The Hope contract of 1613 provides for the heavens to be supported without the help of posts rising from the stage. For this there was a special reason at the Hope, since the stage had to be capable of removal to make room for bear-*baitings. But the advantage of dispensing with the posts and the obstacle to the free vision of the spectators which they presented must have been so great, that the innovation may well have occurred to the builders of the Globe. Whether it did, I do not think that we can say. There are one or two references to posts in stage-directions, but they need not be the posts of the heavens.[1] Possibly, too, there was less use of the descending chair. One might even fancy that Jonson's sarcasm in the prologue to Every Man In his Humour discredited it. The new type of play did not so often call for spectacular palace scenes, and perhaps some simpler and more portable kind of 'state' was allowed to serve the turn. There is no suggestion of a descent from the heavens in the theophanies of As You Like It and Pericles; Juno, however, descends in The Tempest.[2] This, although it has practically no change of setting, is in some ways, under the mask influence, the most spectacular performance attempted by the King's men at Globe or Blackfriars during our period.[3] But it is far outdone by the Queen's plays of the Golden, Silver,
- [Footnote: of knocking downe the bridge, within' and 'Enter . . . Valerius aboue',
who encourages Horatius. After 'Alarum, and the falling of the Bridge', Horatius 'exit', and Porsenna says 'Hee's leapt off from the bridge'. Presently 'the shout of all the multitude Now welcomes him a land'.]
- ↑ Devil's Charter, III. v, Frescobaldi is to waylay the Duke of Candie. 'He fenceth' (s.d.) with 'this conduct here' (1482), and as the victim arrives, 'Here will I stand close' (1612) and 'He stands behind the post' (s.d.); cf. Satiromastix (p. 141, n. 4).
- ↑ Tp. IV. i. 72.
- ↑ Tp. III. iii. 17, 'Solemne and strange Musicke: and Prosper on the top (invisible:) Enter severall strange shapes, bringing in a Banket; and dance about it with gentle actions of salutations, and inuiting the King, &c. to eate, they depart'. . . . (52) 'Thunder and lightning. Enter Ariell (like a Harpey) claps his wings upon the Table, and with a queint device the Banquet vanishes'. . . . (82) 'He vanishes in Thunder: then (to soft Musicke) Enter the shapes againe, and daunce (with mockes and mowes) and carrying out the Table'; IV. i. 134, 'Enter Certaine Nimphes. . . . Enter certaine Reapers (properly habited:) they ioyne with the Nimphes, in a gracefull dance, towards the end whereof, Prospero starts sodainly and speakes, after which to a strange hollow and confused noyse, they heauily vanish'. . . . (256) 'A noyse of Hunters heard. Enter divers Spirits in shape of Dogs and Hounds, hunting them about: Prospero and Ariel setting them on'. Was the 'top' merely the gallery, or the third tiring-house floor (cf. p. 98) above? Ariel, like Prospero, enters 'invisible' (III. ii. 48). Is this merely the touch of an editor (cf. ch. xxii) or does it reflect a stage convention? The Admiral's tiring-house contained in 1598 (Henslowe Papers, 123) 'a robe for to goo invisibell'.
