The Facts About Shakespeare Part 5

A review of the drama must, however, at least remark the importance of this development of realistic comedy which flourished in the decade after 1598 and continued to the end. Jonson's comedy of 'humors'

includes _Volpone_ (1605), which overstepped the bounds of comedy in its denunciation of evil, the _Alchemist_ (1611), perhaps the best English play on the Latin model, and _Bartholomew Fair_ (1614), most original and English of them all. Dekker's fine drama of middle cla.s.s life, _The Honest Wh.o.r.e_ (1604), and Heywood's masterpiece, _A Woman Killed with Kindness_ (1603), a play suggesting both the sentimental comedy of the eighteenth century and the problem play of to-day, also belong to this very remarkable era of domestic themes and serious realism.

If Shakespeare did not turn to satire or realism or current social problems, he did turn away from chronicle history plays and romantic comedies. As we saw in the last chapter, for a period of eight or nine years, from _Julius Caesar_ to _Antony and Cleopatra_, he gave his best efforts of his maturity to tragedy. The day for mere imitation of Seneca, Kyd, or Marlowe, was past; and scholars like Jonson and Chapman as well as Shakespeare sought in the tragedy of the public theater, an opportunity for wisdom and poetry and a criticism of life.

For models, Shakespeare did not need to go back farther than his own _Romeo and Juliet_ and _Richard II_, nor to imitate any other than himself. Yet his great plays may have seemed to his contemporaries to adopt rather than to depart from current dramatic practices. They belong to the Elizabethan 'tragedy of blood'; against a background of courts and battles they present the downfall of princes; they rest on improbable stories that end in fearful slaughter; they invariably set forth great crimes, compact of murder, l.u.s.t, villainous intrigue, and ferocious cruelty. Some of them follow Kyd in recounting a story of blood vengeance presided over by ghosts, or discover the retribution due for crime in physical torments. Nearly all follow Marlowe in centering the tragic interest in the fate of a supernormal protagonist who is swayed by an overpowering emotion, and in elevating these human desires and pa.s.sions into tremendous forces that work their waste of devastation and ruin on character and life.

[Page Heading: Tragedy]

The contemporary tragedy is brought closest to Shakespeare in the relations of the revenge plays to _Hamlet_. The type, introduced by Kyd in _The Spanish Tragedy_ and the original _Hamlet_, underwent a special development in Marston's _Antonio's Revenge_ (1598) and several other plays appearing from 1598 to 1603, that dealt with the blood vengeance of a son for a father. At the same time Shakespeare turned to the remaking of the old _Hamlet_ and to a new treatment of the old theme, yet retained many of the old accessories. Marston reproduces the essential story of blood vengeance, presided over by a ghost, crossed by both l.u.s.t and sentimental love, commented on by long soliloquies, and accompanied by pretended madness. Chettle, in _Hoffman_, amplifies the horrors and villainy and brings the story of the mad girl into closer juncture with the main plot than is the case in _Hamlet_. Tourneur, writing independently of Shakespeare, introduces, among all sorts of horrors, a Christian ghost who forbids blood vengeance and commands submission to Providence. Ben Jonson, in his additions to the old _Spanish Tragedy_, gives fine imaginative interpretation of the wavering moods of meditation, irony, and frenzy with which Kyd had dealt only crudely. The later development of this type proceeded without much regard to Shakespeare's _Hamlet_, but rather in the direction started by Marston's tragedies and his influential tragi-comedy, _The Malcontent_.

While _Hamlet_ may be described as centering attention on a meditative and high-minded avenger, Tourneur, Webster, Middleton, and later dramatists found greater interest in the study of villainy and intrigue.

Revenge is born of depravity rather than duty, and given a setting of physical horrors and unnatural l.u.s.t. Tourneur's _Revenger's Tragedy_ (1606) and Webster's _White Devil_ (1610) and _d.u.c.h.ess of Malfi_ (1611) represent the culmination of this play of revenge, l.u.s.t, and horror, and supply a sort of standard for tragedy until the Civil War. Webster, it must be added, was hardly less interested than Shakespeare in character and motive, though he chose to study these in a chamber of horrors.

Shakespeare's Roman tragedies also suggest comparison with contemporary plays, those either on Roman or on contemporary foreign history.

Tragedies dealing with Roman history had preceded _Julius Caesar_, but that play doubtless stimulated Jonson's _Seja.n.u.s_ (1603) and _Catiline_ (1611). Both these plays attempted an approach to cla.s.sical structure and a thorough study and digest of cla.s.sical history. This effort to make tragedy a serious and authoritative interpretation of history was also shared by Chapman in his plays dealing with contemporary French history, _1_ and _2 Bussy D'Ambois_ (1601-1607) and _1_ and _2 Biron_ (1608). While Jonson strove to free his style from the abundance of conceits, figures, and pa.s.sages of description that had characterized earlier drama, Chapman used every chance to crowd his verse with far-stretched figure and weighty apothegm. At its worst it is peculiarly representative of Elizabethan confusion and bombast; at its best it is closest of all in its resemblance to Shakespeare's. Like Jonson and Chapman, Shakespeare sought historical backgrounds for his characters and found a fascination in the interpretation of the motives of the great protagonists of the world of antiquity. It is worthy of note, however, that he seems to have taken no interest in another cla.s.s of subjects much favored by his contemporaries. Contemporary crimes treated with an excess of realism and didactic conclusions are common in drama from _Arden of Feversham_ (1590) on, and engaged the services of Jonson, Webster, Ford, Dekker, and others.

[Page Heading: Beaumont and Fletcher]

About 1607 a new departure appeared in the work of the dramatic collaborators, Beaumont and Fletcher. After some experiments, they won, in their tragi-comedies, _Philaster_ (1608) and _A King and No King_ (1610), and their tragedy, _The Maid's Tragedy_ (1609), great theatrical successes, and in these and similar plays established a new kind of dramatic romance. The realistic comedies of Jonson and Middleton, which, along with the great tragedies of Shakespeare, crowd the stage history of the preceding ten years, had offered nothing similar to these romances which joined tragic and idyllic material in scenes of brilliant theatrical effectiveness, abounding in transitions from suspense to surprise, and culminating in telling denouements. This new realm of romance is an artificial one, contrasting pure love with horrid entanglements of l.u.s.t, and ever bringing love in conflict with duty, friends.h.i.+p, or the code of honor. In its intriguing courts, or in nearby forests where the idyls are placed, love of one kind or another is the ruling and vehement pa.s.sion, riding high-handed over tottering thrones, rebellious subjects, usurping tyrants, and checked, if checked at all, only by the unexampled force of honor. Romance, in short, depends on situation, on the artificial but skilful juxtaposition of emotions and persons, and on the new technic that sacrifices consistency of characterization for surprise. Characterization tends to become typical, and motives tend to be based on fixed conventions, such as the code of honor might dictate to a seventeenth-century gentleman; but the lack of individuality in character is counterbalanced by the vividness with which the lovers, tyrants, faithful friends, evil women, and sentimental heroines are presented, and by the fluent and lucid style which varies to any emotional requirement and rises to the demands of the most sensational situations.

_Cymbeline_ in its plot bears some close resemblances to _Philaster_, and it seems likely that Shakespeare was adopting the methods and materials of the new romance. At all events, he turned from tragedy to romance, and in _Cymbeline_ and the far more original and successful _Winter's Tale_ and _Tempest_ produced tragi-comedies that, like Beaumont and Fletcher's, rely on a contrast of tragic and idyllic and on surprising plots and idealized heroines. After Beaumont's retirement in 1611 or 1612, it seems probable that Fletcher and Shakespeare collaborated together on _Henry VIII_ and _The Two n.o.ble Kinsmen_.

There is ample evidence that the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher won a great popular renown, surpa.s.sing for a time those of Shakespeare and all others. Beaumont did not live long after he ceased to write for the stage, dying at thirty, in the same year as Shakespeare. Jonson had given up dramatic writing for the time, and Fletcher was left the chief writer for Shakespeare's old company and the undoubted leader of the theater. Including the plays written in collaboration with Beaumont, Shakespeare, and later with Ma.s.singer, he left some sixty dramas of many kinds, varying from farcical comedy of manners to the most extreme tragedy. The comedies of manners present the affairs of women, and spice their lively conversation and surprising situations with a wit that often reminds one of the Restoration; indeed they carry the development of comedy nearly to the point where Wycherley and Congreve began. The tragi-comedies, which display the qualities already noted as belonging to the romances, have the technical advantage that the disentanglement of their rapid plots and sub-plots is left hanging in the balance until the very end. The happy ending to tragic entanglements won a favor it has never lost on the English stage, and tragi-comedy of the Fletcherian type continued the most popular form of the drama until Dryden.

[Page Heading: Tragi-Comedy]

It is unnecessary here to dwell long over the drama after Shakespeare's death. Jonson, Dekker, Heywood, and Webster wrote from time to time, and Middleton devoted his versatile talent to whatever kind of play was in vogue, now rather to Websterian tragedy and Fletcherian tragi-comedy than to realistic comedy. Yet, in collaboration with Rowley, he produced the powerful tragedy, _The Changeling_, and the much-admired tragi-comedy, _A Fair Quarrel_. After Fletcher's death in 1625, Ma.s.singer took his place as leader of the stage, and his work, with that of Ford and s.h.i.+rley, carry on the great traditions of the drama to the very end. A host of minor writers, as Brome, D'Avenant, Suckling, Cartwright, offer little that is new; but no survey of the drama, however brief, can neglect to mention the skilful exposition, admirable psychology, and sound structural principles that characterized the best of Ma.s.singer's many plays, the unique and amazing dramatic genius shown in Ford's masterpieces, _The Broken Heart_ and _'Tis Pity She's a Wh.o.r.e_, and the ingenuity in plot, adroitness in characterization, and genuine poetic gifts of s.h.i.+rley.

Comedies from 1616 to 1642 reveal two chief influences; they are realistic and satiric, following Jonson, or they are light-hearted, lively combinations of manners and intrigue, after Fletcher. In the former cla.s.s are Ma.s.singer's two great comedies, _The City Madam_ and _A New Way to Pay Old Debts_. To the latter cla.s.s belong most of the comedies of s.h.i.+rley. Tragi-comedies follow Fletcher with the variations due to the authors' ingenuity, and include perhaps the most attractive plays of Ma.s.singer and s.h.i.+rley. Tragedies usually mingle l.u.s.t, devilish intrigue, physical horror, after the fas.h.i.+on of Webster and Tourneur, but now often with romantic variation on the theme of love, and a technic of suspense and surprise similar to Beaumont and Fletcher. These are the main tendencies in the last twenty years of the drama, and characterize in the large the work of the greater men as well as of the less. Shakespeare's influence is widespread, but appears incidentally in particular scene, situation, character, or phrase, rather than as affecting the main course and fas.h.i.+ons of the drama. After the publication of his plays in 1623, this incidental influence increased, and is distinctly noticeable in the plays of Ford and s.h.i.+rley.

[Page Heading: Pastoral and Masque]

A glance must suffice for two dramatic forms that had only slight connection with the public theaters, the Pastoral Play and the Court Masque. Pastoral elements are found in many early entertainments and in the plays of Lyly and Peele. Later, in imitation of Guarini's _Il Pastor Fido_, attempts were made to inaugurate a pastoral drama, presenting a full-fledged dramatic exposition of the golden age. Daniel's _Queen's Arcadia_ (1605) and Fletcher's _Faithful Shepherdess_ (1609) had many later followers, but the form won no permanent hold on the popular taste. Traces of its influence, however, may often be seen, as in Shakespeare's _As You Like It_, or Beaumont and Fletcher's _Philaster_.

The masque, originally only a masquerade, soon acquired some dramatic accompaniment, and in the court of James I developed into an elaborate form of entertainment. The masked dance of the ladies and gentlemen of the court was merely the focus for dialogue, elaborate setting, spectacle, music, and grotesque dances by professionals. These shows, costing vast sums for staging, costumes, and music, depended for their success mainly on the architect Inigo Jones, but in some degree also on Ben Jonson, who was the creator of the Court Masque as a literary form.

Such expensive spectacles were far beyond the reach of the public theater, but provoked considerable imitation, as in Shakespeare's _Tempest_, or several of Beaumont and Fletcher's plays. Later Milton immortalized the form in _Comus_.

The most hasty review of the Elizabethan drama must suggest how constantly Shakespeare responded to its prevailing conditions. There are, of course, great variations in the signs which different plays offer of contemporary influence and peculiarity. So it is with most of his fellow dramatists. _Lear_ and _Oth.e.l.lo_ were perhaps written within the same year, yet _Oth.e.l.lo_, in its unity, its technical excellence, and its depiction of character, is the most modern of the tragedies, while _Lear_, with its impossible story, its horrors, its treatment of madness, its likeness to the chronicle plays, its prolonged pa.s.sage from crisis to catastrophe, in its very conception, is the most Elizabethan, though perhaps the most impressive of the tragedies. _Twelfth Night_ is suited to any stage, but _Troilus and Cressida_ and _Pericles_ are hardly conceivable except on the Elizabethan. Despite such variations, however, Shakespeare's relations to the contemporary drama were manifestly constant and immediate. If it was rarely a question with him what the ancients had written, it was always a question what was being acted and what was successful at the moment. His own growth in dramatic power goes step by step with the rapid and varied development of the drama, and the measure for comparison must be, not by decades, but by years or months.

[Page Heading: Shakespeare and His Contemporaries]

A study of the Elizabethan drama may help to excuse some of the faults and limitations of Shakespeare, but it also enforces his merits. Both faults and merits are often to be understood in the efforts of lesser men to do what he did. We admire his triumphs the more as we consider their failures. Yet they often had admirable success, and their triumphs as well as his are due in part to the dramatic conditions which gave the freest opportunity for individual initiative in language, verse, story, and construction. n.o.ble bursts of poetry, richness and variety of life, an intense interest in human nature, comic or tragic--these are the great merits of that drama. That in a superlative degree they are also the characteristics of Shakespeare is not due solely to his exceptional genius, but to the fact that his genius worked in a favorable environment.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A TYPICAL SHAKESPEREAN STAGE

From Albright's _Shaksperian Stage_]

CHAPTER VI

THE ELIZABETHAN THEATER

In 1576, James Burbage, father of the great actor, Richard Burbage, and himself a member of the Earl of Leicester's company, built the first London playhouse, the Theater in Sh.o.r.editch. In the next year a second playhouse, the Curtain, was erected nearby, and these seem to have remained the only theaters until 1587-1588, when probably the Rose, on the Bankside, was built by Henslowe. In 1599 Richard and Cuthbert Burbage, after some difficulty over their lease, demolished the old Theater and used the timber for the Globe, near the Rose, on the Bankside. The Swan, another theater, had been built there in 1594, somewhat to the west; and in 1614 the Hope was erected hard by the old Rose and the new Globe, which in 1613 had replaced the old Globe.

Meantime the Fortune had been built by Henslowe and Alleyn in 1600 in Golden Lane to the north of Cripplegate, on the model of the Globe, and the Red Bull was erected in the upper end of St. John's Street about 1603-1607. These were all public theaters, open to the air, built of wood, outside the city limits and the jurisdiction of the city corporation.

Before the Theater, plays had been acted in various places about the city, and especially in inn-yards, some of which long continued to be used for dramatic performances. At an early date also, the companies of children actors connected with the choirs of St. Paul's and the Queen's Chapel had given public performances, probably indoors, at places near St. Paul's and in Blackfriars. When the Burbages were in difficulties about the Theater, they had leased certain rooms in the dismantled monastery of Blackfriars, but had then released these to a company of children which acted there for some years. In 1608 the Burbages regained possession of this property, and Shakespeare's company began acting there. This Blackfriars theater was known as a private theater in order to avoid the application of certain statutes directed against the public theaters, but it differed from them merely in being indoors, with artificial lights, and higher prices. It was used by Shakespeare's company as a winter theater, while the Globe served for summer performances, and it was the model for various other private theaters, two of which survived the Protectorate and became in turn the models for the Restoration Theater. Drury Lane and Covent Garden, indeed, trace their ancestry back directly to the Blackfriars through the c.o.c.kpit and the Salisbury Court playhouses.

The companies of actors which occupied these theaters were cooperative organizations. Eight or ten actors formed a company, leased a theater, hired supernumeraries, bought plays, and shared in the profits. In Elizabeth's reign they secured a legal position by obtaining a license from some n.o.bleman, and so were known as the Earl of Leicester's men, Lord Admiral's men, and so on. On the accession of James I, the leading London companies were taken directly under patronage of members of the royal family. During Shakespeare's time there were innumerable companies, but the tendency was for the best actors to become a.s.sociated in a few companies, and for each company to keep to a particular theater; so that at the accession of James I, there were only five adult companies in London with permanent theaters. The best companies were frequently employed to act at court, and during the summer or when the plague was raging in London, they often toured the country. The children's companies flourished from time to time, and especially from 1599-1607 they were, as we learn from _Hamlet_, formidable rivals of the men.

[Page Heading: Companies of Actors]

The history of the adult companies shows the growth of two distinct interests, that of Henslowe and Alleyn, and that of the Burbages.

Henslowe, whose diary is one of the chief doc.u.ments for the history of the theater, built the Rose, and in partners.h.i.+p with his son-in-law, the famous actor Alleyn, controlled the Fortune and the Hope, and the companies known as the Admiral's and the Earl of Worcester's men, and later on the Queen's and the Prince's men. The Burbages owned the Theater, the Globe, and the Blackfriars, and were in control of Shakespeare's company. This company, at first the Earl of Leicester's men, was known by the names of its various patrons, Strange's, Derby's, Hunsdon's, and the Lord Chamberlain's, until in 1603 it became the King's men. For a short time, as Lord Strange's men, it acted at the Rose, and apparently later at the playhouse in Newington b.u.t.ts, but its regular theaters were the Theater, the Globe, and Blackfriars. With this company Shakespeare was connected from the beginning, and he aided in making it the chief London company. For a time, Alleyn and the Admiral's men were its close rivals, but even before the accession of James I, Shakespeare and Burbage had given it a supremacy that it maintained to the closing of the theaters.

There are various pictures of the exterior of Elizabethan theaters in the contemporary maps or views of London, the best representation of the four Bankside theaters being the engraving of Hollar printed in the Tudor edition of _Twelfth Night_. This was first published in _Londinopolis_, 1657, but represents the Bankside as it was about 1620.

Four pictures of interiors have been preserved, that from Kirkman's _Drolls_, those from the t.i.tle-pages of _Roxana_ and _Messalina_, and the DeWitt drawing of the Swan, reproduced in the Tudor Shakespeare, _1 Henry VI_. The drawing from Kirkman's _Drolls_ is usually known as the Red Bull stage, but it was not issued until 1679, and does not seem to have anything to do with the Red Bull or with any other regular theater. The _Messalina_ and _Roxana_ pictures are small, and both show a rear curtain and a projecting stage. The DeWitt drawing was done from hearsay evidence, is inaccurate in details, and represents a theater with a movable stage, probably not long regularly used for plays; it gives little idea of the stage, but does afford a good general notion of the interior of a public theater. The contract for the Fortune theater, built on the model of the Globe, except that it was square instead of octagonal, has been preserved and enables us to complete this view of the interior in detail.

[Page Heading: Public Theaters]

The public theaters were usually round, or nearly round, wooden buildings of three stories. These stories were occupied by tiers of galleries encircling the pit, which was open to the air. The stage projected halfway into the pit, and was provided with dressing rooms in the rear, and a protecting roof overhead, supported in some cases by pillars. At the top was the 'hut', a room used to provide apparatus for raising and lowering persons or properties from the stage, Light when needed was provided by torches. Admission to standing room in the pit was usually only a penny, but seats in the gallery or boxes or on the stage cost much more, rising as high as half a crown. Performances were given on every fair day except Sunday, and a flag flying from the hut indicated that a play was to be performed. Some of the public playhouses were used for acrobats, fencing, or even bear-baiting as well as for plays; but the better theaters, as the Globe and Fortune, seem to have been limited to dramatic performances.

The size and arrangement of the stage doubtless varied somewhat with the different theaters, and considerable changes seem to have been introduced by the indoor private theaters. But the Curtain was used from 1577 to 1642, some new theaters were modeled closely on the old, and the same plays were acted on different stages, so it is apparent that in all the stage was the same in its main features. For clearness these may be again enumerated. The stage was a platform projecting into the pit, open on three sides, and without any front curtain. In the rear were two doors, and between them, an alcove, or inner stage, separated from the front stage by curtains. Above the inner stage was a gallery, also provided with curtains, and over the doors were windows or balconies.

The arrangement of doors, inner stage, gallery, and curtain may have varied somewhat, but the essential elements are a curtained s.p.a.ce at the rear, and a gallery above. Trap-doors were also provided, and the hut overhead supplied the machinery for ascents and descents of G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses.

[Page Heading: The Fortune Theater]

Our diagram for the ground floor of the Fortune shows a square-cornered stage with doors flat on the rear, while the perspective drawing from Dr. Albright's _Shaksperian Stage_ shows a tapering stage, as in the _Messalina_ picture, with doors on the bias. Some stages may have had rounded corners with doors in the side. The pillars were not necessary in the private theaters; or in some public houses where other means were found for supporting the roof.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GROUND PLAN OF THE FORTUNE THEATER

Dimensions: 80 ft. square on the outside; 55 ft. square on the inside, the stage 43 ft. wide and extending to the middle of the pit.]

The performance of a play differed in many ways from one to-day. There was no scenery and there were no women actors. Though scenes were used in court performances as early as 1604, they do not seem to have been employed by the professional companies to any extent until after the Restoration. Female parts were taken by boys, and, except in plays acted by the children's companies, there were rarely more than two important female characters in a play. Though without scenery, the Elizabethan stage was by no means devoid of spectacle. Processions, battles, all kinds of mythological beings, ascents to heaven, descents to h.e.l.l, fire-works, and elaborate properties, were employed. Numerous contemporary plays indicate that neither the fairyland of _A Midsummer-Night's Dream_, nor the magnificent court of _Henry VIII_, was devised without an eye to the resources of the stage. Large sums of money were lavished on costumes, the cost of a coat often exceeding the price paid an author for a play. Costume was anachronistic; Cleopatra was impersonated by a boy in stays and farthingale; and Caesar, probably by Burbage, in a costume much like that worn by the Earl of Ess.e.x. Some attention, however, was paid to appropriateness. Shepherds were clothed in white, hunters in green; and doubtless mermaids, fairies, Venuses, and satyrs were given as appropriate a dress as fancy could devise. The action of a play seems usually to have been completed in two hours.

There was sometimes music between the acts, but there were no long waits, and little stage business.

[Page Heading: Stage Presentation]

The peculiarities in the presentation of a play due to the arrangement of the stage were considerable, and have been the subject of much discussion and misunderstanding among investigators. There is, however, no doubt that the action was largely on the front stage, and that most of the scenes, at least in Shakespeare's lifetime, were designed for presentation on this projecting platform. Since there was no drop-curtain, actors had some distance to traverse, on entrances and exits, between the doors and the front. At the end of a scene or a play, all must retire, and the bodies of the dead must be carried out. Hence a tragedy often ends with a funeral procession, a comedy with a dance. The indications of scene supplied by modern editors for Shakespeare's plays help to visualize a modern presentation, but are misleading as to Shakespeare's intentions or an Elizabethan performance. The majority of scenes in his plays differ strikingly from those in a modern play in that they offer no hints as to the exact locality. Often it is not clear from the text whether the scene is conceived as indoors or outdoors, in the palace, or the courtyard, or before the entrance. Even when the scene is presumably within a room, there is often no indication of the nature of the furnis.h.i.+ngs, never any of the elaborate attention to details of setting, such as we find in a play by Pinero or Shaw.

Sometimes placards were hung up indicating the scene of a play, but apparently these merely gave the general scene, as "Venice" or "Verona,"

and did not often designate localities more closely. In fact the majority of the scenes were probably written with no precise conception of their setting. They were written to be acted on a front stage, bare of scenery, projecting out into the audience. This did not represent a particular locality, but rather any locality whatever.

The inner stage and the gallery above, and to some extent the doors and the windows, were used to indicate specific localities when these were necessary. The gallery represented the wall of a town, an upper story of a house, or any elevated locality. The doors represented doors to houses or gates to a city, and the windows or balconies over them were often used for the windows of the houses. The inner stage was used in various ways to indicate a specific locality requiring properties, and this use apparently increased as time went on, and especially in the indoor, artificially lighted private theaters. In any case, however, when the curtains were opened, the inner stage became a part of the main stage, and while action might take place there, it might also serve as a background for action proceeding in the front. Properties could be brought on and off the inner stage, behind the closed curtains, hence large properties were confined to its precincts. Furniture, as chairs, tables, or even beds, could, however, be pushed or carried out from the inner to the outer stage. A play might be given on the front stage without using the curtained recess at all, but numerous references to curtains make it clear that the inner stage was used from the early days of the theater.

[Page Heading: Inner Stage]

The uses of the inner stage have been much discussed and are still in dispute, but they may be summarized briefly. _First_, the inner stage was used for a specific, restricted, and usually propertied locality--a cave, a study, a shop, a prison. _Second_, the inner stage was used for scenes requiring discovery or tableaux. Numerous stage directions indicate the drawing of the curtains to present a scene set on the inner stage, as Bethsabe at her bath, Friar Bungay in bed with his magical apparatus about him, Ferdinand and Miranda playing chess. _Third_, the use of the inner stage was extended so that it represented any propertied background, especially for scenes in a forest, church, or temple. In _As You Like It_, for example, the last four acts are located in the Forest of Arden. "This is the Forest of Arden," says Rosalind as soon as she arrives there; and even before this, Duke senior alludes to "these woods," and later we learn that there are practicable trees on which Orlando hangs his verses. The forest setting, consisting of trees and rocks, was placed on the inner stage and served to give a scenic background. Of course, different places in the forest are to be presumed, but one forest background would be sufficient for all. In the course of the four acts, however, there are three scenes (II. ii; II.

iii; III. i) that are not in the forest, but at unspecified and unpropertied places about the palace and Oliver's house. For these scenes the curtain would be closed, shutting off the forest background and transferring the spectators to the unspecified localities of Act I, _i.e._, to the bare front stage. _Fourth._ An extension of this last use made it possible to employ the curtain to indicate change of scene.

Several scenes, where no heavy properties were required, might succeed one another on the front stage with the curtains closed; but the opening of the curtains would reveal a special background and a manifest change of scene. One instance of this use of the inner stage is seen in the immediate change from an outdoor to an indoor scene, or _vice versa_.