The Elizabethan Playhouse (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: The reference here not only indicates the circular disposition of the auditorium, but disproves Professor Wallace's assertion that the Paul's theatre had no galleries. "This round"1 could not refer to the Singing School in which the playhouse was constructed; for that, most assuredly, was rectangular. Moreover, one treads on firm ground in inferring that the Phoenix had curved galleries, seeing that it was constructed in a cockpit, and that Shakespeare in King Henry F makes the Chorus speak of the Globe (or was it the Curtain ?) as "this cockpit" and "wooden O." So much for the Blackfriars auditorium. On turning our attention stagewards what first strikes us is the notable advance towards the slow-coming isolation of the player and his domains. This, however, was matter of accident, not of artistic intention. It was due to the comparative smallness of the hall. So far from projecting as of old into the middle of the pit, and being surrounded on three sides by the groundlings, the stage shrank proportionately in depth and increased in breadth. It was made to extend right across the hall, a disposition that led to the devotion of some little space at either end to the service of privileged spectators.l Moreover, as the house was designed for strictly theatrical purposes, the stage was made permanent, boarded in below and embellished along the front with a carved balustrade. Much inconvenience must have been experienced by the players on the old removable, unpalisaded stages (of the type represented in the well-known Swan sketch), more particularly in connexion with the working of traps, always a vital factor in Elizabethan performances. Few theatres but must have had several of these traps; many plays demanded the simultaneous employment of three or 1 One is always safe in ts...