most valuable documents of theatrical history which the hazard of time has preserved in any land. It, or rather the earlier of the two sections into which it is divided, is the work of Laurent Mahelot, probably a machinist at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, and contains notes, in some cases apparently emanating from the authors, of the scenery required for seventy-one plays belonging to the repertory of the theatre, to which are appended, in forty-seven cases, drawings showing the way in which the requirements were to be met.[1] It is true that the Mémoire is of no earlier date than about 1633, but the close resemblance of the system which it illustrates to that used in the miracle-plays of the Confrèrie de la Passion justifies the inference that there had been no marked breach of continuity since 1598. In essence it is the mediaeval system of juxtaposed 'maisons', corresponding to the 'case' of the Italian and the 'houses' of the English tradition, a series of independent structures, visually related to each other upon the stage, but dramatically distinct and serving, each in its turn, as the background to action upon the whole of the free space—platea in mediaeval terminology, proscenium in that of the Renaissance—which stretched before and between them. The stage of the Hôtel de Bourgogne had room for five such 'maisons', one in the middle of the back wall, two in the angles between the back and side walls, and two standing forward against the side walls; but in practice two or three of these compartments were often devoted to a 'maison' of large size. A 'maison' might be a unit of architecture, such as a palace, a senate-house, a castle, a prison, a temple, a tavern; or of landscape, such as a garden, a wood, a rock, a cave, a sea.[2] And very often it
- ↑ The full text is printed by E. Dacier from B. N. f. fr. 24330 in Mémoires de la Soc. de l'Hist. de Paris (1901), xxviii. 105, and is analysed by Rigal, 247. The designs have recently (1920) been published in H. C. Lancaster's edition; reproductions, from the originals or from models made for the Exposition of 1878, will be found of Durval's Agarite in Rigal, f.p., Lawrence, i. 241, Thorndike, 154; of Hardy's Cornélie in Rigal, Alexandre Hardy (1890), f.p., Bapst, 185; of Pandoste in Jusserand, Shakespeare in France, 71, 75; of Mairet's Sylvanire in E. Faguet, Hist. de la Litt. Fr. ii. 31; and of Pyrame et Thisbé, Corneille's L'Illusion Comique, and Du Ryer's Lisandre et Caliste in Petit de Julleville, Hist. iv. 220, 270, 354.
- ↑ 'Il faut un antre . . . d'où sort un hermite' (Dacier, 116), 'une fenestre qui soit vis à vis d'une autre fenestre grillée pour la prison, où Lisandre puisse parler à Caliste' (116), 'un beau palais eslevé de trois ou quatre marches' (117), 'un palais ou sénat fort riche' (117), 'une case où il y ayt pour enseigne L'Ormeau' (117), 'une mer' (117), 'une tente' (121), 'un hermitage où l'on monte et descend' (123), 'une fenestre où se donne une lettre' (124), 'une tour, une corde nouée pour descendre de la tour, un pont-levis qui se lâche quand il est nécessaire' (125), 'une sortie d'un roy en forme de palais' (127).
