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emphatic in rejecting its evidence as to the back wall of the stage. Either De Witt entirely misrepresented this feature, or the Swan stage was entirely untypical. If it be asked by what right we assume that the various theatres conformed to any type, the answer is that certain features-certain stage-regions-are clearly demanded by a large majority of plays; while, on the other hand, there is no evidence that the plays produced at any one theatre differed characteristically from plays produced at any other. Now it is beyond all doubt that a curtainable recess at the back of the Main Stage (it may conveniently be called a Rear Stage) was, from a very early date, in constant demand; and of such a recess the De Witt drawing shows no trace. Mr Chambers admits this: he admits, too, that the one play we know to have been acted at the Swan contains one of those shop scenes for which it is almost certain that the Rear Stage was habitually used: yet he does not decisively put De Witt out of court. It is possible, no doubt, that the Swan stage may have been altered in the interval of twelve or fourteen years between De Witt's visit and the production of A Chaste Maid in Cheapside'; but this argument is merely an admission that the original Swan stage did not conform to type. If, then, we reject De Witt's presentment of a flat and unbroken back wall to the stage, we can hardly hesitate to reject the two doors in this wall, squarely fronting the audience. That there were two main entrance-doors in the typical theatre we know from the innumerable stage-directions referring to 'the one dore . . . the other dore'; but it is almost inconceivable that they should have been placed as De Witt shows them. Yet Mr Chambers is so much under the spell of the De Witt doors that he actually reproduces them in his conjectural ground-plan of 'A Square Theatre,' contrasted with An Octagonal Theatre,' in which the doors are obliquely placed. This is the more unfortunate as the only square theatre concerning which we possess clear information is the Fortune, and we know that the Fortune stage was 'contrived and fashioned like unto the stage' of the octagonal Globe. It is really a darkening of counsel to cling to a pair of doors flatly facing the audience. That they cannot have been in common use we know from the very frequent

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occasions on which two men or bodies of men enter simultaneously from opposite directions and squarely encounter each other in the middle of the stage. To do

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This drawing is reproduced simply as a diagram to facilitate discussion. The three galleries and their proportions, the width of the Stage (43 ft.), and the depth of the Stage from the front to the Rear Stage opening (27 ft. 6 in.), are ascertained from the builder's contract. The existence of the regions labelled 'Upper Stage' and 'Rear Stage.' and of the roof or shadow' supported by pillars, may also be taken as indubitable, though details of structure and configuration are conjectural. Conjectural, too, is the oblique position of the two entrance doors, as well as the side staircases leading from the yard' to the middle gallery.

this on the De Witt stage, the one party would have to make a right wheel, and the other party a left wheel

an impossibly ineffective manœuvre. This is only one of many considerations that favour the oblique doors shown in Mr Walter Godfrey's drawing, here reproduced. The only real doubt is as to whether the two doors may not have been placed at right angles to the front of the stage, and may not thus have directly faced each other. Mr Chambers inserts (with a note of interrogation) two such lateral doors in addition to the frontal doors in his Square Theatre diagram. The chief of several objections to this idea is that Mr Chambers's doors are invisible to the audience, whereas everything goes to show that the two main and opposite doors were clearly visible.

It is, perhaps, his hankering after the De Witt drawing that has rendered Mr Chambers indecisive and unilluminating in his treatment of the whole question of the Rear Stage. He frequently refers to it as an alcove,' and he figures it in both his diagrams as a space enclosed on three sides. But this it cannot have been. The more we consider its uses, as indicated in the stage-directions, the more clearly we perceive that it was not an alcove, but rather a corridor-at any rate, that it was freely accessible from both ends, and had probably a large door in its back wall. It is evident that when the curtains were closed, and while action was proceeding on the Main Stage, properties could be placed, and actors grouped, on the Rear Stage, unseen by the audience; whereas Mr Chambers's box alcove could be entered only from the Main Stage. If we think of it, we can imagine no reason why the designers of the stage should box-in this region, and thus deprive it of nine-tenths of its usefulness. If Mr Chambers could see his way to accepting the overwhelmingly probable theory of the corridor-like Rear Stage figured in the Godfrey drawing, he would find himself relieved of many difficulties. At one point, for instance (III, 100), he says, very justly, We have already had some hint that three may not have been the maximum number of entrances,' and proceeds to suggest highly questionable ways in which other entrances might be provided. The Godfrey drawing shows five permanent and always available entrances.

On each side of the alcove, both in his square and in his octagonal theatre, Mr Chambers places a flight of steps, facing the audience, and obviously leading to the

Upper Stage. For these stairs there is no clear evidence, while numerous considerations render their existence highly improbable. In the first place, as Mr Chambers several times points out, the Upper Stage was constantly used to represent the battlements of a town

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A.SQUARE THEATRE (Proportions of Fortune) which was besieged and captured by an army with scaling-ladders. What could be more ridiculous than to drag in scaling-ladders, if all the assailants had to do was to walk upstairs? Again, some part of the Upper Stage unquestionably served as Juliet's balcony, and in many similar capacities. Can there be the slightest doubt that Juliet's chamber was supposed to be inaccessible from the orchard,' except by aid of the 'tackled stair' of cords employed in Act III? And how could this supposition be maintained if it was flatly contradicted by two flights of steps staring the audience in the

face? It is conceivable (though Mr Chambers does not suggest it) that the stairs could be masked by sliding panels when the action required a solid wall. But the whole idea is practically negatived by the fact that it is almost, if not quite, impossible to cite a scene which even appears to imply any permanent and visible means of communication between the Main Stage and the Upper Stage. Had the twin flights of stairs existed, the playwrights could not but have brought them into frequent use in obvious and unmistakable ways.

The radical defect of all Mr Chambers's argumentation lies in his inability to clear his mind of the habits engendered by the modern stage, with its constant presentation or suggestion of visible locality. He has not grasped what is surely the beginning of all wisdom in this inquiry to wit, that the Elizabethan public was very unconcerned as to place, and never demanded any approach to pictorial representation of it. In numberless cases, no doubt, dramatic effect required that relations (as distinct from aspects) of place should be made clear. For instance, Arthur in King John' cannot leap from the walls of his prison if there is no elevated spot for him to leap from. It is necessary (as we have seen) that Juliet should be visibly 'above' and Romeo visibly 'below,' with no visible means of access to her. It is necessary that that there should be some curtained recess in which Hermione, in 'The Winter's Tale,' may be posed as a statue, unseen by the audience until the cue arrives for the opening of the curtains. It is necessary that, when two hostile parties arrive on the scene, they should enter from opposite directions, and not from doors (like those of the Swan drawing) which manifestly issue from one and the same locality. These relations of place can be easily and clearly suggested on the stage figured by Mr Godfrey, with its five entrances and its three distinct regions, the Main, Rear, and Upper Stages. It is not generally recognised what an adequate and adaptable instrument is such a structure, and how few are the problems of Elizabethan

* No attempt has yet been made to present a stage of this design to a modern audience. All the so-called 'Elizabethan stages' which we have seen of recent years have been fantasies unwarranted by any serious research. Exception should perhaps be made of the scene used by the

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