joined the Queen's Revels there at a later date. But the number of plays which can definitely be assigned to it is clearly too small to form the basis of any satisfactory induction.[1] So far as the Blackfriars is concerned, my conclusion must be much the same as for Paul's—that, when plays began in 1600, the Chapel revived the methods of staging with which their predecessors had been familiar during the hey-day of the Court drama under Lyly; that these methods held their own in the competition with the public theatres, and were handed on to the Queen's Revels; but that in course of time they were sometimes variegated by the introduction, for one reason or another, of some measure of scene-shifting in individual plays. This reason may have been the nature of the plot in Sophonisba, the desire to experiment in Eastward Ho!, the restlessness of the dramatist in Your Five Gallants, the spirit of raillery in The Knight of the Burning Pestle. Whether Chapman's tragedies involved scene-shifting, I am not quite sure. The analogy of the Hôtel de Bourgogne, where a continuous setting was not inconsistent with the use of widely distant localities, must always be kept in mind. On the other hand, what did not appear absurd in Paris, might have appeared absurd in London, where the practice of the public theatres had taught the spectators to expect a higher degree of consistency. I am far from claiming that my theory of the survival of continuous setting at Paul's and the Blackfriars has been demonstrated. Very possibly the matter is not capable of demonstration. Many, perhaps most, of the plays could be produced, if need be, by alternative methods. It is really on taking them in the mass that I cannot resist the feeling that 'the fashion of the private stage', as Marston called it, was something different from the fashion of the public stage. The technique of the dramatists corresponds to the structural conditions. An increased respect for unity of place is not the only factor, although it is the most important. An unnecessary multiplicity of houses is, except by Dekker and Middleton, avoided. Sometimes one or two suffice. There is much more interior action than in the popular plays. One hall or chamber scene can follow upon
- ↑ The certain plays are Epicoene, Woman a Weathercock, Insatiate Countess, and Revenge of Bussy. I have noted two unusual s.ds.: W. a W. III. ii, 'Enter Scudmore . . . Scudmore passeth one doore, and entereth the other, where Bellafront sits in a Chaire, under a Taffata Canopie'; Insatiate C. III. i, 'Claridiana and Rogero, being in a readiness, are received in at one anothers houses by their maids. Then enter Mendoza, with a Page, to the Lady Lentulus window'. There is some elaborate action with contiguous rooms in Epicoene, IV, V.
