Page:The Elizabethan stage (Volume 3).pdf/42

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In Like Will to Like the Vice brings in a knave of clubs, which he 'offreth vnto one of the men or boyes standing by'. In King Darius (109) Iniquity, when he wants a seat, calls out

Syrs, who is there that hath a stoole?
I will buy it for thys Gentleman;
If you will take money, come as fast as you can.

A similar and earlier example than any of these now presents itself in Fulgens and Lucres, where there is an inductive dialogue between spectators, one of whom says to another

    I thought verely by your apparel,
That ye had bene a player.

Of a raised stage the only indication is in All for Money, a late example of the type, where one stage-direction notes (203), 'There must be a chayre for him to sit in, and vnder it or neere the same there must be some hollowe place for one to come vp in', while another (279) requires 'some fine conueyance' to enable characters to vomit each other up.

I come now to nine interludes which, for various reasons, demand special remark. In Jacob and Esau (> 1558) there is coming and going between the place and the tent of Isaac, before which stands a bench, the tent of Jacob, and probably also the tent of Esau. In Wit and Wisdom (> 1579) action takes place at the entrances of the house of Wantonness, of the den of Irksomeness, of a prison, and of Mother Bee's house, and the prison, as commonly in plays of later types, must have been so arranged as to allow a prisoner to take part in the dialogue from within. Some realism, also, in the treatment of the den may be signified by an allusion to 'these craggie clifts'. In Misogonus (c. 1560-77), the place of which is before the house of Philogonus, there is one scene in Melissa's 'bowre' (ii. 4, 12), which must somehow have been represented. In Thersites (1537), of which one of the characters is a snail that 'draweth her hornes in', Mulciber, according to the stage-directions, 'must have a shop made in the place', which he leaves and returns to, and in which he is perhaps seen making a sallet. Similarly, the Mater of Thersites, when she drops out of the dialogue, 'goeth in the place which is prepared for her', and hither later 'Thersites must ren awaye, and hyde hym behynde hys mothers backe'. These four examples only differ from the normal interlude type by some multiplication of the houses suggested in the background, and probably by some closer approximation than a mere door to the visual realization of these. There is no change of locality, and only an adumbration of interior