Nevertheless, I do not think that shifting scenes of the public theatre type are indicated. Albano's house does not lend itself to public theatre methods. Act I is beneath his wife Celia's window.[1] Similarly III. ii is before his porch. But III. iv is in his hall, whence the company go to dinner within, and here they are disclosed in V. Hence, from V. 69 onwards, they begin to pass to the street, where they presently meet the duke's troop. I do not know of any public play in which the porch, the hall, and an inner room of a house are all represented, and my feeling is that Albano's occupied the back corner of a stage, with the porch and window above to one side, at right angles to the plane of the hall. At any rate I do not see any definite obstacle to the hypothesis that all Marston's plays for Paul's had continuous settings. For What You Will the 'little' stage would have been rather crowded. The induction hints that it was, and perhaps that spectators were on this occasion excluded, while the presenters went behind the back curtains.
Most of the other Paul's plays need not detain us as long as Marston's. He has been thought to have helped in Satiromastix, but that must be regarded as substantially Dekker's. Obviously it must have been capable of representation both at Paul's and at the Globe. It needs the houses of Horace, Shorthose, and Vaughan, Prickshaft's garden with a 'bower' in it, and the palace. Interior action is required in Horace's study, which is discovered,[2] the presence-chamber at the palace, where a 'chaire is set under a canopie',[3] and Shorthose's hall.[4] The ordinary methods at the Globe would be adequate. On the other hand, London, in spite of Horace, is the locality throughout, and at Paul's the setting may have been continuous, just as well as in What You Will. Dekker is also the leading spirit in Westward Ho! and Northward Ho!, and in these we get, for the first time at Paul's, plays for which a continuous setting seems quite impossible. Not only does Westward Ho! require no less than ten houses and
- [Footnote: 'Bidet, I'll down'; II. ii. 1, 'Enter a schoolmaster, draws the curtains
behind, with Battus, Nous, Slip, Nathaniel, and Holophernes Pippo, schoolboys, sitting, with books in their hands'.]
- ↑ I. 110, 'He sings and is answered; from above a willow garland is flung down, and the song ceaseth'.
- ↑ Satiromastix, I. ii. 1, 'Horrace sitting in a study behinde a curtaine, a candle by him burning, bookes lying confusedly'.
- ↑ V. ii. 23, where the 'canopie', if a Paul's term, may be the equivalent of the public theatre alcove (cf. pp. 82, 120). The 'bower' in IV. iii holds eight persons, and a recess may have been used.
- ↑ Shorthose says (V. i. 60) 'Thou lean'st against a poast', but obviously posts supporting a heavens at Paul's cannot be inferred.
