Note 233 — NOTE ON SYMBOLS (continued 2)

1 Hen. VI, I. i. 1, ‘Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night!’; Lucr. 766 (of night), ‘Black stage for tragedies and murders fell’; Warning for Fair Women, ind. 74, ‘The stage is hung with blacke, and I perceive The auditors prepar’d for tragedie’; II. 6, ‘But now we come unto the dismal act, And in these sable curtains shut we up The comic entrance to our direful play’; Daniel, Civil Wars (Works, ii. 231), ‘Let her be made the sable stage, whereon Shall first be acted bloody tragedies’; 2 Antonio and Mellida (Paul’s, 1599), prol. 20, ‘Hurry amain from our black-visaged shows’; Northward Hoe, IV. i (of court play), ‘the stage hung all with black velvet’; Dekker (iii. 296), Lanthorne and Candlelight (1608), ‘But now, when the stage of the world was hung with blacke, they jetted vppe and downe like proud tragedians’; Insatiate Countess, IV. v. 4 ‘The stage of heaven is hung with solemn black, A time best fitting to act tragedies’; Anon., Elegy on Burbage (Collier, Actors, 53), ‘Since thou art gone, dear Dick, a tragic night Will wrap our black-hung stage’; cf. Malone in Variorum, iii. 103; Graves, Night Scenes in the Elizabethan Theatres (E. S. xlvii. 63); Lawrence, Night Performances in the Elizabethan Theatres (E. S. xlviii. 213). In several of the passages quoted above, the black-hung stage is a metaphor for night, but I agree with Lawrence that black hangings cannot well have been used in the theatre to indicate night scenes as well as tragedy. I do not know why he suggests that a ‘prevalent idea that the stage was hung with blue for comedies’, for which, if it exists, there is certainly no evidence, is ‘due to a curious surmise of Malone’s’. Malone (Var. iii. 108) only suggests that ‘pieces of drapery tinged with blue’ may have been ‘suspended across the stage to represent the heavens’—quite a different thing. But, of course, there is no evidence for that either. According to Reich, Der Mimus, I. ii. 705, the colour of the siparium in the Indian theatre is varied according to the character of the play.