of public resort would not render them altogether superfluous.[1] In favour of locality-labels it is possible to quote Dekker's advice to those entering Paul's, and also the praise given to Jonson by Jasper Mayne in Jonsonus Virbius:
Thy stage was still a stage, two entrances
Were not two parts o' the world, disjoined by seas.[2]
These, however, are rather vague and inconclusive allusions on which to base a whole stage practice, and there is not much to be added to them from the texts and stage-directions of the plays themselves. Signs are of course used to distinguish particular taverns and shops, just as they would be in real life.[3] Occasionally, moreover, a locality is named in a stage-direction in a way that recalls Common Conditions, but this may also be explained as no more than a descriptive touch such as is not uncommon in stage-directions written by authors.[4] It is rather against the theory of labels that care is often taken, when a locality is changed, to let the personages themselves declare their whereabouts. A careful reader of such rapidly shifting plays as Edward I, James IV, The Battle of Alcazar, or King Leir will generally be able to orientate himself with the aid of the opening passages of dialogue in each new scene, and conceivably a very attentive spectator might do the same. Once the personages have got themselves grouped in the mind in relation to their localities, the recurrence of this or that group would help. It would require a rather careful examination of texts to enable one to judge how far this method of localization by dialogue
- ↑ Most of the examples in Lawrence, i. 43 (Title and Locality Boards on the Pre-Restoration Stage) belong to Court or to private theatres; on the latter cf. p. 154, infra. But the prologue to 1 Sir John Oldcastle begins 'The doubtful Title (Gentlemen) prefixt Upon the Argument we have in hand May breede suspence'. The lost Frankfort engraving of English comedians (cf. vol. ii, p. 520) is said to have shown boards.
- ↑ Cunningham, Jonson, iii. 509; Dekker, G. H. B. (ed. McKerrow), 40,
And first observe your doors of entrance, and your exit; not much
unlike the players at the theatres; keeping your decorums, even in fantasticality.
As for example: if you prove to be a northern gentleman, I would
wish you to pass through the north door, more often especially than any
of the other; and so, according to your countries, take note of your
entrances'. - ↑ 1 Contention, sc. xxii, 'Richard kils him under the signe of the Castle in St. Albones'; Comedy of Errors (the Phoenix, the Porpentine), Shoemaker's Holiday (the Last), Edw. IV (the Pelican), E. M. O. (the Mitre), Miseries of Enforced Marriage (the Mitre, the Wolf); Bartholomew Fair (the Pig's Head); &c.
- ↑ Wounds of Civil War, III. iv, 'Enter Marius solus from the Numidian mountaines, feeding on rootes'; 3 Hen. VI, IV. ii, 'Enter Warwick and Oxford in England', &c.; cf. ch. xxii.
