had trod our ancient stage: for D'Avenant's first play, The Cruel Brother, was acted at the Blackfriars in January, 1626-7, and Mohun and Hart, who had themselves acted before the civil wars, were employed in that company, by whose immediate successors The Generous Enemies was exhibited: I mean the King's Servants. Major Mohun acted in the piece before which the lines last quoted were spoken. T may add also, that Mr. Wright, the author of Historia Histrionica, whose father had been a spectator of several plays before the breaking out of the civil wars, expressly says, that the theatre had no scenes.2 But, says Mr. Steevens, (who differs with me in opinion on the subject before us, and whose sentiments I shall give below,) "how happened it, that Shakspeare himself should have mentioned the act of shifting scenes, if in his time there were no scenes capable of being shifted? Thus, in the Chorus to King Henry V: Unto Southampton do we shift our scene." "This phrase" (he adds)" was hardly more ancient than the custom it describes."3 2 "Shakspeare, (who as I have heard, was a much better poet than player,) Burbage, Hemmings, and others of the older sort, were dead before I knew the town; but in my time, before the wars, Lowin used to act Falstaffe," &c.-" Though the town was then not much more than half so populous as now, yet then the prices were small, (there being no scenes,) and better order kept among the company that came." Historia Histrionica, 8vo. 1699. This Essay is in the form of a dialogue between Trueman, an old Cavalier, and Lovewit, his friend. The account of the old stage, which is given by the Cavalier, Wright probably derived from his father, who was born in 1611, and was himself a dramatick writer. Who does not see, that Shakspeare in the passage here quoted uses the word scene in the same sense in which it was used two thousand years before he was born; that is, for the place of action represented by the stage; and not for that moveable hanging or painted cloth, strained on a wooden frame, or rolled round a cylinder, which is now called a SCENE? If the smallest doubt could be entertained of his meaning, the following lines in the same play would remove it : "The king is set from London, and the scene This, and this only, was the shifting that was meant; a movement from one place to another in the progress of the drama; nor is there found a single passage in his plays in which the word scene is used in the sense required to support the argument of those who suppose that the common stages were furnished with moveable scenes in his time. He constantly uses the word either for a stageexhibition in general, or the component part of a play, or the place of action represented by the stage:1 See Mr. Steevens's Shakspeare, 1785, King John, p. 56, n. 7. So, 4 And so do all the other dramatick writers of his time. in Heywood's Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntington, 1601 : 66 I only mean Myself in person to present some scenes Again, in the prologue to Ram-Alley, or Merry Tricks, a comedy, 1611: "But if conceit, with quick-turn'd sceanes,—— "May win your favours, Again, in the prologue to The Late Lancashire Witches, 1634 : "For all my life has been but as a scene King John. "What scene of death hath Roscius now to act?" King Henry VI. Part III. "Thus with imagin'd wing our swift scene flies,-.” King Henry V. "To give our scene such growing, " Ibid. Ibid. "And so our scene must to the battle fly,- "A queen in jest, only to fill the scene." Coriolanus. King Richard III. I shall add but one more instance from All's well that ends well : "Our scene is alter'd from a serious thing, "And now chang'd to the Beggar and the King." from which lines it might, I conceive, be as reasonably inferred that scenes were changed in Shakspeare's time, as from the passage relied on in King Henry V. and perhaps by the same mode of 66 -we are forc'd from our own nation "To ground the scene that's now in agitation." Again, in the prologue to Shirley's School of Compliments, 1629: -This play is "The first fruits of a muse, that before this Again, in the prologue to Hannibal and Scipio, 1637: I forbear to add more instances, though almost every one of our old plays would furnish me with many. reasoning it might be proved, from a line above quoted from the same play, that the technical modern term, wings, or side-scenes, was not unknown to our great poet. The various circumstances which I have stated, and the accounts of the contemporary writers, 5 All the writers on the ancient English stage that I have met with, concur with those quoted in the text on this subject: "Now for the difference betwixt our theatres and those of former times," (says Fleckno, who lived near enough the time to be accurately informed,)" they were but plain and simple, with no other scenes nor decorations of the stages, but only old tapestry, and the stage strewed with rushes; with their habits accordingly." Short Discourse of the English Stage, 1664. In a subsequent passage indeed he adds, "For scenes and machines, they are no new invention; our masques, and some of our playes, in former times, (though not so ordinary,) having had as good or rather better, than any we have now."-To reconcile this passage with the foregoing, the author must be supposed to speak here, not of the exhibitions at the publick theatres, but of masques and private plays, performed either at court or at noblemen's houses. He does not say, "some of our theatres,' but, "our masques, and some of our playes having had," &c. We have already seen that Love's Mistress or the Queen's Masque was exhibited with scenes at Denmark-house in 1636. In the reign of King Charles I. the performance of plays at court, and at private houses, seems to have been very common; and gentlemen went to great expence in these exhibitions. See a letter from Mr. Garrard to Lord Strafford, dated Feb. 7, 1637; Strafford's Letters, Vol. II. p. 150: "Two of the king's servants, privychamber men both, have writ each of them a play, Sir John Sutlin [Suckling,] and Will. Barclay, which have been acted in court, and at the Blackfriars, with much applause. Sutlin's play cost three or four hundred pounds setting out: eight or ten suits of new cloaths he gave the players: an unheard-of prodigality." The play on which Sir John Suckling expended this large sum, was Aglaura. To the authority of Fleckno may be added that of Edward Phillips, who, in his Theatrum Poetarum, 1674, [article, D'Avenant,] praises the poet for "the great fluency of his wit and fancy, especially for what he wrote for the English stage, of which, having laid the foundation before by his musical dramas, furnish us, in my apprehension, with decisive and incontrovertible proofs, that the stage of Shak 6 when the usual plays were not suffered to be acted, he was the first reviver and improver, by painted scenes." Wright also, who was well acquainted with the history of our ancient stage, and had certainly conversed with many persons who had seen theatrical performances before the civil wars, expressly says, as I have observed above, that "scenes were first introduced by Sir William D'Avenant, on the publick stage, at the Duke's old theatre in Lincoln's-Inn-fields."- Presently after the Restoration," this writer informs us, "the king's players acted publickly at the Red Bull for some time, and then removed to a new-built playhouse in Vere-street, by Clare-market. There they continued for a year or two, and then removed to the theatre-royal in Drury-lane, where they first made use of SCENES, which had been a little before introduced UPON THE PUBLICK STAGE by Sir W. D'Avenant at the Duke's old theatre in Lincoln's-Inn-fields, but afterwards very much improved, with the addition of curious machines, by Mr. Betterton, at the new theatre in Dorset Gardens, to the great expence and continual charge of the players.' Historia Histrionica, 8vo. 1699, p. 10. Wright calls it the Duke's old theatre in Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, though in fact in 1663 it was a new building, because when he wrote, it had become old, and a new theatre had been built in Lincoln's-InnFields in 1695. He is here speaking of plays and players, and therefore makes no account of the musical entertainments exhibited by D'Avenant a few years before at Rutland House, and at the Cock-pit in Drury Lane, in which a little attempt at scenery had been made. In those pieces, I believe, no stage-player performed. " I subjoin the sentiments of Mr. Steevens, who differs with me in opinion on this subject; observing only that in general the passages to which he alludes, prove only that our author's plays were not exhibited without the aid of machinery, which is not denied; and that not a single passage is quoted, which proves that a moveable painted scene was employed in any of his plays in his theatre. The lines quoted from The Staple of News, at the bottom of p. 110, must have been transcribed from some incorrect edition, for the original copy, printed in 1631, readsSCENE, not SCENES; a variation of some importance. The words "the various shifting of their SCENE," denote, in my apprehension, nothing more than frequent change of place in the progress of the drama: and even if that were not the case, and these words were used in the modern sense, they would not |