Read Ebook: Shakespeare at the Globe 1599-1609 by Beckerman Bernard

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Any investigation of the enclosure is obliged to include an investigation of Elizabethan stage properties. For a long time it was suggested that a principal purpose of the enclosure was to mask the placement of furniture and other properties. While it is becoming increasingly evident that we must regard such a presumption with skepticism, nevertheless, the presence of a property has so often been cited as evidence for the use of an enclosure that it is necessary to review the handling of stage properties at the Globe before considering the enclosure directly. Aside from their connection with the problem of the enclosure, furthermore, stage properties deserve attention, for their appearance in a play can be more readily ascertained than any other element of production and as a result can provide clues to the methods of staging.

I have carefully examined the one hundred and one properties for evidence of method of introduction. The chart below summarizes my analysis.

In both Shakespearean and non-Shakespearean plays the percentages are about the same. Clearly the number of properties brought on greatly outnumber those which are discovered. Yet enough properties are discovered to make the presence of an enclosure certain.

Two other types of seats appear in the Shakespearean plays: the "chair" and the state. The chair is only mentioned once. It is the one to which Gloucester is bound before he is blinded. There is no indication whether it is brought on or discovered, one's decision in the matter being determined by where one places the scene on the stage. The state too is mentioned specifically only once. After the banquet is brought out, Macbeth tells the assembled guests, "Our hostesse keeps her state, but in best time/ We will require her welcome." . This implies that Lady Macbeth sits apart from the company, perhaps in the enclosure. The state may have been placed there when the banquet was prepared or it may have been discovered. Significantly no action takes place at the state. Several other scenes would permit the use of a state. In each case there is evidence that the scenes proper take place on the stage platform. Though a curtain could be utilized to reveal the state in these cases, I incline to the theory that the state was brought or thrust out.

Ere I ascend this stage where I must act, The latest period of this life of mine, First let me do my deuty to my prince. Next unto you, to much by me offended, Now step, by step, as I ascend this place, Mount thou my soule into the throwne of grace.

Presumably he reaches the top, as do his alleged accomplices, for shortly thereafter the King calls, "Dispatch them executioner: dispatch." Clearly some scaffold has been revealed or brought out for this scene. It is one which the actors can mount before an audience. It also had to be large enough to accommodate four people. From other evidence Smith suggests a platform of this sort would be three or four steps high. Despite its size a subsequent line indicates that it was moved about in front of the audience.

Before the execution can take place, Sentloe reveals that he is not really dead, but has pretended to be in order to subject Vallenger to a rigorous trial of soul and thus force him to purge his offenses. Amidst the joyful reunion of Vallenger and his wife, the King commands,

Away with that same tradgike monument.

Presumably the scaffold is withdrawn from the stage. In all likelihood a scaffold large enough to hold four people was too large to fit through a doorway. Therefore, we must assume that it was removed through the enclosure.

The forward placement of the scaffold is attested by another Globe play. Enamored of Corvino's wife, Volpone disguised as a mountebank mounts his bank under the window where he might glimpse the lady . Dramatically and physically his bank could only be placed on the platform. That he has actually gone up on some structure which, however, is lower than window height, is proved, first, when "Celia at the windo' throwes downe her handkerchiefe," and secondly, when Corvino, the jealous husband, rushes out of his door and shouts to Volpone to "Come downe" . Here too there is no stage direction for the setting up and taking down of a scaffold, but the reiteration of Corvino's "will you downe, sir? downe?" establishes its existence. Perhaps, in this case too, actors or attendants erected or thrust out some frame. Once it is established that such a scaffold was brought out upon the Globe stage, it becomes clear that it appears in some of the scenes cited by Smith. How its use affected staging is properly reserved for a later chapter.

Two inferences can be drawn from this survey of properties on the Globe stage. One is that more often than not properties, even heavy ones, were carried onto the stage. As a consequence, it was not one of the functions of the enclosure to permit the setting of furniture or other properties. The other is that the same class of properties is often introduced in the same way. Beds are likely to be discovered. Tables, scaffolds, and invalid chairs are brought out. These habits may have stemmed from solid theatrical necessity. On the other hand it is possible that they may have embodied a symbolic significance.

The third study scene, in this instance containing two disclosures, occurs at the end of the play. Alexander is about to face the consequences of his charter with the devil. The scene commences, "Alexander unbraced betwixt two Cardinalls in his study looking upon a booke, whilst a groome draweth the Curtaine" . Alexander speaks eight lines, then "They place him in a chayre upon the stage, a groome setteth a Table before him." After chastising himself, "Alexander draweth the Curtaine of his studie where hee discovereth the divill sitting in his pontificals." He disputes with the devil, and later "They sit together," where is not indicated, and finally Alexander's soul is carried down. In two of the scenes there is incontestable evidence that the action is brought out of the enclosure early in the scene. Furthermore, these three are the only study scenes in a play of twenty-two scenes.

Yet the study is mentioned at one other time. At one point Alexander plots the death of two young men, with one of whom he has had a homosexual affair. The murder scene begins with the direction, "Enter Alexander out of his studie." After he has his servant Bernardo prepare a soporific for the young men, he departs with the injunction that when the intended victims are asleep, Bernardo give him notice "at study doore." The young men come in from tennis, have a rubdown by barbers, call for refreshment. The soporific takes effect, and they lie down to nap both upon one bed. Bernardo "knocketh at the study," at which Alexander comes forth "upon the stage" with his asp to slay his paramour. After the act is completed and the murderer has departed, Bernardo summons two Cardinals to see the dead youths who, he asserts, expired from drinking too much when overexerted. Bemoaning the fate of these two hopes of "Phaenza," the Cardinals bid Bernardo "Beare them in."

Several characteristics should be noted. First, the enclosure or study, when it is actually used, is revealed by the drawing of a curtain. But if a curtain hangs before the enclosure, upon what does Bernardo knock? Either upon the side wall, and then Alexander enters from behind the curtain, or upon a door, and a new area is presumed to represent the study. Hosley has suggested that one of the two side doorways, with the doors fully opened, might have served as the enclosure. This possibility must be excluded, however, for Act IV, scene i requires two doors for the passage of the specters of Caesar and Candie at a time when the enclosure or study is in use.

Once more I will with powrefull exorcismes, Invoke those Angells of eternall darkenesse To shew me now the manner of death.

If one of the conventional uses of the enclosure was to discover corpses, then the Globe audiences would have well appreciated the irony of Alexander's last line, for when he draws the curtain, he does discover "the manner of death." Thus, in all preceding examples discovery reveals persons studying, sleeping, or dead. To what extent does Shakespeare follow the same practice?

As you thinke meet; for she must over board straight: Most wretched Queene. LYCHORIDA. Heere she lyes sir. PERICLES. A terrible Child-bed hast thou had my deare, ... nor have I time ... but straight, Must cast thee scarcly Coffind.

At the end of the scene, Pericles sends one of the sailors out to prepare the "caulkt and bittumed" chest for the body, which we do not see removed, for the scene ends when Pericles says, "I'le bring the body presently."

In the second scene, again on the deck of a ship, Lysimachus is told of Pericles' trance out of which no one can stir him.

HELICANUS. hee will not speake to any LYSIMACHUS. yet let me obtaine my wish HELICANUS. Behold him, this was a goodly person.

Presumably a curtain is drawn to reveal Pericles on a couch. Subsequently, Marina is brought to rouse him, and little by little the two discover they are father and daughter. The lines indicate some shifting in and out of the enclosure during this scene.

The Princes walke is here in the galery, There let Ofelia, walke untill hee comes: Your selfe and I will stand close in the study.

At the corresponding point in the Folio version, Polonius says, "Be you and I behinde an Arras then." Naturally Corambis would think of the place behind the arras as the study. It was the enclosure to which he referred, the enclosure which served the double purpose, to reveal and to conceal. Of the fifteen Shakespearean Globe plays seven contain scenes of concealment and ten contain scenes of discovery or concealment or both. If, in addition, the enclosure was employed as the front of a tent in those instances where the interior was not revealed, then twelve of the fifteen Shakespearean plays made some use of the enclosure for other purposes than entry.

Among the parts of the Globe there was, all scholars concede, an upper level attached to the stage fa?ade. Variously termed a "chamber" by Adams and a "gallery" by Hosley, it is referred to as a "window," "walls," or "above," in the Globe texts. To avoid any preconceptions about its nature, we might best refer to the upper level as it is usually called, "the above."

The nature of evidence for the above is of two sorts. First and surest is the category where a stage direction reads "Enter above" or the action involves two levels. The second is where characters refer to being above without actually performing actions which show them to be above, for example, when Bardolph informs Falstaff that "there's a woman below" . Both categories of evidence occur in the Globe plays. The first involves scenes where the above is related to the platform below; the second involves scenes, if the lines can be taken literally, which would continue at length independent of the lower stage.

Scene v commences with the direction, already referred to, "Enter a maide with a child in her armes, the mother by her a sleepe." The Husband rushes in and endeavors to snatch the babe from the maid's arms. When she resists, he assaults her.

Are you gossiping, prating sturdy queane, Ile breake your clamor with your neck down staires: Tumble, tumble, headlong. Throws her down.

All window scenes--there are four--contain a reference to "window" or "casement" in a stage direction. All of them involve interchanges by one person with characters below. However, the shape of the window, whether bay or otherwise, is not disclosed.

Enter Wentloe, and Bartley beneath. BART. Here about is the house sure. WENTLOE. We cannot mistake it, for heres the signe of the Wolfe and the Bay-window. Enter Butler above. BUT. What so close? Tis well, I ha shifted away your Vncles Mistris, but see the spight Sir Francis, if yon same couple of Smel-smockes, Wentloe and Bartley, ha not sented after us.

Under the stimulus of competition, Ilford is willing to rush into marriage without seeing the dowry of his wife-to-be. After sending the couple "below," Butler calls to Bartley and Wentloe to arrange to meet them below, timing matters so that they will arrive after the marriage ceremony is completed.

Location is here treated very loosely. In the course of the scene, action shifts from one place to another. Sometimes the characters seem to be at a window, sometimes in an upper chamber, but there is no exact indication where they are at any one time. Indeed this is a generalized setting, for we know that we are at Scarborrow's house. The scene clearly shows that an extended action could be played above, but only when related to action below.

A unique theory combining the presence of mansions with the rearrangement of the spectators has been devised by Leslie Hotson. Not content to modify current thinking about Elizabethan staging, he reveals, messiah-like, that after two hundred years of bafflement, the world will be able "now for the first time to understand and visualize the stage of the Globe" because of his discoveries. Citing a compote of evidence from the English and Spanish theaters, he asserts that the essential relationship between actor and audience maintained at Court, playhouse, and college, was one in which the actor performed between two masses of audience, with the privileged audience sitting on one side. In the Globe this privileged audience sat in the gallery over the stage and on the stage between the stage doors. The tiring house, contrary to accepted thought, was below the stage. At either end of the stage two-tiered wooden frames with transparent curtains served as mansions. Actors entered through trap doors into these mansions and from thence onto the stage. Masked attendants drew the curtains as the action required.

The Induction commences.

Enter W. Sly, a Tire-man following him with a stool. TIRE-MAN. Sir, the gentlemen will be angry if you sit here. SLY. . Why, we may sit upon the stage at the private house.

Immediately it is apparent that, contrary to Hotson's fancy, sitting on the stage was not the custom and its introduction was not happily countenanced by the "gentlemen." Since the tire-man still holds the stool as he refers to the "gentlemen," the word "here" must mean the stage as a whole and therefore the "gentlemen" are the actors. The one time Sly refers to any spectators, he does it in such terms that he clearly intends the groundlings. Otherwise, no mention is made of other spectators on the stage. Toward the end of the Induction, Lowin succeeds in ushering Sly out by offering to lead him to a "private room."

Hotson also claims that the gentlemen sat "over the stage, i' the lords roome." For this claim he enjoys considerably more support. In and out of plays references to sitting "over the stage" suggest the employment in some way of the area I have called the above. But "over the stage" is not specific. Does "over" mean directly over, or to one side? Does it include the entire length of the stage wall, as Hosley asserts, so that actors in order to play their scenes above were obliged to thrust themselves into the midst of the auditors?

Since its discovery in 1888, repeated attempts have been made to prove that a particular occasion is represented by the Swan drawing. Nagler, among the latest to repeat the attempt, believes "that a rehearsal was in progress. DeWitt seems to have visited the theater in the morning and sketched the interior while the actors were rehearsing a scene." He asserts that the persons in the gallery were actors or "at any rate, theater personnel." Without quarreling with the last comment, I believe that we must discount the theory that a rehearsal was in progress or, in actuality, that any specific moment is recorded in the sketch. One internal contradiction has been noted often. Why are there people in the gallery, but not in the auditorium? Because a rehearsal is in progress, says Nagler. Because DeWitt did not trouble to sketch all the details, says Hosley. But another contradiction exists in the drawing. At the head of the sketch, flying from a staff at the top of the huts, is the ensign of the playhouse, a flag emblazoned with a Swan. The flag was a sign that a performance was in progress. Below the flag is a figure who is blowing a trumpet. Either he is summoning the audience or he is announcing the commencement of the play. Customarily the play began after the third sounding of the trumpet. But, in the sketch, a scene is already under way. Consequently, if a rehearsal was in progress, why is the flag flying, the trumpeter calling the audience? If a performance was in progress, why at the beginning are we in the midst of the action? Could it be that the sketch reflects no particular instance but a composite impression of the Swan and that the rendition of such an impression was likely to have been made after DeWitt had left the playhouse? The text which accompanies the sketch, starting with a general discussion of London playhouses and proceeding to a description of the Swan, indicates that DeWitt set down a summary of experiences either after he had visited various theaters or after he had had them described to him.

It may be well at this time to consider the reliability of the Swan drawing in other respects. Currently it is the fashion to adhere to the sketch closely. However, one fact must be faced, insofar as the Globe is concerned. Granted that the original drawing, as well as Arend van Buchell's copy that has come down to the present, were both trustworthy, nevertheless we are still forced to amend the sketch in order to have it accord with other, indisputable evidence. All sorts of ingenious explanations, that the hangings were not in place or that a stage-width curtain was added for performance, have been offered, but the fact remains: the Swan, as it is depicted in the drawing, unaltered, could not have accommodated the Globe plays. However plausible the suggestions for additions may be, they cannot still the doubt with which one is obliged to regard the sketch, and though DeWitt's testimony cannot be ignored, it cannot be accepted without corroboration.

From the preceding material two conclusions emerge. First, there was no single form for the above. Therefore, in developing an image of the Globe, we cannot rely on the Swan drawing. Yet even if we do, we discover that such an unrelieved gallery as it shows is simply not characteristic of the Renaissance design which presumably DeWitt sought to catch. A glance at prints of various continental stages will illustrate this point. What is suggested by the later views and what accords with the needs of the Globe playhouse is an above which, regardless of the presence of auditors, could be differentiated structurally from the rest of the gallery. Architecturally this might have been accomplished by separating and emphasizing a central, probably uncurtained, section in the balcony, reserved for the actors. On either side of this area, auditors might have overlooked the stage.

Second, all the views agree that the maximum number of spectators in each section was two. Keeping literally to the evidence, we must conclude that twelve persons could be accommodated in the Swan gallery. We could, of course, indulge in the fascinating game of using the dimensions of the Fortune to calculate the capacity of the Swan. But this is unnecessary. DeWitt tells us the Swan could hold three thousand people. Whether twelve or twenty or a few more could sit above, their proportion to the total would be small. Could the actors have directed their performance to such a minority? It is certain that they did not, for in one other respect the extant views are in complete agreement. Where performers are shown in action on stage, they play, not toward the "spectators" in the gallery, but toward the auditors listening "round about." In short, they turn their backs to the stage wall and play front.

Until now the discussion of the Globe playhouse has proceeded from dramatic function to theatrical realization. But inevitably the reader is bound to wonder, if only inwardly, what the Globe looked like. No one knows. Startling as it may seem, no one really can reconstruct the design of the Globe playhouse. The reader may remonstrate: what about the various reconstructions of Walter Godfrey, John C. Adams, C. Walter Hodges, Richard Southern? What about their sketches and models? All hypotheses, some reasonable, some farfetched. Each scholar, selecting for his palette certain scraps of evidence, has painted a hypothetical image of the Elizabethan playhouse. Each realizes, of course, that his image is conjectural. The damage occurs when the image is realized in drawings and the drawings are reproduced with such frequency that what was conjecture comes to be regarded as historical fact by the general reader. Acknowledging that "the hard facts available are insufficient in themselves," Hodges admits that each scholar interprets the evidence according to "influences of taste" of which he may not even be aware. The result has been that equally reputable scholars have produced widely divergent images of the Globe playhouse. In recent times the once prevailing Tudor image has yielded to Renaissance design.

The leading advocate of Tudor style is John Cranford Adams. He affirms that it was a "tendency of stage design to imitate contemporary London houses," and therefore, that "the fa?ade of the tiring-house differed from its model, a short row of London houses, mainly in having upper and lower curtains suspended in the middle." Each reference to a contemporary urban structural feature of the stage is considered to be a description of a realistic detail. "It was the habit of Elizabethan dramatists to accept the equipment of their stage rather literally and to refer to that equipment in dialogue." He cites construction methods of the period for support. The building contract for the Fortune calls for wooden frames "sufficiently enclosed withoute with lathe, lyme & Haire." This specification suggests a half-timbered-and-plaster building of Tudor design, a type of construction which continued to appear through the early part of the seventeenth century. In contrast, buildings in the newer Renaissance style were largely built of stone or brick. Since its completion in 1950, Adams' model of the Globe, now at the Folger Library, has impressed itself upon the imagination of lovers of Shakespeare, particularly in America.

As for the street pageants, continental experience cannot be readily applied to Tudor practice. For the last half of the sixteenth century the royal entries were virtually abandoned by Elizabeth, and it was not until the coronation of James that the magnificence of the royal entry returned to London. When it did, it had all the characteristics of the flamboyant Renaissance style described by Kernodle. Until then, from 1558 to 1603, the Londoner could witness the Lord Mayor's Show, an annual event to honor the installation of the new Lord Mayor. The central device was a single pageant supplied by the Company of which the Lord Mayor was a member. Featuring child orators, it was usually carried along in the procession by porters, though from time to time we hear of frames being built to support the pageants. It appears that the pageant was stored in the company hall from which it was removed when needed, with or without redecoration, though occasionally a new pageant would be ordered. The fact that the pageant remained on permanent view in the company halls suggests that it may have been similar to the figures of saints carried even today in religious processions.

Allegorical in nature, the pageant depicted a theme apt for the new Lord Mayor and his company. In 1561, for example, five ancient harpers, David, Orpheus, Amphion, Arion, and Iopas, were displayed in a pageant to honor the new Lord Mayor, Sir William Harper. Often the themes of the pageants represented the trade rather than the man, the Ship, for instance, being deemed appropriate for the Merchant Tailors Company. At an appropriate point in the procession, the figures in the pageant would speak commendatory verses to the Lord Mayor. From the extant texts, it is quite clear that the presentations were brief and rhetorical; they did not involve dramatic action. In fact, the very people being honored were those who most assiduously sought to destroy the public playhouses.

No sketch of a sixteenth century pageant exists. The presence of mythical figures encourages the notion that Renaissance design characterized these pageants, but there is no graphic or thoroughly descriptive evidence for assuming so. Nor do the symbols which Kernodle enumerates appear prominently in these pageants. Instead the companies relied on those trade-or-personal symbols which held special significance for them. For one company the lion appears in pageant because a lion is part of the company's coat of arms; for another, a Moor rides on a lynx, which animal is deemed appropriate for the Skinners' company.

What is substantiated by these pageants and reinforced by the royal entries of the seventeenth century is the mode of presentation. Perhaps the particular symbols which Kernodle emphasizes did not have significance for the Londoner of the 1590's, but he was familiar with presenting and interpreting theatrical forms in a symbolic manner, and I believe that to this extent the pageants may have influenced the design of the public playhouse.

In conclusion, then, one cannot verify whether the Elizabethan playhouse reflected the outgoing Tudor or the incoming Renaissance style. Roughed up by a master carpenter, such as James Burbage, Peter Streete, or Gilbert Katherens, the structure could have retained the traditions of design familiar to these men or it could have responded to the new fashions. These new fashions, however, were principally decorative; classical forms were applied to Tudor-Gothic foundations. I tend to think that the pragmatic attitude of Elizabethan builders led them to erect a fundamentally Tudor structure to which they attached classical ornaments more or less at random. In such a structure the stage would certainly be the focus of such adornment.

Based solely on the evidence of the Globe plays, what then is the picture of the Globe stage? The principal part of the stage was a large rectangular platform upon which rested two pillars. At the rear of the platform two doors and a curtained recess between them provided access to the stage. The recess, which was an integral part of the tiring house, had to accommodate less than half a dozen people. Above the recess and/or doors was an upper level principally required where characters related themselves to others below. In the floor of the outer stage there was at least one substantial trap. No machinery for flying either actors or properties existed. In over-all design the stage, which was Renaissance in surface details, emphasized formal rather than realistic decoration. Altogether it was a theater that presented itself as a show place rather than as an imitation of London.

In a review once Granville-Barker remonstrated against overemphasis on the physical aspects of the stage at the expense of the imaginative. Such overemphasis has too frequently resulted. In their zeal to reconstruct the Elizabethan stage, theorists have given the impression that the theater of that day was constantly using traps, heavens, upper level, and enclosure. However, a comparison of the number of scenes which use some stage facility, be it merely a stool, with the number which use no stage facility whatsoever, neither property nor stage machinery, save merely a means to get on and off, shows that of the 345 scenes in the Shakespearean Globe plays, only 20 per cent require any facility. Fully 80 per cent need nothing but a bare space and an audience, not so much as a stool.

As a result, Shakespearean drama depends a great deal upon the vigorous movement of the actors coming on and off the stage. The actors themselves, rather than the stage equipment, provide the impetus for a play's progression. We are all familiar with the conclusion of a Shakespearean scene. More often than not, a character will say, "Come along with me," and off will go the actors. I have checked every scene in the Globe plays and found a startlingly high percentage of such exits. For purposes of computation I divide the scene conclusions into four categories.

First, there is the explicit exit line.

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