the attempt to tackle the architectural perspective from a difficult angle in an upper gallery. My impression is that, by giving too much height to the bottom gallery, he has got the two other galleries out of line with the stories of the tire-house to which they correspond, and that the lower gallery should really be on the level of the stage, the middle gallery on that of the gallery 'over the stage', and the top gallery on that of the rather obscure story above. If so, the front of this story would have been visible, and may have contained some aperture of which account has not yet been taken in formulating theories of staging.[1] And I think that the columns were really higher and the roof flatter than De Witt has drawn them. It is perhaps less easy to suggest that the columns stood farther forward than De Witt has placed them, but the roof may well have projected farther over them. They are solid enough to bear a much greater weight than the drawing indicates. However these things may have been at the Swan—I am not blind to the dangers of attempting to convert what De Witt has shown into something which he has not shown—one may, perhaps, infer that more extensive roofing than the pent-house of the drawing would afford was contemplated by the Fortune contract, which provides for 'a shadowe or cover over the saide stadge', and the Hope contract, which is even more precise in its specification of 'the Heavens all over the saide stage'. In both cases there were to be gutters to carry away rainwater. The heavens at the Hope were 'to be borne or carryed without any postes or supporters to be fixed or sett uppon the saide stage', and it has been thought that other theatres of later date than the Swan may also have dispensed with posts. But there is little ground for this theory, other than the obvious obstruction which the posts would offer to vision.[2] Howes seems to refer to the arrangement at the Hope as an innovation, and it can hardly be unrelated to the special need for a removable stage at that house. On the other hand the posts may very likely have been slighter than De Witt has shown them. At the Fortune they were, like other 'princypall and maine postes', square and carved 'palasterwise' with satyrs. The posts are worked into the action of several plays, and Kempe tells us that pickpockets were pilloried by being tied to them.[3]*
- ↑ Cf. vol. iii, p. 78. Is this, or the hut, the 'garret' of R. M.'s A Player (cf. p. 546)?
- ↑ I do not now regard as tenable my suggestion in The Stage of the Globe (Stratford Town Shakespeare, x. 351) that De Witt represented as outstanding columns what were really mere pilasters in the tire-house wall.
- ↑ Kempe, Nine Days Wonder, 6, 'I remembred one of them to be
