early prints the beginnings of scenes are rarely marked, and the beginnings of acts are left unmarked to an extent which is rather surprising. The practice is by no means uniform, and it is possible to distinguish different tendencies in texts of different origin. The Tudor interludes and the early Elizabethan plays of the more popular type are wholly undivided, and there was probably no break in the continuity of the performances.[1] Acts and scenes, which are the outward form of a method of construction derived from the academic analysis of Latin comedy and tragedy, make their appearance, with other notes of neo-classic influence, in the farces of the school of Udall, in the Court tragedies, in translated plays, in Lyly's comedies, and in a few others belonging to the same milieu of scholarship.[2] Ben Jonson and a few other later writers adopt them in printing plays of theatrical origin.[3] But the great majority of plays belonging to the public theatres continue to be printed without any divisions at all, while plays from the private houses are ordinarily divided into acts, but not into scenes, although the beginning of each act has usually some such heading as 'Actus Primus, Scena prima'.[4] This distinction corresponds to the greater significance of the act-interval in the performance of the boy companies; but, as I have pointed out in an earlier chapter, it is difficult to suppose that the public theatres paid no regard to act-intervals, and one cannot therefore quite understand why neither the poets nor the book-keepers were in the habit of showing them in the play-house 'originals' of plays.[5]
- ↑ The Marriage of Wit and Wisdom has no acts, but nine scenes. The latish Jacob and Esau, Respublica, Misogonus, Conflict of Conscience have acts and scenes.
- ↑ Ralph Roister Doister, Gammer Gurton's Needle, Gorboduc, Gismund of Salerne, Misfortunes of Arthur, Jocasta, Supposes, Bugbears, Two Italian Gentlemen, Glass of Government, Promos and Cassandra, Arraignment of Paris; so, too, as a rule, University plays. Dido and Love and Fortune, like the later private theatre plays, show acts only.
- ↑ Devil's Charter, Duchess of Malfi, Philotas, Sir Giles Goosecap, The Turk, Liberality and Prodigality, Percy's plays, The Woman Hater, Monsieur Thomas, 2 Antonio and Mellida.
- ↑ Acts and scenes are marked in Tamburlaine and Locrine; acts, or one or more of them only, sometimes with the first scene, in Jack Straw, Battle of Alcazar, Wounds of Civil War, King Leire, Alphonsus, James IV, Soliman and Perseda, Spanish Tragedy, John a Kent and John a Cumber; a few scenes without acts in Death of Robin Hood. These exceptions may indicate neo-classic sympathies in the earlier group of scholar playwrights; some later plays, e. g. of Beaumont and Fletcher, have partial divisions. The acts in Spanish Tragedy and Jack Straw are four only; Histriomastix, a private theatre play, has six. Where there are no formal divisions, they are sometimes replaced by passages of induction or dumb-shows.
- ↑ Cf. ch. xxi.
