surroundings but rocks or trees, and the references to the landscape, which are frequently put in the mouths of speakers, have been interpreted as intended to stimulate the imagination of spectators before whose eyes no representation, or a very imperfect representation, of wilderness or woodland had been placed.[1] But it is not likely that this literary artifice was alone relied upon, and in some cases practicable trees or rocks are certainly required by the action and must have been represented.[2] There are plays which are set continuously in the open country throughout, or during a succession of scenes, and are thus analogous to Court plays tout en pastoralle. But there are others in which the open-country scenes are only interspersed among scenes of a different type.[3]
Nothing was more beloved by a popular audience, especially in an historical play or one of the Tamburlaine order, than an episode of war. A war scene was often only a variety of the open-country scene. Armies come and go on the road, and a battle naturally takes place in more or less open ground. It may be in a wood, or a tree or river may be introduced.[4] Obviously large forces could not be shown on the stage.*
- ↑ Two late testimonies may be held to support the theory. In T. N. K.
(King's, c. 1613), III. i. 31, 'Enter Palamon as out of a Bush', but cf.
III. vi. 1, 'Enter Palamon from the Bush'. The Prologue to Woman
Killed with Kindness (Worcester's, 1603) says:
I come but like a harbinger, being sent
To tell you what these preparations mean:
Look for no glorious state; our Muse is bent
Upon a barren subject, a bare scene.
We could afford this twig a timber tree.
Whose strength might boldly on your favours build;
Our russet, tissue; drone, a honey bee;
Our barren plot, a large and spacious field.These rhetorical antitheses are an apology for meanness of theme, rather than, like the prologues to Henry V, for scenic imperfections, and I hesitate to believe that, when the actor said 'twig', he pointed to a branch which served as sole symbol on the stage for a woodland.
- ↑ Looking-Glass, V. iii. 2059, 2075, 'Lo, a pleasant shade, a spreading vine . . . A Serpent deuoureth the vine'; O. Furioso, 572, 'Sacrepant hangs vp the Roundelayes on the trees' (cf. A. Y. L. III. ii. 1, 'Hang there, my verse, in witness of my love'); B. B. of Alexandria, sc. vi, 'Here's a branch, forsooth, of your little son turned to a mandrake tree'; Old Fortunatus, 1-357, where Fortunatus dreams under a tree, 1861-2128, where there are apple- and nut-trees in a wilderness; &c., &c. Simon Forman in 1611 saw Macbeth and Banquo 'ridinge thorowe a wod' (N. S. S. Trans. 1875-6, 417), although from the extant text we could have inferred no trees in I. iii.
- ↑ M. N. D. II-IV. i; Mucedorus, I; II. iii; III. iii-v; IV. ii, iii; V. i; T. A. Women of Abingdon, scc. vii, ix-xii.
- ↑ Edw. I, 2391, 'I must hang vp my weapon vppon this tree'; Alphon-*
