and much new Satten is there dambd, by being smothred to death in darknesse.'
I return to the guidance of De Witt. The boarding between
the yard and the lower gallery, which in the Fortune was
overlaid with iron pikes, presumably to prevent the groundlings
from climbing over, shows two apertures, to right and
left of the stage, one of which is marked 'ingressus'. From
these steps lead to the lower gallery itself, and we may
infer the presence of a passage to staircases behind, by which
the upper galleries were reached. The contracts show that
the Fortune, like the Globe, and the Hope, like the Swan,
were to have external staircases.[1] Perhaps this accounts
for the greater diameter of the lower part of the Globe in
the London maps. Of external doors there were only two
at the Globe, which caused trouble at the time of the fire,
and two also at the Fortune, when Alleyn leased a share of
it to Henslowe in 1601. One of these would in each case
have been a door to the tiring house, giving access to the
stage and the lord's room, while the other served the body
of the theatre.[2] Those bound for the galleries paid their
pennies at the theatre door, passed through the yard to the
'ingressus', and made additional payments there and in the
'rooms', according to the places selected.[3] The custom explains
itself by the arrangement between the sharers of companies
and the housekeepers of theatres, which gave the latter
a proportion of gallery takings in lieu of rent. 'Gatherers',
appointed by the persons interested, collected the money,
and although this was put into a locked box, whence the
modern term 'box-office', there were abundant opportunities
for fraud. At need, the gatherers could serve as supernumeraries
on the stage.[4]
At the back of the stage, and forming a chord to an arc of the circular structure of the play-house, runs a straight wall, pierced by two pairs of folding doors, on which De Witt has written 'mimorum aedes'. Above it is the gallery or lord's room already described. This wall is the 'scene', in the primary sense; it is also the front of the 'tire-house',
- ↑ Godfrey (Architectural Review, xxiii. 239) has no authority for his internal roofed staircases and landings in the narrow spaces between the galleries and the sides of the stage.
- ↑ Henslowe made a 'penthowsse shed at the tyeringe howsse doore' of the Rose in 1591. Doubtless the stage could also be reached from in front; cf. the K. B. P. passage on p. 536.
- ↑ Gosson, P. C. (1582, App. C, No. xxx), tells how youths are wont 'to go first into the yarde, and to carry theire eye through euery gallery' in search of attractive company; cf. p. 532.
- ↑ Cf. p. 541, and ch. xi.
