Trial of Chivalry, although it is not until the seventeenth century that three doors are in so many words enumerated.[1] We get entrance 'at every door', however, in The Downfall of Robin Hood, and this, with other more disputable phrases, might perhaps be pressed into an argument that even three points of entrance did not exhaust the limits of practicability.[2] It should be added that, while doors are most commonly indicated as the avenue of entrance, this is not always the case. Sometimes personages are said to enter from one or other 'end', or 'side', or 'part' of the stage.[3] I take it that the three terms have the same meaning, and that the 'end' of a stage wider than its depth is what we should call its 'side'. A few minor points about doors may besets the Castell gate wide ope'. Then follows dialogue, interspersed with the s.ds. 'Musique whyle he opens the door'. . . . 'From one end of the Stage enter an antique . . . Into the Castell . . . Exit'. . . . 'From the other end of the Stage enter another Antique . . . Exit into the Castell'. . . . 'From under the Stage the third antique . . . Exit into the Castell'. . . . 'The fourth out of a tree, if possible it may be . . . Exit into the Castell'. Then John a Cumber 'Exit into the Castell, and makes fast the dore'. John a Kent enters, and 'He tryes the dore'. John a Cumber and others enter 'on the walles' and later 'They discend'. For an earlier example of 'end', cf. Cobler's Prophecy (p. 35, n. 1), and for a later The Dumb Knight (Whitefriars), i, iv. In 2 Return from Parnassus (Univ. play), IV. i begins 'Sir Radericke and Prodigo, at one corner of the Stage, Recorder and Amoretto at the other'.]
- ↑ Fair Em, sc. iv, 'Enter Manvile . . . Enter Valingford at another door . . . Enter Mountney at another door'; Patient Grissell, 1105, 'Enter Vrcenze and Onophrio at seuerall doores, and Farneze in the mid'st'; Trial of Chivalry, sign. I_{3}^{v}, 'Enter at one dore . . . at the other dore . . . Enter in the middest'. Examples from seventeenth-century public theatres are Four Prentices of London, prol., 'Enter three in blacke clokes, at three doores'; Travels of 3 English Brothers, p. 90, 'Enter three seuerall waies the three Brothers'; Nobody and Somebody, 1322, 'Enter at one doore . . . at another doore . . . at another doore'; Silver Age, V. ii, 'Exeunt three wayes'. It may be accident that these are all plays of Queen Anne's men, at the Curtain or Red Bull. For the middle entrance in private theatres, cf. p. 132.
- ↑ Downfall of R. Hood, I. i (ind.), after Eltham has knocked at Skelton's study door (cf. p. 69), 'At euery doore all the players runne out'; Englishmen for my Money, 393, 'Enter Pisaro, Delion the Frenchman, Vandalle the Dutchman, Aluaro the Italian, and other Marchants, at seuerall doores'; cf. the seventeenth-century 1 Honest Whore, sc. xiii (Fortune), 'Enter . . . the Duke, Castruchio, Pioratto, and Sinezi from severall doores muffled'.
- ↑ Locrine, IV. ii. 1460 (not an entry), 'Locrine at one side of the stage'; Sir T. More, sc. i. 1, 'Enter at one end John Lincolne . . . at the other end enters Fraunces'; Stukeley, 245, 'Enter Stukeley at the further end of the stage', 2382, 'Two trumpets sound at either end'; Look About You, sc. ii. 76, 'Enter . . . on the one side . . . on the other part'. Very elaborate are the s.ds. of John a Kent, III. i. The scene is before a Castle. A speaker says, 'See, he [John a Cumber
