Note 1703 — BOOK IV THE PLAY-HOUSES (continued 5)
Reading edition
Peacham, however, may be merely versifying the story of the choleric justice and the provincial audience which laughed when he ‘first peept out his head’ in Nashe, Pierce Penilesse (Works, i. 188), and reading in a feature, in the process, of the stage as known to himself; and the same applies to Davenant, The Unfortunate Lovers (c. 1638), prol., on the play-goers of old times:
For they, he swears, to the theatre would come, Ere they had din’d, to take up the best room; There sit on benches, not adorn’d with mats, And graciously did vail their high-crown’d hats To every half-dress’d player, as he still Through the hangings peeped to see how the house did fill.
For Caroline practice, cf. T. Goffe, Careless Shepherdess ind.:
I never saw Rheade peeping through the curtain, But ravishing joy entered into my heart;
also Tatham’s prologue for the Fortune players, when they moved to the Red Bull in 1640:
Forbear Your wonted custom, banding tile and pear Against our curtains, to allure us forth; I pray, take notice, these are of more worth; Pure Naples silk, not worsted.
I defer a full consideration of stage hangings to the chapters on staging; cf. vol. iii, p. 78.