which ranges widely over the inhabited world, there is an appeal to imagination by Fame, the presenter, who says,
Would your apprehensions helpe poore art,
Into three parts deuiding this our stage,
They all at once shall take their leaues of you.
Thinke this England, this Spaine, this Persia.
Then follow the stage-directions, 'Enter three seuerall waies the three Brothers', and 'Fame giues to each a prospective glasse, they seme to see one another'. Obviously such a visionary dumb-show cannot legitimately be twisted into an argument that the concurrent representation of incongruous localities was a matter of normal staging. Such interplay of opposed houses, as we get in The Merry Devil of Edmonton, would no doubt seem more effective if we could adopt the ingenious conjecture which regards the scenic wall as not running in a straight line all the way, but broken by two angles, so that, while the central apertures below and above directly front the spectators, the doors to right and left, each with a room or window above it, are set on a bias, and more or less face each other from end to end of the stage.[1] I cannot call this more than a conjecture, for there is no direct evidence in its favour, and the Swan drawing, for what that is worth, is flatly against it. Structurally it would, I suppose, fit the round or apsidal ended Globe better than the rectangular Fortune or Blackfriars. The theory seems to have been suggested by a desire to make it possible to watch action within the alcove from a gallery on the level above. I have not, however, come across any play which can be safely assigned to a public theatre, in which just this situation presents itself, although it is common enough for persons above to watch action in a threshold or hall scene. Two windows in the same plane would, of course, fully meet the needs of The Devil is an Ass. There is, indeed, the often-quoted scene from David and Bethsabe, in which the King watches the Hittite's wife bathing at a fountain; but the provenance of David and Bethsabe is so uncertain and its text so evidently manipulated, that it would be very temerarious to rely upon it as affording any proof of public usage.[2] On the other hand, if it is the case, as seems almost certain, that the boxes over the doors were originally the lord's rooms, itdrawes a curtaine, and discouers Bethsabe with her maid bathing ouer a spring: she sings, and David sits aboue vewing her'.]
