As Alexander (V. iv. 71) tells Diogenes that he 'wil haue thy cabin remoued nerer to my court', I infer that the palace and the tub were at opposite ends of the stage, and the shop in the middle, where the interior action could best be seen. In Sapho and Phao the unity of place is not so marked. All the action is more or less at Syracuse, but, with the exception of one scene (II. iii), the whole of the first two acts are near Phao's ferry outside the city. I do not think that the actual ferry is visible, for passengers go 'away' (I. i. 72; ii. 69) to cross, and no use is made of a ferryman's house, but somewhere quite near Sibylla sits 'in the mouth of her caue' (II. i. 13), and talks with Phao.[1] The rest of the action is in the city itself, either before the palace of Sapho, or within her chamber, or at the forge of Vulcan, where he is perhaps seen 'making of the arrowes' (IV. iv. 33) during a song. Certainly Sapho's chamber is practicable. The stage-directions do not always indicate its opening and shutting. At one point (III. iii. 1) we simply get 'Sapho in her bed' in a list of interlocutors; at another (IV. i. 20) 'Exit Sapho', which can only mean that the door closes upon her. It was a door, not a curtain, for she tells a handmaid (V. ii. 101) to 'shut' it. Curtains are 'drawne' (III. iii. 36; IV. iii. 95), but these are bed-curtains, and the drawing of them does not put Sapho's chamber in or out of action. As in Campaspe, there is interplay between house and house. A long continuous stretch of action, not even broken by the act intervals, begins with III. iii and extends to the end of V. ii, and in the course of this Venus sends Cupid to Sapho, and herself waits at Vulcan's forge (V. i. 50). Presently (V. ii. 45) she gets tired of waiting, and without leaving the stage, advances to the chamber and says, 'How now, in Saphoes lap?' There is not the same interplay between the city houses and Sibylla's cave, to which the last scene of the play returns. I think we must suppose that two neighbouring spots within the same general locality were shown in different parts of the stage, and this certainly entails a bolder use of dramatic foreshortening of distance than the mere crossing the market-place in Campaspe. This foreshortening recurs in Endymion. Most of the action is in an open place which must be supposed to be near the palace of Cynthia, or at the lunary bank (II. iii. 9), of Endymion's slumber, which is also near the palace.[2] It stands in*
- ↑ Action is continuous between II. i, at the cave, and II. ii, in which Sapho will 'crosse the Ferrie'. Phao told Sibylla (II. i. 14) that he was out of his way and benighted, but this was a mere excuse for addressing her.
- ↑ The palace itself was not necessarily staged. If it was, it was used with the lunary bank, after visiting which Cynthia goes 'in' (IV. iii. 171). She comes 'out' and goes 'in' again (V. iii. 17, 285), but these terms
