given by a window at the back, from which also the occupants of the room could pretend to look out behind.[1] Internal doors could of course also be made available. A scene in The Jew of Malta requires a trap in the floor of the upper chamber, over a cauldron discovered in the alcove below.[2] The upper chamber could be fitted, like the alcove itself, with an independent curtain for discoveries.[3]
Are we to conclude that all action 'above' was on or behind the back line of the stage? The point upon which I feel most uncertainty is the arrangement of the battlements in the stricter sense.[4] These appear to be generally regarded as running along the whole of the back line, with the gates of the town or castle represented in the central aperture below. Some writers suggest that they occupied, not the actual space of the rooms or boxes 'over the stage', but a narrow balcony running in front of these.[5] I cannot satisfy myself that the Swan drawing bears out the existence of any projecting ledge adequate for the purpose. On the other hand, if all the compartments of the gallery were made available and their partitions removed, all the spectators 'over the stage' must have been displaced; and siege scenes are early, and numerous. I do not know that it is essential to assume that the battlements extended beyond the width of two compartments. There is some definite evidence for a position of the 'walles' on the scenic line, apart from the patent convenience of keeping the main stage clear for besieging armies, in Jasper Mayne's laudation of Ben Jonson:
Thou laid'st no sieges to the music room.[6]
I am content to believe that this is where they normally stood. At the same time, it is possible that alternative arrangements were not unknown. In the Wagner Book, which must be supposed to describe a setting of a type not incredible on the public stage, we are told of a high throne,
- [Footnote: *mentary structure. The Admiral's inventory of 1598 (Henslowe Papers,
116; cf. ch. ii, p. 168) included 'j payer of stayers for Fayeton'. In Soliman and Perseda, I. iii (p. 57, n. 4), where the back wall represents the outer wall of a tiltyard, ladders are put up against it.]
- ↑ Albright, 66; Lawrence, ii. 45. I am not prepared to accept the theory that in R. J. III. v Romeo descends his ladder from behind; cf. p. 94, n. 2. The other examples cited are late, but I should add the 'window that goes out into the leads' of 1 Oldcastle, 2016 (p. 66, n. 1).
- ↑ Jew of Malta, V. 2316; cf. p. 68, n. 5.
- ↑ E. M. I. I. v, 'Bobadilla discouers himselfe: on a bench'.
- ↑ Cf. p. 54, nn. 2-5.
- ↑ See the conjectural reconstruction in Albright, 120.
- ↑ Jonsonus Virbius (1638).
