effect of the houses.[1] For these also timber frames and canvas served. The hollow tree was doubtless a feature of the wood scenes, in which the painter's art, whether in relief or in perspective, was supplemented by the natural foliage of holly and ivy.[2] Elaborate rocks, such as are familiar in the masks, were also constructed. That for The Knight in the Burning Rock in 1578-9 required much timber, carried a chair, and was reached by a scaling ladder. The effect of burning was produced by lighted aqua vitae.[3] I am not quite sure whether a cloud drawn up and down by a cord and pulleys in the same year belonged to this play or to a mask, but obviously there was much give and take between the methods of plays and masks.[4] Spectacular elements were freely introduced into plays. A 'monster' of hoops and canvas, with a man moving inside it, was as easy for the managers of a Perseus and Andromeda in 1572-3 as for those of a Peter Pan in our own day; and doubtless the character was equally popular.[5] Hounds' heads were 'mowlded' for the cynocephali in The History of the Cenofalles of 1576-7.[6] The mediaeval 'devices for hell, and hell mowthe' were still in vogue in 1571-2, and in the same year Narcissus was enlivened by thunder and lightning and by the sounds of a hunt which rang through the palace court-yard, and Paris and Vienna by a tourney and barriers, in which players mounted on hobby-horses contended for a 'christall sheelde'.[7]
- ↑ In 1572-3, 'an awlter for Theagines' (Feuillerat, Eliz. 175); in 1573-4, 'lathes for the hollo tree' . . . 'one baskett with iiij eares to hang Dylligence in the play of Perobia . . . a iebbett to hang vp Diligence' . . . 'hoopes for tharbour' (199, 200, 203); in 1578-9 'a rope, a pulley, a basket' (296); in 1584-5, a well for Five Plays in One (365). For Cutwell, rehearsed but not performed in 1576-7 (277), 'the partes of y^e well counterfeit' were brought from the Bell to St. John's.
- ↑ In 1572-3, 'a tree of holly for the Duttons playe . . . holly for the forest . . . tymber for the forest . . . provizion and cariage of trees and other things to the Coorte for a wildernesse in a playe' (Feuillerat, Eliz. 175, 180); in 1573-4, 'holly and ivye for the play of Predor' (203); in 1574-5, 'moss and styckes' and holly and ivy (239, 244).
- ↑ Feuillerat, Eliz. 306. There were rocks or mountains also in 1574-5, 1579-80, and 1584-5 (244, 320, 365).
- ↑ Ibid. 240. It was an old device. Graves, 27, quotes Palsgrave, Acolastus (1540), 'in stage-playes, when some god or some saynt made to appeare forth of a cloude: and succoureth the parties which seemed to be towardes some great danger, through the Soudans crueltie'.
- ↑ 'Andramedas picture' . . . 'Benbow for playing in the monster' . . . 'canvas for a monster' . . . 'hoopes for the monster' (ibid. 175, 176, 181).
- ↑ Ibid. 265.
- ↑ Ibid. 140, 141. The 'hunters that made the crye after the fox (let loose in the Coorte) with their howndes, hornes, and hallowing' had already been a feature of Edwardes' Palaemon and Arcite at Oxford in 1566.
