For France, E. Rigal, Le Théâtre de la Renaissance and Le Théâtre au xvii^e siècle avant Corneille, both in L. Petit de Julleville, Hist. de la Langue et de la Litt. Françaises (1897), iii. 261, iv. 186, and the same writer’s Le Théâtre Français avant la Période Classique (1901), may be supplemented by a series of studies in _Revue d’Histoire Littéraire de la France_--P. Toldo, La Comédie Française de la Renaissance (1897–1900, iv. 336; v. 220, 554; vi. 571; vii. 263), G. Lanson, Études sur les Origines de la Tragédie Classique en France (1903, x. 177, 413) and L’Idée de la Tragédie en France avant Jodelle (1904, xi. 541), E. Rigal, La Mise en Scène dans les Tragédies du xvi^e siècle (1905, xii. 1, 203), J. Haraszti, La Comédie Française de la Renaissance et la Scène (1909, xvi. 285); also G. Lanson, Note sur un Passage de Vitruve, in Revue de la Renaissance (1904), 72. Less important is E. Lintilhac, Hist. Générale du Théâtre en France (1904–9, in progress). G. Bapst, Essai sur l’Histoire du Théâtre (1893), and D. C. Stuart, Stage Decoration and the Unity of Place in France in the Seventeenth Century (1913, M. P. x. 393), deal with staging, for which the chief material is E. Dacier, La Mise en Scène à Paris au xvii^e siècle: Mémoire de L. Mahelot et M. Laurent in Mémoires de la Soc. de l’Hist. de Paris et de l’Ile-de-France, xxviii (1901), 105. An edition by H. C. Lancaster (1920) adds Mahelot’s designs.]
We come now to the problems, reserved from treatment in the foregoing chapter, of scenic background. What sort of setting did the types of theatre described afford for the plots, often complicated, and the range of incident, so extraordinarily wide, which we find in Elizabethan drama? No subject in literary history has been more often or more minutely discussed, during the quarter of a century since the Swan drawing was discovered, and much valuable spadework has been done, not merely in the collecting and marshalling of external evidence, but also in the interpretation of this in the light of an analysis of the action of plays and of the stage-directions by which these are accompanied.[1] Some points have emerged clearly enough; and if on others there is still room for controversy, this may be partly due to the fact that external and internal evidence, when put together, have proved inadequate, and partly also to certain defects of method into which some of the researchers have fallen. To start from the assumption of a ‘typical Shakespearian stage’ is not perhaps the best way of approaching an investigation which covers the practices of thirty or forty playing companies, in a score of theatres, over a period of not much less than a century. It is true that, in view of the constant shifting of companies and their plays from one theatre to another, some ‘standardization of effects’, in Mr. Archer’s phrase, may at any one date be taken for granted.[2] But analogous effects can be produced by very different arrangements, and even apart from the obvious probability that the structural divergences between public and private theatres led to corresponding divergences in the systems of setting adopted, it is hardly safe to neglect the possibility of a considerable evolution in the capacities of stage-management between 1558 and 1642, or even between 1576 and 1616. At any rate a historical treatment will be well advised to follow the historical method. The scope of the inquiry, moreover, must be wide enough to cover performances at Court, as well as those on the regular stage, since the plays used for both purposes were undoubtedly the same. Nor can Elizabethan Court performances, in their turn, be properly considered, except in the perspective afforded by a short preliminary survey of the earlier developments of the art of scenic representation at other Renaissance Courts.
The story begins with the study of Vitruvius in the latter part of the fifteenth century by the architect Alberti and others, which led scholars to realize that the tragedies of the pseudo-Seneca and the comedies of Terence and the recently discovered Plautus had been not merely recited, but acted much in the fashion already familiar in contemporary ludi of the miracle-play type.[3] The next step was, naturally, to act them, in the original or in translations. Alberti planned a theatrum in the Vatican for Nicholas V, but the three immediate successors of Nicholas were not humanists, and it is not until the papacy of Innocent VIII that we hear of classical performances at Rome by the pupils of Pomponius Laetus. One of these was Tommaso Inghirami, who became a cardinal, without escaping the nickname of Phaedra from the part he had played in Hippolytus. This, as well as at least one comedy, had already been given before the publication (c. 1484–92) of an edition of Vitruvius by Sulpicius Verulanus, with an epistle addressed by the editor to Cardinal Raffaelle Riario, as a notable patron of the revived art. Sulpicius is allusive rather than descriptive, but we hear of a fair adorned stage, 5 ft. high, for the tragedy in the forum, of a second performance in the Castle of St. Angelo, and a third in Riario’s house, where the audience sat under umbracula, and of the ‘picturatae scenae facies’, which the cardinal provided for a comedy by the Pomponiani.[4] Performances continued after the death of Pomponius in 1597, but we get no more scenic details, and when the Menaechmi was given at the wedding of Alfonso d’Este and Lucrezia Borgia in 1502 it is noted that ‘non gli era scena alcuna, perchè la camera non era capace’.[5] It is not until 1513 that we get anything like a description of a Roman neo-classical stage, at the conferment of Roman citizenship on Giuliano and Lorenzo de’ Medici, the Florentine kinsmen of Leo X.[6] This had a decorated back wall divided by pilasters into five spaces, in each of which was a door covered by a curtain of golden stuff. There were also two side-doors, for entrance and exit, marked ‘via ad forum’.
An even more important centre of humanistic drama than Rome was Ferrara, where the poets and artists, who gathered round Duke Ercole I of Este, established a tradition which spread to the allied courts of the Gonzagas at Mantua and the Delle Rovere at Urbino. The first neo-classical revival on record at Ferrara was of the Menaechmi in 1486, from which we learn that Epidamnus was represented by five marvellous ‘case’ each with its door and window, and that a practicable boat moved across the cortile where the performance was given.[7]
In 1487 it was the turn of the Amphitrio ‘in dicto cortile a tempo di notte, con uno paradiso cum stelle et altre rode’.[8] Both the Amphitrio and the Menaechmi were revived in 1491; the former had its ‘paradiso’, while for the latter ‘nella sala era al prospecto de quattro castelli, dove avevano a uscire quilli dovevano fare la representatione’.[9] Many other productions followed, of some of which no details are preserved. For the Eunuchus, Trinummus, and Penulus in 1499 there was a stage, 4 ft. high, with decorated columns, hangings of red, white, and green cloth, and ‘cinque casamenti merlati’ painted by Fino and Bernardino Marsigli.[10] In 1502, when Lucrezia Borgia came, the stage for the Epidicus, Bacchides, Miles Gloriosus, Casina, and Asinaria was of the height of a man, and resembled a city wall, ‘sopra gli sono le case de le comedie, che sono sei, non avantagiate del consueto’.[11] The most elaborate description on record is, however, one of a theatre set up at Mantua during the carnival of 1501, for some play of which the name has not reached us. Unfortunately it is not very clearly worded, but the stage appears to have been rather wider than its depth, arcaded round, and hung at the back with gold and greenery. Its base had the priceless decoration of Mantegna’s Triumphs, and above was a heaven with a representation of the zodiac. Only one ‘casa’ is noted, a ‘grocta’ within four columns at a corner of the stage.[12]
The scanty data available seem to point to the existence of two rather different types of staging, making their appearance at Ferrara and at Rome respectively. The scene of the Ferrarese comedies, with its ‘case’ as the principal feature, is hardly distinguishable from that of the mediaeval sacre rappresentazioni, with its ‘luoghi deputati’ for the leading personages, which in their turn correspond to the ‘loci’, ‘domus’, or ‘sedes’ of the western miracle-plays.[13] The methods of the rappresentazioni had long been adopted for pieces in the mediaeval manner, but upon secular themes, such as Poliziano’s Favola d’Orfeo, which continued, side by side with the classical comedies, to form part of the entertainment of Duke Ercole’s Court.[14] The persistence of the mediaeval tradition is very clearly seen in the interspersing of the acts of the comedies, just as the rappresentazioni had been interspersed, with ‘moresche’ and other ‘intermedii’ of spectacle and dance, to which the ‘dumb-shows’ of the English drama owe their ultimate origin.[15] At Rome, on the other hand, it looks as if, at any rate by 1513, the ‘case’ had been conventionalized, perhaps under the influence of some archaeological theory as to classical methods, into nothing more than curtained compartments forming part of the architectural embellishments of the scena wall. It is a tempting conjecture that some reflex, both of the Ferrarese and of the Roman experiments, may be traced in the woodcut illustrations of a number of printed editions of Terence, which are all derived from archetypes published in the last decade of the fifteenth century. The synchronism between the revival of classical acting and the emergence of scenic features in such illustrations is certainly marked. The Terentian miniatures of the earlier part of the century show no Vitruvian knowledge. If they figure a performance, it is a recitation by the wraith Calliopius and his gesticulating mimes.[16] Nor is there any obvious scenic influence in the printed Ulm Eunuchus of 1486, with its distinct background for each separate woodcut.[17] The new spirit comes in with the Lyons Terence of 1493, wherein may be seen the hand of the humanist Jodocus Badius Ascensius, who had certainly visited Ferrara, and may well also have been in touch with the Pomponiani.[18] The Lyons woodcuts, of which there are several to each play, undoubtedly represent stage performances, real or imaginary. The stage itself is an unrailed quadrangular platform, of which the supports are sometimes visible. The back wall is decorated with statuettes and swags of Renaissance ornament, and in front of it is a range of three, four, or five small compartments, separated by columns and veiled by fringed curtains. They have rather the effect of a row of bathing boxes. Over each is inscribed the name of a character, whose ‘house’ it is supposed to be. Thus for the Andria the inscriptions are ‘Carini’, ‘Chreme[tis]’, ‘Chrisidis’, ‘Do[mus] Symonis’. On the scaffold, before the houses, action is proceeding between characters each labelled with his name. Sometimes a curtain is drawn back and a character is emerging, or the interior of a house is revealed, with some one sitting or in bed, and a window behind. It is noteworthy that, while the decoration of the back wall and the arrangement of the houses remain uniform through all the woodcuts belonging to any one play, they vary from play to play. Sometimes the line of houses follows that of the wall; sometimes it advances and retires, and may leave a part of the wall uncovered, suggesting an entrance from without. In addition to the special woodcuts for each play, there is a large introductory design of a ‘Theatrum’. It is a round building, with an exterior staircase, to which spectators are proceeding, and are accosted on their way by women issuing from the ‘Fornices’, over which the theatre is built. Through the removal of part of the walls, the interior is also made visible. It has two galleries and standing-room below. A box next the stage in the upper gallery is marked ‘Aediles’. The stage is cut off by curtains, which are divided by two narrow columns. In front of the curtains sits a flute-player. Above is inscribed ‘Proscenium’. Some of the Lyons cuts are adopted, with others from the Ulm Eunuchus, in the Strasburg Terence of 1496.[19] This, however, has a different ‘Theatrum’, which shows the exterior only, and also a new comprehensive design for each play, in which no scaffold or back wall appears, and the houses are drawn on either side of an open place, with the characters standing before them. They are more realistic than the Lyons ‘bathing boxes’ and have doors and windows and roofs, but they are drawn, like the Ulm houses, on a smaller scale than the characters. If they have a scenic origin, it may be rather in the ‘case’ of Ferrara than in the conventional ‘domus’ of Rome. Finally, the Venice Terence of 1497, while again reproducing with modifications the smaller Lyons cuts, replaces the ‘Theatrum’ by a new ‘Coliseus sive Theatrum’, in which the point of view is taken from the proscenium.[20] No raised stage is visible, but an actor or prologue is speaking from a semicircular orchestra on the floor-level. To right and left of him are two houses, of the ‘bathing-box’ type, but roofed, from which characters emerge. He faces an auditorium with two rows of seats and a gallery above.
