Note 115 — NOTE ON SYMBOLS

Gibson had used written titles to name his pageant buildings; cf. Brewer, ii. 1501; Halle, i. 40, 54. The Westminster accounts c. 1566 (cf. ch. xii) include an item for ‘drawing the tytle of the comedee’. The Revels officers paid ‘for the garnyshinge of xiiij titles’ in 1579–80, and for the ‘painting of ix. titles with copartmentes’ in 1580–1 (Feuillerat, Eliz. 328, 338). The latter number agrees with that of the plays and tilt challenges for the year; the former is above that of the nine plays recorded, and Lawrence thinks that the balance was for locality-titles. But titles were also sometimes used in the course of action. Thus Tide Tarrieth for No Man has the s.d. (1439), ‘Christianity must enter with a sword, with a title of pollicy, but on the other syde of the tytle, must be written gods word, also a shield, wheron must be written riches, but on the other syde of the shield must be Fayth’. Later on (1501) Faithful ‘turneth the titles’. Prologues, such as those of Damon and Pythias, Respublica, and Conflict of Conscience, which announce the names of the plays, tell rather against the use of title-boards for those plays. For the possible use of both title- and scene-boards at a later date, cf. pp. 126, 154.