So far as minor properties and apparel are concerned, it is often difficult to distinguish the respective needs of masks and plays in the long lists of provisions which the Revels officers detail.[1]
Something may be gleaned, to eke out the rather tantalizing indications of the account-books, from the more descriptive accounts of performances at the universities. The process is legitimate, because the organization of such productions was largely in the hands of Revels and Works experts brought from London by the Lord Chamberlain, who would naturally employ or adapt the methods already found successful at the Court itself. But even the university writers take a good deal of contemporary knowledge for granted. Of the Cambridge visit in 1564 we learn no more than that two chapels before which the stage was set served for 'houses'; of the Oxford visit in 1566 that 'palatia' and 'aedes' were built up 'ex utroque scenae latere', and that a temple in a wood was staged for an out-of-doors episode; of the Oxford visit of 1592 nothing.[2] Greater detail is forthcoming in 1605. The chroniclers were interested by the experiments of 'one M^r. Jones, a great Traveller', the result of which was stupendous in the eyes of the Oxford Public Orator, although an envious spy from Cambridge declared that he 'performed very little to that which was expected'. The stage on this occasion was slightly raked, so that the actors as they entered appeared to be coming down hill. At the back was a false wall, with a space of five or six paces behind it, 'for their howses and receipt of the actors'. In this wall Jones had set revolving pillars or peripetasmata, obviously based on the triangular [Greek: periaktoi] of Vitruvius, whereby 'with the help of other painted clothes', he was able to change the face of the scene twice in the course of each play. Thus in Ajax Flagellifer the scene successively represented first 'Troia et littus Sigaeum', then 'Sylvae et solitudines horrenda antra et furiarum domicilia', and finally 'Tentoriorum naviumque facies'. The machines which worked these changes were
- ↑ Feuillerat, M. P. 57, gives an excellent summary of the data in the Accounts, but his schedule of properties does not attempt to disentangle masks and plays. The latter were liberally supplied. The Italians at Reading and Windsor during the progress of 1574, for example, were furnished with 'golde lether for cronetes', 'shepherdes hookes', 'lam-*skynnes for shepperds', 'arrowes for nymphes', 'a syth for Saturne', 'iij deveils cotes and heades and one olde mannes fries cote' (Feuillerat, Eliz. 227). Probably the apparel used on the stage was of less costly materials than that worn by lords and ladies in masks, but it was doubtless calculated to present the same glittering effect.
- ↑ Cf. p. 226, and Plummer (from Bereblock), 138, 'Fiunt igitur in silvis septa marmorea' with three altars.
