Note 345 — NOTE ON SYMBOLS (continued 2)

Tp. III. iii. 17, ‘Solemne and strange Musicke: and Prosper on the top (invisible:) Enter severall strange shapes, bringing in a Banket; and dance about it with gentle actions of salutations, and inuiting the King, &c. to eate, they depart’.... (52) ‘Thunder and lightning. Enter Ariell (like a Harpey) claps his wings upon the Table, and with a queint device the Banquet vanishes’.... (82) ‘He vanishes in Thunder: then (to soft Musicke) Enter the shapes againe, and daunce (with mockes and mowes) and carrying out the Table’; IV. i. 134, ‘Enter Certaine Nimphes.... Enter certaine Reapers (properly habited:) they ioyne with the Nimphes, in a gracefull dance, towards the end whereof, Prospero starts sodainly and speakes, after which to a strange hollow and confused noyse, they heauily vanish’.... (256) ‘A noyse of Hunters heard. Enter divers Spirits in shape of Dogs and Hounds, hunting them about: Prospero and Ariel setting them on’. Was the ‘top’ merely the gallery, or the third tiring-house floor (cf. p. 98) above? Ariel, like Prospero, enters ‘invisible’ (III. ii. 48). Is this merely the touch of an editor (cf. ch. xxii) or does it reflect a stage convention? The Admiral’s tiring-house contained in 1598 (Henslowe Papers, 123) ‘a robe for to goo invisibell’.