called upon to enlighten us. There are yet two more scenes, according to the Grex. One opens with 'Conceiue him but to be enter'd the Mitre' (3841), and as action shifts from the Mitre to Deliro's and back again without further note, these two houses were probably shown together. The final scene is introduced by 'O, this is to be imagin'd the Counter belike' (4285). So elaborate a directory would surely render any use of labels superfluous for this particular play; but, so far as we know, the experiment was not repeated.[1]
When Cordatus points to 'that', and calls it the west end of Paul's, are we to suppose that the imagination of the audience was helped out by the display of any pictorial background? It is not impossible. The central aperture, disclosed by the parting curtains, could easily hold, in place of a discovered alcove or a quasi-solid monument or rock, any kind of painted cloth which might give colour to the scene. A woodland cloth or a battlement cloth could serve for play after play, and for a special occasion something more distinctive could be attempted without undue expense. Such a back-cloth, perhaps for use in Dr. Faustus, may have been 'the sittie of Rome' which we find in Henslowe's inventory of 1598.[2] And something of this kind seems to be required in 2 If You Know not Me, You Know Nobody, where the scene is before Sir Thomas Gresham's newly completed Burse, and the personages say 'How do you like this building?' and 'We are gazing here on M. Greshams work'.[3] Possibly Elizabethan imaginations were more vivid than a tradition of scene-*painters allows ours to be, but that does not mean that an Elizabethan audience did not like to have its eyes tickled upon occasion. And if as a rule the stage-managers relied mainly upon garments and properties to minister to this instinct, there is no particular reason why they should not also have had recourse to so simple a device as a back-cloth. This conjecture is hardly excluded by the very general terms in which post-Restoration writers deny 'scenes' and all decorations other than 'hangings' to the earlier stage.[4] By 'scenes' they no doubt mean the complete settings with
- ↑ I cite Greg's Q_{2}, but Q_{1} agrees. Jonson's own scene-division is of course determined by the introduction of new speakers (cf. p. 200) and does not precisely follow the textual indications.
- ↑ Henslowe Papers, 116.
- ↑ 2 If You Know Not Me (ed. Pearson), p. 295.
- ↑ Cf. App. I, and Neuendorff, 149, who quotes J. Corey, Generous
Enemies (1672), prol.:
Coarse hangings then, instead of scenes, were worn.
And Kidderminster did the stage adorn.Graves, 78, suggests pictorial 'painted cloths' for backgrounds.
