about the stage, and serving-men come forth with their napkins." A more decisive proof than this, that the stage was not furnished with scenes, cannot be produced. Romeo, Mercutio, &c. with their torchbearers and attendants, are the persons who march about the stage. They are in the street, on their way to Capulet's house, where a masquerade is given; but Capulet's servants who come forth with their napkins, are supposed to be in a hall or saloon of 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.4 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 publick 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 See Vol. XV. p. 186, n. 1. "In your imagination hold "This stage, the ship, upon whose deck 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.ties 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." The exhibition of plays being forbidden some time before the death of Charles I. Sir William An ordinance for the suppressing of all stage-plays and interludes, was enacted Feb. 13, 1467-8, and Oliver and his Saints seem to have been very diligent in enforcing it. From Whitelocke's Memorials, p. 332, we learn that Captain Bethan was appointed (13 Dec. 1648,) Provost Martial," with power to seize upon all ballad-singers, and to suppress stage-plays." "20 Dec. 1649. Some stage-players in Saint John's-street [the Red Bull theatre was in this street,] were apprehended by troopers, their cloaths taken away, and themselves carried to prison." Ibidem, p. 419. "Jan. 1655. [1655-6.] Players taken in Newcastle, and whipt for rogues." Ibid. 619. 66 Sept. 4, 1656. Sir William D'Avenant printed his Opera, notwithstanding the nicety of the times." Ibid. p. 639. 7 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 Musick. "The original of this musick," 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 periphrastick description, and to promise that his representation should be assisted by the art of prospective in scenes?" It has been often wished," 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 dramatick 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 musick." 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 per Fleckno, in the preface to his comedy entitled Demoiselles a-la-Mode, 1667, observes, that "one Italian scene with four doors will do" for the representation. 8 spective 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 his theatre with The First Part of the Siege of Rhodes, which since its first exhibition he had enfarged. 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 * In "The Publick Intelligencer, communicating the chief occurrences and proceedings within the dominions of England, Scotland, and Wales, from Monday, December 20, to Monday, December 27, 1658," I find the following notice taken of D'Avenant's exhibition by the new Protector, Richard: "A course is ordered for taking into consideration the Opera, . shewed at the Cockpitt in Drury Lane, and the persons to whom it stands referred, are to send for the poet and actors, and to inform themselves of the nature of the work, and to examine by what authority the same is exposed to publick view; and they are also to take the best information they can, concerning the acting of stage-playes, and upon the whole to make report," &c. The Saints are equally averse to every other species of festivity as well as the Opera, and considered holydays, the common prayer-book, and a play-book, as equally pernicious; for in the same paper I find this notification: "It was ordered by his Highness the Lord Protector and the Council, that effectual letters be written to the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of the city of London, and to the Justices of peace for Westminster and the liberties thereof, Middlesex and Borough of Southwark, to use their endeavour for abolishing the use of the festivals of Christmas, Easter, and other feasts called holydaies; as also for preventing the use of the common prayerbook." 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 publick 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, who would the world persuade, "That gold is better when the stamp is bad; And no less decisive is the different language of the licence for erecting a theatre, granted to him by King Charles I. in 1639, and the letters patent which he obtained from his son in 1662. In the former, after he is authorized "to entertain, govern, privilege, and keep such and so many players to exercise action, musical presentments, scenes, dancing, and the like, as he the said William Davenant shall think fit and approve for the said house, and such persons to permit and continue at and |