Note 1693 — BOOK IV THE PLAY-HOUSES (continued 5)

E. M. O. (1599), 585 (Q1), ‘Sit o’ the stage and flout; prouided, you haue a good suit’; 1784, ‘rich apparell ... takes possession of your stage at your new play’; A Mad World, my Masters (c. 1604–6), v. ii. 38, ‘The actors have been found i’ th’ morning in a less compass than their stage, though it were ne’er so full of gentlemen’; Woman Hater (1607), i. 3, ‘All the Gallants on the stage rise, vail to me, kiss their hand, offer me their places’. It is true that Roaring Girl (1611), ii. 1, has ‘the private stages audience, the twelve-penny stool gentlemen’, but this may only point to a higher price for a stool at the private house, and in any case cannot outweigh the allusions of Davies and Jonson before the Blackfriars, or probably Paul’s, were reopened, or T. M. Black Book (1604, Bullen, Middleton, viii. 42), ‘Barnaby Burning-glass, arch tobacco-taker of England, in ordinaries, upon stages both common and private’; Dekker, G. H. B. (1609), ‘Whether therefore the gatherers of the publique or priuate Play-house stand to receiue the afternoones rent, let our Gallant (hauing paid it) presently aduance himselfe vp to the Throne of the Stage’ (cf. the whole passage on the procedure and advantages of sitting on the stage, where Dekker clearly mingles traits of both types of house, in App. H). Wallace, ii. 130, argues that the custom was started at Blackfriars and was confined to the private houses, but is hopelessly confuted by C. R. Baskervill in M. P. viii. 581.