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only four houses, in Genoa.[1] Sharpham's Fleir, after a prelude at Florence, which needs no house, has anything from three to six in London.[2] Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess, again, is tout en pastoralle.[3] Finally, The Knight of the Burning Pestle is, in the strict sense, an exception which proves the rule. Its shifts of locality are part of the burlesque, in which the popular plays are taken off for the amusement of the select audience of the Blackfriars. Its legitimate houses are only two, Venturewell's shop and Merrithought's dwelling, hard by one another.[4] But the adventures of the prentice heroes take them not only over down and through forest to Waltham, where the Bell Inn must serve for a knightly castle, and the barber's shop for Barbaroso's cave, but also to the court of Moldavia, although the players regret that they cannot oblige the Citizen's Wife by showing a house covered with black velvet and a king's daughter standing in her window all in beaten gold, combing her golden locks with a comb of ivory.[5] What visible parody of public stage methods heightened the fun, it is of course impossible to say.

I do not propose to follow the Queen's Revels to the Whitefriars, or to attempt any investigation into the characteristics of that house. It was occupied by the King's Revels before the Queen's Revels, and probably the Lady Elizabeth's

  • [Footnote: a 'queach of bushes' (II. ii), Diana's oak (II. ii; IV. iv), Adonis' bower

(II. ii; V. i), a bowling green with arbours (II. iii-v), and the house of Manasses (IV. iii).]

  1. ↑ Law Tricks has (a) the palace (I. i; II; IV. i, ii; V. ii), within which (p. 64, ed. Bullen) 'Discover Polymetes in his study', and (p. 78) 'Polymetes in his study'; (b) an arrased chamber in Lurdo's (III. i), entered by a vault (cf. p. 148, supra); (c) Countess Lurdo's (III. ii); (d) the cloister vaults (V. i, ii) where (p. 90) 'Countesse in the Tombe'. Action passes direct from (a) to (d) at p. 89.
  2. ↑ Fleir has (a) the courtesans' (I. 26-188; II; III. 1-193; IV. 1-193); (b) Alunio's (IV. 194-287); (c) Ferrio's (V. 1-54); (d) a prison (V. 55-87); (e) a law court (V. 178-end); (f) possibly Susan and Nan's (I. 189-500). Conceivably (c), (d), (e) are in some way combined: there is action within at (b), 'Enter Signior Alunio the Apothecarie in his shop with wares about him' (194), (d) 'Enter Lord Piso . . . in prison' (55), and (e); none above.
  3. ↑ The action of F. Shepherdess needs a wood, with rustic cotes and an altar to Pan (I. ii, iii; V. i, iii), a well (III. i), and a bower for Clorin (I. i; II. ii; IV. ii, v; V. ii, v), where is hung a curtain (V. ii. 109).
  4. ↑ K. B. P. I. 230, 'Enter Rafe like a Grocer in 's shop, with two Prentices Reading Palmerin of England'; at 341 the action shifts to Merrithought's, but the episode at Venturewell's is said to have been 'euen in this place' (422), and clearly the two houses were staged together. Possibly the conduit head on which Ralph sings his May Day song (IV. 439) was also part of the permanent setting.
  5. ↑ K. B. P. II. 71-438; III. 1-524; IV. 76-151.
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