Note 283 — NOTE ON SYMBOLS (continued 2)

Revenge says (I. i. 90), ‘Here sit we downe to see the misterie, And serue for Chorus in this Tragedie’, and the Ghost (III. xv. 38), ‘I will sit to see the rest’. In IV. i Hieronimo discusses with his friends a tragedy which he has promised to give before the Court, and alludes (184) to ‘a wondrous shew besides. That I will haue there behinde a curtaine’. The actual performance occupies part of IV. iii, iv (a continuous scene). In IV. iii. 1, ‘Enter Hieronimo; he knocks up the curtaine’. We must not be misled by the modern French practice of knocking for the rise of the front curtain. The tragedy has not yet begun, and this is no front curtain, but the curtain already referred to in IV. i, which Hieronimo is now hammering up to conceal the dead body of Horatio, as part of the setting which he is arranging at one end of the main stage. The Duke of Castile now enters, and it is clear that the Court audience are to sit ‘above’, for Hieronimo begs the Duke (12) that ‘when the traine are past into the gallerie, You would vouchsafe to throw me downe the key’. He then bids (16) a Servant ‘Bring a chaire and a cushion for the King’ and ‘hang up the Title: Our scene is Rhodes’. We are still concerned with Court customs, and no light is thrown on the possible use of title-boards on the public stage (cf. p. 126). The royal train take their places, and the performance is given. Hieronimo epilogizes and suddenly (IV. iv. 88) ‘Shewes his dead sonne’. Now it is clear why he wanted the key of the gallery, for (152) ‘He runs to hange himselfe’, and (157) ‘They breake in, and hold Hieronimo’.