Note 136 — NOTE ON SYMBOLS (continued 2)
Reading edition
Two late testimonies may be held to support the theory. In T. N. K. (King’s, c. 1613), III. i. 31, ‘Enter Palamon as out of a Bush’, but cf. III. vi. 1, ‘Enter Palamon from the Bush’. The Prologue to Woman Killed with Kindness (Worcester’s, 1603) says:
I come but like a harbinger, being sent To tell you what these preparations mean: Look for no glorious state; our Muse is bent Upon a barren subject, a bare scene. We could afford this twig a timber tree. Whose strength might boldly on your favours build; Our russet, tissue; drone, a honey bee; Our barren plot, a large and spacious field.
These rhetorical antitheses are an apology for meanness of theme, rather than, like the prologues to Henry V, for scenic imperfections, and I hesitate to believe that, when the actor said ‘twig’, he pointed to a branch which served as sole symbol on the stage for a woodland.