Note 1674 — BOOK IV THE PLAY-HOUSES (continued 5)

G. Harvey (1579, Letter Book, 67), ‘sum maltconceivid comedye fitt for the Theater, or sum other paintid stage whereat thou and thy liuely copesmates in London may lawghe ther mouthes and bellyes full for pence or twoepence apeece’; Spenser, Tears of the Muses (1591), 176, ‘That wont with comick sock to beautefie The painted Theaters’; cf. Graves, 68. Coryat, i. 386, in 1608, found a Venice play-house ‘very beggarly and base in comparison of our stately Play-houses in England: neyther can their Actors compare with us for apparell, shewes and musicke’. So in Case is Altered, II. vii. 30, the plays in Utopia (= England) are ‘set foorth with as much state as can be imagined’.