mellida, iv. 220 (marsh scene), ‘Enter ... at one door; ... at another door’; 2 Antonio and Mellida, v. 1, ‘Enter at one door ... at the other door’; Maid’s Metamorphosis, II. ii. 1 (wood scene), ‘Enter at one door ... at the other doore, ... in the midst’; III. ii. 1 (wood scene), ‘Enter ... at three severall doores’; Faery Pastoral, III. vi, ‘Mercury entering by the midde doore wafted them back by the doore they came in’; IV. viii, ‘They enterd at severall doores, Learchus at the midde doore’; Puritan, I. iv. 1 (prison scene), ‘Enter ... at one dore, and ... at the other’, &c.; for Blackfriars, Sir G. Goosecap, IV. ii. 140, ‘Enter Jack and Will on the other side’; Malcontent, V. ii. 1, ‘Enter from opposite sides’; E. Ho!, I. i. 1, ‘Enter ... at severall dores ... At the middle dore, enter ...’; Sophonisba, prol., ‘Enter at one door ... at the other door’; May Day, II. i. 1, ‘Enter ... several ways’; Your Five Gallants, I. ii. 27, ‘Enter ... at the farther door’, &c.
[432] For Paul’s, 2 Antonio and Mellida, IV. ii. 87, ‘They strike the stage with their daggers, and the grave openeth’; V. i. 1, ‘Balurdo from under the Stage’; Aphrodysial (quoted Reynolds, i. 26), ‘A Trap door in the middle of the stage’; Bussy d’Ambois, II. ii. 177, ‘The Vault opens’ ... ‘ascendit Frier and D’Ambois’ ... ‘Descendit Fryar’ (cf. III. i; IV. ii; V. i, iii, iv); for Blackfriars, Poetaster (F1) prol. 1, ‘Envie. Arising in the midst of the stage’; Case is Altered, III. ii, ‘Digs a hole in the ground’; Sophonisba, III. i. 201, ‘She descends after Sophonisba’ ... (207) ‘Descends through the vault’; V. i. 41, ‘Out of the altar the ghost of Asdrubal ariseth’.
[433] Widow’s Tears (Blackfriars), III. ii. 82, ‘Hymen descends, and six Sylvans enter beneath, with torches’; this is in a mask, and Cupid may have descended from a pageant. When a ‘state’ or throne is used (e.g. Satiromastix, 2309, ‘Soft musicke, Chaire is set under a Canopie’), there is no indication that it descends. In Satiromastix, 2147, we get ‘O thou standst well, thou lean’st against a poast’, but this is obviously inadequate evidence for a heavens supported by posts at Paul’s.
[434] C. and C. Errant, V. ix, ‘He tooke the Bolle from behind the Arras’; Faery Pastoral, V. iv (wood scene), ‘He tooke from behind the Arras a Peck of goodly Acornes pilld’; What You Will, ind. 97, ‘Let’s place ourselves within the curtains, for good faith the stage is so very little, we shall wrong the general eye else very much’; Northward Ho!, IV. i, ‘Lie you in ambush, behind the hangings, and perhaps you shall hear the piece of a comedy’. In C. and C. Errant, V. viii. 1, the two actors left on the stage at the end of V. vii were joined by a troop from the inn, and yet others coming ‘easily after them and stealingly, so as the whole Scene was insensibly and suddenly brought about in Catastrophe of the Comoedy. And the whole face of the Scene suddenly altered’. I think that Percy is only trying to describe the change from a nearly empty to a crowded stage, not a piece of scene-shifting.
[435] Cynthia’s Revels (Q), ind. 149, ‘Slid the Boy takes me for a peice of Prospective (I holde my life) or some silke Curtine, come to hang the Stage here: Sir Cracke I am none of your fresh Pictures, that use to beautifie the decay’d dead Arras, in a publique Theater’; K. B. P. II. 580, ‘Wife. What story is that painted upon the cloth? the confutation of Saint Paul? Citizen. No lambe, that Ralph and Lucrece’. In Law Tricks, III. i, Emilia bids Lurdo ‘Behind the Arras; scape behind the Arras’. Polymetes enters, praises the ‘verie faire hangings’ representing Venus and Adonis, makes a pass at Vulcan, and notices how the arras trembles and groans. Then comes the s.d. (which has got in error into Bullen’s text, p. 42) ‘Discouer Lurdo behind the Arras’, and Emilia carries it off by pretending that it is only Lurdo’s picture.
[436] I think it is possible that Sophonisba, with its ‘canopy’ (cf. p. 149) was also originally written for Paul’s.
[437] 1, 2 Antonio and Mellida, Maid’s Metamorphosis, Wisdom of Dr. Dodipoll, Jack Drum’s Entertainment, Satiromastix, Blurt Master Constable, Bussy D’Ambois, Westward Ho!, Northward Ho!, Fawn, Michaelmas Term, Phoenix, Mad World, My Masters, Trick to Catch the Old One, Puritan, Woman Hater.
[438] Jack Drum’s Ent. v. 112.
[439] Histriomastix, i. 6, ‘now sit wee high (tryumphant in our sway)’; ii. 1, ‘Enter Plenty upon a Throne’; iii. 11, ‘If you will sit in throne of State with Pride’; v. 1, ‘Rule, fier-eied Warre!... Envy ... Hath now resigned her spightfull throne to us’; vi. 7, ‘I [Poverty] scorne a scoffing foole about my Throne’; vi. 271 (s.d.), ‘Astraea’ [in margin, ‘Q. Eliza’] ‘mounts unto the throne’; vi. 296 (original ending), ‘In the end of the play. Plenty Pride Envy Warre and Poverty To enter and resigne their severall Scepters to Peace, sitting in Maiestie’.
[440] Histriomastix, i. 163, ‘Enter ... Chrisoganus in his study’ ... (181) ‘So all goe to Chrisoganus study, where they find him reading’; ii. 70, ‘Enter Contrimen, to them, Clarke of the Market: hee wrings a bell, and drawes a curtaine; whereunder is a market set about a Crosse’ ... (80) ‘Enter Gulch, Belch, Clowt and Gut. One of them steppes on the Crosse, and cryes, A Play’ ... (105) ‘Enter Vintner with a quart of Wine’; v. 192, ‘Enter Lyon-rash to Fourchier sitting in his study at one end of the stage: At the other end enter Vourcher to Velure in his shop’.
[441] Dr. Dodipoll, I. i. 1, ‘A Curtaine drawne, Earl Lassingbergh is discovered (like a Painter) painting Lucilia, who sits working on a piece of cushion worke’. In III. ii a character is spoken of after his ‘Exit’ as ‘going down the staires’, which suggests action ‘above’. But other indications place the scene before Cassimere’s house.
[442] C. and C. Errant, I. i, ‘They entered from Maldon’; I. iv, ‘They entered from Harwich all’.
[443] C. and C. Errant, I. ii, ‘They met from Maldon and from Harwich’, for a scene in Colchester; III. i, ‘They crossd: Denham to Harwich, Lacy to Maldon’.
[444] Reynolds (M. P. xii. 248) gives the note as ‘In the middle and alofte Oceanus Pallace The Scene being. Next Proteus-Hall’. This seems barely grammatical and I am not sure that it is complete. A limitation of Paul’s is suggested by the s.d. (ibid. 258) ‘Chambers (noise supposd for Powles) For actors’, but apparently ‘a showre of Rose-water and confits’ was feasible.
[445] Faery Pastoral, p. 162, ‘A Scrolle fell into her lap from above’.
[446] Jack Drum, II. 27, ‘The Casement opens, and Katherine appeares’; 270, ‘Winifride lookes from aboue’; 286, ‘Camelia, from her window’.
[447] I give s.ds. with slight corrections from Bullen, who substantially follows 1633. But he has re-divided his scenes; 1633 has acts only for 1 Antonio and Mellida (in spite of s.d. ‘and so the scene begins’ with a new speaker at III. ii. 120); acts and scenes, by speakers, for 2 Antonio and Mellida; and acts and scenes or acts and first scenes only, not by speakers and very imperfectly, for the rest.
[448] 1 Ant. and Mell. I. 100, ‘Enter above ... Enter below’ ... (117) ‘they two stand ... whilst the scene passeth above’ ... (140) ‘Exeunt all on the lower stage’ ... (148) ‘Rossaline. Prithee, go down!’ ... (160) ‘Enter Mellida, Rossaline, and Flavia’; III. ii. 190 ‘Enter Antonio and Mellida’ ... (193) ‘Mellida. A number mount my stairs; I’ll straight return. Exit’ ... (222) ‘Feliche. Slink to my chamber; look you, that is it’.
[449] IV. 220, ‘Enter Piero (&c.) ... Balurdo and his Page, at another door’.
[450] 2 Ant. and Mell. I. ii. 194, ‘Antonio. See, look, the curtain stirs’ ... (s.d.) ‘The curtains drawn, and the body of Feliche, stabb’d thick with wounds, appears hung up’ and ‘Antonio. What villain bloods the window of my love?’
[451] III. ii. 1, ‘Enter ... Maria, her hair loose’ ... (59) ‘Maria. Pages, leave the room’ ... (65) ‘Maria draweth the curtain: and the ghost of Andrugio is displayed, sitting on the bed’ ... (95) ‘Exit Maria to her bed, Andrugio drawing the curtains’.
[452] V. ii. 50, ‘While the measure is dancing, Andrugio’s ghost is placed betwixt the music-houses’ ... (115) ‘The curtaine being drawn, exit Andrugio’.
[453] V. ii. 112, ‘They run all at Piero with their rapiers’. This is while the ghost is present above, but (152) ‘The curtains are drawn, Piero departeth’.
[454] III. i. 33, ‘And, lo, the ghost of old Andrugio Forsakes his coffin’ ... (125) ‘Ghosts ... from above and beneath’ ... (192) ‘From under the stage a groan’; IV. ii. 87, ‘They strike the stage with their daggers, and the grave openeth’. The church must have been shown open, and part of the crowded action of these scenes kept outside; at IV. ii. 114, ‘yon bright stars’ are visible.
[455] Fawn, IV. 638, ‘Dulcimel. Father, do you see that tree, that leans just on my chamber window?’ ... (V. 1) ‘whilst the Act is a-playing, Hercules and Tiberio enters; Tiberio climbs the tree, and is received above by Dulcimel, Philocalia, and a Priest: Hercules stays beneath’. After a mask and other action in the presence, (461) ‘Tiberio and Dulcimel above, are discovered hand in hand’.
[456] W. You Will, IV. 373, after a dance, ‘Celia. Will you to dinner?’ ... (V. 1) ‘The curtains are drawn by a Page, and Celia (&c.) displayed, sitting at dinner’.
[457] II. 1, ‘One knocks: Laverdure draws the curtains, sitting on his bed, apparelling himself; his trunk of apparel standing by him’ ... (127) ‘Bidet, I’ll down’; II. ii. 1, ‘Enter a schoolmaster, draws the curtains behind, with Battus, Nous, Slip, Nathaniel, and Holophernes Pippo, schoolboys, sitting, with books in their hands’.
[458] I. 110, ‘He sings and is answered; from above a willow garland is flung down, and the song ceaseth’.
[459] Satiromastix, I. ii. 1, ‘Horrace sitting in a study behinde a curtaine, a candle by him burning, bookes lying confusedly’.
[460] V. ii. 23, where the ‘canopie’, if a Paul’s term, may be the equivalent of the public theatre alcove (cf. pp. 82, 120). The ‘bower’ in IV. iii holds eight persons, and a recess may have been used.
[461] Shorthose says (V. i. 60) ‘Thou lean’st against a poast’, but obviously posts supporting a heavens at Paul’s cannot be inferred.
[462] Westward Ho! uses the houses of Justiniano (I. i), Wafer (III. iii), Ambush (III. iv), the Earl (II. ii; IV. ii), and a Bawd (IV. i), the shops of Tenterhook (I. ii; III. i) and Honeysuckle (II. i), and inns at the Steelyard (II. iii), Shoreditch (II. iii), and Brentford (V). Continuous setting would not construct so many houses for single scenes. There is action above at the Bawd’s, and interior action below in several cases; in IV. ii, ‘the Earle drawes a curten and sets forth a banquet’. The s.ds. of this scene seem inadequate; at a later point Moll is apparently ‘discovered’, shamming death. Northward Ho! uses the houses of Mayberry (I. iii; II. ii) and Doll (II. i; III. i), a garden house at Moorfields (III. ii), Bellamont’s study (IV. i), Bedlam (IV. iii, iv), a ‘tavern entry’ in London (I. ii), and an inn at Ware (I. i; V. i). Action above is at the last only, interior action below in several.