that even

there were fide and other fcenes. The question is involved in fo much obfcurity, that it is very difficult to form any decided opinion upon it. It is certain, that in the year 1605, Inigo Jones exhibited an entertainment at Oxford, in which moveable fcenes were used *; but he appears to have introduced feveral pieces of machinery in the mafques at court, with which undoubtedly the public theatres were unacquainted. A paffage which has been produced from one of the old comedies, proves, it must be owned, these were furnished with fome pieces of machinery, which were ufed when it was requifite to exhibit the defcent of fome god or faint; but from all the cotemporary accounts, I am inclined to believe, that the mechanifm of our ancient ftage feldom went beyond a painted chair, or a trap-door, and that few, if any of them, had any moveable fcenes. When king Henry VIII. is to be discovered by the dukes of Suffolk and Norfolk, reading in his study, the fcenical direction in the firft folio, 1623, (which was printed apparently from play-houfe copies) is,

The king draws the curtaine, [i. e. draws it open] and fits reading penfively; for, befides the prin

cipal curtains that hung in the front of the ftage, they used others as fubftitutes for fcenes. If a bed-chamber is to be exhibited, no change of icene is mentioned; but the property man is fimply ordered to thrust forth a bed. When the fable requires the Roman capitol to be exhibited, we find two officers enter, to lay cushions, as it were in the ca pitol." So, in King Richard II, act iv. fc. i." Bolingbroke, &c. enter as to the parliament." Again, in Sir John Oldcastle, 1600, "Enter Cambridge, Scroop, and Gray, as in a chamber." In Ro meo and Juliet, I doubt much whether any exhibition of Juliet's monument was given on the ftage. I imagine Romeo only opened with his mattock one of the stage trapdoors, (which might have reprefented a tomb-ftone) by which he defcended to a vault beneath the ftage, where Juliet was depofited; and this idea is countenanced by a paffage in the play, and by the poem on which the drama was founded.

How little the imaginations of the audience were affifted by fcenical deception, and how much neceffity our author had to call on them to "piece out imperfections with their thoughts," may be alfo collected from Sir Philip Sidney,

who, defcribing the ftate of the drama and the ftage in his time, fays, "Now you fhall fee three ladies walk to gather flowers, and then we must believe the ftage to be a garden. By and by we heare news of a fhipwracke in the fame place; then we are to blame if we accept it not for a rock. Upon the back of that, comes out a hideous monster with fire and fmoke then the miferable beholders are bound to take it for a cave; while in the mean time two armies fly in, reprefented with four fwords and bucklers, and then what hard heart will not receive it for a pitched field."

All thefe circumftances induce me to believe that our ancient theatres, in general, were only furnished with curtains, and a fingle fcene compofed of tapestry, which appears to have been fometimes ornamented with pictures: and fome paffages in our old dramas incline one to think, that when tragedies were performed, the ftage was hung with black.

In the early part, at leaft, of our author's acquaintance with the theatre, the want of fcenery feems to have been fupplied by the fimple expedient of writing the names of the different places where the fcene was laid in the progrefs of the play, which were difpofed in fuch a manner to be visible to the audience.

Though the apparatus for thea tic exhibitions was thus feanty, and the machinery of the fimpleft kind, the invention of trap-doors appears not to be modern; for in an old morality, entitled, All for Money, we find a marginal direction, which implies that they were early

in ufe.

It appears from Heywood's Apology for Actors, that the covering, or internal roof of the ftage, was anciently termed the heavens. It was probably painted of a sky-blue colour; or perhaps pieces of drapery tinged with blue were fufpended across the stage, to represent the heavens.

From a plate prefixed to Kirkman's Drolls, printed in 1672, in which there is a view of a theatrical booth, it should feem that the ftage was formerly lighted by two large branches, of a form fimilar to thofe now hung in churches. They being, I fuppofe, found in commodious, as they obftructed the fight of the fpectators, gave place in a fubfequent period to fmall circular wooden frames, furnished with candles, eight of which were hung on the ftage, four at either fide: and thefe within a few years were wholly removed by Mr. Garrick, who, on his return from France, first introduced the prefent commodious method of illuminating the ftage by lights not vifible to the audience.

If all the players, whofe names are enumerated in the firft folio edition of our author's works, belonged to the fame theatre, they composed a numerous company; but it is doubtful whether they all performed at the fame period, or in the fame houfe. Many of the companies certainly were fo thin, that one perfon played two or three parts; and a battle, on which the fate of an empire was fuppofed to depend, was decided by haif a dozen combatants. It appears to have been a common practice, in their mock engagements, to difcharge (mall pieces of ordnance on the itage.

L 4

Before

Before the exhibition began, three flourishes or pieces of mufic were played, or, in the ancient language, there were three foundings. Mufic was likewife played between the acts. The inftruments chiefly used were trumpets, cornets, and hautboys. The band, which did not confift of more than five or fix performers, fat (as I have been told by a very ancient ftage veteran, who had his information from Bowman, the contemporary of Betterton) in an upper balcony, over what is now called the ftage-box.

The perfon who spoke the prologue was ushered in by trumpets, and ufually wore a long black velvet cloak, which, I fuppofe, was confidered as beft fuited to a fupplicatory addrefs. Of this cuftom, whatever might have been its origin, fome traces remained till very Tately; a black coat having been, if I mistake not, within these few years, the conflant ftage-habiliment of our modern prologuefpeakers. The drefs of the ancient prologue-fpeaker is ftill retained in the play that is exhibited in Hamlet, before the king and court of Denmark.

An epilogue does not appear to have been a regular appendage to a play in Shakspeare's time; for many of his dramas had none; at leaft, they have not been preferved. In All's Well that Ends Well, the Midfummer Night's Dream, As you like it, Troi'us and Crefida, and The Tempest, the epilogue is fpoken by one of the perfons of the drama, and adapted to the character of the fpeaker; a circumftance that I have not obferved in the epilogues of any other author of that age.

The epilogue was not always fpoken by one of the performers in the piece, for that fubjoined to The Second Part of King Henry IV. appears to have been delivered by a dancer.

The performers of male charafters generally wore periwigs, which in the age of Shakspeare were were not in common ufe. It appears, from a paffage in Puttenham's Art of English Poefy, 1589, that vizards were on fome occafions ufed by the actors of those days; and it may be inferred from a fcene in one of our author's comedies, that they were fometimes worn in his time, by thofe who performed female characters. But this, I imagine, was very rare. Some of the female part of the audience likewife appeared in maks.

The ftage-dreffes, it is reafonable to fuppofe, were much more costly at fome theatres than others. Yet the wardrobe of even the king's fervants at the Globe and Black-friars, was, we find, but fcantily furnished; and our author's dramas derived very little aid from the fplendor of exhibition.

It is well known, that in the time of Shakspeare, and for many years afterwards, female characters were reprefented by boys or young men. Sir William D'Avenant, in imitation of the foreign theatres, firit introduced females in the fcene, and Mrs. Betterton is faid to have been the firt woman that appeared on the English ftage. Andrew Penny, cuicke played the part of Matilda, in a tragedy of Davenport's, in 1655; and Mr. Kynafton acted feveral female parts after the Reftoration. Downes, a cotempo

rary

rary of his, affures us, "that being then very young, he made a complete ftage beauty, perform ing his parts fo well, (particularly Arthiope and Aglaura) that it has fince been difputable among the judicious, whether any woman that fucceeded him touched the audience fo fenfibly as he."

Both the prompter, or bookholder, as he was fometimes called, and the property-man, appear to have been regular appendages of our ancient theatres.

No writer that I have met with intimates, that, in the time of Shakspeare, it was customary to exhibit more than a fingle dramatic piece on one day.

The Yorkshire Tragedy, or All's one, indeed, appears to have been one of four pieces that were reprefented on the fame day; and Fletcher has alfo a piece called Four Plays in One; but probably thefe were either exhibited on fome particular occafion, or were ineffectual efforts to introduce a new fpecies of amufement; for we do not find any other inftances of the fame kind. Had any fhorter pieces been exhibited after the principal performance, fome of them probably would have been printed but there are none extant of an earlier date than the time of the Restoration. The practice therefore of exhibiting two dramas fucceffively in the fame evening, we may be affured, was not eftablifhed before that period. But though the audiences, in the time of our author, were not gratified by the reprefentation of more than one drama in the fame day, the entertainment was diverfified, and the populace diverted, by vaulting, tumbling, flight of hand, and morris-dancing a mixture not much

more heterogeneous than that with which we are daily prefented, a tragedy and a farce.

The amufements of our anceftors, before the commencement of the play, were of various kinds. While fome part of the audience entertained them felves with reading, or playing at cards, others were employed in lefs refined occupations; in drinking ale, or fmoking tobacco: with thefe they were furnished by male attendants, of whofe clamour a fatirical writer of the time of James I. loudly complains.

It was a common practice to carry table-books to the theatre, and either from curiofity, or enmity to the author, or fome other motive, to write down paffages of the play that was reprefented: and there is reafon to believe that the imperfect and mutilated copies of fome of Shakspeare's dramas, which are yet extant, were taken down in fhort hand during the exhibition.

At the end of the piece, the actors, in noblemens' houfes and in taverns, where plays were frequently performed, prayed for the health and profperity of their patrons; and in the public theatres, for the king and queen. This prayer fometimes made part of the epilogue. Hence, probably, as Mr. Steevens has obferved, the addition of Vivant rex et regina · to the modern play-bills.

Plays in the time of our author began at one o'clock in the afternoon; and the exhibition was ufually finished in two hours. Even in 1667 they commenced at three o'clock.

When Goffon wrote his School of Abuse, in 1579, it feems that dramatic entertainments were usu

ally