In The Devil is an Ass, which is a Blackfriars play of 1616, a little beyond the limits of our period, there is an interesting scene played out of two contiguous upper windows, supposed to be in different houses.[1]
There is other evidence to show that in the seventeenth century as in the sixteenth, the stage was not limited to the presentation of a single house only at any given moment. A multiplicity of houses would fit the needs of several plays, but perhaps the most striking instance for the Globe is afforded by The Merry Devil of Edmonton, the last act of which requires two inns on opposite sides of the stage, the signs of which have been secretly exchanged, as a trick in the working out of the plot.[2] The King's plays do not often require any marked foreshortening of distance in journeys over the stage. Hamlet, indeed, comes in 'a farre off', according to a stage-direction of the Folio, but this need mean no more than at the other end of the graveyard, although Hamlet is in fact returning from a voyage.[3] In Bonduca the Roman army at one end of the stage are said to be half a furlong from the rock occupied by Caractacus, which they cannot yet see; but they go off, and their leaders subsequently emerge upon the rock from behind.[4] The old device endured at the Red Bull, but even here the flagrant example usually cited is of a very special type.[5] At the end of The Travels of the Three English Brothers, the action of
- [Footnote: in a gallery with her love Bellarius' . . . (2021) 'Descendet Leonela';
Duchess of Malfi, V. v; Hen. VIII, V. ii. 19, 'Enter the King, and Buts, at a Windowe above', with 'Let 'em alone, and draw the curtaine close' (34); Pericles, II. ii (where Simonides and Thaisa 'withdraw into the gallerie', to watch a tilting supposed behind, as in the sixteenth-century Soliman and Perseda; cf. p. 96). So, too, in T. N. K. V. iii, the fight between Palamon and Arcite takes place within; Emilia will not see it, and it is reported to her on the main stage.]
- ↑ D. an Ass, II. vi. 37, 'This Scene is acted at two windo's as out of two contiguous buildings' . . . (77) 'Playes with her paps, kisseth her hands, &c.' . . . vii. 1 'Her husband appeares at her back' . . . (8) 'Hee speaks out of his wives window' . . . (23) 'The Divell speakes below' . . . (28) 'Fitz-dottrel enters with his wife as come downe'.
- ↑ M. Devil of Edmonton, V. i, ii; Catiline, V. vi (where apparently three houses are visited after leaving the senate-house); cf. the cases of shops on p. 110, n. 10.
- ↑ Ham. V. i. 60.
- ↑ Bonduca, V. iii.
- ↑ Three English Brothers, ad fin. A court scene in Sir T. Wyatt ends (ed. Hazlitt, p. 10) with s.d. 'pass round the stage', which takes the personages to the Tower. Similarly in 1 If You Know Not Me (ed. Pearson, p. 246) a scene at Hatfield ends 'And now to London, lords, lead on the way', with s.d. 'Sennet about the Stage in order. The Maior of London meets them', and in 2 If You Know Not Me (p. 342) troops start from Tilbury, and 'As they march about the stage, Sir Francis Drake and Sir Martin Furbisher meet them'.
