theatres the three main entrances were in the scenic wall and on the same or nearly the same plane. But the Blackfriars was a rectangular room. We do not know that any free space was left between its walls and the sides of the stage. And it is quite conceivable that there may have been side-doors in the planes of these walls, and at right angles to the middle door. Whether this was so or not, and if so how far forward the side-doors stood, there is certainly nothing in the formulae of the stage-directions to tell us. Perhaps the most noticeable differentiation, which emerges from a comparative survey of private and public plays, is that in the main the writers of the former, unlike those of the latter, appear to be guided by the principle of unity of place; at any rate to the extent that their domus are generally located in the same town, although they may be brought for purposes of representation into closer contiguity than the actual topography of that town would suggest. There are exceptions, and the scenes in a town are occasionally broken by one or two, requiring at the most an open-country background, in the environs. The exact measure in which the principle is followed will become sufficiently evident in the sequel. My immediate point is that it was precisely the absence of unity of place which drove the public stage back upon its common form background of a curtained alcove below and a curtained gallery above, supplemented by the side-doors and later the windows above them, and convertible to the needs of various localities in the course of a single play.
Let us now proceed to the analysis, first of the Paul's plays and then of the Chapel and Revels plays at the Blackfriars; separately, for the same caution, which forbids a hasty syncretism of the conditions of public and private houses, also warns us that divergences may conceivably have existed between those of the two private houses themselves. But here too we are faced with the fact that individual plays were sometimes transferred from one to the other, The Fawn from Blackfriars to Paul's, and The Trick to Catch the Old One in its turn from Paul's to Blackfriars.[1]
Seventeen plays, including the two just named and Satiromastix, which was shared with the Globe, are assigned to Paul's by contemporary title-pages.[2] To these may be
- ↑ I think it is possible that Sophonisba, with its 'canopy' (cf. p. 149) was also originally written for Paul's.
- ↑ 1, 2 Antonio and Mellida, Maid's Metamorphosis, Wisdom of Dr. Dodipoll, Jack Drum's Entertainment, Satiromastix, Blurt Master Constable, Bussy D'Ambois, Westward Ho!, Northward Ho!, Fawn, Michaelmas Term, Phoenix, Mad World, my Masters, Trick to Catch the Old One, Puritan, Woman Hater.
