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VII. THE ELIZABETHAN THEATRE

It is interesting to find that the play which contains Shakespeare's only unmistakable allusion to a contemporary event (see above, Date of Composition, Allusion to Essex) should also contain his only equally unmistakable complaints about the inadequacy of Elizabethan stage accessories. Interesting theories have been advanced by Knight and others as to Shakespeare's solicitude to win his audience's indulgence in this respect. The reason probably lies in passionate enthusiasm for his theme and the feeling that any attempt to give due expression to it must be inadequate. But these references to the "unworthy scaffold," "this cockpit," "this wooden O," compel attention to the shape and peculiarities of the Elizabethan theatre. The two engravings here reproduced1 give contemporary views of the exterior and the interior of typical Elizabethan theatres. The buildings were high, circular (the earliest form), octagonal or hexagonal in shape (the Fortune theatre was rectangular). Two balconies with a gallery (porticus) above, or perhaps three galleries, protected by a roof (tectum) and provided with seats (sedilia), rose against the inner wall; these were reached by stairs (ingressus) from the central pit, 'the yard' as it was usually called (planities, arena). There were no seats in the yard and those who stood there

1 The sketch of the interior of the Swan theatre was made by A. van Buchell from the notes of J. de Witt, a Dutch scholar who visited London in 1596. It was reproduced and published in Zur Kenntnis der altenglischen Bühne, Bremen, 1888. The exterior view of the second Globe theatre (built after the burning of the first in 1613) is from an enlargement of Visscher's map engraving of London reproduced in Halliwell-Phillipps's Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare.

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Ex obferuationibus Londinenfibus

Jo hamis de witt

INTERIOR OF THE SWAN THEATRE

Van Buchell-De Witt drawing, now in the University Library, Utrecht

were nicknamed 'the groundlings' (cf. Hamlet, III, ii, 12). Deep into the yard projected the stage or platform (proscaenium) raised on posts or trestles about four feet high. This condition, with the necessary absence of all such scenery arrangements as the modern theatre-goer is accustomed to, developed to an extraordinary degree that rhetorical quality in the Elizabethan drama which is so splendidly illustrated in King Henry the Fifth. Good elocution was indispensable, as may be gathered from Hamlet's address to the players. The greater part of the stage, like the yard, was open to the sky. At the back it was partially protected by the overhanging roof (the Heavens') of the 'tiring house' (mimorum aedes). This tiring house was in two stories, the lower having doors opening on the stage; above was a balcony-like arrangement that served either as an upper stage, or as a kind of private box for actors and musicians, or, it might be, for distinguished visitors. From the upper story of the tiring house a trumpeter announced the beginning of a performance, and while the performance lasted a flag bearing the sign of the theatre floated from the roof.

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VIII. HISTORICAL CONNECTIONS

The genealogical tables given on the following pages, xxxii-xxxv, indicate the inter-relation of the more important historical characters, English and French, in King Henry the Fifth, and will show in what other plays of Shakespeare they, their ancestors, or their descendants, are either mentioned or appear as dramatis personæ.

With regard to both English and French history Shakespeare is in all essentials faithful to Holinshed's Chronicles.

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Italics indicate that the person is only mentioned in the play. Numerals in parentheses before a name indicate a first, second, or third marriage. Numerals after a king's reign indicate the dates of his reign.

(2) Owen Tudor =

Edmund Tudor

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