Page:The Elizabethan stage (Volume 3).pdf/64

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the one of Lyly's plays to which I have not as yet referred. This is The Woman in the Moon, Lyly's only verse play, and possibly of later date than his group of productions with the Paul's boys. The first act has the character of an induction. Nature and the seven Planets are on the stage and 'They draw the curtins from before Natures shop'. During the other four there is a human action in a pastoral setting with a cave, beneath which is a trap, a grove on the bank of Enipeus, and a spot near the sea-shore. And throughout one or other of the Planets is watching the play from a 'seate' (II. 176; III. i. 1) above, between which and the stage they 'ascend' and 'descend' (I. 138, 230; II. 174, 236; III. ii. 35; IV. 3).