are two of them also in Three Lords and Three Ladies of London, a post and 'the contrarie post', and to one of them a character is bound, just as Kempe tells us that pickpockets taken in a theatre were bound.[1] The binding to a post occurs also in Soliman and Perseda.[2] In James IV and in Lord Cromwell bills are set up on the stage, and for this purpose the posts would conveniently serve.[3] All these are out-of-door scenes, but there was a post in the middle of a warehouse in Every Man In his Humour, and Miles sits down by a post during one of the scenes in the conjurer's cell in Bacon and Bungay.[4] I am not oblivious of the fact that there were doubtless other structural posts on the stage besides those of the heavens, but I do not see how they can have been so conspicuous or so well adapted to serve in the action.[5] Posts may have supported the gallery, but I find it difficult to visualize the back of the stage without supposing these to have been veiled by the hangings. But two of them may have become visible when the hangings were drawn, or some porch-like projection from the back wall may have had its posts, and one of these may be in question, at any rate in the indoor scenes.
The roof of the heavens was presumably used to facilitate certain spectacular effects, the tradition of which the public theatres inherited from the miracle plays and the Court stage.[6] Startling atmospheric phenomena were not infrequently represented.[7] These came most naturally in out-of-door scenes, but I have noted one example in a scene which on general grounds one would classify as a hall scene.[8] The
- [Footnote: heere's an other: Oh now I know in deede where I am; wee are now
at the fardest end of Shoredich, for this is the May-pole'. . . . (1701) 'Ic weit neit waer dat ic be, ic goe and hit my nose op dit post, and ic goe and hit my nose op danden post'.]*
- ↑ 3 Lords and 3 Ladies, sign. I_{3}^v.
- ↑ Cf. p. 57, n. 4, and for Kempe, ch. xviii, p. 545.
- ↑ Cf. p. 57, n. 5; p. 58, n. 1.
- ↑ Cf. p. 64, n. 3; p. 67, n. 1.
- ↑ Graves, 88.
- ↑ Cf. ch. xix, p. 42; Mediaeval Stage, ii. 86, 142. Heywood, Apology (1608), thinks that the theatre of Julius Caesar at Rome had 'the covering of the stage, which we call the heavens (where upon any occasion their gods descended)'.
- ↑ Battle of Alcazar, 1263 (d.s.), 'Lightning and thunder . . . Heere the blazing Starre . . . Fire workes'; Looking Glass, 1556 (s.d.), 'A hand from out a cloud, threatneth a burning sword'; 2 Contention, sc. v. 9 (s.d.), 'Three sunnes appeare in the aire' (cf. 3 Hen. VI, II. i. 25); Stukeley, 2272 (d.s.), 'With a sudden thunderclap the sky is on fire and the blazing star appears'.
- ↑ 1 Troublesome Raign, sc. xiii. 131 (s.d.), 'There the fiue Moones appeare'. The Bastard casts up his eyes 'to heauen' (130) at the sight, and the moons are in 'the skie' (163), but the episode follows immediately
