Chapter V: Act III: , scene i, when Malvolio courts Olivia. The full merging of (1)

the two actions takes place in Act III, scene iv. Meanwhile, the Antonio-Sebastian thread was introduced into the story in Act II, scene i, and in Act III, scene iii, and partly integrated with the main action in Act III, scene iv. In the fourth act the development of the two main threads remains suspended, Viola disappearing from the stage to enable the Sebastian element to be more fully integrated with the Olivia-Orsino-Viola triangle. Finally, in the fifth act, every element is brought together, including the Malvolio sequence, even though this necessitates the unprepared revelation that Viola’s womanly garments are in the hands of a captain who “upon some action/Is now in durance, at Malvolio’s suit” (V, i, 282-283).

Although this form is not as prevalent as either the episodic or the “mirror,” it can be found in a number of Globe plays, for example, _The Merry Wives of Windsor_, _The Revenger’s Tragedy_, and partly in _All’s Well_. _Twelfth Night_ remains, however, its model.

Last of the three dominant forms and the most popular one is the “mirror” pattern. Usually it consists of two stories, almost equal in emphasis. Both are introduced independently and maintain a large degree of independence throughout the play, sometimes never fully coming into plot relation with each other. Their fundamental connection derives from a similarity of theme and story development. Through sharp comparison or contrast one story casts reflections upon the other as though one were the image in the mirror and one the reality. The distinctness of each story is sometimes obscured by the fact that the same individual may appear in both stories and yet maintain independence of action in each case, at least early in the play. For example, through the first two acts Gloucester functions independently in each of the two stories in _Lear_.

_Fair Maid of Bristow_, among the works of the Globe repertory, is an excellent example of this pattern. In fact, here we have striking evidence of the structural care with which a minor play could be organized, despite Bradbrook’s assertion that structure is possible only through “literary means.” This play follows the mirror pattern almost slavishly. In the first scene Challener shows his beloved Anabell to Vallenger who falls in love with her. The two men come to blows over the girl. Challener wounds Vallenger and then flees while Vallenger is taken into Anabell’s house by her father. In the second scene Harbart tries to persuade Sentloe not to remain with the courtesan, Florence. But Sentloe, blind to her fickleness and confident of her devotion, rejects Harbart. Harbart vows to follow Sentloe in disguise. In the third scene Vallenger gains the promise of Anabell’s hand. In the fourth scene Challener, learning of the impending marriage, returns to Bristow in the disguise of an Italian doctor. In the fifth scene Sentloe engages Blunt alias Harbart as a servingman, and Sentloe and Florence are invited to Anabell’s wedding. At this point in the play we can identify two parallel centers of action. Each contains a “loving” couple, and a friend in disguise. In one Challener hates Vallenger and loves Anabell; in the other Harbart hates Florence and loves Sentloe.

Scene vi (nearly the middle of the play, since there are fourteen scenes in all) dramatizes the first blending of the two actions. Immediately after his marriage, Vallenger falls in love with Florence and suborns the doctor to poison Sentloe and Anabell. Later, in scene vii, Florence seduces Blunt to slay Sentloe. In each case the sworn protector is asked to commit the murder. In scene vii we have a typical “digression,” a comic courting scene of two servants. The theme, however, is faithfulness. Douse, the maid, asks whether Frog, after their marriage, “will ... not prove unkind?” Frog, in comic doggerel, vows, among other things, that only “when Lawiers have no tongues at all” will he prove unkind. The idea contrasts with the succeeding scenes in which Vallenger proves unkind to Anabell, only to have Florence subsequently prove unkind to him. The two stories are more tightly joined when Blunt contrives to have Vallenger arrested for the “death” of Sentloe. The rest of the play proceeds by contrasting action. Anabell seeks to save the life of Vallenger and Blunt seeks to have Florence held responsible for her part in Sentloe’s “death.” The finale is brought about when King Richard, the judge-figure, permits a champion to appear for the condemned Vallenger. The final contrast comes when Anabell assumes a disguise to free Vallenger, and Challener throws off his disguise for the same purpose. Only when Florence is moved to contrition by the nobility of Anabell and Challener, does Blunt unveil the still-living Sentloe, thus assuring a happy conclusion. Throughout, one line of development balances the other, and though the symmetry is not perfect, as it is rarely perfect in any Elizabethan play, the basic situations contrast with one another. Obviously the author had taken some care in organizing the plot. The disguises are well worked out, as are the balancing and interweaving of the two stories. Further evidence of the care in plotting can be seen in the foreshadowing of King Richard’s appearance in the plot when Harbart, in scene ii, urges Sentloe to abandon Florence and join Richard in the Holy Land. Richard’s first words are a blessing for being permitted by God to return home. Both in the larger construction and in smaller details the anonymous poet formed his work with care. What the play lacks is not organization of the story but strength of characterization, richness of poetic texture, and fresh outlook upon the prodigal son theme.

Among Shakespeare’s plays of the Globe period this pattern frequently appears. _As You Like It_, _Troilus and Cressida_, _King Lear_, and, in some respects, _Antony and Cleopatra_ reveal such a form. In _As You Like It_, _Lear_, and _Troilus and Cressida_, it is particularly well defined. Although this type of organization is best adapted to plays with double plots, it is only a little less effective in other plots. _As You Like It_, while it possesses rudimentary double plots in the Orlando-Oliver story and the Duke Frederick-Rosalind story, relies principally upon the balance of love relationships that grow in the Forest of Arden. _Lear_, on the other hand, contains a full double plot. The parallel of the two stories with the balance of cruelty of father-to-daughter and son-to-father is too well known to need repetition here. It is sufficient to point out that in situation after situation one story highlights and reflects the other. The stories join in the storm scenes, separate, join again when blind Gloucester meets mad Lear, separate, and join again when Edgar’s defeat of Edmund leads to the disclosure of the plot against Lear and Cordelia. If the form does not appear to be as mechanical as I have described it and if much of the cross-reflection is implicit in the poetry and characterization, this is attributable to Shakespeare’s genius, not to the absence of structural underpinning.

V. SCENE STRUCTURE IN SHAKESPEARE

In an earlier part of this chapter I emphasized the importance of the separate scenes as distinct units. At this point I should like to draw attention to certain characteristics of the scenes. Usually a portion of one action or story is not followed by an advance or counteraction, but by a new line of development, often containing completely different characters. This we take for granted in Elizabethan drama. The absence of liaison is emphasized by the way in which scenes are arranged. Some scenes, such as the one which Hamlet brings to a close with the cry

The play’s the thing
Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King.
[II, ii, 632-633]

conclude with a strong emotional lift at the same time as they thrust the interest forward. Some scenes, which I shall call “leading” scenes, produce a forceful dramatic or theatrical pointing. The brief scene in which Artimedorus prepares to give Caesar a petition warning him of the conspirators is such a scene; so is the one in which Duke Frederick thrusts Oliver out of doors until he can produce Celia. These “leading” scenes are usually brief and drive the story forward with great energy. But most scenes in Shakespeare contain an anticlimactic conclusion: they are rounded off, relaxed, brought to a subdued end. Here we must distinguish between dramatic force and story development. It is the dramatic force that is softened at the same time that the story line is brought to the fore. Upon Viola’s first visit Olivia falls in love with the “youth” (I, v). She sends a ring after “him” through Malvolio, then closes the scene with four lines:

I do I know not what, and fear to find
Mine eye too great a flatterer for my mind.
Fate, show thy force! Ourselves we do not owe.
What is decreed must be--and be this so!
[327-330]

Yet compare this with her feeling before she sends Malvolio off:

How now?
Even so quickly may one catch the plague?
Methinks I feel this youth’s perfections
With an invisible and subtle stealth
To creep in at mine eyes.
[313-317]

Clearly there is a diminution of intensity toward the end. The same thing occurs in the center of the play (III, iv). Viola denies knowing Antonio, but after his arrest she realizes that he has confused her with Sebastian. The scene does not end on that uplift of discovery. Viola goes off in delight; Toby sends Andrew after to beat the page. Fabian and Toby remain for a moment:

FABIAN. Come, let’s see the event.
TOBY. I dare lay any money ’twill be nothing yet.
[III, iv, 430-431]

The final remark is almost desultory. By gradual stages the emotional pitch of the scene is lowered. Shakespeare could easily have given Toby a final line that would have carried the play forward with more vigor. But this was not the way of Shakespeare or, for that matter, of his colleagues.

The falling off of intensity toward the end of a scene is even more marked in the tragedies. In sequence the arrangement of the subdued and pointed endings of scenes helps determine the rhythm of the play. For example, the “plateau” in _Hamlet_ is unified by the way in which the endings of the play-within-the-play scene and the prayer scene point forward, not only in story but in emotional level, each one concluding with Hamlet passionately wrought. Another variation, vital to the rhythm of performance, occurs in the “climactic plateau” of _Lear_. The first storm scene (III, ii) with Lear ends subdued. It is followed by a “leading” scene of only twenty-six lines in which Edmund decides to betray his father. The next storm scene (III, iv) also ends subdued after Lear’s meeting with poor Tom. Another leading scene, again of twenty-six lines, drives forward with Edmund’s betrayal of Gloucester to Cornwall who orders him to “seek out” his father. The last storm scene (III, vi) concludes with Edgar’s realization of the similarity of his plight to that of Lear. Though the end is keyed low, the note struck is ominous. The very next scene rises to a pitch of frenzy in the blinding of Gloucester. In the Folio it concludes abruptly with Cornwall’s order to drive out Gloucester, but the Quarto has a dialogue between two servants which, serving to round out the action, seems more typical of Shakespeare.

Within the framework of an Elizabethan scene, perhaps the most marked characteristic is the placement of emphasis not on the growth of action but on the character’s response to crisis. This, as we noted before, was a distinguishing feature of the climactic plateau. Anticipation means little to the Elizabethan dramatist. This is no more clearly seen than in the handling of the individual scenes. Even where suspense is inevitable, it is muted. _The Revenger’s Tragedy_ contains a scene (III, v) in which Vindice, at long last, plans to take revenge upon the lascivious old Duke who murdered his beloved. The trap is set, the Duke is near. Vindice strains forward,

So, so; now nine years’ vengeance crowd into a minute.
[III, v, 124]

The Duke dismisses his train; the trap in the guise of a “lady,” actually a poisoned manikin, is sprung; the Duke kisses “her” and falls. All this occupies twenty-five lines. In this it reminds us of the closet scene. Once the Duke is poisoned, Vindice and his brother, Hippolito, triumph over the dying man; they reveal the trap and then Vindice unmasks himself. To top these horrors Vindice discloses to the Duke that his bastard son “rides a-hunting in [his] brow,” and moreover that the son and the Duchess are about to hold a rendezvous at the very spot:

[Your] eyes shall see the incest of their lips.
[III, v, 192]

They arrive. The father-husband watches their love-making, hears their mockery of him, and, immediately after their departure, dies. All this takes eighty-three lines. In the structure of the scene, intensification comes from double response: the horror and pain of the Duke and the diabolical delight of the revengers as they witness his pain.

Elizabethan scenes are not unique merely because they give more time to response to a situation rather than to its development. Their uniqueness comes from the fact that the full intensity and implication of the theme is realized not in the accomplishment of the event but in the effects it produces. After Caesar is assassinated, Antony comes to terms with the conspirators. Dramatic though his meeting with them is, the most intense moments are not where Antony composes his differences with Brutus and Cassius, but where he views the body of Caesar. The most compelling section of the scene is Antony’s soliloquy where he envisions the ravages of war which will plague the earth as revenge for the foul deed. A glance at the proportion of lines devoted to the various parts of the scene indicates where Shakespeare placed his emphasis. Seventy-seven lines are devoted to all the tension leading to the assassination, 220 to the reactions and realignments that are its results. Ultimately we find Shakespeare dispensing completely with showing the act of murder and concentrating wholly on the psychological and philosophical responses, as in _Macbeth_.

VI. DRAMATIC UNITY IN THE GLOBE PLAYS

The repetition of dramatic forms in the Globe plays shows that there is a structural foundation for the concept of multiple unity, that unity can be found not in compression of action but in its extension. The story line links the experiences but is not identical with them. Rather the events frequently are extensions of the implications of the story exactly as the shattering of glass may be the effect of an explosion. Consequently, as the scenes seek to reach beyond the limits of the subject, it becomes requisite that means be discovered to set limits to the extension of story and theme. The Elizabethans were well aware that the dimensions of the plays threatened to overwhelm the audience. This is the essence of serious charges by Sir Philip Sidney and Ben Jonson against the popular drama. In this they may well have been following Aristotle who introduced into his definition of tragedy the concept of “magnitude.” A work of art must be able to be perceived as a totality by the audience. Here, of course, we have the true determinant of unity. Training in witnessing the extended sequences of miracle plays or in listening to Sunday sermons must have contributed to a broadness of perception. Nevertheless, a major problem of the Elizabethan playwright was to observe a proper magnitude, to keep within the bounds that his plays always threatened to break. To aid him in maintaining proper magnitude he had several means at his disposal.

One of these means is the story itself; it is always brought to a conclusion. Another means, and one I have not discussed, was the concentration on character. The fact that the story is happening to Hamlet or Vindice or Sejanus is in itself a unifying factor. But I shall discuss the relevance of character to the play in the chapter on Elizabethan acting. Three other means contributed to keeping the play within perceptible bounds.

The first of these, unity through poetic diction, has been amply treated by present-day critics. Both Stoll and G. Wilson Knight have written of Shakespeare’s plays as metaphorical forms.[25] Bradbrook sees the only unity as a poetic unity. Yet verbal expression is but one element of structural multiple unity. There is a close link between the dramatic form of the climactic plateau and the poetic expression, for the second requires the first. Where the playwright fails as a poet, the climactic extensions result in rant and sentimentality. But it is this form that enables the poetry to range freely, or perhaps we may consider that the same compulsion which drove the Elizabethans to copious, lyrical expression caused them to develop this particular dramatic form.

The second means relevant to multiple unity has been the subject of this chapter, precisely the arrangement of scenes about the story line. Some of the scenes that a playwright chooses to dramatize are those primarily concerned with propelling the play, such as the play-within-the-play scene in _Hamlet_. Some scenes develop traits of a character, as in the scene of Portia’s plea to Brutus for confidence. But a central, repeating element within the rhythmic pattern of extension-contraction is the arrangement of scenes or incidents in a combination of contrasting and comparable circumstances. Whether the scenes used are central or peripheral to the story, they repeatedly gain illumination through mirroring similar situations. Hamlet unable to avenge his father is contrasted with Laertes too ready to avenge his father, Hamlet mad is contrasted with Ophelia mad, Rosalind’s mocking love-play is heightened by comparison with Phebe and Silvius as well as with the earthy affection of Touchstone and Audrey, while Touchstone’s professional mockery of the pastoral life casts light upon Jaques’ melancholy. One could go on endlessly pointing out the contrast of situation with situation. Frequently we encounter scenes whose only relationship to the story is to provide dramatic contrast. I have cited the scene in _Fair Maid of Bristow_ in which the servants woo each other. The Porter’s scene in _Macbeth_, about which there has been “much throwing about of brains,” is an example. Another is the scene where Ventidius refuses to outshine Antony, another the lynching of Cinna the poet or the valor of Lucilius (_Julius Caesar_, V, iv). Great events produce many ripples. These ripples, which found expression in the Greek choral odes, the Elizabethans sought to dramatize.

Contrast in the Globe plays, it is essential to note, is a contrast of situations, not a contrast of characters. It is true that Hamlet is contrasted with Laertes as well as Fortinbras, but the character contrast is effected by the participation of each in distinct though related incidents. In _Fair Maid of Bristow_ Challener’s conflict with Vallenger is contrasted with Harbart’s relationship to Sentloe. Vallenger’s asking the disguised Challener to murder Sentloe and Anabell parallels Florence’s attempt to seduce Blunt alias Harbart to murder Sentloe. Modern drama like classic drama, however, contrasts characters caught within a single situation. Antigone and Ismene face the same dramatic circumstance; so do Electra and Chrysothemis. Character contrast is achieved through the different ways in which each person reacts to the same crisis. Lövborg and Tesman are sharply differentiated: in their reactions to the same appointment, their manner of loving, the kinds of books they write. The same holds true for Stanley and Mitch in _A Streetcar Named Desire_, or even for Stella and Blanche. But in Shakespearean drama not only is light thrown on the comparison of situations, but at times the characters are aware of this inter-reflection. At the end of the last storm scene in _Lear_, Act III, scene vi, Edgar has a speech which appears only in the Quarto. After witnessing the sorrow of Lear, he soliloquizes:

When we our betters see bearing our woes,
We scarcely think our miseries our foes.
* * * * *
How light and portable my pain seems now,
When that which makes me bend makes the King bow,
He childed as I fathered!
[108-116]

Certainly the Elizabethans felt that one event mirrored another, and probably that together they mirrored the common meaning of both events. This interconnection of reflected incidents contributed metaphorically to a unified impression.

The final means of achieving unity is the most difficult to define, the method of handling theme. For that reason let us turn to a play where the theme is clearly expounded. _A Larum for London_ has a simple, obvious point to make: the English people will be destroyed by external enemies (the Spanish) and internal treachery unless they become aware of their dangers, forego their desire for personal profit at the expense of the defense of the commonwealth, and rally the faithful honest citizens and soldiers to their support. The point is made through dramatizing the siege of Antwerp. The scenes that are introduced arise from the initial force that propels the story: the determination of the Spanish to take advantage of the improvidence of the citizens of Antwerp. Individual scenes, however, are not causally linked. Rather they are chosen because they reflect and illustrate the basic theme. A burgher, formerly unkind to the hero, is rescued by him. This is the only scene in which the burgher appears. The play is episodic in structure but unified in theme. But the unity is a multiple one. Instead of employing the story of one family and one incident to illustrate the ravages of war, as Gorki did in _Yegor Bulichev and Others_, this play uses a multiple reflection of its theme in a number of independent scenes, each having equal emphasis. Thus the single theme is given multiple dramatization.

The weaker plays of the Globe reveal obvious ways of treating a theme. Dramas of the prodigal son reiterate their morality _ad infinitum_, providing multiple reflections of fall and redemption. The otherwise haphazardly constructed play, _The Devil’s Charter_, is bound together by the theme of Man’s soul sold to the devil and the final retribution that befalls him. Jonson’s predilection for purging mankind with a pill of satire imposes thematic unity on disparate incidents in _Every Man Out of His Humour_. But in his other plays as well as in the plays of Shakespeare there is a more subtle interweaving of structure and theme. At the core of each play there seems to be a point of reference of which the individual scenes are reflections. Though a play moves temporally toward a conclusion, each scene may like a glass be turned toward a central referent. G. Wilson Knight has expressed fundamentally the same idea.[26] Unfortunately, he divorces this concept from the dramatic organism, with the result that his projected productions of Shakespeare’s plays seem like academic and sophomoric, if not fantastic, exercises. But Shakespeare seems to have avoided, at least in his later plays, so schematic an illustration of theme as in _Richard III_. Instead, he allows the theme to permeate the characters, situations, and poetry. He concentrates on the dramatic situations and on the characters, allowing the theme to be struck off indirectly like spark from flint. That is perhaps the reason that it is so difficult to reduce the theme of any Shakespearean play to a concise statement. _Macbeth_ certainly deals with the theme of the source and effects of evil, yet no single statement of this idea is sufficient, because Shakespeare dramatizes various aspects of this subject. Since, to the Elizabethan, the world was a manifold manifestation of a God whom he was unable to compress into one idea or image, in a similar way the Shakespearean play was a manifold reflection of a theme irreducible and unseen. Yet every element in a great Shakespearean play--character, structure, speech--individually and collectively, is brought into an artistic unity through a structural and poetic expression of an unseen referent at its center.

Chapter Three

THE STAGE

Two boards and a passion! Perhaps these words sum up all that was essential to the Shakespearean theater. Heightening of passion coincided with the “climax,” and as for the Elizabethan stage, it was, as G. F. Reynolds remarked, a platform “upon which the story of the play was acted.”[1] And so it was, a flat expanse of boards, somewhat exposed to the weather, roughly eleven hundred square feet.

The story that was acted may be best described as romantic, not because it dealt with romance, although it often did, but because it was centrifugal in impulse, ever threatening to veer from its path. Whatever direct progression narrative possessed in the medieval drama, whether moving from Adam’s sin to Christ’s judgment or from Everyman’s ignorance to his salvation, such progression no longer existed in the Elizabethan age. Instead, the unfolding of the drama took place in a world half of man, and therefore unpredictable, half of God, and therefore moral, and was composed half of history, half of legend; half remote fantasy, half immediate reality. Such a world was wide indeed, and the poet-playwright, its creator, was shackled by neither time nor place. What he demanded of a stage was space for the unimpeded flow of scene after scene, for the instantaneous creation of any place in this world or the next. Even when a ghost in mufti made his way out the stage door in broad daylight, the poet insisted he vanished--yes, even into thin air.

Between the poet’s insistence and the stage’s realization lies the entire secret of Elizabethan staging. About the stage’s realization there is some evidence and little knowledge. Stage directions, a much-debated sketch of a playhouse, a tantalizing incomplete building contract, other assorted fragments, invite the scholar to tilt at theory. About the poet’s insistence there can be little question. Texts of play after play document the demands that the writers made upon the “unworthy scaffold.” Prudence suggests, therefore, that we proceed from play to stage, discovering first what those demands were and then, if we can, how they were satisfied. To understand what the demands were in respect to the environment of an action, it is necessary to consider the following questions: how exactly was a scene located, how consistently was the location maintained, and how relevant was the location to the dramatic impact of the scene?

I. LOCALIZATION IN SHAKESPEARE’S GLOBE PLAYS

In Shakespeare’s Globe plays many scenes are given an exact setting. By exact I wish to convey the notion that the action is supposed to occur in or at a particular place, such as a room, hall, gateway, garden, bridge, and that this place remains consistent throughout the scene. For example, in the scene where Martius, yet to win his name of Coriolanus, assaults the gates of Corioles (I, iv), the location is specific, consistent, and dramatically relevant. At one point in the same play Coriolanus prepares to enter the house of his enemy, Aufidius. The scene (IV, iv) takes place before Aufidius’ door. Here exactness of location intensifies dramatic suspense because, as we watch Coriolanus pass through the doorway, we know he is putting himself at the mercy of his greatest antagonist. Many examples of such types of placement come to mind: Brutus’ orchard, Gertrude’s closet, Timon’s cave, etc. Such scenes have come to be called “localized.”

Usually the opposite of the “localized” setting is the “unlocalized.” In this type of setting no impression of place is projected. Location is irrelevant to the progression of the scenes. Clear-cut instances of this occur in _Macbeth_, II, iv, and III, vi. In the first of these scenes Ross and an old man comment on the unnatural state of the world, then Macduff brings them news of Duncan’s burial and Macbeth’s election to the throne. In the second scene, Lennox and a gentleman comment upon the web of tyranny and the hope that lies in England with Malcolm. Aside from the section containing Macduff’s news, neither of these scenes contributes to the flow of the narrative. Rather they are comments upon the action and essentially perform a choral function.

That these two types of scenes are present in Elizabethan plays has long been recognized. Some scholars, such as V. E. Albright, E. K. Chambers, and J. C. Adams, have tended to divide all scenes of a play into one or the other type, the localized, usually interior and more or less realistic, the unlocalized, exterior, neutral, and somewhat less realistic. This division, according to Albright, derives from the _sedes_ and _platea_ of the medieval stage.[2] What had been physically separate areas earlier became united on one stage in the Tudor period. But, the argument runs, the Elizabethan dramatists continued to juxtapose the two types of scenes, stringing them in a more or less alternating order along the thread of narrative.

To what extent can this dichotomy be supported by the evidence from the Globe? Naturally there is no sharp distinction between these two types of localization. The differentiation depends upon the sequence a scene assumes in the narrative. Consequently, there are scenes which clearly fit into one or the other category. But even if all the localized and unlocalized scenes are counted, the total amounts to only 136. Since there are 345 scenes in my enumeration of the fifteen Shakespearean Globe plays, 209 remain to be accounted for.[3]

Is it true, as William Archer, Harley Granville-Barker, and George F. Reynolds have pointed out, that much localization was vague, that place faded elusively like a mirage before a traveler, and that often the Elizabethans treated the stage as stage? “Scene after scene,” asserts Granville-Barker, “might pass with the actors moving to all intents merely in the ambit of the play’s story and of their own emotions: unless, the spell broken, they were suddenly and incongruously seen to be upon a stage.”[4] Many a scene gives just such an impression, and yet, in almost every scene that is not unlocalized, the characters do not actually act in a dislocated void but are known to be in some more or less specific region. Even when attention is directly called to the stage-as-stage, stage-as-fictional-world still remains. In such moments the audience experiences a double image.

It is a commonplace that the public stages of the Elizabethan period contained “Asia of the one side, and Affricke of the other.” Though contemptuous in intent, in effect this phrase of Sidney’s isolates one of the characteristics of Elizabethan scene setting. Perhaps, as some scholars have thought, the Elizabethans utilized place cards to inform the audience of the general location of a scene. But whether they did or not, they were in the habit of specifying a place at large but not a particular section of it. In such cases the stage stands for rather than represents the fictional locale, the confines of which cannot be reasonably encompassed within the limits of the stage. In this type of locale, placement is general rather than precise--for example, the city of Troy in _Troilus and Cressida_, not a particular part of it. Rome as a whole rather than some portion of it is often the setting in _Coriolanus_ (I, i; IV, ii; IV, vi). Free movement within such a locale occurs readily as in _Julius Caesar_ (III, i), where action takes place first in the street and then in the Capitol. Sequences of action which would be incongruous in a localized setting assume dramatic power in a generalized setting. In the very same place, Othello’s castle, occur the private conflict of Othello and Desdemona and the public encounter of Cassio and Bianca (III, iv). Actually, in this type of setting, dramatic impact proceeds from the general rather than the specific nature of the locale. Without a doubt we know when the scene is Rome and when Egypt in _Antony and Cleopatra_. Dramatically that is all we need to know. To endeavor to isolate the whereabouts of Octavius’ meeting with Antony (II, ii) would reduce the stature of that meeting. All of Rome is their stage just as in medieval practice all of paradise might be the setting for Adam and Eve. Among the 345 scenes of Shakespeare’s Globe plays, 142 are clearly of this sort and 67 tend toward this sort, accounting together for fully 60 per cent of the scenes.

A. H. Thorndike described three types of localization too: the definitely localized, the vaguely localized, and the unlocalized.[5] At first my analysis may seem to repeat his. However, there is a fundamental difference. The generalized locale is not vague; it is extensive, it is symbolic, and dramatically it is concrete. The audience is not expected to identify the stage with a particular location but to understand that it functions as a token of Troy or the Danish palace or the Forest of Arden. Regularly editors have been reducing the generalized location to a localized setting congruent with realistic dimensions. This practice merely betrays the scope of Elizabethan drama. The real distinction between scene _loci_ was not, as others have assumed, a separation of interior from exterior or realistic from conventional but a gradation from the unlocalized through the generalized to the localized setting.

Before investigating whether or not the Globe stage utilized stage decor to set these scenes, it is advisable to consider to what degree and by what methods location was conveyed by the playwright himself. It might be well to state at the outset that in extremely few cases is place projected through properties or other decor. Of all the scenes in Shakespeare’s Globe plays I count only seventeen in which this occurs, a mere 5 per cent. The most frequently recurring methods used by Shakespeare to indicate location are by announcement: a character tells us where he is (“This is the forest of Arden,” _As You Like It_, II, iv); by foreshadowing a location: a character in one scene tells us where he or others will be next (“To the Monument,” _Antony and Cleopatra_, IV, xiv); and by identifying a character with a place (early in _All’s Well_, the Countess becomes identified with Rossillion; whenever she appears thereafter, the scene, we know, is Rossillion). Some of these methods are used in combination. For example, we learn in the second scene of _Othello_ that the Duke is in council, to whose presence Othello, Brabantio, and others are summoned. This is foreshadowing. In the next scene when we see a meeting in progress between the Duke and Senators, we can guess we are at the council, and when Othello and Brabantio enter shortly, we are sure of it. Of course, there are other methods employed to indicate place, but these three are the principal ones. Announcements help to locate 129 of the scenes (37.3 per cent), presence of characters, 128 of the scenes (37.1 per cent), and foreshadowing, 61 of the scenes (17.7 per cent).

Though the chorus is used only occasionally to indicate place, it tells us most about Elizabethan playwrights’ attitudes toward setting the scenes. Fortunately, the Globe plays include two examples of this technique, one from the beginning and one from the end of the decade. In _Every Man Out of His Humour_ Ben Jonson introduces three choral figures, Asper, Mitis, and Cordatus. At the end of the induction Asper leaves the stage to assume the role of Macilente; Mitis and Cordatus remain to comment upon the action. Cordatus, who knows the play, is able to inform Mitis where the action takes place. For some scenes he indicates a generalized locale. “The Scene is the country still,” he remarks to Mitis (Chorus to II, i) or “Onely transferre your thoughts to the city, with the Scene; where, suppose they speake” (Chorus to II, iv). Sometimes he is more specific. Upon the entrance of Cavaliere Shift (III, i), Mitis asks,

What new _Mute_ is this, that walkes so suspiciously?
CORD. O, mary this is one, for whose better illustration;
we must desire you to presuppose the stage, the
middle isle in Paules; and that, the west end of it.

At one time, where the presence of characters identifies the location, Cordatus queries Mitis, “You understand where the Scene is?” (Chorus to IV, i). Jonson, desirous of specifying particular London sites despite the fiction of Italian-named characters, is experimenting along the lines of Shakespeare who shortly before tried a similar method in _Henry V_. Shakespeare returned to this device in _Pericles_. Gower, the chorus, relates portions of Pericles’ adventures directly and in accompaniment to several dumb shows. In passing he often sets the locale. The first scene, he tells us, is “this Antioch ... this city” (17-18). Preparatory to the commencement of III, i, Gower asks the audience,

In your imagination hold
This stage the ship, upon whose deck
The sea-tost Pericles appears to speak

Imagine! Suppose! Both Jonson and Shakespeare call upon the audience to visualize the place of action. Clearly neither conventional nor realistic setting is introduced. Only words, in these instances delivered directly, in most instances conveyed in the midst of dramatic action, are the means for informing the audience where the scene takes place.

II. THE PARTS OF THE STAGE

What the Choruses make evident is that the stage was not altered for individual scenes. As a consequence, the stage structure itself, not scenery, served as the frame for the action. What this structure was and how it was used has been debated for years, and yet despite the lively and continuous debate, there actually exists a broad band of agreement About the size of the stage, for instance, there is little dispute. It is deduced from the Fortune contract. Without a doubt the platform, one side of which was attached to the stage wall or façade, was large, probably about 25 by 45 feet, and bare. Whether or not the supporting trestles were seen by the audience, as Hodges claims, matters little in a consideration of the use of the stage. What is important is that the stage extended to the middle of the yard, that consequently a large portion of the audience stood or sat on either side of the actors, and that the actors had to master the techniques of playing on this open stage. Some disagreement exists concerning the shape of the stage which, according to John C. Adams, was not rectangular but tapered inward toward the front. However, the weight of the evidence is against this theory, and most scholars are inclined to accept the rectangular shape.

Upon what other points is there general agreement? For one, that there were two pillars, located halfway between the stage wall and the front edge of the platform, which supported a shadow or cover over part of the stage. For another, that at platform level the stage wall contained two doors at least and probably a third entry or enclosed space and on an upper level, some sort of acting area. Where there are disputes, they arise over three matters: (1) what details complete this generally accepted scheme, (2) how the parts of the stage were employed, and (3) what temporary structures, if any, supplemented the basic façade. To examine these issues, it will be necessary to review each part of the stage in the light of the Globe repertory.

The Globe plays confirm the presence of at least two entrance doors at some distance from each other. On several occasions there is need for two characters to enter simultaneously from separate entrances and after some conversation come together. For the existence of a third entry the Globe plays offer no conclusive proof. No stage direction specifying an entry from a middle door, such as can be found in non-Globe plays, appears. However, certain scenes do suggest the use of a third entrance. In _Macbeth_ (V, vii) Malcolm, who has presumably come through one door (_A_), is invited into the castle of Dunsinane by Siward. At his exit (through _B_ presumably) Macbeth enters. Either he can come from the door (_A_) through which Malcolm entered, which is dramatically unconvincing, or from the door (_B_) of Dunsinane, which is awkward, or from a third entrance, evidence for which is not conclusive. Still, another sort of evidence does occur, which supports the idea of a third entry. In all cases, save one, where simultaneous entrances take place, the stage direction either reads “Enter _A_ at one door, and enter _B_ at another” or “at another door” or “Enter _A_ and _B_ severally,” or “at several doors.” In all the Globe plays, Shakespearean and non-Shakespearean, there are twenty-two instances of such stage directions.[6] The only exception is _Pericles_ (IV, iv), “Enter Pericles at one doore, with all his trayne, Cleon and Dioniza at _the_ other. Cleon shewes Pericles the tombe, whereat, Pericles makes lamentatton [_sic_].” The explanation for the article, “the” other door, if a third did exist, may be that the third entry was used to display the tomb. The presence of a word such as “another” in all other stage directions implies that when one door was used, more than one other entrance remained, and that, therefore, a third mode of entry was regularly employed on the Globe stage.

Regarding the position of the main entrance doors on either side of the stage, the Globe plays are equally unhelpful. Authority for oblique doors partly facing each other rests on three items of evidence that have been set forth. (1) The phrase “Enter _A_ and _B_ at opposite doors,” which appears in some of the Jacobean plays, proves, according to W. J. Lawrence, that the doors faced each other.[7] (2) Certain plays need facing doors in the action.[8] (3) The historical development of the playhouses explains the genesis of the oblique doors.[9] Concerning the first item, I need only point out that in no stage direction in the Globe plays does the phrase “at opposite doors” appear. Nor does it appear in any pre-Globe Shakespearean play. The second item invites subjective judgment. Lawrence insists that the last scene of _The Merry Devil of Edmonton_, a Globe play, could not be played unless the doors were oblique. However, cross-observation in that scene concerns the exchange of signs over the doors to two inns in Waltham.

SIR ARTHUR. Mine host, mine host, we lay all night at
the George in Waltham, but whether the
George be your fee-simple or no, tis a doubtfull
question, looke upon your signe.

HOST. Body of Saint George, this is mine overthwart
neighbour hath done this to seduce
my blind customers.
[Sig. F2^r]

Signs extending over a door would be readily seen from the opposite end of the stage whether or not the doors were oblique. What this interpretation comes down to is that insistence on opposite doors reveals a realistic conception of staging. Out of oblique doors characters emerge already facing each other or the action. They can respond “naturally” and “realistically.” But, if the doors are flush with the façade, an “unnatural” formal entrance results.

The last argument for oblique doors is historical. Lawrence claims that they were introduced into the Globe from the second Blackfriars theater (1598-1600). Adams argues that they were developed when the Theatre’s frame was adapted for the Globe. Neither offers sufficiently convincing proof to counter-balance the evidence of the Swan drawing which clearly shows flush doors. Therefore, though either oblique or flush doors could accommodate the Globe plays, flush doors were more likely to have been employed.

We can also dismiss the notion occasionally put forth that the doors consistently represented entrances from particular places, such as Olivia’s house in _Twelfth Night_ or Page’s and Ford’s houses in _The Merry Wives of Windsor_. The difficulty of maintaining a continuing identification of one place with one entrance is obvious in the latter play. The comedy opens with the entrance of Justice Shallow, Sir Hugh Evans, and Slender. Their point of entry (marked _A_ for identification) is unspecified and therefore might be in the center. Having been insulted by Falstaff, whom he expects to find at Page’s house, Shallow calls upon the Windsor worthy who emerges from his house (entry _B_). The remaining entrances and exits in scene i and in the brief scene ii maintain these associations. Scene iii occurs at the Garter. It is possible to confine all in-goings and out-goings to one door (entry _C_). But with scene iv all previous associations are shattered. The place is Dr. Caius’ house. Entry _A_, _B_, or _C_ must represent Caius’ house. The neutral entry A can be selected. But in the course of the scene Simple is forced to hide from Caius. He cannot exit at _A_, for Caius is about to enter at that point. Thus he must choose _B_ (Page’s house) or _C_ (the Garter). A continuation of this analysis would only confirm how hopeless it is to expect any correlation between an entry and a specific locality for more than one scene. Further evidence exists in _Twelfth Night_ that the doors did not have locational significance. At the conclusion of Act I, scene v, Olivia sends Malvolio after Cesario to tell “him” that she’ll have none of “his” ring. After an intervening scene, Malvolio encounters Cesario. His first line is, “Were not you ev’n now with the Countess Olivia?” Simple realism would demand that Malvolio, endeavoring to catch Cesario, would follow “him” on stage. That is how the scene is frequently staged. However, the stage direction specifies, “Enter Viola and Malvolio at several doors” (II, ii). Professor Reynolds has reconstructed the staging of _Troilus and Cressida_ so that one stage door represents Troy, the other the Grecian camp.[10] An enclosed recess, with the curtain drawn, becomes Cressida’s home and with the curtain closed, Achilles’ tent. But, as Irwin Smith has reminded me privately, this arrangement is “proved wrong by the stage direction to Act IV, scene i, which specifies entrance at two doors,” although the location of the scene is wholly within Troy. The fact is that every other Globe play lacks that neat division of place which enables us to assign one location to one door and another to the other door. Too often there is a major shift in location during the course of a play, such as, from the court to the forest in _As You Like It_, from Venice to Cyprus in _Othello_, from the castle to the field in _Lear_. Such a shift prevents the localizing of the stage door for any appreciable period.

As good evidence as that of Reynolds can be offered for a theory that actors almost always obeyed the convention of entering at one door and leaving at the other, regardless of location. In _Hamlet_, for instance, there are only three instances when such a convention would be violated: when Polonius is sent for the ambassadors and players in II, ii, and when the Prologue leaves to usher in the players in III, ii. I offer this suggestion not as a theory but as a warning against such reconstructed staging as Reynolds proposes.

The critical part of any study of an Elizabethan playhouse concerns the “third entry,” “the place in the middle,” “the booth,” “the inner stage,” “the discovery-space.” The abundance of terms testifies to the uncertainty concerning this area. Every aspect of it is open to controversy: function, dimensions in all directions, the presence of curtains, and location. But that there is some space between the stage doors, capable of being enclosed or secluded, is granted by all scholars. Objection has been raised to calling this area an “inner stage,” first because the term never appeared in Elizabethan texts, and secondly because it suggests a purpose that it did not have, namely, to house entire scenes. Increasingly the term “discovery-space” has been utilized, notably by Richard Hosley, but this has the disadvantage of suggesting too limited a function for the space. Since the area we are concerned with, whether recessed or not, had to be enclosed, almost certainly by curtains, I have chosen to refer to the “enclosure” of the Globe stage.

Any investigation of the enclosure is obliged to include an investigation of Elizabethan stage properties. For a long time it was suggested that a principal purpose of the enclosure was to mask the placement of furniture and other properties. While it is becoming increasingly evident that we must regard such a presumption with skepticism, nevertheless, the presence of a property has so often been cited as evidence for the use of an enclosure that it is necessary to review the handling of stage properties at the Globe before considering the enclosure directly. Aside from their connection with the problem of the enclosure, furthermore, stage properties deserve attention, for their appearance in a play can be more readily ascertained than any other element of production and as a result can provide clues to the methods of staging.

Anyone who has had occasion to produce a Shakespearean play realizes how few properties are needed for any single play. Yet even when we are cautious, we tend to overproperty a play. Even properties clearly alluded to may not exist on stage. Several times in _Julius Caesar_ characters speak of Caesar having been struck down at the base of Pompey’s statue (III, i, 115; III, ii, 193), even in the very scene where the action takes place. Yet the description is merely a paraphrase of Plutarch.[11] The Romans are beaten back to their trenches in their first assault against Corioles (I, iv). Once more the trenches are not on-stage but in Plutarch.

Consequently, in examining the Globe plays, I have tried to guard against seeing a stage property where none exists. Only when use is clearly demonstrable in action or stage direction can we assume that a property was introduced. Some instances exist where smaller properties were added to give verisimilitude to a scene, as Fabell’s necromantic instruments in _The Merry Devil of Edmonton_, prologue, and Horace’s papers in _Satiromastix_ (I, iii), but larger properties which require placement or setting were charily employed. It is to these set properties that I shall refer.

In the fifteen Globe plays written by Shakespeare I count sixty-five uses of properties, in the twelve non-Shakespearean plays, sixty-eight.[12] In the former plays the presence of fifteen of these “props” is difficult to verify. Such a property would be the “hedge-corner” around which the soldiers hide before pouncing on Parolles (_All’s Well_, IV, i) or the “tree” upon which Orlando hangs his verses (_As You Like It_, III, ii). Since the hedge and the tree might very well be represented by the stage posts, I must omit consideration of them. In the twelve non-Shakespearean plays there are seventeen such properties. Consequently, in one category we are left with fifty properties and in the other with fifty-one, or one hundred and one altogether, an average of almost four properties a play. That this is not a slim list for a ten-year period is supported by the few properties inventoried by Henslowe in 1598. The heading of the inventory claims that _all_ the properties are listed. Of set properties there are only twenty-one.[13] To these we may add chairs and tables which are not included. Nor are curtains mentioned unless “the cloth of the Sone & Mone” is a hanging of some sort rather than rudimentary scenery, as Malone suggested. In any case the list substantiates the conclusion that Elizabethan stage production employed few properties and reinforces the warning that we should not insist upon finding others where they do not appear.

How were the properties introduced onto the stage? Some were discovered. When Lychorida bids Pericles look upon his dead bride, she probably draws a curtain to reveal Thaisa on the bitter “child-bed” of which Pericles speaks (III, i). Other properties were brought on. For the fencing match between Hamlet and Laertes, though the 1604 Quarto stage direction notes, “A table prepared ...,” the Folio specifies that following the King, Queen, and others, there enter “other Attendants with Foyles, and Gauntlets, a Table and Flagons of wine on it” (V, ii). But many instances are not so clear, instances where at most we can assume that a property was _probably_ brought on stage or _probably_ discovered. Another small category exists. There are several instances where properties are taken off stage, although there is no evidence to indicate how they came to be on stage. Caesar, at the finale of _Antony and Cleopatra_, commands his soldiers to “Take up [Cleopatra’s] bed,/and bear her women from the monument” (V, ii, 359-360). To my mind this suggests that the prop had been previously brought on.

I have carefully examined the one hundred and one properties for evidence of method of introduction. The chart below summarizes my analysis.

_How Props_ | _In_ | _In Non-_ |
_Are_ | _Shakespearean_ | _Shakespearean_ | _Total_
_Introduced_ | _Plays_ | _Plays_ |
--------------+-----------------+-----------------+-----------------
| _No._ | % | _No._ | % | _No._ | %
+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------
Brought on | 12 | 24. | 18 | 35.3 | 30 | 29.7
Probably | | | | | |
brought on | 11 | 22. | 8 | 15.7 | 19 | 18.8
Taken off | 2 | 4. | 2 | 3.9 | 4 | 4.
+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------
_Total_ | 25 | 50. | 28 | 54.9 | 53 | 52.5
+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------
Discovered | 2 | 4. | 8 | 15.7 | 10 | 9.9
Probably | | | | | |
discovered | 7 | 14. | 1 | 1.9 | 8 | 7.9
+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------
_Total_ | 9 | 18. | 9 | 17.6 | 18 | 17.8
Undetermined | 16 | 32. | 14 | 27.5 | 30 | 29.7
--------------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------
_Grand Total_| 50 | | 51 | | 101 |