Note 652 — BOOK V PLAYS AND PLAYWRIGHTS

Acts and scenes are marked in Tamburlaine and Locrine; acts, or one or more of them only, sometimes with the first scene, in Jack Straw, Battle of Alcazar, Wounds of Civil War, King Leire, Alphonsus, James IV, Soliman and Perseda, Spanish Tragedy, John a Kent and John a Cumber; a few scenes without acts in Death of Robin Hood. These exceptions may indicate neo-classic sympathies in the earlier group of scholar playwrights; some later plays, e.g. of Beaumont and Fletcher, have partial divisions. The acts in Spanish Tragedy and Jack Straw are four only; Histriomastix, a private theatre play, has six. Where there are no formal divisions, they are sometimes replaced by passages of induction or dumb-shows.