Page:The Elizabethan stage (Volume 3).pdf/156

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the fairy chapel. This, which had seats on 'degrees' (v. 5), occupied the 'Canopie, Fane or Trophey', which I take to have been a discovered interior under the 'Beame' named in the other play, corresponding to the alcove of the public theatres. The other properties were smaller 'practicables' standing free on the stage, which is presumably what Percy means by 'outward'. The arrangement must have closely resembled that of The Old Wive's Tale. The 'Fowen Cott' is later described as 'tapistred with cats and fowëns'—a gamekeeper's larder. Some kind of action from above was possible; it may have been only from a tree.[1]

The plays so far considered seem to point to the use at Paul's of continuous settings, even when various localities had to be shown, rather than the successive settings, with the help of common form domus, which prevailed at the contemporary Globe and Fortune. Perhaps there is rather an archaistic note about them. Let us turn to the plays written for Paul's by more up-to-date dramatists, by Marston, Dekker and Webster, Chapman, Middleton, and Beaumont. Marston's hand, already discernible in the revision of Histriomastix, appears to be dominant in Jack Drum's Entertainment, although neither play was reclaimed for him in the collected edition of 1633. Unity of locality is not observed in Jack Drum. By far the greater part of the action takes place on Highgate Green, before the house of Sir Edward Fortune, with practicable windows above.[2] But there are two scenes (I. 282-428; IV. 207-56) in London, before a tavern (I. 345), which may be supposed to be also the house where Mistress Brabant lies 'private' in an 'inner chamber' (IV. 83, 211). And there are three (II. 170-246; III. 220-413; V) in an open spot, on the way to Highgate (II. 228) and near a house, whence a character emerges (III. 249, 310). It is described as 'the crosse stile' (IV. 338), and is evidently quite near Fortune's house, and still on the green (V. 96, 228). This suggests to me a staging closely analogous to that of Cuckqueans and Cuckolds, with Highgate at one end of the stage, London at the other, and the cross stile between them. It is true that there is no very certain evidence of direct transference of action from one spot to another, but the use of two doors at the beginning of the first London scene is consistent, on my theory, with the fact that one entrant comes from Highgate, whither also he goes at the end of the scene, and the similar use at the beginning of the second cross-stile scene is con-*

  1. Faery Pastoral, p. 162, 'A Scrolle fell into her lap from above'.
  2. Jack Drum, II. 27, 'The Casement opens, and Katherine appeares'; 270, 'Winifride lookes from aboue'; 286, 'Camelia, from her window'.