Note 1719 — BOOK IV THE PLAY-HOUSES (continued 5)

Nashe (iii. 329), epist. to Astrophel and Stella (1591), ‘here you shal find a paper stage streud with pearle, an artificial heau’n to ouershadow the faire frame’; Wagnerbook (1594, cf. ch. xx), ‘Now aboue all was there the gay Clowdes vsque quaque adorned with the heavenly firmament, and often spotted with golden teares which men callen Stars. There was liuely portrayed the whole Imperiall Army of the faire heauenly inhabitauntes’; Birth of Hercules (1597 <), i. 1, s. d., ‘Ad comoediae magnificentiam apprime conferet ut coelum Histrionium sit luna et stellis perspicue distinctum’; Heywood, Apology (c. 1608), 34, of the Roman theatre, ‘the covering of the stage, which we call the heavens’; Cotgrave, Dict. (1611), s.v. Volerie, ‘a place over a stage, which we call the heavens’. The same word was used for the state over a throne; cf. Cotgrave, s.v. Dais, ‘a cloth of estate, canopie, or Heaven, that stands over the heads of Princes thrones’. Graves, 24, gives examples of heavens used in Tudor pageants. It is to be noted that the ‘heavens’ and ‘hell’ (cf. p. 528) of a theatre continue characteristic features of mediaeval staging (cf. Mediaeval Stage, ii. 86, 137, 142); cf. All Fools, prol. 1:

The theory of J. Corbin in Century (1911), 267, that the heavens was a mere velarium or cloud of canvas thrown out from the hut, will not fit the evidence; cf. Lawrence, ii. 6.