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Elizabethan Interior and Aloft Scenes: A Speculative Essay

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2010

Albert B. Weiner
Albert B. Weiner
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Language and Literature, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
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Extract

Professor George F. Reynolds' The Staging of Elizabethan Plays at the Red Bull Theatre, 1606–1625 was the first major book, to cast doubt on the theory that there was a recessed room, an ‘inner stage,’ cut into the tiring house wall on the Shakespearian stage. Reynolds further restored the reputation of the much-maligned De Witt-van Buchell sketch of the Swan Theatre. Although a number of scholars recognized at once that Reynolds' book was something of a landmark, it was not until this decade that his methods and materials were made use of. C. Walter Hodges' The Globe Restored was the first book to take up where Reynolds had left off. Dependent on Hodges, but at the same time highly original, was A. M. Nagler's Shakespeare's Stage.

Type
Research Article
Information
Theatre Survey , Volume 2 , May 1961 , pp. 15 - 34
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1961

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References

NOTES

1. (New York, 1940).

2. (London, 1953).

3. (New Haven, 1958).

4. Allardyce Niooll, ed. (Cambridge, 1959).

5. All of these articles, however, were written at least a year before Nagler's book appeared.

6. Shakespeare Survey 12, pp. 35–46.

7. Cf. Reynolds, George F., “Troilus and Cressida on the Elizabethan Stage,” Joseph Quincy Adams Memorial Studies, ed. McManaway, James G. et al. (Washington, 1949), pp. 229–38.Google Scholar

8. In this paper I speak of three types of pavilion: permanent (immovable), semi-portable (can be moved but not without difficulty), and portable (can be moved with no difficulty).

9. It does not follow, however, that the discovery space was used only for discovery scenes.

10. See Reynolds, , Staging, p. 162.Google Scholar

11. I do not believe there is any disagreement on this point. Any comprehensive anthology of Elizabethan stage directions such as V. E. Albright, The Shaksperian Stage, or A. H. Thorndike, Shakespeare's Theatre will confirm the need for a discovery space.

12. Nagler, p. 50.

13. Dr. Adams would be the last person in the world to agree that Nagler's interpretation is satisfactory; but his objections are more conjectural than the thing to which he objects. See his review of Nagler's book in Shakespeare Quarterly, X (Summer 1959), 433.

14. Nagler, pp. 10–11. However, Holmes, Martin, Theatre Notebook, X (1956), 80–83Google Scholar, was the first to make this suggestion.

15. Quoted in full in Chambers, E. K., The Elizabethan Stage (London, 1923), II, 364 n. 1.Google Scholar

16. See his article in Adams Memorial Studies.

17. I have made no distinctions throughout this article between plays which were produced at public theatres and those produced at private ones. To do so would be hopeless. Many plays were produced at both, and when such is the case, there is often no way of knowing which version the printed text represents. I have lumped together all the plays assuming (or ignoring) that there was no basic difference between the staging principles of public and private theatricals. Professor Reynolds would, I believe, accept my assumption: “I myself am of the impression that when plays were given at court their performance was essentially like that they received at the public theatres.” Staging, p. 5.

18. Dark emptiness.

19. Melancholy.

20. Chambers, III, 106–7.

21. In Young, Karl, The Drama of the Medieval Church (Oxford, 1933), II, 222.Google Scholar

22. See Paris, Louis, Toiles peintes et tapisseries de la ville de Reims, ou la mise en scène du théatre des Confrères de la Passion (Paris, 1843), II, 752, 762, 784.Google Scholar