always have occupied the same place. The large number of plays between 1579 and 1585 which required battlements, no less than fourteen out of twenty-eight in all, is rather striking. No doubt the assault motive was beloved in the popular type of drama, of which Orestes was an early representative. A castle in a wood, where a knight is imprisoned, is assaulted in Clyomon and Clamydes, and the Shakespearian stage never wearied of the device. I have sometimes thought that with the Revels officers 'battlement' was a technical term for any platform provided for action at a higher level than the floor of the stage. Certainly a battlement was provided in 1585 for an entertainment which was not a play at all, but a performance of feats of activities.[1] But as a matter of fact raised action, so common in the Shakespearian period, is extremely rare in these early plays. With the exceptions of Clytemnestra peering over her wall, and the descents from heaven in Gismond of Salerne and Clyomon and Clamydes, which may of course have been through the roof rather than from a platform, the seventy or so plays just discussed contain nothing of the kind. There are, however, two plays still to be mentioned, in which use is made of a platform, and one of these gives some colour to my suggestion. In 1582 Derby's men played Love and Fortune at Court, and a city and a battlement, together with some other structure of canvas, the name of which is left blank, were provided. This may reasonably be identified with the Rare Triumphs of Love and Fortune, which claims on its title-page of 1589 to have been played before the Queen. It is a piece of the romantic type. The action is divided between a court and a cave in a wood, which account for the city and the unnamed structure of the Revels record. They were evidently shown together, at opposite ends of the stage, for action passes directly from one to the other. There is no assault scene. But there is an induction, in which the gods are in assembly, and Tisiphone arises from hell. At the end of it Jupiter says to Venus and Fortune:
Take up your places here, to work your will,
and Vulcan comments:
They are set sunning like a crow in a gutter.
They remain as spectators of the play until they 'shew themselves' and intervene in the dénouement. Evidently they are in a raised place or balcony. And this balcony must be the battlement. An exact analogy is furnished by
- ↑ Feuillerat, Eliz. 365.
