Note 1704 — BOOK IV THE PLAY-HOUSES (continued 5)

For the classical sense of Scaena, cf. the passage from Vitruvius quoted in vol. iii, p. 3. Florio, Dictionary (1598), s.v. Scena, ‘a skaffold, a pavillion, or forepart of a theatre where players make them readie, being trimmed with hangings, out of which they enter upon the stage’, points to the identity of scene and tire-house front. This structure has therefore precisely the double function of the ‘domus’ of the court plays; cf. ch. xix. I owe the quotation to Graves, 15, who adds, The Englysshe Mancyne upon the foure Cardynale Vertues (c. 1520), ‘a disgyser yt goeth into a secret corner callyd a sene of the pleyinge place to chaunge his rayment’, and Palsgrave, Acolastus (1540), prol., ‘our scenes, that is to saye, our places appoynted for our players to come forth of’. The English ‘Mancyne’ is a translation, earlier than A. Barclay’s, of Dominic Mancini’s De Quatuor Virtutibus (1516), and the original has only ‘Histrio, qui in scaenam vadit’. The notion of scena as not a mere wall, but a shelter for performers, is mediaeval, and appears to go back to an early definition from σκῆνος, a hut or tent, found, e. g., side by side with the regular mediaeval misunderstanding of the classical art of acting in Hugutius, Liber Derivationum, ‘Scena est umbraculum siue locus obumbratus in theatro et cortinis coopertus similis tabernaculis mercenariorum, quae sunt asseribus vel cortinis opertae, et secundum hoc scena potest dici a scenos, quod est domus, quae in modum domus erat constructa. In umbraculo latebant personae larvatae, quae ad vocem recitatoris exigebantur ad gestus faciendos’; cf. Herrmann, 280, W. Cloetta, Komödie und Tragödie im Mittelalter (1890), 38; Mediaeval Stage, ii. 208. It is revised on humanist lines by Jodocus Badius Ascensius in the Praenotamenta to his Terence of 1502, ‘Intra igitur theatrum ab una parte opposita spectatoribus erant scenae et proscenia, id est loca lusoria ante scenas facta. Scenae autem erant quaedam umbracula seu absconsoria, in quibus abscondebantur lusores, donec exire deberent. Ante autem scenas erant quaedam tabulata, in quibus personae qui exierant ludebant.’