Volume 1 / Book 1 — VII THE COURT PLAY

[Bibliographical Note.—The books cited at the head of ch. iii, with F. S. Boas, University Drama in the Tudor Age (1914), provide material for this chapter; cf. A. Thaler, The Players at Court (1920, J. G. P. xix. 19).]

THE foregoing chapters have illustrated the overflow of the Renaissance passion for drama, taking shape in the spectacular enrichment of elements in court life which were not originally mimetic in their intention; the welcome, the exercise of arms, the dance. They are subordinate in their interest to us, as they were in fact subordinate by reason of their occasional character to the play itself, which formed, both in Elizabeth's reign and in that of James, the staple amusement of the court winter. The ordinary season for plays was a comparatively restricted one. Traditionally it began with All Saints, but Elizabeth at least rarely reached her winter quarters by the beginning of November, and her revels began with the Christmas festival itself, the twelve days of ancient licence in Calends and Saturnalia that extended from Nativity to Epiphany.[680] Within this period the three feasts of St. Stephen, St. John, and the Innocents, with New Year's Day and Twelfth Night, were nearly always gladdened by play or mask. Sometimes one of them was omitted, and sometimes, in substitution or addition, another day, often the Sunday in Christmas week, was selected. I know no record of a play on Christmas Day itself. Chamberlain writes in January 1608, 'The king was very earnest to have one on Christmas night, though, as I take it, he and the prince received that day, but the Lords told him it was not the fashion. Which answer pleased him not a whit, but said, "What do you tell me of the fashion? I will make it a fashion."'[681] But the Chamber accounts show that he dropped the point. After Twelfth Night there was a lull, broken perhaps by an occasional play, notably on February 2 at Candlemas, until a group of two or three at Shrovetide brought revelling to a conclusion before the rigours of Lent. This was the close of the official season, and the Revels office had now little to think of but the annual airing of the wardrobe stuff, at any rate until the progress came round.

The longest number of plays given before Elizabeth in any one winter was probably in 1600-1, when there were eleven. During the greater part of the reign the number ranged from six to ten. For some of the earliest years only two or three are on record. It is possible that a few may have escaped notice owing to the absence of a 'reward', or conceivably the charge of a reward to funds other than those covered by the very complete accounts of the Treasurer of the Chamber.[682] Naturally, if an Inn of Court or gentlemen such as the sons of Sir Percival Hart played, they did not take a money payment. The schoolboys of Eton and Westminster did, but the latter perhaps not from the very beginning. The only winter for which the Treasurer of the Chamber records no rewards is that of the plague year 1563-4. But the Revels Office provided for three plays at Windsor, and if it was thought dangerous to bring companies from London or elsewhere to court, Eton or the Windsor choir would have been the natural substitutes. In 1574 again the Revels Office were furnishing plays at Windsor and Reading by Italians, no payments to whom can be traced. Elizabeth occasionally ordered a mask outside the winter season, for some such purpose as the entertainment of an ambassador. I do not find clear evidence that she ever ordered a play. But, both in winter and in summer, she was from time to time present at a play given by some one else, in progress or at a wedding or banquet in London.[683]

James gave the impression, when he first came to England, of taking, unlike Queen Anne and Prince Henry, 'no extraordinary pleasure' in plays.[684] But he had a great many more than his predecessor, and reverted in some years to the early practice of opening the play season at the beginning of November. Nor, on the other hand, was he strict in his observance of Lent, and in some years the performances continued at intervals until after Easter. During his first winter he saw eleven plays and gradually increased this number, reaching a maximum of twenty-three in 1609-10. Up to 1615 he never saw less than eleven, except during 1612-13, the winter of Henry's death, when the number fell to seven. Moreover, even when he himself escaped to a hunting-box, he was liberal in ordering additional plays for the prince and court, and yet others seem to have been charged to the private funds of Anne and the royal children.[685] The records do not in all years give the dates of individual performances; but in 1611-12, to take one example, the programme was as follows. The King himself was present at plays on October 31, November 1, and November 5, on the four nights after Christmas, on January 5, on Candlemas, and on Shrove Sunday and Tuesday. On January 6 was the mask. Most of the intervening days he spent in visits to his various hunting quarters. Meanwhile there were at least twenty-six other plays before one or more of the royal children, at which Anne was probably also present. Two of these were in November, one in the middle of December, one in Christmas week, eight in January after Twelfth night, and nine in February, both before and after Lent had begun. Two plays at the end of March and three in April, none of these in the King's presence, exhausted the official supply, but not the enthusiasm of Prince Henry. He spent a fortnight with Anne at Greenwich during January, and there was 'every night a play', some of which the Queen probably paid for; and in March he was entertained by the Marquis of Winchester at supper, again with plays.[686] Occasionally James ordered a play during the summer; there were four for the entertainment of the King of Denmark in 1606, of which one, by the Paul's boys, is not traceable in the Chamber accounts, and one for the Duke of Savoy's ambassador in 1613. All plays at the Jacobean court was given by professional companies; if the lawyers came to court, it was not in a play, but a mask.

Whether the revels were kept at Westminster, Hampton Court, Greenwich, Richmond, or Windsor, sufficient accommodation could be afforded for a play in the great hall, which thus for a brief space resumed its ancient glories as the state apartment of the sovereign. At the first three of those palaces, there is definite evidence of the use of the hall. But Whitehall, at least, was spacious enough to offer other alternatives. The banqueting-house might be available, if it was not occupied by the preparations for a mask. And performances were sometimes given in the 'great chamber', which at Whitehall was distinct from both the presence chamber and the 'guard' or 'watching' chamber which served as an ante-room to the presence.[687] It seems also that provision could be made, perhaps only on the less public and crowded occasions when the King was not present, for a stage in the octagonal cockpit, which stood on the edge of St. James's Park, in the western extension of the palace.[688] As a courtesy to a royal visitor, a play was given in 1565 at the Savoy, where the Lady Cecilia of Sweden was housed, and in 1614 Anne's pastoral of Hymen's Triumph took place in 'a little square paved court' at Somerset House.

It is a curious illustration of the functions of the Privy Council as a household board that, during the whole of Elizabeth's time and the greater part of that of James, the actors could not get their fee or 'reward', except through the medium of a formal warrant addressed by that body to the Treasurer of the Chamber. These warrants are not in existence, but their issue is noted, rather irregularly and inaccurately, in the collection of minutes known as the Council register, and they are recited, with their dates and places of signature, and the names of the actors or managers to whom they appointed payment to be made on behalf of the companies, in the annual accounts of the Treasurer of the Chamber as audited and declared before the Exchequer.[689] The amount of the reward was, subject to certain historical developments, a uniform one. It had been fixed, early in the reign of Henry VIII, at ten marks (£6 13s. 4d.) a play, and this rate continued to rule, when Elizabeth came to the throne, and for some years thereafter. But in 1572 a tendency to an increase shows itself, and up to 1575 the amounts are irregular. Sometimes the normal fee is paid, sometimes a double fee of £13 6s. 8d., sometimes an intermediate one of £10. The Treasurer of the Chamber records various explanations of the extra sums. They are 'a more rewarde by her maiesties owne comaundement', or they are paid in respect of special charges incurred by the companies, as for example when Farrant had to bring his boys from Windsor to Whitehall. And after 1575 things had evidently settled down on the basis of a normal £10, which was conventionally regarded as made up of £6 13s. 4d. 'for presentinge' the play, and £3 6s. 8d. 'by way of speciall reward'. The formulas in the accounts are not invariably the same, but they all come to this; and the shadowy distinction between the two amounts is preserved in the practice by which, if a play was ordered and then counter-ordered, the £6 13s. 4d. was paid, but not the £3 6s. 8d. The £10 rate was maintained, with insignificant exceptions, during the rest of Elizabeth's reign, and was taken over as 'the usuall allowaunce' or 'the ordinary rates formerly allowed' by James.[690] If, however, a play was ordered for the Prince only and not the King, the 'speciall rewarde' was omitted, so far as the Treasurer of the Chamber was concerned, although it is quite possible that the Prince may have supplied it out of his privy purse.[691] A quite exceptional amount of £30 was paid to the King's men for a play at Wilton in December 1603, to cover their 'paynes and expences' in coming from Mortlake to give the performance. Plague was raging, and they were probably practicing at Mortlake for the court entertainments of the following Christmas. It may be added that the King's company, and that alone, received a subsidy of £30 from the Treasurer of the Chamber, in aid of its maintenance during this plague-winter. Similar payments, of £40 and £30 respectively, were made after the plague-winters of 1608-9 and 1609-10.[692]

In 1614 there was an innovation in the procedure, by which the responsibility for signing warrants for allowances to players was transferred from the Privy Council to the Lord Chamberlain; and thenceforward the payments are recorded in a special section of the Treasurer's accounts, devoted to expenditure which the Chamberlain had power to authorize, and most of which had been at one time charged to the Privy Purse.[693] An example from a later date of a Lord Chamberlain's warrant for payment is preserved, together with a schedule of the plays covered by the amount paid. The warrant refers to the 'acquittance for the receipt' of the money, which the Treasurer would take from the players, and is in fact endorsed with receipts by one of them for the successive instalments paid, and with a final one for the whole sum due.[694] References in the Chamber Accounts for 1605-6 and 1609-10 to similar schedules in or annexed to the warrants show that, at an earlier date, the Privy Council had evidence before them, perhaps from the Lord Chamberlain, perhaps from the Master of the Revels, as to the number of plays which a company had given.[695] It is a pity that the Treasurer of the Chamber only on rare occasions thought it worth while to record the name of the play for which he was paying. A chance memorandum of Henslowe's tells us that, as perhaps we might have guessed, some of the money stuck to the hands of officials in the form of fees. To get the £10 due to Worcester's men for a play in 1601-2, Henslowe had had to give the Clerk of the Council 7s. for 'geatynge the cownselles handes to' the warrant, and 10s. 6d. 'for fese' to one Mr. Moysse 'at the receuinge of the mony owt of the payhowsse'.[696] On the other hand, the players got their money pretty quickly; the warrants were generally signed within a month or so, sometimes within a day or so, of the performances to which they relate. Considerable delays during the years 1596-9 possibly reflect the disorganization of the Revels Office by the disputes of the officers; just as similar delays about 1615-17 probably reflect the general disorganization of Jacobean finance.

Plays were given in private houses, as well as at court, and not only when there was a royal guest to be entertained. As the public theatres were open by daylight, the companies were easily available for private engagements after supper. Naturally the record of such occasions has in most cases perished with the domestic account-books in which it was entered. But Sir Edward Hoby invited Sir Robert Cecil to a performance of Richard II—at least, I think so—in 1595.[697] The gossip of Rowland Whyte informs us of the banquets and plays given in honour of Sir Robert Cecil by Sir Walter Raleigh and other friends on the eve of his mission to France in 1598, of the two plays at a supper about the same date by Sir Gilly Meyrick at the rival political head-quarters of Essex House, and of the performances of Henry IV under its original title of Sir John Oldcastle, when Lord Chamberlain Hunsdon feasted the Flemish ambassador Louis Verreyken in 1600.[698] Similarly, in 1606 John Chamberlain went to a play at Sir Walter Cope's, now Holland House, and 'had to squire his daughter about, till he was weary', and in 1613 Sir Robert Rich had a play for the delectation of the Savoyard ambassador after a supper in Holborn.[699] An amusing side-light on the improvised stage-arrangements necessary in private houses is given by a stage-direction in Percy's Aphrodysial, 'Here went furth the whole Chorus in a shuffle as after a Play in a Lord's howse'.[700] Wealthy citizens, if they were not too puritanically disposed, could well afford to follow the lead of the nobles and gentry of the court. And in the years before the controversy between the corporation and the actors became acute, a play was thought no inappropriate accompaniment to the annual feast of a guild, or the welcome or valediction of a civic dignitary.[701] The domestic plays of the Oxford and Cambridge colleges had their origin in the Renaissance theories of education, and dispensed with the professional mimes. A detailed study of them lies outside the scope of these volumes.[702] The Inns of Court men, too, could hold their own upon the boards at will. But for their ordinary solace they were accustomed to take the easier course of calling in professional aid. At the Inner Temple, Beaumont mentions a Christmas show of Lady Amity, probably not long after his admission in 1600, and the Treasurer's accounts of the Inner Temple, which are extant from 1605, show that from that year to 1611 there was always a play, at a cost of £5, either upon Candlemas or upon All Saints' Day, and in some years on both dates. At Candlemas 1611, something must have gone wrong, for on February 10 the Benchers passed a decree:

'For that great disorder and scurrility is brought into this House by lewd and lascivious plays, it is likewise ordered in this parliament that from henceforth there shall be no more plays in this House, either upon the feast of All Saints or Candlemas day, but the same from henceforth to be utterly taken away and abolished.'

At the following feast of All Saints the only expenditure entered by the Treasurer is of £2 10s. for a 'consort' of music and £2 for antics and puppets. These must have proved but inadequate substitutes, for on November 24 the period of austerity was brought to an end by the withdrawal of the interdict.

'Whereas of late years upon the two festival days of All Saints and Candlemas, plays have been used after dinner for recreation which have lately been laid down by order in parliament, it is now ordered that the same order shall henceforth stand repealed.'

The payments are now resumed, and continue twice a year, generally at the increased rate of £6 13s. 4d. At Candlemas 1613 some misunderstanding seems to have led to a supplementary payment to 'another company of players which were appointed to play the same day'. On All Saints 1614 and both Candlemas and All Saints 1615, the players are specified to have been the King's men.[703] From the other Inns the story is more fragmentary. The devices for the famous Gray's Inn Christmas of 1594-5, reported in the Gesta Grayorum, were mainly due to the fertile imagination of the lawyers themselves. In addition to the continuous burlesque of state ceremonies in the court of Purpoole and the mask sent to Whitehall at Shrovetide, they included a special show of Amity for the reception of the ambassador of Templaria on January 3. But this had its origin in the disorders of an earlier revel on Innocents' Day, when the confusion was so great that the Inner Temple men left in dudgeon, and the show then intended was not given. To supply its place, 'a Comedy of Errors (like to Plautus his Menechmus) was played by the players. So that night was begun, and continued to the end, in nothing but Confusion and Errors; whereupon, it was ever afterwards called, The Night of Errors.' On the following day there was a trial, and a supposed sorcerer or conjurer was arraigned on the charge amongst others 'that he had foisted a Company of base and common Fellows, to make up our Disorders with a Play of Errors and Confusions'.[704] Similarly the Middle Temple in 1597-8 varied their own fooling with plays on 28 December and 2 January, which from the absence of details in the narrative were probably supplied by professional actors.[705] And this house, too, must have been accustomed to keep Candlemas with a play, for a note of February 1602 in John Manningham's diary makes mention of Twelfth Night as given 'at our feast'.[706] The same practice, known as the Post Revels, prevailed at Lincoln's Inn. Here the notices are of an earlier date, and preserve the memory of performances by the Chapel boys in 1565, 1566, and 1580, and by Lord Roche's, or more probably Lord Rich's, men in 1570.[707]

I have digressed somewhat from the ways of the court. The arrangements for performances were in the hands of the Revels, and are therefore only traceable in detail before 1589, after which year the extant accounts of that office are very summary. As Christmas drew near, symptoms of bustle began to show themselves in the work-rooms. A good deal of time was spent in the discovery and preparation of suitable pieces. It would seem that the available companies were invited to submit the various plays in which they had exercised themselves by public performance, that these were then recited, and a selection made from them to the number which her majesty intended to hear.[708] Both in 1574-5 and in 1576-7 the accounts record the trying over of plays that were not ultimately given. These 'rehearsals' or 'proofs' took place in the hall or the 'great chamber' of St. John's, or the Master's lodgings, and were of an elaborate character, for it was thought worth while to bring in cumbrous properties for them and to employ musicians. When the selection had been made, further rehearsals were required, especially as the texts had to undergo a process of 'reforming' or editing, in order that they might be 'convenient' for her majesty's hearing. There had been a bad blunder at the second Christmas of the reign when 'the plaers plad shuche matter that they wher commondyd to leyff off'.[709] Sometimes the office called in special aid to make such alterations; sometimes, as we learn from Henslowe's diary, the companies employed their own poets to carry them out, or to write special prologues or epilogues.[710] At first the perusal of plays appears to have been a common responsibility of the officers.[711] While Blagrave was in charge, it was supervised by the Lord Chamberlain, for whose satisfaction rehearsals sometimes took place at court. Tilney was encouraged by his commission of 1581 to treat it as his personal function, and charged wages for attendance at the office, with a porter and three other servitors, but as a rule without his colleagues, on nearly every day between All Saints and Christmas for the purpose of carrying it out.[712] All the officers, on the other hand, were concerned with the provision of the fittings of the stage and the properties and apparel necessary to furnish a sumptuous appearance for the players. The details of this provision are so mixed up in the accounts with those for the masks that they can only occasionally be assigned to individual plays. The wording of certain entries suggests that, while some plays required a complete outfit, for others the Revels was only called upon to supplement what the companies already possessed.[713] Probably the stuffs employed were less expensive than those lavished on the masks. Certain articles, such as armour, were generally hired. Elaborate properties, which might entail the designing of special 'patterns', had often to be constructed. The fixed 'composition' of £66 6s. 8d. for all the ordinary charges of plays imposed upon the office in 1598 cannot have left much margin for apparel and properties.[714] But probably by this date the companies were themselves better equipped.

When the actual night of performance arrived, all the officers gave personal attendance at Court. Here they had, in Tilney's time, until they were crowded out and driven to hire for themselves, an office and a chamber for the Master, both of which they kept supplied with fuel and rushes.[715] They had also to superintend the conveyance of the 'stuff', either by wagon or by barge and tiltboat, to fit the players with the gloves which seem to have been de rigueur at a Court performance, and to furnish such amenities of the tiring-house as 'an iron cradle to make fire in' and a close-stool.[716] With the officers came a doorkeeper and three servitors, who probably acted as dressers.[717] As the court performances were always at night, beginning about 10 p.m. and ending about 1 a.m., the arrangements for lighting were a constant preoccupation.[718] From the wire-drawers' bills incorporated in the accounts we can gather that use was made of candlesticks of various kinds and sizes, of lanterns, and of branches large and small. Candelabra were formed of as many as twenty-four branches, each bearing four lights, and hung upon wires strained across the hall.[719] But here again the precise provision made for plays cannot be disentangled from that made for masks. There is no special reference to footlights.

Except for the lighting and the maintenance of a 'music-house', the situation of which is unknown, the functions of the Revels do not appear to have extended beyond the tiring-house and the decorative enrichment of the stage.[720] The fabric, both of the stage and of the seating for spectators, was a matter for the Works.[721] The 'apparelling' of the room was under the supervision of the Gentleman Usher of the Chamber, and in the marshalling of the audience the Lord Chamberlain could count on the assistance of the 'white staves' of the Household, and of the few officers who still survived from the once important office of the Hall.[722] No picture or detailed description of the auditorium survives.[723] A brief notice of 1594 shows us Elizabeth conspicuous 'in a high throne, richly adorned', and next to her chair the Earl of Essex, 'with whom she often devised in sweet and favourable manner'.[724] This high throne was no doubt the 'state', which was brought into the action of The Arraignment of Paris. Something more may be gleaned from the narratives of royal visits to the universities. That to Cambridge in 1564, indeed, affords no very close analogy, for the structure of the stage was of quite an abnormal type.[725] It was not in a hall, but in the chapel of King's College, and was built five feet high right across the nave from wall to wall. The 'state' for the Queen was placed on the stage itself, against the south wall. She reached it by a bridge from the choir door. At the other end of the stage, under the north wall, stood the actors, with two side chapels to serve for their entrances and exits. Cecil and Dudley, as Chancellor and High Steward of the University, 'vouchsafed to hold both books on the scaffold themselves, and to provide that sylence might be kept with quietness'. I am not quite clear whether these books were prompt-books, or copies of the texts, provided in order that the Queen or her train, if they thought fit, might help out their Latinity. When the Westminster boys brought the Miles Gloriosus to Court in 1565, they spent 11s. on 'one Plautus geuen to the Queenes maiestie and fowre other unto the nobilitie', and the Sapientia Salomonis which they gave Elizabeth in 1565-6 is still extant.[726] Only a few other privileged spectators were allowed on the King's College stage, at the north end. Seats were provided for ladies and gentlemen in the rood loft, and for the chief officers of the Court at 'the twoe loer Tables' below the rood loft. The only lighting was provided by the torches of the guard, who were aligned along the sides of the stage. At Oxford, on the other hand, where the plays were given in Christ Church hall, it is reasonable to assume that the arrangements were directly modelled upon those prevalent in the palaces.[727] There was, however, one exceptional feature, due to the desire to enable the Queen to reach the hall, without being incommoded by the press of spectators. A temporary door was cut in the side of the hall and a 'proscenium' or 'porch' built in front of it, which was approached by a wooden 'bridge' or stairway, adorned with a painted roof and hung with greenery.[728] It was a wise precaution, for undergraduates were not excluded, as they had been at Cambridge, and the press on the main staircase of the hall was so great that one of the low bounding walls was broken down and killed a college cook and two other persons.[729] The interior appearance of the hall is fully described by Bereblock. The stage was at the upper or western end, raised high above a flight of steps. The Queen had a high seat beneath a gilded state, the exact location of which is not specified. The lords and ladies were accommodated on scaffolds round the walls, and the lesser personages in galleries above them. Every kind of lighting device seems to have been utilized, including 'ramuli' and 'orbes', in which we may see the 'branches' and 'plates' of the Revels Accounts. The Christ Church hall, with a stage at its upper end, was used again when James came in 1605, and we hear of a dispute between the academic functionaries and those of the Household as to the placing of the King's chair. The latter complained that it was fixed so low that only His Majesty's cheek would be visible to the auditory; the latter attempted to explain that, by the laws of perspective, the King would have a much better view than if he sat higher. There was a solemn debate in the council chamber, resulting in the decision that a King must not merely see, but be seen, and the state was moved to the middle of the hall, twenty-eight feet from the stage, which in fact proved too far, as he could not well hear or understand the long speeches. The Queen and Prince shared the state with the King; in front, but on a lower level, were seats for ladies; the state itself was ringed with lights; on either side were placed nobles; and the populace thronged around the walls.[730]

I think it may be taken that this seating, with the sovereign in the middle of the floor and directly opposite the stage, was that ordinarily employed. It may be illustrated by a French engraving of Louis XIII in Richelieu's Palais Royal theatre of the mid-seventeenth century, which also shows very clearly the seating round the walls and the lighting by means of suspended chandeliers.[731] I notice that Mr. Ernest Law, in tracing the outlines of the vanished hall of Whitehall, places the stage at the lower or screen end of the building, and suggests that the pantry was utilized as a tiring-room.[732] He may have evidence as to this in reserve; but the Christ Church analogy, for what it is worth, points to a stage at the upper or daïs end. The Revels Accounts contain many items bearing upon the scenic decoration of the plays; but, as they were compiled, unfortunately, to satisfy the financial appetite of contemporary auditors, rather than to elucidate the archaeological problems of posterity, they not unnaturally take for granted a familiarity with the general system of that decoration which we do not happen to possess. The discussion of the problems, which cannot be dissociated from those presented by the public theatres, must be left for treatment, with the aid of the evidences furnished by plays themselves, in a later chapter.[733] But the actual information furnished by the accounts may conveniently be summarized at this point. The outstanding features were evidently certain 'houses', appropriate to the action of the plays, and specially prepared, with considerable trouble and expense, for each production, although no doubt the Revels officers, as in the case of masking garments, exercised their economical ingenuity where possible in the 'translation' of old material.[734] These houses appear to have been structures in relief, presumably practicable for entrances and exits, and perhaps also on occasion for interior action. Wooden frame-works, fitted with hooped tops, were covered with painted cloths of canvas, which was strained on with nails or pins, and was sometimes fringed.[735] From the amount of canvas used, it may be judged that they were of considerable size.[736] The painting of the cloths was a matter of skilled workmanship. William Lyzarde, with thirty assistants, was employed upon it in 1571.[737] In 1572-3 'patternes' were prepared for the play of Fortune.[738] In most of the earlier accounts the houses are only mentioned incidentally and generically. But in 1567-8 they are stated to have consisted of 'Stratoes howse, Gobbyns howse, Orestioes howse, Rome, the Pallace of Prosperitie, Scotland and a gret Castell one thothere side'.[739] And when Edmund Tilney became Master of the Revels in 1579, he introduced, perhaps under pressure from the auditors, a practice, which lasted for some years, of including in the preliminary schedule of plays, with which his accounts began, a note of the specific houses constructed for each. Thus in 1579-80, there were a country house and a city for The Duke of Milan and the Marquis of Mantua, a city and a battlement for Alucius, a city and a mount for The Four Sons of Fabius, a city and a battlement for Scipio Africanus, a city and a country house for an unnamed play, a city and a town for Portio and Demorantes, a city for a play on the Soldan and a duke, and a great city, a wood, and a castle for Serpedon.[740] In 1580-1 there were a city and a battlement for Delight, a great city and a senate house for Pompey, a city and a battlement for each of two unnamed plays, a house and a battlement for a third, a city and a palace for a fourth, and a great city for a fifth.[741] In 1582-3 there were four pavilions for A Game of the Cards, a cloth and a battlement of canvas for Beauty and Housewifery, and a city and a battlement of canvas for each of four other plays.[742] In 1584-5 there were a great curtain, a mountain, and a great cloth of canvas for Phillida and Corin, a battlement and a house of canvas for Felix and Philiomena, a great cloth and a battlement, well, and mount of canvas for Five Plays in One, a house and a battlement for Three Plays in One, and a house for an unnamed play.[743] It is evident that decorative variety was sought after. Even when several successive plays could be fitted into the normal scheme of a city and a battlement, the stage architects had to prepare a separate device for each.

I think that when the Elizabethans spoke of 'houses' on the stage, they were perhaps regarding them primarily as the habitations of the actors rather than of the personages whom these represented. They were the tiring-houses, in which the actors remained when they were not in action and to and from which they made their exits and their entrances. At any rate, the term in its technical use seems wide enough to cover, not merely the palaces and the more humble domestic edifices which made appropriate backgrounds to the comings and goings of individual kings and citizens—of an Orestes, a Dobbyn—but also more elaborate and composite structures of 'battlements' and 'cities', of which the former doubtless represented the external view of the walls and gates of a town or castle, and the latter some internal town scene, a street or market-place, perhaps before the doors of more than one house in the narrower sense. We hear of such specialized forms of 'house' as 'pavilions' or tents, the 'Senat howse' used for Quintus Fabius in 1573-4 and the 'prison' which must have formed part of the 'cittie' for The Four Sons of Fabius in 1579-80. These, and probably other houses, were no doubt sufficiently practicable for personages to be seen, and in some cases also heard, inside them; and the senate house was veiled by curtains, which doubtless remained closed until the proper moment for interior action to take place. There are other references to curtains, the mechanism by which they were drawn, and the sarcenet of which they were made.[744] It has been suggested that some of these were front curtains, but there is no reason, so far as the evidence in the Revels Accounts is concerned, why they should not all, like the senate house curtain, have been veils for individual 'houses', such as were used in masks, and had been used in the corresponding domus of miracle-plays. It is possible, although not certain, that some of the 'great cloths' provided may have been for hangings to the back and side walls of the stage, rather than for covering houses. There is no reason why these should not have been painted in perspective, but the extent to which, if at all, perspective was employed is one of the points on which we are most in the dark.[745] Subsidiary structures, hollow trees, arbours, gibbets, altars, wells, gave variety to the action, and helped out the decorative effect of the houses.[746] For these also timber frames and canvas served. The hollow tree was doubtless a feature of the wood scenes, in which the painter's art, whether in relief or in perspective, was supplemented by the natural foliage of holly and ivy.[747] Elaborate rocks, such as are familiar in the masks, were also constructed. That for The Knight in the Burning Rock in 1578-9 required much timber, carried a chair, and was reached by a scaling ladder. The effect of burning was produced by lighted aqua vitae.[748] I am not quite sure whether a cloud drawn up and down by a cord and pulleys in the same year belonged to this play or to a mask, but obviously there was much give and take between the methods of plays and masks.[749] Spectacular elements were freely introduced into plays. A 'monster' of hoops and canvas, with a man moving inside it, was as easy for the managers of a Perseus and Andromeda in 1572-3 as for those of a Peter Pan in our own day; and doubtless the character was equally popular.[750] Hounds' heads were 'mowlded' for the cynocephali in The History of the Cenofalles of 1576-7.[751] The mediaeval 'devices for hell, and hell mowthe' were still in vogue in 1571-2, and in the same year Narcissus was enlivened by thunder and lightning and by the sounds of a hunt which rang through the palace court-yard, and Paris and Vienna by a tourney and barriers, in which players mounted on hobby-horses contended for a 'christall sheelde'.[752] So far as minor properties and apparel are concerned, it is often difficult to distinguish the respective needs of masks and plays in the long lists of provisions which the Revels officers detail.[753]

Something may be gleaned, to eke out the rather tantalizing indications of the account-books, from the more descriptive accounts of performances at the universities. The process is legitimate, because the organization of such productions was largely in the hands of Revels and Works experts brought from London by the Lord Chamberlain, who would naturally employ or adapt the methods already found successful at the Court itself. But even the university writers take a good deal of contemporary knowledge for granted. Of the Cambridge visit in 1564 we learn no more than that two chapels before which the stage was set served for 'houses'; of the Oxford visit in 1566 that 'palatia' and 'aedes' were built up 'ex utroque scenae latere', and that a temple in a wood was staged for an out-of-doors episode; of the Oxford visit of 1592 nothing.[754] Greater detail is forthcoming in 1605. The chroniclers were interested by the experiments of 'one Mʳ. Jones, a great Traveller', the result of which was stupendous in the eyes of the Oxford Public Orator, although an envious spy from Cambridge declared that he 'performed very little to that which was expected'. The stage on this occasion was slightly raked, so that the actors as they entered appeared to be coming down hill. At the back was a false wall, with a space of five or six paces behind it, 'for their howses and receipt of the actors'. In this wall Jones had set revolving pillars or peripetasmata, obviously based on the triangular [Greek: periaktoi] of Vitruvius, whereby 'with the help of other painted clothes', he was able to change the face of the scene twice in the course of each play. Thus in Ajax Flagellifer the scene successively represented first 'Troia et littus Sigaeum', then 'Sylvae et solitudines horrenda antra et furiarum domicilia', and finally 'Tentoriorum naviumque facies'. The machines which worked these changes were painted 'motantibus quasi nubibus, ut eas, Sole Britannico statim ingressuro, aufugientes putares'.[755]

The changing stage of 1605 was obviously an advance from the Elizabethan methods of twenty years before. But it can hardly be assumed that the new principles were regularly adopted in the Jacobean Court. In 1614-15 the Revels office was still buying 'canvas for the boothes and other necessaries for a play called Bartholmewe Faire', and the entry seems to suggest 'houses' of the old type.[756] Possibly Inigo Jones was not sufficiently successful with his Oxford mechanism to inspire confidence. It is not until much later, in Caroline days, that we can clearly discern him beginning to apply to the presentation of Court plays the proscenium arch and the other perfected results of his studies in the mask.[757] There is no obvious trace of the new methods even in his interesting design for the new Cockpit at Court, which may date from about 1632. This shows a building 58 feet square without and octagonal within. Five sides of the octagon are occupied by the auditorium, which contains a pit with balconies above, and apparently a royal box at the back; the other three by a stage 35 feet wide and 16 deep, which stands 4½ feet above the pit level, and has a 5-foot apron and a semicircular back wall of a 15-foot radius. This does not appear to be adapted either for hangings or for shifting scenes, but is a Palladian façade of two stories in solid architecture adorned with niches and busts and a tablet inscribed 'Prodesse et delectare'. It is pierced below by a large archway and four other doors, and above the archway is a single window.[758]