Note 1715 — BOOK IV THE PLAY-HOUSES (continued 5)

Chaste Maid in Cheapside, V. iv. 1 (s. d.), ‘There is a sad song in the music-room’; cf. Thracian Wonder, IV. i. 182, ‘Pythia speaks in the musick Room behind the Curtain’, 186, ‘Pythia above, behind the curtains.’ But these, although early plays, are in late prints, and the other examples of a music-room ‘above’ given by Lawrence, i. 91, are Caroline. Jasper Mayne says of Jonson (1638, Jonsonus Virbius), ‘Thou laid’st no sieges to the music-room’. My own impression is that when the lord’s room over the tire-house was disused by spectators (cf. p. 537) it became indifferently available for actors and for music, and that here, rather than, as is possible, higher still in the scenic wall, was the normal place for the seventeenth-century music, when it was not needed elsewhere, or the space needed for other purposes. The introduction of the high proscenium arch at the Restoration caused difficulties, and various experiments were tried in placing the music above (Lawrence, i. 91, 161; ii. 160; W. G. Keith, The Designs for the First Movable Scenery on the English Public Stage in Burlington Magazine, xxv. 29, 85), before the modern situation was adopted.