The antinomy between symmetry and asymmetry and the antinomy between eternal order and mundane movement seem to be the principal semantic markers of the development of the Italian stage. To the degree that a clear arrangement with a single axis and a tendency toward the center was obligatory in the renaissance box, the baroque box was based on two optical axes (in accordance with the evolution of the painterly theory of perceiving the world) and introduced episodic multiple-image composition. Thus it stripped space of its Renaissance homogeneity. Achieving the technical perfection of theatrical optics and the technique of open change, Romanticism in turn opted for multiple-stage three dimensionality, which also included the doubling of the scenic frame (on the principle of the window-within-a-window).

Over time, the asymmetric symbolism of spatial relations became common. This consisted of linking characters to a designated place and direction of action. As Dobrochna Ratajczak has written:

A special, asymmetric aspect was brought in by the well-known division between stage right (cote cour, the court side, designating the good or the “expressive or active side”), and stage left (cote jardin, the garden side, the “side of identification” of the spectator with the protagonist—also designating evil; toward the end of the eighteenth century a revolutionary reversal of these values occurred).

The antinomies mentioned so far, which after all have never been fully dispelled, strictly connected the principle of perspective—or a certain “immobile” order of the construction of spatial significances (within the scope of the symmetrical backstage perspective)—and the inevitable undermining of the symmetrical equilibrium by the living, moving actor. More precisely, by the network of symbolic meanings (for example the semiotic space of gesture) asymmetrically shaped by the actor.