How little the imaginations of the audience | 3000l. was expended upon it. "At night," says Sir Dudley Carleton, "we had the Queen's Maske in the Banqueting-house, or rather her Pageant. There was a great engine at the lower end of the room, which had motion, and in it were the images of sea-horses (with other terrible fishes), which were ridden by the Moors. The indecorum was, that there was all fish and no water. At the further end was a great shell in form of a skallop, wherein were four seats; on the lowest sat the Queen with my Lady Bedford; on the rest were placed the ladies Suffolk, Darby," etc. Such were most of the Masques in the time of James the First; triumphal cars, castles, rocks, caves, pillars, temples, clouds, rivers, tritons, etc. composed the principal part of their decoration. In the courtly masques given by his successor during the first fifteen years of his reign, and in some of the plays exhibited at court, the art of scenery seems to have been somewhat improved. In 1636 a piece written by Thomas Heywood, called Love's Mistress or the Queen's Masque, was represented at Denmark House before their Majesties. "For the rare decorements," (says Heywood in his preface)" which new apparelled it, when it came the second time to the royal view, (her gracious majesty then entertaining his highness at Denmark House upon his birth-day). I cannot pretermit to give a due character to that admirable artist Mr. Inigo Jones, master surveyor of the king's worke, etc. who to every act, nay almost to every scene, by his excellent inventions gave such an extraordinary lustre; upon every occasion changing the stage, to the admiration of all the spectators." Here, as on a former occasion we may remark, the term scene is not used; the stage was changed to the admiration of all the spectators.

were assisted by scenical deception, and how much necessity our author had to call on them to "piece out imperfections with their thoughts," | may be collected from Sir Philip Sidney, who, describing the state of the drama and the stage, in his time (about the year 1583), says, "Now you shall have three ladies walk to gather flowers, and then we must beleeve the stage to be a garden. By and by we heare news of shipwrack in the same place; then we are to blame, if we accept it not for a rock. Upon the back of that, comes out a hidious monster with fire and smoke; and then the miserable beholders are bound to take it for a cave; while in the mean time two armies fly in, represented with four swords and bucklers, and then what hard hart will not receive it for a pitched field."

The first notice that I have found of any thing like moveable scenes being used in England, is in the narrative of the entertainment given to King James at Oxford, in August, 1605, when three plays were performed in the hall of Christ-Church, of which we have the following account by a contemporary writer. "The stage," he tells us, "was built close to the upper end of the hall, as it seemed at the first sight but indeed it was but a false wall faire painted, and adorned with stately pillars, which pillars would turn about; by reason whereof, with the help of other painted clothes, their stage did vary three times in the acting of one tragedy:" that is, in other words, there were three scenes employed in the exhibition of the piece. The scenery was contrived by Inigo Jones, who is described as a great traveller, and who undertook to "further his employers much, and furnish them with rare devices, but produced very little to that which was expected.'

It is observable, that the writer of this account was not acquainted even with the term, scene, having used painted clothes instead of it: nor indeed is this surprising, it not being then found in this sense in any dictionary or vocabulary, English or foreign, that I have met with. Had the common stages been furnished with them, neither this writer, nor the makers of dictionaries, could have been ignorant of it. To effect even what was done at Christ-Church, the University found it necessary to employ two of the king's carpenters, and to have the advice of the controller of his works. The Queen's Masque, which was exhibited in the preceding January, was not much more successful, though above * Leland Collect, vol. ii. edit. 1770.

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In August, 1636, The Royal Slave, written by a very popular poet, William Cartwright, was acted at Oxford before the king and queen, and afterwards at Hampton-Court. Wood informs us, that the scenery was an exquisite and uncommon piece of machinery, contrived by Inigo Jones. The play was printed in 1639; and yet even at that late period, the term scene, in the sense now affixed to it, was unknown to the author; for describing the various scenes employed in this court-exhibition, he denominates them thus: "The first Appearance, a temple of the sun. Second Appearance, a city in the front, and a prison at the side," &c. The three other Appearances in this play were, a wood, a palace, and a castle.

In every disquisition of this kind much trouble | sented, we find two officers enter, two lay and many words might be saved, by defining the cushions, as it were, in the Capitol." So, in King subject of dispute. Before therefore I proceed Richard II. Act IV. sc. i. “Bolingbroke, etc. further in this inquiry, I think it proper to say, enter as to the parliament," Again, in Sir John that by a scene, I mean, A painting in perspec- Oldcastle, 1600: "Enter Cambridge, Scroop, tive on a cloth fastened to a wooden frame or and Gray, as in a chamber." When the citizens roller; and that I do not mean by this term, of Angiers are to appear on the walls of their "a coffin, or a tomb, or a gilt chair, or a fair town, and young Arthur to leap from the batchain of pearl, or a crucifix;" and I am the tlements, I suppose our ancestors were contented rather induced to make this declaration, because with seeing them in the balcony already dea writer, who obliquely alluded to the position scribed; or perhaps a few boards were tacked towhich I am now maintaining, soon after the first gether, and painted so as to resemble the rude edition of this Essay was published, has men- discoloured walls of an old town, behind which a tioned exhibitions of this kind as a proof of the platform might have been placed near the top, scenery of our old plays; and taking it for granon which the citizens stood: but surely this can ted that the point is completely established by scarcely be called a scene. Though undoubtedly this decisive argument, triumphantly adds, "Let our poet's company were furnished with some us for the future no more be told of the want of wooden fabric sufficiently resembling a tomb, proper scenes and dresses in our ancient thea- for which they must have had occasion in several tres." plays, yet some doubt may be entertained, whether in Romeo and Juliet any exhibition of Juliet's monument was given on the stage. Romeo perhaps only opened with his mattock one of the stage trap-doors (which might have represented a tomb-stone), by which he descended to a vault beneath the stage, where Juliet was deposited; and this notion is countenanced by a passage in the play, and by the poem on which the drama was founded.

A passage which has been produced from one of the old comedies, proves that the common theatres were furnished with some rude pieces of machinery, which were used when it was necessary to exhibit the descent of some god or saint; but it is manifest from what has been already stated, as well as from all the contemporary accounts, that the mechanism of our ancient theatres seldom went beyond a tomb, a painted chair, a sinking cauldron, or a trap-door, and In all the old copies of the play last-mentioned that none of them had moveable scenes. When we find the following stage direction: "They King Henry VIII. is to be discovered by the march about the stage, and serving-men come Dukes of Suffolk and Norfolk, reading in his forth with their napkins." A more decisive proof study, the scenical direction in the first folio, than this, that the stage was not furnished with 1623 (which was printed apparently from play- scenes, cannot be produced. Romeo, Mercutio, house copies), is "The King draws the curtain, &c. with their torch-bearers and attendants, [1. e. draws it open] and sits reading pensively; are the persons who march about the stage. They for, beside the principal curtains that hung in are in the street, on their way to Capulet's the front of the stage, they used others as sub-house, where a masquerade is given; but Castitutes for scenes, which were denominated pulet's servants, who come forth with their naptraverses. If a bedchamber is to be representedkins, are supposed to be in a hall or saloon of no change of scene is mentioned; but the property-man is simply ordered to thrust forth a hed, or, the curtains being opened, a bed is exhibited. So, in the old play on which Shakspeare formed his King Henry VI. P. II. when Cardinal Beaufort is exhibited dying, the stage direction is "Enter King and Salisbury, and then the curtains be drawn,[i. e. drawn open,] and the Cardinalis discovered in his bed, raving and staring as if he were mad." When the fable requires the Roman capitol to be repre

Mr. Steevens, if, as supposed, the author of the letter in the St. James's Chronicle, in which sdecisive argument" first appeared, May 1780.

their master's house: yet both the masquers without and the servants within appear on the same spot. In like manner in King Henry VIII. the very same spot is at once the outside and inside of the council-chamber.

It is not, however, necessary to insist either upon the term itself, in the sense of a painting in perspective on cloth or canvas, being unknown to our early writers, or upon the various stage-directions which are found in the plays of our poet and his contemporaries, and which afford the strongest presumptive evidence that the stage in his time was not furnished with scenes: because we have to the same point the

concurrent testimony of Shakspeare himself, of Ben Jonson, of every writer of the last age who has had occasion to mention this subject, and even of the very person who first introduced scenes on the public stage.

In the year 1629, Jonson's comedy, intitled The New Inn, was performed at the Blackfriars theatre, and deservedly damned. Ben was so much incensed at the town for condemning his piece, that in 1631 he published it with the following title: The New Inne, or the light Heart, | a comedy; as it was never acted, but most negligently played, by some, the kings servants, and more squeamishly beheld and censured by others, the kings subjects, 1629: And now at last set at liberty to the readers, his Ma. servants and subjects to be judged, 1631." In the Dedication to this piece, the author, after expressing his profound contempt for the spectators, who were at the first representation of this play, says, "What did they come for, then? thou wilt ask me. I will as punctually answer: to see and to be seene. To make a general muster of themselves in their clothes of credit, and possesse the stage against the playe: to dislike all, but marke nothing: and by their confidence of rising between the actes in oblique lines, make affidavit to the whole house of their not understanding one scene. Arm'd with this prejudice, as the stage furniture or arras clothes, they were there as spectators away; for the faces in the hangings and they beheld alike."

says he, in his Address to the Reader, "that our scenes (we having obliged ourselves to the variety of five changes, according to the ancient dramatic distinctions made for time), had not been confined to about eleven feet in the height and about fifteen in depth, including the places of passage reserved for the music." From these words we learn that he had in that piece five scenes. In 1658 he exhibited at the old theatre called the Cockpit in Drury Lane, The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru, express'd by vocal and instrumental Musick, and by Art of perspective in Scenes. In spring, 1662, having obtained a patent from King Charles the Second, and built a new playhouse in Lincoln's Inn Fields, he opened this theatre with The First Part of the Siege of Rhodes, which since its first exhibition he had enlarged. He afterwards in the same year exhibited, The Second Part of the Siege of Rhodes, and his comedy called The Wits; "These plays," says Downes, who himself acted in The Siege of Rhodes, "having new scenes and decorations, being the first that ever were introduced in England." Scenes had certainly been used before in the masques at Court, and in a few private exhibitions, and by D'Avenant himself in his attempts at theatrical entertainments shortly before the death of Cromwell: Downes, therefore, who is extremely inaccurate in his language in every part of his book, must have meant-the first ever exhibited in a regular drama, on a public theatre.

I have said that I could produce the testimony of Sir William D'Avenant himself on this subject. His prologue to The Wits, which was exhibited in the spring of the year 1662, soon after the opening of his theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, if every other document had perished, would prove decisively that our author's plays had not the assistance of painted scenes. "There are some," says D'Avenant,

The exhibition of plays being forbidden some time before the death of Charles I. Sir William D'Avenant in 1656 invented a new species of entertainment, which was exhibited at Rutland House, at the upper end of Aldersgate Street. The title of the piece, which was printed in the same year, is, The Siege of Rhodes, made a Representation by the Art of prospective in Scenes; and the Story sung in recitative Music. "The original of this music," says Dryden, "and of the scenes which adorned his work, he had from the Italian operas; but he heightened his characters (as I may probably imagine) from the examples of Corneille and some French poets." If sixty years before, the exhibition of the plays of Shakspeare had been aided on the common stage by the advantage of moveable scenes, or if the term scene had been familiar to D'Avenant's audience, can we suppose that he would have found it necessary to use a peri-him by King Charles I. in 1633, and the letters phrastic description, and to promise that his re- patent which he obtained from bis son in 1662. presentation should be assisted by the art of pro- In the former, after he is authorised" to enter spective in scenes? It has been often wished," tain, govern, privilege, and keep such and so

who would the world persuade,
That gold is better when the stamp is bad;
And that an ugly ragged piece of eight
Is ever true in metal and in weight;
As if a guinny and louis had less
Intrinsick value for their handsomeness,
So divers, who outlive the former age,
Allow the coarseness of the plain old stage,
And think rich vests and scenes are only fit
Disguises for the want of art and wit.

And no less decisive is the different language of the license for erecting a theatre, granted to

I shall add but one more instance from All's curtain and the general audience, and on its well that ends well: