house is followed by four set continuously before the three booths of the fair. Absolute unity, as distinct from the unity of a single country, or even a single town, is perhaps only attained in The Alchemist. Here everything takes place, either in a single room in Lovewit's house in the Blackfriars, or in front of a door leading from the street into the same room. Evidently advantage was taken of the fact that the scene did not have to be changed, to build a wall containing this door out on to the stage itself, for action such as speaking through the keyhole requires both sides of the door to be practicable.[1] There is also a window from which persons approaching can be seen. Inner doors, presumably in the scenic wall, lead to a laboratory and other parts of the house, but these are not discovered, and no use is made of the upper level. Jonson here is a clear innovator, so far as the English public theatre is concerned; no other play of our period reproduces this type of permanent interior setting.
Shakespeare is no classicist; yet in some of his plays, comedies and romantic tragedies, it is, I think, possible to discern at least an instinctive feeling in the direction of scenic unity. The Comedy of Errors, with its action in the streets of Syracuse, near the mart, or before the Phoenix, the Porpentine, or the priory, follows upon the lines of its Latin model, although here, as in most of Jonson's plays, it is possible that the various houses were shown successively rather than concurrently. Twelfth Night, Much Ado about Nothing, and Measure for Measure each require a single town, with two, three, and five houses respectively; Titus Andronicus, A Midsummer-Night's Dream, The Merry Wives of Windsor, As You Like It, Troilus and Cressida, Timon of Athens, each a single town, with open country environs. Love's Labour's Lost has the unity of a park, with perhaps a manor-house as background at one end and tents at the other; The Tempest complete pastoral unity after the opening scene on shipboard. Hamlet would all be Elsinore, but for one distant open-country scene; Romeo and Juliet all Venice, but for one scene in Mantua. In another group of plays the action is divided between two towns. It alternates from Padua to near Verona in The Taming of the Shrew, from Verona to Milan in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, from Venice to Belmont in The Merchant of Venice; in Othello an act in Venice is followed by four in Cyprus. On the other hand, in
- ↑ Alchemist, III. v. 58, 'He speakes through the key-hole, the other knocking'. Hen. VIII, V. ii, iii (continuous scene) also requires a council-chamber door upon the stage, at which Cranmer is stopped after he has entered through the stage door.
