Note 1779 — BOOK IV THE PLAY-HOUSES (continued 5)
Reading edition
What You Will (1601, Paul’s), ‘Enter Atticus, Doricus, and Philomuse, they sit a good while on the stage before the Candles are lighted.... Enter Tier-man with lights’; Mich. Term (1607, Paul’s), ‘Ours [terms] haue but sixpenny fees all the year long, yet we dispatch you in two hours without demur: your suits hang not long here after candles be lighted’; Faithful Shepherdess (1608–9, Blackfriars), Beaumont’s c. v., ‘Some like, if the wax lights be new that day’. Otho of Hesse-Cassel (1611) says that the Whitefriars plays were ‘nur bei lichtern’. Later we have G. Wither, Fair Virtue (1622), 1781:
those lamps which at a play Are set up to light the day;
Lenton, The Young Gallants Whirligig (1629):
spangled, rare perfumed attires, Which once so glister’d at the torchy Friars.
Cf. Lawrence (ii. 1), Light and Darkness in the Elizabethan Theatre; also E. S. xlviii. 213.