sights.[1] In many cases the alcove constructed in the tiring-house behind the scenic wall would give all that is required, and occasionally a mention of the 'curtains' or of 'discovery' in a stage-direction points plainly to this arrangement. The 'traverse' of Webster's plays, both for the King's and the Queen's men, appears, as already pointed out, to be nothing more than a terminological variant.[2] Similarly, hall scenes have still their 'arras' or their 'hangings', behind which a spy can post himself.[3] A new feature, however, now presents itself in the existence of certain scenes, including some bedchamber scenes, which entail the use of properties and would, I think, during the sixteenth century have been placed in the alcove, but now appear to have been brought forward and to occupy, like hall scenes, the main stage. The usage is by no means invariable. Even in so late a play as Cymbeline, Imogen's chamber, with Iachimo's trunk and the elaborate fire-places in it, must, in spite of the absence of any reference to curtains, have been disposed in the alcove; for the trunk scene is immediately followed by another before
- [Footnote: a Fether shop; the third a Sempsters shop'; Two Lamentable Tragedies
(? Fortune), I. i, 'Sit in his shop' (Merry's); I. iii, 'Then Merry must passe to Beeches shoppe, who must sit in his shop, and Winchester his boy stand by: Beech reading'; II. i, 'The boy sitting at his maisters dore'. . . . 'When the boy goeth into the shoppe Merrie striketh six blowes on his head and with the seaventh leaues the hammer sticking in his head'. . . . 'Enter one in his shirt and a maide, and comming to Beeches shop findes the boy murthered'; IV. iv, 'Rachell sits in the shop' (Merry's); Bartholomew Fair (Hope), II-V, which need booths for the pig-woman, gingerbread woman, and hobby-horse man.]
- ↑ Revenger's Tragedy (Dodsley^4), i, p. 26, 'Enter . . . Antonio . . . discovering the body of her dead to certain Lords and Hippolito; pp. 58, 90 (scenes of assignation and murder in a room with 'yon silver ceiling', a 'darken'd blushless angle', 'this unsunned lodge', 'that sad room'); D. of Malfi, IV. i. 55, 'Here is discover'd, behind a travers, the artificiall figures of Antonio and his children, appearing as if they were dead'; ii. 262, 'Shewes the children strangled'; cf. White Devil (Queen's), V. iv. 71, 'They are behind the travers. Ile discover Their superstitious howling', with s.d. 'Cornelia, the Moore and 3 other Ladies discovered, winding Marcello's coarse'; Brazen Age (Queen's), III, 'Two fiery Buls are discouered, the Fleece hanging over them, and the Dragon sleeping beneath them: Medea with strange fiery-workes, hangs above in the Aire in the strange habite of a Coniuresse'.
- ↑ Cf. p. 25. I am not clear whether Volpone, V. 2801, 'Volpone peepes from behinde a trauerse' is below or above, but in either event the traverse in this case must have been a comparatively low screen and free from attachment at the top, as Volpone says (2761), 'I'le get up, Behind the cortine, on a stoole, and harken; Sometime, peepe ouer'.
- ↑ M. Ado, I. iii. 63; M. Wives, III. iii. 97, 'Falstaffe stands behind the aras' (Q_{1}); Ham. II. ii. 163; III. iv. 22; D. of Malfi, I. ii. 65; Philaster, II. ii. 61, 'Exit behind the hangings' . . . (148), 'Enter Galatea from behind the hangings'.
