Page:The Elizabethan stage (Volume 3).pdf/57

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  • peter. 'Let y^e trumpet go towarde the Citie and blowe.'

Clytemnestra answers. 'Let y^e trumpet leaue soundyng and let Harrauld speake and Clytemnestra speake ouer y^e wal.' Summons and defiance follow, and Orestes calls on his men for an assault. 'Go and make your liuely battel and let it be longe, eare you can win y^e Citie, and when you haue won it, let Horestes bringe out his mother by the armes, and let y^e droum sease playing and the trumpet also, when she is taken.' But now Aegisthus is at hand. 'Let Egistus enter and set hys men in a raye, and let the drom play tyll Horestes speaketh.' There is more fighting, which ends with the capture and hanging of Aegisthus. 'Fling him of y^e lader, and then let on bringe in his mother Clytemnestra; but let her loke wher Egistus hangeth'. Finally Orestes announces that 'Enter now we wyll the citie gate'. In the two other plays the changes of locality come thick and fast. The action of Clyomon and Clamydes begins in Denmark, and passes successively to Swabia, to the Forest of Marvels on the borders of Macedonia, to the Isle of Strange Marshes twenty days' sail from Macedonia, to the Forest again, to the Isle again, to Norway, to the Forest, to the Isle, to the Forest, to a road near Denmark, to the Isle, to Denmark. Only two domus are needed, a palace (733) in the Isle, and Bryan Sans Foy's Castle in the Forest. This is a prison, with a practicable door and a window, from which Clamydes speaks (872). At one point Providence descends and ascends (1550-64). In one of the Forest scenes a hearse is brought in and it is still there in the next (1450, 1534), although a short Isle scene has intervened. This looks as though the two ends of the stage may have been assigned throughout to the two principal localities, the Forest and the Isle. Some care is taken to let the speakers give the audience a clue when a new locality is made use of for the first time. Afterwards the recurrence of characters whom they had already seen would help them. The Norway episode (1121) is the only one which need have much puzzled them. But Clyomon and Clamydes may have made use of a peculiar device, which becomes apparent in the stage-directions of Common Conditions. The play opens in Arabia, where first a spot near the Court and then a wood are indicated; but the latter part alternates between Phrygia, near the sea-shore, and the Isle of Marofus. No domus is necessary, and it must remain uncertain whether the wood was represented by visualized trees. It is introduced (295) with the stage-direction, 'Here enter Sedmond with Clarisia and Condicions out of the wood'. Similarly Phrygia is introduced (478) with 'Here entreth Galiarbus out of Phrygia',