and that there are hints of a convention by which the locality of each scene was indicated with the help of a label, placed over the door through which the personages in that scene made their exits and their entrances.[1] The public stage of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries experienced no re-establishment of the principle of unity; broadly speaking, it presents an extreme type of romantic drama, with an unfettered freedom of ranging from one to another of any number of localities required by a narrative plot. But the practice, or the instinct, of individual playwrights differs. Ben Jonson is naturally the man who betrays the most conscious preoccupation with the question. He is not, however, a rigid or consistent unitarian. In his two earliest plays the scene shifts from the country to a neighbouring town, and the induction to Every Man Out of his Humour is in part an apology for his own liberty, in part a criticism of the licence of others.
Mitis. What's his scene?
Cordatus. Mary Insula Fortunata, sir.
Mitis. O, the fortunate Iland? masse he has bound himself to a
strict law there.
Cordatus. Why so?
Mitis. He cannot lightly alter the scene without crossing the seas.
Cordatus. He needs not, hauing a whole Ilande to runne through,
I thinke.
Mitis. No? howe comes it then, that in some one play we see so
many seas, countries, and kingdomes, past over with such admirable
dexteritie?
Cordatus. O, that but shewes how well the Authors can travaile in
their vocation, and out-run the apprehension of their Auditorie.
Sejanus is throughout in Rome, but five or six distinct houses are required, and it must be doubtful whether such a multiplicity of houses could be shown without a change of scene.[2] The prologue to Volpone claims for the author that 'The laws of time, place, persons he obserueth', and this has no more than four houses, all in Venice.[3] In Catiline the scenes in Rome, with some ten houses, are broken by two in open country.[4] In Bartholomew Fair a preliminary act at a London
- ↑ Cf. pp. 41, 126, 154.
- ↑ Palace of Tiberius (Acts I, II, III), Senate house (III, V), Gardens of Eudemus (II), Houses of Agrippina (II, IV), Sejanus (V), Regulus (V).
- ↑ Houses of Volpone (I, II, III, V), Corvino (II), Would Be (V), Law court (IV, V).
- ↑ Houses of Catiline (I, IV), Fulvia (II), Cicero (III, IV, V), Lecca (III), Brutus (IV), Spinther (V. vi), Cornificius (V. vi), Caesar (V. vi), Senate house (IV, V), Milvian Bridge (IV).
