presumably at the back, of hell mouth 'at the one end of the stage', and of an elaborate castle 'at the other end in opposition'. This is 'the place where in the bloudlesse skirmishes are so often perfourmed upon the stage', and although I should not press this as meaning that the walls were always at an 'end' of the stage, the passage would be absurd, if they were invariably at the back.[1] Further, there is at least one extant play in which it is very difficult to envisage certain scenes with the walls at the back. This is 1 Henry VI, the Orleans scenes of which, with the leaping over the walls, and the rapid succession of action in the market-place within the town and in the field without, seem to me clearly to point to walls standing across the main stage from back to front.[2] But if so, how were such walls put into place? The imagination boggles at the notion of masons coming in to build a wall during the action, in the way in which attendants might set up a bar or a lists, or carpenters the gibbet for an execution. Bottom's device for Pyramus and Thisbe would hardly be more grotesque. Yet the Orleans siege scenes in 1 Henry VI are by no means coincident with acts, and could not therefore be set in advance and dismantled at leisure when done with. Can the walls have been drawn forwards and backwards, with the help of some machine, through the doors or the central aperture?[3] It is not inconceivable, and possibly we have here the explanation of the 'j whell and frame in the Sege of London', which figures in the Admiral's inventories. Once the possibility of a scenic structure brought on to the main stage is mooted, one begins to look for other kinds of episode in which it would be useful. This, after all, may have been the way in which a gibbet was introduced, and the Admiral's had also 'j frame for the heading in Black Jone', although nothing is said of a wheel.[4] The senate houses could, I think, have been located in the gallery, but the beacon in King Leir would not look plausible there,(on which cf. A. E. Haigh, Attic Theatre^2 ?], 201), although he is thinking of it as a device for 'thrusting' out a set interior from the alcove, which does not seem to me necessary.]
- ↑ Cf. p. 72.
- ↑ 1 Hen. VI, II. i (p. 54, n. 5). This arrangement would also fit I. ii, in which a shot is fired from the walls at 'the turrets', which could then be represented by the back wall. On a possible similar wall in the Court play of Dido, cf. p. 36.
- ↑ W. Archer (Quarterly Review, ccviii. 466) suggests the possible use of a machine corresponding to the Greek [Greek: ekkyklêma
- ↑ Henslowe Papers, 118. The 'j payer of stayers for Fayeton' may have been a similar structure; cf. p. 95, n. 4. Otway, Venice Preserved (1682), V, has 'Scene opening discovers a scaffold and a wheel prepared for the executing of Pierre'.
