direction for a dumb show, 'Enter aboue Nemesis'.[1] There
are traces of it also in James IV and in A Looking Glass for London and England. In James IV the presenters are Bohan, a Scot, and Oberon, king of fairies. They come on the stage for an induction, at the end of which Bohan says, 'Gang with me to the Gallery, and Ile show thee the same in action by guid fellowes of our country men', and they Exeunt. Obviously they watch the action, for they enter again and comment upon it during act intervals. One of their interpositions is closed with the words 'Gow shrowd vs in our harbor'; another with 'Lets to our sell, and sit & see the rest'.[2] In the Looking Glass we get after the first scene the direction, 'Enters brought in by an angell Oseas the Prophet, and set downe ouer the Stage in a Throne'. Oseas is evidently a presenter; the actors ignore him, but he makes moral comments after various scenes, and at the end of Act IV comes the further direction, 'Oseas taken away'.[3] Purely human presenters in The Taming of a Shrew are still on a raised level. Sly is removed from the main stage during the first scene of the induction. He is brought back at the beginning of the second scene, presumably above, whence he criticizes the play, for towards the end the lord bids his servants
lay him in the place where we did find him, Just underneath the alehouse side below;
and this is done by way of an epilogue.[4] I do not suggest that presenters were always above; it is not so when they merely furnish the equivalent of a prologue or epilogue, but only when it is desired to keep them visible during the action, and on the other hand they must not obstruct it. Sometimes, even when their continued presence might be desirable, it has to be dispensed with, or otherwise provided for. The presenters in Soliman and Perseda come and go; those in The Spanish Tragedy sit upon the stage itself. Why? I think the answer is the same in both cases. A platform was required for other purposes. In Soliman and Perseda one scene has the outer wall of a tiltyard reached by ladders from the stage; another has a tower, from which victims are tumbled down out of sight.[5] In the Spanish*
- ↑ Henslowe Papers, 139.
- ↑ James IV, 106, 605, 618, 1115.
- ↑ Looking Glass, 152, 1756.
- ↑ T. of a Shrew, scc. ii, xvi. In T. of the Shrew, sc. ii of the Induction is 'aloft' (1), and the presenters 'sit' to watch the play (147), but they only comment once (I. i. 254) with the s.d. 'The Presenters aboue speakes', and Sly is not carried down at the end.
- ↑ Cf. p. 57, n. 4. The main induction ends (38) with, 'Why stay we
