a wall inserted on the line of the scenic curtain would not meet the needs of the situation. Pastoral scenes are also common, for the urban preoccupation has its regular reaction in the direction of pastoral. There is plenty of evidence for practicable trees, such as that on which Orlando in As You Like It hangs his love verses, and the most likely machinery for putting trees into position still seems to me to be the trap.[1] A trap, too, might bring up the bower for the play within the play of Hamlet, the pleached arbour of Much Ado about Nothing, the pulpit in the forum of Julius Caesar, the tombstone in the woods of Timon of Athens, the wayside cross of Every Man Out of his Humour, and other terrains most easily thought of as free-standing structures.[2] It would open for Ophelia's grave, and for the still beloved ascents of spirits from the lower regions.[3] It remains difficult to see how a river-*bank or the sea-shores was represented.[4] As a rule, the edge of the stage, with steps into the auditorium taken for water stairs, seems most plausible. But there is a complicated episode in The Devil's Charter, with a conduit and a bridge over the Tiber, which I do not feel quite able to envisage.[5] There is another bridge over the Tiber for Horatius Cocles in the Red Bull play of the Rape of Lucrece. But this is easier; it is projected from the walls of Rome, and there must be a trapped cavity on the scenic line, into which Horatius leaps.[6]
- [Footnote: (42) 'Martius followes them to their gates, and is shut in'. . . . (62) 'Enter
Martius bleeding, assaulted by the enemy'. . . . 'They fight and all enter the City', and so on to end of sc. x; Tim. V. iv. 1, 'Enter Alcibiades with his Powers before Athens. . . . The Senators appeare vpon the wals'; IV. i; Devil's Charter, II. i; IV. iv; Maid's Tragedy, V. iii.]feare that he Fall not vpon the arches', and 'Caesar casteth Frescobaldi after'.]*
- ↑ A. Y. L. III. ii. 1; Philaster, IV. iv. 83, 'Philaster creeps out of a bush' (as shown in the woodcut on the t.p. of the Q.); T. N. K. III. i. 37, 'Enter Palamon as out of a bush'; V. i. 169, 'Here the Hynde vanishes under the Altar: and in the place ascends a Rose Tree, having one Rose upon it'.
- ↑ Ham. III. ii. 146 (Q_{1}) 'Enter in a Dumb Show, the King and the Queene, he sits downe in an Arbor', (Q_{2}, F_{2}) 'he lyes him downe vpon a bancke of flowers'; M. Ado, I. ii. 10; III. i. 7, 30; J. C. III. ii. 1, 'Enter Brutus and goes into the Pulpit'; Tim. V. iii. 5; E. M. O. III. ii.
- ↑ Ham. V. i; Macb. IV. i; Devil's Charter, prol.; Catiline, I. i, &c.; I do not know whether hell-mouth remained in use; there is nothing to point to it in the hell scene of The Devil is an Ass, I. i.
- ↑ Pericles, II. i. 121, 'Enter the two Fisher-men, drawing vp a Net'.
- ↑ Devil's Charter, III. v. Caesar Borgia and Frescobaldi murder the Duke of Candie (vide infra). Caesar says 'let vs heaue him ouer, That he may fall into the riuer Tiber, Come to the bridge with him'; he bids Frescobaldi 'stretch out their armes [for
- ↑ Rape of Lucrece (ed. Pearson), p. 240. It is before 'yon walles' of Rome. Horatius has his foot 'fixt vpon the bridge' and bids his friends break it behind him, while he keeps Tarquin's party off. Then 'a noise
