The hut has two windows in front, and a door in the visible side. It has been suggested that it may really have stood rather more forward than De Witt indicates, jutting out from the tire-house so as to be directly over a part of the heavens.[1] An analogous superstructure is observable in most of the map-representations of theatres. That of the later Globe in Visscher's map of 1616 seems to have two bays, one behind another, instead of the one bay of the Swan drawing, and would have required more space. The 'Theatrum' of Jonson's 1616 Folio has an L-shaped superstructure. The object of a jut forward would be to facilitate the descents and ascents from and to the heavens, which formed popular features in many plays, and which must have been contrived by some kind of machinery from above.[2] From the roof of this hut floats a flag, with the figure of a swan upon it, and at the door stands a man, apparently blowing a trumpet, from which depends a smaller flag also bearing a swan. There is abundant evidence that the play-houses flew flags when they were open for performances, and took them down when Lent or a plague rendered playing impossible.[3] The
- [Footnote: a noted Cut-purse, such a one as we tye to a poast on our stage, for all
people to wonder at, when at a play they are taken pilfring'; cf. Nobody and Somebody, 1893,
Somebody
Once pickt a pocket in this Play-house yard,
Was hoysted on the stage, and shamd about it;
also ch. xx, p. 75; ch. xxi, pp. 108, 141.]*
- ↑ For criticism of the drawing of the heavens and hut, cf. Graves, 22, and Brereton in Homage, 204.
- ↑ Henslowe paid in 1595 for 'mackinge the throne in the heuenes' at the Rose; cf. R. M., Micrologia (1629), in Morley, Character Writings, 285, A Player, 'If his action prefigure passion, he raves, rages, and protests much by his painted heavens, and seems in the height of this fit ready to pull Jove out of the garret where perchance he lies leaning on his elbows, or is employed to make squibs and crackers to grace the play'. Wegener, 133, gives examples of the use of machines; for the throne, cf. vol. iii, p. 77.
- ↑ Field (1583, App. C, No. xxxi), 'Those flagges of defiance against God'; Vennar's apology (1614) for England's Joy (1602, cf. ch. xxiii). 'The report of gentlemen and gentlewomens actions, being indeed the flagge to our theatre, was not meerely falcification'; A Mad World, my Masters (1604-6), I. i. 38, III. iii. 143, Tis Lent in your cheeks; the flag's down'. . . . 'The hair about the hat is as good as a flag upo' th' pole, at a common playhouse, to waft company'; Dekker, Raven's Almanac (1609, Works, iv. 210), 'Another ciuill warre doe I finde will fal betweene players. . . . For it is thought that Flag will be aduanced (as it were in mortall defiance against Flag)'; Work for Armourers (1609, Works, iv. 96), 'Play-houses stand . . . the dores locked vp, the flagges . . . taken down'; Curtain-Drawer of the World (1612), 'Each playhouse advanceth his flag in the aire, whither quickly at the waving thereof are summoned whole troops of men, women, and children'. The maps regularly show flags
