in the street, on their way to Capulet's house, where a masquerade is given; but Capulet's servants who come forth with their napkins, are supposed to be in a hall or saloon of their master's house: yet both the masquers without and the servants within appear on the same spot. In like manner in King Henry VIII. the very same spot is at once the outside and inside of the council-chamber. It is not, however, necessary to insist either upon the term itself, in the sense of a painting in perspective on cloth or canvas, being unknown to our early writers, or upon the various stage-directions which are found in the plays of our poet and his contemporaries, and which afford the strongest presumptive evidence that the stage in his time was not furnished with scenes: because we have to the same point the concurrent testimony of Shakspeare himself, of Ben Jonson, of every writer of the last age who has had occasion to mention this subject, and even of the very person who first introduced scenes on the publick stage.

In the year 1629 Jonson's comedy intitled The New Inn, was performed at the Blackfriars theatre, and deservedly damned. Ben was so much incensed at the town for condemning his piece, that in 1631 he published it with the following title: "The New Inne, or the light Heart, a comedy; as it was never acted, but most negligently played, by some, the kings servants, and more squeamishly beheld and censured by others, the kings subjects, 1629: And now at last set at liberty to the readers, his Ma.ties servants and subjects, to be judged, 1631." In the Dedication to this piece, the author, after expressing his profound contempt for the spectators, who were at the first representation of this play, says, "What did they come for then, thou wilt ask me. I will as punctually answer: to see and to be seene. To make a general muster of themselves in their clothes of credit, and possesse the stage against the playe: to dislike all, but marke nothing: and by their confidence of rising between the actes in oblique lines, make affidavit to the whole house of their not understanding one scene. Arm'd with this prejudice, as the stage furniture or arras

clothes, they were there; as spectators away; for the faces in the hangings and they beheld alike.”

The exhibition of plays being forbidden some time before the death of Charles I. Sir William D'Avenant in 1656 invented a new species of entertainment, which was exhibited at Rutland House, at the upper end of Aldersgate Street. The title of the piece, which was printed in the same year, is, The Siege of Rhodes, made a Representation by the Art of prospective in Scenes; and the Story sung in recitative Musick. "The original of this musick," says Dryden, "and of the scenes which adorned his work, he had from the Italian operas; but he heightened his characters (as I may probably imagine) from the examples of Corneille and some French poets." If sixty years before, the exhibition of the plays of Shakspeare had been aided on the common stage by the advantage of moveable scenes, or if the term scene had been familiar to D'Avenant's audience, can we suppose that he would have found it necessary to use a periphrastick description, and to promise that his representation should be assisted by the art of prospective in scenes?" It has been often wished," says he, in his Address to the Reader, "that our scenes (we having obliged ourselves to the variety of five changes, according to the ancient dramatick distinctions made for time,) had not been confined to about eleven feet in the height and about fifteen in depth, including the places of passage reserved for the musick." From these words we learn that he had in that piece five scenes. In 1658 he exhibited at the old theatre called the Cockpit in Drury Lane, The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru, express'd by vocal and instrumental Musick, and by Art of perspective in Scenes. In spring 1662, having obtained a patent from King Charles the Second, and built a new playhouse in Lincoln's Inn Fields, he opened his theatre with The First Part of the Siege of Rhodes, which since its first exhibition he had enlarged. He afterwards in the same year exhibited, The Second Part of the Siege of Rhodes, and his comedy called The Wits; "these plays," says Downes, who himself acted in The Siege of Rhodes,

"having new scenes and decorations, being the first that ever were introduced in England." Scenes had certainly been used before in the masques at Court, and in a few private exhibitions, and by D'Avenant himself in his attempts at theatrical entertainments shortly before the death of Cromwell: Downes, therefore, who is extremely inaccurate in his language in every part of his book, must have meant- the first ever exhibited in a regular drama, on a public theatre.

--

I have said that I could produce the testimony of Sir William D'Avenant himself on his subject. His prologue to The Wits, which was exhibited in the spring of the year 1662, soon after the opening of his theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, if every other document had perished, would prove decisively that our author's plays had not the assistance of painted scenes. "There are some," says D'Avenant,

66

who would the world persuade,

That gold is better when the stamp is bad;
And that an ugly ragged piece of eight
Is ever true in metal and in weight;
As if a guinny and louís had less
Intrinsick value for their handsomeness.
So diverse, who outlive the former age,
Allow the coarseness of the plain old stage,
And think rich vests and scenes are only fit
Disguises for the want of art and wit."

And no less decisive is the different language of the licence for erecting a theatre, granted to him by King Charles I. in 1639, and the letters patent which he obtained from his son in 1662. In the former, after he is authorized" to entertain, govern, privilege, and keep such and so many players to exercise action, musical presentments, scenes, dancing, and the like, as he the said William Davenant shall think fit and approve for the said house, and such persons to permit and continue at and during the pleasure of the said W. D. to act plays in such house so to be by him erected, and exercise musick, musical presentments, scenes, dancing, or other the like, at the same or other hours, or times, or after

plays are ended," the clause which empowers him to take certain prices from those who should resort to his theatre runs thus:

"And that it shall and may be lawful to and for the said W. D. &c. to take and receive of such our subjects as shall resort to see or hear any such plays, scenes, and entertainments whatsoever, such sum or sums of money, as is or hereafter from time to time shall be accustomed to be given or taken in other playhouses and places for the like plays, scenes, presentments, and entertainments."

Here we see that when the theatre was fitted up in the usual way of that time without the decoration of scenery, (for scenes in the foregoing passages mean, not paintings, but short stage-representations or presentments,) the usual prices were authorized to be taken: but after the Restoration, when Sir W. D'Avenant furnished his new theatre with scenery, he took care that the letters patent which he then obtained, should speak a different language, for there the corresponding clause is as follows:

"And that it shall and may be lawful to and for the said Sir William D'Avenant, his heirs, and assigns, to take and receive of such of our subjects as shall resort to see or hear any such plays, scenes, and entertainments whatsoever, such sum or sums of money, as either have accustomably been given and taken in the like kind, or as shall be thought reasonable by him or them, in regard of the great expences of SCENES, musick, and such new decorations as have not been formerly used."

Here for the first time in these letters patent the word scene is used in that sense in which Sir William had employed it in the printed title-pages of his musical entertainments exhibited a few years before. In the former letters patent granted in 1639, the word in that sense does not once occur.

To the testimony of D'Avenant himself may be added that of Dryden, both in the passage already quoted, and in his prologue to The Rival Ladies, performed at the King's Theatre in 1664:

in former days

Good prologues were as scarce as now good plays —
You now have habits, dances, scenes, and rhymes;
High language often, ay, and sense sometimes."

And still more express is that of the author of The Generous Enemies, exhibited at the King's Theatre in 1672:

"I cannot choose but laugh, when I look back and see
The strange vicissitudes of poetrie.

Your aged fathers came to plays for wit,

And sat knee-deep in nutshells in the pit:
Coarse hangings then, instead of scenes were worn,
And Kidderminster did the stage adorn:

But you, their wiser offspring, did advance

To plot of jig, and to dramatick dance,” &c.

These are not the speculations of scholars concerning a custom of a former age, but the testimony of persons who were either spectators of what they describe, or daily conversed with those who 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.

I 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.

But, says Mr. Steevens, (who differs with me in opinion on the subject before us,) "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."