- ing of tapestry used as a wall decoration, and often projected
from a frame so as to leave a narrow space, valuable to eavesdroppers and other persons in need of seclusion, between itself and the wall. The stage arras serves precisely this purpose as a background to interior scenes. Here stand the murderers in King John; here Falstaff goes to sleep in 1 Henry IV; and here too he proposes to 'ensconce' himself, in order to avoid being confronted with both his lady-*loves together in The Merry Wives.[1]
The stage-directions, however, make it quite clear that the curtains were not merely an immovable decoration of the back wall. They could be 'opened' and 'shut' or 'closed'; and either operation could indifferently be expressed by the term 'drawn'. This drawing was presumably effected by sliding the curtain laterally along a straight rod to which it was affixed by rings sewn on to its upper edge; there is no sign of any rise or fall of the curtain. The operator may be an actor upon the stage; in Bacon and Bungay Friar Bacon draws the curtains 'with a white sticke'. He may be the speaker of a prologue.[2] Whether the 'servitours' of a theatre ever came upon the stage, undisguised, to draw the curtains, I am uncertain; but obviously it would be quite easy to work the transformation from behind, by a cord and pulley, without any visible intervention.[3] The object of the drawing is to introduce interior action, either in a mere recess, or in a larger space, such as a chamber; and this, not only where curtains are dramatically appropriate, as within a house, or at the door of a tent, but also where they are less so, as before a cave or a forest bower. One may further accept the term 'discovered' as indicating the unveiling of an interior by the play of a curtain, even when the curtain is not specifically mentioned;[4] and may recognize that the stage-directions sometimes use 'Enter' and 'Exit'
- [Footnote: drawn; Famous Victories, 'curtains' drawn; 1 Contention, 'curtains'
drawn and bodies 'discouered'; 1 Rich. II, 'curtayne' drawn; Death of R. Hood, 'vaile' or 'curten' drawn; R. J., 'curtens' shut); p. 67, n. 1 (Friar Bacon, 'courtaines' drawn by actor with stick; Lord Cromwell, 'curtaines' drawn); p. 68, n. 1 (Old Fortunatus, 'curtaine' drawn; Downfall of R. Hood, 'curteines' drawn and 'shut').]
- ↑ M. W. III. iii. 97; cf. p. 66, n. 1 (K. J.), p. 68, n. 3 (1 Hen. IV).
- ↑ So probably in Dr. Faustus, 28, where the prol. ends 'And this the man that in his study sits', and the s.d. follows, 'Enter Faustus in his study'.
- ↑ The 'groom' of the seventeenth-century Devil's Charter (cf. p. 110) might be a servitor.
- ↑ Cf. p. 53, n. 5 (Edw. I; Trial of Chivalry); p. 65, n. 3 (1 Contention); p. 67, n. 1 (E. M. I.). In James IV, V. vi. 2346, 'He discouereth her' only describes the removal of a disguise.
