- tion was not, I venture to think, qualified by the presence
in any scene of a property inappropriate to that scene, but retained there because it had been used for some previous, or was to be used for some coming, scene. I do not mean to say that some colourless or insignificant property, such as a bench, may not have served, without being moved, first in an indoors and then in an out-of-doors scene. But that the management of the Theatre or the Rose was so bankrupt in ingenuity that the audience had to watch a coronation through a fringe of trees or to pretend unconsciousness while the strayed lovers in a forest dodged each other round the corners of a derelict 'state', I, for one, see no adequate reason to believe. It is chiefly the state and the trees which have caused the trouble. But, after all, a state which has creaked down can creak up again, just as a banquet or a gallows which has been carried on can be carried off. Trees are perhaps a little more difficult. A procession of porters, each with a tree in his arms, would be a legitimate subject for the raillery of The Admirable Bashville. A special back curtain painted en pastoralle would hardly be adequate, even if there were any evidence for changes of curtain; trees were certainly sometimes practicable and therefore quasi-solid.[1] The alcove, filled with shrubs, would by itself give the illusion of a greenhouse rather than a forest; moreover, the alcove was available in forest scenes to serve as a rustic bower or cottage.[2] Probably the number of trees dispersed over the body of the stage was not great; they were a symbolical rather than a realistic setting. On the whole, I am inclined to think that, at need, trees ascended and descended through traps; and that this is not a mere conjecture is suggested by a few cases in which the ascent and descent, being part of a conjuring action, are recorded in the stage-directions.[3] One of these shows that the traps would carry not merely a tree but an arbour. The traps had, of course, other functions. Through them
- ↑ Cf. p. 52, n. 2. The Admiral's inventories of 1598 (Henslowe Papers, 116) include 'j baye tree', 'j tree of gowlden apelles', 'Tantelouse tre', as well as 'ij mose banckes'.
- ↑ Cf. p. 51, n. 3.
- ↑ Looking Glass, II. i. 495, 'The Magi with their rods beate the ground, and from vnder the same riseth a braue Arbour'; Bacon and Bungay, sc. ix. 1171, 'Heere Bungay coniures and the tree appeares with the dragon shooting fire'; W. for Fair Women, ii. 411, 'Suddenly riseth vp a great tree betweene them'. On the other hand, in Old Fortunatus, 609 (ind.), the presenters bring trees on and 'set the trees into the earth'. The t.p. of the 1615 Spanish Tragedy shows the arbour of the play as a small trellissed pergola with an arched top, not too large, I should say, to come up and down through a commodious trap.
